Live data from Hacker News

James Damore and three others end Google suit

bloomberg.com

741–750 of 1001 posts

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was already a huge mess internally even before it got leaked. Internal relations matter a lot too. I think he would have gotten fired even without the leak.

> I think he would have gotten fired even without the leak. I don't think so, it had to go all the way up to Sundar before he got fired, Sundar wouldn't have taken a break from his vacation if it wasn't a PR mess. Internal messes happens all the time at Google and they almost never end with someone getting fired.

People get fired over internal issues all the time, you just don't hear about it because they don't make the news. The people involved make the rational decision to not go public, because if they did, it could easily cause them to never be able to work in the industry again. No one wants to hire a malcontent.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#742
post #184

Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess. As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your resume.

What don't you agree with?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people who think that women are inferior (just on average tho!) remain gainfully employed, because instead of writing their views on internal company memos, they post them on news.ycombinator.com.

Do you have any examples?

Sure. There's this one user named lawnchair_larry who believes that women are, on average, weaker performers in tech[1], that it's for biological reasons[2], and that it's fair to discriminate against women in hiring decisions because of it[3]. Yes, he phrased some of his opinions as questions, but anyone with a fifth grade reading level can figure out the implied answer.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960327

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23125229

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18186240

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He failed the green eggs and ham test for written communication at work. >Would you like this in the press? >Would you like this at Brand X? >Like to read it on the stand? >Like it in the government's hand? https://www.legalethicsforum.com/blog/2006/12/over_at_white_...

I think his failure was just naivete. He thought Google wanted legitimate feedback or would support intellectual honesty over popularity. That was wrong.

That's not the only issue. Taking away the political content entirely, storing up all your greivances and airing them in a single document intended to attack the entire purpose of other teams was a stupid thing to do. I've seen people do the same thing with technical issues and it's just totally counter-productive.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citing papers doesn’t make an opinion piece “scientific” or unpolitical. It just means the author did enough research to prop their opinion up. It’s a particular failing of self described rationalists that seeing citations means the goal was objective truth rather than supporting a pre-existing bias or opinion. Particularly when dealing with papers in harder to study fields that have been at the centre of the replica…

I don't care what his pre-existing biases were, and that's not really the point. He wrote a paper and supported it with facts and sources. If you disagree with something, then dispute the facts/sources. I haven't seen a single comment in this post disagreeing with the memo that actually critiques any specific points in the memo. Every single criticism I've seen is more along the lines of "but he was being sexist". Ok…

If you don’t care about the context the memo was written in you are just engaging in what I described. Essentially trying to veneer your preconceptions with the appearance of “science” and attempting to shift the burden of proof.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#746
post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"X has been silent on Y," is generally not a fair criticism. Not speaking about a topic is the norm, since time is finite and there are uncountable numbers of issues to discuss, even within a specific topic.

Except they know about the issue, were pointed to it multiple times, even by me and are always quick to proclaim that 'Israel has the right to defend itself'. Dave Rubin for example has had several offers from some prominent left-wing commentators to debate the issue, among others, yet he's always busy or some other excuse. Sam Harris definitely knows about it as well, (has even spoken about BDS itself, just not thei…

But all three of those IDW people you cite are Jewish! It's no surprise they wouldn't support BDS.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're technically correct, still is not unreasonable to argue that accusing google of quote "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate" might have a net effect of caste a shadow over certain groups being competent enough or being "diversity hires".

So pointing out a mathematical fact about the hiring practices of your company is wrong? Google decided to implement the policy that minorities who almost passed the bar(but didn't) get special treatment.

A simple example: "On the current political climate, political platforms are being built around being "anti-pc". With the past evidence we have about astroturfing campaigns it's possible that there are some paid posters even here on HN peddling political right wing propaganda."

I'm not saying anything false, but you can clearly see that this is not only a bad faith argument, but actually poisons the discussion, and still it can be argued that indeed we need to be wary about astroturfing and social network manipulations.

I wouldn't have fired Damore, but let's not kid ourselves by saying "we're simply stating facts". Mainly because that's not really the conversation, the tacit implication of "minorities who almost passed the bar", but letting them in anyway, is that the "bar" might be wrong, and that the company might be getting more results with this kind of hires than just measuring "mad hack skillz". Damore rightly points out that "without evidence this is just veiled (left) ideology" the point where he misses is that there has been at least attempts to get this evidence, we can discuss the results and even if they're valid (reproducibility crisis), but Damore just plain ignore's it. The only extension he has to offer about this point is: "[7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”" which is just bullshit by the account of anyone who knows the basics and history of marxism or social science. So these are not even "facts", but youtube tier analysis.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#748
post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You mean consequences for your behavior?" Outrage mobs are by definition 'consequences for some behavior'. But the implication that someone should be vilified globally for having an earnest and not entirely unreasonable intellectual opinion makes his responders an 'outrage mob'. Damore had no malice, ill will, his opinion was made ostensibly for some positive will, among a relatively private group. If he was beating…

> not entirely unreasonable intellectual opinion Despite reasoning his point of view well, it does not mean it's right, healthy, or valid. And while Sexism and Racism are not equal, there do parallel in many ways. How different is his memo than writings that discuss how the Negroid is a lesser form of human species, and there for it's condition is justified? Scientifically, there is very little, if anything, that dif…

> Scientifically, there is very little, if anything, that differs between a man and woman performing a job in tech.

Thst wasn't the argument made. The argument wasn't about job performance, but job preference.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#749
post #401
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is architecture any less about 'things' than software engineering? The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit. Is Facebook not about people? Airbnb? Uber? It may be that these companies, perhaps inadvertently, choose to hire people who don't focus on the people-related aspects of their roles. But it's obvious that empathy and an interest in people would in fact be very useful at ma…

>"The 'things vs people' dichotomy is extremely vague and obviously bullshit." Is it? Or have you simply not taken a moment to do a little bit of research? Here is a study with 500,000 participants, for example: "Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension. "Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and…

You've missed what his comment was about, it's not that the things vs people dichotomy doesn't exist. It's that it has no relation to engineering. Architecture is just as much things over people as engineering, Architecture is balaanced, engineering isn't. The problem is that in reality, you can do engineering from a people first approach or from a things first approach, and in reality, only one of those approaches will get you through university and into Google.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore should have just got a new job. I think I agree with this analogy.

You're being reductive about my explanation about the role a survivor plays in a DV relationship. Recognizing, understanding, and ultimately forgiving yourself for why a person was in a DV relationship is part of the process survivors go through in order to move past it. I know. I'm a survivor.

In case it wasn't clear I don't actually think DV is the fundamentally the consequence of the victims action.
Post reply on HN