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James Damore and three others end Google suit

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Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#871

Post by afiori »

ashtonkem wrote: post #413
sacks2k wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He never released anything to the public. Someone who didn't like his political views leaked it to Twitter and the press. If I were him, I would have personally sued the person that leaked the content and continued the fight until they had no money left. They really need to be taught a lesson that it's not okay to do something like this with the intention of destroying a person's life.

Publishing to that many people and expecting it to remain private is folly of such a high kind that it borders on stupidity.

I do not think that all feedback ever sent to the google diversity team had been made public.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#872

Post by afiori »

rbanffy wrote: post #504
lonelappde wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore was character assassinated via leaks and libel, yes. Pragmatically, he could have prevented his fate if he took the opportunity to back down when challenged by corporate, instead of defending his right to free honest speech at a megacorp. He erroneously thought that because controversial party-line free-speech was job-safe even when intellectually dishonest, that controversial anti-party-line free speech was a…

The character assassination weapon was his own memo and opinions, stated over and over by himself. It's character suicide.

except for the fact that almost all controversial statements attributed to the memo are projections.

In practice the entire content of that document sums up to "Since current diversity efforts are not solving the problem it could be time to admit that the current google structure is on average slightly less attractive or rewarding for women (or for individual in a slice of the population that contains slightly more women than men)" together with some suggestions of what those changes could be.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#873

Post by afiori »

UncleMeat wrote: post #866
ekianjo wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Damore has the same choice. You mean he had the choice between: - not speak at all and let all the media portray him as a misogynist and generally horrible person - or try to explain himself with whoever was willing to hear him, knowing that he would also be judged "by association" in a negative light? Sorry but it seems like there was no good choice for Damore anyway in terms of reputation.

His brief media appearances just doubled down. It wasn't about how he was trying to express himself more clearly. It was about how "the left" was out to sabotage him and tech is taken over by SJWs. The media appearances weren't going to do anything to repair his reputation even if they were on NPR.

> It was about how "the left" was out to sabotage him and tech is taken over by SJWs.

Well, this part is true at google...

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#874

Post by lliamander »

wpietri wrote: post #865
lliamander wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damore laid out the timeline pretty clearly: * He attended a voluntary HR run seminar on diversity, and feedback was solicited. * He wrote the memo and submitted it to HR * HR sat on the memo without response for a month, after which he started sharing it on some internal mailing lists

In which case, the "request for feedback" bit, which Damore's defenders here are making a big deal about, was irrelevant. Him sharing it internally was not anything people asked for; it was something he decided to do on his own.

One of the criticisms made of Damore when this first broke was "he should have expressed his concerns to HR first". Like pretty much all of the criticisms of Damore, this one was based on ignorance (or a lie). He in fact did initially submit his concerns to HR, and not merely of his own initiative but in response to their request.

If HR had an objection to Damore's memo, the appropriate time to address that would have been when he initially submitted it. They had a whole month to respond before he shared it with other people. They could have had a private conversation with him and resolved any disagreements or misunderstandings without it ever becoming a fiasco. By inviting his comments but then failing to address them, Google HR bears most of the blame for the fallout.

His decision to share the memo with his colleagues was his, sure, but he wrote initially it in response to a request from HR. If management asks for your feedback about something but then ignores it, seeking validation from your colleagues is a perfectly logical next step. Especially so at a place like Google, where open discussion was supposed to be a hallmark of it's internal culture.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#875

Post by afiori »

varjag wrote: post #198
look_lookatme wrote: post #12

Damore does not fit into the neat ideological right or left classification but it would be impossible for an institution like Bloomberg to have nuance on this issue. Just because some deplorable lifted him up doesn't mean he should be defined specifically on an ideological axis. But, of course, who gives a fuck. The rage machine rages on.

His political standing is fairly transparent.

If that is meant to say moderate then I agree.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#876

Post by afiori »

koheripbal wrote: post #103
duxup wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be curious what the agreement is if only because it didn't seem like he had much in the way of a strong with case.

Are you serious? He was fired for his political views.

The case could be constructed as being fired due to the backlash caused to google.

Damore would have had to prove that there was a active discrimination at google toward some political views. He had some good evidence for that (in terms of internal conversations and witnesses) but it is not so clear whether that was enough, or even if it was necessarily illegal in this case.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#877

Post by afiori »

duxup wrote: post #329
LurkersWillLurk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this as though it's plainly obvious that it wasn't. The truth is that it depends, and not on whether or not we think his political views are ridiculous. The causes of action in the lawsuit were unlawful termination on account of political activities (which are protected in California) and sex (which is protected federally). Google made three motions to dismiss and lost all of them. Does that mean Google is gu…

I'm not convinced it was because of his "political views" is an automatic fact. People say "political views", that's how he might frame it, but I would assume Google would frame it as they fired him for making statements that women are less capable.

I feel this comment is a good summation of this conversation. I do not know whether you would agree with the presumed Google's opinion, but a big part of this entire "scandal" is that Damore never said that women are less capable.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#878

Post by lliamander »

sacks2k wrote: post #292
mabbo wrote: 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.

He never released anything to the public. Someone who didn't like his political views leaked it to Twitter and the press. If I were him, I would have personally sued the person that leaked the content and continued the fight until they had no money left. They really need to be taught a lesson that it's not okay to do something like this with the intention of destroying a person's life.

Also, he shared his memo with HR (at their request) long before he shared it with his colleagues. If Google was going to have an objection to what he wrote, that would have been the appropriate time.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#879

Post by afiori »

hpcjoe wrote: post #290
throw0101a wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody suggests that women are somehow naturally 'less inclined', and the profession is richer for it. It was not about "inclination", but rather that the current engineering culture tended to be lean a certain way when it comes to focus: > Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroti…

There are economic factors associated with being a primary educator. The pay, for lack of a better way to put it, sucks. This impacts men and women. My wife and I went through Physics grad school together. To say that the experience was hostile for her, and many other women, would be an understatement. My daughter is contemplating grad school for next year (senior in college, its been an interesting year). We've been…

The context of the memo was slightly different. Google would love to reach some kind of 50/50 gender balance internally. The point of the memo was that 1) it is possible that the current google will never be able to reach that balance due to individual choices and 2) suggestions on how to make that goal easier to achieve (for example using performances in teams rather than performances as independent contributor as internal metrics).

From my point of view the current situation is that many organizations are both hostile to women and desperate not to be. what I think was really useful of the Damore memo is that it tried to point a way on how to change institutions to be more inclusive by default.

For sure it would not solve 100% of the problem, maybe just 5%, but I actually think it would have made the remaining 95% easier to solve also.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#880

Post by fzeroracer »

pnako wrote: post #861
fzeroracer wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but to make this argument you would have to demonstrate that the West somehow became much more gender egalitarian in the past 30 years in order to explain the drop in CS grads. So what happened from the late 80s to now that resulted in women gaining more freedom and therefore shifting them out of CS? And more specifically: Why has this only affected computer science? The gender equality paradox supposedly holds…

The fact remains that there are more women studying engineering (not just CS) in less egalitarian third world countries than in progressive western countries, despite the latter having campaigns, funding, etc. The idea that male and female primates (including humans) have different ways to look at the world seems very sensible to me, and that would explain why "women care more about people" and "men care more about t…

That wasn't the argument I was making. Please don't change the topic. I don't dispute that there are more women studying engineering in said countries, what I asked you was a very specific question.

Why did Computer Science of all STEM degrees face a drop in female graduates versus the others?

And if you're making the argument that 'women care more about people' and 'men care more about things' then I'm going to disagree heavily considering it doesn't relate to modern day software development. Current development is highly collaborative, constantly dealing with other people whether it's customers or members of your team. In fact, back when CS was at its peak of women obtaining CS degrees, that was when CS was more focused on things and less on people as a result of software still being a niche and local thing. That argument doesn't work considering the history of CS as a whole.

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