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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

#911

Post by eloff »

wpietri wrote: post #908
eloff wrote: post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A diversity program is inherently political, as you said. I don't think it has a place in a company. Again, I think leave your politics at home. You seem to think that's not possible, but that's how I would do things, were it up to me. It's got nothing to do with men's or women's rights. I'm dismayed by that whole argument. Let the meritocracy rule and the chips fall where they may.

Not having a diversity program is also political. The concept of meritocracy is political. Claiming that the things fitting with your political biases are non-political is political.

If that's the case everything is political. I'm not sure I accept that.

What I want to say is I don't care about left or right or the agendas of either. Focus on the product, the customers, and the fight. Alexander the Great never had a diversity program. I'm not going to say he was the pinnacle of morality here, but maybe it's a good idea to focus on the important things if you want to be successful.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#912

Post by foldr »

fastball wrote: post #900
foldr wrote: post #897

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think there's any analogy between women working as programmers in the 60s and women working in factories during the second World War. But in fact, WWII did effect a huge change in perceptions of women as part of the workforce.

You literally claimed that women working in an industry means women are interested in working in that industry. That's not necessarily true. Hence the analogy.

It does mean that in the absence of any other obvious explanation. I don't actually know the extent to which women working in factories were conscripted in WWII. But I do know that women weren't forced to work as programmers in the 1960s.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#913

Post by tomnipotent »

googlryas wrote: post #798
saagarjha wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I was recently a college student who lived near frat houses. (Yes, I know there are academic fraternities: that’s not what this discussion was about.)

I was recently living next to black people, so let me tell you about how black people really are.

Exactly. Most people use silly stereotypes from TV to paint "frat bois" in some biased lighting, never ceases to amuse me.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#914

Post by tootie »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #820
tootie wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. Free speech means you can't be prosecuted for speech. It doesn't mean people can't hate you. You're literally up here telling me I shouldn't speak. What's the difference between saying women are inferior and saying sexists are inferior? The answer is that I'm actually correct.

> " Free speech means you can't be prosecuted for speech. It doesn't mean people can't hate you. " Would you have said that to people in the civil rights movement or the labor movement? They were hated and mistreated by many as well and yet your words would have justified that. The sword always cuts both ways. Your viewpoint will hurt causes you believe in just as much as causes you oppose.

Slippery slope? Nope. You're thinking like a programmer where rules have to be rigorously defined. Humans are capable of being reasonable. We are capable of distinguishing hateful speech without an algorithm.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#915

Post by hpcjoe »

throw0101a wrote: post #907
hpcjoe wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think it might be simple as that. Its not about ability. Its about environment. Which is how I interpreted what Damore was trying to do with his memo: saying that women are capable, but that the environment was not appealing to them. Either/both of (a) what they got to work on, and/or (b) how they were treated. IMHO, men and women perceive and react to the world differently, and treating them the same is foolish…

I generally disagree with broad brush strokes of articles and books that make such cases. I find this to be a watered down variant on Phrenology[1], but rather than using physical skull measurements, people invoke the existence of two X chromosomes to offer explanations of differences.

I've worked with/for brilliant female scientists and engineers before. I personally believe that what makes a good scientist or engineer is a profound insatiable curiosity, and a drive to understand. I've seen this in both females and males.

My point was, when you encourage this, and you help the person understand and adapt to challenges they may face, society is often better off, as we have added to our scientific and engineering pool of talent. If you discourage this by saying "your brain is different", or "you are more interested in feelings than quantitative science", we wind up with a discouraging environment for 1/2 of our prospective scientists and engineers.

I don't see how the latter is a good thing. Damore had a right to author his text. I'd argue that sending it out to others in his company was a bad idea ... generally one should separate personal politics from corporate life. But I disagree with numerous things in the text (I read it when it came out).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#916

Post by jlebar »

banads wrote: post #906
jlebar wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the fact that people criticized the memo without reading it in full speak to OP's point about the memo having been taken out of context? I'll also suggest, reading this memo was incredibly painful for many of my female colleagues and friends inside and outside of Google. I don't think they should have to read the entire thing carefully in order to have an opinion on it. Indeed, I am not a well-read expert in…

Yes of course if it had not been excerpted and retitled as "Anti-diversity memo", people would have been less primed to have a knee jerk reaction, or to even click the link in the first place. >How does the fact that people criticized the memo without reading it in full speak to OP's point about the memo having been taken out of context? Because you can't begin to know what someone meant unless you read what they wro…

OK, if I'm understanding this right, the argument is that because the document was not initially printed in full (i.e. with figures and citations) in the press (and had inflammatory headlines), many people got the wrong impression about it.

That seems like a testable hypothesis.

1. If it were true, I'd expect a significantly higher proportion of Googlers to be on his side than the proportion non-Googlers, since all Googlers had access to the full memo. Is that true?

2. If it were true, I'd expect a significant number of people who ended up reading the whole memo to say, I initially had a negative reaction, but after seeing X specific figure or citation, I changed my mind. Has anyone in this thread said that? If not, why not?

(Is your feeling that first impressions are everything, and after that, people's views are ossified past the point of being able to change?)

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#917

Post by ALittleLight »

UncleMeat wrote: post #862
ALittleLight wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you genuinely believe that you are unqualified to read research papers and come up with an opinion about them with sufficient rigor to merit responding to a request for a feedback from a training program you attended at work?

Yes absolutely. I'm barely even qualified to synthesize conclusions from CS papers outside of my subfield. Drawing broader conclusions from a slice of the literature requires immense context.

If you aren't able to read research papers and synthesize an opinion on them then by your own standards it seems you shouldn't have an opinion here. You can't tell whether Damore was right or wrong because you can't read papers from different fields and reach conclusions.

You think the authors Damore cited rejected him. Perhaps you have an example of that. I haven't seen anything beyond the authors agreeing with Damore's interpretation of the facts and saying they don't know about the conclusions. It's obviously not very compelling given that Damore was metaphorically tarred on feathered on social media and fired, so researchers saying they "don't know" about the conclusions might be because they genuinely don't know or might be because they don't want to invite backlash of their own.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#918

Post by tomnipotent »

DonHopkins wrote: post #575
tomnipotent wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalist using the words "frat" in an article doesn't make something true. The only place I see this term slung is in the media and HN, or people making up abstract bad guys to vent their anger on.

>Journalist using the words "frat" [...] No actually: widely respected Pulitzer Prize and other award winning New York Times journalists quoting senior government official using the word "frat": “The culture clash between public and private sectors has been jarring,” The Times reports. “The senior official described the Kushner team as a ‘frat party’ that descended from a U.F.O. and invaded the federal government.” >…

All you've demonstrated is general male misogyny. This is nothing new, and has as much overlap with fraternities as charities, churches, and sports.

Painting it was "frat bro" just makes for a better more exciting headline.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#919

Post by ALittleLight »

wpietri wrote: post #863
ALittleLight wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said Damore was asked for feedback not that his managers ordered him to write the document and then fired him for it. Damore claimed he originally wrote it as feedback for a diversity meeting he attended and then shared it for broader feedback. To my knowledge this account has never been contested by Google or anyone else and is the agreed upon account. I agree it is possible that Damore is lying about why he wrote…

When you talk about how "Google fired Damore" and "They asked him for feedback" you imply that the firer and the feedback-re are the same entity. But there's no reason to think that's the case. A more plausible interpretation is that somebody running D&I programs said something general, like "we welcome feedback on our programs". But there's no evidence that he specifically was asked, and even if he were, sharing it…

Damore was both asked for feedback and fired by Google. Sure, it was different individuals at Google who did each, whoever presented the diversity the diversity conference asked for feedback and the decision to fire Damore was made, I believe, by Pichai.

I never said it was the same individual though, I said it was Google. I think it's splitting hairs to take what I wrote "Google asked for feedback and fired him" read it as a claim that it's somehow the same individual firing him, and then try to dispute the unintended interpretation you just invented.

Regarding sharing it broadly being Damore's idea - true. He shared it first as feedback and then tried to develop the ideas further by sharing within the company. For opinions not verboten by Google, this is common at the company.

This does not mean that it was irrelevant he was asked. Google talked to Damore about diversity and asked for his opinions. He was working to provide it and fired by Google for it.

Your construction seems to imply that Damore was fired for sharing his diversity feedback more broadly. I don't think that's true. Damore wasn't fired or censured when he gave the original opinion and not when he shared internally. He was only fired when social media began brewing an outrage mob. The point is, it shows Damore wasn't doing anything objectively wrong. He wasn't punished until popular subjective opinion went against him. He wasn't fired for his opinion or for sharing it internally, he was fired because people were tweeting about it and Google lacks the intellectual and moral integrity to stand behind their people against mean tweets.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#920

Post by tomnipotent »

DonHopkins wrote: post #778
manigandham wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media is not "everywhere", it's the media, which currently has a massive problem with subjective narratives rather than facts.

Are you actually suggesting that it follows from the media being not being "everywhere" that Frat Bros culture is a myth? Exactly what about the Snapchat or Jared Kushner stories I cited do you believe is a hoax?

It's a media narrative constructed to sell headlines.

The exact same behavior is present in people that have zero background in frats. How do you explain that?

This is not a "frat bros" problem, it's a misogyny problem. Painting it with the words frat just helps paint whatever biased narrative is being spun to make the story more compelling.

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