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James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

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Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#151

Post by IncRnd »

ebbv wrote: post #108
take4 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual quote: > the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes From the article: > women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering Do you not see the difference?

Yeah, I do see the difference; the second sentence is spelling out plainly the bigotry he's trying to cloak in faux intellectualism. It's always the same kind of crap from bigots. "Women MIGHT be less capable of engineering." "Black people MIGHT be more prone to crime." "Gay people MIGHT be more likely to be pedophiles." and it's always based in bigotry, not in science or evidence.

> Yeah, I do see the difference; the second sentence is spelling out plainly the bigotry he's trying to cloak in faux intellectualism.

The second sentence wasn't written by Damore, so why attribute to him what he didn't write?

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#152

Post by mikeryan »

vorotato wrote: post #104
mikeryan wrote: post #24

Will watch this with interest AFAIK discriminating against conservative white men isn’t illegal. It’s not a protected class. There must be some twist here.

Race and Sex are actually protected classes. Conservative however yes is totally not federally protected and neither is Socialist, or Liberal. Frankly I think that's weird, but the law is the law.

But I'm not sure[1] that you can combine classes like this to create a new protected class. No one is making the argument that Google discriminates based on race or sex. If this is more of a harassment suit then a discrimination claim it seems to have more legs.

[1] I'm really not sure, I'm not kidding that I'm interested in how this plays out.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#153

Post by MBCook »

carrja99 wrote: post #136
john_moscow wrote: post #87

He doesn't have a choice really. With the PR mess he got himself into, no big company will ever hire him. Imagine the possible headlines "Microsoft hires the James Damore, the male supremacy advocate fired from Google". Nope, regardless the technical skill or his actual personality, his public image is forever ruined. So he realistically has a choice between becoming a paid speaker for fringe ultra-right organization…

> So he realistically has a choice between becoming a paid speaker for fringe ultra-right organizations Isn't that what he's been doing through his twitter account where he muses whether people join the KKK because they have cool titles? Or his interviews with people like Milo?

But can he sustain that? Or is he something of a ‘flavor of the month’ that people will stop carrying about in a year or two?

Is this just an attempt to extend his relevance a bit longer?

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#155

Post by anonemouse145 »

threeseed wrote: post #121
brndnmtthws wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News outlets generate income through sensationalism, and that's the storyline that they need to drive the most traffic.

This has nothing to do with the news and everything to do with what Damore did. He was fired for a reason.

No he didn't. Stop spreading lies.

This is the heart of the lawsuit.

Unless you mean he was fired as part of a witch hunt which was much ado about nothing, and that's a sad fact of basing firing decisions on tweets. That is true.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#156

Post by BonesJustice »

ebbv wrote: post #10
Veen wrote: post #3

From the article: > women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering Why do news outlets persistently misrepresent what he actually said? I've read his memo and just about every news article says it contains claims that it doesn't. I have no view on whether he's right or not, but I remain shocked at the misrepresentation of his views throughout the tech media.

From his memo: > I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. He said exactly that, right there. Why do conservatives…

I read this as suggesting that the engineering field is currently structured in a way that skews towards the preferences and natural strengths of men rather than women. He's not saying that women are less capable engineers in principle. That would be an absurd argument given that women dominated the field only a few decades ago. Rather, he's arguing that we've reshaped the field and the culture such that it's inherently hostile to women, which is exactly the same argument I hear all the time. He just didn't express it very well.

As I recall, his entire point is that we should be reshaping the field to make it more appealing to women so that they are drawn to it naturally, as opposed to the current strategy of giving women preferential treatment in the hiring process, only to have them leave because we haven't addressed the underlying problems that are driving them away.

That's hardly a radical idea. There are benefits to his approach: I, for one, think the field would benefit greatly if we focused more on, for example, the importance of empathy. Thinking about others ought to be a fundamental pillar of software engineering, as it naturally leads to better UX, APIs, and services. And when we think about the people who will be maintaining our code, we're inclined to write better code that is easier to grok.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#157

Post by grondilu »

> after posting a memo to an internal Google message board

He should really have posted that somewhere else, and maybe with a pseudonym.

I'm no lawyer but I'm willing to bet that although it's illegal to fire someone for his political opinions, it's fine if those opinions are expressed via the company's internal communications channels.

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#158

Post by Idontknowmyuser »

kharms wrote: post #80
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between "fewer women wind up having the skills for X" and "women are worse at X".

“Distribution of...abilities” suggests “women are worse.” If the quote merely spoke of skills I could see your point, but it speaks of abilities and points to genetics as an root cause.

if more woman are better at empathy ( already proven as fact), wouldn't you agree that some women might prefer jobs that can capitalize on that empathy.

this argument uses "Distribution of...abilities" without indicating in any part that women are worse at anything.

the phrase “Distribution of...abilities” does not suggest that “women are worse.”

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#159

Post by coloneltcb »

john_moscow wrote: post #87

He doesn't have a choice really. With the PR mess he got himself into, no big company will ever hire him. Imagine the possible headlines "Microsoft hires the James Damore, the male supremacy advocate fired from Google". Nope, regardless the technical skill or his actual personality, his public image is forever ruined. So he realistically has a choice between becoming a paid speaker for fringe ultra-right organization…

he could be CTO of Breitbart

Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

#160

Post by threeseed »

john_moscow wrote: post #87

He doesn't have a choice really. With the PR mess he got himself into, no big company will ever hire him. Imagine the possible headlines "Microsoft hires the James Damore, the male supremacy advocate fired from Google". Nope, regardless the technical skill or his actual personality, his public image is forever ruined. So he realistically has a choice between becoming a paid speaker for fringe ultra-right organization…

No that just isn't how life does or should work.

You make mistakes in an industry and you own the impacts to your reputation. He has done serious harm to the work of so many by his actions and absolutely deserves to own the consequences.

And let's be serious here he has zero chance of winning against Google.

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