James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by swsieber » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #126

kharms wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

> “Distribution of...abilities” suggests “women are worse.” No, it doesn't. It suggests fewer women are good. It doesn't suggest that the women in the field are any worse than the men in the field, it just explains why there may be fewer women than men.

It doesn't even suggest that. Other interpretations include that women are better at non-programming skills than men, pulling them away from tech. (That would be a plausible explanation for there being less women in tech than men, given the two groups have equal tech abilities)

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

#192

Post by comicjk » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

thenayr wrote: post #140

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…

Or, you know, he could realize what a monumental fuck up he made and try and make a difference for the better. The dude literally let himself be paraded around by the alt-right and neo-nazi groups as a hero. -----------EDIT below--------------- Zero sympathy for this dirtbag. He's un-hireable because he deserves to be. Future advice for Damore wannabees When alt-right Twitter agrees with your world-views, you're doin…

He also lied about having a PhD (he was in a program, but did not finish). This makes it difficult for me to take him seriously as someone motivated by an insistent search for truth.

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

#193

Post by sp332 » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

zamalek wrote: post #95

> illegal hiring quotas Whether or not this is illegal, or true, this is an anti-pattern. If you want representation (and PR) hiring quotas are great; however, if you truly want to empower they work against your goals. At the end of the day any person who walks into a job because of a quota will question, "did I get this job because of my gender/race/creed/orientation?" While you have provided them with opportunity i…

Making someone question whether they are qualified is better than not hiring them at all. Quotas are useful if you have reason to believe that your hiring process is biased and you are missing out on qualified candidates. That way you're not passing up too many candidates from specific groups that you're having a hard time characterizing.

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

#194

Post by Shank » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

Just for once, I'd like a story like this to turn out positively. Not in that James wins or loses this lawsuit, but that something could be positively gained in his life from this experience.

Being fired from Google has been traumatizing. He's gone farther and farther into the "unrecoverable from a PR standpoint" zone, and that's really horrible. 10 years from now, he's going to have a hard time finding employment or basic living possible. He's still a human though. If he committed himself to being humble and actually trying to work on himself, it would be really positive. Even the PR thing can go away -- everyone loves a redemption story.

The problem is that moves like this just deepen the hole. A lot of people are cheering for his demise, and seeing that hole get bigger is eye candy. But again, he's still a human. He still has hopes, dreams, fears, etc., just like the rest of us. Maybe positive encouragement to change is a better route to go than just watching him keep digging. In no way do I support his ideas -- quite the opposite -- but is it fair to characterize someone as fully a lost cause this early?

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

#195

Post by Idontknowmyuser » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

ncallaway wrote: post #103

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".

However there's not much of a different between: "fewer women wind up having the skills for X in part due to biological causes" and "women are worse at X".

women are better at empathy, due to biological reasons. women ,on average not all women of course, go into fields that need more empathy on average. they endup having less skills in this field on average because more of them went and studied another field due to biological reasons.

source:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19476221

from the abstract: "This study contributes information on women's greater empathic disposition in comparison with men by means of a longitudinal design in an adolescent population"

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

#196

Post by DoofusOfDeath » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

jgh wrote: post #180

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…

I notice none of those options include "admit he was wrong and apologize". I'm sure he doesn't have to work for a top-tier tech company either.

It sounds like you're suggesting he both lies, and acts with disingenuity. I don't think it's reasonable to ask him to do that.

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

#197

Post by pm90 » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #162

thenayr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, he could realize what a monumental fuck up he made and try and make a difference for the better. The dude literally let himself be paraded around by the alt-right and neo-nazi groups as a hero. -----------EDIT below--------------- Zero sympathy for this dirtbag. He's un-hireable because he deserves to be. Future advice for Damore wannabees When alt-right Twitter agrees with your world-views, you're doin…

I'm not sure how many people have the PR-savvy needed to avoid that kind of problem. So even if the consequences of not avoiding that landmine are awful, I'm not sure it's fair to castigate him for that. (N.B.: I haven't looked carefully into how he handled that affair, so my comment might be misinformed.)

Most people have enough sense to not post something so inflammatory in an office system where it can be accessed by random coworkers. He could have been more nuanced about it but the controversy seems intentional and deliberate and he absolutely deserves the whole shitstorm he's facing.

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

#198

Post by imartin2k » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

lukev wrote: post #131

imartin2k wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to explain this in a blog post. It also irritates me why this is so consequently misinterpreted, as it makes for quite a big difference for the overall narrative. Because of course if someone would claim that an individual woman cannot be as good as an individual man in engineering (or better), that person would be an idiot. "Misunderstanding statistical distribution" https://medium.com/@martinweigert/misunde…

That's a strawman. Nobody is saying that Damore thinks every man is a better programmer than every woman. He suggested that on average men are biologically more suited to programming, and the contention of his opponents is that that is still a problematic and inappropriate thing to say.

Edit: Sorry, I misread your comment, lukev. It's not a strawman though. This is exactly how many of the harshest critics of the memo have described his stance. Too many to count.

Stating "members from group X are better than members from group y" (which is how Damore's opponents describe his claim) is a not the same as stating that “more people from group X than from group Y might be suitable for this job”. The first is qualitative, the latter quantitative. The latter also implies that members of group y can be as good.

I am sure everyone has experienced how sentences and context radically can change through the addition or omission of just one or two words. Here we have such a case, and it should be acknowledged.

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

#199

Post by threeseed » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

viridian wrote: post #170

thenayr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, he could realize what a monumental fuck up he made and try and make a difference for the better. The dude literally let himself be paraded around by the alt-right and neo-nazi groups as a hero. -----------EDIT below--------------- Zero sympathy for this dirtbag. He's un-hireable because he deserves to be. Future advice for Damore wannabees When alt-right Twitter agrees with your world-views, you're doin…

I largely agreed with the memo. I have coworkers and friends who fell on either side of the camp, but more in the agree camp than disagree. Should we just purge half the developers in Columbus for Silicon Valley wrongthink? edit: looks like thenayr updated his post a couple of times since my reply. When written only the first two lines were present.

(1) Your anecdotal evidence is literally worthless. You need to provide some statistics that 50% of developers support him. I can easily self select 100% of developers who disagree with Damore.

(2) If you agree/disagree with Damore that's great. It's your right as a person to have opinions and no company can criticise you for that. What you can't do however is publicise these issues on any forum. It's simply not a topic that has any merit being discussed in a professional environment.

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

#200

Post by ogre_magi » Mon, Jan 08, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #176

Why would a "white male conservative" sue a corporation when the conservative platform believes that in a free market corporations should be allowed to discriminate as they please ? I have heard Ron Paul (ok, a libertarian) state numerous times how he doesn't support civil rights, because the public will stop visiting those businesses who engage in discriminatory behavior. Shouldn't James Damore just let the free mar…

Damore wouldn't describe himself as conservative I think.