Live data from Hacker News

James Damore and three others end Google suit

bloomberg.com

301–310 of 1001 posts

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Snowden defected to Russia. Sometimes you just have to go where you are free to state your case and not be shouted down which sometimes means an enemy-of-my-enemy scenario.

Snowden did not "defect to Russia", he got stuck in Russia while in transit after the US cancelled his passport.

And crucially, Snowden is as critical of Russia as possible, though not to the point of endangering himself. He doesn't want to be there. It's not where his allegiance ultimately lies.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#302
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if you intentionally ignored it because I said the same - that women in tech is a minority - outlier. The problem with accessing whether the field is unattractive to women is asking women not in the field why they don't like the field which I haven't seen done much. This is the reason why I compared construction. Secondly, I don't understand why it has to be CS. A product requires more roles than a CS g…

> I am not sure if you intentionally ignored it because I said the same - that women in tech is a minority - outlier. The problem with accessing whether the field is unattractive to women is asking women not in the field why they don't like the field which I haven't seen done much. This is the reason why I compared construction. Sorry, I thought we were still discussing the James Damore memo, because he said and back…

No, I didn't assume anything. Sorry if I came off that way.

And I wasn't talking about damore memo.

I like the idea of diversity and support it but it depends on what cost. My country suffers from reservation (quota) and it's wrecked.

Although I wanted to talk more about organisational diversity. Whether organisations as a whole have 50/50 gender ratio at scale. Whether roles are "diverse".

Because that would be more interesting.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#303
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other words for hurting their bottom line by demanding Google be better (each in their preferred way) for society and its employees? Yes? If I hired someone to clean my apartment and instead of cleaning my apartment he or she spent the whole time writing up long diatribes demanding that I be better, per his or her understanding, for society and my employees you can bet I would not be hiring that cleaner again!

I may be misremembering, but wasn’t Damore’s post to an internal list Google specifically set up to solicit feedback on diversity?

To cut to the chase, I do think there’s a certain amount of dishonesty in the typical Silicon Valley corporate culture. But to my mind it is far more reasonable to ask that companies not engage in this dishonesty rather than asking that they live up to it. Bring your whole self to work is ridiculous and unworkable. No one can run a successful business if their employees are spending all day debating philosophy on internal message boards.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#304

Would it be too much to ask that we collectively say "The Damore thing is obviously a [scissor statement]( https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ ), on which otherwise-reasonable people bafflingly manage to hold different views very strongly, and we should stop talking about it forthwith because no good can come of it"? Nothing new can be said on the subject, vanishingly few people can be persua…

That is such an interesting story / concept. Love it, thanks for posting this.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been endless discussion about Damore. In particular podcasts you'd think that the firing of a random engineer at Google ranked alongside 9/11 as a defining event in modern history. If I circulated a memo to my co-workers that not only opposed a new policy from management, but did obvious harm to the expressed intent of that policy, I might be fired. It doesn't matter if the memo I circulated would have gotten…

The fact you wrote this comment, tells me, that you never read his memo.

How so, I didn't say anything about the content of the memo? Or you disagree that it did obvious harm to Google's policy on gender? We know that female employees received the memo and stated that it made them feel excluded, which did harm to the intent of the policy. That's not really debatable is it?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#306
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women Be precise, how is your community not friendly to women in ways you cannot fix in five minutes? If its obvious, its trivial to list them, if its subtle then its worth doing the exercise. We have to accept they may just not want the gig. Just like most men don't go into pre-school teaching.

* Intellectual posturing and oneupsmanship in software teams. Participating in intellectual dick waving. * A strong focus on being "right" over working collaboratively (especially in domains with no right answers). * Hyper competitiveness - to the detriment of effectiveness. * A lack of empathy (e.g. PRs with "your code sucks, suck it up and stop being such a baby"). These things are hardly good from the perspective…

All which can be fixed in five minutes.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Snowden defected to Russia. Sometimes you just have to go where you are free to state your case and not be shouted down which sometimes means an enemy-of-my-enemy scenario.

Snowden did not "defect to Russia", he got stuck in Russia while in transit after the US cancelled his passport.

Your timeline is wrong. Snowden defected to Russia.

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-fable-of-edward-snowden...

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If making a mess is what gets you fired, shouldn't google have gone after whoever leaked the memo, instead of Damore?

They are likely a) harder to find b) firing Damore is more likely to satisfy the loudest group while firing the leaker is going to rile them up more.

It wouldn't be that hard to find.

"firing the leaker is going to rile them up more."

It seems our society has devolved into satisfying the mob rather than doing the right thing these days.

I've seen some of the comments from internal Google groups that were since leaked after this incident. Some of the most horrible thoughts and opinions were posted, with actual real names, but nobody got punished or fired. Why? Because they were progressive/hard-left thoughts and opinions.

This is all about politics and has nothing to do with right or wrong.

It's just more proof that these large tech companies are becoming the equivalent of fascist governments that police our thoughts and opinions....and punish us for wrongthink.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rogan was labelled alt-right after he interviewed Gavin McInness and Alex Jones again (a comical interview btw). That may have been cancelled out by him interviewing Bernie Sanders though.

Rogan is aesthetically a bro, that's all this comes down to. If he were more 'soy' and less 'bro', while having the same mostly-liberal opinions, he'd get an entirely different reaction from the elite cultural left.

I'm a European living and working in Europe. I have no idea what a 'bro' is.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#310
post #206

Would it be too much to ask that we collectively say "The Damore thing is obviously a [scissor statement]( https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ ), on which otherwise-reasonable people bafflingly manage to hold different views very strongly, and we should stop talking about it forthwith because no good can come of it"? Nothing new can be said on the subject, vanishingly few people can be persua…

That story you links makes for some fascinating reading. Thanks.

Format reminds me of this cold war story: https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail

"It made a horrible kind of sense, for Cold War values of sense: not a real rocket motor, but a vile way of getting your enemy’s best and brightest to kill themselves by trying to reverse-engineer an impossible nightmare."

Post reply on HN