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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

#311

Post by pjc50 »

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.

.. so you'd destroy their life instead?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#312

Post by AzzieElbab »

bradleyjg wrote: post #303
tzs wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 int…

How would a geek with 0 real life experience outside Google know that? It is not what they told him about "internal discussions".

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#313

Post by DonHopkins »

sacks2k wrote: post #286
azinman2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he did become an alt-right / Fox News / conservative machine darling.

It's pretty well known that if you go on Fox news, the other news organizations like CNN, MSNBC, etc will ban you from their station. Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew have talked about this on their podcast and so have many other people interviewed by Fox news. This creates the false impression of "Fox News darlings" and ends up furthering the "us vs them" narrative.

Perhaps it's actually because Dr. Drew, Dr. Oz, and Dr. Phil are dangerous self-promoting quacks who dispense deadly medical advice, and CNN, MSNBC, etc have a problem with that, but Fox News loves it. Looks like CNN etc made the right call.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/04/17/dr-oz-dr-...

>Dr. Oz, Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil made these claims on Fox News. Now they're backtracking

>TV hosts Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Drew Pinsky and Phil McGraw have all appeared on Fox News and made these misleading claims about coronavirus. Now, all of them are backtracking.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#314

Post by dijit »

searchableguy wrote: post #302
dijit wrote: 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. 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…

Incidentally that's exactly what Damore was saying;

Quotas are terrible no good bad and ugly hacks which will cause a lot of harm and the reasons why are controversial.

I think 50/50 gender parity is a stupid goal too, I think more representation but if it's not 50:50 then it doesn't mean that there is sexism, 60:40 is fine even 70:30 is ok, wether it skews more to women or men, it doesn't matter, the point is that women, men, blind, black- everyone needs to have their voices heard on teams that design global products.

The closer you try to force it to 50:50 the worse and much harder it'll be, bureaucrats will love you though, at what point do you stop breaking down societal boundaries? I'd argue that getting a few voices from each are is a good thing but I don't think exactly defining the distribution of the country is a good goal.

Instead of quotas, we should investigate what would make the industry more appealing to those under-heard voices.

Damore says that women tend to favour flexible working hours, that's great Tech can support that.

Damore says that women tend to favour jobs that have a high emphasis on collaboration, excellent, tech can support that.

This is why I dislike the overwhelming criticism of Damores paper, because it's the quintessential attack on the author for daring to insinuate that women are different, instead we should boulder through the idea that Women == Men, and anything other than that is sexism, but also we want 50:50 gender parity... and why isn't it happening! sexism! therefore men are bad and we should hire women over men using quotas! that will fix it!.

It's egregious, and stupid, and harmful. And a conversation about why and trying to actually improve the situation is more fruitful than shit slinging because the only people to let Damore speak are right-wingers.

If you're left-wing (as I am) you should want him to speak, he's promoting equality and compassion.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#315

Post by threatofrain »

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.

That’s like suing people for telling others that you’re gay. That’s a standard of liability people would never rally behind, one which prevents you from speaking truthfully at the cost of another person.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#317

Post by spangry »

pydry wrote: post #294
pinkfoot wrote: post #253

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…

> but they're particularly off putting to women.

This is the crux of the issue. For this to be true, it must also be true that men and women are, at least in some ways, intrinsically different (otherwise why would these things pose a greater challenge for women relative to men)?

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#318

Post by DonHopkins »

door99 wrote: post #244
somewhereoutth wrote: post #226

I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this. In architecture (a somewhat older profession, but also concerning things constructed by people), women previously did have a hard time, and often had to practice under their husbands/partners name. Mercifully this ended some while ago, and now architecture schools and onwards are more evenly gender balanced. Nobody suggests that women are somehow natural…

Not to mention the fact that most programmers used to be women! The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women. How can we make that cultural change?

It's more precise to say that it used to be most programmers were women.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#319

Post by StephenAmar »

pjc50 wrote: post #311
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.

.. so you'd destroy their life instead?

Always assume that what you say could be on the front page of the New York Times.

Re: James Damore and three others end Google suit

#320

Post by curmudgeont653 »

sacks2k wrote: post #308
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Beca…

Society hasn't devolved; this is how it's always been.

Actors with power exercise that power by enforcing their will over those with less.

Googlers being mostly neo-left is irrelevant. Were they neo-con, Google would've done the same and appeased them by firing a single employee as a scapegoat. In reality, Google doesn't care about politics because it, like sovereign states, is only mindful of its own self-interest, political games are only one tool in its aresenal to get there; and just like sovereign states, Google is effectively a stateless yet sovereign state of its own, not strictly bound under any state's power, like the citizens of any country are.

The truth is, buddy, politics won't do anything for you. They've been bread and circus since Ancient Athens for the labor classes so they wouldn't cause too much of a mess.

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