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…
ironically if he had a union he likely would've had the protection of a grievance process and not been subject to summary termination, regardless of how sexist his views were
James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
501–510 of 1001 posts
Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm very tired of this "joking" thing. Neo-Nazis (and historical Nazis before them) use jokes to cover their actual, earnest beliefs, and then go "it's just a joke bro" to shield themselves from criticism from those who disagree while gaining earnest support from those who agree. From the Daily Stormer style guide: "The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. There should also be a conscio…
> I'm very tired of this "joking" thing. Neo-Nazis (and historical Nazis before them) use jokes to cover their actual, earnest beliefs, and then go "it's just a joke bro" to shield themselves from criticism from those who disagree while gaining earnest support from those who agree. From the Daily Stormer style guide: So basically your whole argument is that no one is allowed to joke because that's what nazis are doin…
No, that is not my argument. This is about the second time in one week where I've posted "x was a bad idea in context", and someone else has replied with "So, your argument is no one should be allowed to do x ever?", so clearly I am being very bad at communicating. As with last time, I'll try to explain my position in a little more detail in the hope that it will help.
My position is that, if you are already at risk of being an alt-right poster-boy (thanks to having been forced to do interviews with alt-right YouTubers because nobody else would interview you fairly, or something), and if you are not actually a supporter of the alt-right position, it is probably a good idea to avoid doing and saying things that give the further impression that you are and want to be an alt-right poster boy. (If you do want to be a supporter of the alt-right position, by all means, more power to you, but then arguments about joking are moot - you're an intentional and happy member of the alt-right and we can continue discussions having established that. But for now I'm assuming that's not the case.)
This is a different position from "Don't tell jokes," or "Don't tell jokes about the KKK," or even "Don't tell jokes that make it sound like you support the KKK," or even "Don't make non-joking commentary that supports certain things the KKK is doing."
A brief aside there - I don't understand how that tweet is a joke. I think it's meant earnestly, and I think it stands up as a piece of earnest commentary and I think it does him and his position a disservice to read it as a joke. The internal title names are cool. That's why they picked them. The KKK wanted, and still wants, to attract membership, and cool-sounding titles are something that pushes people from neutral to excited. This isn't a particularly novel observation, but it's certainly a true one. (And the KKK isn't alone; plenty of secret societies of varying levels of racism have done similar things through history.) The job of smart, non-KKK-sympathizing people is to recognize that this is a tactic, and to go find some other less racist outlet for your desire to be called "Grand Wizard," like tabletop gaming, instead of expressing approval for the KKK's marketing tactics.
This is also a different position from "That joke is offensive." I did not claim that the joke was offensive, nor did anyone else, and I think "Actually, that's not offensive and you're wrong because you were offended" is a terribly fallacious rhetorical strategy when nobody has claimed to be offended.
Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
#503Honestly, this whole thing is just ugly. I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth. Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech. I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status. I also see people hired who are minorities but also great at their job. It's not a binary pattern. But those who are hired just because they are a POC or female, yet are…
> I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women. The history of women in tech completely contradicts your belief. The lack of representation is a real problem, we can debate how to fix it, but to claim it doesn't exist is baseless and harmful. https://hackernoon.com/a-brief-history-of-women-in-computing...
The issue is that it doesn't matter. Women might be less interested in tech, as in if you took 100 men and 100 women and measured their interest the men might be higher.
That doesn't mean no women are interested in tech, or that those who are interested are less competent.
I do think the idea of "less interested" is shallow and ignores every other explanation. For example, women are a majority in health care but a minority of doctors. Why?
Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
#504Honestly, this whole thing is just ugly. I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth. Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech. I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status. I also see people hired who are minorities but also great at their job. It's not a binary pattern. But those who are hired just because they are a POC or female, yet are…
Diversity based on outward appearance is one of the most convoluted and ridiculous movements ever. We cannot spend decades trying to show that appearance is absolutely meaningless to talent, skills, and motivation, and then regress right back to it to show off "diversity". Also nobody ever seems to ask: diversity of what exactly? What's the target? Life experience? There is no qualitative score for that, nor is any s…
I don’t know to what extent this is true, or even how to measure it, but it would help explain why “diversity” initiatives seems so illogical some times, which has perplexed me too.
Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
#505Honestly, this whole thing is just ugly. I read what he wrote. It was (mostly) ugly but contained a lot of truth. Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech. I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status. I also see people hired who are minorities but also great at their job. It's not a binary pattern. But those who are hired just because they are a POC or female, yet are…
How do you know that they were hired just because of their minority status?
Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If you change what he said it sounds worse" lol, is that seriously your argument?
It's a very good argument. Behavior that is ok for one group should be ok for another group, and viceversa. That is a truth of equality.
Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
You claim that there is a pattern of bad diversity hires, but your anecdotes are just as easily explained by confirmation bias: You see an incompetent male engineer, and you write him off as an idiot and forget him. You see an incompetent woman, and she becomes evidence that there is a problem with diversity programs. You remember evidence that supports your narrative. Obviously my statement is not evidence either. I…
It depends on whether the incompetent male engineers are just as incompetent as the incompetent female engineers. For instance, she mentioned a female developer who couldn't write SQL queries. Are the incompetent male developers at that same level of incompetence? Of course taking this into account cannot completely eliminate selection bias, and the sample size either way is probably too small to be all that meaningf…
I'd wager a third of the nodejs "developer community" could be described that way. The key thing is was she hired to write sql queries?
Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends on whether the incompetent male engineers are just as incompetent as the incompetent female engineers. For instance, she mentioned a female developer who couldn't write SQL queries. Are the incompetent male developers at that same level of incompetence? Of course taking this into account cannot completely eliminate selection bias, and the sample size either way is probably too small to be all that meaningf…
Strikes me as a distinction without a difference -- incompetence means you are incapable of performing a task. One could speak of someone having more skill than another, but if both skillsets have no value, it doesn't really matter.
Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
#509Just 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…
Re: James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google
#510He 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…
This is true. If the memo wasn't enough, him immediately going to right wing YouTubers like Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson, Mike cernovich, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, etc. is suspicious. [1] Generally I wouldn't have minded if he went to right wing outlets, as long as he had also gone to left wing outlets. I was willing to listen to his reasoning. But it became clear after the memo came out that he didn…
He's got a footnote in it about how complaints about gay rights are just an attempt by Marxists to undermine capitalism for goodness sake! In an internal corporate communication about how to better deal with diversity. The mind boggles.