701–710 of 1001 posts
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Because there are explicit examples of this with supporting evidence given in the lawsuit.
No, there aren't. There are alleged examples and supposed evidence of lots of things in the lawsuit, but that isn't one of them.
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 wouldn't be surprised if he gets a fast 7 figure settlement. Conservatives/Populists groups are literally salivating for discovery to nail google on other things. EDIT: Also reminder some googlers kept politically motivated blacklists, if those blacklists were on company computers, Google will be hammered for it. Discovery could go wrong for Google in a million ways. https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/google-manifesto-…
Since they were G+ blocklists, they were obviously on company computers. OTOH, it's not clear (despite the lawsuits characterization, which is pretty directly contradicted by the posts and emails offered to support it) that these were motivated by ideology rather than disruptive manner of expressing that in the workplace. Moreover, it's not clear they they were, in fact, used for any problematic purpose.
> Discovery could go wrong for Google in a million ways
Which is why there won't be a settlement; it's clearly a politically motivated suit aimed to hurt Google as badly as possible; if Damore and the other individually named plaintiff were seeking to maximize the probability and magnitude of personal recompense, this would be a direct action. A settlement with no admission of guilt, no discovery, and just a go-away cash payment that’ll mostly be assigned to the attorneys won't achieve the goals for which they are filing the suit.
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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.
Well then doesn't he deserve what he gets? Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences.
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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…
If people "on the left" won't allow him to speak, where exactly do you expect him to go? It's like the people on the right saying Edward Snowden is obviously a traitor/spy because he went to Russia. Uhhh... something very obvious is being ignored there. Also, come on ... Joe Rogan is definitely not right-wing. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin do not self-identify as right-wing. And your [1] just seems a little extreme.…
Damore himself said he wanted to go on friendly media to do interviews, not that other media wouldn't have him.
Honestly, 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…
> Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech. Why would it matter that you are "a mixed race woman in tech"? Your comment should be judged only by its content, not by its author's race or gender, right?
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.
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And I'd add that there's evidence (and plenty of anecdote) that the men who most object to diversity are not so good at what they do. Which makes sense; they are the ones who have the most to lose from an increased talent pool. [1] Personally, I'd be very interested to see Damore's code. We already know that he lied about both a PhD and being a chess master. [2] I would not be shocked at all to find out that he's not…
From the complaint: "23. Damore was diligent and loyal, and received substantial praise for the quality of his work. Damore received the highest possible rating twice, including in his most recent performance review, and consistently received high performance ratings, placing him in the top few percentile of Google employees. Throughout the course of his employment with Google, Damore received approximately eight per…
> Damore received the highest possible rating twice, including in his most recent performance review, and consistently received high performance
How are these ratings done, by the team/manager or externally? IME when it's done by the same team then reviews are more about politics than performance.
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That’s an interesting idea, but it sounds like your argument rests on two assertions: 1) Professions tend to become more gender biased over time 2) It was equally likely that computing become a female dominated field. These are novel claims that require justification. If (1) was true, we should expect to see it in other fields. But many industries seem quite stubbornly gender neutral - for example medicine. (Although…
I don't agree. The gender bias of a profession this year is dependent on the gender bias from previous years. They would only become more biased over time if the previous bias favored hiring new entrants to the field that are more biased. If there is an imbalance in intrinsic inchoate biases, such as if men tended to unconsciously hire 55% men and 45% women, whereas women preferred to hire 50% each, then an initial 5…
I agree and acknowledge that. But many other fields are much older than computing, and arose independently in separate countries (medicine, childcare, law, organised crime, nursing, farming, cooking, construction, etc). If your hypothesis were true we should expect strong, consistent gender biases in all those fields. And we would expect that the dominant gender in different fields would vary across different cultures. But we see the opposite of that in the world - the dominant gender in different professions is remarkably consistent between isolated cultures. In the case of child care its even consistent cross-species.
SSC had a much more in-depth analysis than I'll manage in this comment. The onus is on you to explain why we don't see that actually happen in the world, as would be predicted by your theory.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...
> The body of work is already so large, and readily available to everyone, that starting from a different foundation today really does require the fictional time stasis bubble that I described.
I understand why this feels true, but in practice it is easier today than it has ever been to make novel user interfaces for programmers and users. There are no gatekeepers between you and your code editor. Please experiment with this; I'd love to see what you come up with.
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I read it and it made me pretty annoyed, not so much for what he said, but how he chose to go about saying it. He says he is only trying to start a conversation or discussion, but circulating a secret memo around your company and then going on a self-promotional media crusade really is not a great way to do that. It looks more like a political stunt, which is pretty much the opposite of a conversation.
My understanding is that this is a very inaccurate portrayal of what happened, and that makes me doubt that you gave the memo a fair chance. He published an internal memo, but not necessarily a "secret" one. Someone else published it externally -- not him -- and he only went on a media "crusade" after being very publicly fired.
But you're right, though, now that I'm reflecting, my portrayal of him was too harsh. After all, the man did get fired for writing a letter. THAT is ridiculous and I hope he wins the suit just for that.
The whole thing is embarrassing, though. I mean, what was he complaining about? He worked at Google, which is like, the top of the heap for programming jobs. I didn't understand why he was upset over the company's efforts to include women more. Did he not understand why that would be seen as sexist?
The more I think about it, the more I realize the answer to that question might be no. Maybe Damore didn't realize that presenting his ideas in the form of a memo passed around the office would be insulting to some people. Maybe it was honestly the only way he knew how to initiate a discussion about it. And in that case, I do think he was mistreated and it's a shame he didn't have another way to voice his concerns.
I guess it's a lesson, but what to learn from it, I don't know.
Honestly, 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…
EDIT: Deleted this comment as it was downvoted for not agreeing with the hivemind.