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

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

#781

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:37 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #702

MollyR wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

> EDIT: Also reminder some googlers kept politically motivated blacklists, if those blacklists were on company computers, Google will be hammered for it. 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 th…

> 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.

Nope. Think about that. You think a guy who got fired after a few years of work experience would rather make a company look bad than gain financial security?

The reason we are hearing about the lawsuit is because he did try for a settlement, with terms much like you deacribe, and Google refused. You only go to court as a last resort, and that's what this is. That's also why we are only hearing about it now instead of when it happened. Months of negotiation did not go anywhere.

That's my theory anyway. I have no knowledge of this case, but I have seen this happen many times.

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

#782

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

andrewprock wrote: post #779

stcredzero wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short, yes. You should look up the book which is cited in this video, and you should listen to the discussion of the prologue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw Since the human brain and its interaction with culture is very complicated, more research is needed. But a fair reading of what we have so far would seem to indicate: it's both. Beware of ideological just-so stories that make you feel good. Also,…

It looks like there is only indirect evidence, and no direct evidence. In fact, the whole discussion smells far too much of "correlation means causation" to get anything useful out of it. There are some great weasel words like: "there is good evidence ... play a role ..." Without a hypothetical mechanism, this is all quite speculative.

Nothing to get your knickers in a bunch about, is what I'd say about it. (Note, that term can refer to golf pants.)

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

#783

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:43 AM UTC

ryguytilidie wrote: post #324

vowelless wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wait, Joe Rogan is considered a right wing youtuber? I listen to his show all the time and I'm a pretty big liberal and while he sometimes does the whole "everyone is sooooo PC now" thing, he also talks negatively about Trump, the GOP and right wing politics constantly. I also listened to the James Damore episode, and while I thought James did a good job of making his point and Joe did an AWESOME job of interviewing…

So was he disingenuous, or did he lack understanding? Pick one.

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

#784

Post by dguaraglia » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:44 AM UTC

grzm wrote: post #776

dguaraglia wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next time someone complains about me "jumping the gun" for talking about brigading on posts regarding Damore, I'll point them to this comment, where I state a 100% correct, non-controversial, non-offensive fact and I still get downvoted. Hard to explain, huh?

This is a highly contentious thread with a lot of participants and over 740 comments at this point. I don't think you can reach any meaningful conclusion other than HN members are human and behave in all variety of ways, rational, and otherwise.

Of course Hacker News participants are just human. That said, automatic downvoting of non-controversial, easily-proven statements, while comments with highly subjective and inflammatory takes get upvoted show the worst this community has to offer.

I used to think HN provided a good balance of open-mindedness and tech topics. It was a nice refuge from places like reddit and Twitter that had become overly politicized. In the last year - in particular since Damore's little lesson about shitting where you eat - the same kind of smarmy calls for "tolerance of different opinions" mixed with constant brigading of people (talk abut "tolerance") have taken over HN.

I really hope for our community's sake that it's just a small number of users ruining it for everyone.

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

#785

Post by bduerst » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:47 AM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #684

bduerst wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true then wouldn't James Damore have recanted or apologized at some point, once he realized it was offense? This isn't making an off-color remark in passing.

Bearing in mind he has no reason to apologize for "the memo as a whole", how should he approach this? He's already said many times he was not saying what people are claiming he has said. It hasn't worked. Should he release a version 2 of the memo with the benefit of maybe someone else to help him edit it? How would that be received by his critics or the press? Is there really anything he can say or do that will redee…

I guess I don't get your point about him being on the spectrum and how that means he accidentally may say offensive things. If that were true, as you say, wouldn't he have realized that in something like this?

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

#786

Post by querulous » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:48 AM UTC

dotnetisnotdead wrote: post #757

Gusbenz wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does she even bother looking at the docs or would that also denote how useless she is?

Well, she is learning it now and I wouldn't call her "useless". But her level of experience and knowledge is far below "software engineer" and if she were a guy she couldn't get away with it.

you'd be surprised. i worked with people who would write simple json structures by creating a class in java and then serializing it and printing it to the console to copy and paste. most of them were promoted out to management

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

#787

Post by bduerst » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:50 AM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #698

bduerst wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. And my point is that even with it's correctly understood, it is still incorrect. I agree that the entire document was overly vague and open to interpreters inserting their own ideas, usually tied to their own political identity. 2. Appealing to number of citations is an appeal to popularity (fallacy) because it avoids criticizing the content. It's also not "unseating" the big five, just demonstrating how the big f…

So your point is that, even though the reporters neglected to explain (or understand) the term neurotic, they were justified because the ultimately correct explanation is that it's meaningless in context? In that case, the only proper response is to report that the word neurotic is not scientific.

No, my point is that worrying about the semantics of the word neurotic is a pointless exercise because even when correctly understood in the case of the big five, it's still incorrectly used scientifically by Damore.

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

#788

Post by jacksmith21006 » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

Why does the right wing embrace Damore instead of being pissed at him?

There are people that might generalize and think all right wing people feel this way about women.

I have right wing friends and know that is not true but others might.

Instead Damore has become some kind of right wing matre which seems really strange.

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

#789

Post by manigandham » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 2:51 AM UTC

hypersoar wrote: post #734

manigandham wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Policies to force diversity based on outward appearance and other unchangeable and meaningless physical traits do not help. As said before: remove any selection bias, then hire those who can do the work, want to do the work, and have shown to do the work well before. Then measure performance and promote using the same objective processes. That's it. Perhaps we can boil down the issue as the difference between making…

They don't help what ? You haven't really responded to my point. And how to you plan to "remove any selection bias"? These efforts are there to counteract the selection bias that already exists. You say we should make hiring as fair as possible, but that, right there, is a big part of the goal of diversity policies.

We're miscommunicating. We both agree that hiring practices should be fair and objective as possible... what I'm saying is that is the goal itself, and a racial/ethnic/skintone/appearance-based diverse group may or may not be the outcome, but the outcome will be fair if the process is.

Diversity-based policies currently are only focused on the outcome, but the outcome is not what should be designed for. The outcome should just be what it will naturally be (whether it's "diverse" or not) and we should only control for selection and opportunity. This is what diversity-based policies do not help since you cannot work backwards from the outcome, you must start with making a fair process and just let people do what they want do beyond that.

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

#790

Post by Khaine » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 3:06 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #350

ebbv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From his memo: > I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. He said exactly that, right there. Why do conservatives…

> He said exactly that, right there. You even highlight the word _exactly_ but that is not what he said. That quote says they don't have equal representation and there maybe biological differences to blame. The main reason for confusion seems to be the quote assumes women might not be as attracted by tech work as men are. That assumption changes the meaning because in your interpretation "Women want to be in tech as…

Quillette asked a bunch of people who are in the fields quoted by darmore and they mostly agreed that the science quoted was accurate[1]. There is evidence to show that as economic equality increases, gender diversity skews more. That is, in poorer countries like India and Eastern Europe, women are more likely to work in tech to gain economic advantages. In countries where women are well off, they are more likely to pursue roles that are seen as feminine.[2], [3]

[1] http://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists-...

[2] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

[3] https://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/a_funny_thing_happ...