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

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

#831

Post by swingedseraph » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:19 AM UTC

OCASM wrote: post #699

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right wing and egging him on did not help him. It probably contributed to him not realizing the mistake he has made. Saw an interview with him and saying he needed to have his GF filter what he writes. I was thinking no that is not the issue. Instead do not share these things if they are in your head. Swear him saying that just made it worse. He clearly still does not get it.

He did nothing wrong.

He did several things wrong, and simply _stating_ that he did not does not make it true.

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

#832

Post by swingedseraph » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:21 AM UTC

bzbarsky wrote: post #446

badloginagain wrote: post #75

Just to clarify, is he stating he was fired due to his gender/political views? I would assume the literal army of attorneys will point to various violations of Code of Conduct or Employment Agreement Damore undoubtedly broke. He openly published a memo condemning his employer, tarnishing the brand and bringing the company under considerable negative press. I figure there must be some clause in any employment agreemen…

OK, but continuing with your analogy, what about if you write a script that drops tables from a database it's pointed to, for internal use, then someone else runs it against the production server? And then you, not whoever ran it, get fired.

The analogy is flawed.

He did not write a piece of software, he wrote a piece of rhetoric which had very little to do with reality and had a lot to do with making people dislike Google and its policies.

I also write a lot of rhetoric designed to do that. The difference is I'm not a Google employee. Were I, I would fully expect to be fired, regardless of what I did with that writing (except perhaps leave it unreleased on my home computer, or write it to /dev/null).

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

#833

Post by jgh » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:21 AM UTC

Idontknowmyuser wrote: post #393

jgh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice none of those options include "admit he was wrong and apologize". I'm sure he doesn't have to work for a top-tier tech company either.

why do you think that he is necessarily wrong. After I read his memo, I would say it is debatable, not wrong. In fact you're attitude is a very clear sign of the silence culture being pushed.

Ehh...I was replying to a post that didn't consider the fact that he might actually be wrong, come to terms with his wrongness, and admit it and move on. Whether or not he's wrong is perhaps an unanswered question -- I don't really know enough about the memo to say one way or the other -- but he should consider that what he did was wrong.

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

#834

Post by josephg » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:46 AM UTC

eesmith wrote: post #753

josephg wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"My understanding is that generally the direction of gender bias we see in other highly gender biased fields is consistent cross-culturally. (nurse," Your understanding isn't correct, at least for nursing. Nurses were male until the 1800s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_nursing#History give examples of predominately nurses and caregivers in other cultures before that time. http://minoritynurse.com/rethinking-ge…

Interesting. Did men actually make up the majority of nurses back then, or are we just talking about fluctuations in how much of a minority men were in nursing? From the wikipedia article you linked:

> The term nosocomial originates from the latin nosocomi, the name given to male care-givers, meaning that men were prominent in Ancient Rome

... If they needed a special word for male care-givers in ancient rome, that implies they assumed care givers were female by default.

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

#835

Post by dguaraglia » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:50 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #127

dguaraglia wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you call "lack of interest" a handicap? Would you be likely to be suspicious about candidates coming from a group that you know to be "less interested" in a job you are offering?

No? The person who isn't interested wouldn't even be applying in the industry in the first place.

I know plenty of people who are in the industry because it pays well and not because they are fascinated by engineering problems. Even among those who are interested in engineering, there's a wide gamut from "obsessive learner who wants to spend all their time in the computer" to "I love my job, but I'd rather be enjoying my favorite hobby/spending time with my kids".

Also, notice that interest doesn't necessarily translate into performance, as there are plenty of factors that affect performance besides "general interest in tinkering with things." Some of the worst performers I've met were obsessive "language experts" who enjoyed gaming (another "male" trait) and spent their weekends on their computers. Their apparent obsession didn't make them more performant than parents who spent nights and most weekends with their kids.

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

#836

Post by sleazebreeze » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 5:52 AM UTC

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #440

nashashmi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you switch out words of gender with words of race, it may sound more offensive. That is what the Youtube CEO said and it immediately began to make sense.

"If you change what he said it sounds worse" lol, is that seriously your argument?

It's interesting to note that that was actually the structure of one of the arguments in the lawsuit - changing "men" to "women" to demonstrate the flaws in a Googler's reasoning. Check out points 166-169.

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

#837

Post by coupdetaco » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 6:15 AM UTC

dmode wrote: post #176

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…

Imagine this going to the supreme court

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

#838

Post by coupdetaco » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 6:16 AM UTC

ogre_magi wrote: post #200

dmode wrote: post #176

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.

In the memo and court filings he is describing himself as a classical liberal. So, a conservative.

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

#839

Post by ryan_j_naughton » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 6:45 AM UTC

The lawsuit says he was discriminated against not only for being a white male but also "discriminated against (i) due to their perceived conservative political views by Google".

Discriminating against someone for their political beliefs is not illegal. Federally political affiliation is not a protected group and in California apparently 'political affiliation' is according to wikipedia[1] however I couldn't find the relevant section of the CA statute on the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) of CA[2].

If he was discriminated against because of his race or gender, then that is a problem. But firing him for having conservative views should be entirely valid. I am not saying that believe firms SHOULD fire people who have X view or Y view so much as they should have the right to.

While we can debate the merits of James' individual views, let's take a more extreme example. If an individual regularly spouted off white supremacist and neo-NAZI views, I don't think any of us would have a problem with a firm firing that co-worker. Firms are trying to create a culture that aligns with their objectives and enhances employee/workplace happiness and harmony. Some views are antithetical to that.

Furthermore, we can back away from such extreme views and still find cases where it would be legitimate to make decisions based on individual's views and perspectives. If you owned a company focused on selling sustainably sourced, carbon neutral products. Hiring a sales person who does not believe in climate change and is actively hostile the the concept of environmentalism would be a bad idea. It is entirely logical to hire/fire people based on non-religious beliefs.

Beliefs are choices individuals make, and thus they should be judged by their choices.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160909163923/http://www.dfeh.c...

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

#840

Post by akhilcacharya » Tue, Jan 09, 2018, 6:46 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #738

d1zzy wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be positives of hiring to increase diversity which aren't related strictly to their performance in the role they occupy. Two such arguments for this kind of policies: - by giving them jobs which they wouldn't otherwise have the skills to fill you are trying to break the "cycle" (more on that below) - having different viewpoints in a team can be beneficial beyond the skill set those people should bring accor…

have the benefit that now those people get included in a social environment that they would normally be cut out from, get payed more than they would otherwise and, hopefully, this will trickle down to their children and grandchildren Irish immigrants started out from a culture, where the typical peasant was 1/2 to 1/4th as wealthy as the median pre-Civil War American Slave. There was a period of time when ethnic Iris…

Disregarding the Flynn effect, the slow integration of Irish and the Catholics into American society prior to the end of Jim Crow and the fact that the US Black community and US mainstream left were lead by a black President who went to Harvard Law and Columbia, which toxic culture are they supposedly glorifying?