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James Damore has filed a class action lawsuit against Google

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

#901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a silver lining to all this for me: it shows that whereas women used to have little voice in the public sphere, "American women" as a class now have a sufficiently loud voice There is nothing good about someone who has a "sufficiently loud voice" -- if that loudness comes not from principle and merit, but from emotional toxicity.

The way I see it is that the feminism movement of old basically won - women voices are being heard and treated as equally important in the society. But like many movements, instead of dissolving after successful accomplishment of its mission, it transformed into a form that tries to perpetuate its own survival and status of importance.

I would disagree with that. Women still face plenty of discrimination in society

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

#902

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Also nobody ever seems to ask: diversity of what exactly? https://www.bis.org/review/r160531e.pdf asks literally "Diversity of what exactly?"

Diversity in any non-job-related axis along which candidates have historically been excluded.

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

#903
post #644

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> Perhaps the reason people don't feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an "old school" company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It's not that way for white guys, sorry. More recent studies don't show any bias against women in callback rates. In fact, some show slight…

another study supports this claim: "The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview." "Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door." source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...

“We built our castle 300 miles away from where they live, but if any of them make it here we are 3% more likely to let them in the door. The men live in a village 1000 yards away, but we’re 3% less likely to let one in, so it’s fair.”

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

#904
post #478
post #396

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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.…

> If people "on the left" won't allow him to speak, where exactly do you expect him to go? Adding to this; we should bear in mind that while nobody specific speaks for "the left"'s moral judgments, at least some people literally won't allow him to speak. Secondly, he was never trying to be a martyr and we shouldn't expect him to be one. He was posting a controversial opinion on a message board marked for controversia…

He sent out a company-wide memo on a very controversial subject pretending to be an expert.

I don't know what he expected, but that was stupid.

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

#905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be from US. As a European, I find all these things very absurd. Like the guys with the "dongle" joke that both got fired [1], and if I remember correctly, so did the woman reporting them. Maybe you should all start by treating each other with more respect, whoever it is. And don't go witch-hunting. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes...

I actually lived in Germany for a few years before moving on to North America, so I can somewhat compare. IMO, people in US are generally more competitive than in Europe, but in the current political climate this unfortunately leads to more backstabbing and more dirty play. Europe has its holy cows as well. Try publicly questioning the Syrian refugee program or come up with scientific evidence that nationals coming f…

Or try questioning most problem with the population coming from recent (last 30 year) immigration, or the benefits of colonisation, or the existence of any slave trade that's not European.

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

#906

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course the analogy is flawed. The analogy I was replying to is even more flawed. ;)

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

#907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously he did. Weird that is not obvious. But Google does not need a reason. BTW, the fact that a former Google engineer is sitting at home unemployed would suggest he did do something wrong.

I think Damore's firing was more due to 1. The memo being leaked. 2. After being leaked, misrepresentations and even outright falsehoods about the memo being promulgated online. Remember, the memo was being circulated within google for a month before his firing. This suggests that Google did not see the need to take punitive action against Damore due to the memo, but rather that it was the reception of the memo by th…

I don't need to work at Google to know that circulating a memo at work about how your female coworkers are less qualified because of genetic factors is a stupid idea.

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

#908
post #755

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But now you're getting into the "free speech for me, not for thee" part. You're basically saying that Damore is entitled to free speech and protection, but that Google and his former co-workers are not. Remember, who you work with is part of the freedom of association which is a component of free speech.

Firing someone is speech? A whole lot of laws disagree with you about that.

Firing someone is part of the right to free association.

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

#909
post #102

presence of Caucasians and males was mocked with ‘boos’ during companywide weekly meetings. What does this even mean? People booed simply because they were white and male? I honestly don't get it. And who did the booing?

Yes sir. It's happened all over. Even at Github: https://imgur.com/7YaVYUx

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

#910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> Is there any evidence that this is biological, as opposed to cultural? > [Plenty] > It looks like there is only indirect evidence, And there go the goalposts, red-shifting into the sunset. > "correlation means causation" / "there is good evidence ... play a role ..." Well, remember that Damore's claim was that there is evidence that we cannot categorically rule out biological causes for the skewed representation,…

There is quite a distance between:

"We cannot rule out biological causes" and "We should base our HR policy on this speculative research".

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