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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

#971

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

#972

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that was actually a point in his memo. "Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things ○ We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration. Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be and we shouldn't deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into…

> We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration This is different than my point. I'm saying that software engineering IS people-oriented as it exists and that it's simply undervalued. > Unfortunately, there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles at Google can be What roles at Google shouldn't be people-oriented? This just strikes me as an absurd thing t…

a limit to how hot something can get get, doesn't imply that something shouldn't be hot.

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

#973

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the European interpretation: It's a fucking dongle joke! Why the hell would anyone feel offended by a fucking dongle joke? Seriously. And yes, we have no trouble saying "fucking" without censoring it. And if there is a "nipple slip" on live TV, we don't make such a big deal out of it. It's a fucking nipple, get over it. So to answer your question: 1. We see no problem in dongle jokes 2. If someone would see a…

> 1. We see no problem in dongle jokes Who is 'we' here? You think most Americans have a problem with dongle jokes? Or you mean to say that most or all Europeans don't have a problem with dongle jokes. > 2. If someone would see a problem with it and complain, those complains would be ignored (because we see no problem) This is when you end up with Uber, where these complaints were ignored and they eventually ended up…

> This is when you end up with Uber, where these complaints were ignored and they eventually ended up with Susan Fowler incident.

Sorry, but Susan Fowler did not complain about 'dongle' jokes, this was a serious case of sexual harassment. Not seeing the distinction between the two is a serious problem.

> Are European workplaces completely welcoming to women, as European feminists would like it to be?

From my personal experience, the women I worked with were a minority in tech, and they actually enjoyed working in a male dominated environment. They told me guys are more up front, and they preferred that over working in woman dominated environments where there is a lot of backstabbing going on. I worked for a lot of female managers, and they were very good at their job. Probably because women are socially softer than men (=men have more ego).

That's what I mean with respect. We will treat women as co-workers, not as people to have potentially sex with, and not with 'oh my god, there's a woman in the workplace, let's act totally different than we normally do not to scare her away'.

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

#974
post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just mining for something by now. It is clear that you implication that Damore was a sore loser that covered his lack of performance by blaming diversity has no connection to reality. Damore had performance completely satisfactory by Google's standards, and achieved significant praise from his peers, so whatever would be your evaluation of it, he was not in a loser position, had no reason to be sore for anythi…

The guy appears to have lied about a PhD and being a chess master. So it's entirely reasonable for me to be skeptical of his claims in a lawsuit that he was an A+++ top performer. And even if those claims are correct, I still would like to look at his code and hear from his coworkers. He wouldn't be the first person to get promoted beyond his actual accomplishments. Also, sweeping assertions like "had no reason" assu…

It's OK to be skeptical. But when evidence is presented that it's not the case, and you are doubling down by denying it, it's not being skeptical anymore. It's refusing to accept the facts since they don't fit your preconceptions.

> We mainly don't know what happened at Google.

We don't, beyond public evidence (including one in the lawsuit and outside). But that evidence we do have, and it does not align with your presumption that Damore was poor performer, unless you accept a completely invented premise that all his peers in Google somehow colluded to fake his reviews and performance evaluations, but he was still unhappy and decided to push the diversity angle to achieve... I don't know what, getting fired from a job where everybody, according to you, were going out of the way to make him happy? I don't think this is a workable hypothesis, and certainly not one that bears minimal skeptical scrutiny.

You can't be called "skeptical" if you only mistrust evidence which does not fit your preconception, but accept and even invent one that fits one. That's not skepticism, that's agenda.

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

#975
post #857

Even if James Damore does not win Google has a number of practices that could be considered embarrassing if they were to be made public. I know a number of Googlers who confide to me privately about their experiences. Traditionally they would not have an outlet to express their grievances because no-one really cares. I'm hoping this lawsuit will give them and others a chance leak some of these practices. I'm interest…

Could you describe some of these practices?

If there's any veracity to the lawsuit's claim that Google employees maintained blacklists of employees based on their political affiliations, or boo'd new hires on the basis of their skin tone, Google just handed Fox News an excellent ratings boost.

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

#976

Will watch this with interest AFAIK discriminating against conservative white men isn’t illegal. It’s not a protected class. There must be some twist here.

IANAL. Discriminating against someone because of their political activities is illegal in California. Whether simply holding and/or expressing views consistent with a political party counts as a 'political activity' or if there's a higher criteria is a question for a lawyer.

Also, my understanding of how discrimination laws work is that the question of 'protected class' doesn't come into it - if the discrimination was based on race or gender, it's illegal.

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

#977
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't that what he's been doing through his twitter account where he muses whether people join the KKK because they have cool titles? That was just a joke, stop pretending he is a neo-nazi.

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…

> Neo-Nazis (and historical Nazis before them) use jokes to cover their actual, earnest beliefs,

Did they? Can you provide any evidence that the Nazi party used "jokes" to hide their beliefs? I can't quite see that, somehow. To the contrary, they were quite open about their beliefs.

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

#978
post #963

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he is somewhat confused or insincere about the maths here. Given this `distribution of preferences and abilities` he said that women on average were lower, but if you only hire people above a certain threshold, there is no difference in the people you hire. This is not true. Unless the `distribution` is binary "has ability / does not have ability", the people coming from the "higher average" distribution will…

You assume that "the lower average" group will apply as much (i.e. lower ability people will apply too) as the "higher average" group. I could now point "confused or insincere" right back at you ... But at least this whole debate is wonderful example why you should not assume bad faith in others.

Hm, you are saying one will get equal average skill/interest rates above the cut, if one includes that good people are more likely to apply?

That sounds like an interesting argument. I don't think Damore made it, but if you will flesh it out a bit more, I'd be very interested in reading it.

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

#979

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…

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…

The way I read these actions weren't "running to the right" rather "fleeing from the biased leftist media." For one, Rubin is left leaning, so is Peterson, though because they're generally fair, they get consistently mislabeled, but that's also how I imagine it must feel in his situation.

Let's say you're a shy/introverted engineer working at Google. You are going to a bunch of diversity events because it's an easy way to progress in your career. You find things you disagree with, or think are potentially illegal, but overall agree with the end goal: more women / PoC at Google, and so put forward an analysis that supports the same goal, even asserting that diversity is a good thing, but indicating that Google's methodology is problematic, and possibly illegal. You shop it around, including to HR, who rejects it, get lots of constructive criticism and feedback from peers, revise it, and continue hoping you eventually do cause a good change in your organization.

Someone then sees it, gets angry, and proceeds to leak it to the press. A few days later, nearly every mainstream news organization has an article calling you a woman-hating sexist, calling your memo a "screed" and treating you like some kind of Nazi. Peers you've never spoken to start sending you threatening and hateful messages, not having even read your work, instead relying on clearly defamatory claims made by "news" organizations, totally misquoting what you've said, and even putting words in your mouth. Then you're fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes" when you've explicitly drawn a line in your work between societal expectations on gender expression and biological predisposition due to sex, that is, you're fired for something you didn't actually say or do, and it's final, there's no appeal.

You're this young guy here, with such negative publicity, and stuck in a part of the country that's 90% leftist or left-leaning, being called all sorts of horrible things by thousands of people you don't even know. You check Twitter and see your name is associated with some of the most hateful words you could imagine.

Now, in this situation, do you respond to CNN who has just printed their 17th hitpiece on you, and hope they'll be fair to you, because you're not assertive enough to deal with the confrontation required if they start putting words in your mouth or asking leading questions? Or do you seek to tell your side of the story from people who are already presenting the story in a more neutral way?

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

#980
post #398

Earlier 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…

> she mentioned a female developer who couldn't write SQL queries 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?

The best C++ programmer (someone who does real magic in the machine) I know has said that they can't think in SQL. Different people have different skills and mindsets.
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