Newspaper Obtains James Damore's Complaint Against Google (siliconbeat.com) 471
A Silicon Valley newspaper brings this update on fired Google engineer James Damore:
California law allows employers to fire workers for virtually any reason -- and the Constitutional protection of free speech doesn't apply to private company workplaces. Until now it was unclear how Damore might fight back against Google over his termination. Now, this news organization has obtained the U.S. National Labor Relations Board charge sheet that reveals the basis for Damore's battle. His argument hinges on the contents of his memo, which went far beyond discussing a possible biological reason for the gender gap.
The document contained detailed criticism of Google's diversity initiatives and their effects on employees, and it said that the company's biases led to alienation among employees holding conservative views. His Labor Board charge rests on Section 8(a) subsection (1) of the National Labor Relations Act, which gives employees the right to engage in activities for the purpose of "mutual aid or protection." Google discriminated against Damore by firing him "in retaliation" for activities protected by law, and also possibly to discourage such activities within the company, the charge sheet said. It appears clear that the protected activities Damore refers to are his communications, in the memo, with co-workers, about issues in the workplace.
Google was unavailable for comment, but the newspaper quoted an earlier statement from Google CEO Sundar Pichai that "An important part of our culture is lively debate. But like any workplace that doesn't mean that anything goes."
The document contained detailed criticism of Google's diversity initiatives and their effects on employees, and it said that the company's biases led to alienation among employees holding conservative views. His Labor Board charge rests on Section 8(a) subsection (1) of the National Labor Relations Act, which gives employees the right to engage in activities for the purpose of "mutual aid or protection." Google discriminated against Damore by firing him "in retaliation" for activities protected by law, and also possibly to discourage such activities within the company, the charge sheet said. It appears clear that the protected activities Damore refers to are his communications, in the memo, with co-workers, about issues in the workplace.
Google was unavailable for comment, but the newspaper quoted an earlier statement from Google CEO Sundar Pichai that "An important part of our culture is lively debate. But like any workplace that doesn't mean that anything goes."
Weasel words (Score:4, Insightful)
weasel words
noun
words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading.
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Apparently is actually does mean anything goes. People have only discussed the impact on one employee, how about all the rest. That really mild memo gets you instantly fired, that as a warning to all other 'MALE' employees and hearty have fun to the 'FEMALE' employees, as if that mild memo got you instantly fired, any kind of accusation by any female against any male will get them fired. Personally firing someone for that memo means I would have to walk away from the company ASAP lest I make any mistake or
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Re:Weasel words (Score:5, Insightful)
There is pretty much no form of human interaction where anything goes.
Love.
War.
Zombocom.
Re:Weasel words (Score:5, Insightful)
Hinting that your co-workers are biologically predisposed to be worse at their jobs, even if some aren't... is crossing a line.
Who "hinted" that? Certainly not James Damore.
Further, which line, exactly? Please define it. Please cite where it is defined. Please also define and cite all other such "lines" not to be crossed.
Re:Weasel words (Score:5, Insightful)
by the people he wants treated as second-class.
Ugh, how many months now and we still have people posting comments like that? Anybody who got that from what he wrote clearly either hasn't read the memo or is deliberately lying to push the progressive lynching of the guy.
Re:Weasel words (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me that Damore was trying to create a more welcoming environment to women. The people making it hostile are the fuckwits that misinterpreted it.
Right now Google is clearly a hostile environment to anybody that recognises the differences between men and women. I suspect it's hostile to most men too, and good fucking luck trying to implement or enact equality policies there.
Actual equality policies.
questions (Score:2)
-- Does the person who claims being harrassed or feeling antagonized have complete free reign to define what constitutes this and is reasonable for someone to be fired over?
-- If all of the claims in the "manifesto" were true, does it chang
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Has the definition of harrassment and creating a hostile workplace culture broadened to include when the offensive activity in question is actively engaged in (through calmly / voluntarily reading a website) by the person who claims being harrassed or antagonized?
No, but the document's existence isn't the problem (I mean its Google, they have access to how many billions of questionable things from around the internet?) the problem is the hostile workplace culture -- the document only exposes the problem.
Does the person who claims being harrassed or feeling antagonized have complete free reign to define what constitutes this and is reasonable for someone to be fired over?
No. The managers, HR and other people in charge of staffing defines this. They may or may not agree with the complainant. In this case they did.
If all of the claims in the "manifesto" were true, does it change whether someone can legally be fired over it? (truth of course is hard to judge)
No. If the manifesto contained a single line "I think all women suck at computers!", it may well be entirely true (I m
Re:questions (Score:5, Insightful)
For all I know the document may have some valid points buried in the misogynist bullshit
You appear to have redefined the term 'misogynist'. Could you perhaps highlight the "misogynist bullshit" in Damore's document because I didn't spot it.
Whether he had valid points or not, the way people have demonised his writing means he was indeed clearly working within a hostile workplace culture. It's just that it was clearly hostile to men, not to women.
Translation (Score:3, Interesting)
An important part of our culture is lively debate. Unless you start making arguments that threaten our position that we cannot refute.
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I think the big problem here is the lack of understanding in some people that when you're at work, they're paying for your time. Using that time to promote your own dogma or bullshit is probably going to be frowned on, and rightfully so. Conservatives, on the other hand, seem to think they can spout their bullshit anywhere and anytime without having and responsibility or repercussions for doing that.
Advice from someone ol
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An important part of our culture is lively debate.
In society, yes. In a country, yes. When influencing others, yes. In a company.... no.
In a company the only important part of culture is what the directors of the company wish that culture to look like. If you suit that culture you get to stay. If you don't suit that culture then the way to change it is working your way up to the director position and then changing it from the top down. Disagreeing with it provides you with no future. It breeds discontent within a company which itself can lead to a toxic cu
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An important part of our culture is lively debate.
This was a quote from the Google CEO. When he says this, are you supposed to call him out on it or just nod and pretend it was just some bullshit so he can say he "supports free speech"?
Liberal hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
Google fires James Damore for writing a conservative memo.
Liberals: It's a private company, they're not obligated to respect his free speech rights.
The NFL fires Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the anthem
Liberals: THEY VIOLATED HIS RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH!!
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Nailed it! I am pretty middle of the road along the liberal-conservative spectrum but support the right of both of these employers to fire these employees who are engaging in speech out of alignment with corporate values on company time: neither are a government employer subject to the First Amendment.
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You don't have a right to free speech in a private company. That's never been the argument.
The argument is that Google violated James's rights to discuss workplace conditions, and fired him in a retaliatory way, violating the NLRA.
I'm not really familiar with the NFL guy, but it sounds like he wasn't exactly fired, but his contract expired and he became a free agent. It looks like he's now being blackballed because nobody wants to deal with the politics he brings forth in public. The NFL guy doesn't have
Re:Liberal hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberal: "I favor strong LGBTQIA+ rights, an end to systemic racism and sexism,
Progressive: "Oh cool hey friend..."
Liberal: "...but I believe it should be rooted in true equality rather than giving special treatment to some people over others,
Progressive: "Omg that's so offensive, you're a racist!"
Liberal: "...and we should acknowledge and operate under the reality that men and women may have different preferences..."
Progressive: "SHUT UP SEXIST NAZI SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT CIS-SCUM YOU DON'T DESERVE THE RIGHT TO SPEAK"
Discussion can't continue after that point, evidence, logic, etc don't matter. It's really sad that it's destroying the left;, but progressives just can't get past forcing identity politics and value-by-victim-points down everyones throat, denying reality (see: wage gap, college sex assault stats), gutting free speech, discriminating against anyone without victim points, gutting due process in all sex crimes, etc. The most extreme ends of the progressive insanity basically just want to reverse racism and sexism, to punish for the oppression by flipping which groups exercise the power to oppress. And in doing all that, they've grouped everyone else on the left in with the right and have absolutely no tolerance for anyone not supporting their methods, even when the same outcome is desired. Hope that clears up the difference.
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Here's where the sleight of hand comes in with your argument:
Liberal: "...and we should acknowledge and operate under the reality that men and women may have different preferences..."
Merely stating "that" without answering "why" is more or less meaningless.
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Not slight of hand. The point is, your comment would have been a decent rebuttal, and would allow discussion to continue. If you reacted with condemnation, with emotional outrage that cast the 'liberal' as evil, discussion would end. We are in a situation where discussion is shut off because of immediate and overwhelming personal attacks.
The proper response to Damore's essay is to accept the parts that are right, argue against the points that are wrong, explain why, and then let the other side do the sam
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Here's where the sleight of hand comes in with your argument:
Liberal: "...and we should acknowledge and operate under the reality that men and women may have different preferences..."
Merely stating "that" without answering "why" is more or less meaningless.
There's a very good article at Psychology Today that summarizes a number of the same research articles I've cited on this topic in the past.
https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
Look especially at the section summarizing Wang, Eccles, and Kenny (2013). I find one conclusion Dr. Jussim draws from the paper particularly interesting:
"People (regardless of whether they were male or female) who had only strong math skills as students were more likely to be working in STEM fields at age 33 than were other students".
I
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Whatever it is you're smoking, did you bring enough for everyone? It's liberals, who are right-wing toolbags, [youtube.com] who swing the identity politics club with abandon in order to not deal with the fact that their leaders are frequently more extreme than the worst Republicans they can name. Shi
Re:Liberal hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
Google fires James Damore for writing a conservative memo.
Liberals: It's a private company, they're not obligated to respect his free speech rights.
The NFL fires Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the anthem
Liberals: THEY VIOLATED HIS RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH!!
Another example was the gay wedding cake case. A private company refused to bake a cake saying "I support gay marriage" because the owners were religious types who didn't support gay marriage and they got sued out of business with the left cheering it on.
Now I'm sure someone will say "gay people are a protected class and white cisscum male like Damore are not".
Curious how the left keeps adding more protected classes like trans people. I.e. the protected class notion had some validity post civil rights but the left have basically added all the groups other than white ciscum males to the protected class category.
And then they act surprised when white cismen start acting like an identity group too. Actually I'm surprised it doesn't happen more.
The left in the US have a peculiar 'build a majority out the minorities' strategy which depends on them siding against white cisscum males and with every other group. I'm not really sure this is viable - e.g. what do the left do if one of their protected groups takes a stand against another. Which basically guaranteed. Black in the US people are less likely to support gay marriage than whites [pewforum.org], a poll of UK muslims found zero tolerance for homosexuality [theguardian.com]. In fact gay rights is something which is almost exclusive to majority white, judeo christian based societies like the US and Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There's no real reason to believe that importing lots of people from outside those countries into them will make the country more 'progressive'. And yet the far left continue to say that once white people are a minority will 'true revolution' be possible.
https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
Of course this sort of rhetoric is hardly likely to make white people decide to vote democrat and stop worrying about immigration.
If one party is plotting to make you a powerless minority, aren't you more likely to vote for the other? Even if the other party nominates someone who is a bit non politically correct as its candidate? In fact given PC means becoming a powerless minority, maybe Trump's non PC-ness is a feature.
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Another kind of right winger. [youtube.com]
By taking a knee on the sideline? That's only "disruptive" if you're a goosestepping fascist.
Players are only out on the field because the government started paying the NFL to do so - which makes it a cut & dried First Amendment issue.
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But they're being paid by the government for players to be on the field for the National Jingoism, so it is a free speech issue.
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Kaepernick is not really that good though. Do these numbers look familiar to you?
11-4-1
12-4-0
8-8-0
5-11-0
2-14-0
Sure, Kaepernick certainly looked good in the beginning. But he flared early and burnt out. He choked when it really mattered and delivered the 49-ers their first Super Bowl loss in the history of the team. And it just got worse from there. If I were running a team, I'd take a chance myself as well on a new player out of college, who might be on the rise; over someone who is well into his decli
Re:Liberal hypocrisy (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh that is the lamest attempt at making a distinction I think I've ever witnessed. I'm actually ashamed for you that you've even sunk to that.
You could just as easily say that Damore was obligated to support Google's existing diversity policy, which he declined to do.
Face it, you're a hypocrite. You're no different than the conservative s who screamed "Not my President!" and espoused all that birther/Obama-is-a-secret-muslim horseshit when Obama was President and now bemoan the liberals doing that same ugly shit with Trump. You're the first person to defend any action against conservatives, and the first person screaming bloody murder when the same exact rules are used against liberals.
If the NFL mandated diversity training for all its players and one player declined to participate and was fired, you would be the first person in line to scream that the NFL was perfectly within their rights to fire him. But the second a LIBERAL player is fired for refusing to do something you don't like, or a bakery refuses to bake a cake for a gay wedding, then suddenly private companies are absolutely obligated to respect their employees' and customers' rights.
Re:Liberal hypocrisy (Score:5, Informative)
The two are not equivalent. Damore chose to write that memo. Kaepernick is obliged to take certain actions during the national anthem, which he declined to do.
If your employer decided to have a mandatory prayer every morning, would you be okay with that?
Also, we can criticise the firing on Kaepernick but welcome the firing of Damore, because they were fired for different reasons. We judge one reason to be bad, one reason to be good.
Kaepernick was not fired. He ran out of his contract and was thereafter unable to find a new employer. Baltimore Ravens were in a contract discussions with him but the relationship went sour when Kaepernick's girlfriend Nessa Diab sent a tweet comparing Ravens' owner Steve Bisciotti to a slave owner.
The tweet happened but it might be that Kaepernick's fate was already sealed. He's currently sueing NLF owners that they colluded not to hire him. The collusion claim is handled by arbitration institute set up in the Collective Bargaining Agreement between NFL and NFL Player Association.
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Some of us also dislike hypocrisy no matter where it's coming from.
Extremely interesting piece in the Economist (Score:4, Interesting)
The Economist posted the response Google should have sent to James Damore here:
https://www.economist.com/news... [economist.com]
It is far more eloquent than a typical Slashdot comment. If you're interested in this subject, and in seeing what in my opinion is the most thoughtful commentary on this subject, the above article is highly recommended.
Re:Extremely interesting piece in the Economist (Score:5, Insightful)
Damore was saying: A) There are many possible reasons for the gender gap among programmers: here are some suggestions; and B) Google's current recruiting methods are not effective.
The Economist article you linked to took those "here are some suggestions" and turned them into absolute assertions. You can tell the Economist article is confused because of phrases like, "at least that’s what you seem to be doing; you don’t quite say so." He doesn't say so because that's not what he's doing: the Economist author got confused because he assumed Damore was actually trying to make a solid assertion.
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If Damore wasn't actually making any assertions then all he was doing was stirring the pot. Trying to evade responsibility by only making "suggestions" is actually rather transparent to most people.
Nah, he was saying that Google's current (at that time) methods for increasing the number of women programmers were ineffective.
The rest of your post is well-written and clear.
Re:Extremely interesting piece in the Economist (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic problem is that he asserts that women make, on average, biologically inferior engineers.
He didn't. He said that they choose not to be engineers (which is true, and you agree with it), possibly for biological reasons. Once women choose to become engineers, they are just as good as men.
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. Men NEVER face a similar problem, so their stress level is invariably MUCH LESS from the job Reality very much contradicts this assertion. If it were at all true then men wouldn't kill themselves four times more than women do.
Re:Extremely interesting piece in the Economist (Score:5, Insightful)
Men NEVER face a similar problem, so their stress level is invariably MUCH LESS from the job.
Check suicide rates by gender, then fuck off with your pop psychology bullshit.
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> Workplaces are invariably structured for how men like to interact (hierarchical authority), not women (peer authority, different than Japanese workplace consensus). This immediately puts a big burden on women, to act like men regardless of how awkward or wrong it feels to do so ... and then to be scolded from time to time for being too masculine. Men NEVER face a similar problem, so their stress level is invariably MUCH LESS from the job.
Well... IF you accept the above as true, then the average woman i
bah (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bah (Score:4, Insightful)
It does seem to suggest a certain amount of hypocrisy, doesn't it?
It'd have been easier, for google, if his "memo" were easily dismissable as sexist. However, given he had all his facts lined up and he apparently knew what he was talking about, it does make it out to be quite a problem for Google.
Regardless of the outcome, it should be interesting.
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Sure you do. That's precisely the way to weed out the people who are likely to talk behind your back.
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When someone says "I want to talk about X", they usually don't mean "feel free to say anything at all about X". I doubt Google meant "free free to call your colleagues biologically inferior, inviting lawsuits when you give a less than stellar evaluation of them".
They clearly meant that they wanted to talk about ways to make it easier for women and minorities, not their biological suitability.
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Yes and yes.
He clearly stated that on average women are more neurotic and less able to deal with the demands of engineering jobs. He claims that this is due to biology.
Re:bah (Score:4, Insightful)
He clearly stated that on average women are more neurotic and less able to deal with the demands of engineering jobs. He claims that this is due to biology..
He did mention women were more neurotic and there are scientific papers that agree. [scientificamerican.com].
But most of his memo was about interests, not abilities and even in interests part, he mentioned that there was a big overlap.
Doesn't matter... (Score:4, Insightful)
I read his "essay" in full. It's not completely bad, it has few good points, it has several bad ones, but ultimately this is about the image of the company.
All in all, no matter how much he tried to make it technical, cold or like a scientific study, it's still basically - men are biologically more apt to some types of jobs rather than women, the "extreme left" is hindering Google as a business, and attempts to bring more women into the company is getting to some extremes he doesn't like and feels threatened by.
Are there possibly some extreme left inside Google that is blindly against his views? Probably yes. Could they have had a hand in leaking the essay which ultimately led to him being fired? Also probably yes.
But ultimately, the problem is that Google could not keep him as an employee without it becoming a huge liability. He's smart enough to realize that. His defense will fail because Google will put it up that his attempt of "mutual aid or protection" was obviously damaging to the company as a whole, to several employees, and to general company policies. He has no ground to stand.
The press took his essay to say it's an attempt to biologically label women as inferior. It's not exactly that, nor it is what the full thing is about, but that's the image that was left.
With this, it's pretty much unsustainable to keep him there both for Google's image as a company, and as an employee that would most likely create an internal divide that the company really cannot afford.
Now, Google is a company that has been struggling, spending a whole ton of money, and reforming itself internally to adopt a more progressive role and go exactly against speeches like his. This is probably the current money sinkhole there, as it is on several other social networks.
His steps towards a better company, at least some of them, are not bad per se, but the way he put it isn't great for anyone.
It's all about the tone. There's a bunch of useful stuff in his write up, but unfortunately, it came with a bunch of other stuff that threw mud in entire areas where Google is investing a whole lot of money and effort. It calls for elimination of parts of Google. It certainly wasn't only mutual aid and protection, it was also an attack on parts of Google's internal structure. And to make things worse, he politicized his views - the sort of polarization that Google and other big companies are definitely trying to run away from. There's a lot of unjustified and baseless labeling in his speech where he keeps trying to defend stereotypification and labeling with general statistics. It's poor science at best, prejudice at worst.
If Google kept him there, even if the argument was in defense of free speech or whatever, it would bring the polarization and toxicity of political discussions inside the company more than it probably already is.
This is a personal opinion of course, but I think Google did the right thing. Even if he somehow wins his complaint, in the long run it'll be far less damaging to the company as a whole.
Re: Doesn't matter... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you read the responses to his memo, you'll see that Google already has a toxic workplace culture. Firing him doesn't get rid of the hundreds of Google employees who behaved utterly unprofessionally in response.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
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https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf
Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
It's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to be written by an engineer - who thinks that because he's so, so smart, he can easily grasp argumentation, social sciences, and politics. But the reality is, this is the guy who - when he walks into a meeting - the room rolls its eyes because the meeting is going to take twice as long and accomplish half as much. But boy, are you going to hear his opinions.
The irony is staggering!
Engineer? (Score:5, Informative)
Engineer? He has a degree in biology. Also, you can betcha an engineer will research his topic before diving in, unlike the CEO type, who will certainly rush in with a virtue signalling opinion rather than science.
Obviously you didn't read the memo. (Score:5, Insightful)
Facts or GTFO (Score:2, Insightful)
> He says things - over, and over, and over - like they're facts, with zero basis for them. His citations are often ridiculous, and he certainly does spend some time talking about how unbiased HE is.
Way to contradict yourself. He has zero basis... except for all the citations of scientific studies. What could be more ridiculous than hand-waving away all the evidence without bothering to engage with it? Why don't you read the memo [documentcloud.org] some more and discuss that? Right, then you'd have to deal with scienti
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Facts or GTFO (Score:5, Insightful)
But I find it quite telling that one side (Mr. Damore) cites studies and such (as biased and wrong as they might be), while all the other side does is whine and say "it can't be true". Well, if the latter is the case, go right ahead and cite some studies that clearly show Mr. Damore is wrong. Or shut the fuck up.
That's because the other side had no need for citations. That isn't how this works. Damore was expressing a forbidden opinion.
And the stupid ass expressed his forbidden opinion in an actual memo.
Re: So (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, this case has become a great litmus test at determining who actually reads the facts and decides for themselves, vs. who doesn't care about the facts as long as they can use the issue to publicly demonstrate that they're being compliant with the socially acceptable conclusion.
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Conservatives in general oppose welfare
Only for "other people". They're more than happy to receive it.
so "ungrateful" is hardly a useful label either
I think it's okay. They think they deserve the handouts they'd deny to others because they believe themselves to be the "right kind of people" who "deserve it". 'Grateful' isn't an emotion I'd associate with them.
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It is kind of ironic that right now Google is facing a lawsuit for discriminating against women, and also one for discriminating against men. Where will the insanity end??
When we start discriminating against people for machines.
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No, this is the case where a liberal presents a view that maybe women don't want STEM careers.
Uh no, you're leaving out the most important part. His assertion is that maybe women don't want STEM careers, and therefore that's why they're having a hard time at google. But his assertion is false, and so is his conclusion.
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No, this is the case where a liberal presents a view that maybe women don't want STEM careers.
Uh no, you're leaving out the most important part. His assertion is that maybe women don't want STEM careers, and therefore that's why they're having a hard time at google. But his assertion is false, and so is his conclusion.
I wouldn't at all be surprised if many women don't want STEM careers though.
It's only my experience that on a very general level, there is a different thought process between men and women. On an individual level, there are no hard and fast differences. I cannot tell unless I know them and have been around them.
I look at both the conservative and liberal concepts of how females "are" as very prejudiced and stereotyped. To the point where they remind me of the Bell curve fallacy, in which racists try
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No, this is assholes taking the conservative name because its sounds better than "the assholes" and "alt-right" has taken on a pretty negative tone recently, even in conservative media.
It must suck to be a decent conservative (or a Republican) these days. All of your valid arguments and viewpoints are grossly overshadowed by bullshit like this, Charlottesville, etc. "Women should stay in the kitchen" or "blacks should still be slaves" are just not really valid political viewpoints anywhere on the spectrum
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It must suck to be a decent conservative (or a Republican) these days.
You have no idea. I've stayed pretty consistent as a Goldwater Conservative over the years, where you spend the money wisely but once you decide, you make certain the bills are paid, that you intrude on people's freedoms as little as possible, and that everyone gets a chance on the individual level.
And I think for myself, rather than get my ideology handed to me. I think that's what the crypto-conservatives really hate.
Anyhow, it's kind of lonely out here.
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I've stayed pretty consistent as a Goldwater Conservative over the years, where you spend the money wisely but once you decide, you make certain the bills are paid,
Sure, that's a conservative value...
that you intrude on people's freedoms as little as possible,
...but that's a liberal one...
Keeping in mind that Goldwater was pro choice and anti-religious fundamentalist, I'm right in step with him:
Fundies:
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Gay Rights:
"The
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So is it the case that the conservative view is that women are inferior in STEM careers?
Hard to tell what all conservatives think.
There really wasn't anything exactly wrong in his memo, and I doubt that it reflects all conservative thought.
His mistake was circulating it as a memo.That was what did the dumbass in.
There is no denying that there is a powerful faction that demand that all accept the notion that men and women are exactly alike in the way that their minds work, and any differences are culturally instilled. So that except for artificial distinctions enforced by the patriarchy
Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh yeah and that was after his managers told him to drop it and he then made the company look bad.
You do realize that federal law explicitly grants workers the right to bring up discriminatory practices in the workplace, and therefore telling a person who brings it up is a federal law violation? And retaliating against them for bringing it up, or not dropping it, is also a violation? You realize that, right?
And for those unaware of how these laws work, the person bringing it up does NOT have to be a person negatively effected by the practices.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that federal law explicitly grants workers the right to bring up discriminatory practices in the workplace, and therefore telling a person [to stop] who brings it up is a federal law violation? And retaliating against them for bringing it up, or not dropping it, is also a violation? You realize that, right?
They didn't retaliate against him for bringing it up.
Umm, yes they did.
What happened is he didn't like his manager[']s answer and created a hostile workplace environment (something which they are 100% entitled to act on) by posting his opinions to the entire company.
He posted it to an internal mailing list dedicated to discussing issues about inclusion, not to the entire company. It was then forwarded by someone else who objected to his memo. So, posting a concern about inclusion to an internal mailing list dedicated to discussing issues of inclusion is now deemed creating a hostile working environment? Interesting theory you have there.
Now of course you can argue back and forth as to whether you think he's right and whether or not that did create a hostile workplace environment. But that doesn't make your interpretation of the law one I think is correct.
And sooner or later we'll get a definitive answer on this unless google settles which I doubt they will.
If you mean if a decision is made by a court, that will only address whether Google's actions in this case violated the law, not whether the interpretation I cited is correct. BTW, go do some research and you may find the law journals I pulled it from. Also, I doubt it will reach a trial since Google will make it go away before that point is reached.
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You have the most bizarre take on such a straightforward document. His points were:
* Men and women, as groups, as statistically different psychologically
* The way Google recruits and approaches problems is biased towards men, because it's focused on a narrow aspect of the job that men are more likely to be interested in
* Google should fix that, as a better way to improve the gender ratio than what they do now
Seems like a legitimate topic for discussion on a mailing list about inclusion.
When I interviewed a
Alec Baldwin (Score:4, Interesting)
Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin comments on an impresario in the news for allegations, which the subject of these allegatiions has as much as admitted, that he had assaulted many women. Mr. Baldwin remarks on Twitter or other public places that "everyone knew" what was going on but said impresario was not held to account because "women accepted settlements."
The response to Mr. Baldwin was yes, women accepted financial settlements in exchange for their silence but what choice did they have given how the "system is rigged"? Excellent point, and there is also a "you go first" problem. Once many women come forward with corroborated stories, it is not anywhere near as hard as if you are the first woman to come forward against a well-connected man and how you as the accuser are going to be put on trial.
But that is not how the correct-thinking persons are responding to the once correct-thinking Alec Baldwin. There is not a conversation of the form, "This wouldn't have been such a problem if the women hadn't accepted financial settlements" to which the response could be offered, "Yes, I see your point that maintaining silence perpetuates the problem. But you also have to take into account that the first woman to speak out will be facing tremendous obstacles, especially not knowing if other women will follow in speaking out."
No, Mr. Baldwin offers his opinion and then it is, "Oh the Humanity! How can Baldwin make such a sexist, insensitive remark? Alec Baldwin is the worst sort of man in Hollywood with no regard for what women in Hollywood go through! Mr. Baldwin's career is finished."
The subject here is a somewhat different aspect of men's inhumanity to women, but do not many of the "debunkings" of James Damore, here and elsewhere, fit this pattern?
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Yeah, someone posting their view on Jews totally wouldn't have a negative view on any Jewish coworkers. Oddly enough most human beings have emotions.
Whoa, hold on.
I am convinced that as a generalization, that men and women think differently.
I am likewise convinced that individual women and men do not all think alike
Therefore, any woman who wishes to work in a field where her thinking process lends itself to working in the field is welcomed to work there.
And of the female engineers and scientists and technicians I've worked with, almost all were quite competent. There was one unfortunate exception, who got into the field and was miserable, even
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I'd say that it is more than enough, and almost certainly would get you fired.
Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)
> I found the arguments essentially rehashing rather old, tired talking points without adding anything new
> All he did was take a contentious topic and give the pot a very thorough stir without adding anything new (IMO).
Since none of the points are discussed as part of the topic, within Google (as he stated and Google then characterized as hateful), it's hard to understand how your mind comes up with some of these opinions.
If you want to prove that, try "quotes" (Score:5, Insightful)
The memo is here [documentcloud.org]. There are these crazy things called "quotes" that one normally uses to support a particular point like that. You have posted six times on this story as of a moment ago when I went here [slashdot.org] and counted. I note a conspicuous lack of supporting quotes in your posting.
I do not and will not believe that you have read the actual, uncensored memo until and unless you quote from the memo to support your claims. You appear to have read reports about the memo while ignoring the memo itself and then conflated what's been reported about the memo with that which was actually written. This is hilariously bad because some outlets have done stupid things like strip all the citations.
Because what reader would want to bother with pesky things like facts in a discussion like this?
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The memo is here.
So? I've read it already. I have no desire to read it again.
There are these crazy things called "quotes" that one normally uses to support a particular point like that.
Been there done that, back in the beginning. Interestingly, putting detailed quotes in got me modded down about twice as fast! And it's a lot more effort.
I do not and will not believe that you have read the actual, uncensored memo until and unless you quote from the memo to support your claims.
Not really my problem. You've c
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> Interestingly, putting detailed quotes in got me modded down about twice as fast! And it's a lot more effort.
If you haven't put any effort into your thoughts, why should anyone listen to them?
Also, I can't find any quotes from Damore's piece on this story [slashdot.org], you only seem to be quoting other Slashdot posters.
Downmods are nothing, anyhow. I get all my submissions auto-flagged as spam by certain users ever since I posted the story about Trump winning that seems to be permanently stuck in the "related stor
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If you haven't put any effort into your thoughts, why should anyone listen to them?
Like I said I put in the legwork when this first blew up and I got exactly the same downmods as before. I'm not going to waste my time on that again.
Also, I can't find any quotes from Damore's piece on this story, you only seem to be quoting other Slashdot posters.
It wasn't the first story. The document was long, by the time I'd actually given it a thorough read, that thread was long past. It takes time to read a long thing a
Re:If you want to prove that, try "quotes" (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the Quora article is interesting. But it's weird how it takes Damore's statement about things not being absolute and goes on to say that... it's not absolute.
Damore: "On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed "
Quora: "His implicit model is that cognitive traits must be either biological (i.e. innate, natural, and unchangeable) or non-biological (i.e., learned by a blank slate). This nature versus nurture dichotomy is completely outdated and nobody in the field takes it seriously."
They're agreeing with him but claiming to disagree. He's saying it's not all biological. That does NOT imply that everything is therefore personality, turning this into a binary distinction is the Quora writer is stuffing words in his mouth. Also, Quora takes a section talking about interest and turns that into a statement about ability:
Damore: "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. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions."
Quora: "At what point did we jump from talking about personalities to abilities? "
He was talking about interest, not ability, here. Even the Economist, when discussing that part, realizes he didn't actually say that, writing: "Then you make a giant leap from group differences between men and women on such measures as interest in people rather than things, or systematising versus empathising, to differences in men’s and women’s ability to code. At least that’s what you seem to be doing; you don’t quite say so."
This is a really low trick, to stuff words in someone's mouth, inventing evil motivations, and then arguing against those imaginary intentions instead of any idea you can actually point to in his writing. Quora actually does this multiple times, claiming him to be variously alt-right, racist, etc. without basis.
Frankly, in the Economist, we run into trouble right at the very start where they write:
"You’re probably expecting me to start by claiming that there are no differences in the average abilities, aptitudes and interests of men and women. Or that the fact that four times as many of Google’s software engineers are men than are women is proof of discrimination."
The sentiment here is reasonable. The problem is that the second statement contradicts what a "disparate impact" analysis does. Just look here at the 80% rule [wikipedia.org] and tell me that 80% isn't four times as much as 20%... So yes, that absolutely would be considered evidence by the courts anywhere that this disparate impact analysis is applied.
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Take a look at Damore's twitter account: https://twitter.com/jamesadamo... [twitter.com]
"Canâ(TM)t we all just agree that women having more sexual capital than men has its positives and negatives?"
"Feminist women are more masculine than average, which may explain why most women don't identify as feminists"
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DN... [twimg.com]
I imagine that these tweets will be shows in court as evidence of the intent of his memo.
Hella thing when you express forbidden opinions.
Regardless, I stand by the concept that you can say whatever you like, and people are free to react however they like.
Whatever else the guy is, he is monumentally stupid for expressing a forbidden opinion inside the company. I'd fire him as well, for doing something so damn stupid.
We have to accept that times are what the times are, and that even if the concept of men's and women's minds and thought processes being identical are right up there with Lyse
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He is welcome to his opinion, my only point here is that he's not the rational, good intentioned actor people seem to think he is. When let loose on Twitter he starts spouting standard anti-feminist/MRA rhetoric.
His Twitter statements undermine his claim to be rational and scientifically literate.
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He is welcome to his opinion, my only point here is that he's not the rational, good intentioned actor people seem to think he is.
When let loose on Twitter he starts spouting standard anti-feminist/MRA rhetoric.
His Twitter statements undermine his claim to be rational and scientifically literate.
Fortunately, all of those who are his enemies are completely rational, amirite?
Do his stupid opinions on Twitter make all of his arguments wrong? Was his firing actually brecause of wht he wrote on Twitter? Regardless, I still stand by his opinions as being forbidden, and not to be uttered because reasons.
Of course, we can take the conve
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Maybe it's because you're ACTUALLY trolling, under the guise of "I just don't agree with you".
Because that's all leftists do, is claim to be the voice of reason when in actuality, they're just trolling anyone who can read and think logically. Since you are obviously incapable of using logic and critical thought when reading the memo, you simply state that it's "underwhelming" not because you disagree, but because you just "don't get it".
You may not even realize you're trolling, but you're still trolling non
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
The second link is an opinion piece with no scientific debate simply asserting how wrong all mischaracterizations were like everyone else, the first was more interesting, but of the portion that wasn't just explaining how horrible the author thought his opinions were without challenging the facts, and consisted of actual scientific references, the author has a few valid points here and there, but the bias is so incredibly thick and it's full of so much "no you're wrong and you're a racist sexist because I say so" it doesn't even seem worth pursuing the nitpicks; and there's lots of attacking straw men (by erroneously claiming Damore is asserting biology *alone* accounts for something, then linking to evidence for nature and nurture). I mean seriously, the author explicitly states we shouldn't judge people on their individual merits.. how can you really take that as a serious rebuttal? It's clear someone on the far left was extremely personally offended and tried to take it apart, but the extreme bias and desperation produced nothing but opinion, straw men, and minor nitpicks, among the small percentage of the article that actually directly addressed the actual content.
But that's not a comment I would mod down, since you did at least try to back up the opinion with a non-troll source. Might not mod it up since it's wrong and contradicted by lots of other scientists, but not down.
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Which is why metamoderation is a thing. Of course that's just one step further down the potential rabbit hole..
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> However, as much as you might use the dogwhistle of "free speech," this has nothing to do with it; Google is not the government
Funny thing about that, but California's free speech protections go beyond just the First Amendment. Damore may have a state law claim under California's laws that prohibits discrimination based on political activities or affiliations [nolo.com]. I think he would have to raise that claim in California's courts, rather than the NLRB, however, so I'm not clear that it will ever get heard.
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As opposed to the right who haven't had any ideas since Reagan.
Not true at all: what's missing is a Republican leader who is as good at articulating the ideas of the right as Reagan was. This is because the GOP stopped being conservative a couple decades ago (except on meaningless distraction-devices like gay marriage), so thoughtful people on the right aren't interested in the GOP.
Trump is trying to appeal to where conservatives are now, but he's sort of an idiot and neither understands the ideology nor can he articulate much of anything.
Meanwhile Clinton-style Dems
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Let's put it this way - a very left wing employee of a very right wing company gets fired for advocating her views at the company. Do you still think the company is ok to violate free speech?>
There is nothing in the constitution that says you have a right to a particular job.
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There is nothing in the constitution that says you have a right to a particular job.
You might want to let Colin Kaepernick know that. He seems to think otherwise.
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You seem to be a tool, as he's not making any such claim. What he is claiming is that owners are engaging in collusion to deny him a job, deliberately passing him over for inferior quarterbacks.
Speaking of the Constitution, though, it's the government paying the NFL for players to be on the field during the National Jingoism, making it a free speech issue as well.
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It's not protected, as long as the company disagrees with you?
No, its not protected at all. The first amendment only applies when the government is infringing free speech -- private entities, including companies, are not restricted in any way and can prevent all the free speech in the world if they want -- at least in whatever parts of the world they have jurisdiction over.
Now that said, barring things like libel, you're welcome to walk 10 feet away from the company's headquarters and on to private land and free speech the hell out of them if you want. They don't ha
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
As if Slashdotter wasn't equivalent to an incel... (Score:2)
So, you're saying he's a modern day civil rights leader, but we shouldn't listen to him because you think he's gay? This is one of your least coherent insults, and that's saying a lot.
Re:Disclaimer missing (Score:5, Insightful)
Why hasn't the person that leaked it been disciplined? They're the person that damaged Google's reputation. Damore merely wrote a document for internal use.
I've never written "These views are mine and mine alone" on a document created for internal use. I've never written it on one written for external use either, as those do represent my employer.