James Damore Silently Ends Lawsuit Against Google (usatoday.com) 303
"The high-profile discrimination dispute between Google and one of its former software engineers has quietly come to an end," reports USA Today. "Ex-Google employee James Damore has moved to dismiss his lawsuit against the internet giant two years after alleging discrimination against conservative white men."
Damore worked as an engineer at Google before being fired in 2017 after criticizing the company's efforts to improve diversity among its workforce... On Thursday, Damore and three other men involved in the suit made a written request to the Santa Clara Superior Court in California to drop the charges. Google also signed the motion, which was first spotted by Bloomberg.
"This matter is dismissed in its entirety," Judge Brian Walsh wrote in the order. A lawyer for the men told Bloomberg his clients are prohibited from saying anything beyond what's in the court filing.
Bloomberg provides some context: In 2018, Damore suffered a setback when a National Labor Relations Board attorney concluded the engineer's use of biological stereotypes in his widely circulated memo was offensive enough to cause disruption in the workplace, making his firing lawful...
In August Google posted internal rules that discourage employees from debating politics, a shift away from the company's famously open culture.
"This matter is dismissed in its entirety," Judge Brian Walsh wrote in the order. A lawyer for the men told Bloomberg his clients are prohibited from saying anything beyond what's in the court filing.
Bloomberg provides some context: In 2018, Damore suffered a setback when a National Labor Relations Board attorney concluded the engineer's use of biological stereotypes in his widely circulated memo was offensive enough to cause disruption in the workplace, making his firing lawful...
In August Google posted internal rules that discourage employees from debating politics, a shift away from the company's famously open culture.
He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedback (Score:5, Insightful)
James' big mistake was he foolishly believed Google wanted honest feedback on their diversity program.
He paid a steep price for his naivete.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:5, Interesting)
I’m sure the comment section on this will be entertaining at any rate.
Nothing Funny to see here? (Score:2)
I'd have modded you Insightful if I ever got the mod point. But I still would have wound up disappointed by the lack of Funny comments. Probably has something to do with the lack of humor on that side? And then they complain about feminists hating jokes?
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His lawsuit was funded by political organizations seeking to make hay. Once they stopped getting headlines this funding backed out and Damore was likely looking at millions in legal fees.
This is what happens when you lets yourself be used by politicians as a talking point. He's hardly alone in the list of people that have had their lives turned upside down by politicians and political groups looking to make hay, it's a very long list.
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Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. What he did not understand in the slightest is that the SJW movement is not driven by facts but by ideology. He tried to address a real problem and tried to offer insights in how it came to pass and what could be done. While I am not "conservative" at all, I found his arguments well reasoned and with merit and obviously given in good faith. Of course nothing is perfect, but that is why you have that thing called an "exchange of ideas", something the SJW crowd is not familiar with.
I wonder how much they offered to pay him off. I guess he may find it really difficult to get meaningful employment now (and that is the real crime against him), so I do not blame him for having take a settlement.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how much they offered to pay him off.
We will never know. Sadly, the courts allow gag orders on settlements. You have a disagreement with someone, the two of you can settle it as you please. But once you bring your fight into our court system that should no longer be permitted. You now have to bring your agreement before the court and get its permission to dismiss. making that agreement a matter of public record. Who knows. The court may decide that it is in the public's best interest to continue the trial and test the law or set precedent.
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Now, you have to bring your agreement before the court and get its permission to dismiss.
There, fixed your unintentionally ironic error. The only alternative would be to never permit confidential settlement terms, which would deter quite a few litigants from settling, which is a bad outcome for everyone, including the public. Your problem seems to be that judges do indeed routinely dismiss without disclosed terms.
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The only alternative would be to never permit confidential settlement terms
Once a lawsuit has been filed, yes. You can settle with anyone on any terms prior to that. But if you try to use our court system as a weapon to threaten opponents, it might just come back and bite you in the ass. At the very least, all your dirty laundry is made public. So think very carefully before suing.
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"Sadly, the courts allow gag orders on settlements"
This wasn't a gag order. It was a mutual agreement between the two parties involved in a civil dispute. Both parties agreed to amicable terms to eliminate the waste of the courts time and resources.
Both parties requested the court's permission to withdraw the litigation, therefore there was no public record for disclosure (nor should there be).
There were lawyers postureling, documents filed but the system functioned perfectly. All filed documents are part
Re: He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedb (Score:3, Insightful)
...but that is why you have that thing called an "exchange of ideas", something the SJW crowd is not familiar with
Behavior exhibited by sub-genius zealots of every ilk; also lots of otherwise highly-intelligent Aspies. I suspect it's about defending egos than idealogy.
Re: He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedb (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, in my experience if you use "SJW" or "snowflake" (without sarcasm) I have a good idea of your political leaning regardless of what you claim. Why? In-groups and out-groups, and the power of linguistic community.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:4, Informative)
Since "SJW zealots" are an observable fact, your argument is without merit.
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That is purely false. There are definitely self-described SJWs.
Whether they deserve the scorn heaped upon them by conservacucks is a whole other discussion.
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Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:5, Interesting)
Why this bizarre attempt at denial? SJWs exist, they are quite loud about it, and they absolutely despise everyone else in society for not being as pure as they are. Who roamed Evergreen college with baseball bats looking for nonexistent nazis? Who threatened a man into silence at Berkeley with violence? Who created the election-related event at the ostensibly prestigious University of Michigan Law School. After Trump won, staffers scheduled - then hastily canceled - an event entitled "Post-election Self-care with Food and Play." The University of Michigan Law School's embedded psychologist, Reena Sheth, was going to host of the event.
"Join us for delicious and comforting food with opportunity to experience some stress-busting, self-care activities such as coloring sheets, play dough [sic], positive card-making, Legos, and bubbles with your fellow law students," the description of the event announced [dailycaller.com].
SJWs denounce the teaching of the Epic of Gilgamesh or The Iliad as 'racist' and the teaching of certain ideas collide with the imperatives of social justice dogma. [theatlantic.com]
Remember when humanity landed a space probe on a comet, a tremendous achievement in our species' history? You don't? Well I bet you sure remember the SJW shitstorm when they saw the shirt the spokesman was wearing. [stemwomen.net]"Instead of celebrating STEM at this momentous event, women are reminded of our objectification and exclusion. The claim that the shirt isn't sexist in a work context is itself a rhetorical derailing tactic that perpetuates the harm to women in science."
Derald Wing Sue, author of the 2010 book, Microaggressions in Everyday Life, and professor of psychology at Columbia University's graduate school of education, has been writing about microaggressions for more than 20 years. [theglobeandmail.com] His extensive, decade-long series of studies on the subject, published in 2007 in American Psychologist, helped to broaden understanding of the term, he says from his office in New York, adding that he now conducts training sessions around the world on how to identify, and avoid, the problem.
For a longform, here's professor Bret Weinstein explaining SJWism. [youtu.be] TL;DW: these rules apply
1. Lived experience trumps population analysis
2. Reasonable people cannot disagree
3. Inquiry is a bad thing
4. Meritocracy is a trick
5. One can simply swap out people
6. Discomfort is injury
7. Anytime you are on the defence is a sign of bad faith of your opponent
8. When your opponent makes gains, there is a conspiracyï
Bad conclusions (from 55:30):
1. If you oppose an equity proposal, you are against equity.
2. If you defend yourself against accusations of racism, this is evidence for your racism.
3. If you defend yourself against accusations of white supremacy, then you are acting to preserve your own privilege.
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Why this bizarre attempt at denial? SJWs exist, they are quite loud about it, and they absolutely despise everyone else in society for not being as pure as they are.
Indeed. Nicely sums it up. These people are using virtue-signalling as the very core of their existence. When virtue-signalling is basically one of the most stupid acts imaginable.
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Indeed. Nicely sums it up. These people are using virtue-signalling as the very core of their existence. When virtue-signalling is basically one of the most stupid acts imaginable.
Stupid? It just fits the pattern of cult behavior. Almost none of these SJWs ever have an idea of their own, because of the risk of the vicious backlash they would receive should they fail whatever purity test their cult leaders or fellow cultists insist they must adhere to.
Virtue signalling is the only way to gain social currency, and of course those dopamine hits from likes, upvotes and retweets.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:5, Informative)
His actual letter is available at https://www.dhillonlaw.com/wp-... [dhillonlaw.com] .He provided fairly specific claims about gender based performance, and his claims are well based historically and psychologically. While I do not agree with every point of his claims, they're not outrageous.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:4, Insightful)
The authors called this out after they saw the shit-storm. Their statements may well be motivated by self-preservation and not actual insights into the subject.
Now, I am not actually saying I agree with the original statements made by Danmore, but it is completely obvious that once this went public, rational argument went out the window and a full (figurative) witch-burning was performed. That is not conductive to finding fact and truth in any way.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure what you call this, appeal to paranoia perhaps? You can just dismiss anything anyone says as being influenced by dark, unseen forces if they disagree with you.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:5, Insightful)
His memo was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the science, which the authors of the very papers he cited have called out: https://www.wired.com/story/th... [wired.com]
Is there really nothing better than a Wired article, written by a couple of woke journalists? Get out of the echo chamber, pal. At least Quillette published the unedited opinion of some scientists [quillette.com]. Needless to say that the end result is quite different:
The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right.
I think it’s really important to discuss this topic scientifically, keeping an open mind and using informed skepticism when evaluating claims about evidence.
As a woman who’s worked in academia and within STEM, I didn’t find the memo offensive or sexist in the least. I found it to be a well thought out document, asking for greater tolerance for differences in opinion, and treating people as individuals instead of based on group membership.
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Those essays are interesting, especially the comment "Graded fairly, his memo would get at least an A- in any masters’ level psychology course.".
Not directly related (Score:3)
Hey, thanks for being one of the few people on this site that doesn't sound like a raging incel everytime women are brought up.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:4, Interesting)
So you are saying that the Quillette article you cited in support of Damore actually debunks him as well.
You know, between debunking and espousing there is a whole lot of degrees of opinions. The only debunking is written in the title of that misleading article by Wired, the full unedited opinion of Schmitt, published by Quillette, is more nuanced and sympathetic to Damore, it is critical of the affirmative action policies adversed by Damore and far from being a "debunking". In Schmitt's own words:
Alongside other evidence, the employee argued, in part, that this research indicates affirmative action policies based on biological sex are misguided. Maybe, maybe not. Let me explain.
Then read it by yourself, you may learn something.
That's not how you win an argument.
Maybe, but you have already lost it.
Let me fix that for you (Score:4, Insightful)
"There is lots of evidence that women are generally X. And lacking evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable to assume the subset of women employed at Google are also X."
No, stereotyping is taking a trait common to a population as a whole, and assuming it also applies to an individual without evidence.
Assuming a sub-population has the same characteristics as the entire population is simply good statistics (given a large enough sub-population), and a reasonable assumption to make unless you can come up with evidence to the contrary. Given that Google has 100,000 employees, if you assume half of them are women then the expected deviation of traits among the 50,000 women from the general population would be less than 0.6% (with a 99% confidence interval). So unless he knew that trait was specifically being weeded out by the interview process, Damore made a statistically sound assumption.
I am not seeing that. (Score:5, Informative)
Dpille, I did exactly what you suggested. I went and read the memo, right here [dhillonlaw.com] And I read it carefully, looking hard to see an argument in which he states that women at google are just like average women. I assure you, I am no idiot, and I have made a good faith to understand what he is actually saying.
And here is a quote directly from the memo that seems to capture his intent quite well: "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership." This isn't some bombastic claim that all women are the same, or that the women at google are just like ordinary women, or that women are less fit for some jobs than men. It is clearly a very general statement pointing out that the differences between the genders might be contributing to the different gender representations in tech. This is clearly a different claim than the one you have made.
I see in the memo some suggestions as to how google could overcome its own biases, reach a broader audience, and possibly see an increase in the overall number of women in positions of tech and leadership. But nothing in them is a statement that stereotypes the women currently employed at google in any way. These changes he recommends are designed to make the environment more attractive to women in general, which would include new hires and such.
Can you provide quotes from the article that support your claim? I would prefer that you do this without insulting me, if possible, as such behavior generally indicates that one is ranting rather than actually doing a logical analysis.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:5, Informative)
He has a Masters degree in Systems Biology; he stopped his PhD to work at google. Systems Biology does not immediately qualify him to speak with any more authority on this subject than you or I. He’s not actually trained in this field. I won’t deny that he must be legitimately intelligent, but you can’t make an appeal to his authority on this subject.
There are plenty of other scientists that disagree with Damore; that 4 agreed with him and that one of them is Jordan Peterson is not in itself convincing.
Here’s a link with plenty of citations of its own, and I find this author considerably more credible than Damore by virtue of their closer study of the subject. https://medium.com/@tweetingmo... [medium.com]
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:4, Interesting)
By the way mods, this isn't trolling. He actually has neurological damage.
https://nationalpost.com/news/... [nationalpost.com]
He got addicted to benzodiazepine and couldn't get off them so went for some risky treatment where they basically put you in a medically induced coma and then you go cold turkey while unconscious. The idea is you wake up having slept through the withdrawal symptoms but it's risky and he had to travel to Russia to get it.
Anyway it went wrong and last we heard his daughter said it had given him brain damage and he was unable to speak or write properly, and was taking anti-seizure drugs. He hasn't made public appearances since.
https://newrepublic.com/articl... [newrepublic.com]
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By the way mods, this isn't trolling.
Damore and Peterson are sacred cows. It seems that while their supporters claim to be in support of free speech and contrary opinions, anything critical of them will get you modded troll in a hurry!
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The memo was about hiring practices. So no, he wasn't talking about women he works with.
well, this is progress. (Score:5, Insightful)
Excellent, so statistics dont apply any more, good to know. I assume all statistically based positions will be immediately unwound?
For example, we should no longer have any affirmative action positions, as we cannot assume anything about either the people being supported or those who are not?
We will stop all claims about privilege, since again we cannot assume anything about people, regardless of their race, financial position, etc?
There will be no more demonstrations against speakers, no more 'xyz lives matter', no more LGBTQIA+ issues to deal with, since statistics simply mean NOTHING, so all such people are the same as everyone else?
In other words, we will go back to a situation where we actually just evaluate every single situation on an individual basis and we have no need to compensate or allow for someone who could be more sensitive, less advantaged, historically downtrodden, etc because STATISTICS MEAN NOTHING?
We dont need to call people NAZIs any more, because hey, they are just people - in fact it wouldnt even mean anything any more, because we cannot actually say NAZIs were bad because, well, no statistics!
Great, sounds like progress.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to learn a little about sampling theory [wikipedia.org] before calling people morons. Math says that it is in fact perfectly valid to assume the 0.01% of women who are plumbers are just like the other 99.99%, as long as there are a sufficient number of them.
Sampling theory says that when you take a random sample of the population, the bigger your sample the more likely it is to be the same as the general population. Moreover, the effect depends only on the sample size, not the population size. So the fact that female plumbers are only 1 in 10,000 women is irrelevant. If you work out the math, it turns out that only the total number of female plumbers matters. If there are 650 of them, then the percentage of them with a certain trait will be within +/-5% of the percentage for the entire female population (with a 99% confidence interval). At 15,000 (roughly half the number of female Google employees) it's within +/- 1% of the entire population (99% confidence interval).
The only exception is if there's some correlation (positive or negative) between your sampling process and the trait under debate (the sample is biased). Unless there's some obvious correlation, it's common to assume a sample is sufficiently random. Critiques then are based on the existence of a correlation, which is then followed by controlling for the statistical skew imparted by that correlation. IOW the mere existence of a skew does not invalidate the process of sampling. e.g. "women who are plumbers are half as likely to have a certain trait as the general population." There's no animosity in this process. You start with an assumption, and others commenting on your work refine it to quantify how the sample deviates from the original assumption. Helping everyone eventually get to the truth of the matter.
Your post has just made me realize what's actually going on here, and the stupid reason why he was fired. A bunch of people who don't know math and statistics couldn't understand his arguments based on math and statistics. And in their ignorance misinterpreted what he said as being hostile to their viewpoint, and crucified him rather than building upon the (statistically very sound) framework he had laid out.
Re: He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedb (Score:2)
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Maths doesn't say anything about if it's fine to make assumptions about people based on statistics. That's a social, moral and legal question.
In fact it's actually illegal to make some statistically valid assumptions about people. For example you can't put "no women of child baring age" in your job advert because even though statistically they are more likely to want parental leave it's morally objectionable.
Damore put himself in the impossible position of stating that he believes in certain biases about hi
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I'm not an expert on US law but for example it seems you are not allowed to even ask about things like age during a job interview, so I imagine outright stating that you have some statistically valid opinions about certain ages is out too.
I have no problem with people saying these things unless it's in a work setting where it creates a problem for someone else. Just like I have no problem with giving complements unless it's the boss and now you feel like they are coming on to you and if you refuse your job
Comment removed (Score:4)
Re: He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedb (Score:5, Insightful)
Using averages to judge an individual is stupid, using them to try to explain general trends is not. From what I've read, he never mentioned individuals.
It is a fact that men and women are different in average, and while men and women working at Google are not representative, that doesn't mean those differences necessarily disappear. Some differences may disappear, some may decrease, some may stay the same.
If women in general have higher level of stress than men, and if women working at Google report higher level of stress too, is not outlandish to think that at least part of those at least part of the latter is due to the former.
Also even assuming that those differences completely disappeared because Google only hired people with a high score Y on characteristics X, if men on average have a higher score on X, then there naturally be less women applicants than men with the same Y score.
Now to go back to your plumbing example. Yes women plumbers aren't representative of the general women population. For example, I'd bet that their physical strength is higher, but i'll also bet it is still lower than the strength of men plumbers. The differences may be smaller, doesn't mean they don't exist anymore.
Also no one claims that the fact 97% of plummets are men is due to sexism, because we all know that the job is better suited to men (and let's be honest, because it's a tough job that doesn't pay nearly as much as it should, so no one cares). Let's assume you want to hire more women plumbers.
Do you actually believe that going to schools to convince girls to become plumbers is the best idea? Wouldn't changing the job to make it more appealing to the average girl be more efficient?
That's the crux here. Google is in the camp of "every difference is due to sexism and we just need to convince girls to become devs", while Damore is in the camp of "there are difference in the general population, so maybe not every difference here is due to sexism, and if we want to hire me women, we should make the job more suited to women in general".
Is the answer in middle? Probably, but as far as i know, damore acknowledges that sexism is one of the cause, while Google refuses to acknowledge that anything other than sexism may be a cause.
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:4)
Wait?
The reason for the discussion to begin with was the question, "Why don't we have more women working here?"
Unless the real question was, "Why are all men pigs?", I fail to see how stereotypes of the "typical woman" could not be required. How does the conversation even make sense unless you bring in some stereotypes?
BTW, stereotyping is not automatically evil. It is how the human brain works. It is how we make sense of the world. It is just categorization of things we know.
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Like he'll have to work for money again after the Google payout.
He may choose to work for self-fulfillment, and if that's at a pillow factory good on him.
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Re: He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedb (Score:2)
James was paid off for his silence. Google admitted too much non-sense in public.
Settlement is cheaper then letting this drag I am certain.
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James' big mistake was he foolishly believed Google wanted honest feedback on their diversity program.
That is not correct. It wasn't the feedback to the organisers of the diversity program that caused the problem. It was the fact that after getting no response about his feedback, he then followed it up by sending the memo to Google's internal mailing lists and forums and that this was the cause of tensions within Google. It was very provocative and divisive among the staff.
Even then it wasn't until the memo was leaked publicly that he was sacked. Considering that they were already in hot water with the US D
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I've just reviewed his letter. He didn't go into profound detail, but his claims seemed quite mainstream historically and psychologically. Is there any claim you found to be actually unfounded or a matter of any debate among psychologists not deeply embedded in "post-Modernist" politics?
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You just think everything you don't agree with is controversial and therefore must be silenced.
Autism is a helluva drug
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:5, Interesting)
So, OK, but does that in any way justify firing him?
Google asked for ways to improve hiring diversity. James compiled a diligent, well-research, and obviously sincere set of suggestions for process improvement. There was clearly no malice involved, and his goal was clearly to help Google hire more women.
The only valid company response if they disagree is "thanks for the extra effort, but these ideas don't fit here".
The worst possible culture at engineering shops of any sort has nothing to do with "SJW", it's the culture of punishing people who point out data that's inconvenient for the prevailing narrative. Even if the data upon deeper analysis doesn't mean what you think it means, and everything's fine, you just don't punish people for looking at data. You see this all the time at companies who have ritualized dishonesty in project scheduling, but it's far worse when there's a culture of fear-of-disagreement around anything safety-related, Boeing's learning that one the hard way,
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:He foolishly believed they wanted honest feedba (Score:4, Insightful)
My own opinion of this as someone that works at a large multinational company is that they had no choice, because his stance made him impossible to put on any team. Not only were several women refusing to work with him, no performance review of him or by him could ever be taken seriously again. Even if he were giving a completely unbiased view (which is honestly not possible for anyone, we should just own that), the perception of bias would follow him around forever.
While I disagree with his stance and his analysis, that in itself wouldn’t be enough to fire him, but not being able to confidently integrate him onto a team makes work at a company like that impossible.
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It wasn't well researched, that was the biggest flaw in it. It's obvious that he just googled some papers that agreed with his established views, didn't really understand them (according to the authors of those papers https://www.wired.com/story/th... [wired.com]) and didn't bother to look for counter arguments. If he had put in more effort he would have found a vast library of material discussing his ideas and have been at least able to address some of the obvious and common criticisms, which might have saved him.
His
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I used to want very much to work at Google. Now I'm scared of the place. If I had to work there I would be very much "in the closet", being careful what I say. Oh, you want feedback about our hiring practices? Sorry, I just don't have any ideas about that. Can't think of even one.
I interviewed there before all this came to light. In hindsight, I'm very happy the place gave me the creeps and I politely finished out the interview and told them no thanks. Whatever you think about James's memo, his comments about the Google interview process were right on target. I had less meaningful human interaction in that interview than any other in-person interview I've had. Even the design questions weren't design discussions, no attempt was made to see how working with me would be by challen
Stereotype? (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2018, Damore suffered a setback when a National Labor Relations Board attorney concluded the engineer's use of biological stereotypes in his widely circulated memo was offensive enough to cause disruption in the workplace, making his firing lawful
Stereotypes? He posted facts with citations.
Re:Stereotype? (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2018, Damore suffered a setback when a National Labor Relations Board attorney concluded the engineer's use of biological stereotypes in his widely circulated memo was offensive enough to cause disruption in the workplace, making his firing lawful
Stereotypes? He posted facts with citations.
Indeed he did. And by that he committed a cardinal sin: He demonstrated conclusively that the prevalent narrative was fundamentally flawed. (And it is.) He made some fundamentally stupid people _look_ stupid. And that, like all zealots, they cannot forgive or even conceptualize as a possibility.
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At the end of all this.
Do you feel that his memo has helped or hinder women employment in the tech workforce.
I think that it will take another 3 years before this dissipates from mainstream memory and
we see more women in the tech field.
I study history of information movement and I've come to the conclusion that things repeat
over and over and real solutions are rarely achieved.
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Do you feel that his memo has helped or hinder women employment in the tech workforce.
I suspect and hope it's hindered women in the IT industry. It was time for a correction and to reinstitute gender equality, and Damore's memo rapidly accelerated the tensions regarding the severe bias that was taking place.
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At the end of all this.
Do you feel that his memo has helped or hinder women employment in the tech workforce.
That is besides the point. The aborted discussion (which was not his doing) certainly did damage.
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So, you expect a posting on an internal mailing-list to be on the quality level of a scientific research paper? What planet are you from? Also, did you actually read the thing and try to understand it?
Seems to me you are desperately trying (and failing) to justify what happened to him.
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Further, he was posting to a forum. So his forum version of truth might seem appropriate... except this was not an internet forum, this was a work forum. He was not an anon, spreading the wisdom of his cherry-pic
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:Here you will find comments from people who did (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like saying that affirmative action to hire less qualified people from diverse background is in fact racial discrimination?
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Google was a popular place to work. They could filter the pile of qualified resume's using almost any criteria they want. That would look for google's numbers, but make the problem worse for the rest of the industry.
Unless they focus their attention on structural problems (if they exist) in the education pipeline, to ensure the under-represented have the opportunity to learn. Which would result in more candidates to choose from.
Re: Here you will find comments from people who d (Score:3)
Re: Here you will find comments from people who (Score:2)
Why? Qualified is qualified, and sometimes hiring someone that is more qualified means they are going to ask for a bigger salary, or may move on to another company quicker, inflating costs both i salary and in replacement hiring. So it could make business sense not to hire the most qualified person every time. And monoculture(usually in established companies the "good ol boy" network) is a very real thing and very hard to dislodge without bringing in new blood and fresh perspectives.
Hell, when I got hired f
Re: Here you will find comments from people who (Score:5, Insightful)
Though randomly hiring basic qualified people could bear fruit, people tend to look for the best qualified they can hire for the budget.
Why would I just want to settle for, meh, when I can get WOW.
I hire people, I hate the process, it takes away from productivity and doing actual work. I dont own a large company, thus do not have an HR department.
I do not have time to find the diamond in the rough and spitshine it. I need to hire the best I can get right now.
Eventually, if I need to shake things up, I wouldnt be averse to hiring someone with different background. But for now thats not the goal.
You have a nice anecdotal story. But you arent seeing the forest for the trees.
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Alphabet is making money hand over fist. It doesn't need the likes of Damore
Re: Here you will find comments from people who d (Score:2)
You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
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But if we're saying having a different view than the company herd is a positive then they should have kept him, right?
No, we're not actually saying something so foolishly simplistic. You might think that and it says me about you than anyone else.
You want diversity of opinion but only up to a point. You wouldn't want someone who's opinion was that bubble sort is always the right choice, no matter how much that goes against groupthink.
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Reminds me of the 60s when women started to do jobs traditionally only done by men. Lots of comments about them being hired for their looks or to make the company appear modern and progressive. There was a genuine belief that the reason women hadn't been doing those jobs before was lack of ability.
It's a little different now I suppose. These "diversity hires" are actually just HR getting its shit together and finding that there is a pool of untapped talent it hadn't considered before. Maybe some training is
Re:Here you will find comments from people who did (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, most of the opinions I've seen here that are deemed 'uninformed', cite the actual memo, or the policy of the mailing list.
Re:Here you will find comments from people who did (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a difference between being informed about the content of the memo and being informed about the actual issue. It's the exact same mistake that Damore made, he didn't bother to research it properly or address the counter-arguments made decades ago.
To be fair his treatment was perhaps a bit hash. People assumed he must have known about all that stuff and was just ignoring it deliberately to make a point, but he appears to have been genuinely clueless and well intentioned.
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"Re: Here you will find comments from people who did not read the memo."
You must be new here.
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Re:Here you will find comments from people who did (Score:5, Interesting)
I did read the original memo back then because the whole thing had a smell to it. I found the original memo well reasoned and certainly written in good faith with the intention to provide a basis for further discussion and possible solutions. Sure, nothing is perfect, but basically all of the accusations leveled against him publicly are pretty extreme lies and reflect very, very badly on those that made the accusations.
Of course, claiming that men and women are the same is fundamentally stupid and ignoring rather obvious biological facts. Of course what biological carrier-system you run on has a major impact on your experience of physical reality. Of course, due to fundamental biological mechanisms critical to species survival, your interactions with others are impacted. However, in this age of enlightenment, we can finally say "different but of equal worth" and can have a rational stance. Instead the SJW zealots insist on "not different" and make any rational and effective approach to the remaining problems (and there quite a few of those) impossible. And to make matters worse, they try to fit everybody into the same template and try to remove or strongly limit individual choice.
Now, I am perfectly happy to teach the about 10% of female students in my software security course. They rank from excellent to mediocre, but all deserve to be there, just like the male students. (This is a higher-year course.) I also have absolutely no problem to occasionally compensate for biological issues, like the one time a student could not come to an exam because she was pregnant with a high risk of miscarriage. I visited her at home with a 3rd person present (her husband) and did a low-stress aural exam which went completely fine and was perfectly in line with the mid-semester written exam she did. But I doubt the number of female students in this subject will be approaching 50% anytime soon and that is by choice of the potential students, not because they are somehow prevented by force or not given the opportunity or brainwashed.
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I visited her at home with a 3rd person present (her husband) and did a low-stress aural exam which went completely fine and was perfectly in line with the mid-semester written exam she did.
I think you mean oral exam. Unless you were investigating her ear.
But I doubt the number of female students in this subject will be approaching 50% anytime soon and that is by choice of the potential students, not because they are somehow prevented by force or not given the opportunity or brainwashed.
Yes, but is it really biology or a lifetime of cultural influence that computer software is nerdy boy stuff? I don't expect an equal share of girls and boys to wear skirts any time soon, it doesn't mean I think biology is behind it. Cultural attitudes get passed down from generation to generation and change very slowly if at all. Even today there's little doubt that the school yard is divided by gender.
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Yes, but is it really biology or a lifetime of cultural influence that computer software is nerdy boy stuff? I don't expect an equal share of girls and boys to wear skirts any time soon, it doesn't mean I think biology is behind it. Cultural attitudes get passed down from generation to generation and change very slowly if at all. Even today there's little doubt that the school yard is divided by gender.
Quite obviously a mix. Also, quite obviously, what body you live in does shape your experience of reality to a significant degree. And also quite obviously, sex drive has a significant influence on human interaction and it is fundamentally different for women and men. If you even need to ask whether this can be fully cultural, then you are blind.
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^ THIS.
Hiring based on bullshit ideology instead of merit is reverse discrimination.
Only Stupid Juvenile Whiners complain about bullshit issues that no one gives a fuck about.
* 50% of nurses are NOT men. No one cares.
* 50% of plumbers are NOT women. No one gives a fuck.
SJWs are to stupid too understand Different does NOT imply unequal. In Mathematics we would express this concept as:
AbsoluteValue( -2 ) == AbsoluteValue( +2 )
Men and Women are wired fundamentally [scientificamerican.com] different [sciencemag.org] at the brain level. It is not sex
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Indeed. The important thing is that the girl that wants to become an engineer can try to and finds no higher hurdles in her way than the men. And we have reached that in the west today. That most girls do not want to be engineers is their personal preference and needs to be respected.
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I have to ask - how do you know there is no discrimination and there is only hiring based on merit? Do you know this because you believe women can't become good engineers, like Damore did?
They can't handle the stress, you know...
Also, well done on misinterpreting the study that showed a massive correlation of brain wiring based on gender, but only because it had an even greater correlation based on profession. Almost like a lifetime of being an engineer may make a difference on your brain, regardless
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Damore's argument was that the nature of the job should be changed to reflect biology in order to make it more attractive to women. Ignoring that he got the biology wrong (as confirmed by the authors of the studies he cited), let's assume he is right for a moment.
Isn't this kind the kind of "everyone gets a medal" stuff that conservatives rail against? Make the job easier for women so they can be engineers too. Wouldn't it be better to help them overcome whatever issues they might have?
And aren't the issues
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Excuse me? Are you on drugs?
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I'm fairly sure he was being sarcastic, veering into sardonic.
Although it's hard to tell these days, Poe's Law and all that.
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Well, possibly. But even when being sarcastic, it is good style to actually contribute something. I am missing that here.
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I do not even get a rough impression of your point. What are you trying to say?
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The basic problem Damore ran into is that he is an Aspie, and lacks the normal toolkit of human emotional skills to foresee he is likely to offend with certain phrases and juxtaposition of arguments. A normal person who writes a memo that way is very very likely to be offending on purpose. It is conceivable that Damore's motivations very quite innocent. I honestly do not know.
There is an interesting question here: How much does a workplace have to accommodate mental disabilities of a worker?
I suspect the
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Just shows... (Score:2)
...that the biggest checkbooks can solve anything.
He was certainly paid off (so good for him, I guess) but that's why it's sealed.
Remember this next time you hear someone from the left complaining about the 'power of big corporations'.
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Damore was weak; should have gone for Pichai (Score:2)
He had the limelight, and could have gone after Pichai big time in the court of public opinion.
The first and obvious and most step would be to put the memo up on a public website. Today, we have to go to archive.org to find a copy from the Wikipedia page. Then collect all the people that support him. Make his case.
Then get right wing idiots to support him. Finally, they have something valid to complain about. He could have gotten interviews everywhere.
And his message would be:
1. Use Bing or Duck to pro
Hopefully he will put "Retired" on his LinkedIn (Score:2)
Re: A lot more targeted firings will happen in 202 (Score:2)
Anyone? Ever?
Re: A lot more targeted firings will happen in 202 (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you asking about the red scare?
Are you asking about people who couldn't get security clearance because they protested against the Vietnam war
Are you asking about people fired for trying to unionize?
Are you asking about civil rights activists?
Are you asking about Phil Donahue, who was fired for opposing the Gulf War?
Are you asking about Erwin Chemerinsky,who was un-hired as Law School Dean?
Are you asking about Dr. Bright, since medicine has become the next political frontier?
Or do you see all of these dismissals as non-ideological, and based on legitimate concerns that just happen to be coincide with your ideology?
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Re: A lot more targeted firings will happen in 20 (Score:2)
I asked who. Yet to see anything relevant.
OTOH, the topic of this article is the google dumb ass who got his name tarnished, reputation destroyed and career wrecked for trying to take SJW nonsense seriously and engage with SJWs in an intellectually honest way.
The response was, "REEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! REEEEEEEEE!!!! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!".
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Indeed. For example, poor white boys have the worse educational outcomes of any gender/race demographic in the UK.
Of course, that hasn't prevented the few people seeking to understand or address this being called racist. Because apparently it's racist to try and help people if they're white.
Still, at least in America it's different. It's like the old-but-current joke:
I'm proud to be black, said the black man.
I'm proud to be Latino, said the hispanic man.
I'm proud to be white, said the racist.