Google done' goofed - fires employee for "opinions"

[DigDog]

Apparently Google has noticed an internal memo written by one of their employees, Havard PhD graduate James Damore, which .. well, the text is here: http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320

To sum it up, since i have read (and understood) the whole thing, it's a rather mild attack on the various neo-feminist pseudoscience that has wormed its way into the corporate (HR mostly) culture of Google, and it basically just says "science actually disagrees with you - here is the proof".

If i can fault this guy, is that he didn't have the foresight to know that bringing science into any corporation that has a HR department means being immediately fired. Or maybe he did, and he's looking forward to his juicy unfair dismissal settlement. I mean, he's a Harvard boy, after all. Not as smart as a MIT boy, but possibly more street-savvy.

The resulting faeces-storm is so large that i won't add any other links - every website out there and their dog's blogs have their own opinions on this case, and be they liberal or conservative, few of them get it right. Which is ok because their job is to write articles, not to actually understand science.

 

[agent00f]

Apparently Google has noticed an internal memo written by one of their employees, Havard PhD graduate James Damore, which .. well, the text is here: http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320

To sum it up, since i have read (and understood) the whole thing, it's a rather mild attack on the various neo-feminist pseudoscience that has wormed its way into the corporate (HR mostly) culture of Google, and it basically just says "science actually disagrees with you - here is the proof".

If i can fault this guy, is that he didn't have the foresight to know that bringing science into any corporation that has a HR department means being immediately fired. Or maybe he did, and he's looking forward to his juicy unfair dismissal settlement. I mean, he's a Harvard boy, after all. Not as smart as a MIT boy, but possibly more street-savvy.

The resulting faeces-storm is so large that i won't add any other links - every website out there and their dog's blogs have their own opinions on this case, and be they liberal or conservative, few of them get it right. Which is ok because their job is to write articles, not to actually understand science.

The facts here are that he posted his manifesto about women being unsuited for tech and whatnot on some little internal forum, and it figures that sort of thing got widely distributed. In any other company it's point and laugh time, but as mitigating factor google has more a culture of critical internal discussion.

Predictably the "blacks r dumb cus science" crowd are up in arms over this, and it's at least safe to say these aren't the sorts those with a good reputation want fighting their battles.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Remember when Brendan Eich got pushed out of Mozilla, for his political views?

 

[IronWing]

Science not found.

 

[senseamp]

He went crying to NLRB Such a good small government conservative

 

[jackstar7]

Worker fired from company. Why is this a big story to you?


Ohhhhhhh, I see why.

That specter of male oppression rearing its head.

Get scared, man. Get REAL scared.

 

[Yakk]

When being paid by employer, please leave opinions unapproved by HR at the door.

 

[Jaskalas]

We found a witch! May we burn him?

When being paid by employer, please leave opinions unapproved by HR at the door.

True, that. A company controls its image by controlling what its people publicly say. Stepping out of line is a textbook firing case. I think the writer got the wrong impression of what openness means. He should have stayed FAR from the textbook meaning and instead paid attention to what his boss(es) wanted.

 

[DaveSimmons]

His "science" that women are "genetically less capable" of software development as a group is even more dubious than the feminist pseudoscience that he attacks. He tries to weasel out of it by saying you can't judge a specific woman by their gender inferiority, but it's still junk science and misogyny.

Was the firing justified for him being a deluded misogynist who shared his views with co-workers? I have no idea, I'm a developer not a lawyer.

 

[Jaskalas]

He tries to weasel out of it by saying you can't judge a specific woman by their gender inferiority...

Inferiority? I skimmed after a certain point, but what I read he was extolling differences. Where the hell did inferiority come from?

 

[agent00f]

Inferiority? I skimmed after a certain point, but what I read he was extolling differences. Where the hell did inferiority come from?

Degens gonna degen.

 

[realibrad]

I was tempted to start a thread on this.

Here is the full PDF of what he actually wrote.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf

Personality differences Women, on average, have more:
● Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
○ These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.

● Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness.
○ This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support.

● Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).
○ This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

Note that contrary to what a social constructionist would argue, research suggests that "greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s personality traits." Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider.” We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.

Men’s higher drive for status We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life. Status is the primary metric that men are judged on4, pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths.

Here is a study that backs up his claims.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/

Im just not sure what is so disagreeable with what he said. We do see clear differences in men and women.

 

[Commodus]

There's a simple truth here: even if you buy Damore's bullshit (the pseudoscience comes from him, not Google), it's still true that his attitude is hostile to female coworkers. Imagine if you're a woman stuck on a programming team with him; would you want to work with him knowing he believes your vagina puts you at an inherent disadvantage? That he would be perfectly happy if Google never hired another woman for your team? If he tries for a wrongful dismissal lawsuit, he's going to lose; you're allowed to have opinions, but not if they're actively harmful to your coworkers.

It's rather telling that the only people trying to excuse Damore are men (specifically, the sort who masturbate to GamerGate and Red Pill posts). Every woman I know or have seen online who knows about this document has objected to it. Every single one of them is happy Damore has been fired.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

The facts here are that he posted his manifesto about women being unsuited for tech and whatnot on some little internal forum, and it figures that sort of thing got widely distributed. In any other company it's point and laugh time, but as mitigating factor google has more a culture of critical internal discussion.

Predictably the "blacks r dumb cus science" crowd are up in arms over this, and it's at least safe to say these aren't the sorts those with a good reputation want fighting their battles.

Not really every big company has morality clauses. Basically if you get known for doing or saying something stupid and bad for business and it's known where you work your employment can be terminated.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

There's a simple truth here: even if you buy Damore's bullshit (the pseudoscience comes from him, not Google), it's still true that his attitude is hostile to female coworkers. Imagine if you're a woman stuck on a programming team with him; would you want to work with him knowing he believes your vagina puts you at an inherent disadvantage? That he would be perfectly happy if Google never hired another woman for your team? If he tries for a wrongful dismissal lawsuit, he's going to lose.

It's rather telling that the only people trying to excuse Damore are men (specifically, the sort who masturbate to GamerGate and Red Pill posts). Every woman I know or have seen online who knows about this document has objected to it. Every single one of them is happy Damore has been fired.

Or worse, he becomes a boss that does reviews for Women.

 

[agent00f]

I was tempted to start a thread on this.

Here is the full PDF of what he actually wrote.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf

Personality differences Women, on average, have more:
● Openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing).
○ These two differences in part explain why women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics.

● Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness.
○ This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support.

● Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).
○ This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.

Note that contrary to what a social constructionist would argue, research suggests that "greater nation-level gender equality leads to psychological dissimilarity in men’s and women’s personality traits." Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider.” We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism.

Men’s higher drive for status We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life. Status is the primary metric that men are judged on4, pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths.

Here is a study that backs up his claims.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/

Im just not sure what is so disagreeable with what he said. We do see clear differences in men and women.

Such a mystery why basically shitting on co-workers (and reports in his case) for their genetics might be disagreeable.

Not really every big company has morality clauses. Basically if you get known for doing or saying something stupid and bad for business and it's known where you work your employment can be terminated.

I'm just relaying the fact that google has this culture of internal discussion far more than other companies, which is why some google folks are upset about it independently of diversity policy.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Phd? Smart enough to understand why he'd lose his job, I hope. Or he wasted all that money for a paper cert.

 

[brycejones]

Or worse, he becomes a boss that does reviews for Women.

He does that already. The largest component of Google's review process if feedback from your peers not your management. So unless he works in a group that is 100% male he is already involved in the review process for women.

 

[realibrad]

Such a mystery why basically shitting on co-workers (and reports in his case) for their genetics might be disagreeable.

Which part specifically do you think he shit on his co-workers?

 

[realibrad]

Phd? Smart enough to understand why he'd lose his job, I hope. Or he wasted all that money for a paper cert.

Did you read the actual doc? If so, what part do you think was the part that got him fired.

Reading the articles that talk about this, seem very different than what I read on the actual doc.

 

[Commodus]

To add to what I just said: Damore didn't actually get a PhD. He has a Master's in Systems Biology.

Sort of says it all, really... a man making bogus, sexist claims doesn't even have the degree his cheerleaders think he does.

 

[realibrad]

To add to what I just said: Damore didn't actually get a PhD. He has a Master's in Systems Biology.

Sort of says it all, really... a man making bogus, sexist claims doesn't even have the degree his cheerleaders think he does.

Did you read the doc? What part was a sexist claim?

 

[agent00f]

Which part specifically do you think he shit on his co-workers?

Did you read the actual doc? If so, what part do you think was the part that got him fired.

Reading the articles that talk about this, seem very different than what I read on the actual doc.

Did you read the doc? What part was a sexist claim?

Who are you competing against for this championship of playing dumb? Buckshot doesn't even post anymore.

 

[IronWing]

To add to what I just said: Damore didn't actually get a PhD. He has a Master's in Systems Biology.

Sort of says it all, really... a man making bogus, sexist claims doesn't even have the degree his cheerleaders think he does.

Dr. Science isn't a real doctor; he has a master's degree in science!

 

[jackstar7]

Im just not sure what is so disagreeable with what he said. We do see clear differences in men and women.

Cool. How do you think they should affect an American workplace that operates with legal protections for employees and candidates against discrimination based on sex?

To add to this, you are asserting that his post is all good, yeah? Why do you think that?