Should Google have fired James Damore?
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Should Google have fired James Damore?
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 17077 votes
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
For reference (Score:5, Informative)
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This story must be getting a hell of a lot of hits, considering how many times it's been posted today.
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IF people want to discuss it, might as well keep posting it.
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But that is absolutely not true . At most, the biological evidence shows that women prefer not to be programmers. However, once they actually choose to become programmers, the evidence shows they are just as good as men (if not better).
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Individual women undoubtedly but as a group no. Women tend to group more closely to the center of the bell curve when it comes to intelligence.
In a massive study of 15,000 people across all age groups to test that hypothesis [sciencedirect.com], this was shown to be false. Pop Psychology websites haven't caught up yet. From the paper:
" The authors conclude that these Romanian data show no support for the sex differences in either mean values or variance of scores which were reported by other studies."
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if Google hadn't fired the guy, plenty of employees would have grounds to sue, as well as refusing to go to work until the problem was fixed - and get paid in the interim, and no reprisals.
What? On what basis? I'd like you to better explain this.
Freedom of speech doesn't extend to harming or harassing your co-workers
Harming? Really? And, no, he did not defame his employer, he simply explained why he thinks that some corporate choices were bad (that is a waste of resources) for the company and for the working force (distorted meritocracy) of said company. Then started the name calling, and that was not his fault.
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What? On what basis? I'd like you to better explain this.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the First Amendment (and employment at will) works. While you certainly have the freedom to write whatever you want, your private employer is under no obligation to provide you with a pedestal, nor can you cry "free speech" to protect against the consequences of that speech. Google had to fire this fellow because any reasonable person can see this creates a hostile work environment - for which Google would be liable, and also because the whole episode
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It's amazing (not really) how many people take to tech because they have defective people skills[...]because you are such special snowflakes [...] perfect examples of adults who have "failed to launch" [...] a poor or non-existent sex life[...]
At the point you debase yourself with ad hominem attacks you undermine the integrity of the entirety of your other arguments.
For Actual Reference (Score:5, Informative)
to the link of the actual memo. This is the actual memo with no edit and all the links & tables included. Everyone new to the topic need to read this first for your independent judgement.
Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber - PC Considered Harmful [documentcloud.org]
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Can't read past his first insipid table (Left biases, right biases), which is about as insightful as a C- undergrad humanities term paper from a community college student. I didn't know you qualified for a six figure income with that level of "education". What a country!
Humans are both inherently cooperative and inherently competitive. Disparities are natural, but justice does not exist in nature. And while some few conservatives might argue that all authority deserves respect, I would argue that many of th
Social justice is starting to look smell funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as someone passionate about social justice, but also someone who spent some formative years around evangelical Christianity in the bible belt, I'm seeing some disturbing parallels:
1. Complete cynicism about the motivations of outsiders: Everyone assumes the worst about the motives of the author of the "anti-diversity document" despite his repeated claims to be a supporter of social justice. The judgment is he must be a terrible sexist because he dares to question the details of the diversity programs at Google.
2. Belief that any questioning of the doctrine must be motivated by sin: the sin in this case being sexism.
3. Belief that all deviations from the one true faith, however slight, are equally evil and warrant expulsion from the tribe, or hellfire, or firing.
Basically discourse on the left about social justice is turning toxic and is mirroring the worst parts of evangelical Christianity. Ironically, Ezra Klein discussed exactly this problem on his podcast two weeks ago just before the Google news broke: https://player.fm/series/the-e... [player.fm]
We should take the advice of his guest and learn to be more tolerant of dissent within our own ranks.
For what it's worth, I don't endorse the content of the "anti-diversity manifesto." What I endorse is his right to say things that might be wrong (THE HORROR) without fear of losing his job for being wrong about something.
Re:Social justice is starting to look smell funny (Score:4, Insightful)
Science no longer dominates the discussion.
The application of personal destruction to non-adherents of Identity Politics is concerning, and damning.
Commenters that haven't read James' memo, but had guns, there is no doubt they'd execute him for his "heresy".
Identity Politics is now a religion. The Inquisition will burn apostates
Re:Social justice is starting to look smell funny (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't agree with everything you wrote but I think you hit a few nails on the head especially this one:
1. Complete cynicism about the motivations of outsiders: Everyone assumes the worst about the motives of the author of the "anti-diversity document" despite his repeated claims to be a supporter of social justice. The judgment is he must be a terrible sexist because he dares to question the details of the diversity programs at Google.
I was thinking about this yesterday relative to this exact subject and I think its a big problem, thanks for pointing it out.
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That isn't what he said. What he said was a perfect 50/50 split may never be possible because he believed an underrated quality in the lack of diversity is that biological differences between the sexes could discourage women from wanting to get into this field.
We can agree or disagree with that claim (I am skeptical of it) but it's not like he said that women who do choose to get into the field are inherently worse at it or anything. In fact h
Re:Social justice is starting to look smell funny (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the kind of bullshit the OP was talking about. Taking his comments out of context and intentionally drawing the wrong conclusion in order to demonize him, or anyone for that matter. You are part of the problem.
This says nothing about whether he is wrong or right, it is saying that anyone that dares deviate from the social norms and group think of any organization they belong to are fired or excommunicated. That is the problem. Assuming the worse and reading that into every comment is the problem. Most often, this intentional misreading is done in order for the reader to further their own political agenda.
Americans are losing their ability to simply disagree without someone getting butt hurt over it. It's rather disgusting how we've become a nation of politically correct pansies.
Results matter (Score:2, Interesting)
I voted yes. Not because of his views, which were idiotic, but because of the results of his actions. The Google employee publicly embarrassed his company and generated a shitstorm of bad press for them. A circulated memo is not the way to express one's political views in the workplace (especially views so divisive) and he just learned that the hard way.
Some of the best advice my father gave me was about personal views in the workplace: "You might think something. You might even say something. But, for Hea
Re:Results matter (Score:5, Interesting)
The stickier situation is when you write stuff on your personal blog that is controversial and off-message for your employer, and you get fired for that. I think this entire debate would have a different color if he did that, and I'd be far more inclined to support him if he did exactly this, even if I disagree with his screed. I would consider that to be an overstep by his employer, even if his blog mentioned that he was a google engineer.
I would love to be debating that scenario. But mouthing off at work has never served anyone well, whether they are right or wrong, and unless this was literally his job, totally not helpful to his employer and thus worthy of termination if it had bad effects (which it did). Even if it is his job, clearly the reaction suggests he needs to leave.
Re:Results matter (Score:4, Informative)
He was talking about anti-conservative bias with fellow employees. That is an appropriate issue for conversation according to the NLRB, and he had an outstanding complaint with the NLRB.
What are you going to do next, advocate his firing for attempting to organize a Conservative Union? How far from the Left's plank issues will you deviate in order to defend your religion?
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People keep saying he is sexist. I read the doc, twice now:
At no point does he say women are inferior, that women don't have the chops for leadership or IT roles, or that there is some sort of moral failing about women or feminism. Nor does he say that he dislikes women, that there are too many of them in the workplace, or that something needs to be done to reduce their influence at all. He mostly just explains why more women don't want to be in those roles, but doesn't advocate blocking them in any way.
Other: None of my business (Score:2, Interesting)
Google is free to hire/fire whomever they wish. If they think his leaked memo embarrassed the company in any way, then they were free to part ways with his company. If I started spreading "trash talk" about company policies around my company in the form of a manifesto, then I'd expect to be fired or otherwise disciplined.
Read the damn thing before you make a decision. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Read the damn thing before you make a decision. (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless of the majority of the claims in the document...
1) As groups, women and men have various qualities that differ on average.
2) There is plenty of reason to believe those differences could affect average interests and aptitudes that result in sex disparities in the work place.
3) There is plenty of reason to believe that there's plenty of fundamentally dogmatic and wrong-headed efforts to force an artificial 50/50 representation of the sexes in various careers.
4) Saying any of the above unless you're in a sexist environment will end up getting you fired.
Maybe he was wrong on some or even the majority of his stated opinions, but not on the underlying basis. And sure enough, rather than debate him he's vilified, his arguments ignored.
Having said that... dumbass move posting that within Google, even in a supposedly 'open' environment. I've lived through a couple of PC purge eras so far... once the nutbars are allowed to have control, it takes a long time to restore sanity and it's made more difficult by the opposition nutbars who really do need to be shut down for poisoning their workplace with sexism/racism/whateverism.
And yeah, when you get a place like that... if you're white you're presumed racist and if you're male you're presumed sexist, so you get Affirmative Action (forcing hiring quotas which, yes, involves lowering standards for the targeted groups). And that results in inferior hires who support pre-existing prejudices and leaves qualified members of those groups working under suspicion of being unqualified diversity hires... and silent resentment from those losing opportunities to others who are presumed to be less qualified.
It's poison, and Google is paying a price for it even if they don't realize it.
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Stop lying,
He never said women are not suitable to work in IT.
He did say how do we make IT better suit women by realizing the differences between men and women, as well as how to confront the common biases in Google, both left and right.
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He should have stopped at line 41. He might still have been fired but it's likely the people who threw him under the bus wouldn't have found enough fuel.
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You DO realize this is slashdot, right???
Yes (Score:2)
Yes, not so much for his beliefs. Not so much that he expressed those beliefs; but because as a representative of the company he embarrassed Google and made Google look bad.
Google's new Logo (Score:3, Funny)
he has committed a career limiting move (Score:2, Insightful)
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You are flat wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
He does NOT "argue to exclude over half the human population from his profession." At NO POINT does he say anything even remotely like that.
He does attempt to explain why more women don't want to be in his profession. Direct quote: " 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."
At no point in the entire document does he even hint that women should avoid leadership or tech, nor that the company should shun women or scrutinize them more during interviews or anything at all like that. This attitude simply is not there.
Another quote: "I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism)."
He agrees with you! And here you are making false statements about what he wrote and judging him based on those false statements.
See for yourself [pastebin.com]. You are judging him based on lies other people have said about what he wrote.
Also, he doesn't "imply" that women tend to be neurotic, he states it here: "Women, on average, have more: ... Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)." He is stating that as a biologist, not as an accuser. He doesn't use that to justify treating women different, but to explain why women act differently. Everyone is going ape-shit over this statement...but it just doesn't mean what they say it means. And anyway it's true, the stats prove it [adaa.org].
Read first, judge afterwords.
Re: You are flat wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
I like that people keep posting this, but the most outraged people aren't reading anything but headlines, and I think the repetition of said headlines will stifle reality like it usually does.
I was outraged at the headline, and then when I read the document, it was obvious that a lot of bias had been inserted into a really sterile observational document that was critical of how Google is handling diversity.
I'm proudly liberal, and I can't find a lot to disagree with in the doc. I think people are reading in a lot of personal crap that isn't actually in the document into it. It bums me out that the left is so intolerant of critique. We should be better than this.
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"His language implies that women tend to be neurotic" - probably because neuroticism is a dimension within Big 5 personality traits system, it is a tendency to experience negative emotions, and is statistically more pronounced in women. Same as his argument about "agreeableness".
"He gives conservatives a bad name" - he explicitly says that companies need a mix of liberals and conservatives (and their traits) to be healthy.
"He seems irrational" - he seems to be quoting research and
women take more medication for mental illness (Score:2)
The World Health Organization reports:
Depressive disorders account for close to 41.9% of the disability from neuropsychiatric disorders among women compared to 29.3% among men.
Leading mental health problems of the older adults are depression, organic brain syndromes and dementias. A majority are women.
About 1 in 4 women are taking medication for mental illness compared to 15% of men.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
One of the more startling statistics in the report, which analyzed prescription claims data f
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I don't think he's in opposition to the company's values. He's in opposition to the way they implement them and he brings facts to the table to demonstrate that.
Must-see documentary on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I have experienced the bro culture first hand over the decades - this is tiresome and a waste of energy.
It's astonishing to me that remarks like those are made routinely by feminists. I have heard remarks about "bro culture" many times now. Isn't that a stereotyping remark? Frankly, remarks like those are far more extreme than any stereotyping behavior I have ever seen at any startup, and I've been doing this a long time, as you have.
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"I haven't seen it so it can't exist": Cool lolgic, bro.
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Ann, did you understand what you just read? I didn't say that sexism was non-existent at companies. I said that making remarks or writing screeds about "bro culture" in the tech field is even more stereotyping and worse than any sexism at companies I have observed.
Your response to that is simply to repeat the inflammatory remarks which were just pointed out to you?
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Floo, I understood what I read just fine.
You said you hadn't seen any stereotyping behavior more extreme than the word 'bro' at any startup, and that you'd been doing startups for a long time.
Are you seriously backing away now from the obvious implication of your own words, i.e. that sexism more extreme than the word 'bro' doesn't exist at startups?
If so, your goalposts don't just shift, they do the fucking mamba.
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He didn't say to exclude half the human population. He did say that "I hope it’s clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair" and "I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I
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You obviously didn't read it. Or have reading comprehension issues.
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What does that have to do with women being unsuited for I.T. other than prejudice.
No clue (Score:2)
I voted "Other", because I have no idea whether or not his firing was justified. I don't have nearly enough information to be able to gauge that (and neither does anyone else who isn't party to the whole thing).
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some interesting things from interviews (Score:4, Insightful)
"Hal: Witch hunts are a well-known cultural problem at Google. The company is currently facing a Federal complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board in April for interfering with employees’ legal right to discuss “workplace diversity and social justice initiatives.” The complaint alleges that Senior Vice President Urs Holzle and numerous managers in his organization actively stoked up witch hunts in 2015 and 2016 intended to muzzle low-level employees who raised concerns about the company’s practices. The trial is set for November.
Several managers have openly admitted to keeping blacklists of the employees in question, and preventing them from seeking work at other companies. There have been numerous cases in which social justice activists coordinated attempts to sabotage other employees’ performance reviews for expressing a different opinion. These have been raised to the Senior VP level, with no action taken whatsoever.
Allum Bokhari: What’s it like to work in such an environment? Do you think it damages employee output?
Hal: A lot of social justice activists essentially spend all day fighting the culture war, and get nothing done. The company has made it a point to hire more people like this. The diversity gospel has been woven into nearly everything the company does, to the point where senior leaders focus on diversity first and technology second. The companywide “Google Insider” emails used to talk about cool new tech, but now they’re entirely about social justice initiatives. Likewise, the weekly all-hands “TGIF” meetings used to focus on tech, but now they’re split about 50/50 between tech and identity politics signaling.
For conservative employees, this is obviously demoralizing, but it is also dangerous. Several have been driven out of the company or fired outright for sharing a dissenting view. Others have had their promotions denied or suffered other forms of deniable retaliation. Most of us just keep our heads down because we can’t afford to lose our jobs."
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Numerous individuals alleged to be members of Google’s management team have been caught bragging about forming blacklists to impact the careers of colleagues with different political beliefs.
In a series of screenshots from 2015 onwards published by a verified Google employee, individuals described as left-wing Google management employees can be seen discussing the ways they punish their colleagues both inside and out of the company.
“While Google appears to be doing very little to quell the hostile voices that exists inside the company, I want those hostile voices to know: I will never, ever hire hire/transfer you onto my team. Ever. I don’t care if you are perfect fit of technically excellent or whatever,” declared former employee Adam Fletcher in a post on Google’s internal, staff-only Google+ network: “Internal Plus.” “I will actively not work with you, even to the point where your team or product is impacted by this decision. I’ll communicate why to your manager if it comes up.”
“You’re being blacklisted by people at companies outside of Google,” he continued. “You might not have been aware of this, but people know, people talk. There are always social consequences.”
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Since the say guy who authored this letter also filed the NRLB compliant, I wonder if he would have a pay day for retaliatory firing?
Yes (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He hurt their feelings so bad that many women who work for Google stayed home on Monday. [npr.org]
They should be fired for perpetuating the stereotype that women are weak.
Feelz (Score:2)
Humans deserve respect and corps are NOT human! (Score:2)
Human beings deserve respect and corporations are NOT human beings and do NOT deserve respect, and especially not the respect demanded by slave-masters. AKA fear by the indebted wage slaves.
Makes me feel so dated. "Respect for the individual". Ever hear of it? One of the three operative principles of a formerly great company back when corporate principles meant something, before partial capitalism was completely replaced by modern corporate cancerism. Really hard to apply that simple-sounding principle, how
Misrepresentation (Score:3)
I don't know if we are approaching a moment when intelligent discussion will be forever gone. It certainly seems so, sometimes.
I can say that women run slower than men, and not offend anyone (I'd hope). Everybody is aware of the fact that, even if women run slower than men, in general, most men cannot outrun the women running at the Olympics. That fact does not invalidate the previous one. There we find in the general public a good understanding of distributions, that shows that the concept is not inherently difficult to grasp.
Somehow, that cleanness is lost when you substitute running by any, absolutely any, mental attribute. Suddenly no sex can be better than the other at anything, regardless of the evidence. The fact that some women are very good at something is enough to invalidate the fact that most are not. The good understanding of distributions is suddenly and forever lost, just because. This is a bad way of thinking, and bad ways of thinking have a tendency to come back and bite you in the backside, when they are confronted with reality.
Something, something, inclusive workplace? (Score:2)
Part of his screed was about how people of certain genders or races are statistically less likely to be suitable for work at Google and therefore they shouldn't hire so many people of those races or genders. Seems pretty clear-cut, doesn't it?
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My bad, it was gender rather than race that he said that about. Sometimes I get my forms of deplorable bigotry mixed up when I'm in a hurry. I guess it's better to make a bigoted statement against a whole gender than any specific races, right?
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RTFM? I've had to read the whole awful thing multiple times by now, and have even seen the lost (ethically irrelevant) citations. Behold, enough smoking guns for a John Woo action scene:
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.
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.
Whoahoho that last one is more like a smoking bazooka!
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That is a '50s-level sexist comment made in the context of recommendations for changes to company hiring practices, not an academic discussion on psychology. I think you'll need to accept that you're somehow immune to passively noticing such statements, and if you wish to be able to notice 5-alarm-fires of bigotry, you'll have to put an active effort into recognizing them on an intellectual level.
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Congratulations, you have a rather limited vocabulary, and it just got 1 word bigger!
Never get involved in a company political issue (Score:2)
Google is being investigated for gender pay inequality (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay-disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit). Their response is that Google most definitely does not have this happening.
When someone comes in and tries to explain that it's natural for there to be one ("This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for
raises, speaking up, and leading."), and it leaks to the public, it gives the prosecution some extra evidence
It was a setup, so No (Score:2)
But: having given this guy the idea that Google had a culture of open inquiry, they pulled the rug out from under him when he crossed an unwritten boundary. No one is entitled to dis their employer in public, but Google fucked him over nevertheless.
And that, of course, doesn't get into the blatant lies and doublespeak out of Pichai, and Brown, and Sandberg, a
Saddest moment (Score:4, Insightful)
At the moment the vote stands at 1484 / 4415 or 33% for firing James Damore. Before voting "no", I thought that this would be the most one sided poll in the Slashdot's history. I am devastated to find that a third of Slashdot's active readership is for James' firing.
I need spell how I interpret this.
First, after reading the memo, I concluded that James presented intelligent, well meaning and well thought argument about a complex topic. I don't think anyone can come to any other conclusion after reading the whole text in good faith. It is also worth pointing out that the memo was, at a deeper level, more about intellectual monoculture than sex differences, his main claim being that dissenting voices, even rational are silenced at Google. We was proven right by Google's actions.
Second, "firing" doesn't mean "I disagree" or "I want to disagree". Instead it means, in all probabilities, ruining someone's livelihood.
A third of Slashdot's readership is willing to ruin someone's livelihood based on a hearsay about a memo, which they haven't read (which is readily available for anyone able to use Google). Impulsive emotional retribution first based on hearsay then than weighted intellectual reaction. The mindset of majority of Slashdot's readership (I'm willing to say that approximately 33% of votes to "no" are also impulsive reactions) in this day and age. A sad realisation especially when compared to Slashdot's golden age.
With Google's reprehensible actions, the same can be said about our whole culture. It seems that western civilisation is heading towards next dark ages. This got to be my saddest moment for a long time.
The Part He Was Wrong (Score:2)
"the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes" isn't right, because it's actually due to hubby free benefit!
Seriously, if you have/caught a hubby, why work when you can have free money from your hubby? Why deal with Google, tech, annoying bosses or deadlines when you can go by your days going out, play with the kids and have fun doing yoga? Let's the men enjoy their terrible bosses and stressful days while you take your time planting new roses on the
Yes... later (Score:2)
That being said, since free speech is legally protected they were stupid to fire him straight away. Doing so just kept the story in the news and brought up lega
What exactly don't you like about the essay? (Score:2)
Suppose you're at a code review meeting. Would you just say, "There's a major error in the code", and leave it at that? Or would you be specific and say, "Line 50 is "
int arrayIndex = 1;
"The index should be initialized to zero, not to one."? You would tell exactly what was wrong with the code, right?
I've read a lot of criticisms of Damore's essay. The criticisms claim that the essay says that women aren't suited for IT work, or that the essay created a hostile work environment, or something like that. Howev
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To give you one short example, "Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of humanities and social sciences lean left (about 95%), which creates enormous confirmation bias, changes what’s being studied, and maintains myths like social constructionism and the gender wage gap", which I think you'll agree contains the implied statement [the gender gap is a myth]. In the footnote it says that the well known numbers are a result of bad averaging, but "For the same work though, women get paid just as much as
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Thanks for your response.
I agree that your first quote implies that the gender gap is a myth. However I don't think that that statement, or the statement "For the same work though, women get paid just as much as men" could cause Google serious harm, but I might be wrong. And I appreciate your well-reasoned argument.
actions (Score:2)
Diversity Issues (Score:2)
Diversity is a big problem today as it was in the past. diversity acknowledges that people are different, but equal in rights and should be treated equally. Unfortunately, we do not do that. Sometimes we try to fight our own prejudgments, but often we not even know we have them. This has in part to do with our ability (and its application) to question ourselves and reflect on our behavior. On top of that we have societal structures which limit and prohibit equal chance and equal respect for everyone (these
Redo This Poll (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see this poll redone with these options:
* Yes, and I read the full memo
* Yes, but I didn't read the memo
* No, and I read the full memo
* No, but I didn't read the memo
Re:At Will Employment (Score:4, Insightful)
The question was "should," not "could." Rights define what you can do, not necessarily what you should do. Yes, they were well within their rights. But no, they probably shouldn't and wouldn't have fired him if this had remained internal. Unfortunately, that decision wasn't left up to them, because somebody violated confidentiality and leaked this to the press. Under public fire, Google was forced to fire the employee to save face, and nobody can blame them for that. But what they should do is hunt down that leaker and make sure they cannot in the future personally cause so much harm to the company by violating trust.
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They are not within their rights to suppress political speech.
The premise of his memo was actually making Google more accommodating to women and conservatives.
Apparently, he was rather prescient by talking to the NLRB first, before publishing the memo.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That still doesn't change the fact that Google is 100% within their rights to fire him.
Actually, I suspect that a team of lawyers are going to be arguing about that very soon. While California is "at will," in addition to those protected classes, employers are not allowed to fire employees for their political views or discussing how to improve their work environment, which Damore's opinions fall under.
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No, Google created the hostile work environment. Catering to certain groups is a bad idea in the workplace and Google is only second to Facebook is the ranking.
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Google has shown that it is just as morally ambiguous as China
Google is a publicly traded company, incorporated in the United States and subject to its laws and the whims of its board of directors. China is a sovereign nation that answers to nobody. One chooses an employer, citizenship is forced. Comparing these two is bizarre.
He himself acknowledges that he is aware of his employers views and rules. He ran against the grain and got fired. That's employment in a nutshell.
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Google is a publicly traded company, incorporated in the United States and subject to its laws and the whims of its board of directors. China is a sovereign nation that answers to nobody. One chooses an employer, citizenship is forced. Comparing these two is bizarre.
Google does business in China, and people can change their citizenship.
Re:At Will Employment (Score:4, Informative)
How did he "create a massively hostile work environment?"
He made the SJW's get angry, and anger is hostile.
Its not the fault of the SJW's that they get mad at criticisms, so surely it isn't their fault that they get very angry at criticisms that include citations to indisputable peer reviewed science like he did.
Its not their fault. Its always someone elses fault.
Re:Of course they should have (Score:5, Interesting)
There's some confusion between what's acceptable at work and what's acceptable in the public. It's happens a lot, not strictly in technology. You don't spread this stuff around your office, even if it is 100% undeniable truth, and in this case there's a lot of speculation and narrative very loosely backed up by cherry picked facts and uncontrolled anecdotal "experiments". Even amongst scientists this "theory" would probably be resisted strongly and carry a very significant burden of proof, and it certainly wasn't written as any academic effort.
There's no science to be had on this topic, every attempt to apply scientific principles to behavior at the individual or group level has been tried for over a hundred years and produced absolutely nothing of value. With that said, we then have to choose the direction we want for the society we want. In the west, this implies gender and racial equality. This is the prevailing belief, it is widespread, generally accepted and, I'd be willing to bet, part of his yearly business conduct training at Google (as it is at every employer I've ever had).
If James Damore, misogynist, gets persecuted by the government or even the local rabble, I'm more inclined to defend him even if I don't like his ideas. But James Damore, Google Engineer, fired for mouthing off at work is not defensible. I don't care if the prevailing belief at Google is that the earth is the center of the universe, and he's the one guy screaming that it's not true, he's being disruptive. He has to choose whether his job or his beliefs are more important to him, and in the case where he cannot do his job because of his beliefs, he needs to leave anyway (see also crazy government clerk who won't issue marriage certificates for gay marriages).
Re:Of course they should have (Score:4, Insightful)
Evo-psych is actually getting pretty good at designing and conducting reasonably well-controlled experiments. You might want to brush up on it a little more. This [evolution-institute.org] is a good starting point.
Re:Of course they should have (Score:4, Insightful)
Saying that, on average, men and women have different interests doesn't imply those are worse.
But if you are privately a sexist shitfuck while publicly you say all the right words because you are a leftist, those words do imply it.
This is whats really going on here. These leftists DWELL on race and gender because they are racists and sexists.
Re:Of course they should have (Score:4, Interesting)
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Equality does not mean capability.
Ask 100 men and 100 women to bench press 60kg. That's equality, giving the same chance to both.
More men are going to be capable to bench press that weight than women. Some men will fail, some women will succeed but the percentages of success on both sides will be vastly different. That's capability (and reality), not everyone is created
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No. In your example, the distribution of capability difference is defined by gender. Individual inequality is not. This is actually an important and meaningful distinction.
It's also important to note that an observed gender based difference in capability distribution may not necessarily be a result of biology. In the example at hand (computer programming?), the preponderance of current evidence indicates that it isn't.
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> It's happens a lot, not strictly in technology. You don't spread this stuff around your office,
Couldn't have said it better myself. Truth has absolutely no place within a corporate workplace.
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See: https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
“These findings suggest that human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior,”
You can look at ph
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For a variety of reasons, those broad differences do not lead to broad differences in potential or capability. Amazing but true.
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Re: Of course they should have (Score:2)
Do you have proof that he leaked his manifesto, which seems quite clearly to be written with the best interest of Google at heart, publicly?
Or, are you accusing him without any evidence?
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Someone please tell that to Trump! I'm Canadian and I'm tired of hearing about that clown! I can't imagine how most Americans survive each passing day!
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Left politics has dominated tech since before I was born. That battle was "lost" long ago, and since I showed up to work on my first day I've learned that there are some topics I need to not discuss. It's really easy, every year they drill in to us what those are and from his own memo, he knows all this to be true. He does not agree, but that's not the proper forum, and honestly not a battle that can be won. That last point is something that bites the young a lot, and it's annoying, but it's like arguing th
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Libertarian: Conservative who wants to smoke pot and have free sex.
Programmers tend to be fiscally conservative (because they have enough money to care about high taxes), but socially liberal (I don't know why).
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In every tech company I worked with the CEO and most of the executives were Wall St. shills that had very little involvement with the employees of his company, or at least was mostly unable to reach or impact them. They hung out for a few years and were replaced. In the one case where the CEO was there for a long time, he is very, very liberal.
Tech CEOs are focused on money and keeping wall st. happy, the manage up, they find ways of selling what we make for them. Their gums flap a lot but rarely are able t
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Or the DNC?
I don't suppose they ever talk about politics over there, eh?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
He wasn't fired for holding beliefs... He was shit canned for writing up a stupid document espousing those beliefs and spreading it around his place of business. Whether you agree or disagree with what he had to say (and I disagree strenuously, having worked in the industry for almost 20 years), his employer has the final say to his employment status... Especially in an at will employment state.
I don't know why, but I was expecting better from the next generation of engineers.
He got fired for going public with stuff the female engineers fear the guys are saying in private anyway. His first point, that his other points should be addressed in the open has some merit. But, his other points were presented in a long crazy sexist rant that did not help the debate. Men and women are different, but so are men and men and women and women. Much of what he says applied to some women and some men
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Anyone who actually read the damn thing knows that he wasn't anti-diversity, he was against *how* Google was trying to increase diversity.
It still boggles my mind that "treat people like individuals" is a bad thing to some parts of the left now.
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That is because the left cares more about identity than individuals.
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I think companies should be free to hire bigots, as long as the bigoted employee doesn't let their coworkers or employers or the general public know about their bigotry ;-)