8 ms·

I am almost certain that they gave this guy a termination agreement in which he agreed not to sue Google, and in return would be given a massive golden parachut

by erentz 9y ago

I am almost certain that they gave this guy a termination agreement in which he agreed not to sue Google, and in return would be given a massive golden parachute. Google felt they needed him gone for business reasons. But of course they had no legitimate reason to fire him and he could sue if they did. If that's not the case, expect a lawsuit from him shortly.

johan_larson 9y ago
If he is, as the following article says, "considering legal options," then he wasn't given an exit package. Or I suppose he could have been offered one but turned it down. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-employee-fired-diversity-row-considers-legal-action-james-damore https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-em...
- erentz 9y ago
  Oh, wow in that case if I were him I'd probably sue. This termination will sadly haunt him and he will miss out on many job opportunities because of it. Even if you disagree with what he wrote, that's a huge price to pay for trying to have a discussion around making his workplace better and what he perceives fairer.
  - HelloMcFly 9y ago
    This case isn't cut-and-dry. Much of that memo I disagreed with but generally found innocuous. However, there were notable aspects of that memo that could be argued to have created a hostile work environment for different groups were they to be forced to work with or for that engineer. It's clear that, in aggregate, he believes certain groups naturally more "fit" for the work. Now, if you're a woman who has to work with or for him, what do you feel? You likely feel that your capability is more in question, that you have to prove yourself more than the men on the team, and that this person you work next to (or for) starts out with an assumption that you're less capable. Comments and behaviors that make a protected class feel like that, even if made as "jokes" or "facilitators of open dialogue", are not permissible. It's not a cut-and-dry case. I wouldn't bet on a lawsuit either way, excepting the fact that Google's lawyers are probably the better lawyers in a legal tussle.
    - ng12 9y ago
      > You likely feel that your capability is more in question I don't really understand this. It's not like female engineers at Google had never noticed how few of them there were until this memo was published. Obviously you're a deviation from the average in some way if you're one of a few X in a large group of mostly Y.
      - therebedragons 9y ago
        > if you're one of a few X in a large group of mostly Y. Is that a pun? Maybe ... "if you're one of a few XX in a large group of mostly XY"?
      - HelloMcFly 9y ago
        Or perhaps you're a product of tokenism, as this memo implies may often be the case.
    - gizmo686 9y ago
      >Now, if you're a woman who has to work with or for him, what do you feel? You likely feel that your capability is more in question, that you have to prove yourself more than the men on the team, and that this person you work next to (or for) starts out with an assumption that you're less capable. I might be biased since my experience with data analysis gives me an above average internalization of the concept of "in aggregate", but I disagree with this assesment. The fact is, as a matter of aggregates, by my demographics [0], I am "in aggregate", more likely to be a drug addict, rapist, misogynist, and terrorist. There are some people who do hold these aggregate statistics against me personally, but they are very rare (or at least, avoid the circles where they will see me); and I would not suggest that any who observes or discusses these aggregate traits holds them against me personally. The beginning of the memo spends a paragraph (and illustrative diagram, which was removed from in the original article) making this exact distinction. >excepting the fact that Google's lawyers are probably the better lawyers in a legal tussle. Google's lawyer's are probably also willing to settle out of court. I doubt there will be a trial unless he want "unreasonable" compensation, or to make a political point. [0] Based on my current understanding; I have not verified any of these beliefs.
  - riku_iki 9y ago
    > This termination will sadly haunt him and he will miss out on many job opportunities because of it. But his employment is at will, Google can terminate contract any time, and it is not Google who caused that damage, but news outlets and information leakers, who distributed these information..
    - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
      You can terminate it at any time unless your reasoning was illegal, thus wrongful termination.
      - riku_iki 9y ago
        Wikipedia says that according to explanation by Supreme Court of California no reasoning is required: [A]n employer may terminate its employees at will, for any or no reason ... the employer may act peremptorily, arbitrarily, or inconsistently, without providing specific protections such as prior warning, fair procedures, objective evaluation, or preferential reassignment ... The mere existence of an employment relationship affords no expectation, protectable by law, that employment will continue, or will end only on certain conditions, unless the parties have actually adopted such terms.
        vanattab 9y ago
        IANAL But my understanding is "At will employment" does mean the employer can fire you for an illegal reason such as your race or as retaliation for a complaint. It really just means that the employer does not have to give the legal reason at the time of firing and there is no law requiring warning warnings or a formal evaluation system.
        patrickyan 9y ago
        It's on the employee to prove that the company fired them illegally. For example, if the employee had an email showing that their boss said "I hate X because he's black" then the employee would probably win.
  - PopsiclePete 9y ago
    High price to pay? I don't think so. Writing and circulating that memo was a colossally stupid thing to do. Stupid on a level that basically puts you into the camp of "nobody wants to work with you anymore". You're now that guy. A liability for any company and obviously an unpleasant human being. I wouldn't want him at my company either, that's for sure. Computer programmers often make the mistake of treating other humans like cold, calculating machines. But they're not. They have emotions. Emotions, and past experiences, and history. And, unless you're in the extreme Asperger's spectrum of being unable to deal with other human beings, you should know, by age 15 or so, that there are certain subjects that are sensitive and that a company environment is not the place for them. To help other potential programmers from destroying their careers, I'll post a short list of risky topics here: * Politics * Race * The Holocaust * Sex Any one of those could land you in hot water for creating a hostile work environment. Nobody cares if you have scientific evidence that Jews make for inferior doctors, you don't post a memo claiming that in the company you work at. You just don't. Because you're working with other humans, not with machines, and you have to be smart enough to know what's acceptable office talk and what's acceptable poker night talk. This Google Engineer is an idiot. I don't care whether he can "out-prgoram" me and code a complete OS in 2 hours. He's still an idiot. And deserves to be fired, because Google doesn't want to employ idiots.
    - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
      I'd agree with your opinion if Google wasn't a place where political discussion is seemingly "welcomed" (eng-misc, Memegen, TGIFs). It's okay to express an opinion that is targeting a group of people (conservatives/Republicans/Trump supporters/etc.) if you belong to the right ideological group (progressives). Don't think for an instance that this is the first case of controversial content posted internally. It happened all the time when I worked there, just that the group getting targeted wasn't in the majority in the social dominance and power hierarchy.
      - PopsiclePete 9y ago
        There's welcoming political discussion, and then there's saying that all gay people need to be euthanized because god wills it. You could say that it's just another "political opinion" and I shouldn't face blow-back for expressing it in an open environment, but, no, that's just not the case. If I say something like that, I will (rightly) become a social pariah immediately and nobody would want to be around me. Same thing with that guy. Yeah, you can joke about Trump, and you can joke about Hillary's emails, but saying that women are inferior due to biology makes you an unpleasant human being to be around and I don't want to be in the same room as you, much less on the same team or the same company as you. If they hadn't fired his dumb ass, it would have sent a very bad message to all of Google's women employees.
- MistahKoala 9y ago
  'Considering' isn't the same as 'exercising', though. Of course, you might reasonably ask what he has to gain by bluffing like that. Nothing comes to mind straight away.
  - grigjd3 9y ago
    Internet fame, like so many commenters on news aggregation sites?
justforFranz 9y ago
Did you feel a disturbance in The Force?
- erentz 9y ago
  Woosh. Your comment went way over my head sorry. Care to clarify?
  - chii 9y ago
    In nerd speak, programmers are like the Jedi in star wars. When a great wrong is committed against the Jedi, they feel a disturbance in the force.
mc32 9y ago
I think so too. Either he got a nice severance package --ala Steve Jobs' "you're fired" firing random engineers and HR picking up the pieces and cutting nice checks to the no reason fires, or he's got a decent chance at a nice verdict from a wrongful termination suit due to the free speech implications, even if this is a private company. You still can't willy nilly fire someone and not expect a suit, specially in such a high profile case.

by erentz 9y ago

johan_larson 9y ago

If he is, as the following article says, "considering legal options," then he wasn't given an exit package. Or I suppose he could have been offered one but turned it down. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-employee-fired-diversity-row-considers-legal-action-james-damore https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/08/google-em...

erentz 9y ago
Oh, wow in that case if I were him I'd probably sue. This termination will sadly haunt him and he will miss out on many job opportunities because of it. Even if you disagree with what he wrote, that's a huge price to pay for trying to have a discussion around making his workplace better and what he perceives fairer.
- HelloMcFly 9y ago
  This case isn't cut-and-dry. Much of that memo I disagreed with but generally found innocuous. However, there were notable aspects of that memo that could be argued to have created a hostile work environment for different groups were they to be forced to work with or for that engineer. It's clear that, in aggregate, he believes certain groups naturally more "fit" for the work. Now, if you're a woman who has to work with or for him, what do you feel? You likely feel that your capability is more in question, that you have to prove yourself more than the men on the team, and that this person you work next to (or for) starts out with an assumption that you're less capable. Comments and behaviors that make a protected class feel like that, even if made as "jokes" or "facilitators of open dialogue", are not permissible. It's not a cut-and-dry case. I wouldn't bet on a lawsuit either way, excepting the fact that Google's lawyers are probably the better lawyers in a legal tussle.
  - ng12 9y ago
    > You likely feel that your capability is more in question I don't really understand this. It's not like female engineers at Google had never noticed how few of them there were until this memo was published. Obviously you're a deviation from the average in some way if you're one of a few X in a large group of mostly Y.
    - therebedragons 9y ago
      > if you're one of a few X in a large group of mostly Y. Is that a pun? Maybe ... "if you're one of a few XX in a large group of mostly XY"?
    - HelloMcFly 9y ago
      Or perhaps you're a product of tokenism, as this memo implies may often be the case.
  - gizmo686 9y ago
    >Now, if you're a woman who has to work with or for him, what do you feel? You likely feel that your capability is more in question, that you have to prove yourself more than the men on the team, and that this person you work next to (or for) starts out with an assumption that you're less capable. I might be biased since my experience with data analysis gives me an above average internalization of the concept of "in aggregate", but I disagree with this assesment. The fact is, as a matter of aggregates, by my demographics [0], I am "in aggregate", more likely to be a drug addict, rapist, misogynist, and terrorist. There are some people who do hold these aggregate statistics against me personally, but they are very rare (or at least, avoid the circles where they will see me); and I would not suggest that any who observes or discusses these aggregate traits holds them against me personally. The beginning of the memo spends a paragraph (and illustrative diagram, which was removed from in the original article) making this exact distinction. >excepting the fact that Google's lawyers are probably the better lawyers in a legal tussle. Google's lawyer's are probably also willing to settle out of court. I doubt there will be a trial unless he want "unreasonable" compensation, or to make a political point. [0] Based on my current understanding; I have not verified any of these beliefs.
- riku_iki 9y ago
  > This termination will sadly haunt him and he will miss out on many job opportunities because of it. But his employment is at will, Google can terminate contract any time, and it is not Google who caused that damage, but news outlets and information leakers, who distributed these information..
  - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
    You can terminate it at any time unless your reasoning was illegal, thus wrongful termination.
    - riku_iki 9y ago
      Wikipedia says that according to explanation by Supreme Court of California no reasoning is required: [A]n employer may terminate its employees at will, for any or no reason ... the employer may act peremptorily, arbitrarily, or inconsistently, without providing specific protections such as prior warning, fair procedures, objective evaluation, or preferential reassignment ... The mere existence of an employment relationship affords no expectation, protectable by law, that employment will continue, or will end only on certain conditions, unless the parties have actually adopted such terms.
      - vanattab 9y ago
        IANAL But my understanding is "At will employment" does mean the employer can fire you for an illegal reason such as your race or as retaliation for a complaint. It really just means that the employer does not have to give the legal reason at the time of firing and there is no law requiring warning warnings or a formal evaluation system.
        patrickyan 9y ago
        It's on the employee to prove that the company fired them illegally. For example, if the employee had an email showing that their boss said "I hate X because he's black" then the employee would probably win.
- PopsiclePete 9y ago
  High price to pay? I don't think so. Writing and circulating that memo was a colossally stupid thing to do. Stupid on a level that basically puts you into the camp of "nobody wants to work with you anymore". You're now that guy. A liability for any company and obviously an unpleasant human being. I wouldn't want him at my company either, that's for sure. Computer programmers often make the mistake of treating other humans like cold, calculating machines. But they're not. They have emotions. Emotions, and past experiences, and history. And, unless you're in the extreme Asperger's spectrum of being unable to deal with other human beings, you should know, by age 15 or so, that there are certain subjects that are sensitive and that a company environment is not the place for them. To help other potential programmers from destroying their careers, I'll post a short list of risky topics here: * Politics * Race * The Holocaust * Sex Any one of those could land you in hot water for creating a hostile work environment. Nobody cares if you have scientific evidence that Jews make for inferior doctors, you don't post a memo claiming that in the company you work at. You just don't. Because you're working with other humans, not with machines, and you have to be smart enough to know what's acceptable office talk and what's acceptable poker night talk. This Google Engineer is an idiot. I don't care whether he can "out-prgoram" me and code a complete OS in 2 hours. He's still an idiot. And deserves to be fired, because Google doesn't want to employ idiots.
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    I'd agree with your opinion if Google wasn't a place where political discussion is seemingly "welcomed" (eng-misc, Memegen, TGIFs). It's okay to express an opinion that is targeting a group of people (conservatives/Republicans/Trump supporters/etc.) if you belong to the right ideological group (progressives). Don't think for an instance that this is the first case of controversial content posted internally. It happened all the time when I worked there, just that the group getting targeted wasn't in the majority in the social dominance and power hierarchy.
    - PopsiclePete 9y ago
      There's welcoming political discussion, and then there's saying that all gay people need to be euthanized because god wills it. You could say that it's just another "political opinion" and I shouldn't face blow-back for expressing it in an open environment, but, no, that's just not the case. If I say something like that, I will (rightly) become a social pariah immediately and nobody would want to be around me. Same thing with that guy. Yeah, you can joke about Trump, and you can joke about Hillary's emails, but saying that women are inferior due to biology makes you an unpleasant human being to be around and I don't want to be in the same room as you, much less on the same team or the same company as you. If they hadn't fired his dumb ass, it would have sent a very bad message to all of Google's women employees.
MistahKoala 9y ago
'Considering' isn't the same as 'exercising', though. Of course, you might reasonably ask what he has to gain by bluffing like that. Nothing comes to mind straight away.
- grigjd3 9y ago
  Internet fame, like so many commenters on news aggregation sites?

justforFranz 9y ago

Did you feel a disturbance in The Force?

erentz 9y ago
Woosh. Your comment went way over my head sorry. Care to clarify?
- chii 9y ago
  In nerd speak, programmers are like the Jedi in star wars. When a great wrong is committed against the Jedi, they feel a disturbance in the force.

mc32 9y ago

I think so too. Either he got a nice severance package --ala Steve Jobs' "you're fired" firing random engineers and HR picking up the pieces and cutting nice checks to the no reason fires, or he's got a decent chance at a nice verdict from a wrongful termination suit due to the free speech implications, even if this is a private company. You still can't willy nilly fire someone and not expect a suit, specially in such a high profile case.