9 ms·

Thought Police

46 points by jerrymiller 9y ago

2Steps 9y ago
There is a difference between bad ideas and dangerous ideas.
rbanffy 9y ago
It's... more complicated than that. Had Edward used the proper internal channels, his bad ideas would have reached the people in charge of policies and he'd have a chance to debate them and be proven wrong. When proved wrong, he'd adjust his mental models of the world in accordance with what he learned. It's entirely possible this happened and he just didn't change his mind. Unfortunately, Edward decided to try to start a mutiny and share his dissent with the whole company, alienating and insulting a significant part of its workforce, hoping a majority would side with him. Some asked to be removed from all projects Edward took part in, others wanted to punch him in the face. The result, unfortunately for Edward, was that it was very hard for him to stay at the company because very few people wanted to work with him. While I agree his firing is a rather unfortunate consequence of all this, and that it'd have been much better had Edward changed his mind in accordance to the current understanding of how height relates to anxiety about escalator operations instead of publicly attacking company policies. Unfortunately, that's not how Edward proceeded.
- zamalek 9y ago
  > It's entirely possible this happened and he just didn't change his mind. Although he had some bad ideas it was a long memo with some valid concerns. > Had Edward used the proper internal channels, his bad ideas would have reached the people in charge of policies and he'd have a chance to debate them and be proven wrong. There is the crux of the problem. In a genuine discussion about these issues both parties would have left the table uniquely enlightened about heightism issues. Edward wouldn't have had to defend [the portion of] scientifically correct ideas and would have been more open to correction on his assumptions/biases. Likewise, management would have been able to more accurately understand and tackle the problems that short people face as elevator operators.
  - icthysilia 9y ago
    I feel like The Google Memo has become this kind of litmus test for understanding workplace social dynamics, and ironically, is one of the reasons for emphasizing things like diversity, etc. The reason this person was fired was not because of the argument they outlined, but because they communicated this position via a long, widespread memo without appreciating the ramifications of doing so. The "hostile workplace environment" part isn't the argument per se, it's the fact that they're asserting this very publicly in a decontextualized way. The employee could have written a 20 page memo about coffee being poisonous, and how it shouldn't be allowed at Google functions, with all sorts of scientific support they marshaled, and if they sent it out in the same way I guarantee that they would get checks on their "socially incompetent and unpleasant to work with" list, even if they wasn't outright fired for doing so. Now, instead of coffee, you're talking about gender and sex, where there are people in the workplace who have reason to feel threatened. This doesn't mean those women are correct, or that the memo-writer's position is incorrect, but that writer distributing that memo in that way shows a lack of appreciation for social behavior. Add to this that Google is a private company, and that employee is asking to be fired. It's really simple: they could have kept the same opinions, and brought them up at specific times, with a limited subset of people, when it was practically relevant--such as when discussing a specific hire, or when the topic is being discussed with a limited number of need-to-know people. Frankly, this is a time when I think how you talk about minorities in the workplace does matter. It's not thinking there shouldn't be quotas that's the problem, it's how you bring that up.
    - zamalek 9y ago
      > when it was practically relevant I can completely agree with this. It was a very disruptive (not the good kind) message - he likely exasperated the problems that quotas cause for other employees. The article mentions that the diversity manager should also be sacked and, while I never like to imply that should be done, someone did hand Edward a loaded gun; a person that was hired to prevent situations like that from happening.
      - rbanffy 9y ago
- theandrewbailey 9y ago
  It doesn't matter how Edward spread his ideas. He was fired because he had a thoughtcrime.
  - avs733 9y ago
    No, he was fired because he was speaking about things he is not an expert and was a dick about it and made his company look bad. Imagine if Damore (sorry...Edward) had been forced to accept some social scientist's interpretation of computer science. The uproar would be unimaginable. Knowledge and expertise is transferable to aid in developing understanding of a new area of thought, however knowledge and expertise in one area is not automatically transferable to expertise in another area.
    - sever5 9y ago
      > it and made his company look bad This may have been a nuance James missed, Google is open to _external_ social woes.
- rednerrus 9y ago
  Isn't working with people you disagree with part of corporate life? Do you think there are no conservative people at your company who have to deal with the incessant anti-conservative tech culture? I assume that occasionally they want to punch us in our faces. They show up for work and get their jobs done. The problem with enforcing these policies when we agree with them is we have to enforce them when we don't agree with them.
  - richmarr 9y ago
    > ...incessant anti-conservative tech culture Not sure I'd silo this as a tech culture thing. Education has been shown to negatively correlate with conservatism so it'd be reasonable to expect to see low numbers of conservatives in any field with higher educational barriers. http://www.people-press.org/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/ http://www.people-press.org/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-g...
    - rednerrus 9y ago
      I can't tell if you are ironically making my point or not.
    - devnull791101 9y ago
      except in UK, where the poor and uneducated are stereotypically labour/democrat supporters, wealthy educated types are tory/conservative.
      - Edmond 9y ago
        That use to be true in the US too and in some ways still is...but the US also has the race issue which tends to further complicate everything. Working class whites use to be democrats for economic reasons (labor) while still being socially conservative, now they're almost entirely republican and mostly it seems for social (really, ethnic) reasons. In the US republican affiliation is (or used to be) actually more closely tied with college education and higher income and that is the "fiscal conservatism" (basically lower taxes). Of course higher education levels and income also correlate quite closely with ethnicity and whites are mostly republicans.... Basically the political divisions have become quite ethnically polarized so the usual correlation between actual socio-economic interest and party affiliation don't hold the way one would expect.
- andrewingram 9y ago
  It is. Edward demonstrated extremely poor judgement. Now Edward may secretly be bigoted against short people, perhaps some of this bias came through in his memo. On the other hand, he might just not be as smart as he thinks he is, and is really just a poor communicator and makes bad decisions. It might be a bit of both, but we're much more confident about the poor judgement side of it.
jaclaz 9y ago
Sometimes I feel good about not being short and not in the escalator business. Very interesting article/point of view. “Monsieur l’Abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerais ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire” http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/
avs733 9y ago
Whenever possible I rely on folks who are better writers than me to express ideas I agree with. This is one of those cases. From a journalist I respect: "k, let's nip this in the bud right now: James Damore is not a whistleblower, just as any other sniveling white dudes crying about the presence of people of color and/or women at their workplace are also not whistleblowers. Having personal biases and misogynistic views doesn't mean Damore was exposing institution-wide crimes. What Damore posted essentially boils down to an argument over management styles. Now, he went about this in the dumbest, most sensationalist way possible because he circulated a fucking memo about it and it got posted everywhere. I imagine any company in the world would probably be pretty cheesed off about an employee doing that. Now, there are institutional crimes at play here, but Damore didn't expose them. For example, Google is currently battling a wage discrimination investigation by the US Department of Labor, which has found that Google routinely pays women less than men in comparable roles. That's a serious issue, not the fact that women are working at the company in the first place. What's funny about all of this is most of the people (read: white men) complaining about Damore's firing also defend companies' rights to fire employees at will. If they were really concerned about protecting employees' ability to internally dissent without jeopardizing their job, they would strongly support unions and the right to collectively bargain, but they're been silent on those issues. Why? Because this isn't really about protecting workers or "whistleblowers." This is about a group of pissed off white dudes fighting for the rights of other pissed off white dudes to bitch about diversity and bully and intimidate their co-workers who are people of color and/or women. "
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- xiaoma 9y ago
  If you're using phrases like "sniveling white dudes", you're part of the problem.
  - avs733 9y ago
    naming behavior what it is is the problem?
mcphage 9y ago
> The people and companies in this posting are fictional. Any resemblance to any real individuals or companies is coincidental. The events described herein are solely about the fictional individuals and entities, and should not be interpreted in any other context. Honestly I found this to be the most telling line in the whole article. Why include it? As readers, we're under no obligation to pretend to be so stupid we can't see through such a transparent falsehood. Maybe that's part of the problem with the larger conversation as well. Pro-manifesto articles usually lead with "look, here's all the places in the manifesto where the author wrote that they support diversity"—does that mean that, as readers, we need to accept those statements uncritically, ignoring everything that it includes rejecting diversity? There are people out there who feel that if they preface their statements with "No offense, but ...", they are thereby absolved of any responsibility to not be offensive. That's not how communication does (or should) work, however.
nicolashahn 9y ago
The author left out the part where the large tech blog takes Edward's words and unabashedly misrepresents them, distorting "ERUs policy of giving preference to short people is discriminatory and harmful to the company" to "I think short people are inferior to tall people" in order to create outrage where there otherwise wouldn't have been and advance their own agenda.
notacoward 9y ago
Ah, argument by false analogy. Always a good way to avoid an constructive discussion, as any inconvenient counter-argument can be dropped into the gap between the analogy and its referent at the author's sole discretion. Not going to spend more than a few minutes playing that game. The problem is that Damore did far more than our elevator operator. He didn't stop at claiming there were innate differences. He assumed that they could justify representational differences a full degree of magnitude greater than those innate differences could possibly account for. He whined about being silenced, in a memo seen by most of the company. He poisoned the well many times, accusing anyone who might (even hypothetically) disagree with him of "generally rejecting science" and "virtue signaling" and being like Communist dictators. He rejected current approaches because their effectiveness isn't absolutely 100% proven, then proposed alternatives that are even less proven (and indeed sometimes proven not to work). It was a veritable parade of (pseudo-)intellectual dishonesty, which the OP continues from its derogatory title to its cowardly coda. A company that fires people for dishonesty isn't dying. It's smart.
shakkhar 9y ago
Why is this flagged?

46 points by jerrymiller 9y ago

There is a difference between bad ideas and dangerous ideas.

It's... more complicated than that. Had Edward used the proper internal channels, his bad ideas would have reached the people in charge of policies and he'd have a chance to debate them and be proven wrong. When proved wrong, he'd adjust his mental models of the world in accordance with what he learned. It's entirely possible this happened and he just didn't change his mind. Unfortunately, Edward decided to try to start a mutiny and share his dissent with the whole company, alienating and insulting a significant part of its workforce, hoping a majority would side with him. Some asked to be removed from all projects Edward took part in, others wanted to punch him in the face. The result, unfortunately for Edward, was that it was very hard for him to stay at the company because very few people wanted to work with him. While I agree his firing is a rather unfortunate consequence of all this, and that it'd have been much better had Edward changed his mind in accordance to the current understanding of how height relates to anxiety about escalator operations instead of publicly attacking company policies. Unfortunately, that's not how Edward proceeded.

zamalek 9y ago
> It's entirely possible this happened and he just didn't change his mind. Although he had some bad ideas it was a long memo with some valid concerns. > Had Edward used the proper internal channels, his bad ideas would have reached the people in charge of policies and he'd have a chance to debate them and be proven wrong. There is the crux of the problem. In a genuine discussion about these issues both parties would have left the table uniquely enlightened about heightism issues. Edward wouldn't have had to defend [the portion of] scientifically correct ideas and would have been more open to correction on his assumptions/biases. Likewise, management would have been able to more accurately understand and tackle the problems that short people face as elevator operators.
- icthysilia 9y ago
  I feel like The Google Memo has become this kind of litmus test for understanding workplace social dynamics, and ironically, is one of the reasons for emphasizing things like diversity, etc. The reason this person was fired was not because of the argument they outlined, but because they communicated this position via a long, widespread memo without appreciating the ramifications of doing so. The "hostile workplace environment" part isn't the argument per se, it's the fact that they're asserting this very publicly in a decontextualized way. The employee could have written a 20 page memo about coffee being poisonous, and how it shouldn't be allowed at Google functions, with all sorts of scientific support they marshaled, and if they sent it out in the same way I guarantee that they would get checks on their "socially incompetent and unpleasant to work with" list, even if they wasn't outright fired for doing so. Now, instead of coffee, you're talking about gender and sex, where there are people in the workplace who have reason to feel threatened. This doesn't mean those women are correct, or that the memo-writer's position is incorrect, but that writer distributing that memo in that way shows a lack of appreciation for social behavior. Add to this that Google is a private company, and that employee is asking to be fired. It's really simple: they could have kept the same opinions, and brought them up at specific times, with a limited subset of people, when it was practically relevant--such as when discussing a specific hire, or when the topic is being discussed with a limited number of need-to-know people. Frankly, this is a time when I think how you talk about minorities in the workplace does matter. It's not thinking there shouldn't be quotas that's the problem, it's how you bring that up.
  - zamalek 9y ago
    > when it was practically relevant I can completely agree with this. It was a very disruptive (not the good kind) message - he likely exasperated the problems that quotas cause for other employees. The article mentions that the diversity manager should also be sacked and, while I never like to imply that should be done, someone did hand Edward a loaded gun; a person that was hired to prevent situations like that from happening.
    - rbanffy 9y ago
theandrewbailey 9y ago
It doesn't matter how Edward spread his ideas. He was fired because he had a thoughtcrime.
- avs733 9y ago
  No, he was fired because he was speaking about things he is not an expert and was a dick about it and made his company look bad. Imagine if Damore (sorry...Edward) had been forced to accept some social scientist's interpretation of computer science. The uproar would be unimaginable. Knowledge and expertise is transferable to aid in developing understanding of a new area of thought, however knowledge and expertise in one area is not automatically transferable to expertise in another area.
  - sever5 9y ago
    > it and made his company look bad This may have been a nuance James missed, Google is open to _external_ social woes.
rednerrus 9y ago
Isn't working with people you disagree with part of corporate life? Do you think there are no conservative people at your company who have to deal with the incessant anti-conservative tech culture? I assume that occasionally they want to punch us in our faces. They show up for work and get their jobs done. The problem with enforcing these policies when we agree with them is we have to enforce them when we don't agree with them.
- richmarr 9y ago
  > ...incessant anti-conservative tech culture Not sure I'd silo this as a tech culture thing. Education has been shown to negatively correlate with conservatism so it'd be reasonable to expect to see low numbers of conservatives in any field with higher educational barriers. http://www.people-press.org/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/ http://www.people-press.org/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-g...
  - rednerrus 9y ago
    I can't tell if you are ironically making my point or not.
  - devnull791101 9y ago
    except in UK, where the poor and uneducated are stereotypically labour/democrat supporters, wealthy educated types are tory/conservative.
    - Edmond 9y ago
      That use to be true in the US too and in some ways still is...but the US also has the race issue which tends to further complicate everything. Working class whites use to be democrats for economic reasons (labor) while still being socially conservative, now they're almost entirely republican and mostly it seems for social (really, ethnic) reasons. In the US republican affiliation is (or used to be) actually more closely tied with college education and higher income and that is the "fiscal conservatism" (basically lower taxes). Of course higher education levels and income also correlate quite closely with ethnicity and whites are mostly republicans.... Basically the political divisions have become quite ethnically polarized so the usual correlation between actual socio-economic interest and party affiliation don't hold the way one would expect.
andrewingram 9y ago
It is. Edward demonstrated extremely poor judgement. Now Edward may secretly be bigoted against short people, perhaps some of this bias came through in his memo. On the other hand, he might just not be as smart as he thinks he is, and is really just a poor communicator and makes bad decisions. It might be a bit of both, but we're much more confident about the poor judgement side of it.

jaclaz 9y ago

Sometimes I feel good about not being short and not in the escalator business. Very interesting article/point of view. “Monsieur l’Abbé, je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerais ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire” http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/01/defend-say/

avs733 9y ago

Whenever possible I rely on folks who are better writers than me to express ideas I agree with. This is one of those cases. From a journalist I respect: "k, let's nip this in the bud right now: James Damore is not a whistleblower, just as any other sniveling white dudes crying about the presence of people of color and/or women at their workplace are also not whistleblowers. Having personal biases and misogynistic views doesn't mean Damore was exposing institution-wide crimes. What Damore posted essentially boils down to an argument over management styles. Now, he went about this in the dumbest, most sensationalist way possible because he circulated a fucking memo about it and it got posted everywhere. I imagine any company in the world would probably be pretty cheesed off about an employee doing that. Now, there are institutional crimes at play here, but Damore didn't expose them. For example, Google is currently battling a wage discrimination investigation by the US Department of Labor, which has found that Google routinely pays women less than men in comparable roles. That's a serious issue, not the fact that women are working at the company in the first place. What's funny about all of this is most of the people (read: white men) complaining about Damore's firing also defend companies' rights to fire employees at will. If they were really concerned about protecting employees' ability to internally dissent without jeopardizing their job, they would strongly support unions and the right to collectively bargain, but they're been silent on those issues. Why? Because this isn't really about protecting workers or "whistleblowers." This is about a group of pissed off white dudes fighting for the rights of other pissed off white dudes to bitch about diversity and bully and intimidate their co-workers who are people of color and/or women. "

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
xiaoma 9y ago
If you're using phrases like "sniveling white dudes", you're part of the problem.
- avs733 9y ago
  naming behavior what it is is the problem?

mcphage 9y ago

> The people and companies in this posting are fictional. Any resemblance to any real individuals or companies is coincidental. The events described herein are solely about the fictional individuals and entities, and should not be interpreted in any other context. Honestly I found this to be the most telling line in the whole article. Why include it? As readers, we're under no obligation to pretend to be so stupid we can't see through such a transparent falsehood. Maybe that's part of the problem with the larger conversation as well. Pro-manifesto articles usually lead with "look, here's all the places in the manifesto where the author wrote that they support diversity"—does that mean that, as readers, we need to accept those statements uncritically, ignoring everything that it includes rejecting diversity? There are people out there who feel that if they preface their statements with "No offense, but ...", they are thereby absolved of any responsibility to not be offensive. That's not how communication does (or should) work, however.

nicolashahn 9y ago

The author left out the part where the large tech blog takes Edward's words and unabashedly misrepresents them, distorting "ERUs policy of giving preference to short people is discriminatory and harmful to the company" to "I think short people are inferior to tall people" in order to create outrage where there otherwise wouldn't have been and advance their own agenda.

notacoward 9y ago

Ah, argument by false analogy. Always a good way to avoid an constructive discussion, as any inconvenient counter-argument can be dropped into the gap between the analogy and its referent at the author's sole discretion. Not going to spend more than a few minutes playing that game. The problem is that Damore did far more than our elevator operator. He didn't stop at claiming there were innate differences. He assumed that they could justify representational differences a full degree of magnitude greater than those innate differences could possibly account for. He whined about being silenced, in a memo seen by most of the company. He poisoned the well many times, accusing anyone who might (even hypothetically) disagree with him of "generally rejecting science" and "virtue signaling" and being like Communist dictators. He rejected current approaches because their effectiveness isn't absolutely 100% proven, then proposed alternatives that are even less proven (and indeed sometimes proven not to work). It was a veritable parade of (pseudo-)intellectual dishonesty, which the OP continues from its derogatory title to its cowardly coda. A company that fires people for dishonesty isn't dying. It's smart.

shakkhar 9y ago

Why is this flagged?