5 ms·

Agreed. Sundar's memo was just posturing... "We want you to feel free to express different opinions..." Proceeds to fire Damore...

ghgggh5555 9y ago
You should emphasize "feel" as well. Then it makes more sense
rdtsc 9y ago
Might not be a crazy idea, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign Invite everyone to freely share ideas. Make lists, then kick out those with the "wrong" ideas. The are often comparisons between large corporations' command economy and the now failed countries with centralized command economy. But perhaps there are interesting parallels about how large corporations discover and weed out those with undesirable ideas and how totalitarian regimes do it. It goes into hyperbole territory there, I know, but perhaps there are some common underlying mechanisms...
- williamle8300 9y ago
  Wow... I never knew about this. This is a direct correlation between Google's "damage control" strategy and Marxism.
- danso 9y ago
  Why should Google fire people for having the "wrong" ideas, when Google has made it clear that they'll fire people whose ideas conflict with its code of conduct? https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html Damore asserted that his ideas should be heeded by Google (from the very first paragraph: "This needs to change"). And he makes assertions about how Google has been poorly conducting himself: https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncensored-memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso... - Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts. - I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts. - Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is being spent to water only one side of the lawn. Why should Google tolerate these claims at face value? And Google truly disagrees with these assertions and their underlying principles, why should it respond with something less than severing ties with an employee who literally demanded, "This needs to change"? And if Google did respond with something less than termination (nevermind what kind of sanction would be possible), how are other employees not supposed to interpret that other than a concession to some degree, i.e. that Google has doubts, and agrees with Damore that women-in-tech initiatives are a form of discrimination, and is "misguided"? Or that when it comes to complaints about diversity issues, that colleagues or management having "empathy" necessarily opens up the risk of "harbor[ing] irrational and dangerous biases"? No need for Google to use subterfuge to fire people with conflicting ideas. They say it loud and clear that they expect employees to agree ("follow both its spirit and letter") with the Code of Conduct. And Googlers are all smart enough to see that the Code of Conduct uses language that leaves the interpretation of things more open than narrow: "Google prohibits discrimination, harassment and bullying in any form – verbal, physical, or visual, as discussed more fully in our Policy Against Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation."
  - pacala 9y ago
    > Employment here is based solely upon individual merit and qualifications directly related to professional competence. We strictly prohibit unlawful discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, veteran status, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy status, sex, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, mental or physical disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, or any other characteristics protected by law. We also make all reasonable accommodations to meet our obligations under laws protecting the rights of the disabled. From the code of conduct. "XX% of hiring must be of phenotype Y" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. "If two candidates of phenotype X and Y are equally qualified, prefer the X candidate" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. "Target hiring search based on phenotype X" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. Edit. "women-in-tech initiatives" _are not_ a form of discrimination. Phenotype-based hiring and promotion policies _are_. Edit2. There is no such thing as protected groups under law. There are only protected characteristics. For example, sex. One can't discriminate on the basis of sex, _either_ female or male. Favoring females is de-favoring males, thus discrimination.
    - danso 9y ago
      > "XX% of hiring must be of phenotype Y" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. Does Google have mandated quotas? For which demographic, because they seem to be either ignoring them (which would mean they aren't mandates) or aiming pretty low when it comes to women and non-asians. Or they coincidentally ended up with roughly the same quotas as all the other large tech companies: http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/ http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/ > "If two candidates of phenotype X and Y are equally qualified, prefer the X candidate" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. "prefer the X candidate" (if X is a stand-in for a gender/racial/subgroup of protected category) is plain illegal. So I'm assuming that's not an official Google mandate (without further evidence). But this would be a pointless mandate anyway as there is no such thing as "equally qualified". Has a hiring manager ever had to decide between identical twins who went to the same schools and internships for the same amount of years and received the same grades and job evaluations? Is there a universally agreed upon conversion scale upon which we know how many years at MIT equals a year at Harvard (or vice versa), and how that translates into "qualification points" depending on job title? > "Target hiring search based on phenotype X" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. Uh, well since we're trying to interpret the letter and spirit of the quoted passage in the Code of Conduct, I hope it isn't pedantic to point out that the quoted passage specifically refers to the basis of "employment" and employment is related to, but not recruitment? I mean, has there ever been a recruiting process that was unaffected by factors unrelated to "individual merit and qualifications"? LinkedIn built a unicorn business off of the bias of networks. Before LinkedIn, there was this concept called "references". If you're suggesting it's wrong for a job search to prioritize diversity, at what level? I'm not a lawyer but let's assume that a policy of "reject all applications from whites and non-females" would be legally prohibited. However, sending a recruiter to do a luncheon at Smith College or Howard University is clearly not illegal. But is it "wrong" or suboptimal if Google sends a recruiter to those colleges even though it's much cheaper to do a recruiting tour at Stanford and Berkeley? Does the extra expenditure for sending a recruiter to colleges that are mostly black/women constitute evidence that Google has racial/gender biases, because it's spending more money to recruit at colleges that have far fewer whites/men than the average college? What about donating to and allowing employees to spend worktime assisting and interacting with programs like Black Girls Code or the Society of Women Engineers, which would presumably increase the chances that members of those organizations end up successfully networking with Google recruiters? Just as Damore argued in his memo, diversity is not as simple as skin color or gender. So it stands to reason that initiatives with the aim of supporting and increasing diversity or not simple, nor reducible to "Google hires unqualified non-white-males in the pursuit of public relations/appeasing SJWs", which is how Damore seemed to interpret things. But why should we assume Damore has interpreted Google's initiatives correctly, which would imply that the Google employees who agree or participate in these initiatives are idiots and/or complicit in discrimination? He didn't name any specific people or employees so it's possible that he's had adequate interaction with the initiatives and its facilitators to make a privileged assessment of them. If he has evidence that these programs led to either illegal discrimination of qualified candidates, and/or the hiring of inferior candidates, I'm assuming he'll bring that up with his complaint to the NLRB.

ghgggh5555 9y ago

You should emphasize "feel" as well. Then it makes more sense

rdtsc 9y ago

Might not be a crazy idea, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign Invite everyone to freely share ideas. Make lists, then kick out those with the "wrong" ideas. The are often comparisons between large corporations' command economy and the now failed countries with centralized command economy. But perhaps there are interesting parallels about how large corporations discover and weed out those with undesirable ideas and how totalitarian regimes do it. It goes into hyperbole territory there, I know, but perhaps there are some common underlying mechanisms...

williamle8300 9y ago
Wow... I never knew about this. This is a direct correlation between Google's "damage control" strategy and Marxism.
danso 9y ago
Why should Google fire people for having the "wrong" ideas, when Google has made it clear that they'll fire people whose ideas conflict with its code of conduct? https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html Damore asserted that his ideas should be heeded by Google (from the very first paragraph: "This needs to change"). And he makes assertions about how Google has been poorly conducting himself: https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncensored-memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso... - Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts. - I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts. - Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and Google money is being spent to water only one side of the lawn. Why should Google tolerate these claims at face value? And Google truly disagrees with these assertions and their underlying principles, why should it respond with something less than severing ties with an employee who literally demanded, "This needs to change"? And if Google did respond with something less than termination (nevermind what kind of sanction would be possible), how are other employees not supposed to interpret that other than a concession to some degree, i.e. that Google has doubts, and agrees with Damore that women-in-tech initiatives are a form of discrimination, and is "misguided"? Or that when it comes to complaints about diversity issues, that colleagues or management having "empathy" necessarily opens up the risk of "harbor[ing] irrational and dangerous biases"? No need for Google to use subterfuge to fire people with conflicting ideas. They say it loud and clear that they expect employees to agree ("follow both its spirit and letter") with the Code of Conduct. And Googlers are all smart enough to see that the Code of Conduct uses language that leaves the interpretation of things more open than narrow: "Google prohibits discrimination, harassment and bullying in any form – verbal, physical, or visual, as discussed more fully in our Policy Against Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation."
- pacala 9y ago
  > Employment here is based solely upon individual merit and qualifications directly related to professional competence. We strictly prohibit unlawful discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, veteran status, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy status, sex, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, mental or physical disability, medical condition, sexual orientation, or any other characteristics protected by law. We also make all reasonable accommodations to meet our obligations under laws protecting the rights of the disabled. From the code of conduct. "XX% of hiring must be of phenotype Y" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. "If two candidates of phenotype X and Y are equally qualified, prefer the X candidate" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. "Target hiring search based on phenotype X" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. Edit. "women-in-tech initiatives" _are not_ a form of discrimination. Phenotype-based hiring and promotion policies _are_. Edit2. There is no such thing as protected groups under law. There are only protected characteristics. For example, sex. One can't discriminate on the basis of sex, _either_ female or male. Favoring females is de-favoring males, thus discrimination.
  - danso 9y ago
    > "XX% of hiring must be of phenotype Y" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. Does Google have mandated quotas? For which demographic, because they seem to be either ignoring them (which would mean they aren't mandates) or aiming pretty low when it comes to women and non-asians. Or they coincidentally ended up with roughly the same quotas as all the other large tech companies: http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/ http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/ > "If two candidates of phenotype X and Y are equally qualified, prefer the X candidate" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. "prefer the X candidate" (if X is a stand-in for a gender/racial/subgroup of protected category) is plain illegal. So I'm assuming that's not an official Google mandate (without further evidence). But this would be a pointless mandate anyway as there is no such thing as "equally qualified". Has a hiring manager ever had to decide between identical twins who went to the same schools and internships for the same amount of years and received the same grades and job evaluations? Is there a universally agreed upon conversion scale upon which we know how many years at MIT equals a year at Harvard (or vice versa), and how that translates into "qualification points" depending on job title? > "Target hiring search based on phenotype X" is in direct violation of the code of conduct. Uh, well since we're trying to interpret the letter and spirit of the quoted passage in the Code of Conduct, I hope it isn't pedantic to point out that the quoted passage specifically refers to the basis of "employment" and employment is related to, but not recruitment? I mean, has there ever been a recruiting process that was unaffected by factors unrelated to "individual merit and qualifications"? LinkedIn built a unicorn business off of the bias of networks. Before LinkedIn, there was this concept called "references". If you're suggesting it's wrong for a job search to prioritize diversity, at what level? I'm not a lawyer but let's assume that a policy of "reject all applications from whites and non-females" would be legally prohibited. However, sending a recruiter to do a luncheon at Smith College or Howard University is clearly not illegal. But is it "wrong" or suboptimal if Google sends a recruiter to those colleges even though it's much cheaper to do a recruiting tour at Stanford and Berkeley? Does the extra expenditure for sending a recruiter to colleges that are mostly black/women constitute evidence that Google has racial/gender biases, because it's spending more money to recruit at colleges that have far fewer whites/men than the average college? What about donating to and allowing employees to spend worktime assisting and interacting with programs like Black Girls Code or the Society of Women Engineers, which would presumably increase the chances that members of those organizations end up successfully networking with Google recruiters? Just as Damore argued in his memo, diversity is not as simple as skin color or gender. So it stands to reason that initiatives with the aim of supporting and increasing diversity or not simple, nor reducible to "Google hires unqualified non-white-males in the pursuit of public relations/appeasing SJWs", which is how Damore seemed to interpret things. But why should we assume Damore has interpreted Google's initiatives correctly, which would imply that the Google employees who agree or participate in these initiatives are idiots and/or complicit in discrimination? He didn't name any specific people or employees so it's possible that he's had adequate interaction with the initiatives and its facilitators to make a privileged assessment of them. If he has evidence that these programs led to either illegal discrimination of qualified candidates, and/or the hiring of inferior candidates, I'm assuming he'll bring that up with his complaint to the NLRB.