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I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down. Of all the sentiments expr

by rpiguy 9y ago

I really enjoyed the well reasoned discussion. I think a lot more constructive dialog is happening now that people have calmed down. Of all the sentiments expressed in the article, I mainly disagree with the comment that Damore did the company harm. He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board and someone else leaked this internal document to the press. The leaker did harm to Google not Damore. In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked. If your argument for firing Damore is that he did the company harm, you should look at the person who took an internal company document and made it public. There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe, but that is a different argument all together with its own merits and faults depending strongly on your stance on what constitutes tolerable speech.

kenferry 9y ago
The harm would have been done even if the memo was not leaked, due to the otherwise discussed effects on google employees.
- rpiguy 9y ago
  Again, only if you believe a line was crossed, or whether he wrote a well-intentioned memo with the goal of supporting and increasing diversity that had some dubious conclusions based on controversial research. He is also young and just starting his career. If this had been addressed calmly maybe he could have learned from this situation. Zero tolerance for a young man's folly instead turned him into a sympathetic figure and an alt-right star. It has reinforced the perception that the PC left is oppressive and reactionary. And worse of all he will never learn from his experience because the reaction confirmed his natural bias. I guess there is no cutting people a break anymore in this era of shouting into the ether, virtue signaling, and political hellfire.
  - wcummings 9y ago
    Hopefully hes just ending his career now. Google shouldn't be soaking up all these ignorant young college boys if they're not mature enough to handle a workplace.
    - dang 9y ago
      Would you please not poison the discussion like this? Regardless of how correct your underlying points might be, it amounts to arson in a fire zone, and we ban accounts that do it. Plenty of other users are able to express similar views to yours without violating the site guidelines. Please follow in their footsteps and post only comments that make the forum better, not worse.
      - wcummings 9y ago
        Duly noted
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    It's extremely charitable to assume that he is naive enough to not understand the implications of his associations with those alt-right sites. If he had been on techcrunch or some other media platform it would be one thing but he immediately started showing up on those websites with interviews.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
tedivm 9y ago
Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked. The document still did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article- > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove myself to people one way or another? The additional mental and emotional burden on me just to do my job is not negligible at all, and it’s also a pretty crappy way to start every day thinking: “Will the team/manager/VC I talk with today realize I’m qualified, or will they be making stereotypical assumptions about my abilities and therefore make it harder for me to do my job?” To me, that absolutely makes for a hostile work environment, and it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day. That quote wasn't caused by this going public in the way it did, it was caused by it being posted in the first place. There is real harm done if women who work at a company don't feel they are welcome there.
- bufbupa 9y ago
  Are you arguing we should spare factual discourse for the sake of someones subjective feelings?
  - wcummings 9y ago
    Not much about that memo was "factual", whatever that means.
    - ahugebeach 9y ago
      Some scientists did agree, even said he wrote an A worthy paper. Others disagreed. Even slatestarcodex argued a little for both sides. Its clear scientific consensus has not been reached, and people need to discuss this openly with out censors.
      - sjg007 9y ago
        It's pseudoscience at best.
jonny_eh 9y ago
Everything you write at a company should be assumed may end up printed on the froom page of the NY Times.
- komali2 9y ago
  I find it frustrating that this is being downvoted - this is about the most universal piece of advice to be given to anybody in any job that uses computers to communicate with each other. I literally just read this exact line in "The Hard Thing About Hard Things," a book recommended to me on this forum. Those that are downvoting, why do you disagree that this statement is not relevant to the current discussion?
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I agree, and I suspect the attitude of cooler heads may act in Damore's favor when all is said and done. The number of leakers has to be quite the headache for Google's StopLeaks folks. Between people leaking Damore's memo because they were upset by it, and people talking to Breitbart because they were angry he was fired, there's been a LOT of leaks. How Google approaches handling this issue is going to be interesting, there's a lot of hurt feelings on all sides.
- gaius 9y ago
  It was fascinating to see how many Google managers operate their own "blacklists". That's got to be legally very dodgy.
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    That's a huge one. I can easily see anyone who operates an internal "blacklist" of other employees as creating a hostile work environment. And from my understanding, those who did posted as such under their real names, so there's no investigation needed to track down who is doing it. If there's an employee conduct we should all be able to agree is hostile, blacklisting coworkers would be it.
    - gaius 9y ago
      If I had been passed over for promotion or denied an internal transfer I was well qualified for, especially if I had gotten good performance reviews, I'd certainly be looking to have a judge subpoena those lists. That those managers felt so bold as to brag about it indicates that most of them are at it, or that they have tacit support from HR. And if I wasn't on one of the lists revealed, then we'd have to keep digging, or suspect someone had destroyed the evidence.
  - cyanexttuesday 9y ago
    Google will be sued for it. It will be too enticing for lawyers to pass up. It'll be open season on Google now, and they deserve it if the blacklists and age blacklist is true.
wcummings 9y ago
If you distribute material like that, it will get leaked. That should be taken foregranted. If I got that memo I probably would have leaked it to the press, too.
johnp_ 9y ago
As far as I have been able to put things together as a non-Googler he went to an unrecorded "diversity summit" about a month and 1/2 ago, where, according to his statements in the Jordan Peterson interview, practices where put forward that he considered to be potentially illegal. He then wrote the document in his free time and posted it to a forum dedicated for feedback to the summit (? or more general diversity related). After engagement has been nothing to low he also posted the memo to an internal Google Group called "Skeptics" because he wanted to be proven wrong. Shortly after that the memo was leaked to the public (either without citations or the citations were then removed by the respective media), indicating that someone from this community did so. I'd appreciate if someone could confirm/deny or add anything to this timeline.
- lutorm 9y ago
  I have no factual information, but I know that when I write papers where I want to invite discussion, I don't make blatant statements based on a subset of the evidence I have and then expect people to dispassionately pick them apart for me. Rather, I present my honest assessment of the strengths of the various pieces of evidence, pro and con. If I "want to be proven wrong", I certainly wouldn't present a falsely certain argument. That is not arguing in good faith. And that's how I would argue a scientific question, not an argument about my coworkers ability.
  - bloaf 9y ago
    I don't know, a lot of HNners seem to believe in Cunningham's Law, and it certainly seems to have held in this situation.
- ehsankia 9y ago
  Just to cleanup what you said: 1. He went to the summit, which wasn't recorded mostly to allow people to be open and share their private stories without fear 2. Something about that summit didn't sit right with him, so he wrote up this document and send it as feedback directly to the organizers (not openly) 3. When he got no response back (it's arguable if organizers should reply to every single feedback, but you can also argue that this was a pretty big one), he posted it to an open but not huge discussion board (skeptics) specifically made for people to argue ideas and have discussions. 4. Eventually, it caught some attention outside of the board and it blew up across the entire company You were pretty close but just wanted to clarify a couple small points.
gaius 9y ago
The leaker did harm to Google not Damore I am 100% certain that the trackiest company in the world is perfectly capable of knowing exactly who leaked it. They have chosen to protect that person, for reasons unknown at this time.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  How? Presumably tens of thousands of employees read it; how can you possibly know which needle in that haystack converted it to a different format and then sent it to a reporter? Especially if it was done over Tor or similar? How exactly do you track that? There are technologies that work that allow for anonymous means of communication.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  How? Presumably tens of thousands of employees read it; how can you possibly know which needle in that haystack converted it to a different format and then sent it to a reporter? Especially if it was done over Tor or similar? How exactly do you track that? There are technologies that work that allow for anonymous means of communication.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Is there some positive net benefit of Google releasing the details of the person they fired for leaking the internal information? Companies rarely mention details about firing employees for misconduct.
  - gaius 9y ago
    Well, they didn't and it resulted in a war of leaks. Now anyone with inside information knows they can settle scores by doing it. I think we will see a lot more of it. Good for justice, not so good for Google...
generic_user 9y ago
> There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe. I feel unsafe as a Man when people advocate that employers should engage in gender discrimination against Men to enforce an arbitrary ratio of Men/Women the workforce. Do I have the right to feel safe? Do Men have the right to get Women fired because they feel unsafe and threatened by the ideas they express? There is a double standard and institutional bias that is being perpetrated by corporations like Google. I see no attempt to address these issues in away that changes there institutional bias and affords equity to the opponents to these ideas. This is simply damage control.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
bduerst 9y ago
Anyone making arguments for/against firing him for the memo need to be reminded that we don't know why he was fired. It's just as likely he was fired for lying about having a PhD from Harvard. Edit: I stand corrected, he was just enrolled in a PhD program.
- jshevek 9y ago
  He didn't lie about having a PhD from Harvard. LinkedIn doesn't allow one to differentiate between being enrolled in a PhD program, or having completed a PhD program The common practice when enrolled in a PhD program is to list using a future completion date, making clear that you have not yet completed the program. Google knew he was enrolled in this program when they hired him.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    Good point, I wasn't aware of LinkedIn's abilities with that.
Method-X 9y ago
> He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board An internal discussion board intended for controversial discussion no less!
avinassh 9y ago
> In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked. a month ago. > ... said he initially shared the 3,300-word memo internally a month ago. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/fired-google-engineer-says-company-execs-shamed-and-smeared-him https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/fired-goo...

by rpiguy 9y ago

kenferry 9y ago

The harm would have been done even if the memo was not leaked, due to the otherwise discussed effects on google employees.

rpiguy 9y ago
Again, only if you believe a line was crossed, or whether he wrote a well-intentioned memo with the goal of supporting and increasing diversity that had some dubious conclusions based on controversial research. He is also young and just starting his career. If this had been addressed calmly maybe he could have learned from this situation. Zero tolerance for a young man's folly instead turned him into a sympathetic figure and an alt-right star. It has reinforced the perception that the PC left is oppressive and reactionary. And worse of all he will never learn from his experience because the reaction confirmed his natural bias. I guess there is no cutting people a break anymore in this era of shouting into the ether, virtue signaling, and political hellfire.
- wcummings 9y ago
  Hopefully hes just ending his career now. Google shouldn't be soaking up all these ignorant young college boys if they're not mature enough to handle a workplace.
  - dang 9y ago
    Would you please not poison the discussion like this? Regardless of how correct your underlying points might be, it amounts to arson in a fire zone, and we ban accounts that do it. Plenty of other users are able to express similar views to yours without violating the site guidelines. Please follow in their footsteps and post only comments that make the forum better, not worse.
    - wcummings 9y ago
      Duly noted
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  It's extremely charitable to assume that he is naive enough to not understand the implications of his associations with those alt-right sites. If he had been on techcrunch or some other media platform it would be one thing but he immediately started showing up on those websites with interviews.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

tedivm 9y ago

Lets assume that we're in an alternative universe where the document was never leaked. The document still did harm. Just read this quote from the posted article- > When I walk into my job at a tech company, how do I know which of my colleagues thinks I’m an outlier among women versus someone who was hired because I’m female that doesn’t deserve the job they have? How do I prove myself to people one way or another? The additional mental and emotional burden on me just to do my job is not negligible at all, and it’s also a pretty crappy way to start every day thinking: “Will the team/manager/VC I talk with today realize I’m qualified, or will they be making stereotypical assumptions about my abilities and therefore make it harder for me to do my job?” To me, that absolutely makes for a hostile work environment, and it’s an unequal burden my male coworkers don’t have to deal with every day. That quote wasn't caused by this going public in the way it did, it was caused by it being posted in the first place. There is real harm done if women who work at a company don't feel they are welcome there.

bufbupa 9y ago
Are you arguing we should spare factual discourse for the sake of someones subjective feelings?
- wcummings 9y ago
  Not much about that memo was "factual", whatever that means.
  - ahugebeach 9y ago
    Some scientists did agree, even said he wrote an A worthy paper. Others disagreed. Even slatestarcodex argued a little for both sides. Its clear scientific consensus has not been reached, and people need to discuss this openly with out censors.
    - sjg007 9y ago
      It's pseudoscience at best.

jonny_eh 9y ago

Everything you write at a company should be assumed may end up printed on the froom page of the NY Times.

komali2 9y ago
I find it frustrating that this is being downvoted - this is about the most universal piece of advice to be given to anybody in any job that uses computers to communicate with each other. I literally just read this exact line in "The Hard Thing About Hard Things," a book recommended to me on this forum. Those that are downvoting, why do you disagree that this statement is not relevant to the current discussion?

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

I agree, and I suspect the attitude of cooler heads may act in Damore's favor when all is said and done. The number of leakers has to be quite the headache for Google's StopLeaks folks. Between people leaking Damore's memo because they were upset by it, and people talking to Breitbart because they were angry he was fired, there's been a LOT of leaks. How Google approaches handling this issue is going to be interesting, there's a lot of hurt feelings on all sides.

gaius 9y ago
It was fascinating to see how many Google managers operate their own "blacklists". That's got to be legally very dodgy.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  That's a huge one. I can easily see anyone who operates an internal "blacklist" of other employees as creating a hostile work environment. And from my understanding, those who did posted as such under their real names, so there's no investigation needed to track down who is doing it. If there's an employee conduct we should all be able to agree is hostile, blacklisting coworkers would be it.
  - gaius 9y ago
    If I had been passed over for promotion or denied an internal transfer I was well qualified for, especially if I had gotten good performance reviews, I'd certainly be looking to have a judge subpoena those lists. That those managers felt so bold as to brag about it indicates that most of them are at it, or that they have tacit support from HR. And if I wasn't on one of the lists revealed, then we'd have to keep digging, or suspect someone had destroyed the evidence.
- cyanexttuesday 9y ago
  Google will be sued for it. It will be too enticing for lawyers to pass up. It'll be open season on Google now, and they deserve it if the blacklists and age blacklist is true.

wcummings 9y ago

If you distribute material like that, it will get leaked. That should be taken foregranted. If I got that memo I probably would have leaked it to the press, too.

johnp_ 9y ago

As far as I have been able to put things together as a non-Googler he went to an unrecorded "diversity summit" about a month and 1/2 ago, where, according to his statements in the Jordan Peterson interview, practices where put forward that he considered to be potentially illegal. He then wrote the document in his free time and posted it to a forum dedicated for feedback to the summit (? or more general diversity related). After engagement has been nothing to low he also posted the memo to an internal Google Group called "Skeptics" because he wanted to be proven wrong. Shortly after that the memo was leaked to the public (either without citations or the citations were then removed by the respective media), indicating that someone from this community did so. I'd appreciate if someone could confirm/deny or add anything to this timeline.

lutorm 9y ago
I have no factual information, but I know that when I write papers where I want to invite discussion, I don't make blatant statements based on a subset of the evidence I have and then expect people to dispassionately pick them apart for me. Rather, I present my honest assessment of the strengths of the various pieces of evidence, pro and con. If I "want to be proven wrong", I certainly wouldn't present a falsely certain argument. That is not arguing in good faith. And that's how I would argue a scientific question, not an argument about my coworkers ability.
- bloaf 9y ago
  I don't know, a lot of HNners seem to believe in Cunningham's Law, and it certainly seems to have held in this situation.
ehsankia 9y ago
Just to cleanup what you said: 1. He went to the summit, which wasn't recorded mostly to allow people to be open and share their private stories without fear 2. Something about that summit didn't sit right with him, so he wrote up this document and send it as feedback directly to the organizers (not openly) 3. When he got no response back (it's arguable if organizers should reply to every single feedback, but you can also argue that this was a pretty big one), he posted it to an open but not huge discussion board (skeptics) specifically made for people to argue ideas and have discussions. 4. Eventually, it caught some attention outside of the board and it blew up across the entire company You were pretty close but just wanted to clarify a couple small points.

gaius 9y ago

The leaker did harm to Google not Damore I am 100% certain that the trackiest company in the world is perfectly capable of knowing exactly who leaked it. They have chosen to protect that person, for reasons unknown at this time.

CydeWeys 9y ago
How? Presumably tens of thousands of employees read it; how can you possibly know which needle in that haystack converted it to a different format and then sent it to a reporter? Especially if it was done over Tor or similar? How exactly do you track that? There are technologies that work that allow for anonymous means of communication.
CydeWeys 9y ago
How? Presumably tens of thousands of employees read it; how can you possibly know which needle in that haystack converted it to a different format and then sent it to a reporter? Especially if it was done over Tor or similar? How exactly do you track that? There are technologies that work that allow for anonymous means of communication.
bduerst 9y ago
Is there some positive net benefit of Google releasing the details of the person they fired for leaking the internal information? Companies rarely mention details about firing employees for misconduct.
- gaius 9y ago
  Well, they didn't and it resulted in a war of leaks. Now anyone with inside information knows they can settle scores by doing it. I think we will see a lot more of it. Good for justice, not so good for Google...

generic_user 9y ago

> There are many people who believe he should have been fired anyway for offending his female coworkers and perhaps making them feel unsafe. I feel unsafe as a Man when people advocate that employers should engage in gender discrimination against Men to enforce an arbitrary ratio of Men/Women the workforce. Do I have the right to feel safe? Do Men have the right to get Women fired because they feel unsafe and threatened by the ideas they express? There is a double standard and institutional bias that is being perpetrated by corporations like Google. I see no attempt to address these issues in away that changes there institutional bias and affords equity to the opponents to these ideas. This is simply damage control.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

bduerst 9y ago

Anyone making arguments for/against firing him for the memo need to be reminded that we don't know why he was fired. It's just as likely he was fired for lying about having a PhD from Harvard. Edit: I stand corrected, he was just enrolled in a PhD program.

jshevek 9y ago
He didn't lie about having a PhD from Harvard. LinkedIn doesn't allow one to differentiate between being enrolled in a PhD program, or having completed a PhD program The common practice when enrolled in a PhD program is to list using a future completion date, making clear that you have not yet completed the program. Google knew he was enrolled in this program when they hired him.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Good point, I wasn't aware of LinkedIn's abilities with that.

Method-X 9y ago

> He posted his thoughts on an internal discussion board An internal discussion board intended for controversial discussion no less!

avinassh 9y ago

> In fact, I think the memo had been posted for a week or two before it was leaked. a month ago. > ... said he initially shared the 3,300-word memo internally a month ago. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/fired-google-engineer-says-company-execs-shamed-and-smeared-him https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-10/fired-goo...