7 ms·

I never really saw too much issue with what he wrote. It seemed a lot of people were mad at him for things he never said. It's been awhile since I read his docu

I never really saw too much issue with what he wrote. It seemed a lot of people were mad at him for things he never said. It's been awhile since I read his document, but I remember expecting it to be so bad from all the uproar I was hearing, but after reading it I couldn't find much to be angry about. Can someone enlighten me - i'll admit, this may be a highly ignorant topic of mine.

nashashmi 9y ago
If you switch out words of gender with words of race, it may sound more offensive. That is what the Youtube CEO said and it immediately began to make sense.
- AlwaysBCoding 9y ago
  "If you change what he said it sounds worse" lol, is that seriously your argument?
  - 5ilv3r 9y ago
    It's a very good argument. Behavior that is ok for one group should be ok for another group, and viceversa. That is a truth of equality.
    - ng12 9y ago
      I think there's a different point -- that we're willing to ignore certain avenues of discussion to maintain a civil society.
    - Chaebixi 9y ago
      > It's a very good argument. In the best case, that argument only has a little utility. However, it's a pretty bad argument now, since political correctness only allows you to make those kinds of swaps in certain cases. Nowadays, it can only be use to amplify the outrage against an already-identified villain.
    - mhermher 9y ago
      If you turn "I only have sex with women" into "I only have sex with white people", suddenly it sounds pretty offensive. Can we judge those two statements equivalently? It's not a good argument at all.
  - sleazebreeze 9y ago
    It's interesting to note that that was actually the structure of one of the arguments in the lawsuit - changing "men" to "women" to demonstrate the flaws in a Googler's reasoning. Check out points 166-169.
- nightcracker 9y ago
  To be the devil's advocate, many things are a lot more offensive if you swap words of gender with race. "Birth control for blacks", "we need more jews in STEM", "no blacks in the whites only bathroom". They're more offensive because unlike race there are very real and relevant biological differences when it comes to gender. And whether or not that applies to STEM probably shapes your viewpoints on this subject.
jbob2000 9y ago
It was more about the timing. The memo came shortly after Trump was elected, when many women and minorities were feeling defeated. It was not the climate to try and hold reasoned debate.
- stillhere 9y ago
  In my experience the left was not capable of having reasoned debate even before the election. They prefer to shut it down.
  - lurr 9y ago
    On what topic?
    - haihaibye 9y ago
      That humans aren't blank slates.
      - lurr 9y ago
        If you're talking about Damore then I believe that's less about what was said and more about how it was stated.
        haihaibye 9y ago
        The context was "the left .. not capable of having reasoned debate even before the election. They prefer to shut it down." Pre-election a similar thing happened to James Watson and Larry Summers - eg here is shutting down conversation about humans not being blank slates: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/us/harvard-chief-defends-his-talk-on-women.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/us/harvard-chief-defends-h... "When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," Dr. Hopkins said.
013a 9y ago
The document went through multiple layers of abstraction. Very few people actually read it. Instead, some news outfit reported on it relatively accurately, then a less scrupulous outfit wanted clicks so they sensationalize it, then a third party reads both of those articles and averages their opinion on it somewhere in the middle. Repeat. As the information becomes more popular, we get sponsored snap stories and Facebook news box summarizations that are even more inaccurate, based on bad interpretations and abstracting away so much content that the information is useless. Radical leftists enter the picture and distort it even more to accomplish their own political ends. No one reads the actual article. Its two problems our industry literally created: Sensationalist click farming and information overload. Our industry does not take these problems seriously enough. Damore was fired because of the outrage, not because of the article, but the outrage was manufactured by a sensationalist click machine and information overload culture literally championed by the company he was fired from.
- lurr 9y ago
  > Very few people actually read it. You need to learn that people can have a different opinion then you, having read the same document. > Damore was fired because of the outrage, not because of the article, but the outrage was manufactured by a sensationalist click machine and information overload culture literally championed by the company he was fired from. Correct, and that's why his lawsuit is BS. He caused outrage both externally and internally. You had an employee that others would refuse to work with. Of course he was fired.
  - armsmerchant 9y ago
    No, his lawsuit is not BS. Google asked for his opinion, and they got it. He did not cause the outrage. It was sensitively framed and well argued. You can disagree with it, but he really didn't say anything controversial. Read it yourself. It's only when the terminally butthurt howled that management did something. And instead of saying something mature like, "You need to learn that people can have a different opinion than you" and be tolerant of ideas, it was burn the witch and purge the wrongthink. Craven corporate leadership at its worst.
  - 9y ago
1_2__4 9y ago
Google, and a few other major tech companies, have turned diversity into a religion. It’s insane. We spend more time talking about it than anything technical or organizational. There is no dialogue about it either, just every day we’re bombarded with reminders about how much we’re failing at diversity and how all people everywhere must be considering diversity before anything else. ANYTHING else. At all times. What he did was speak heresy. I’m sorry that it sounds like I’m a butthurt male but the fact is diversity is dogma in these companies and you either buy in wholeheartedly, constantly, to the exclusion of all other priorities, or you’re ex-communicated.
tboyd47 9y ago
I read it and it made me pretty annoyed, not so much for what he said, but how he chose to go about saying it. He says he is only trying to start a conversation or discussion, but circulating a secret memo around your company and then going on a self-promotional media crusade really is not a great way to do that. It looks more like a political stunt, which is pretty much the opposite of a conversation.
- DanAndersen 9y ago
  >circulating a secret memo around your company >then going on a self-promotional media crusade If internally sharing a document within a company is bad, and externally talking about it once it was made public by another party who got you fired is also bad, what is in your opinion the acceptable and appropriate method to have this conversation?
  - tboyd47 9y ago
    Going privately to people who disagree with you and talking to them respectfully about the issue you disagree on is a start.
    - therealdrag0 9y ago
      Everyone was publicly disagreeing with him though so why should he remain private?
- nilkn 9y ago
  My understanding is that this is a very inaccurate portrayal of what happened, and that makes me doubt that you gave the memo a fair chance. He published an internal memo, but not necessarily a "secret" one. Someone else published it externally -- not him -- and he only went on a media "crusade" after being very publicly fired.
  - tboyd47 9y ago
    Yes, I gave the memo a chance. But you're right, though, now that I'm reflecting, my portrayal of him was too harsh. After all, the man did get fired for writing a letter. THAT is ridiculous and I hope he wins the suit just for that. The whole thing is embarrassing, though. I mean, what was he complaining about? He worked at Google, which is like, the top of the heap for programming jobs. I didn't understand why he was upset over the company's efforts to include women more. Did he not understand why that would be seen as sexist? The more I think about it, the more I realize the answer to that question might be no. Maybe Damore didn't realize that presenting his ideas in the form of a memo passed around the office would be insulting to some people. Maybe it was honestly the only way he knew how to initiate a discussion about it. And in that case, I do think he was mistreated and it's a shame he didn't have another way to voice his concerns. I guess it's a lesson, but what to learn from it, I don't know.
paulgb 9y ago
I'm a former Googler (left before the memo) and I was upset by the memo because, in implying that the hiring bar was lower for women, it contained the thinly veiled corolloary that my female colleagues were less capable than my male colleagues. That did not match my experience at all.
- agentultra 9y ago
  And Google's own internal project confirmed that what makes an engineer at Google successful is their ability to communicate and empathize with other people. Traits which this "biological selection" narrative disfavors. Discrimination of gender, race, and sexual preference is demonstrably real. This suit is a farce and I hope he loses. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-lear...
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  Affirmative action is the policy of favoring members of a disadvantaged group who suffer or have suffered from discrimination within a culture[1]. Google is an affirmative action employer[2]. If women are favored over men, then wouldn't it make sense that a less skilled woman has the potential of being selected over a more skilled man? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action [2] https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/ https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/
  - paulgb 9y ago
    I don't see any support for [2] in the page you linked (maybe because I am on mobile). There may have been efforts to recruit that were directed at women (e.g. sending employees to Grace Hopper), but ultimately the bar was the same for everyone.
    - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      It's at the bottom of the page. > Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.

nashashmi 9y ago

If you switch out words of gender with words of race, it may sound more offensive. That is what the Youtube CEO said and it immediately began to make sense.

AlwaysBCoding 9y ago
"If you change what he said it sounds worse" lol, is that seriously your argument?
- 5ilv3r 9y ago
  It's a very good argument. Behavior that is ok for one group should be ok for another group, and viceversa. That is a truth of equality.
  - ng12 9y ago
    I think there's a different point -- that we're willing to ignore certain avenues of discussion to maintain a civil society.
  - Chaebixi 9y ago
    > It's a very good argument. In the best case, that argument only has a little utility. However, it's a pretty bad argument now, since political correctness only allows you to make those kinds of swaps in certain cases. Nowadays, it can only be use to amplify the outrage against an already-identified villain.
  - mhermher 9y ago
    If you turn "I only have sex with women" into "I only have sex with white people", suddenly it sounds pretty offensive. Can we judge those two statements equivalently? It's not a good argument at all.
- sleazebreeze 9y ago
  It's interesting to note that that was actually the structure of one of the arguments in the lawsuit - changing "men" to "women" to demonstrate the flaws in a Googler's reasoning. Check out points 166-169.
nightcracker 9y ago
To be the devil's advocate, many things are a lot more offensive if you swap words of gender with race. "Birth control for blacks", "we need more jews in STEM", "no blacks in the whites only bathroom". They're more offensive because unlike race there are very real and relevant biological differences when it comes to gender. And whether or not that applies to STEM probably shapes your viewpoints on this subject.

jbob2000 9y ago

It was more about the timing. The memo came shortly after Trump was elected, when many women and minorities were feeling defeated. It was not the climate to try and hold reasoned debate.

stillhere 9y ago
In my experience the left was not capable of having reasoned debate even before the election. They prefer to shut it down.
- lurr 9y ago
  On what topic?
  - haihaibye 9y ago
    That humans aren't blank slates.
    - lurr 9y ago
      If you're talking about Damore then I believe that's less about what was said and more about how it was stated.
      - haihaibye 9y ago
        The context was "the left .. not capable of having reasoned debate even before the election. They prefer to shut it down." Pre-election a similar thing happened to James Watson and Larry Summers - eg here is shutting down conversation about humans not being blank slates: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/us/harvard-chief-defends-his-talk-on-women.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/18/us/harvard-chief-defends-h... "When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," Dr. Hopkins said.

013a 9y ago

The document went through multiple layers of abstraction. Very few people actually read it. Instead, some news outfit reported on it relatively accurately, then a less scrupulous outfit wanted clicks so they sensationalize it, then a third party reads both of those articles and averages their opinion on it somewhere in the middle. Repeat. As the information becomes more popular, we get sponsored snap stories and Facebook news box summarizations that are even more inaccurate, based on bad interpretations and abstracting away so much content that the information is useless. Radical leftists enter the picture and distort it even more to accomplish their own political ends. No one reads the actual article. Its two problems our industry literally created: Sensationalist click farming and information overload. Our industry does not take these problems seriously enough. Damore was fired because of the outrage, not because of the article, but the outrage was manufactured by a sensationalist click machine and information overload culture literally championed by the company he was fired from.

lurr 9y ago
> Very few people actually read it. You need to learn that people can have a different opinion then you, having read the same document. > Damore was fired because of the outrage, not because of the article, but the outrage was manufactured by a sensationalist click machine and information overload culture literally championed by the company he was fired from. Correct, and that's why his lawsuit is BS. He caused outrage both externally and internally. You had an employee that others would refuse to work with. Of course he was fired.
- armsmerchant 9y ago
  No, his lawsuit is not BS. Google asked for his opinion, and they got it. He did not cause the outrage. It was sensitively framed and well argued. You can disagree with it, but he really didn't say anything controversial. Read it yourself. It's only when the terminally butthurt howled that management did something. And instead of saying something mature like, "You need to learn that people can have a different opinion than you" and be tolerant of ideas, it was burn the witch and purge the wrongthink. Craven corporate leadership at its worst.
- 9y ago

1_2__4 9y ago

Google, and a few other major tech companies, have turned diversity into a religion. It’s insane. We spend more time talking about it than anything technical or organizational. There is no dialogue about it either, just every day we’re bombarded with reminders about how much we’re failing at diversity and how all people everywhere must be considering diversity before anything else. ANYTHING else. At all times. What he did was speak heresy. I’m sorry that it sounds like I’m a butthurt male but the fact is diversity is dogma in these companies and you either buy in wholeheartedly, constantly, to the exclusion of all other priorities, or you’re ex-communicated.

tboyd47 9y ago

I read it and it made me pretty annoyed, not so much for what he said, but how he chose to go about saying it. He says he is only trying to start a conversation or discussion, but circulating a secret memo around your company and then going on a self-promotional media crusade really is not a great way to do that. It looks more like a political stunt, which is pretty much the opposite of a conversation.

DanAndersen 9y ago
>circulating a secret memo around your company >then going on a self-promotional media crusade If internally sharing a document within a company is bad, and externally talking about it once it was made public by another party who got you fired is also bad, what is in your opinion the acceptable and appropriate method to have this conversation?
- tboyd47 9y ago
  Going privately to people who disagree with you and talking to them respectfully about the issue you disagree on is a start.
  - therealdrag0 9y ago
    Everyone was publicly disagreeing with him though so why should he remain private?
nilkn 9y ago
My understanding is that this is a very inaccurate portrayal of what happened, and that makes me doubt that you gave the memo a fair chance. He published an internal memo, but not necessarily a "secret" one. Someone else published it externally -- not him -- and he only went on a media "crusade" after being very publicly fired.
- tboyd47 9y ago
  Yes, I gave the memo a chance. But you're right, though, now that I'm reflecting, my portrayal of him was too harsh. After all, the man did get fired for writing a letter. THAT is ridiculous and I hope he wins the suit just for that. The whole thing is embarrassing, though. I mean, what was he complaining about? He worked at Google, which is like, the top of the heap for programming jobs. I didn't understand why he was upset over the company's efforts to include women more. Did he not understand why that would be seen as sexist? The more I think about it, the more I realize the answer to that question might be no. Maybe Damore didn't realize that presenting his ideas in the form of a memo passed around the office would be insulting to some people. Maybe it was honestly the only way he knew how to initiate a discussion about it. And in that case, I do think he was mistreated and it's a shame he didn't have another way to voice his concerns. I guess it's a lesson, but what to learn from it, I don't know.

paulgb 9y ago

I'm a former Googler (left before the memo) and I was upset by the memo because, in implying that the hiring bar was lower for women, it contained the thinly veiled corolloary that my female colleagues were less capable than my male colleagues. That did not match my experience at all.

agentultra 9y ago
And Google's own internal project confirmed that what makes an engineer at Google successful is their ability to communicate and empathize with other people. Traits which this "biological selection" narrative disfavors. Discrimination of gender, race, and sexual preference is demonstrably real. This suit is a farce and I hope he loses. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-lear...
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
Affirmative action is the policy of favoring members of a disadvantaged group who suffer or have suffered from discrimination within a culture[1]. Google is an affirmative action employer[2]. If women are favored over men, then wouldn't it make sense that a less skilled woman has the potential of being selected over a more skilled man? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action [2] https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/ https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/
- paulgb 9y ago
  I don't see any support for [2] in the page you linked (maybe because I am on mobile). There may have been efforts to recruit that were directed at women (e.g. sending employees to Grace Hopper), but ultimately the bar was the same for everyone.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    It's at the bottom of the page. > Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.