4 ms·

"...ALLEGATIONS made by former Google employees James Damore and David Gudeman in a discrimination lawsuit filed against their former employer. Damore and Gudem

by SiVal 9y ago

"...ALLEGATIONS made by former Google employees James Damore and David Gudeman in a discrimination lawsuit filed against their former employer. Damore and Gudeman CLAIM that Google encouraged pro-diversity voices within the company and stifled conservative views. However, THE NEW DOCUMENT ILLUSTRATES that employees who spoke out in favor of diversity initiatives were reprimanded as well..." [ALL CAPS added by me] So, the consistently left-leaning analysts at Gizmodo inform us that James Damore, whom Google themselves say they fired for the opinions expressed in a memo we can all read and see for ourselves what he was fired for, is still only alleging and claiming that the company that SAYS they fired him for expressing these views stifles conservative views. But a MEMO written by a guy whom Google didn't fire at all, much less for expressing a pro-diversity opinion, but simply quit becomes a NEW DOCUMENT that ILLUSTRATES facts about Google not otherwise in evidence. I lived in a country once with a state-controlled media that would begin its evening news reports with statements such as, "US President so-and-so claimed such-and-such today, but our-glorious-leader set the record straight, pointing out that blah-blah." I wondered how people in that country could hear that template and not see that it was blatantly biased at the template level. It wasn't just a biased interpretation of the issue, but was biased on the face of it, even before anything about the actual issue was inserted in the blanks. But I discovered that people who consistently heard media talking this way couldn't detect even this blatant a bias in format, much less in the content of the actual issue, so the writers didn't have to even pretend superficially. With government-controlled media, most people lived in a bubble. Everything they were told agreed with everything else they were told, so it was just common sense, and anything I said that contradicted "the narrative" was considered utter nonsense. What does it say about the tech audience Gizmodo is writing for that they are as confident as the state media in that small, tropical dictatorship, that they can be this blatant and their audience lives in such an ideological bubble, self-imposed in our case, that they'll approve of it and want more like it?

MisterBastahrd 9y ago
It's common practice in media when dealing with court cases which have not been resolved to use language consistent with the non-resolution. So yes, they use the words "alleging" and "claiming," because it is consistent with what is going on in the courts.
- SiVal 9y ago
  If the use of "alleging" and "claiming" is proper for one side of the argument, and I allege and claim that it is, it is proper for the counterargument, especially when both are presented in the same paragraph as a contrast.
- calculusftw 9y ago
  Right, but just as SiVal pointed out, the article still issued an imbalanced and not-so-subtly biased "analysis" of the conflict. The first sentence introduces the "memo" (which--face it--is really just a curated list of emails copied-and-pasted into a Word doc, interspersed with a series accusations, posturing and name-calling). Two sentences later, the "memo" is promoted to a decidedly more substantive "new document, which illustrates that employees who spoke out in favor of diversity initiatives were reprimanded as well, and that senior leaders in the company discouraged discussion of diversity altogether." Further on, the article's author is blatantly dishonest in his "assessment" of Google's response to Altheide's self-serving account of the conflict. What the article's author purports is Altheide's reprimand by Google leadership for "[speaking] out in favor of diversity initiatives," as if Altheide is some whistleblower who suffered retaliation from Google leaders for some ground he stood against malevolent oppressors--is absolute rubbish. If you've read Altheide's retelling of his "reprimand" in his memo, it's clear his manager was forced to intercede––not in some nefarious effort to suppress diversity supporters at Google, but to defuse a totally inappropriate, tense and escalating feud between coworkers. Granted, the coworker by whom Altheide was so outraged appears to have been a bigot at the least, and possibly somewhat unstable, assuming he said what he's reported to have said. Still, no reasonable or rational person I've ever met would have responded in the way Altheide did. As Google's VP Sridhar Ramaswamy pointed out, it's about respecting other people's feelings. Altheide should have "stepped back," as Ramaswamy advised in the memo, and reported the colleague's bigoted mantra to the appropriate HR person. He definitely should not have escalated the tension by calling the guy out publicly in what I assume is a department-wide or company-wide forum. That sort of escalation, if his coworker had been imbalanced, could potentially have lead to a violent incident, as has happened elsewhere countless times. Ultimately, Altheide appears to have been on some sort of overzealous crusade. And while diversity and social justice are certainly honorable causes to defend, it's the context and manner in which Altheide did so, in his work environment, that resulted in his objectively necessary reprimand from his Google managers. So, I call bullshit on this tech blogger's attempt to exploit the sad affair for his own idealogical agenda, by portraying Altheide as some sort of "martyr of the cause" of diversity. I think you and I, and rational people everywhere can see that's just not what happened here.
paulddraper 9y ago
This is so grating. And honestly, not even that bad compared to what I often see nowadays (from multiple sides). Reading news seems to requires a very strong -- to borrow Wikipedia's term -- "weasel word" filter, and paying attention to only bare facts.
zzzzzzzza 9y ago
Several things, 1. it's an assumption that gizmodo is writing for a tech audience, 2. it's not really "blatant" in that, ultimately, it's completely intentional since this is what gets monetizable views - gizmodo pushes an agenda because it's profitable to do so Overall, great comment.
dang 9y ago
> ALL CAPS added by me Please don't. It breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Also, please don't post ideological rants to Hacker News regardless of your ideology. We're hoping for thoughtful discussion here, not flames.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  I know there's this convenient meta-rule that says we can't discuss the rules, but this site really needs to scrap the concept of an "ideological rant". It pre-supposes the existence of non-ideological moderators and posters, a false assumption, which means it is only ever applied in one direction - there are lots of far more ranty and ideological things posted here which are left well alone, because they agree with the increasingly rather odd Silicon Valley (but not rest of America) social norms. The OP posted interesting insights from his time in a small totalitarian state. He also drew comparisons to the writing style of Gizmodo. This sort of post has value to me, even if it might not be right, because it makes me think about new topics and existing topics in new ways. It merits further discussion and analysis, not downvoting, flagging, and being ticked off by moderators for being "ideological". But this is one instance of a wider issue, that moderation and flagging in discussions of Google's diversity-related woes is often wildly inconsistent for no apparent reason. Slashdot associates adjectives with votes and moderation decisions, something maybe HN could use. I now routinely expand hidden posts and have showdead switched on because the ratio of useful and well written flagged posts to genuine spam or nonsense is so unbalanced. There's hardly any genuine spam or trolling here. Other examples - there's a post further up by calculusftw that's dead for no apparent reason, as the post itself seems calm, well written and to present a reasonable point of view that is repeated by other posts elsewhere. Another post by nodesocket compares the management styles of Google vs other bay area tech firms and claims differing management style is related to the internal culture - it is both flagged and dead, again for no apparent reason.
  - dang 9y ago
    The concept is valuable because it identifies a predator species that kills the intellectual curiosity HN exists for. This is independent of the content of the rant. If an army tramples your garden, it doesn't matter whether they led with their left feet or right, or what color the uniforms were. You're thinking about this in terms of specific comments and political views, while for us it is a systemic problem of how to run a large, anonymous internet forum that doesn't self-destruct. These are two different perspectives. That gap is why people make the mistake of feeling certain that we're secretly biased in favor of $X, where $X has nothing to do with us but is rather the inversion of their own ideological side. All sides think this, leading to many contradictory-yet-somehow-all-the-same charges of manipulation. I presume it is the same cognitive bias that makes sports fans 'know' that the refs are secretly against their team. Often people throw in seemingly factual statements like you did here: "because they agree with the increasingly rather odd Silicon Valley...". A statement like that is simply invented. You don't know it; you can't know it; nor can you point to any statement showing it. It just feels like it's true. Meanwhile opposite people say opposite things, feeling just the same way that you do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098840 is typical. There's an incongruence between saying that HN is filled with quality discussion ("hardly any genuine spam or trolling") and that the mods are biased censors (Soviet-style! adds your sibling commenter) stamping out good discussion. That would hardly be quality-enhancing behavior. The assumption that if only we would stop doing what we do, HN would get better, is magical thinking. If HN is any good, how did it get good to begin with? How could it stay any good, if the moderators are so repellent? Re dead comments, there are lots of reasons why that happens. Sometimes it's software that we've written based on past patterns of abuse; sometimes it's user flags, etc. These methods are indispensable but imperfect, which is why we created the 'vouch' feature for community members to rescue dead comments that shouldn't be dead. Anyone with karma > 30 can click a comment's timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch'. This way, instead of interpreting it as censorship and complaining about the refs, you and your fellow community members can simply reverse it. How Soviet is that!

by SiVal 9y ago

MisterBastahrd 9y ago

It's common practice in media when dealing with court cases which have not been resolved to use language consistent with the non-resolution. So yes, they use the words "alleging" and "claiming," because it is consistent with what is going on in the courts.

SiVal 9y ago
If the use of "alleging" and "claiming" is proper for one side of the argument, and I allege and claim that it is, it is proper for the counterargument, especially when both are presented in the same paragraph as a contrast.
calculusftw 9y ago
Right, but just as SiVal pointed out, the article still issued an imbalanced and not-so-subtly biased "analysis" of the conflict. The first sentence introduces the "memo" (which--face it--is really just a curated list of emails copied-and-pasted into a Word doc, interspersed with a series accusations, posturing and name-calling). Two sentences later, the "memo" is promoted to a decidedly more substantive "new document, which illustrates that employees who spoke out in favor of diversity initiatives were reprimanded as well, and that senior leaders in the company discouraged discussion of diversity altogether." Further on, the article's author is blatantly dishonest in his "assessment" of Google's response to Altheide's self-serving account of the conflict. What the article's author purports is Altheide's reprimand by Google leadership for "[speaking] out in favor of diversity initiatives," as if Altheide is some whistleblower who suffered retaliation from Google leaders for some ground he stood against malevolent oppressors--is absolute rubbish. If you've read Altheide's retelling of his "reprimand" in his memo, it's clear his manager was forced to intercede––not in some nefarious effort to suppress diversity supporters at Google, but to defuse a totally inappropriate, tense and escalating feud between coworkers. Granted, the coworker by whom Altheide was so outraged appears to have been a bigot at the least, and possibly somewhat unstable, assuming he said what he's reported to have said. Still, no reasonable or rational person I've ever met would have responded in the way Altheide did. As Google's VP Sridhar Ramaswamy pointed out, it's about respecting other people's feelings. Altheide should have "stepped back," as Ramaswamy advised in the memo, and reported the colleague's bigoted mantra to the appropriate HR person. He definitely should not have escalated the tension by calling the guy out publicly in what I assume is a department-wide or company-wide forum. That sort of escalation, if his coworker had been imbalanced, could potentially have lead to a violent incident, as has happened elsewhere countless times. Ultimately, Altheide appears to have been on some sort of overzealous crusade. And while diversity and social justice are certainly honorable causes to defend, it's the context and manner in which Altheide did so, in his work environment, that resulted in his objectively necessary reprimand from his Google managers. So, I call bullshit on this tech blogger's attempt to exploit the sad affair for his own idealogical agenda, by portraying Altheide as some sort of "martyr of the cause" of diversity. I think you and I, and rational people everywhere can see that's just not what happened here.

paulddraper 9y ago

This is so grating. And honestly, not even that bad compared to what I often see nowadays (from multiple sides). Reading news seems to requires a very strong -- to borrow Wikipedia's term -- "weasel word" filter, and paying attention to only bare facts.

zzzzzzzza 9y ago

Several things, 1. it's an assumption that gizmodo is writing for a tech audience, 2. it's not really "blatant" in that, ultimately, it's completely intentional since this is what gets monetizable views - gizmodo pushes an agenda because it's profitable to do so Overall, great comment.

dang 9y ago

> ALL CAPS added by me Please don't. It breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Also, please don't post ideological rants to Hacker News regardless of your ideology. We're hoping for thoughtful discussion here, not flames.

peoplewindow 9y ago
I know there's this convenient meta-rule that says we can't discuss the rules, but this site really needs to scrap the concept of an "ideological rant". It pre-supposes the existence of non-ideological moderators and posters, a false assumption, which means it is only ever applied in one direction - there are lots of far more ranty and ideological things posted here which are left well alone, because they agree with the increasingly rather odd Silicon Valley (but not rest of America) social norms. The OP posted interesting insights from his time in a small totalitarian state. He also drew comparisons to the writing style of Gizmodo. This sort of post has value to me, even if it might not be right, because it makes me think about new topics and existing topics in new ways. It merits further discussion and analysis, not downvoting, flagging, and being ticked off by moderators for being "ideological". But this is one instance of a wider issue, that moderation and flagging in discussions of Google's diversity-related woes is often wildly inconsistent for no apparent reason. Slashdot associates adjectives with votes and moderation decisions, something maybe HN could use. I now routinely expand hidden posts and have showdead switched on because the ratio of useful and well written flagged posts to genuine spam or nonsense is so unbalanced. There's hardly any genuine spam or trolling here. Other examples - there's a post further up by calculusftw that's dead for no apparent reason, as the post itself seems calm, well written and to present a reasonable point of view that is repeated by other posts elsewhere. Another post by nodesocket compares the management styles of Google vs other bay area tech firms and claims differing management style is related to the internal culture - it is both flagged and dead, again for no apparent reason.
- dang 9y ago
  The concept is valuable because it identifies a predator species that kills the intellectual curiosity HN exists for. This is independent of the content of the rant. If an army tramples your garden, it doesn't matter whether they led with their left feet or right, or what color the uniforms were. You're thinking about this in terms of specific comments and political views, while for us it is a systemic problem of how to run a large, anonymous internet forum that doesn't self-destruct. These are two different perspectives. That gap is why people make the mistake of feeling certain that we're secretly biased in favor of $X, where $X has nothing to do with us but is rather the inversion of their own ideological side. All sides think this, leading to many contradictory-yet-somehow-all-the-same charges of manipulation. I presume it is the same cognitive bias that makes sports fans 'know' that the refs are secretly against their team. Often people throw in seemingly factual statements like you did here: "because they agree with the increasingly rather odd Silicon Valley...". A statement like that is simply invented. You don't know it; you can't know it; nor can you point to any statement showing it. It just feels like it's true. Meanwhile opposite people say opposite things, feeling just the same way that you do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16098840 is typical. There's an incongruence between saying that HN is filled with quality discussion ("hardly any genuine spam or trolling") and that the mods are biased censors (Soviet-style! adds your sibling commenter) stamping out good discussion. That would hardly be quality-enhancing behavior. The assumption that if only we would stop doing what we do, HN would get better, is magical thinking. If HN is any good, how did it get good to begin with? How could it stay any good, if the moderators are so repellent? Re dead comments, there are lots of reasons why that happens. Sometimes it's software that we've written based on past patterns of abuse; sometimes it's user flags, etc. These methods are indispensable but imperfect, which is why we created the 'vouch' feature for community members to rescue dead comments that shouldn't be dead. Anyone with karma > 30 can click a comment's timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch'. This way, instead of interpreting it as censorship and complaining about the refs, you and your fellow community members can simply reverse it. How Soviet is that!