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'Altman got a verbal warning for writing on an internal board that certain employees should be fired. “I meant only bigoted white men should be fired. They inte

'Altman got a verbal warning for writing on an internal board that certain employees should be fired. “I meant only bigoted white men should be fired. They interpreted it as applying to all white men,” Altman says' I think this statement goes a long way towards helping Damore. That a senior engineer can say something like this openly and not see how it could cause concern and accusations of double standards is telling. I am not advocating for or against Damore but statements like these are not helpful. Saying Bigots should be fired but when you specify race and gender, you are encouraging feelings of persecution and animosity. I personally don't believe that a workplace is the right location for either Altman or Damore's statements. However, if a culture of allowing this sort of talk is created, you cannot arbitrarily decide that one side is right or wrong without inviting a lawsuit. Google is currently learning that people need clearly defined rules and if you allow people to say and act how they want in a professional environment, confrontations and trouble are inevitable.

deleted 9y ago
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vowelless 9y ago
> Altman got a verbal warning for writing on an internal board that certain employees should be fired. “I meant only bigoted white men should be fired. They interpreted it as applying to all white men,” Altman says' Wow. How can employees believe that this type of language is acceptable in the work place? Is this common in other tech companies on their internal communication channels (like slack)?
- xya3453 9y ago
  Welcome to SV. It's becoming increasingly common within tech, even more disheartening is the complete authoritarian shutdown of discourse around the issue. See your sibling post for a perfect example.
- aklemm 9y ago
  Wait, what? Why is it not appropriate to say bigoted white men should be fired? That seems non-controversial to me. Edit: I guess I'm assuming the bigot is behaving as a bigot, and I think that's a safe assumption.
  - msla 9y ago
    I interpreted it to mean that the only bigots who should be fired are the white, male bigots.
  - vowelless 9y ago
    Why even discuss this? How can you expect good intentions from your white coworkers if these are the types of discussions going on publically in the company? Race agnostically, it is an obvious statement and should be part of company guidelines : "bigotry will get you fired". Simple. Similarly, how can anyone believe that saying something like "violent black men should be fired" is okay? Just address violence in the workplace race agnostically in your company guidelines and don't tolerate it. Is this really complicated?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - wrren 9y ago
    Why didn't they say "Bigots should be fired?". By inserting race or gender into the statement, you're singling out a group as being the only offenders.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      While I'm not sure of the extent to which I agree in this context, this is basically a rehashing of the black lives/all lives matter argument. In that lens, the statement makes sense if you feel that white men get away with bigotry more than their non white male counterparts. In other words, the subtext is "fire all the bigoted white men too". Like I said, I'm not sure if I endorse that view it not. It makes more sense in the context of lifting up than putting down, but I can at least see it.
- simonpenn 9y ago
  Shortly after Trump was elected, there was a major problem in work Slack where people upset at the outcome would make undirected threats of physical violence in #general. After about a week of it, I was able to get it to stop by commenting on it something like: I don't think it's appropriate to make threats of physical violence in logged work chat. Tech companies get sued for things like bullshit patent infringements all the time, and it would be very damaging to the company for this to ever come out in discovery" Fortunately, this comment made them stop (or move to a private channel, who knows). But the fact that they were making these comments for a week was rather shocking to me. Nobody involved seemed to think there was anything wrong with saying that you would, quote, "beat in the face of the nearest Trump voter" in a work chat room with ~1000 members
pjc50 9y ago
Do we know anywhere in all of this the exact words and context used by Altman? (I note that Linus seems to manage at least one "people who do X should be fired"-equivalent email every week)
- ThrowawayR2 9y ago
  > I note that Linus seems to manage at least one "people who do X should be fired"-equivalent email every week Fired for poor programming practices. The two situations are in no way comparable.
  - moomin 9y ago
    I agree. Thinking other people are subhuman and unworthy of the rights you have is way worse.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Veelox 9y ago
  Asusme Altman authored the meme on page 121 of the lawsuit the text of reads > If you want to increase diversity at Google fire all the bigoted white men. I would put the above statement at about the same as > If you want to increase productivity at Google fire all the lazy black people. I will let the reader decide if the two statements should be treated the same by HR.
  - geofft 9y ago
    There is a distinction between those two statements - firing white men in and of itself increases "diversity" by adjusting the gender and racial balance of employees, but hiring black people does not increase average productivity unless you believe that all black people are lazy. That is, the first statement does not require the assumption that all, or even many, white men are bigoted in order to make sense, and the mention of race and gender is directly relevant. (It would also be true that firing white men at random would accomplish the same goal; the meme author is trying to say, why don't we fire the bigoted subset of this group, because we want to fire bigots anyway.) I think it's a defensible position to believe that the statement isn't acceptable anyway - but I don't think the two statements are analogous by any means.
notajeryreally 9y ago
Misspelled throwaway because want to talk about this and not have people misunderstand and hate me. There was a similar small bruhaha in the Rust community severals weeks ago. They hired a community manager who has leanings (nothing wrong with that), but had made tweets like "kill all men". Believe no actual ill will was intended, but you could see why it may trigger people. In the thread announcing this person's new role, a few people brought up issues like this (that wasn't an isolated sentiment, it was a pattern of behavior) and the mods for a while simply deleted any criticism, then they made a hard rule that nobody could talk about it (because that was related to personal issues). This rule was in the interest of preventing harassment (which yeah, legit reason), but it was completely tone deaf. You can't appoint a community manager who has made pointed statements about people in your community and then shut down discussion in the interest of tolerance. Check out the thread, it looks like a warzone. It turned me off Rust a little bit. https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7nx3cm/announcement_ashley_williams_joins_the_core_team/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7nx3cm/announcement_a... I wish we could talk about these things openly, the way we are handling these discussions only isolates us.
- atom-morgan 9y ago
  The very act of censoring people bringing up her past behavior is very indicative that they're fully aware of the double standards within their community.
  - wonderwonder 9y ago
    Indeed. I don't think people should be punished their entire lives for statements they made in the past. A very simple, "we are aware of the statments that X has made in the past and they have assured us that they regret them and will not be a concern going forward." would go a long way. But if the individual stands by those same public comments calling for violence against a particular race or ethnicity then cause for concern is justified. By silencing that concern they are not doing themselves or anyone else a favor.
    - RandomTisk 9y ago
politicsthrow 9y ago
SlateStarCodex had a good article on this. Basically, if you keep on complaining about bad <X> people then <X> people are going to start worrying that you are targeting them because you are referring to <X> people when you could just complain about bad people. This can also cause strife between well meaning people who wouldn't otherwise be at each others throats. Like you have someone complaining about bad <X> people, an <X> person gets triggered and lashes out, the original complainer now believes the triggered person is a bad <X> person.
- forgottenpass 9y ago
  I'm vouching this, it's a perfectly fine comment. I think a sizable portion of the diversity arguments are brouhaha caused by people who don't speak specifically and clearly. I'm not always good at it myself. But when "say what you mean, and mean what you say" isn't at least someones goal for their choice of phrasing, then they're probably just going to make things worse. Also, people don't have an obligation to instantly re-cast everything they hear into the best possible argument for a poorly made point. You can make a good point poorly. We should stop blaming the reader for not bending over backwards to take it the way the writer wanted. Or, maybe, at least stop calling them autistic.
  - aklemm 9y ago
    On the other hand, instigators are behaving unethically when they take poorly worded complaints and make hay out of it.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
JPKab 9y ago
"Meanwhile, inside Google, the diversity advocates say some employees have “weaponized human resources” by goading them into inflammatory statements, which are then captured and reported to HR for violating Google’s mores around civility or for offending white men." Does anyone else think that "goading them into" is basically transferring responsibility to others for saying stupid, inappropriate things at work?
- ankjl 9y ago
  Unrelated to what "side" of the "war" people making statements are on, I would think that the typical role of the HR department would be to examine the context surrounding inappropriate statements at work before taking action. If the HR department doesn't operate that way, or the company guidelines suggest that some statements demand reprimand regardless of context, then I would suggest the issue would be surrounding the way the HR department operates rather than the people making complaints to HR.
  - Chaebixi 9y ago
    Honestly, I could see HR legitimately reprimanding inflammatory statements, regardless of context, that were strong enough to get them involved. It's an escalation of a disagreement and employees should be expected to behave more professionally.
- nlowell 9y ago
  That line stuck out to me as well. It's a good example of this victimhood mindset where even when the people on the left are the ones being reprimanded they insist that the other side started it and forced their hand somehow. There is not a single note of personal responsibility. Obviously the whole article has this bias but it is wild to me how oblivious lines like this look.
muddi900 9y ago
It is telling that the top most comment in reaction to an article about right-wing harassment and doxing campaign is about how the maligned the poor majority is. Conservative Americans openly advocate for white supremacists but somehow want to escape the label of 'racist'. Since the trouble is having discussions openly, the first step would be to first fully embrace our own positions. It would be far more helpful for the discussion if all these 'what about white men?' types just get the courage of their convictions.
- leereeves 9y ago
  Conservatives aren't the majority in SV. And one thing we certainly don't need is more people expressing the "courage of their convictions" with remarks like "kill all men" or "acts of courage" like the shootings at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park.
- ameister14 9y ago
  Yes, if someone is conservative and is also openly advocating for white supremacy and also wants to escape the label of racist and also is saying 'what about white men?' they should do so openly. Not all conservatives are advocating this, not all of those who do want to escape that label, and not all of those who are both talk about what about white men. If you are all of those things, you are an extreme minority, one that I doubt is present in this discussion.

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vowelless 9y ago

> Altman got a verbal warning for writing on an internal board that certain employees should be fired. “I meant only bigoted white men should be fired. They interpreted it as applying to all white men,” Altman says' Wow. How can employees believe that this type of language is acceptable in the work place? Is this common in other tech companies on their internal communication channels (like slack)?

xya3453 9y ago
Welcome to SV. It's becoming increasingly common within tech, even more disheartening is the complete authoritarian shutdown of discourse around the issue. See your sibling post for a perfect example.
aklemm 9y ago
Wait, what? Why is it not appropriate to say bigoted white men should be fired? That seems non-controversial to me. Edit: I guess I'm assuming the bigot is behaving as a bigot, and I think that's a safe assumption.
- msla 9y ago
  I interpreted it to mean that the only bigots who should be fired are the white, male bigots.
- vowelless 9y ago
  Why even discuss this? How can you expect good intentions from your white coworkers if these are the types of discussions going on publically in the company? Race agnostically, it is an obvious statement and should be part of company guidelines : "bigotry will get you fired". Simple. Similarly, how can anyone believe that saying something like "violent black men should be fired" is okay? Just address violence in the workplace race agnostically in your company guidelines and don't tolerate it. Is this really complicated?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- wrren 9y ago
  Why didn't they say "Bigots should be fired?". By inserting race or gender into the statement, you're singling out a group as being the only offenders.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    While I'm not sure of the extent to which I agree in this context, this is basically a rehashing of the black lives/all lives matter argument. In that lens, the statement makes sense if you feel that white men get away with bigotry more than their non white male counterparts. In other words, the subtext is "fire all the bigoted white men too". Like I said, I'm not sure if I endorse that view it not. It makes more sense in the context of lifting up than putting down, but I can at least see it.
simonpenn 9y ago
Shortly after Trump was elected, there was a major problem in work Slack where people upset at the outcome would make undirected threats of physical violence in #general. After about a week of it, I was able to get it to stop by commenting on it something like: I don't think it's appropriate to make threats of physical violence in logged work chat. Tech companies get sued for things like bullshit patent infringements all the time, and it would be very damaging to the company for this to ever come out in discovery" Fortunately, this comment made them stop (or move to a private channel, who knows). But the fact that they were making these comments for a week was rather shocking to me. Nobody involved seemed to think there was anything wrong with saying that you would, quote, "beat in the face of the nearest Trump voter" in a work chat room with ~1000 members

pjc50 9y ago

Do we know anywhere in all of this the exact words and context used by Altman? (I note that Linus seems to manage at least one "people who do X should be fired"-equivalent email every week)

ThrowawayR2 9y ago
> I note that Linus seems to manage at least one "people who do X should be fired"-equivalent email every week Fired for poor programming practices. The two situations are in no way comparable.
- moomin 9y ago
  I agree. Thinking other people are subhuman and unworthy of the rights you have is way worse.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Veelox 9y ago
Asusme Altman authored the meme on page 121 of the lawsuit the text of reads > If you want to increase diversity at Google fire all the bigoted white men. I would put the above statement at about the same as > If you want to increase productivity at Google fire all the lazy black people. I will let the reader decide if the two statements should be treated the same by HR.
- geofft 9y ago
  There is a distinction between those two statements - firing white men in and of itself increases "diversity" by adjusting the gender and racial balance of employees, but hiring black people does not increase average productivity unless you believe that all black people are lazy. That is, the first statement does not require the assumption that all, or even many, white men are bigoted in order to make sense, and the mention of race and gender is directly relevant. (It would also be true that firing white men at random would accomplish the same goal; the meme author is trying to say, why don't we fire the bigoted subset of this group, because we want to fire bigots anyway.) I think it's a defensible position to believe that the statement isn't acceptable anyway - but I don't think the two statements are analogous by any means.

notajeryreally 9y ago

Misspelled throwaway because want to talk about this and not have people misunderstand and hate me. There was a similar small bruhaha in the Rust community severals weeks ago. They hired a community manager who has leanings (nothing wrong with that), but had made tweets like "kill all men". Believe no actual ill will was intended, but you could see why it may trigger people. In the thread announcing this person's new role, a few people brought up issues like this (that wasn't an isolated sentiment, it was a pattern of behavior) and the mods for a while simply deleted any criticism, then they made a hard rule that nobody could talk about it (because that was related to personal issues). This rule was in the interest of preventing harassment (which yeah, legit reason), but it was completely tone deaf. You can't appoint a community manager who has made pointed statements about people in your community and then shut down discussion in the interest of tolerance. Check out the thread, it looks like a warzone. It turned me off Rust a little bit. https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7nx3cm/announcement_ashley_williams_joins_the_core_team/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/7nx3cm/announcement_a... I wish we could talk about these things openly, the way we are handling these discussions only isolates us.

atom-morgan 9y ago
The very act of censoring people bringing up her past behavior is very indicative that they're fully aware of the double standards within their community.
- wonderwonder 9y ago
  Indeed. I don't think people should be punished their entire lives for statements they made in the past. A very simple, "we are aware of the statments that X has made in the past and they have assured us that they regret them and will not be a concern going forward." would go a long way. But if the individual stands by those same public comments calling for violence against a particular race or ethnicity then cause for concern is justified. By silencing that concern they are not doing themselves or anyone else a favor.
  - RandomTisk 9y ago

politicsthrow 9y ago

SlateStarCodex had a good article on this. Basically, if you keep on complaining about bad <X> people then <X> people are going to start worrying that you are targeting them because you are referring to <X> people when you could just complain about bad people. This can also cause strife between well meaning people who wouldn't otherwise be at each others throats. Like you have someone complaining about bad <X> people, an <X> person gets triggered and lashes out, the original complainer now believes the triggered person is a bad <X> person.

forgottenpass 9y ago
I'm vouching this, it's a perfectly fine comment. I think a sizable portion of the diversity arguments are brouhaha caused by people who don't speak specifically and clearly. I'm not always good at it myself. But when "say what you mean, and mean what you say" isn't at least someones goal for their choice of phrasing, then they're probably just going to make things worse. Also, people don't have an obligation to instantly re-cast everything they hear into the best possible argument for a poorly made point. You can make a good point poorly. We should stop blaming the reader for not bending over backwards to take it the way the writer wanted. Or, maybe, at least stop calling them autistic.
- aklemm 9y ago
  On the other hand, instigators are behaving unethically when they take poorly worded complaints and make hay out of it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

JPKab 9y ago

"Meanwhile, inside Google, the diversity advocates say some employees have “weaponized human resources” by goading them into inflammatory statements, which are then captured and reported to HR for violating Google’s mores around civility or for offending white men." Does anyone else think that "goading them into" is basically transferring responsibility to others for saying stupid, inappropriate things at work?

ankjl 9y ago
Unrelated to what "side" of the "war" people making statements are on, I would think that the typical role of the HR department would be to examine the context surrounding inappropriate statements at work before taking action. If the HR department doesn't operate that way, or the company guidelines suggest that some statements demand reprimand regardless of context, then I would suggest the issue would be surrounding the way the HR department operates rather than the people making complaints to HR.
- Chaebixi 9y ago
  Honestly, I could see HR legitimately reprimanding inflammatory statements, regardless of context, that were strong enough to get them involved. It's an escalation of a disagreement and employees should be expected to behave more professionally.
nlowell 9y ago
That line stuck out to me as well. It's a good example of this victimhood mindset where even when the people on the left are the ones being reprimanded they insist that the other side started it and forced their hand somehow. There is not a single note of personal responsibility. Obviously the whole article has this bias but it is wild to me how oblivious lines like this look.

muddi900 9y ago

It is telling that the top most comment in reaction to an article about right-wing harassment and doxing campaign is about how the maligned the poor majority is. Conservative Americans openly advocate for white supremacists but somehow want to escape the label of 'racist'. Since the trouble is having discussions openly, the first step would be to first fully embrace our own positions. It would be far more helpful for the discussion if all these 'what about white men?' types just get the courage of their convictions.

leereeves 9y ago
Conservatives aren't the majority in SV. And one thing we certainly don't need is more people expressing the "courage of their convictions" with remarks like "kill all men" or "acts of courage" like the shootings at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park.
ameister14 9y ago
Yes, if someone is conservative and is also openly advocating for white supremacy and also wants to escape the label of racist and also is saying 'what about white men?' they should do so openly. Not all conservatives are advocating this, not all of those who do want to escape that label, and not all of those who are both talk about what about white men. If you are all of those things, you are an extreme minority, one that I doubt is present in this discussion.