11 ms·

I don't agree with Damore's message. But Google cultivated an environment were open discussion were encouraged. So firing him for stating his opinion is truly,

I don't agree with Damore's message. But Google cultivated an environment were open discussion were encouraged. So firing him for stating his opinion is truly, hypocritical bullshit. People should get fired for not doing their jobs -- not for writing what they think. And I also want to say that before you blame "the Left" for Google's behavior... Had he been fired in "Socialist Europe," the firing would have been declared against the law and Google would have had to pay a hefty fine. I can add why I'm so sure he wouldn't have been fired. In most (many?) European countries, you can be fired for only(!) two reasons; misconduct and labor shortage. Misconduct must be specifically related to your job performance. Like, a train conductor that always oversleeps or a cock who can't boil eggs. Something quite a bit more obvious than claiming gender differences between men and women. Labor shortage is if there is not enough work to do and then the company can let go of the surplus personnel. The walkthrough of the US laws, that tptacek provides, shows that they are completely different and much less employee friendly.

ionforce 9y ago
> So firing him for stating his opinion Do you think it's possible for his stating of his opinion to have side effects like creating a toxic work environment, which would be the antithesis of doing his job well?
- oceanghost 9y ago
  Google is a toxic work environment. He was fired for pointing that out.
  - ditonal 9y ago
    Downvoted but true, look at direct physical threats to Damore in the lawsuit by people Google still employs. Yet he got fired for violating code of conduct...are threats not violations? It's a double standard, if you threaten people deemed conservative there are no repercussions, even though I consider that far more hostile than a doc.
    - gaius 9y ago
      And the “blacklists” maintained by Google managers and spread to other employers - that practice was found to be illegal in the U.K. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36242312 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36242312
    - caseysoftware 9y ago
      In reading the original article, I think this quote is the opening: > Because companies have a duty to comply with equal employment laws and an interest in promoting diversity, “employers must be permitted to ‘nip in the bud’ the kinds of employee conduct that could lead to a ‘hostile workplace,’ rather than waiting until an actionable hostile workplace has been created before taking action," Sophir wrote. If that is the case, the employees who create and talk about these blacklists - which appear to be well-documented according to HR - may be creating an ongoing hostile work environment long before this memo existed, which demonstrates Damore's point.
    - bduerst 9y ago
      It says that the employee who made the threat was reprimanded: >... email read, in relevant part: “You’re a misogynist and a terrible human. I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. F[*] you.” The employee was issued a final warning for sending this email. http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391 http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391 (pdf)
  - anonytrary 9y ago
    This is not unique to Google. If you don't "vibe" with your company's culture, you are more likely to become a scapegoat. The outsiders leave or get fired, keeping the culture pure (people get fired for lack of culture fit). This mentality is indeed toxic, but the bottom line of any company benefits from harmony between all of the employees.
    - gaius 9y ago
      This mentality is indeed toxic, but the bottom line of any company benefits from harmony between all of the employees. Not to excuse anything that's actually toxic, mind, but I think it's more subtle than that. Why is Google so inept at social media? Why are they so often blindsided by attention from regulators and tax authorities? Why Google Glass and the glassholes? Because in the pursuit of this harmony they have a limited kind of diversity based on race and gender, but they're all 20-something graduates of the same handful of universities - there's no diversity whatsoever on age or class axes. So things that are completely obvious to outsiders, they are organisationally incapable of understanding. Trapped in a local minima and unable to climb out.
  - jacksmith21006 9y ago
    Yet been the top place to work six years in a row. Nobody else done it even two years in a row. How can they be both? http://fortune.com/best-companies/google/ http://fortune.com/best-companies/google/ Google: #1 on 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2017 | Fortune
    - leereeves 9y ago
      > How can they be both? Best place to work if you fit the culture. Toxic environment if you don't.
    - gowld 9y ago
      This page isn’t working fortune.com redirected you too many times. Try clearing your cookies. http://fortune.com/best-companies/list/filtered?searchByName=google http://fortune.com/best-companies/list/filtered?searchByName... "No results found" This year is 2018, and Salesforce is #1. I don't see Google.
    - whataretensors 9y ago
      'Top places to work' contests are internal marketing competitions.
    - oceanghost 9y ago
      You know they buy these awards right? Usually with ad sales.
- Udik 9y ago
  An environment in which you can be fired for having expressed scientific views which- while debatable- are certainly not fringe seems pretty toxic. Maybe only for those who don't fit in, but still..
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tj-teej 9y ago
You should not be put in prison for writing what you think - I think any company should be able to fire people for publicly making statements which are antithetical to the company's values.
- ng12 9y ago
  This was _not_ public. It was internal for Google employees. It was made public by someone who disagreed and resorted to publicly sharing the memo. The fact that Google has not addressed this is a more damning condemnation of their culture than anything else.
  - anonytrary 9y ago
    Oh wow. Yeah, the person who leaked the internal email should have been fired. That's crazy. I feel for Damore.
    - xiphias 9y ago
      The leaker should definately be fired, that's not a question. I don't know whether firing Damore was legal or not, and whether there was harassment or not, but leaking was a clear copyright violation and Google always had a policy of firing leakers, this was the only exception where they didn't talk about it.
- ditonal 9y ago
  I believe employers have a right to fire employees for speech. But as we see industry power condense to a few megacorps, ones that play gatekeeper to information access, we should look at why we value freedom of speech at the national level and be more open minded about freedom of speech and political expression in other contexts. I don't buy the cliche "it's not freedom from consequences" argument (government couldn't say jail is just a consequences, so freedom of speech does imply no consequences within its context) and I don't buy this "we can't tolerate intolerance" argument either, as there seems to be an increasingly narrow point of views that at least some people won't label intolerant (or more common, smear by association by implying your views are associated with intolerant ones)
jdavis703 9y ago
How open of discussion should be allowed? Certainly in an open environment the CEO's actions should be criticizable. But what about issuing a death threat to the CEO? Should that also be allowed because they're attempting to foster an open discussion environment?
- xiphias 9y ago
  A death threat to the CEO has nothing to do with open discussion, as it's illegal in it's own right, like harassment.
scaryclam 9y ago
No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. He broke clear company rules and made the working environment hostile for others. That's not acceptable over here the same was as it's not in the US. However, had he written this out on a personal blog, or just has an adult conversation with HR I believe he'd had been safe on both sides of the pond. People don't just get fired for not doing their jobs. If I bully a co-worker or start stating at work that I think someone is less capable for any reason linked to their biology, religion, sexuality or age I will be putting my job at risk. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's worked in a professional environment for any amount of time (or heck, even a fresh graduate who bothered to read the company handbook!).
- juicyfroot 9y ago
  How is it a hostile work environment to discuss peer reviewed research on bio differences between the sexes?
- justAnotherNET 9y ago
  If you actually read the lawsuit, you’ll see Google cultivated an openly hostile workplace towards a significant portion of their employees and insulated the attackers from HR reprimands.
- gowld 9y ago
  Citation for rules and hostility?
- GuiA 9y ago
  > No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. That's an extremely strong claim that does not match my experience and will highly depend on the company, which country in Europe, etc. For instance I've seen explicitly sexist things happening in French companies, and have had many more related to me by friends and family. My mother works for a large European oil company, and has witnessed execs telling women in meetings to shut up and go back to being secretaries. None of these examples resulted in firing. And honestly, while Europe is indeed socialist in many ways policy wise, in many places it is far from as progressive as the coastal US. I'd much rather be LGBTQ in San Francisco or New York than Paris or Barcelona. Hell, I have several European female coworkers who have explicitly told me that they do not intend on ever working there ever again because the culture is significantly more sexist than SF/LA/Seattle/NYC. But again, Europe is big. Paris or Madrid are much more hostile than Berlin or Stockholm in these ways.
eitally 9y ago
The firing was over his methods (and the adverse impact they directly had on the broader organization), not his opinions.
- rurounijones 9y ago
  As far as I know his methods were to post his document to an internal mailing list specifically for feedback on potentially controversial topics[1]. This seems a "by the book" method (although I am surprised such a mailing list exists). Someone ELSE then disseminated it more widely (Internally and externally). [1] I cannot find any citations on this right now though, google-fu appears to be failing me.
  - eitally 9y ago
    Accompanied by all sorts of inflammatory dialogue and generally aggravating behavior.
debt 9y ago
“But Google cultivated an environment were open discussion were encouraged.” “People should get fired for not doing their jobs” When you’re hired to write code all day and instead are writing a long sexist rambling memo at work during work hours and posting it to a work forum, you’re not doing your job.
- gowld 9y ago
  The memo was written as part of a company training event. Damore attended a training and then wrote a response when asked for feedback. Very much doing his job.
  - debt 9y ago
    I don’t see how circulating his feedback with coworkers about some training event was part of his job.
    - dfasdfasdfasdf 9y ago
      it was circulated by the people he sent it to. Jesus read a fucking book.
mseebach 9y ago
It's worth keeping in mind that Europe certainly isn't one place when it comes to labour regulations. Some places you barely fire people at all (prevalent in the South, apparently getting reformed in France) and in some places it is significantly easier (several countries in the North), if not quite at will. The "easiness" generally has to do with the burden attached to showing insufficient performance.
- bjourne 9y ago
  Indeed, the laws are different. But in this case it doesn't matter much because the example is extreme. Even if the employer could show that the manifesto caused a toxic work environment (hard), and that that was also Demore's intent (even harder), the employer would also need to show that they had tried to resolve the situation with other means. For example, by asking Demore not to publish similar manifestos in the future. Had he then refused to comply, their case would have been stronger. Not even the examples I gave -- a cock not able to boil eggs, a train conductor always oversleeping or an active member of a Nazi party -- are completely clear cut in all countries. And Damore's manifesto is very, very far from it.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    That's the point. Under some of the more liberal legislations in eg. Denmark, you can fire people for "cooperation difficulties". The bar is higher than at-will, but it's not very difficult to meet. The employer just have to show that it has tried and failed to remedy the "difficulties" first (so you can't just fire people the next day). It's unclear that the statements found to constitute sexual discrimination could reasonably be meaningfully "remediated" (especially if the employer isn't in fact committed to it, it just have to show that it tried).
    - bjourne 9y ago
      The employer must be able to document that the termination is due to cooperation difficulties. Google didn't provide any such documentation. Hence terminating Damore for the manifesto would have been illegal in Denmark. That's the point -- Damore's dismissal was so obviously unfair that it wouldn't have been allowed in any Western European country.
janoc 9y ago
You are very very wrong. In most of Europe (including here in France with their famously rigid labor code) you can be terminated for pretty much anything as well, with a few exceptions. In many cases the employer doesn't even need to justify the firing. The only difference is that in some countries they may have more paperwork with it than in others and that you may get severance or some other benefits in certain situations. Moreover, what Damore got fired for would be very likely qualified as a gross misconduct here. He was advocating stuff that would go straight against the anti-discrimination laws which are standard Europa-wide. It could be perhaps qualified even as incitement to hate or discrimination against certain groups of population which is actually a crime - typically used to prosecute racism, antisemitism, hate speech against LGBT groups, etc. but not only. Hate speech laws are MUCH stricter in Europe than in the US, lots of the stuff that is fair game in the US is routinely prosecuted here. And committing a crime (you don't even need to be convicted yet, being indicted is often sufficient) is a valid reason for termination pretty much anywhere in Europe.
- bjourne 9y ago
  From: http://www.eurojuris.net/en/node/41566 http://www.eurojuris.net/en/node/41566 "Employment at will does not exist in France. So, you may only dismiss an employee for specific reasons. The specific reasons must be recognized by French Law or French case law. Employment at will does not exist in France. So, you may only dismiss an employee for specific reasons. The specific reasons must be recognized by French Law or French case law. If the dismissal is challenged by an employee, the company will have to prove that dismissal was based on "genuine and substantive grounds". Also, employers need to be careful about applicable dismissal procedures." See also the sections POSSIBLE GROUNDS FOR DISMISSAL and DISMISSAL BASED ON PERSONAL REASONS. Of course, it is still possible for companies to get rid of unwanted employees, they just have to be smart about it. Common methods include assigning only menial tasks to employees or setting up inconvenient work schedules so that they leave voluntarily. Or reorganizing departments so that they become redundant. But outright firing people for no justification is not possible. Committing, or being indicted of, committing crime is generally not enough for terminating an employee either. For example, speeding is a crime but not grounds for dismissal.

ionforce 9y ago

> So firing him for stating his opinion Do you think it's possible for his stating of his opinion to have side effects like creating a toxic work environment, which would be the antithesis of doing his job well?

oceanghost 9y ago
Google is a toxic work environment. He was fired for pointing that out.
- ditonal 9y ago
  Downvoted but true, look at direct physical threats to Damore in the lawsuit by people Google still employs. Yet he got fired for violating code of conduct...are threats not violations? It's a double standard, if you threaten people deemed conservative there are no repercussions, even though I consider that far more hostile than a doc.
  - gaius 9y ago
    And the “blacklists” maintained by Google managers and spread to other employers - that practice was found to be illegal in the U.K. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36242312 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36242312
  - caseysoftware 9y ago
    In reading the original article, I think this quote is the opening: > Because companies have a duty to comply with equal employment laws and an interest in promoting diversity, “employers must be permitted to ‘nip in the bud’ the kinds of employee conduct that could lead to a ‘hostile workplace,’ rather than waiting until an actionable hostile workplace has been created before taking action," Sophir wrote. If that is the case, the employees who create and talk about these blacklists - which appear to be well-documented according to HR - may be creating an ongoing hostile work environment long before this memo existed, which demonstrates Damore's point.
  - bduerst 9y ago
    It says that the employee who made the threat was reprimanded: >... email read, in relevant part: “You’re a misogynist and a terrible human. I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. F[*] you.” The employee was issued a final warning for sending this email. http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391 http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391 (pdf)
- anonytrary 9y ago
  This is not unique to Google. If you don't "vibe" with your company's culture, you are more likely to become a scapegoat. The outsiders leave or get fired, keeping the culture pure (people get fired for lack of culture fit). This mentality is indeed toxic, but the bottom line of any company benefits from harmony between all of the employees.
  - gaius 9y ago
    This mentality is indeed toxic, but the bottom line of any company benefits from harmony between all of the employees. Not to excuse anything that's actually toxic, mind, but I think it's more subtle than that. Why is Google so inept at social media? Why are they so often blindsided by attention from regulators and tax authorities? Why Google Glass and the glassholes? Because in the pursuit of this harmony they have a limited kind of diversity based on race and gender, but they're all 20-something graduates of the same handful of universities - there's no diversity whatsoever on age or class axes. So things that are completely obvious to outsiders, they are organisationally incapable of understanding. Trapped in a local minima and unable to climb out.
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Yet been the top place to work six years in a row. Nobody else done it even two years in a row. How can they be both? http://fortune.com/best-companies/google/ http://fortune.com/best-companies/google/ Google: #1 on 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2017 | Fortune
  - leereeves 9y ago
    > How can they be both? Best place to work if you fit the culture. Toxic environment if you don't.
  - gowld 9y ago
    This page isn’t working fortune.com redirected you too many times. Try clearing your cookies. http://fortune.com/best-companies/list/filtered?searchByName=google http://fortune.com/best-companies/list/filtered?searchByName... "No results found" This year is 2018, and Salesforce is #1. I don't see Google.
  - whataretensors 9y ago
    'Top places to work' contests are internal marketing competitions.
  - oceanghost 9y ago
    You know they buy these awards right? Usually with ad sales.
Udik 9y ago
An environment in which you can be fired for having expressed scientific views which- while debatable- are certainly not fringe seems pretty toxic. Maybe only for those who don't fit in, but still..

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tj-teej 9y ago

You should not be put in prison for writing what you think - I think any company should be able to fire people for publicly making statements which are antithetical to the company's values.

ng12 9y ago
This was _not_ public. It was internal for Google employees. It was made public by someone who disagreed and resorted to publicly sharing the memo. The fact that Google has not addressed this is a more damning condemnation of their culture than anything else.
- anonytrary 9y ago
  Oh wow. Yeah, the person who leaked the internal email should have been fired. That's crazy. I feel for Damore.
  - xiphias 9y ago
    The leaker should definately be fired, that's not a question. I don't know whether firing Damore was legal or not, and whether there was harassment or not, but leaking was a clear copyright violation and Google always had a policy of firing leakers, this was the only exception where they didn't talk about it.
ditonal 9y ago
I believe employers have a right to fire employees for speech. But as we see industry power condense to a few megacorps, ones that play gatekeeper to information access, we should look at why we value freedom of speech at the national level and be more open minded about freedom of speech and political expression in other contexts. I don't buy the cliche "it's not freedom from consequences" argument (government couldn't say jail is just a consequences, so freedom of speech does imply no consequences within its context) and I don't buy this "we can't tolerate intolerance" argument either, as there seems to be an increasingly narrow point of views that at least some people won't label intolerant (or more common, smear by association by implying your views are associated with intolerant ones)

jdavis703 9y ago

How open of discussion should be allowed? Certainly in an open environment the CEO's actions should be criticizable. But what about issuing a death threat to the CEO? Should that also be allowed because they're attempting to foster an open discussion environment?

xiphias 9y ago
A death threat to the CEO has nothing to do with open discussion, as it's illegal in it's own right, like harassment.

scaryclam 9y ago

No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. He broke clear company rules and made the working environment hostile for others. That's not acceptable over here the same was as it's not in the US. However, had he written this out on a personal blog, or just has an adult conversation with HR I believe he'd had been safe on both sides of the pond. People don't just get fired for not doing their jobs. If I bully a co-worker or start stating at work that I think someone is less capable for any reason linked to their biology, religion, sexuality or age I will be putting my job at risk. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's worked in a professional environment for any amount of time (or heck, even a fresh graduate who bothered to read the company handbook!).

juicyfroot 9y ago
How is it a hostile work environment to discuss peer reviewed research on bio differences between the sexes?
justAnotherNET 9y ago
If you actually read the lawsuit, you’ll see Google cultivated an openly hostile workplace towards a significant portion of their employees and insulated the attackers from HR reprimands.
gowld 9y ago
Citation for rules and hostility?
GuiA 9y ago
> No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. That's an extremely strong claim that does not match my experience and will highly depend on the company, which country in Europe, etc. For instance I've seen explicitly sexist things happening in French companies, and have had many more related to me by friends and family. My mother works for a large European oil company, and has witnessed execs telling women in meetings to shut up and go back to being secretaries. None of these examples resulted in firing. And honestly, while Europe is indeed socialist in many ways policy wise, in many places it is far from as progressive as the coastal US. I'd much rather be LGBTQ in San Francisco or New York than Paris or Barcelona. Hell, I have several European female coworkers who have explicitly told me that they do not intend on ever working there ever again because the culture is significantly more sexist than SF/LA/Seattle/NYC. But again, Europe is big. Paris or Madrid are much more hostile than Berlin or Stockholm in these ways.

eitally 9y ago

The firing was over his methods (and the adverse impact they directly had on the broader organization), not his opinions.

rurounijones 9y ago
As far as I know his methods were to post his document to an internal mailing list specifically for feedback on potentially controversial topics[1]. This seems a "by the book" method (although I am surprised such a mailing list exists). Someone ELSE then disseminated it more widely (Internally and externally). [1] I cannot find any citations on this right now though, google-fu appears to be failing me.
- eitally 9y ago
  Accompanied by all sorts of inflammatory dialogue and generally aggravating behavior.

debt 9y ago

“But Google cultivated an environment were open discussion were encouraged.” “People should get fired for not doing their jobs” When you’re hired to write code all day and instead are writing a long sexist rambling memo at work during work hours and posting it to a work forum, you’re not doing your job.

gowld 9y ago
The memo was written as part of a company training event. Damore attended a training and then wrote a response when asked for feedback. Very much doing his job.
- debt 9y ago
  I don’t see how circulating his feedback with coworkers about some training event was part of his job.
  - dfasdfasdfasdf 9y ago
    it was circulated by the people he sent it to. Jesus read a fucking book.

mseebach 9y ago

It's worth keeping in mind that Europe certainly isn't one place when it comes to labour regulations. Some places you barely fire people at all (prevalent in the South, apparently getting reformed in France) and in some places it is significantly easier (several countries in the North), if not quite at will. The "easiness" generally has to do with the burden attached to showing insufficient performance.

bjourne 9y ago
Indeed, the laws are different. But in this case it doesn't matter much because the example is extreme. Even if the employer could show that the manifesto caused a toxic work environment (hard), and that that was also Demore's intent (even harder), the employer would also need to show that they had tried to resolve the situation with other means. For example, by asking Demore not to publish similar manifestos in the future. Had he then refused to comply, their case would have been stronger. Not even the examples I gave -- a cock not able to boil eggs, a train conductor always oversleeping or an active member of a Nazi party -- are completely clear cut in all countries. And Damore's manifesto is very, very far from it.
- mseebach 9y ago
  That's the point. Under some of the more liberal legislations in eg. Denmark, you can fire people for "cooperation difficulties". The bar is higher than at-will, but it's not very difficult to meet. The employer just have to show that it has tried and failed to remedy the "difficulties" first (so you can't just fire people the next day). It's unclear that the statements found to constitute sexual discrimination could reasonably be meaningfully "remediated" (especially if the employer isn't in fact committed to it, it just have to show that it tried).
  - bjourne 9y ago
    The employer must be able to document that the termination is due to cooperation difficulties. Google didn't provide any such documentation. Hence terminating Damore for the manifesto would have been illegal in Denmark. That's the point -- Damore's dismissal was so obviously unfair that it wouldn't have been allowed in any Western European country.

janoc 9y ago

You are very very wrong. In most of Europe (including here in France with their famously rigid labor code) you can be terminated for pretty much anything as well, with a few exceptions. In many cases the employer doesn't even need to justify the firing. The only difference is that in some countries they may have more paperwork with it than in others and that you may get severance or some other benefits in certain situations. Moreover, what Damore got fired for would be very likely qualified as a gross misconduct here. He was advocating stuff that would go straight against the anti-discrimination laws which are standard Europa-wide. It could be perhaps qualified even as incitement to hate or discrimination against certain groups of population which is actually a crime - typically used to prosecute racism, antisemitism, hate speech against LGBT groups, etc. but not only. Hate speech laws are MUCH stricter in Europe than in the US, lots of the stuff that is fair game in the US is routinely prosecuted here. And committing a crime (you don't even need to be convicted yet, being indicted is often sufficient) is a valid reason for termination pretty much anywhere in Europe.

bjourne 9y ago
From: http://www.eurojuris.net/en/node/41566 http://www.eurojuris.net/en/node/41566 "Employment at will does not exist in France. So, you may only dismiss an employee for specific reasons. The specific reasons must be recognized by French Law or French case law. Employment at will does not exist in France. So, you may only dismiss an employee for specific reasons. The specific reasons must be recognized by French Law or French case law. If the dismissal is challenged by an employee, the company will have to prove that dismissal was based on "genuine and substantive grounds". Also, employers need to be careful about applicable dismissal procedures." See also the sections POSSIBLE GROUNDS FOR DISMISSAL and DISMISSAL BASED ON PERSONAL REASONS. Of course, it is still possible for companies to get rid of unwanted employees, they just have to be smart about it. Common methods include assigning only menial tasks to employees or setting up inconvenient work schedules so that they leave voluntarily. Or reorganizing departments so that they become redundant. But outright firing people for no justification is not possible. Committing, or being indicted of, committing crime is generally not enough for terminating an employee either. For example, speeding is a crime but not grounds for dismissal.