17 ms·

What is your point, because it is actually hard to get..?

• geofft 9y ago
  The Damore memo was not a problem for daring to talk about gender and race and hiring. Google both wants and needs its employees to talk about that. The Damore memo was a problem for the underlying assumptions about gender and race it used in trying to make its (vague) point. An analogy I've made previously on this site is that it's like a memo about which tech stack to use. Saying "Why can't engineers learn not to talk about tech stack and just use what they're told to use" is misguided - it might work at some companies, but it won't work at Google, and moreover, Google specifically wants you to talk about such things. The Damore memo, however, responded by saying "Let's do a long study on whether Classic ASP on NT 4.0 is the right approach, let's try rewriting some core components in Classic ASP and moving some services to NT 4.0 and see if things get better," and making questionable citations to papers (which do exist, and aren't inherently non-credible) about projects developed in Classic ASP. An engineer who seriously advocates that position and wants the rest of the company to spend time evaluating that position is in the wrong, and is wasting the company's time. Saying that their mistake is daring to speak about programming languages - and saying that other employees who say "Actually, no, your technology suggestions are obviously wrong" in response are equally mistaken - is misunderstanding the mistake.