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Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what
by mabbo 6y ago
Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess.
As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your resume.
- discordance 6y agoYet he still got a payout
- spangry 6y agoIf making a mess is what gets you fired, shouldn't google have gone after whoever leaked the memo, instead of Damore?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoThey are likely a) harder to find b) firing Damore is more likely to satisfy the loudest group while firing the leaker is going to rile them up more.
- sacks2k 6y agoIt wouldn't be that hard to find. "firing the leaker is going to rile them up more." It seems our society has devolved into satisfying the mob rather than doing the right thing these days. I've seen some of the comments from internal Google groups that were since leaked after this incident. Some of the most horrible thoughts and opinions were posted, with actual real names, but nobody got punished or fired. Why? Because they were progressive/hard-left thoughts and opinions. This is all about politics and has nothing to do with right or wrong. It's just more proof that these large tech companies are becoming the equivalent of fascist governments that police our thoughts and opinions....and punish us for wrongthink.
- curmudgeont653 6y agoSociety hasn't devolved; this is how it's always been. Actors with power exercise that power by enforcing their will over those with less. Googlers being mostly neo-left is irrelevant. Were they neo-con, Google would've done the same and appeased them by firing a single employee as a scapegoat. In reality, Google doesn't care about politics because it, like sovereign states, is only mindful of its own self-interest, political games are only one tool in its aresenal to get there; and just like sovereign states, Google is effectively a stateless yet sovereign state of its own, not strictly bound under any state's power, like the citizens of any country are. The truth is, buddy, politics won't do anything for you. They've been bread and circus since Ancient Athens for the labor classes so they wouldn't cause too much of a mess.
- randallsquared 6y ago> Google doesn't care about politics because it, like sovereign states, is only mindful of its own self-interest This is often a useful abstraction for predicting corporate activity in general, but not explaining specific actions by specific people in the company.
- cft 6y agoPolitics, buddy, did a lot for Lenin, Mao, Hitler, Castro or Chavez. We aren't manifestly destined differently here.
- at_a_remove 6y agoI would like to see some of those comments, thoughts, and opinions, as well-sourced as possible. As far as I can tell, people seem to be reacting to ... a lot of translations, cherry-picking, inaccurate summations, and strawmen when it comes to this Damore deal.
- CydeWeys 6y agoPor que no los dos? Google has fired leakers too.
- foldr 6y agoGoogle may have fired whoever leaked the memo, for all we know.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThey fired the most vocal guy railing against Damore, so they plausibly could have fired the leaker as well.
- spangry 6y agoThat would certainly upset one of my preconceived notions about this whole affair. Could you provide a source on that?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoSure. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-damore-memo-tim-chevalier-lawsuit-liberal-conservative-backlash https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-dam...
- username90 6y agoActually Google has been much harsher on the extreme left crowd at Google since then. They didn't say it officially but I think they realized that both sides were to blame for this PR mess and just bashing one side will make the other way more vocal and aggressive in the future.
- drivebycomment 6y agoSeems like you are right, given their firing of the opposite political spectrum: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/11/27/googles-thanksgiving-four-present-a-challenge-to-leadership.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/11/27/goo...
- wan23 6y agoI'd say it's fairly likely that they found and fired the leaker, but had them sign an NDA. Google hates leaks and has internal surveillance methods in place to catch leakers, especially ones that cause this much trouble.
- dirtydroog 6y agoHe didn't cause a PR mess, whomever leaked his post to the wider world did. And I could be wrong, but I seem to recall he posted what he did weeks, if not months, before it was leaked (in a heavily modified form too)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cassalian 6y ago> Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR mess. I agree with you; however Damore is only partly to blame... IMO the leaker of the memo is just as responsible for the PR mess as Damore is for writing the memo in the first place (no leak = no PR mess) (no memo = no PR mess) (memo + no leak = no PR mess).
- CydeWeys 6y agoIt was already a huge mess internally even before it got leaked. Internal relations matter a lot too. I think he would have gotten fired even without the leak.
- username90 6y ago> I think he would have gotten fired even without the leak. I don't think so, it had to go all the way up to Sundar before he got fired, Sundar wouldn't have taken a break from his vacation if it wasn't a PR mess. Internal messes happens all the time at Google and they almost never end with someone getting fired.
- CydeWeys 6y agoPeople get fired over internal issues all the time, you just don't hear about it because they don't make the news. The people involved make the rational decision to not go public, because if they did, it could easily cause them to never be able to work in the industry again. No one wants to hire a malcontent.
- bastardoperator 6y ago"Say It Forget It, Write It Regret It". He's the root cause of all of his his pain and the pr issue. All the leaker did was speed up an inevitable process.
- sacks2k 6y agoHe never released anything to the public. Someone who didn't like his political views leaked it to Twitter and the press. If I were him, I would have personally sued the person that leaked the content and continued the fight until they had no money left. They really need to be taught a lesson that it's not okay to do something like this with the intention of destroying a person's life.
- pjc50 6y ago.. so you'd destroy their life instead?
- StephenAmar 6y agoAlways assume that what you say could be on the front page of the New York Times.
- CydeWeys 6y agoThis is literally part of Noogler orientation at Google, word for word, and I'm sure at many other companies too. I sure as hell don't write screeds at work, only design docs that would be completely uninteresting to national media.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y agoHopefully every other part of your online life is under a difficult to guess pseudonym if you write anything even remotely controversial, because the social justice mob is only looking for scalps, not justice.
- CydeWeys 6y agoNot sure how that's relevant here. He published under his real name, at work.
- 6y ago
- DonHopkins 6y agoIf your CEO hires women who you think are biologically inferior to you because of their gender, you'd better start polishing up your resume before they learn your name.
- pgcj_poster 6y agoMost people who think that women are inferior (just on average tho!) remain gainfully employed, because instead of writing their views on internal company memos, they post them on news.ycombinator.com.
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoDo you have any examples?
- pgcj_poster 6y agoSure. There's this one user named lawnchair_larry who believes that women are, on average, weaker performers in tech[1], that it's for biological reasons[2], and that it's fair to discriminate against women in hiring decisions because of it[3]. Yes, he phrased some of his opinions as questions, but anyone with a fifth grade reading level can figure out the implied answer. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9960327 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23125229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23125229 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18186240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18186240
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoCare to ctrl-f for “weaker” in your citation (which doesn’t even say what you claim) and paste the sentences immediately after? Here, let me help you: It should also be a possibility that they're [women] actually stronger performers in tech (I bet you reached for the down arrow before getting to that sentence). Pretending everyone must have equal ability and 50% of executives and 50% of programmers should be women doesn't get us anywhere. Obviously, [3] doesn’t even come close to approaching what you’re claiming I said. But you could not have accidentally proven my point any better if you tried, so thanks! I’ve had enough experience in these arguments to know that this will likely fall on deaf ears, but to restate my point in simpler terms: The probability that the natural distribution (as in, free from bias or cultural influences) for any profession would be perfectly 50/50 across gender lines is approximately zero. For those who don’t understand what an average is, this says nothing about the ability of any individual, and says nothing about whether men or women are better or worse for any given role.
- sneak 6y agoWhat about Chris Smalls? Is what he did also an “ultimate sin”? Should your logic be applied there?
- leetcrew 6y agoI'm inclined to agree; it's never a good idea to discuss stuff like this on work comms. this leads to a bigger question though. why does google encourage this kind of discussion on an internal mailing list in the first place? seems like it can only lead to embarrassing PR moments.
- ashtonkem 6y agoIt was going to end in tears one way or another.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoGoogle allows (allowed?) relatively free socialization on internal mailing lists, and there are serious labor law issues with saying "you can talk about anything you'd like as long as it's not company policies or politically controversial".
- leetcrew 6y agomost companies don't have to say anything like that. the absence of active encouragement is usually enough. the "default" is not to discuss sensitive topics over company email.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoGoogle specifically wanted to encourage open discussion of things like company plans and priorities, which at many other companies are sensitive topics.
- yahyaheee 6y agoYea and he was essentially complaining about google brainwashing
- pas 6y agoNo, he was complaining about how the diversity team wasn't scientific enough, and pointed out that it from a certain viewpoint it doesn't makes sense. But failed to simply account for what Google as an entity (the CEO, the shareholders, the board of directors, the upper management, the vocal minorities, etc) wanted. And that was simply diversity even at the cost of spending a lot of money and making some sub-optimal decisions.
- JSavageOne 6y agoIt was only a "PR mess" because his co-workers leaked the memo to the eager press and Google fired him over what was basically a paper attempting to explain why women might be underrepresented in engineering. If a famous company fires someone over something so trivial, of course the media will be all over it. Had none of that happened, none of us would be still discussing this because it's not like the paper's particularly groundbreaking or anything.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wendyshu 6y agoWhat don't you agree with?
- downerending 6y agoAll true. And in addition, we got to see the reactions of a large number of insiders, which changed the way a lot of us think about Google. If you haven't read the internal list captures, you owe it to yourself to do so.
- lliamander 6y agoThe willingness of some of his peers, the media, and even the CEO to deliberately misrepresent what he wrote cannot be laid at his feet.
- cleansingfire 6y agoI would like to see the breakdown of individual positions on James Damore versus Captain Crozier. I suspect very few people have consistent views (I do not) in spite of exactly the same arguments being made on both sides. Essentially: Should have known it would become public, or too important to keep silent. That tells me the real disagreement isn't in those arguments, but in the values behind them.
- shadowgovt 6y agoThe company was backed into the corner because whether or not he was right, he created a hostile environment by starting and continuing the conversation where everyone in the company could read it. There isn't a debate to be had in a public forum (even internal public) because the law has already decided the question.