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> In other words for hurting their bottom line by demanding Google be better (each in their preferred way) for society and its employees? Yes? If I hired someo

> In other words for hurting their bottom line by demanding Google be better (each in their preferred way) for society and its employees? Yes? If I hired someone to clean my apartment and instead of cleaning my apartment he or she spent the whole time writing up long diatribes demanding that I be better, per his or her understanding, for society and my employees you can bet I would not be hiring that cleaner again!

ak39 7y ago
Let's continue with your cleaner analogy: You hired the cleaner to clean. They do their job as per agreement. You are satisfied and so are they. Then one day they find out that in addition to cleaning normal office mess, they are now cleaning blood. Blood from victims of the company's activities. Should they remain ignorant of the company's real societal impact? Should they voice their opinions to fellow cleaners? Should they take advantage of the purported freedom to speak their minds their companies advertised during their hiring? Life rarely offers us an easy black or white judgment on complex realities.
tzs 7y ago
I may be misremembering, but wasn’t Damore’s post to an internal list Google specifically set up to solicit feedback on diversity?
- bradleyjg 7y ago
  To cut to the chase, I do think there’s a certain amount of dishonesty in the typical Silicon Valley corporate culture. But to my mind it is far more reasonable to ask that companies not engage in this dishonesty rather than asking that they live up to it. Bring your whole self to work is ridiculous and unworkable. No one can run a successful business if their employees are spending all day debating philosophy on internal message boards.
  - AzzieElbab 7y ago
    How would a geek with 0 real life experience outside Google know that? It is not what they told him about "internal discussions".
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      Bumbling geeks with zero real life experience can be a huge liability to large corporations generally, and often don't make for good employees solely for that reason. He's an adult. He bears responsibility for his actions. Ignorance is not enough of an excuse to save him. But even that's not valid here because he repeatedly defended the same views in the media long after someone who was merely bumbling would have realized the error of their ways. He doubled down on it. What started out as bumbling, didn't end that way.
    - bradleyjg 7y ago
      The people that want everything made explicit and all lies banished from human relations lost, have always lost, and will always lose. I recognize that for some this imposes significant hardship but changing everyone else’s human nature is not a reasonable accommodation. The kindest thing those of us that know young people of this type can do is pull them aside and explain how the world works. It is unkind to feed their delusions by vigorously agreeing with them online and then turning around and continuing to act pragmatically in our own lives.
      - cousin_it 7y ago
        Strongly disagree. I think it would be both feasible and good to change culture to be more tolerant of "tone-deaf" speech.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - AzzieElbab 7y ago
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    But that's beyond moving the goalposts now, just inventing arbitrary reasons to justify an already set view. That shouldn't be accepted either, otherwise it's just a "get out of jail free" card for bad actors - "I sacked you because you did something I didn't like. Wait, you did what I asked you to? But you should've known that in this case when I say to do something, I mean the opposite! In this case, and any other case I find convenient after the fact."
coldtea 7y ago
And you can bet without those people there would still be adults (and kids) working 12 and 14 hour shifts unpaid overtime with no workers protection, racial and sex based discrimination, no leave days, no workplace safety, no insurance, and without several other niceties gained in the late-19th early 20th century by exactly such people and such actions... Of course in a place where everybody is imaginary temporarily inconvenienced millionaire, expecting to soon join the "employer" side and with no regards for those on the other side, the above might not be a problem...

ak39 7y ago

Let's continue with your cleaner analogy: You hired the cleaner to clean. They do their job as per agreement. You are satisfied and so are they. Then one day they find out that in addition to cleaning normal office mess, they are now cleaning blood. Blood from victims of the company's activities. Should they remain ignorant of the company's real societal impact? Should they voice their opinions to fellow cleaners? Should they take advantage of the purported freedom to speak their minds their companies advertised during their hiring? Life rarely offers us an easy black or white judgment on complex realities.

tzs 7y ago

I may be misremembering, but wasn’t Damore’s post to an internal list Google specifically set up to solicit feedback on diversity?

bradleyjg 7y ago
To cut to the chase, I do think there’s a certain amount of dishonesty in the typical Silicon Valley corporate culture. But to my mind it is far more reasonable to ask that companies not engage in this dishonesty rather than asking that they live up to it. Bring your whole self to work is ridiculous and unworkable. No one can run a successful business if their employees are spending all day debating philosophy on internal message boards.
- AzzieElbab 7y ago
  How would a geek with 0 real life experience outside Google know that? It is not what they told him about "internal discussions".
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Bumbling geeks with zero real life experience can be a huge liability to large corporations generally, and often don't make for good employees solely for that reason. He's an adult. He bears responsibility for his actions. Ignorance is not enough of an excuse to save him. But even that's not valid here because he repeatedly defended the same views in the media long after someone who was merely bumbling would have realized the error of their ways. He doubled down on it. What started out as bumbling, didn't end that way.
  - bradleyjg 7y ago
    The people that want everything made explicit and all lies banished from human relations lost, have always lost, and will always lose. I recognize that for some this imposes significant hardship but changing everyone else’s human nature is not a reasonable accommodation. The kindest thing those of us that know young people of this type can do is pull them aside and explain how the world works. It is unkind to feed their delusions by vigorously agreeing with them online and then turning around and continuing to act pragmatically in our own lives.
    - cousin_it 7y ago
      Strongly disagree. I think it would be both feasible and good to change culture to be more tolerant of "tone-deaf" speech.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - AzzieElbab 7y ago
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  But that's beyond moving the goalposts now, just inventing arbitrary reasons to justify an already set view. That shouldn't be accepted either, otherwise it's just a "get out of jail free" card for bad actors - "I sacked you because you did something I didn't like. Wait, you did what I asked you to? But you should've known that in this case when I say to do something, I mean the opposite! In this case, and any other case I find convenient after the fact."

coldtea 7y ago

And you can bet without those people there would still be adults (and kids) working 12 and 14 hour shifts unpaid overtime with no workers protection, racial and sex based discrimination, no leave days, no workplace safety, no insurance, and without several other niceties gained in the late-19th early 20th century by exactly such people and such actions... Of course in a place where everybody is imaginary temporarily inconvenienced millionaire, expecting to soon join the "employer" side and with no regards for those on the other side, the above might not be a problem...