7 ms·

Slightly shocking that he didn't get fired. (yet?) They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf, insensitive, but largely supported by research.

• mc32 5y ago
  Given prior behavior around similar issues with other people I’m very surprised this person maintained their job. I’m pretty sure if he were another person talking the same way about other people he’d have gotten fired unceremoniously. And I doubt they have recalibrated how they deal with controversial opinions.
• logicchains 5y ago
  >Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with these things changed over the past few years? Simple explanation is Google's Democrat-leaning leadership are more aligned with Bobb than Damore (in the US, the left are generally anti-Israel while the right support it, and the left are pro-affirmative-action while the right oppose it).
  • whimsicalism 5y ago
    Yes, people on the Left haven't realized women's innate biological tendency towards neuroticism, which renders affirmative action self-defeating.
    • throwaway3699 5y ago
      Why does this statement sound sexist? Is it true? I feel like I should disagree on principal, but honestly I've remotely no idea if this is true or false. I thought the data was that there are differences, but they're so small that the average man and average woman overlap in the majority of their characteristics.
      • whimsicalism 5y ago
        They are small, and we are not nearly as good at separating out nature and nurture as Damore's claims require. The comment was an experiment, I was somewhat appalled to see I got upvoted for that here. Absolutely a fireable offense to inject that sort of discourse into a professional workplace imo.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • cjohnson318 5y ago
      > women's innate biological tendency towards neuroticism What the actual... Are you serious right now? Men kill women and other men at much, much higher rates than women kill men or other women. What does that say about the the "innate biological tendencies" of men?
      • whimsicalism 5y ago
        Of course not. I was seeing how far people would go with Damore, and it really saddens me how much my comment was upvoted. People here are the type of people I work with... they all hold these views? Of course, now that I've clarified, I expect the Damore-types to downvoted my comment, it peaked at +5.
        • cjohnson318 5y ago
          Jfc. You had me there. I need to calm down and get back to work. This whole thread is way too much.
          • whimsicalism 5y ago
            What's even more interesting is that it wasn't flagged and taken down until I clarified that I was trying to be critical of Damore.
      • artichokes 5y ago
        It's universally acknowledged that men are more violent than women.
        • kbelder 5y ago
          Would saying so at Google get you fired?
        • cjohnson318 5y ago
          It is not universally acknowledged. Case in point, during the 2016 campaign, people asked if a woman could be trusted with the nuclear codes, but no one questioned whether a man could be trusted with them.
  • zpeti 5y ago
    This is the correct answer. The amount of anti-semitism shown during this recent Hamas Israel conflict in the woke left has been very worrying. We are likely to see a big resurgence of anti-semitism in the next period. It's more and more socially acceptable on the left.
    • antisemtexism 5y ago
      Criticism of Israel's apartheid policies isn't antisemitism. It's such nonsense how the two have been conflated in recent years.
      • zpeti 5y ago
        Most of the stuff I've seen recently is not criticising the "apartheid policies" (debatable) of Israel. It's actual anti jewish rhetoric.
        • antisemtexism 5y ago
          Well, I've seen the opposite. I suspect it's not leftists you're witnessing saying such things.
        • whimsicalism 5y ago
          Seriously, most of the stuff you've seen recently?
      • javagram 5y ago
        Street harassment or violence against visibly Jewish individuals has nothing to do with “criticism of Israel” though, and it did spike and has been increasing based on news articles and counts of reported incidents. https://www.jta.org/2021/05/21/united-states/antisemitism-in-new-york-city-what-we-know-about-thursdays-attacks https://www.jta.org/2021/05/21/united-states/antisemitism-in...
      • xdennis 5y ago
        Arabs in Israel have the same rights (and more than Arabs in Arab countries). Where is the apartheid? Is letting the Palestinian Authority govern Gaza and the West Bank apartheid?
  • shadowgovt 5y ago
    The simple explanation is not always correct. Damore doubled down on defending the document and asserted his right to publish it. At that point, he made himself a walking Title VII violation and tied Google's hands. Whether management wanted to fire him or not, the legal cost of retaining him was going to exceed his value as an individual contributor. As far as I can see, Bobb is doing everything he can to work with Google to avoid the further creation of a hostile work environment. It might not be enough, but for now it seems to be worth more to the company to keep him than to fire him. There may be one aspect, however, where your observation about relative American tolerances for hostile-environment-creating speech matters. Hostile work environment is partially decided by fellow employee's reaction to behavior. If the average Googler is, in fact, less tolerant of biological essentialism than antisemitism, that could create a corporation where one speech is punished more hardly than the other. But I think we ought not to discount the reaction of the separate actors in these two stories once caught in the spotlight.
• agentofoblivion 5y ago
  They are entirely consistent. They succumb to pressure from their far left employees, which don’t like insensitivity to the Jews, but abhor any take that conflicts with their “diversity = equal outcomes” nonsense. There is no room for thought even remotely consistent with conservatism, whether or not it’s consistent with scientific consensus.
  • wutbrodo 5y ago
    > far left employees, which don’t like insensitivity to the Jews, The far left doesn't like insensivity to Jews? Which far left are you thinking of? In the US, the far left is the most reliable source of public anti-Semitism. (Note specifically that I said public. I'm not going to try and divine whether rightwing anti-Semitism is worse in private, which it very well may be.)
    • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
      Not everyone agrees. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/far-right-extremists-blamed-surge-anti-semitic-crimes-germany-n1215636 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/far-right-extremists-blam... https://www.bendthearc.us/announcing_howtofightantisemitism_com https://www.bendthearc.us/announcing_howtofightantisemitism_...
      • wutbrodo 5y ago
        The first link is about Germany. I specifically mentioned the US. It's also about anti-Semitic _violence_, not public statements, another thing that I made sure to clarify. I'd be pretty comfortable guessing that anti-Semitic violence is more right-skewed, incl in the US. Your second link is interesting, thank you. Caputo in particular is a good example of anti-semitism among rightwing public figures. It doesn't dispute my impression that anti-Semitism (and other racism) on the left is much more acceptable in public statements than rightwing public anti-Semitism; it just claims that the media disproportionately focuses on leftwing anti-Semitism (possibly true). I don't think complaining about Internet votes is particularly constructive, but this is more of an insight than a complaint: the downvotes on my original comment are a perfect reflection of how inanely most people engage with topics like these. There are "good guys" and "bad guys", and the "good guys" don't do any of the bad things. I don't use the phrase anti-Semitism reflexively, and think it's often wielded as a bludgeon, particularly in the context of criticism of the Israeli government. But the idea that one would be surprised at anti-semitism on the far left, like the comment I responded to, is ridiculous.
• delaynomore 5y ago
  Well, they can't afford to fire another person from an under-represented group, it'll really screw up the percentages :)
• zuminator 5y ago
  Damore held and advanced his beliefs while working for Google. Bobb went on his "rant" (actually just one instance) back in 2007 and has recanted his beliefs. So the disparate treatment is based on disparate behavior, which isn't on its own an inconsistency nor necessarily a policy change.
• throw1103 5y ago
  A blog post from 13 years ago.. which has since been removed.. is different from an email sent internally. Hopefully nobody will hold me accountable to all the slashdot comments I wrote 10-15 years ago. Taken out of context, I've probably made fantastically horrific statements too.
  • randompwd 5y ago
    Are you the head of diversity? If no, then it doesn't matters. You won't have outsized power and influence. Kind of hard to claim diversity matters when you install a demonstrable racist at the top. Who else is he discriminating against that we just haven't found yet?
  • throwusawayus 5y ago
    > which has since been removed Literally within the past day, along with the rest of his entire blog. This post was still online yesterday! I also don't see any form of public acknowledgement or apology anywhere on his site or twitter. Perhaps he made one but I just can't find it. I'm not sure how people are affirmatively concluding that his views have changed so substantially since this post. > Taken out of context The full post speaks for itself. Nothing is taken out of context here; he's directly making offensive statements about all Jewish people based on stereotypes and actions of the Israeli government, which literally has no relation to the majority of Jewish people in the world.
• notimrelakatos 5y ago
  > Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with these things changed over the past few years? Nope, they're being very consistent if you use the correct ideological goggles, change Bobb's color palette and first name a little and we would have another Damore-like shitshow.
• JansjoFromIkea 5y ago
  I think the blog post is definitely worse than Damore's email (although I thought it was pretty crappy in itself), but you're talking here about a blog post from 2007 and an email that was sent via company channels while he was working there. I can only imagine Bobb was quite apologetic and a lot more aware of how terrible his conflations are there than he was in 2007. That's also 14 years of time to have solid evidence that he no longer holds such myopic views.
  • rsj_hn 5y ago
    No Damore sent supposedly confidential feedback when solicited to do so by diversity trainers. That content so enraged the diversity staff they leaked it to the rest of the company. Perhaps Damore was naive in thinking the feedback about diversity training was welcome or confidential, but he definately did not send a company-wide email to anyone.
    • balls187 5y ago
      I think the point being made was Damore's email was sent using company resources, while employed by the company, presumably on company time. Bobb's blog post was from 2007.
      • rsj_hn 5y ago
        He was using company resources to respond to a company request for him to provide feedback to a company event. When the company asks you "tell me what you think about the content of our diversity training, we promise your response is confidential and we are interested in hearing what you have to say", and you respond with an evidence based argument that the diversity training is incorrect, then this is a very different situation from the head of diversity making public comments on a blog. Remember Damore was a non-management developer. If you are going to fire people for their views, which is what apparently Google has no problem doing, then the Damore situation is much less justifiable than this situation and the person with the offending views was not even fired.
        • 5y ago
• KittenInABox 5y ago
  Damore held and advocated for those beliefs so much so that he communicated them within the company at the time of his firing, and then legally disputed his firing. Bobb wrote something which he has since recanted, 10 years ago, outside of Google's official channels?
• sanity31415 5y ago
  > They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf, insensitive, but largely supported by research Damore was asked for his feedback on Google's diversity policies, and that's exactly what he provided. Most of Damore's critics haven't actually read his memo[1], but rather formed an opinion based on the character assassination campaign against him, a campaign his employer publicly sided with. Over the 4 years since the controversy I've asked countless Damore critics to point to the specific part of his memo that was tone-deaf, insensitive, or bigoted. I'm still waiting for an answer. [1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...
  • tolbish 5y ago
    People take issue with the following, but I don't recall Google confirming/denying if it is true: I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices: ● Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race ● A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates ● Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate ● Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias) ● Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination
    • sanity31415 5y ago
      To my knowledge Google has never challenge the accuracy of those claims, and such practices are commonplace in many tech companies in the name of "diversity".
      • jms55 5y ago
        Do you think purposely hiring X group is a bad practice? From what I understand, it's not enough to say "we'll hire X if they're better than Y". When you don't actually have any X at the moment, your company might not be very welcoming to X, and so they won't join. So you purposely go out of your way to hire extra X, to account for the lower acceptance rate. The common response is "that's not fair to Y, you should be hiring only based on quality, not on X or Y". But the issue is if you only hire on quality, but the quality X candidates don't join, then you're actually losing out on quality. So instead, you lower quality requirements, with the goal that overall you're actually promoting quality in the end, by working towards an environment where quality _is_ the only determining factor, and removing the current factors that work against X candidates. What about this do you disagree with? Note: This kind of handwaves over what "X won't join is". There's a lot of nuance to this. It may be that X grows up thinking the job isn't for them, because they always see Y in those types of jobs, and never bothers to try that job. It may be that X tries to join, but the people hiring them all Y, and favor Y instead because it's familiar to them, and the rest of the company is Y. It may be that X joins, but they feel uncomfortable that everyone is Y, and quits. There's a lot of different factors that goes into what discrimination looks like, which is why affirmative action is a lot more than just company policies.
• DoctorNick 5y ago
  "largely supported by research" is complete horseshit. It's was just reheated biological determinism: https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-damores-google-memo/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-...
• geodel 5y ago
  Well isn't it plainly obvious to be fired one has to be targeted by rabid left.
• datavirtue 5y ago
  Read Damore's post again and you might see the epic burn he laid on Google executives. That is why he was instantly purged.