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Live by the sword, die by the sword. That said, firing him, like they did with Damore would have been more consistent. Because everyone is under arbitration agr
by lgleason 5y ago
Live by the sword, die by the sword. That said, firing him, like they did with Damore would have been more consistent. Because everyone is under arbitration agreements that always benefit the company, vs the courts where you might have a shot at justice, they have no incentive to do that.
As repugnant as his past anti-semitic rant was, people change and sometimes say and do stupid things. In a sane world this guy would not have been removed from his position and Damore would not have been fired. Instead we could have had a conversation to win hearts and minds, but today it is all about getting scalps, witch hunts and over-reaction. What we are currently doing sends people underground which radicalizes them more.
- whimsicalism 5y agoThe people change defense obviously doesn't work for Damore, who was fired over his actions while employed at Google Lots of weird comments in this thread.
- cloverich 5y agomoreover he immediately posted a “fired for telling the truth “ response - perhaps he’s since changed but very different circumstance.
- ehsankia 5y agoYeah, I don't have a very strong opinion on Damore, but the two situations are clearly not the same. One was published 14 years ago and another was published in the same week where it blew up.
- thu2111 5y agoThey're clearly not the same because Damore said nothing anywhere near as offensive as this. He said, paraphrased, that there are fewer women in tech than men because they are less interested in it. He backed it up with a whole pile of research showing that this obviously true claim is true. And he pointed out that women are biologically different to men, so maybe that is part of the explanation, and even if it is, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to be a programmer (which is in a sense a tautology, it's a way of saying "women are different because they're women"). In particular he bent over backwards to carefully spell out that he was not claiming women are worse at programming than men, perhaps because he knew the dangerous liars he was picking a fight with would also lie about his words - which they did, immediately, across the entire media and with vigor. Damore also tried to keep these views inside the company. Now this guy made very explicitly offensive comments broadcast to the whole world on his blog, which claims that all Jewish people are the same, that by implication they are morally inferior to people whose hearts are not filled with war, and that they should feel guilt and shame about this. No comparison, indeed.
- namelessoracle 5y agoOne is a member of a privileged group and one is not. One of those groups can do or say whatever they want and be insulated from the consequences. Thats how you know they are NOT the privileges group. Newspeak is real and in effect btw.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago>One was published 14 years ago Right, so in one case, the company clearly ought to have known he was an antisemite before hiring him as Chief of Diversity. In the other, the company was hiring for a technical role and didn't bother asking about his political or social views.
- jonfw 5y agoDamore never backed down
- mellosouls 5y agoGiven his original point was that voices countering the radical left wouldn't be tolerated, and they proved him right, it's not obvious what he could back down from?
- GrinningFool 5y ago> but today it is all about getting scalps, You say "today" as if it's ever been any different. Has it?
- michaelscott 5y agoIn terms of getting people fired/removed/cancelled for remarks, yes absolutely. That may be a function of social media and the scale of communication in modern times, but either way the sensitivity of the vocal minority has definitely changed even in my relatively short life.
- germinalphrase 5y agoAlternatively, we just may just hear about more examples which increases our perception of prevalence (similar, maybe, to the perception of increased violent crime in the 90’s while violent crime was actually reducing).
- throwaway09223 5y agoYou say yes, but can you explain how it is different? As far as I can tell it's the same as it was a century ago. The only change is the subject matter. Do you think you'd keep your job after saying something anti-Christian in the 1950s? Look at what happened to Sinead O'Connor in the early 90s after she spoke out against child abuse in the Catholic church. Maybe the biggest difference is that now we write when we communicate with peers, so there's evidence of our speech. I'm not convinced the mechanism behind cancel culture itself is new at all.
- anoonmoose 5y agoI regret that I have only one upvote for the Sinead O'Connor reference. This isn't new, the only thing that's new is that people are broadcasting their opinions far and wide for everyone to find/see/hear.
- MajorBee 5y agoNot to mention if you uttered something even vaguely socialist/communist sounding a few decades ago, you would be fired from your All-American job, be socially ostracized, and have the FBI on your tail before you can say "Stalin is bad".
- castlecrasher2 5y ago>Google apologized for his comments and said he was being reassigned to a role on the company's STEM team. He wasn't fired, just reassigned.
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- andrewclunn 5y ago'To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." They fear an open discussion about these issues because if the truth were the standard people might stop viewing such statements as repugnant.
- sascha_sl 5y agoI don't get the comparison with Damore, his hobby sociologist bad takes were recent, ongoing and deeply embedded into his job.
- a1pulley 5y agoGoogle no longer forces arbitration [1]. [1] https://www.vox.com/technology/2019/2/22/18236172/mandatory-forced-arbitration-google-employees https://www.vox.com/technology/2019/2/22/18236172/mandatory-...
- AzzieElbab 5y agoHis successor will be his carbon copy minus a few tweets. It is the ideology not the guy.
- nashashmi 5y agoI don’t see how his words based on the article were anti Semitic. They were anti Israel. And I find that you and everyone here and at google are having a hard time distinguishing between the two. Further based on the other comment to this post he was quite an activist. Fighting for rights of the racially oppressed and in minority. He went against white people and Israel? He is not racist. He is just anti majority dominant power holder.
- chadash 5y agoThe quote was: "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself" Yes, the sentiment is (possibly) anti-israel, not anti-semetic, but the wording itself implies that Jews have insatiable appetites for war. I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, but someone who is chief diversity officer at a major corporation should certainly be attuned to the difference between Jews and Israelis.
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- ant6n 5y agoBut it was also quoted worse in the tweets. "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself," (…) "If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired." It just became “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing” in the tweets.
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- ABCLAW 5y agoI think with the more fulsome context you've provided that the prior post's attempt to reduce his statement as critical of Israelis alone is a bit reductionist; his argument here extends to the diaspora that also unwaveringly support Israel in their expansionary policy. I don't feel that position is anti-Semitic either, but I think it needs to be noted for the sake of intellectual honesty. He is critiquing a LOT of Jews here.
- andrei_says_ 5y ago“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” And hey, great news, now we have every line written by every man, woman and child automatically captured and archived forever in an easy to search dossier. Someone who wrote a racist or anti-Semitic comment in 2007 could have evolved to deeper understanding and to a more compassionate worldview. But the writing remains forever, conveniently accessible.
- HPsquared 5y agoThis is why anonymity is so important on the internet.
- kube-system 5y ago... and/or privacy. In this case, it's was a once-public post, but the same issue applies to messages sent in confidence.
- kulig 5y agoIf only there were some genius programmer guy who has been saying that for the last 30 years
- threatofrain 5y agoMore like a proper social response to bad behavior. We can't keep hiding from the truth, especially when we live in an interconnected world where other people don't have to agree to forget.
- nikolay 5y agoJust to remind you that your binary, i.e. inhumane, way of thinking is permanently documented here as well. I hope you regret this comment one day when the same binary approach is applied to you as well. People are expected to change today - and that's why people go in and out of jail. But in the liberal world view, everybody (except the oppressed) is evil! Even when the oppressed is a cold blooded killer, it's an excuses - they did it, because they are oppressed. And this is how the Commies executed tens of million of people - they were imperialists and enemies of Communism and there was no chance for them; they were sentences as permanently damaged goods and deserved only a bullet!
- darepublic 5y agoThere is clearly a double standard in terms of groups you can get away with slandering, and who is allowed to do the slandering.
- johnasmith 5y agoGoogle has stopped mandatory arbitration for all employment disputes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeenmabud/2019/02/26/worker-organizing-results-in-big-change-at-google https://www.forbes.com/sites/rakeenmabud/2019/02/26/worker-o...
- toeget 5y agoOne has to note that he also made homophobic comments (available at https://archive.is/dp0n7 https://archive.is/dp0n7): If I were to pretend to be gay, that isn’t something that I can just wash off and tell those who know me and saw me, that I was just pretending, it was just an experiment. Sure you’re not a homosexual. Having had that thought, I realized that within my inner emotional core, not only do I not agree with homosexuality, I still despise it in a way that I would not want there to be any connection between my personal character and it. Given that such comments resurfaced during the Pride Month, I'm surprised he hasn't been fired.
- drewwwwww 5y agoi mean, in context, that passage feels more like he is realizing the strength of his internalized homophobia but not justifying it. but overall the existence of this blog is mystifying.
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- lupire 5y agoIt's his portfolio that got him his jobs, like a programmer's GitHub repo.
- whimsicalism 5y agoThe comments about Jews read in context seems worse to me than those comments read in context.
- lalaland1125 5y agoYou think it's homophobic for someone to write about their own struggle with internalized homophobia?
- weasel_words 5y ago"I still despise it..." - you seriously did not understand that statement? And you took it to mean his own INTERNALIZED struggle?
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- michaelmrose 5y agoIt's not clear that it was anti Semitic so much as anti Israel although that isn't the impression given by the headline.
- mandliya 5y ago14 years is such a long time. I am not the same person I was a year ago. There is no excuse to what he did, but what if he is a different person altogether now.
- ejanus 5y agoSo, why do you think that conversation with them would de-radicalize them? We need to send clear message to the world that we don't stand with such people.
- ilaksh 5y agoI agree that the scalp collecting is horrible, but at the same time I am not sure a simple conversation can make prejudice go away that easily. You're also right that we don't want to drive people "underground". But the head of diversity needs to have a perspective on diversity that is actually.. diverse and inclusive.
- fruityrudy 5y agoIn a sane world, his job wouldn’t even need to exist. Most people interested in diversity thrive on creating drama and conflict. Embarking on witch hunts. Arbitrating blame. What comes around goes around.
- NoPicklez 5y agoWhat frustrates me the most about this, is that we clearly have diversity teams to help encourage more diversity and inclusion AND to change the minds of people who may have been historically opposed or perhaps subconsciously discriminative. So the entire idea that this person should be removed based on a blog post 14 years ago is absurd. Are they saying therefore that people who historically demonstrated limited views on diversity are incapable of changing and advocating for change? Then why have the position in the first place.
- mieses 5y agoArguing that there is equivalence between Damore's politically incorrect but truthful statements and antisemitism is "repugnant". They may have offended in equal amounts, judging by reactions. But if you find Damore distasteful then you've already been radicalized and your taste ruined.