By firing the employee they're effectively sending out a strong message about it no matter how they sugarcoat it.
The message here seems abundantly clear and I have trouble understanding how it can miscontrued to be anything other than reacting to a clear violation. I can't even think of how to restate what is so clearly laid out in the note.
I wouldn't rule out the potential that there is uneven enforcement of such violations, and that would make this action look questionable. But I don't know enough about Google's internal operations to get to that conclusion.
I think it is certainly a very fine line to walk and people (including Google employees) will definitely see it in a lot of different ways. But, reading this as an outsider, the note appears to me to address the situation very directly and conveys a real sense of urgency (more so than I have ever seen from any of my employers, at least).
"many points raised in the memo ... are important topics."
So what? Other points were a violation of the CoC. Goodbye, good luck, see you around the campus!
At every company in the world. You aren't seriously expecting a company code of conduct to be applied fairly in some sort of scientifically measurable way? The code of conduct is there to protect against the worst types of behavior, and plenty of bad behavior will slip under the radar. So what? It's not meant to create some sort of utopian workplace. It's meant to create a better workplace for those who have historically been discriminated against. So far, it looks like it has come in handy at least once in a very public way.
Intimidating is a strong word for this, I think. I would call it intimidating if the original memo was a challenge to the code of conduct, as opposed to a violation of it.
Either way, I agree that other employees could see this as intimidation and that makes the whole situation much more complex. I suppose that ultimately I would not stand 100% in defense of the course of action, but I am also not grabbing my pitchfork over it.
It should be. If violating the CoC has no consequences then there should be no CoC in the first place.
The CoC makes it clear that some actions and some types of speech are entirely unwelcome at the company.
The memo also makes it clear that if you have a minority viewpoint that does not violate the CoC, then you should be encouraged to express those viewpoints. It even gave specific examples of the parts of the original memo that do not violate the CoC.
This is problematic since the toxic effect of uncertainty and ideological supression at the work place is not mitigated by it being produced through arbitrary executives or an executives arbitrary interpretation of some given code of conduct.
edit: If the purpose of the code of conduct is to create this uncertainty, than that alone should be reason enough for the code to be improved.
edit2: And of course, this specific code of conduct did not generate the legitimicy it should have created, which is why we are talking about this incidence.
What's confusing or unclear about that? It's crystal clear to me that Google prioritizes a workplace free of harassment over your individual ideology. If your ideology makes other employees feel harassed or intimidated, you'll have to leave your ideology at home.
And if you're not clever enough to understand that a statement in a widespread memo like "women, on average, have more neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)" could cause one gender to feel intimidated or harassed, then perhaps you're not clever enough to work at Google.
Science is not an ideology or opinion; in a diverse environment, reasonable positions are disputed by arguments, not power play.
Exercising an executive bias to intimidate the employees into subscribing to a specific ideology is nothing this code of conduct were able to prevent. The coc could not perform worse measured by it's own goal.
It's no service to any code of conduct intention if a code of conduct is treated as some chilling orthodoxy that is used to prevent a communities open dialogue and self awareness.
"Women, on average, have more neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)." isn't a reasonable position at Google, or any other big company. If for no other reason, to protect the company from being sued for gender discrimination.
Neither are any of the following statements reasonable:
"Blacks on average are... [insert some negative]".
"Jews on average are... [insert some negative]".
If an employee can't figure that out, you should fire them with zero hesitation. Open dialogue at a place of employment has many limits, and it will never be the top priority. If you say something that offends enough other employees, you're going to get fired, and that's not going to change no matter who you work for.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
When a murderer is sentenced for murder... there are 2 levels of understanding the sentencing. One is that he broke the "code of conduct"/law, the deeper is why we consider that to be unlawful (societal harm).
Saying he clearly broke the code of conduct just shifts the question to how useful the code of conduct is.. its not some fucking holy unbreakable scripture from the sky, its man made, just as the firing is.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. I'll even stick with your example in asking - is murdering someone a good way to start debating the "why" of the law against murder?
There are certainly examples where breaking the law proves to be a powerful and effective way to start the conversation. But how often does this hold true when breaking the law causes real harm to others? I doubt the answer is "never", but I can't come up with any argument for how this applies to the current situation.
Anyways my main point was the breach of code of conduct is just the technical reason he was fired. If you read the line item he was fired for, its clear its vague enough to be used many many different ways. I don't think its productive to focus on whether he broke some rule somewhere when the whole situation that led to the firing is known to us.
If it's so clear, then could you specify exactly which parts of the memo were "fair to debate" (as Pichai says) and which part were "clear violation?"