> Not the Ex-Google guy with his medium rant about how people would punch him in the face and he would understand.
Could you give a link to that rant?
Could you give a link to that rant?
It seems like every time I make a politically controversial post on Reddit and increasingly HN, I can just CTRL-F my comment inbox and assure myself that there's some reference to punching in there.
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-man...
He's very clearly siding with the face-punchers.
That is wholly unsupported by any reading of his sentence.
He literally says he would avoid creating a situation where even the possibility of someone punching him in the face might happen. If he was siding with the face-punchers, why would he avoid that situation?
People can't work with someone because he has a different point of view about injustice in the society and has the courage to voice it respectfully? They would resort to violence against someone because they have a different point of view?
If you can resort to violence against someone and get away with it, you're the oppressor in the society, not the oppressed.
Sundar, Yonatan and their likes are so privileged and delusional. These people have no issue with a war-criminal like Kissinger being invited to talk at Google but have such serious issues with a software engineer writing his views.
Forcing minorities and women to work with people who are bigoted against them is a recipe for a lawsuit.
A better example is an atheist working with an evangelical. Both the atheist and the evangelical will have very strong opinions on each others' belief systems.
A better statement would be: "Will the Evangelical write a 10 page memo "explaining" why there are naturally fewer Atheists in church organizations because their beliefs makes the inherently less interested in it?"
The answer would be yes. But it's not a good example.
It's kind of offensive to be judged by this hypothetical "average X person" stereotype. It more or less implies it's their fault, that they are underrepresented because they want to.
But that's not what I was responding to. OP implied this guy is a racist or a misogynist and stated she couldn't work with someone who held his kinds of beliefs.
I've read the manifesto and it's not as strong as you make it out to be. For example, I've argued that you can't expect perfect proportional demographic representation in a free society in any field. It will not happen, for a variety of reasons that may not be nefarious. If women are under-represented in programming it may not be because of sexism.
"May" is the important word here. We really don't know.
To play devil's advocate, what makes it right for certain groups to be able to be preferred over others? How come perceived racists, homophobes, and anti-semites are pushed out and the subjects of their hate allowed to stay?
What if we flipped your statement around. "As a misogynist, I could not work with a woman. As a homophobe, I could not work with an out homosexual. As a an outspoken anti-semite, I could not work with a reverent jew."
Let's say for the sake of this example both parties are the same in efficiency. But, come due time one party starts to openly resent the other and demand they be fired from the company because they cannot work with [insert group here]. Now, I didn't say this was the anti-semite or the jew. It could be either, so let's not shut down here.
Group A says they cannot work with Group B, because Group B holds X idea. Group B can work with Group A, even though Group A holds Y idea.
Is management really right in, in this isolated fairy tale example, in firing Group B because Group A cannot work with them?
Let's reverse the roles in the Google fiasco. Let's say it was the detractors who were fired instead of Damore. Do you think this would have been unfair?
If so, why do you believe it's okay for the original situation to happen? I'm aware there are other variables, but this is what it boils down to.
As long as that person isn't constantly soliciting investment advice from me or asking me to front them loans, I don't think it's unreasonable for an adult to be expected to tolerate opinions that do not affect their work.
Hell, I've worked with co-workers who consider Jews illegitimate occupiers of their country, yet we still got along just fine by avoiding talking about politics in the break room.
Avoid talking about something controversial is deemed self censoring by a lot of people here in HN.
You might be a forgiving person, but that is a gift not a necessity, and better not assuming people would return the favor. For more controversial stuff I choose to only talk with my inner circle which I assume I knew them well enough. The author makes the memo public to ALL employees, most of them he wouldn't even know their names. That is his freedom, however he should expect there will be reactions to his piece from them. And it is not really his business or within anybody's control to decide what reaction is appropriate or over the top at that point. This is internet, where things escalate proportional to the speed of light.
My understanding is that is that the guy shared this memo among a small group of friends at work using an internal forum specifically designed for this kind of discussion. If that's true, I hardly think it's fair to hold him accountable for the reactions of Googlers he never shared the text with, let alone those of the world at large once someone else leaked the memo to the internet.
Zunger's response makes it clear that the promulgation of ideas in the memo are unacceptable, but is strangely silent on judging the actions of the hypothetical face-puncher.
And as we now know from Google, taking no action is tantamount to endorsing the opinions of those under you.