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Comment by ejlangev | Hacker News Reader

> "When I first circulated the document about a month ago to our diversity groups and individuals at Google, there was no outcry or charge of misogyny."

Kind of meaningless though, could be he only sent it to people who agreed with him or who were men.

"Goolag" shirt is pretty on the nose, I guess true hardship in Silicon Valley is losing your well paid tech job for... another well paid tech job?

It's funny that he refuses to admit any fault in what he said even in a limited way when ideological rigidity and refusing to entertain other people's ideas in good faith is exactly what he's complaining about in others. Doesn't seem like this experience has resulted in him rethinking much of anything. Suppose it's true that whatever you accuse the other side of is exactly what you actually do.

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> It's funny that he refuses to admit any fault in what he said

Fault as in he regrets it?, or would have done it differently another time? If his goal was to get people to discuss this topic, how could he have done much better?

> ideological rigidity and refusing to entertain other people's ideas in good faith is exactly what he's complaining about

I don't think you can fault him for the rigidity or not entertain other people's ideas. It wasn't perfect or even great in either direction, but it surely made more effort than the many internet discussions, which we don't find fault with.

> it surely made more effort than the many internet discussions, which we don't find fault with.

I wouldn't say he made significantly more effort, and people certainly (and correctly IMO) find fault with them.

> Fault as in he regrets it?

I don't think he should regret publishing it, but I also don't think it led to much productive discussion about the issues here. People on both sides just chose to ignore and distort what other people said.

I don't think it's fair to say he made a good faith attempt to engage with the other side's position and fit it into the context of his beliefs. Instead he just presented his ideas and I don't think that does much on its own to advance the discussion. Predictably led to both sides digging in rather than finding some common ground.

To be frank, after all this, I wonder what tech company would want to hire him and the baggage that entails. I'm not saying he's wrong or right but he now brings with him a lot of unwanted attention. More than anything else, he was fired for bringing unwanted attention to Google. If the media never caught on or fan the firestorm that resulted, I'm not sure if he would have lost his job. I think he recognized as much even in the WSJ article.

Then again, maybe some daredevil startup could find a way to exploit his fame.

Gab founder has already offered him a job

What should he apologize for?

"I'm sorry for telling the truth."?

He doesn't have a monopoly on truth, that sort of presupposes that he was completely right and handled the situation perfectly. Perhaps he'll feel differently when the dust settles as another commenter suggested.

Again, what should he apologize for?

You seem to really want him to repent for something. What is it?

How about for the things in his memo that were not truth? Sure, there's a bit of truth in it. There's much more that's debatable at best, and some that's pretty clearly false. How about for the totally off-topic nastiness toward the left, and diversity advocates, and others? Even in a memo about the driest of technical minutiae, comments like "honest discussion is being silenced" and "X tends to deny science" (with not even an attempt at proof on either point) would be worthy of censure. The memo was clearly written in a style more likely to escalate conflict than to create any positive outcome, so the reaction when Damore or one of his cronies leaked it beyond its supposed original distribution was entirely predictable. If you do something that simple diligence and common sense say would lead to a massive productivity-destroying flame war, you have something to apologize for.

> "honest discussion is being silenced"

I'm pretty sure that being fired - having pitchfork crowds go after you and people who agree - is close enough to being silenced.

The memo was written before that, and one extreme case does not prove a general trend. If one person is ejected from a concert or rally or trial for being disruptive, does that prove there's a general conspiracy against people with the same beliefs?

He handled the situation poorly IMO. Didn't consider the consequences of what he was saying true or not and didn't present it in an appropriate way for how sensitive the issue was. Ultimately that's a self defeating way to get your points across.

Showing up to a photo shoot in a Goolag shirt also just undermines him as a person. It's totally hyperbolic and ridiculous and will further discredit him in other people's minds because it's an insane overreaction to make that comparison.

"Telling the truth" <- that's the problem, you've just made the jump to a conclusion: he's 100% right, and everyone saying he might be wrong is just an angry liberal who doesn't want to accept reality.

Maybe there's way too much socially driven discrimination right now to jump to conclusions about him being "right"?

What would be the fault in what he wrote? Can you provide some examples?

We should cut him some slack. Let the dust settle and he might reconsider the situation. Right now he's probably in defensive mode due to the backlash this whole situation created.

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