The dude literally let himself be paraded around by the alt-right and neo-nazi groups as a hero.
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Zero sympathy for this dirtbag. He's un-hireable because he deserves to be.
Future advice for Damore wannabees
When alt-right Twitter agrees with your world-views, you're doing something WRONG.
Unless i missed something, the guy never advocated violence or gender discrimination, or making anyone's life miserable. He expressed opinion on scientific explanation. You may find it very stupid, but what in your mind makes you think it's OK to destroy a man's life for his opinion, and then i suppose pretend to be someone with high moral grounds.
I don't know why he did that. People do stupid things all the time.
Centuries of gender discrimination, in a field that is very publicly plagued by it, in a world that is still broken with it, what was Damore thinking?
Everyone has the freedom to act, but no one has freedom from the consequences of the act.
No question that Damore made mistakes; most sane people would never have let an opinion like that touch paper during office hours, and google will hopefully review the terrible idea of having a 'controversial opinions' forum.
However, his mistake is the debate's gain - the response is clearly disproportionate on several levels. This is an opportunity to identify the people calling for his life to be destroyed and convince them that their definition of various -isms is calibrated a little too high. Or failing that, to try and get some moderates into positions of power rather than the hard left.
Did he leak the memo to the press to cause the outrage? No he didn't, so he is not responsible for the PR whirlwind created by it. Those who leaked the internal corporate communication are responsible and they should be fired.
edit: looks like thenayr updated his post a couple of times since my reply. When written only the first two lines were present.
(2) If you agree/disagree with Damore that's great. It's your right as a person to have opinions and no company can criticise you for that. What you can't do however is publicise these issues on any forum. It's simply not a topic that has any merit being discussed in a professional environment.
He wrote the memo in response to an event he attended where they asked for feedback. Are you saying that you can't provide feedback on a topic that a talk is about if you come to the "wrong" conclusion? I've attended diversity events and have seen opinions expressed in the open, to executives even, that were far less progressive than Damore's interpretation. I think this is just a coastal thing, having topics like diversity be verboten seems silly if we are also having meetings about, setting up programs for, and shifting our non-tech->tech career plotting to favor diverse candidates.
Just don't discuss it at work. It's called professionalism.
Even after attending a work event on that very topic, which specifically asked for feedback and further discussion?
Or should discussion be restricted to only one viewpoint?
But then the dude appeared on Mike Cernovich's show and was all over r/the_donald and I was like, "oh this is who this guy is." I hate to judge someone by the company they keep but this guy's company was particularly bad (imo).
What's truly sad about this is that he is the first I've heard of to propose actually fair measures we could take to promote gender diversity in IT, such as using more socially involved methods such as pair programming. Instead we get positive discrimination.
This depiction by tech crunch is an insult to reporting, if you read/listen to the primary source, there is no hate, no sexism, no racism, he just saw unfair stuff and spoke out about it.
The memo was as polite scientificly-backed and clearly written as it was reasonably possible without turning it into an academic publication. The only mistake he made (while at Google; I was really surprised by the on-line crowd that he found itself with after being ejected from his workplace) was not realizing that he's not dealing with a rational audience, in Google or elsewhere.
Mike Cernovich is the same way. He's looking to push a narrative to further his own agenda. An agenda and narrative I find gross and offensive. So he thinks Damore fits into that narrative. That is a not so subtle hint to me that Damore is saying something gross and offensive.
It's not the best way of judging things for sure but I don't think it served me poorly here.
This is literally the way we (as humans) are built to test veracity. Only in a few cases does this litmus test fail.
It's a good test, just like "follow the money". It can be abused (joe jobs, false flags), but works a vast majority of the time.
When the memo came out, the Guardian reported that news outlets contacted him and Damore went with anti-feminist youtubers for a more friendly reception. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/09/james-dam...
> Damore went with anti-feminist youtubers for a more friendly reception
Maybe understandable, but disappointing.
I got the impression that he accepted those interviews because they were the only ones that would be conducted fairly. Especially considering he was subjected to at least one hostile and unfair interview.
We can't have a world where you can destroy somebody by endorsing them. This turns every undesirable into a perfect hitman.
An exact opposite bias doesn't cancel out into fairness.
So even if the consequences of not avoiding that landmine are awful, I'm not sure it's fair to castigate him for that.
(N.B.: I haven't looked carefully into how he handled that affair, so my comment might be misinformed.)
Da'More must have completed at least course work and research required for master's, however, and Harvard gave him master's instead.
After, he changed it to "Harvard University / Master of Science - MS, Systems Biology / 2011-2013".
The fact that his old profile said PhD, in place of the MS degree he actually had, does look to me like falsely indicating that he had a PhD.
http://www.businessinsider.com/james-damore-removes-phd-stud...
I guess most folks don't take Linkedin seriously -- my LinkedIn profile there is also outdated. When I dropped out of college to work a few years in industry, I indicated years I attended, relevant course works, and matriculation status in my resume, but, LinkedIn is just a social networking site for business -- and only recently it's transformed into a job search site. IMO, it's a stretch to say Damore's LinkedIn page was intended to mislead potential employer or the public.
I've seen the LinkedIn with my own eyes, but if you prefer to trust media sources: https://www.wired.com/story/james-damore-google-memo-harvard... http://www.businessinsider.com/james-damore-removes-phd-stud...
Stop with the false dilemma; it's not an either/or choice between acceptable skills and acceptable behavior.
He didn't want to make a statement, he wanted to get to the bottom of what he was wondering about on the internal discussion forum. He also has autism, maybr he was trying to learn or check if his observations are true or not.
Then, the media spun this story as to why he's such a sexist without even specifically saying why or trying to debunk his observations, with, you know, arguments or studies.
He isn't a writer, he doesn't know how to perfectly write something that is divisive without offending anyone. He didn't work on the memo for months to check that his language is perfect and represents everything exactly the way he views it.
His memo could have been a good start to find gender biases in tech and actually improve them instead of ostrachzing people outright who dare to talk about the issue.
Explain how this is James' fault.
> When alt-right Twitter agrees with your world-views, you're doing something WRONG.
Alt-right Twitter agrees that murder is wrong, the national debt is concerning, and that sexual assault is supremely immoral. What does that make you, if you define yourself by disagreement with them? It is not James Damore's job to disavow all the people you disagree with on other matters, no matter how legitimate your disagreement.
Alt-right Twitter seems to believe that murders were only committed by Hillary Clinton's death squads, and that random violence in America's big cities doesn't exist (until two seconds later when apparently people are so terrified of violence in America's big cities that we need all sorts of invasions on civil liberties so people can walk outside ever).
The national debt is a good thing, and if you oppose it for the reasons alt-right Twitter does (it has the name "debt" in it, and debt is bad, right?), that's a sign of a pretty flawed world-view.
Alt-right Twitter thinks sexual assault is so immoral that cultures that are successfully calling it out and reforming are bad cultures, and cultures that are ignoring it and electing people who deny credible claims are good cultures. It just so happens that the first group of cultures are left-leaning and the second are right-leaning - what a coincidence!
If those are your three examples, I am absolutely happy to define myself by disagreement with all of them.