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No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. He broke clear company rules and made the working environment hostile for others. That's not acceptable over here the same was as it's not in the US. However, had he written this out on a personal blog, or just has an adult conversation with HR I believe he'd had been safe on both sides of the pond.

People don't just get fired for not doing their jobs. If I bully a co-worker or start stating at work that I think someone is less capable for any reason linked to their biology, religion, sexuality or age I will be putting my job at risk. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's worked in a professional environment for any amount of time (or heck, even a fresh graduate who bothered to read the company handbook!).

Citation for rules and hostility?

> No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well.

That's an extremely strong claim that does not match my experience and will highly depend on the company, which country in Europe, etc. For instance I've seen explicitly sexist things happening in French companies, and have had many more related to me by friends and family. My mother works for a large European oil company, and has witnessed execs telling women in meetings to shut up and go back to being secretaries. None of these examples resulted in firing.

And honestly, while Europe is indeed socialist in many ways policy wise, in many places it is far from as progressive as the coastal US. I'd much rather be LGBTQ in San Francisco or New York than Paris or Barcelona. Hell, I have several European female coworkers who have explicitly told me that they do not intend on ever working there ever again because the culture is significantly more sexist than SF/LA/Seattle/NYC.

But again, Europe is big. Paris or Madrid are much more hostile than Berlin or Stockholm in these ways.

> If I bully a co-worker or start stating at work that I think someone is less capable for any reason linked to their biology, religion, sexuality or age I will be putting my job at risk.

He didn't really say women were less capable, though (biologically or otherwise).

He said that there are differences not related to capability, and that the current environment in tech is such that the work environment is more acceptable to people on the "male" side of those differences, which makes capable women less likely to go into or stay in tech. To increase diversity he suggested that we need to make the tech environment more friendly to women.

For example, he said that men on average are more competitive, and women more cooperative, and that women tend to value work-life balance more then men, and men tend to value status more. There's a fair bit of scientific literature supporting those claims. (To what extent these differences are biological rather than learned is less clear--but does it actually matter?)

Currently tech tends to favor competitive status seekers who will make their career the focus of their life (especially for management and leadership positions). Cooperative people who want a good work-life balance get left behind. He suggested Google move toward more pair programming and other cooperative ways of doing things, and make it so that it is easier for employees to balance their outside life with work. That should get more women coming into tech and increase the retention rate.

It is worth reading the actual memo if you have not. A very large amount of the discussion of it has been based on what people imagined it said, not what it actually said.

>He didn't really say women were less capable, though (biologically or otherwise).

Did you read the memo?

>>I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.

That says nothing about the abilities of his female coworkers who are already working at Google and who are already in the minority there.

He's saying that going full steam ahead trying anything and everything to get to 50/50 may be impossible without lowering the bar for women which is bad for everyone.

So which is it then? You're going from "He didn't say that about women" to "He said that about women but he didn't mean that about his women coworkers" - i.e. no true scotsman.

Even so, Damore did not specifically say that about "non-coworker women", he said it about women.

One is the distribution of the entire population, the other is a tiny and non representative sample. Take a probability class if that is hard for you to understand.

If :

A) For every woman in the general population who is qualified and wants to work at Google, there are two men (for whatever reasons)

B) the observed ratio at Google is two men per woman

Then, together, A and B are consistent with a belief that the women that currently work at Google are just as qualified and interested as the men.

That quote doesn't support the statement "women are less capable", since it refers to 'distribution of abilities'; whereas 'less capable' would usually be interpreted as a statement about averages.

> So firing him for stating his opinion

Do you think it's possible for his stating of his opinion to have side effects like creating a toxic work environment, which would be the antithesis of doing his job well?

Google is a toxic work environment. He was fired for pointing that out.

Downvoted but true, look at direct physical threats to Damore in the lawsuit by people Google still employs. Yet he got fired for violating code of conduct...are threats not violations? It's a double standard, if you threaten people deemed conservative there are no repercussions, even though I consider that far more hostile than a doc.

And the “blacklists” maintained by Google managers and spread to other employers - that practice was found to be illegal in the U.K. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36242312

In reading the original article, I think this quote is the opening:

> Because companies have a duty to comply with equal employment laws and an interest in promoting diversity, “employers must be permitted to ‘nip in the bud’ the kinds of employee conduct that could lead to a ‘hostile workplace,’ rather than waiting until an actionable hostile workplace has been created before taking action," Sophir wrote.

If that is the case, the employees who create and talk about these blacklists - which appear to be well-documented according to HR - may be creating an ongoing hostile work environment long before this memo existed, which demonstrates Damore's point.

It says that the employee who made the threat was reprimanded:

>... email read, in relevant part: “You’re a misogynist and a terrible human. I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. F[*] you.” The employee was issued a final warning for sending this email.

http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391 (pdf)

This is not unique to Google. If you don't "vibe" with your company's culture, you are more likely to become a scapegoat. The outsiders leave or get fired, keeping the culture pure (people get fired for lack of culture fit). This mentality is indeed toxic, but the bottom line of any company benefits from harmony between all of the employees.

This mentality is indeed toxic, but the bottom line of any company benefits from harmony between all of the employees.

Not to excuse anything that's actually toxic, mind, but I think it's more subtle than that. Why is Google so inept at social media? Why are they so often blindsided by attention from regulators and tax authorities? Why Google Glass and the glassholes? Because in the pursuit of this harmony they have a limited kind of diversity based on race and gender, but they're all 20-something graduates of the same handful of universities - there's no diversity whatsoever on age or class axes. So things that are completely obvious to outsiders, they are organisationally incapable of understanding. Trapped in a local minima and unable to climb out.

Yet been the top place to work six years in a row. Nobody else done it even two years in a row. How can they be both?

http://fortune.com/best-companies/google/ Google: #1 on 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2017 | Fortune

> How can they be both?

Best place to work if you fit the culture. Toxic environment if you don't.

    This page isn’t working
    fortune.com redirected you too many times.
    Try clearing your cookies.

http://fortune.com/best-companies/list/filtered?searchByName...

"No results found"

This year is 2018, and Salesforce is #1. I don't see Google.

'Top places to work' contests are internal marketing competitions.

You know they buy these awards right? Usually with ad sales.

An environment in which you can be fired for having expressed scientific views which- while debatable- are certainly not fringe seems pretty toxic. Maybe only for those who don't fit in, but still..

You should not be put in prison for writing what you think - I think any company should be able to fire people for publicly making statements which are antithetical to the company's values.

This was _not_ public. It was internal for Google employees. It was made public by someone who disagreed and resorted to publicly sharing the memo.

The fact that Google has not addressed this is a more damning condemnation of their culture than anything else.

Oh wow. Yeah, the person who leaked the internal email should have been fired. That's crazy. I feel for Damore.

I believe employers have a right to fire employees for speech. But as we see industry power condense to a few megacorps, ones that play gatekeeper to information access, we should look at why we value freedom of speech at the national level and be more open minded about freedom of speech and political expression in other contexts. I don't buy the cliche "it's not freedom from consequences" argument (government couldn't say jail is just a consequences, so freedom of speech does imply no consequences within its context) and I don't buy this "we can't tolerate intolerance" argument either, as there seems to be an increasingly narrow point of views that at least some people won't label intolerant (or more common, smear by association by implying your views are associated with intolerant ones)

I think google is responsible for encouraging an employee to voice opinions and then fire the employee for saying 'the wrong thing'.

I also believe all the google employees that physically threatened damore should receive jail time, and those that verbally did so to get the can.

You are very very wrong. In most of Europe (including here in France with their famously rigid labor code) you can be terminated for pretty much anything as well, with a few exceptions. In many cases the employer doesn't even need to justify the firing. The only difference is that in some countries they may have more paperwork with it than in others and that you may get severance or some other benefits in certain situations.

Moreover, what Damore got fired for would be very likely qualified as a gross misconduct here. He was advocating stuff that would go straight against the anti-discrimination laws which are standard Europa-wide. It could be perhaps qualified even as incitement to hate or discrimination against certain groups of population which is actually a crime - typically used to prosecute racism, antisemitism, hate speech against LGBT groups, etc. but not only.

Hate speech laws are MUCH stricter in Europe than in the US, lots of the stuff that is fair game in the US is routinely prosecuted here. And committing a crime (you don't even need to be convicted yet, being indicted is often sufficient) is a valid reason for termination pretty much anywhere in Europe.

From: http://www.eurojuris.net/en/node/41566

"Employment at will does not exist in France. So, you may only dismiss an employee for specific reasons. The specific reasons must be recognized by French Law or French case law.

Employment at will does not exist in France. So, you may only dismiss an employee for specific reasons. The specific reasons must be recognized by French Law or French case law.

If the dismissal is challenged by an employee, the company will have to prove that dismissal was based on "genuine and substantive grounds".

Also, employers need to be careful about applicable dismissal procedures."

See also the sections POSSIBLE GROUNDS FOR DISMISSAL and DISMISSAL BASED ON PERSONAL REASONS. Of course, it is still possible for companies to get rid of unwanted employees, they just have to be smart about it. Common methods include assigning only menial tasks to employees or setting up inconvenient work schedules so that they leave voluntarily. Or reorganizing departments so that they become redundant. But outright firing people for no justification is not possible.

Committing, or being indicted of, committing crime is generally not enough for terminating an employee either. For example, speeding is a crime but not grounds for dismissal.

The firing was over his methods (and the adverse impact they directly had on the broader organization), not his opinions.

As far as I know his methods were to post his document to an internal mailing list specifically for feedback on potentially controversial topics[1]. This seems a "by the book" method (although I am surprised such a mailing list exists).

Someone ELSE then disseminated it more widely (Internally and externally).

[1] I cannot find any citations on this right now though, google-fu appears to be failing me.

Accompanied by all sorts of inflammatory dialogue and generally aggravating behavior.

It's worth keeping in mind that Europe certainly isn't one place when it comes to labour regulations. Some places you barely fire people at all (prevalent in the South, apparently getting reformed in France) and in some places it is significantly easier (several countries in the North), if not quite at will. The "easiness" generally has to do with the burden attached to showing insufficient performance.

Indeed, the laws are different. But in this case it doesn't matter much because the example is extreme.

Even if the employer could show that the manifesto caused a toxic work environment (hard), and that that was also Demore's intent (even harder), the employer would also need to show that they had tried to resolve the situation with other means. For example, by asking Demore not to publish similar manifestos in the future. Had he then refused to comply, their case would have been stronger.

Not even the examples I gave -- a cock not able to boil eggs, a train conductor always oversleeping or an active member of a Nazi party -- are completely clear cut in all countries. And Damore's manifesto is very, very far from it.

That's the point. Under some of the more liberal legislations in eg. Denmark, you can fire people for "cooperation difficulties". The bar is higher than at-will, but it's not very difficult to meet. The employer just have to show that it has tried and failed to remedy the "difficulties" first (so you can't just fire people the next day). It's unclear that the statements found to constitute sexual discrimination could reasonably be meaningfully "remediated" (especially if the employer isn't in fact committed to it, it just have to show that it tried).

The employer must be able to document that the termination is due to cooperation difficulties. Google didn't provide any such documentation. Hence terminating Damore for the manifesto would have been illegal in Denmark. That's the point -- Damore's dismissal was so obviously unfair that it wouldn't have been allowed in any Western European country.

That's just a detail. Google didn't hire or fire Damore in Denmark, so obviously they didn't bother to follow Danish law. My point is that Google could most likely fairly easily have argued that the memo caused insurmountable cooperation difficulties and terminated him on that basis.

The exact steps, the time taken and the phrasing of the arguments would have been different, but the substance (he got fired for the memo) would have been the same.

You are wrong. Read the link here: https://gettingthedealthrough.com/area/18/jurisdiction/52/la...

"Similarly, ‘conduct of the employee’ means that dismissals based on sickness absence, underperformance, etc, will usually be considered reasonably justified. In most cases, however, it will be a requirement that one or more written warnings have been given before the dismissal to allow the employee to remedy the situation and thus avoid dismissal."

Google didn't issue one or more written warnings. The dismissal would therefore have been judged unjustified.

No, they didn't issue warnings because they didn't have to. If they did have to, they would have issued a warning, then found that no action he might take could have remedied the situation (the things in the memo that were considered harassment can't meaningfully be taken back), and then he would have been fired.

How open of discussion should be allowed? Certainly in an open environment the CEO's actions should be criticizable. But what about issuing a death threat to the CEO? Should that also be allowed because they're attempting to foster an open discussion environment?

“But Google cultivated an environment were open discussion were encouraged.”

“People should get fired for not doing their jobs”

When you’re hired to write code all day and instead are writing a long sexist rambling memo at work during work hours and posting it to a work forum, you’re not doing your job.

The memo was written as part of a company training event. Damore attended a training and then wrote a response when asked for feedback. Very much doing his job.

I don’t see how circulating his feedback with coworkers about some training event was part of his job.