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Comment by adventskalender | Hacker News Reader

I consider this and the other article by the international relations guy to be very one-sided accounts.

A couple of people are unhappy, out of a workforce of 100000. So what?

It also mostly seems to be political reasons. I would imagine a lot of people working for Google just want to do a good job for a good salary, not make Google a vehicle for their political opinions.

I think people pushing their political agenda within a company tend to harm the company and it should therefore be ok to fire them.

That said, I haven't wanted to work for Google for years. But I am from the opposite side from these veterans. I felt it was very unjust when James Damore was fired, and I really don't want to work at a place that distrusts its workers so much that it forces them to go through diversity trainings and things like that. I would feel "unsafe" at Google.

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> I really don't want to work at a place that distrusts its workers so much that it forces them to go through diversity trainings and things like that.

So for the sake of argument, if you worked at a company where one of your colleagues was being overtly racist and made another employee uncomfortable, you as a third party would feel "unsafe" by the diversity training that this person would be required to attend (likely not even only for ethical or corporate reasons, but likely also legal)?

If somebody was being overtly racist, I would not feel better knowing that they've then been put through diversity training.

Why? Because I don't think it likely that diversity training would convince the racist to stop being a racist. It may teach the racist to conceal his racism, which from the corporation's perspective might well be good enough, but a crypto-racist is still a racist and would still make me feel uncomfortable.

Or to put this another way, how many sessions of diversity training would you need to put James Damore through before the women of google felt comfortable working with him?

Nobody puts anyone in diversity training to change their mind. It's a way of explaining very thoroughly how you are expected to act in the workplace, and if you choose to ignore it, there is a good foundation to let you go because you were very clearly informed of the rules.

That's a completely different way to frame it. "Here is a course on how to avoid the legal pitfalls in the workplace" is something I might be able to accept.

Indoctrinating people on why they should behave in a certain way is a different matter. And again, the insult of assuming employees are in need of such training.

> "Here is a course on how to avoid the legal pitfalls in the workplace" is something I might be able to accept.

That is the yearly manager training class. Even if you were only managing an intern, you had to take it every year.

I think that's my point. It's not about making people no longer be racists, it's about making them not overtly express their racism. Which from the perspective of the corporation is great because it reduces their liability. But from the perspective of a worker who feels unsafe because they know their coworker is a racist, knowing that coworker has been put through diversity training and now knows better than to overtly express their racism seems like little consolation.

It may even make the situation worse for the racist's [present and future] coworkers since now they have a wolf in sheep's clothing situation to contend with.

Everyone is forced to go through diversity training, not just problematic people.

This depends on multiple factors, and even when it's true I don't see the issue in trying to avoid these issues before conflicts happen.

I think forcing them to attend "diversity training" would be very likely to turn them into a more hateful person. That's what force tends to do.

If your argument is that the best way to handle racists is to never challenge their views, I think we can just agree to disagree on that.

I said "forced diversity training" is not the right way to go about it.

I don't claim to have a recipe for converting racists. Maybe a good start would be not to hire them in the first place?

How would you legally filter for that in an interview?

Bad culture fit

Punishing people I feel is bad, doing wrong and evil give me a very nice feeling. It not just me, research into that topic has shown that dopamine production get a boost like few other things when we justifiable punish someone or see someone else justifiable punish someone.

However, seeing someone being unjustifiable punished makes most of us to feel empathy and sharing their pain. It make us feel scared, activate flight and fly reflexes, anger and a lot of regions in the brain associated with strong emotions.

So for the sake of argument, the best would be if only the first case occur in the work place. If everyone share the same definition of good and bad, wrong and rights, racism, sexism, classism, and *ism. We could achieve this single mind if everyone has the same age, share the same cultural background, have the same religion, with a large dose of kinship. That way the first case can be almost guarantied with minimum risk of the second case.

There are no legal requirements to make racist people attend "diversity training", that's not even defined in law.

Companies that have problematic employees solve that with management intervention or firings. Click-through or HR driven powerpoint fests have nothing to do with it.

But this attitude is telling. The vast majority of people are not racist. Actually in my own experience I never encountered someone being racist against blacks or other minorities in the workplace: only white people (e.g. by refusing to hire them into positions). Why is a company wasting time on mandatory training for everyone to rectify nearly non-existent problems?

I used to work at Google and back then it wasn't so big into this idpol stuff. Based on what I've read but also heard from the dwindling number of friends who haven't left yet (now down to only two), I would never return. I agree I'd feel unsafe in that environment, partly because idpol ridden workplaces tend to abuse terms like "racism" to mean anyone who isn't loudly and visibly loyal to idpol ideology ... people like Damore. And I don't think you can be loyal to an ideology and still maintain your self respect.

>I think people pushing their political agenda within a company tend to harm the company and it should therefore be ok to fire them.

>That said, I haven't wanted to work for Google for years. But I am from the opposite side from these veterans.

>I felt it was very unjust when James Damore was fired

Well, it can be argued that he was fired for similar reasons.. Are you saying that it's okay depending on which 'side' (a whole other story) someone is on?

I didn't follow it too closely, but the whole Damore thing seemed like it was more of a reaction to the increasingly political nature of the company.

Neither did I, just pointing out that someone's POV might colour what they perceive as justified vs not.

"Well, it can be argued that he was fired for similar reasons.. Are you saying that it's okay depending on which 'side' (a whole other story) someone is on? "

Good point. I guess what feels particularly unfair to me is that (afaik) Damore published his paper on an internal board, after having been encouraged to state his opinions in a diversity training session. He didn't start out accusing Google publicly. Also, another bit that feels unfair to me is the interpretation of his memo as "hateful".

Other than that - I personally think companies should be allowed to fire whoever they want. Them firing Damore (among other things) just makes them a company I don't want to work for.

Did you know that Damor filed a complaint with the National Labor Board?

“ ... an internal NLRB memo found that his firing was legal. The memo, which was not released publicly until February 2018, said that while the law shielded him from being fired solely for criticizing Google, it did not protect discriminatory statements, that his memo's "statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected", and that these "discriminatory statements", not his criticisms of Google, were the reason for his firing.“

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_...

I know he sued Google, not details, though.

This statement by the NBL just proves to me that the NBL is a batshit crazy untrustworthy institution. (Add the NBL to the list of places I wouldn't want to work for...).

I guess that is just the modern world, people have so different views (perspectives) that no reconciliation seems possible.

In any case, no need to discuss the Damore memo again, I just wanted to point out that there are different sides, and these recent articles seem to represent only one side.

What in particular about the statement do you see as batshit crazy?

FYI I erred - it’s the NLRB not the NLB - my bad.

"statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected"

I actually read the memo by Damore.

But OK, "batshit crazy" goes more for the "movement" as a whole. This is just crazy. Or maybe just legal weirdness?

> I would feel "unsafe" at Google.

What would make you feel unsafe? It seems like you're suggesting the answer is diversity trainings. What about them would make you feel that way?

Some people would argue that James Damore was fired precisely because he chose to make Google workplace discussions "a vehicle for [his] political opinions". I don't think you can avoid "politics" of some sort in the workplace, no matter how hard you try. Are you "harming" the company by trying to advocate for improvements in workplace conditions? It depends on who you ask.

He didn't, though - he published his memo in an internal discussion group (after being encouraged to think about solutions in a diversity training session), and it was published widely without his consent, making him a worldwide outcast. IIRC - it's been a while.

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