You are free to hold any belief you want, but once you’re in my ear with some misinformed ideas that are potentially hurtful to a large group I am free to tell you to be quiet or leave. Of course, it’s your right not to listen to me... but if I’m your boss you can expect to be fired.
Would you be okay with firing an LGBT person because they "made the workplace less comfortable" for some conservative employees?
I'm not saying anything false, but you can clearly see that this is not only a bad faith argument, but actually poisons the discussion, and still it can be argued that indeed we need to be wary about astroturfing and social network manipulations.
I wouldn't have fired Damore, but let's not kid ourselves by saying "we're simply stating facts". Mainly because that's not really the conversation, the tacit implication of "minorities who almost passed the bar", but letting them in anyway, is that the "bar" might be wrong, and that the company might be getting more results with this kind of hires than just measuring "mad hack skillz". Damore rightly points out that "without evidence this is just veiled (left) ideology" the point where he misses is that there has been at least attempts to get this evidence, we can discuss the results and even if they're valid (reproducibility crisis), but Damore just plain ignore's it. The only extension he has to offer about this point is: "[7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”" which is just bullshit by the account of anyone who knows the basics and history of marxism or social science. So these are not even "facts", but youtube tier analysis.
From what I recall in the memo, I'm pretty sure he never said that women were less effective at their tech jobs (fortunately, because there isn't any evidence remotely suggesting that !)
What he did is that, when Google asked for feedback on their mandatory diversity training, he challenged the prevailing view being taught in these classes about why less women get into tech than men (basically: not because of inherent lack of interest but because of societal pressure)
He pointed out that the latest science on "interesting in things vs people" disagrees, and he supported his argument with citations.
In a company that prides itself on making data-based decisions, starting a discussion in this way with a reasonable argument (even if later refuted) ideally shouldn't be a firing offense.
Now, was it politically, humanly, emotionally smart for him to say things in this way without consideration for their impact on coworkers ?
Of course not. But still, I can't help feeling somewhat sympathetic to someone with child-like naiveté who spoke the uncomfortable scientific truth (or at least, a very reasonable theory) that adults don't want to hear.
OK, but I don't think it's right. Here's why.
We as a society have said, employers can "discriminate" (meaning "choose") employees on some axes but not others. They can discriminate based on where you went to college, where you've worked previously, how friendly you seem to be, but not based on your gender or race. That's true even if working with a Black person or a woman would make some people uncomfortable.
The question, which I'll leave as a question, is, what's the difference between these two sets, and in which one does LGBTQ identity belong and why?
If you're going to solicit feedback and then fire someone because you don't like it - at least specify that it must be non-dissenting feedback. Be honest here about the dishonest game being played.
If a company can't handle honest, carefully researched and presented feedback - they shouldn't ask for it.
That would be one way to run a company, I guess. But I've never heard of one that actually works like that.
I think Demore's memo has little place in a company, but neither does the diversity program that spawned it. Better to keep politics out of the work place. But given the context, it was fully justified, regardless of its merits or lack thereof and I think the person who leaked it committed a real sin here, as did the company for firing him.
It's got nothing to do with men's or women's rights. I'm dismayed by that whole argument. Let the meritocracy rule and the chips fall where they may.
What I want to say is I don't care about left or right or the agendas of either. Focus on the product, the customers, and the fight. Alexander the Great never had a diversity program. I'm not going to say he was the pinnacle of morality here, but maybe it's a good idea to focus on the important things if you want to be successful.
If you want to be a reactionary, fine. But please own it.
1) Damore may have felt just as uncomfortable as his coworkers with what was being said, just in the opposite direction.
2) Damore, being a little spectrumy, attempted to derive an answer to a question about gender inequality in a cold and rational way, having no understanding that what he wrote would upset people. That's not the same as suggesting what he wrote is "correct." Correctness is irrelevant. As a person also on the spectrum, I can relate to this happening all.the.time. It's very difficult to understand what will upset people if you don't already have a mental rule about it. And rules are narrow.
Not just any group of people, naturally, but particular groups.
Politics necessarily makes certain groups uncomfortable. A discussion of wealth redistribution makes the rich incomfortable, should such things be impermissible? Politics enables certain groups to be favoured, and others to be disfavoured. This is a good reason to ban politics in general, but if you allow it, you need consistent rules regarding which sorts of views are permissible, rules that aren't themselves political.
It is impossible to have apolitical rules regulating which political discussions are allowed.
Hell, just banning political discussion - any political discussion - is a political act. It's always a political act.
How the hell do you expect to get anything done in a society if you presume that any hurtful idea is misinformed?
How can you seriously pretend that gendered differences in humans magically stop above the shoulders? You're denying realty. It's black and white.
You can bend over backwards and sweep rational arguments like Damore's under the rug, or you can accept that consistent inequality of outcome across the time and culture is very obviously indicative of at least some degree of intrinsic cognitive differences.
The idea that Google fired Damore for anything other than bad publicity is not supported by evidence. They asked him for feedback. He provided an intelligent and well researched document. They debated it. A social media mob got mad, and Google, being greedy cowards, fired Damore.
"James Damore was spurred to write the memo when a Google diversity program he attended solicited feedback."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...
To my knowledge this account has never been contested by Google or anyone else and is the agreed upon account. I agree it is possible that Damore is lying about why he wrote it, and that if Google said he wrote it under some different circumstances there would be ambiguity because Damore's own account could be self serving - but, just because it is possibly Damore is lying doesn't mean we should assume he is. There is no dispute about why he originally authored the memo, is there?
I never said it was the same individual though, I said it was Google. I think it's splitting hairs to take what I wrote "Google asked for feedback and fired him" read it as a claim that it's somehow the same individual firing him, and then try to dispute the unintended interpretation you just invented.
Regarding sharing it broadly being Damore's idea - true. He shared it first as feedback and then tried to develop the ideas further by sharing within the company. For opinions not verboten by Google, this is common at the company.
This does not mean that it was irrelevant he was asked. Google talked to Damore about diversity and asked for his opinions. He was working to provide it and fired by Google for it.
Your construction seems to imply that Damore was fired for sharing his diversity feedback more broadly. I don't think that's true. Damore wasn't fired or censured when he gave the original opinion and not when he shared internally. He was only fired when social media began brewing an outrage mob. The point is, it shows Damore wasn't doing anything objectively wrong. He wasn't punished until popular subjective opinion went against him. He wasn't fired for his opinion or for sharing it internally, he was fired because people were tweeting about it and Google lacks the intellectual and moral integrity to stand behind their people against mean tweets.
It's true that sharing opinions is a common activity. But that again elides key facts. A highly political document attacking company programs and company culture was not the sort of thing people normally pass around for discussion.
Your notion that Damore just, gosh golly, thought he was sharing some helpful feedback is hard to square with the content or with his subsequent behavior both before and after his firing. I think what fits better with the text and his behavior is that he was engaging in political activism, and was well aware that he was going to cause a stir.
I agree that it's possible Damore wouldn't have ended up being fired under a variety of circumstances. Maybe it's true that if it hadn't hit the press, he'd still be there. Although given that what made news was the level of internal upset it was causing, he could well have been fired anyhow. And regardless, any employee should know that, "Don't cause the company a giant PR problem" is a reasonable rule to follow. Indeed, that apparently is explicitly part of Google's orientation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23124750
Your objection is that saying "Google" did each of those things "hides relevant details". I disagree given that I've explicitly stated those details in this thread. Taking a single sentence and complaining it lacks details which are readily available in the wider context seems like splitting hairs.
Your point about "what fits better with Damore's text and behavior" may be your opinion. I don't share it though based on Damore's text clearly offering suggestions to improve diversity and different ways to think about it. To me, it seems much more likely Damore interpreted the Google diversity people as being honest actors and gave his honest feedback.
Your final point about how Damore should've known he would be fired is true, and I agree he should've realized Google is not an honest actor and doesn't want genuine feedback. That's kind of beside my broader point though, which is to highlight Google's lack of integrity in this instance. Damore was naive and trusted Google, he should've known not to. We agree there.
Setting that point aside, do you think if Damore was genuinely trying to give advice, and I know you don't think that, that he should've been fired for it?
But let's say you're right, that his very best effort to collaborate with his colleagues was a divisive attack on their politics. That his very best effort to collaborate involved sticking to his guns to the point it was causing a major internal problem, and then a notable external one. In which case, he's so uniquely bad at collaboration that I don't think they could do anything other than fire him.
But personally, I don't think Damore was almost uniquely incompetent.
I don't think you're being honest or fair here and don't see the benefit of continuing a conversation with you.
I'm being perfectly honest, and I'm doing my best to be fair. If you don't like that, well, I did my best.
Google correctly gave employees a lot of power to have internal discussions because they thought that would benefit them as a company. And the great bulk of people used that responsibly. Damore didn't and paid the price.
A lot of people here want to be the boss of their own start-up, which means they won't want their future (perhaps hypothetical) employees organising against them.
I'm a big believer in the principle of freedom of speech. It's sad that employees don't have freedom of speech in the workplace.