Reuters Data Scientist: The post that led to my termination | Hacker News Reader

Reuters Data Scientist: The post that led to my termination

kriegman.substack.com

49 pointsg42gregory26 comments

Arguing with BLM stats is like arguing whether Mary was virgin - it’s a matter of religion not science. Would you expect 16th century religious Spaniard argue with you intricacy of Bible? No, he will just drug you to inquisition and let them deal with you. The same here - BLM/DEI crowd would want you gone and HR will oblige.

Courage today is removing a 3.5mm jack plug socket, not reasoned discussion with accompanying evidence to back up assertions.

FWIW, I would never discuss anything remotely politicisable on work systems. Vi vs emacs and branching model debates are enough to remind me how vitriolic people can be.

How about monorepo vs multirepo

> I would never discuss anything remotely politicisable on work systems

Seriously, what is with this trend? Why would anyone care so much about the opinions of the people in the massive corporation they work for? You're there to work – anything else is going to introduce an unnecessary variable.

For this guy in particular, you'd think that at some point whilst writing his 10k+ word screed, he might think "gee, this looks an awful lot like what that Damore guy wrote." In fact, it requires so much naiveté to think that a rage hungry mob of employees he's never met would not immediately dub this a "manifesto," that one must assume that his goal was to start this controversy. Otherwise, why post it? There are plenty of public forums where he could share his views and get the same reaction without also being fired.

Although I likely agree with much of what he wrote (I'm not reading all that), I have no sympathy for anyone who displays such a lack of judgement.

Perhaps the better question is why this internal forum exists at all. It used to be that everyone knew you don't talk politics at the workplace. Now that it's becoming more normalized (with a hefty selection bias for the orthodoxy), people think everyone gives a shit about their opinions. News flash: they don't. Those who pretend to care are only interested because they want to get angry as a form of self-validation of their moral superiority complex. The only way to defeat the mob is to starve them of attention. Eventually they'll hyperventilate on the fumes of their own bullshit, the pendulum will swing back, and we can all move on.

In other words, don't feed the trolls.

>In other words, don't feed the trolls.

I think you missed out on "silence is violence". It's not good enough for the author to keep his mouth shut and his head down. No, he must stand up and repeat what everyone else is repeating or face the same consequences as posting a "10k+ word screed."

If you're going to go down anyway, might as well go down with a bang.

It’s certainly a great way to bootstrap a substack, I’ll give him that.

Imagine you had a belief system you wanted to impose on the country, and you had persuaded the vast majority of the management of the Fortune 500 to fire anyone who disagreed with you.

Would you expect your powers to magically dissipate because some people were trying their best to ignore you?

I don't much courage in the promulgation of such half-cocked reasoning as in the OP's unfortunate (and unfortunately long-winded) missive.

"don't see much"

It may be true that politics have permeated the workplace such that in certain industries and circles it has become important to signal your support for the popular movements of the day for basic job security.

To the extent it is innappropriate, it is equally innappropriate is for the workplace to become the venue for those who hold less popular ideas to tilt at political windmills of their choice, even if they do work at a news company.

> it has become important to signal your support for the popular movements of the day for basic job security.

Since (we are told) America and all her institutions, private and public, are systemically racist and white supremacist, that means it's important to signal your support for white nationalism, right? And that gets you job security, and certainly not the opposite.

All this post is really saying is that "shoot first, ask questions later" policing affects whites no less than blacks, controlling for relevant factors. But it's quite plausible that the detrimental effects of this style of policing (euphemistically referred to as "proactive" within OP's post) are nonetheless most relevant to Blacks and Black communities due to the aforementioned factors. So "Black Lives Matter" as a shorthand for the movement towards more sensible policing seems like a reasonable claim, even though whites would also benefit from being shot at less.

The claims of BLM and allied activists are not so measured and reasonable as the shorthand you propose:

> At BLM protests, and from BLM proponents, we have since heard that “it’s open season” for police to kill black people, and that police are “hunting” black people. According to the BLM website itself, “Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise” by “state-sanctioned violence against Black people''.

> "Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise" by "state-sanctioned violence against Black people".

This is not an unfair characterization, especially if you expand the scope of "state-sanctioned violence" against Black communities beyond the matter of policing to encompass the criminal justice system as a whole. The whole ideology of "tough on crime", notably favored and pushed by the current POTUS and VPOTUS alike, has been among their most dismal failures in living memory. Sad!

the craziest thing about this whole saga is that a skilled politician might have been able to nip this in the bud and improve america by guiding people on both sides to a solution that works for both.

The cops are not systematically murdering blacks, BUT this does not mean that there are not significant problems with the policing system that can be worked on. I think both sides would be able to accept that huge benefits could be reaped from police reform such as better training, better support for non-police based interventins etc. stuff that has been shown to work elsewhere. some of it might work in the USA and some might not, but BLM should appreciate that something would be being done and the cops should appreciate that they are getting extra support and aren't getting blamed for something they aren't doing.

maybe I am naive. I am not an expert here; in fact I am Australian so I don't even have first hand knowledge, but the solution looks worth a try from the outside, just needs the right leadership and commitment.

"skilled politician might have been able to nip this in the bud and improve america"

This entire narrative is (re)manufactured to drag targetted electorate to the polls; expect black lives to matter again in 2024 and possibly this year depending on how desperate the midterms get.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=b...

That Reuters Data Scientist's error was thinking this has something to do with data. You speak heresy, you burn at the stake.

'significant problems with the policing system that can be worked on.'

You are naive if you believe government unaccountability is something that can be 'worked on'. The police violence is allowed due to government immunity, which USSC created out of thin air. It's not realistically going to be able to be incrementally fixed.

I think you're taking a definition of 'worked on' that I did not intend. I meant it in a general sense intending to include large or disruptive changes where necessary.

While I'm open to discussion that things just might more complicated than the standard narrative (basically: "disproportionate shootings of unarmed blacks versus those of whites is explained entirely by racial bias on the part of the police") -- this guy's line of thinking veers straight off into the deep end of spurious, unchecked reasoning. For example:

While it may be difficult to pin down an exact number, what’s clear is that thousands of black people have been murdered as a result of BLM’s falsehoods villainizing the police, and the resultant anti-police sentiment that makes police even more wary of confronting criminal suspects

The thing is, even you want to lend 100 percent credence to the so-called Minneapolis Effect (and not everyone does) -- this isn't what it says. Cassell's argument was based solely on the diversion of police resources, period. It did not attribute the 2021 homicide spike to "BLM falsehoods", "villainization of police", or "anti-police sentiment".

It's just spurious and off-kilter what he's saying (in addition to being inflammatory). On that point, and in a whole bunch of other places in his screed (which I'd rather not dissect right now).

Not that that explains his firing, though. The reason for that is pretty clear:

Receiving no support from HR, I raised the issue with my colleagues and senior leadership over email, for which I was fired.

That is, for expressly violating HR's request not to discuss this (alleged) harassment over company communication channels.

Yes, the author could have presented his core data analysis as is or framed it in a way that would encourage discussion instead of provoke reaction. Even the title at the top “BLM Spreads Falsehoods That Have Led to the Murders of Thousands of Black People in the Most Disadvantaged Communities” would rub many the wrong way and disincline them from processing the remainder of the article.

It’s similar to presenting technical ideas at work: You can have the best idea ever from a technical standpoint, but if you present it poorly and turn off other people in the process your idea will probably be ignored.

Yup. My initial reaction was "Has he posted a Masters thesis on the company blog?" If he had summarised it in 5 lines at the start & avoided the inflammatory headline he may have survived.

1. Would you dismiss it as the "deep end of spurious, unchecked reasoning" if someone pointed out a likely connection between Trump's election fraud narratives and the events of January 6th, 2021?

False and inflammatory narratives have consequences. It's not hard to figure out the connection in these cases.

2. Who cares if HR wanted him not to speak up? Their request was illegitimate. This is just bootlicking.

As to 1. -- I see no connection to anything we're talking about here so I'll pass.

As to 2. -- it wasn't about "speaking up" (privately or verbally) but rather using company networks to do so (that is, spamming company boards with this nonsense). Which is a rather different matter.

1. Glib and disingenuous.

2. According to Kriegman's letter to TR management, the internal social media post was reviewed by HR and the head of DEI and approved by the internal moderators. He followed it up with an email complaining about his harassment. It was only after the email that he was fired.

You either have no idea what happened in this story (and support the company anyway) or you're supporting a company for firing someone for emailing a harassment complaint.

1. Yep - "glib and disingenuous" was how I assessed your question.

As to 2, from his own post:

I was told I was not allowed to use any company communications channels (email, teams, the Hub, etc.) to discuss the attacks I had experienced. Receiving no support from HR, I [did precisely that] and was fired.

Indeed, as I said, you're supporting a company for firing someone for complaining about harassment against a protected class.

There is no evidence that TR did this, but if they did, it would be an egregious violation of civil rights law.

It's astounding to me how you can support this and not be utterly ashamed of yourself.

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