Fired Google engineer files complaint, weighs legal options

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOOGLE_DIVERSITY_CAOL-?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-08-08-18-42-15

by rbanffy • 9 years ago

67 83 9 years ago

hosted.ap.org

noncoml2• 9 years ago

Getting flagged in 5, 4, ...

cratermoon• 9 years ago

I notice no stories about how Damore lied about having a PhD from Harvard have made it to the top.

fumigator2• 9 years ago

I notice no stories about how Damore lied about having a PhD from Harvard have made it to the top.

http://sysbiophd.harvard.edu/people/alumni/james-damore

noncoml2• 9 years ago

No matter which side one takes it's a bit sad to see these stories getting flagged because most of HNers are very civil and it's nice to read each side's arguments and opinions.

jahlove• 9 years ago

citation?

fumigator2• 9 years ago

.. 3, 2, 1 ...

Lets see what he wrote that was so offensive, remembering that it was to a private list and only posted to the wider Internet by Googles 'diversity' chief Danielle Brown.

"Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber"

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

vkou3• 9 years ago

The crux of the argument was:

1. There are biological differences between men and women.

2. Because #1 and <personal biases> and evolutionary psychology, this makes women bad engineers.

3. Because #1 and #2, diversity programs are harmful.

Saying one of those three things creates a hostile work environment. Nothing in that manifesto provided any unique, novel, or original insight. It was the same old, same-old, 'computers are for boys, talking to people is for girls' nonsense.

cookiecaper2• 9 years ago

Let this incident fully dislodge any tendency to cling to the belief that people in positions of authority wear their hearts on their sleeves, or that their statements can be taken at face value.

It doesn't make sense from the naive perspective because people are manipulating the narrative. If Trump's election doesn't make that painfully obvious, I don't know what will.

Imagine you are reading some code written by a colleague and comparing it against some output. After reviewing the code 3-4 times, you cannot figure out where a certain strange token, unlike the others, is coming from. Do we continue to stare at the same chunk of code, or do we look for other points in the pipeline where the file may be touched by an external process?

Companies that fail to maintain a specific type of brand persona open themselves to extremely costly lawsuits. Corporate management exists to say what needs to be said to get employees to cooperate and to keep the company from falling into legal or financial peril.

You can't take things at face value. This article indicates that Damore is 28 years old. A lot of us have to learn this lesson after a few years in the workforce, often in bitter, unpleasant ways (generally proportional to the amount of hope/optimism we have that things aren't really that way). Let's learn from Damore's experience, where his well-meaning attempt to discuss and explain the issue at hand got him terminated.

"Kumbaya" is a myth. Humans are tribal and driven by biological impulses to hoard both materials and personal control for good survival-centric reasons. There is no reason, other than naive optimism, to assume there are some fields where these instincts do not apply.

We should think about how we can change our processes to keep undeserving persons from scheming their way into positions of power, and revising a legal structure that forces everyone to act like a scared mouse around anything slightly controversial is probably a good place to start.

I hope that Damore revises his essay in 1 year's time from his now-forcefully-refined worldview.

bobdole12345• 9 years ago

You think a VP at Google leaked the document to the internet?

Really?

imaginenore2• 9 years ago

Liberals / progressives keep missing the point - silencing your opposition and calling them names only shows how weak your side of the argument is. That's how you get 4 more years of Trump.

Fight bad ideas with better ideas, better arguments.

totalZero• 9 years ago

I don't think that either side of any issue has a monopoly on that kind of lunacy.

By which I mean, there are people on either side of any big debate who try to silence the opposition and call them names.

As Adlai Stevenson once said, "when you sling mud, you lose ground."

thephyber3• 9 years ago

Liberals / progressives keep missing the point - silencing your opposition and calling them names

You're conflating a political movement with a company doing PR damage control. Google management didn't "call him names".

You're not thinking about it like a corporate manager. Google is trying hard not to be seen as just another Frat startup like Uber (albeit an older one). They are actively trying to hire the best engineers in the world and this memo just put a dent in their hiring process for 50% of their potential hiring candidates.

Fight bad ideas with better ideas, better arguments.

Of course.

The irony is that social conservatives are usually the ones to cry foul when an employee sues a company for firing the employee for social/cultural reasons. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, both political poles are shown to be hypocrites.

davidreiss6• 9 years ago

You're conflating a political movement with a company doing PR damage control. Google management didn't "call him names".

Google is heavily invested in the political movement. Lets not pretend google is an objective observer in this.

They are actively trying to hire the best engineers in the world and this memo just put a dent in their hiring process for 50% of their potential hiring candidates.

Can you point to anything specific that was written that would scare 50% of potential hires? That is quite an assertion and I would love to here the rationale for it.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, both political poles are shown to be hypocrites.

That's the point. Why are you defending one foot and not the other?

leifaffles2• 9 years ago

You have some strong points in here, except one which is worth pointing out:

Google management didn't "call him names".

Google's management (including its CEO) did, however, repeatedly lie and misrepresent the essay as justification for their actions.

This was cruel and should not be forgotten.

abc_lisper• 9 years ago

What escapes this whole shebang is the fact that his post went Viral inside google. Would he have been fired if it didn't?

thephyber3• 9 years ago

Perhaps not. But I don't see the fact that he wrote it as the proximal cause for his firing.

I suspect it's the fact that his PR event caused by the memo makes it harder for the company to hire women and to draw a clear distinction between Google company culture and, say, Uber company culture.

cookiecaper2• 9 years ago

Or, put another way, the PR makes it harder for Google to defend itself in lawsuits from current or former female employees alleging discrimination. Would failure to discharge Damore itself constitute grounds for a complaint of a hostile work environment?

There is some heavy legal machinery firing underneath the covers here, forcing Google's hand.

flukus3• 9 years ago

I suspect it's the fact that his PR event caused by the memo

In which case they should be firing the people that leaked it outside google. At the moment it seems as though they are rewarding the leakers (who I suspect disagreed with the memo) by giving them what they want.

davidreiss6• 9 years ago

For the life of me I still can't figure out what he wrote that was so offensive.

I see people attacking him in general terms, calling him a bigot/sexist/etc, but they never mention anything specific he wrote.

Can anyone point to anything specific that is upsetting so many people?

danielvf• 9 years ago

The statement by Google's CEO categorizes some specific sections of the the article into the "okay" bin, and some sections into the "fireable" bin. That's about as good as a start as you are likely to get.

https://www.blog.google/topics/diversity/note-employees-ceo-...

matt_wulfeck2• 9 years ago

To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK

I don't know, I read the article and it seem to me his point was pretty clear that men and women have biological differences that make them drawn to different types of work, and to find enjoyment in different things.

I actually found his point in saying we should increase cooperative work (such as pair programming) to make it more desirable rather refreshing. I also am drawn to people and would find more enjoyment in more cooperative work.

zaqokm3212• 9 years ago

I see people attacking him in general terms, calling him a bigot/sexist/etc, but they never mention anything specific he wrote.

You don't need to have any specific valid reason to be offended unfortunately.

Can anyone point to anything specific that is upsetting so many people?

Also being offended is quite contagious also.

ilaksh2• 9 years ago

The document is the definition of sexism and a perfect example of why we still need diversity laws and programs.

Despite the attempts to provide disclaimers, many of the comments he wrote were explicitly sexist. For example the sections "Personality differences" and "Men's higher drive for status".

Sexism means prejudice related to gender. Prejudice means pre-judging a group. For example the belief that women do not have as high as drive for status can (and previously has been) used as an excuse for promoting men instead of women or a particular man instead of a particular woman.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

And other comments. In the context of discussion of things like hiring, promotion and pay, acting on the beliefs he stated has been outlawed (even though unfortunately these biases are still very prevalent). If they do not fire him, the document will be used as evidence in discriminatory lawsuits.

These sexist beliefs are still just as popular as ageist and racist beliefs. Many may be able to find scientific studies that back up their prejudice. There are usually studies backing up just about any view, just due to the nature of science. Regardless of how well accepted or not these studies are, the laws have already been made years before. So if you want these types of prejudicial beliefs to be openly consulted in hiring, promotion, etc. decisions in companies, those laws will need to be changed.

visarga2• 9 years ago

Prejudice means pre-judging a group.

Would it be a prejudice to say women on average are less tall than men? Where do you draw the line between "pre-judgement" and "statistics" (can we call it post-judgement?). Height is OK but work drive is not OK to post-judge?

davidreiss6• 9 years ago

The document is the definition of sexism

I would love some examples of your accusation. You say it's the "definition of sexism". So you must have plenty of examples from his writing.

and a perfect example of why we still need diversity laws and programs.

Yes. The fact the guy got fired for having his own opinions proves that we are in a dire need for diversity of thought and ideas.

For example the belief that women do not have as high as drive for status can (and previously has been) used as an excuse for promoting men instead of women or a particular man instead of a particular woman.

But that's societal/evolutionary theory proposed by some scientists/thinkers? Also, the belief that women can't compete with men physically is used as an excuse to created women's tennis assocation, WNBA, women's hockey, women's soccer, etc? Is that sexist? There is sexism and there is biological facts/inquiry/etc.

He was just offering a possible explanation for why more men are in leadership roles.

"The greater tendency for men to be interested in having a higher status fits with a long line of biological research dating back to Darwin. It seems men believe that higher status brings the mating opportunities that come with being top dog."

https://phys.org/news/2012-12-women-money-men-status.html

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/evolution/9005552/Me...

It's almost as if humans were evolutionarily driven to be this way. Is science and discussing scientific topics now bigotry?

If that's why people are upset and if that's why he got fired, then google is going to lose and he's going to be wealthy.

rtpg2• 9 years ago

For those who discuss this as "being fired for wrongthink":

Companies fire people for lack of cultural fit. How is this any different?

gdulli• 9 years ago

If I brought my employer bad press or just made myself enough of a bother with complaints about their tabs vs. spaces dictate I could be fired.

caminante• 9 years ago

Bad press and complaints aren't sufficient conditions for legal firing.

e.g. Employee reports OSHA violation. Company gets bad press for workplace conditions. Company can't fire employee for reporting unsafe work conditions.

Inconel• 9 years ago

It may not be any different. In any case, and irrespective of this specific case or how anyone might feel about it, I think it's probably a good idea to be critical of claims like bad cultural fit when coming from corporate execs. Yes, there are some people who are unable to act in a way that most would agree is a professional manner, and indeed these people are toxic and pretty much impossible to work with, however, I have a strong suspicion that bad "cultural fit" in many cases is probably just an instance of bias and essentially a weasel term to make it acceptable to only want to hire people of specific demographics.

At this point I really wish tech would just abandon this whole "culture" thing were the company hopes to be a center of social activity and just go back to being a place people work and get a paycheck in return.

rtpg2• 9 years ago

I feel like this is a "keep the politics out of everyday life" thing.

Ultimately if you're working together, then personal differences come into play (just like they do in other sphere of life). There are ways of professionalising environments, of course

I think once you reach "people management" itself, then its basically in the job description that this sort of stuff matters.

williamle83002• 9 years ago

Yea but Google isn't firing him for "lack of cultural fit." They're firing him because they don't like it. Big difference.

maxscam• 9 years ago

Please extrapolate what is the differerence. I dont see it

throwerway5• 9 years ago

Because evolutionary biology is fundamentally at odds with the core tenets of Feminism.

Feminism is founded on the idea that males and females are equal. Biological research over the past 30 years; specifically from the fields of genetics, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary biology; directly contradicts this premise. Evolutionary biology research tells us there are sex differences in human males and females during all phases of the human lifecycle, including prenatal, childhood, adolescence, mating, parenting, grandparenting, and death. Behavioral ecology tells us we see these same effects in non-human species too. Genetics tells us these traits are heritable and not socially constructed (for example, the correlation between a parent's IQ and their child is around .80, even accounting for adoption).

How does one reconcile evidence from a field of science, that directly contradicts one's own beliefs? To protect one's identity, to avoid the cognitive dissonance, the obvious answer is to discredit the field, discredit the arguments, and discredit the person citing it.

That is why there is a concerted effort by Feminists, and supporters of feminism in the media to squash statistical evidence that goes against their ideology.

It is akin to telling a Christian that God is not real. You will receive a similar response. Heretics must be punished.

bobdole12345• 9 years ago

So, you're telling me there is a feminist conspiracy against science?

0x4454422• 9 years ago

No, just intellectual dishonesty to support preconceived notions. To be fair, this is not behavior unique to the feminist group.

didgeoridoo3• 9 years ago

Men and woman ARE equal. What they are NOT is identical.

Many feminists rightly argue for the first. The second is obviously postmodernist twaddle.

matt_wulfeck2• 9 years ago

And the fact that you're writing this under a throwaway drives home how difficult it is to have a discussion that goes against these ideas. You run the risk of being bullied or shamed into quitting or simply fired.

throwerway5• 9 years ago

:) You get it

0x4454422• 9 years ago

Beautiful summation. The pretzel logic these folks are engaging in is quite hilarious. I don't know if the term's been widely used but I call them Gender Deniers.

dang3• 9 years ago

Ideological boilerplate does not move thoughtful discussion forward; it detracts from it. Please don't post like this to Hacker News.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14964935 and marked it off-topic.

throwerway5• 9 years ago

Men and woman ARE equal.

I used to believe so, until I discovered there were thousands of studies suggesting that statistically, men and women aren't equal.

Each one of these points is backed up by dozens of statistical studies.

Are there statistical differences between males and females in height? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in athletic ability? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in memory recall? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in visuospatial ability? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in short-term mating strategies? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in long-term mating strategies? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in partner selection? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in partner commitment? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in parental investment? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in life expectancy? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in aggression? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in neuroticism? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in suicide? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in infancy and play? Yes

Are there statistical differences between males and females in wealth inheritance to children? Yes

I could make this list 200 items long, it's crazy how many studies there are out there. There's at least 50 years of research on this topic.

didgeoridoo3• 9 years ago

You're not parsing the difference between "equality" and "identicality".

Equality is about the rights one has, and how one should be treated as an individual — equality before the law, and before society. We strive for a society where men and woman are equal, blacks and whites are equal, straights and gays are equal.

Universal equality, however, does NOT require us to believe that people are identical in personality, in intelligence, or in any of the other dimensions you've listed above. We don't even have to believe that specific groups, taken together, are identical to all other groups in mean, median, and standard deviation on these attributes.

People can be EQUAL without being THE SAME.

Edit: really bummed I missed the opportunity to make a JavaScript joke about == vs ===.

throwerway5• 9 years ago

Edit: New accounts cannot reply so I rewrote my comment

I'm talking about equality in terms of attributes. The distribution of traits in males and the distribution of traits in females, are not equal. So I will not say males and females are equal. They do qualify as equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_relation

I believe people should be treated as individuals, if you take two distinct persons A and B, I don't believe they are equal. The only person equal to person A is person A. On this vein, you can't say Group A is equal to Group B, unless Group A and B are the same group.

You can apply equivalence relations to groups, which is basically a lower threshold for equality.

IshKebab• 9 years ago

That may be what "equal" means to hard-core feminists but to everyone else it is a synonym for "identical". Wiktionary defines it as "the same in all respects".

If you are talking in non-feminist circles you probably want to use standard language, e.g. "treated equally". You'll get fewer arguments about words that have been redefined by a small group.

dang3• 9 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14965216 and marked it off-topic.

true_tuna• 9 years ago

They fired him for making women and minorities at google feel unwelcome due to their gender and ethnicity respectively. That's a violation of the company code of conduct and kind of a dick move. People who work hard to become experts in their fields should not have to continually prove that they are in fact good enough and smart enough for the positions they have earned.

davidreiss6• 9 years ago

They fired him for making women and minorities at google feel unwelcome due to their gender and ethnicity respectively.

What did he say that made women feel unwelcome? What did he say about minorities?

aaomidi5• 9 years ago

Automatically assuming that women are there because the standards were lowered for them. Indicating that when he's working with a female co-worker, he thinks they shouldn't be there and the only reason they're there is because of "reverse discrimination".

He spoke about affirmative action as well, but most of his arguments were against women.

dragonwriter• 9 years ago

They fired him for making women and minorities at google feel unwelcome due to their gender and ethnicity respectively. That's a violation of the company code of conduct and kind of a dick move

And also creates a situation which potentially exposes the company to legal liability under state and federal laws if not addressed, independent of company policy; hostile work environment based on sex or race is itself employment discrimination under the law.

joliv• 9 years ago

I'm willing to bet Damore would win his case with the NLRB if not for the new Trump members that will be on the board by the time he gets there. Eager to see some deal with their simultaneous passion for speech freedoms and disdain for the only remedy here—strengthening labor protections.

throwerway5• 9 years ago

Thank you. It's something that I think needs to be said.

One thing, about your point on 'gender deniers', I would try to avoid using the term 'gender'. It's a term perpetuated by the left to avoid direct conversation about biological sex. There has been a concerted effort to separate the concept of gender and sex through justification by the social sciences. This phenomena is not new, historically the social sciences have always been used to justify the predominant ideology of the time.

Gender is considered a 'social construct' under the theory of social constructionism, a philosophical theory not based on statistical evidence. Once you start debating about what is 'Gender', you've already fallen into their trap. I would use the term 'biology deniers' because it avoids people from making roundabout arguments on what is gender.

dang3• 9 years ago

We ban accounts that use HN primarily for political and ideological battle, regardless of which flavor they favor.

It's fine for community members who use HN as intended (i.e. for intellectual curiosity) to also comment on divisive topics as long as they do so thoughtfully. It's not fine to make throwaway accounts to post boilerplate ideological talking points. Since that's what you've been doing, I've banned this one. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14969394 and marked it off-topic.

Fired Google engineer files complaint, weighs legal options

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