Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-16/google-firing-of-damore-was-legal-u-s-labor-panel-lawyer-said

by JoshTriplett • 8 years ago

381 711 8 years ago

tptacek40• 8 years ago

The first thing everyone needs to know about this is what the case was about, because it implicates one of the most powerful and least known rights tech company employees have.

According to Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA, employees can't generally be disciplined for exercising the rights provided under Section 7 of the NLRA. These rights are commonly understood to be about unionizing (ie, you can't be fired for trying reasonably to organize a union), but are actually broader: the NLRA protects an employee right to almost arbitrary "concerted action" to improve working conditions.

Damore was terminated by Google for authoring his anti-diversity memo. During the time he was authoring and distributing internal copies of the memo, he worked with (apparently) a bunch of other engineers at Google that shared many of his viewpoints (the memo covers a lot of ground). He was terminated after the memo, an artifact of his concerted effort to change aspects of how Google was managed, was published. He and his lawyer mounted an 8(a)(1) complaint.

As a starting point --- people with real-world experience or understanding of the NLRA should correct me where I'm wrong --- NLRA complaints get filed with the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB adjudicates claims internally. If a complaint is found valid, the NLRB will try to convince the employer to settle with the employee; if that goes nowhere, the NLRB will itself effectively sue the company. If the complaint is found invalid, the NLRB will inform the complainant that NLRB is done with the case.

Most of these cases (there are tens of thousands annually as you'd expect) are handled by grunts in DC. Novel or high-profile cases are escalated to a special department in the NLRB called the Advice Division. This particular case was not only escalated but apparently handled personally by the director of the division, an NLRB lawyer who'd been with the board since 1988.

The NLRB turned down Damore's complaint. I think he could theoretically still sue in civil court? I don't think that's commonly done? Either way, his complaint was denied.

The basis for the complaint is super simple and kind of obvious in retrospect: employers in the US are required by federal and usually state law to avoid discrimination against protected classes. To the extent that Damore's memo was about organizing against discrimination of conservative viewpoints --- a phenomenon that is almost certainly real in SFBA tech! --- it was protected. But to the extent that it attempted to organize around changes to Google management that might (might) themselves violate EEO laws (for instance, any kind of official recognition that men are better suited to software development at Google than women), they were not. You can't use the NLRA to organize in opposition to federal employment law. Wa-waa.

As it turns out, this was apparently super-apparent to Google legal and Google HR, who fired Damore precisely by the book, exclusively for promoting stereotypes about women and advocating for the inclusion of those stereotypes into Google's management processes.

I think an important thing to consider --- I'm no lawyer and am probably wrong about lots of this stuff --- is that if the memo had been exclusively about how SFBA tech discriminates against conservatives and could in a number of ways be made more accommodating to them, Damore would had been protected from retaliation. The Advice Memo says as much!

So for someone like me, who believes very strongly in both the importance of employee organizing rights (I think tech should organize into professional associations; "unions lite") and who believes strongly in the absolute innate equivalence in aptitude for our profession between men and women, this is the best possible outcome. There's a lot to take heart in here; we do in fact have the right to organize that we've been saying we have.

ghaff2• 8 years ago

The NLRB turned down Damore's complaint. I think he could theoretically still sue in civil court? I don't think that's commonly done? Either way, his complaint was denied.

There's still a civil lawsuit going ahead as the article notes.

tptacek40• 8 years ago

Right, but it's on a different set of claims, isn't it? I thought it was not a case brought under the NLRA.

nindalf• 8 years ago

Probably even less of a lawyer than you are, so thanks for that summary :)

dk1138• 8 years ago

Thanks for taking the time to write this out and give some background.

paxy• 8 years ago

if the memo had been exclusively about how SFBA tech discriminates against conservatives and could in a number of ways be made more accommodating to them, Damore would had been protected from retaliation

Probably, but the entire conversation would have been different then, likely not even leading to his termination and the lawsuit in the first place

kasey_junk• 8 years ago

That’s a feature

quaunaut• 8 years ago

Thanks for that explanation, it was both thorough and frankly, illuminating in a way that I wasn't expecting.

Do you think if he had kept his original memo to those acceptable points(the hostile attitude toward conservative views), that they might have gone forward with it? Or would it have still been too difficult to prove with the case?

ggggtez• 8 years ago

I dunno, if you believe the legal teams, the only reason he was fired at all is because of those points. Maybe you believe it or maybe you don't, but in some alternate universe he didn't say those things, and didn't get fired at all.

tptacek40• 8 years ago

Yes. I'm summarizing not the Bloomberg article but the Advice Memo itself, which is on NLRB's case website (you can just go read it).

It's a little fuzzy because the Advice Memo asserts up front that it's assuming arguendo that the memo, in both its protected and unprotected components, constituted protected concerted action. So it's possible that NLRB never really reached the question of whether this kind of organizing truly constitutes organizing for "mutual aid and protection" under the definitions of the NLRA; it didn't have to, because whether or not you're organizing under the NLRA, the memo says there's pretty extensive case history saying you can't do it to work against federal anti-discrimination law.

The NLRA does not eliminate employment at-will! You can get fired for all sorts of dumb superficial reasons. You just can't be fired for exercising your specific rights to concerted action for improved workplace conditions under the NLRA.

But before you go flex this particular right --- and really people should start doing this, like, a lot --- go talk to a labor lawyer and dot your 't's.

This turns out to be pretty easy to do: you can just contact @michelleimiller at Coworker.org, who facilitates this kind of stuff.

fnord77• 8 years ago

is that if the memo had been exclusively about how SFBA tech discriminates against conservatives and could in a number of ways be made more accommodating to them, Damore would had been protected from retaliation.

But then this whole thing would be nothing, maybe a minor labor dispute. So this boils down to his bigoted views.

sidlls2• 8 years ago

Having "conservative viewpoints" is not a protected class.

skissane• 8 years ago

Having "conservative viewpoints" is not a protected class.

In California, it is illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee on the basis of their political beliefs [1], so to that extent particular political ideologies (including conservatism) can be viewed as protected classes.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... and https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

twtw• 8 years ago

"Political affiliation" a protected class in California.

Not saying this is necessarily the same as "conservative viewpoints," but it could be interpreted that way.

TheCoelacanth2• 8 years ago

People organizing with other employees who share conservative views to engage in concerted action to improve their working conditions is a protected class, though, because people organizing with other employees to engage in concerted action to improve their working conditions is a protected class no matter what other descriptors you add.

cabaalis• 8 years ago

and who believes strongly in the absolute innate equivalence in aptitude for our profession between men and women

I believe in it also, but shouldn't this idea be quantifiable in order to be a legit basis of a firing? I.E. where is the line between "promoting stereotypes" and "promoting science?"

tptacek40• 8 years ago

I think? the answer is that it probably doesn't much matter. The Advice Memo states explicitly that the NLRB gives deference to employers on this matter, because they're required by state and federal EEO laws to suppress discrimination of protected classes.

So where this might become a material question is if you were an employer who was receptive to the "scientific" arguments for superior male aptitude, and you had employees that shared that view, and your employees organized to promote that view organically. Like, maybe you couldn't discipline them at the insistence of some other employee?

But in general it sounds like if the workplace issue you're organizing around is "does our employer go too far in trying to comply with EEO laws", the NLRB is not going to have your back.

naveen99• 8 years ago

absolute innate equivalence

Is hacker aptitude some kind of conserved quantity that is conserved over sexes based on some natural symmetry ?

Why not just say, absolutely pretended equivalence.

Analemma_• 8 years ago

The null hypothesis is to assume there is innate equivalence; the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise and the attempts I've seen so far are lacking.

T2_t23• 8 years ago

You seem to understand this better than me, so can you explain a few things to me I find (as a non-American) confusing?

The NLRB turned down Damore's complaint

Can you explain where you got this idea from? Not this article, because it states several contradictory or non-commital things such as:

Damore withdrew his complaint in January

And

"a federal agency lawyer concluded."

And

an associate general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board wrote in a six-page memo disclosed Thursday

Is this just an opinion, or an actual ruling? In other words, is this a PR exercise by the NRLB, or is it an official ruling in some way?

https://nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-203891 appears to be the case - AFAICT as the dates lineup with the withdrawl statement, and https://www.google.com.au/search?q=site%3Anlrb.gov+james+dam... shows this as the only link. As a non-American, I'm not going to file a FOI request, so I have no idea what any of this is, or how to find the memo that Bloomberg quotes.

Can you (or anyone else) shed any actual, source not third party light on this?

tptacek40• 8 years ago

If you reread my comment, I spend a couple paragraphs explaining the procedural background to this. If the NLRB had found Damore's complaint valid, they would have intervened on his behalf. They did not, so they will not.

Apparently, there's no private right to action under the NLRA. Enforcement is public, and goes through the NLRB. If the NLRB decides against pursuing a case, that's probably the end for you (maybe short of suing the NLRB itself).

berberous5• 8 years ago

You are looking at the wrong case, this is the correct one and contains a link to the Advice Memo, which is dated January 16: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-205351

This is what an Advice Memo is: "The NLRB analyses referred to are NLRB Advice Memos, which are prepared by the Office of the General Counsel (GC), a division within the NLRB, to respond to requests for advice from various NLRB Regions across the country about the proper response to some specific fact pattern under the Act. In answering these requests, the General Counsel considers the facts of the specific question posed and analyzes Board precedent relating to the situation.

The GC then reaches a conclusion whether the particular fact pattern violates the Act or not. If the fact pattern does not violate the Act, the Office of General Counsel indicates the unfair labor practice charge should be dismissed. If it finds a violation, it will direct the Region to issue a complaint if the matter is not settled in accordance with its analysis of the law.

All this analysis, and the conclusions, are incorporated into a document known as an Advice Memorandum. These Advice Memos are distributed for the information of all NLRB Regions so that they will all have the same guidance and can address similar questions in a coordinated and consistent manner throughout the United States. The Advice Memorandum does not have the same authoritative force as a published decision of the Board, but it does set out the agency's enforcement position on the questions covered and provides guidelines that will be followed by all Regions when faced with a similar situation.”

So what happened was Damore filed a complaint under the National Labor Relations Act with the National Labor Relations Board. The regional office turned it over to the central office for advice, given the novel issues. The central office decided to decline the case, viewing it as not a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. I don't know whether Damore could still privately sue Google for violating the National Labor Relations Act in court or appeal this decision somehow; perhaps he had some rights, since from the link it looks like he withdrew his case on January 23, a week after the date of the advice memo. He does, however, still have a pending lawsuit against Google, which at the very least, could allege violations of numerous other laws other than (and perhaps also including) the National Labor Relations Act (e.g., California state law).

darawk4• 8 years ago

But to the extent that it attempted to organize around changes to Google management that might (might) themselves violate EEO laws (for instance, any kind of official recognition that men are better suited to software development at Google than women), they were not.

Was he trying to do that, though? As I understand it, he was protesting policies that sought to actively promote diversity. EEO laws require no such active promotion, afaik. He fell all over himself to be clear that he was not saying that Google should prefer hiring men, or that they should restrict women to specific roles within the company. He was questioning Google's active efforts to specifically recruit women above the background level that would otherwise apply. Whether or not this is a good idea is certainly up for debate, but it does not, to my knowledge, violate EEO laws to merely not actively and specifically target women for recruitment.

who believes strongly in the absolute innate equivalence in aptitude for our profession between men and women

Curious, why do you believe in that? Have you evaluated the evidence and come to that conclusion, or is it a priori for you?

fra• 8 years ago

"... absolute innate equivalence ..."

As was already stated in this thread, this is the null hypothesis. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397321

georgemcbay• 8 years ago

Curious, why do you believe in that? Have you evaluated the evidence and come to that conclusion, or is it a priori for you?

Curious why you question his belief?

All of the half-way reputable studies I've ever heard of have either concluded that there is no difference in male/female intelligence or that there are small differences in certain silos, with men scoring slightly higher on average in visuospatial while women score slightly higher on average in verbal.

Even if you accept the latter as fact (which there is no clear cut evidence-based reason for doing so, if you look at the studies in aggregate) it says basically nothing about suitability to "our profession" as both of those skills are important.

Given the choice between someone with higher than average overall IQ and outstanding visuospatial skills and someone with higher than average overall IQ and outstanding verbal skills, I'd generally prefer the latter as a colleague.

tptacek40• 8 years ago

He was terminated at Google's discretion under at-will employment, the same standard that might allow you to be fired for coming to work with blue hair. He sought relief under an exception to at-will, the NLRA, which protects concerted action to improve working conditions. The NLRB determined that because the substance of his action involved requests that Google might reasonably determine would be problematic under EEO law, that whether or not Damore's actions were unlawful, Google was within its rights as a US employer to terminate him.

It might help to pivot away from EEO law and to some other regulatory regime we work under. For instance, you could attempt to organize around reworking the way your company complies with the HITECH laws. What you'd be doing would certainly not be unlawful! Nevertheless, despite that fact and the fact that the NLRA generally protects employee organization, the fact that your employer has a legal obligation to comply with HITECH would mean that the NLRB gives them substantial extra deference in whether or not they can fire you for doing that.

On the other hand, if you were to organize around, I don't know, closed-door offices instead of open-offices, no such extra deference would apply.

(Re: my beliefs: I provided them as a cards-on-the-table disclaimer, not an invitation to litigate them; they're the least interesting part of this story).

hux_• 8 years ago

There are no good outcomes in the current noise. People on both extremes will misread and misuse it.

Silicon Valley's achievement in the last 10 years is to make sure ambiguity is profitable. Resolution of anything or even a path to resolution just produces less clicks, talking heads and outrage.

The proof is in the pudding. Who wants to bet 2-5 years from now the status quo wouldn't have changed? Replace the issue with gun control, climate change or universal health it hardly matters.

If you guys want to see change the noise levels have to reduce.

rsp1984• 8 years ago

(for instance, any kind of official recognition that men are better suited to software development at Google than women)

This was where Damore's got his words twisted in his mouth: He never claimed that!

The problematic claims he did make are that women - on average - "have a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading" and are more prone to "neuroticism". Nowhere in the memo does he touch upon women's fitness for SWE jobs -- even though everybody seems to think so.

Whether he promoted stereotypes about women is another story (although most of his claims seem to have some backup by actual science) but the whole thing would have never blown so badly out of proportion if it wasn't for people who circulated a malicious and wrong summary of this memo, either intentionally or by being hanger-ons.

solidsnack9000• 8 years ago

High "neuroticism" is tendency to ruminate on one's life experiences in a negative way -- to reflect especially on difficult situations and experience anxiety or distress. It is one of the "Big 5" personality traits.

It's not the same thing as being crazy or a neurotic in the Freudian sense (which is not a personality trait but a condition or syndrome, more or less vaguely defined).

fareesh5• 8 years ago

Neuroticism should be parsed as a reserved word. It is a technical term and his use of it is proper since he is quoting academia. The results of research are not stereotypes. That would be like saying that it is a stereotype to believe that people who smoke have a higher possibility of developing cancer.

It is not problematic to use the terminology of the field that you are citing. The problematic part is misrepresenting those words as judgements. That would be like firing our programmer for lazy-loading images because we can't tolerate laziness at our firm.

goatlover• 8 years ago

and who believes strongly in the absolute innate equivalence in aptitude for our profession between men and women

Do you also believe in the absolute innate equivalence in motivation for our profession between men and women, so that in a perfectly fair society, we would end up with a 50/50 ratio?

Would this also be the case with other professions, such as nursing, psychologists, or social workers?

ar-jan• 8 years ago

This is a reasonable assessment, but you still misrepresent Damore's memo - as virtually all who disagree with him have done since the controversy started.

[...] that men are better suited to software development at Google than women

When you use generic "men" and "women", you imply he talked about a categorical difference. Damore explicitly talked about population distributions, even illustrated with a Bell curve. He said for example "Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions."

More importantly, he never said men are "better suited" to software development. You mention aptitude, when Damore focussed on preference and interest, based on a well-established literature of personality differences between men and women.

jdavis7032• 8 years ago

"concerted action" to improve working conditions

Improve the working conditions for whom though? IANAL, but I would think that it'd have to be an improvement in the working conditions for everyone, or at least not have a negative impact on other, non-managerial groups.

For example say engineering gets tired of the sales department's constant phone conversations and boisterous behavior. They organize a group that seeks to eliminate the sales department altogether, after all, the engineers are building a self-service SaaS product that sells itself.

Would the engineers have legal recourse if they were fired for seeking a change that would harm some other group?

bradleyjg• 8 years ago

The NLRB turned down Damore's complaint. I think he could theoretically still sue in civil court? I don't think that's commonly done? Either way, his complaint was denied.

Technically the NLRB didn't act on Damore's charge because he withdrew it. The Advice Memo was requested by and directed to a Regional Director at the NLRB. If the charge had not been withdrawn the Regional Director likely would have refused to issue a complaint, i.e. dismissed the charge. That decision could have been appealed to the General Counsel, a Presidential appointee. The person that wrote the memo, the associate General Counsel for the Division of Advice, reports directly to the General Counsel. If the General Counsel upheld the decision to dismiss the charge, that decision would not be appealable to any court. Nor can the relevant provisions of the NLRA be enforced directly by private lawsuit.

tptacek40• 8 years ago

Thanks! This is good stuff.

TulliusCicero• 8 years ago

If his memo had been exclusively about discrimination against conservatives, he wouldn't have been fired in the first place. The obvious reason Google fired him is that he was now poison in terms of working with others, especially women, because he was saying that women as a whole were either less suited or less inclined to be engineers.

ThomPete40• 8 years ago

Less inclined (which was what he said) can be tested factually are you saying that it's ok to be fired to state something factually correct?

jeffmould2• 8 years ago

The NLRB has a vast reach that many employees are completely unaware of. Several years ago I was the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against an employer. About 6 months after I filed the lawsuit my employer fired me for fabricated "disciplinary" reasons (not unexpectedly on my behalf, it did take them longer to react than I had thought). Of course, my attorneys immediately sunk their teeth in this termination.

Almost immediately my attorneys launched a two-pronged approach. They filed additional complaints to the lawsuit and they had me file a complaint with the NLRB. Prior to this, I had never even heard of the NLRB and when I read their website I still thought it was a protection for unionized employees. This is far from the truth. My NLRB complaint consisted of two complaints, one for wrongful termination and the second was centered around the employer trying to stop my organizing the class action by terminating my employment (I was the only member of the class that was terminated at this point). At this point, I was also separated as a plaintiff from the "class" and had my own lawsuit against the employer that encompassed the wrongful termination complaint.

The NLRB almost immediately assigned an investigator (a staff attorney) to explore my complaint. This lasted a couple months with several meetings between myself, my attorneys, and the NLRB interviewing the employer and other current employees.

One thing I learned is that there is nothing an employer hates more than a federal agency digging around their business. In the end, the NLRB found both my complaints valid. They offered a settlement to the employer that involved monitoring and random complaince checks for a period of time.

At the same time, my lawsuit continued through the courts. What did help my case was the NLRB findings. It was hard for the employer to deny complaints when they had already settled complaints with the NLRB. In the end, we ended up settling the entire case.

After the case was settled the employer ended up terminating most, if not all, of the employees that were involved for various reasons (mostly false allegations).

Overall, the NLRB does provide a level of protection for the common employee and working conditions not just for unionized employees that I, and I am sure many others, are completely unaware of.

mistersquid• 8 years ago

If you don't mind my asking and if you are at liberty to say, what was the basis of the original class action suit?

happyguy433• 8 years ago

This is well argued but some of the assumptions are false.

1) Damore never argued men were better suited to software engineering than women.

2) Damore never argued for google to violate EEO laws, and in fact it’s the opposite.

It’s very sad to me that there is such widespread misinterpretation of Damore’s nuance in his memo. In every possible factual way it’s a pro-diversity memo, but because it cites research on the average personality differences amongst men and women (which are 100% true), he gets crucified as a bigot and an anti-diversity zealot.

Furthermore, when it comes to matters such as these, “belief” should not play a substantial role. We’ve already proven that men and women don’t differ much on intelligence. No need to believe one way or another.

joshuamorton6• 8 years ago

Damore never argued for google to violate EEO laws, and in fact it’s the opposite.

While this may not have been his intent, this ruling appears to imply that the EEOC thinks that the content of his words do amount to that.

You can disagree, but my expectation is, being that they are EEOC lawyers and you are not, their understanding of what does or does not violate EEO law is better than yours.

oh_sigh4• 8 years ago

What constitutes a harmful sterotype?

If I say that women are on average shorter than men, is that a harmful stereotype when it comes to mixed gender basketball leagues?

If I say that women are more caring on average than men, is that a harmful stereotype only if it is untrue, or is it harmful to state it even if it is true?

Radim• 8 years ago

Honest question: I'm from eastern Europe, trying to wrap my head around this US controversy.

I fully respect Google's right for at-will termination, just trying to figure out whether Damore sinned by going against "world-as-is" or "world-as-ought-to-be".

I took the effort and found both the full text of this new National Labor Relations Board judgement [0, PDF], which includes:

"… statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism … were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment…"

and Damore's original memo, which cites a peer-reviewed published source [1]:

"research in large samples has shown that levels of N (neuroticism) are higher in women than men. This is a robust finding that is consistent across cultures. This is especially the case during the reproductive years, but is also visible in children and elderly."

Does such research really constitute harassment in the US? If so, what are the broader implications for science?

Other rebuttals I could find were similarly vague in distinguishing between facts ("is") and desires ("ought to be"). Has Damore's memo been rebutted at the "is-level"? Is he wrong in facts, or merely controversial in his proposed policies?

[0] https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391 (PDF)

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23068306

lawnchair_larry2• 8 years ago

I think you have misrepresented a few things. One, it was a pro-diversity memo, not an anti-diversity memo. Two, it didn’t say anywhere that men are better suited to software development.

It’s fine to disagree with what he said, but it’s not fine to mischaracterize what he said.

posterboy• 8 years ago

who believes strongly in the absolute innate equivalence in aptitude for our profession between men and women

This sounds almost sarcastic. I get that hyperbole is a rhetoric device. I agree to a certain extent, too, while I understand that positive discrimination is discriminating never the less. But: The absolute "innate" equivalence between any two persons is not comparable.

Prejudice is not allowed, sure, but it goes both ways. You can't just take any 50% of the population and claim they must be as good as the other half, just as you can't take any half and claim they must be inferior. Because that is subjective -- concerning subjects -- whereas you want to be objective -- judging actions by their objectives.

YeGoblynQueenne11• 8 years ago

> You can't use the NLRA to organize in opposition to federal employment law. Wa-waa.

I know I should really not be focusing on that one silly little detail out of your comment (which I agree with in general) but can you please explain that "Wa-Waa"? Do you mean it as in the "wa-waa-waa-waaaa" sound from old movies, like in the video below?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xt1kUK71lc

And sorry for derailing the conversation.

GnwbZHiU• 8 years ago

"Damore was terminated by Google for authoring his anti-diversity memo"

Wrong. Damore was pro diversity.

What he said was Google didn't achieve the wanted diversity, because the methodology is wrong.

notconservative7• 8 years ago

“Much of" Damore’s memo was probably protected under the law. ... But ... Google discharged Damore only for his "discriminatory statements," which aren’t shielded by labor law.

Given how significantly many people have misunderstood Damore's claims, this seems to open up a hole for companies to mischaracterize someone as a racist/sexist/etc and then fire them over it.

izacus• 8 years ago

Isn't employment in places where these companies operate at-will? Meaning they can fire you because you waved your hair funny in the morning?

HeyLaughingBoy• 8 years ago

In an at-will state, I can fire you because I don't like how you did your hair, but I can't fire you because you belong to a protected class.

BookmarkSaver• 8 years ago

Yes, but (IANAL) if the employee suspects that there was an illegal reason behind it, they can probably sue and subpoena documents revealing management motivations.

Like, sure, a manager could wake up and just fire you because they were grumpy. But if it is discovered that there was internal communications about their political opinions leading up to it, then there would be a case.

notconservative7• 8 years ago

Yes, but not if you're trying to organize to improve working conditions, because this is protected by the NRLA.

If the NRLA believes only parts of Damore's memo were working towards improving working conditions and other parts were working to discriminate against women, which part is which.

To someone that agrees with Damore, it looks like everyone mischaracterized his effort to improve working conditions as sexism. Then Google was able to use that as cover to fire him for protected organizing.

JonnyNova• 8 years ago

There are certain legal limitations to that from the NLRA. tptacek goes into that in depth here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16396827

dragonwriter17• 8 years ago

Yes, but there are still prohibited reasons for firing. Which labor organizing is one of; Damore charged that he was fired for organizing, the NLRB found that Google fired him for actions that fall outside of protected labor organizing.

andrewprock4• 8 years ago

Allow me to suggest that both Google and the NLRB understood Damore's claim, and that any misunderstanding falls on the side of those who disagree with what they found.

notconservative7• 8 years ago

That's possible of course.

But, I haven't read exactly what the NRLA found to be discriminatory. This would help anyone that is legitimately trying to improve working conditions and trying not to promote discrimination.

dragonwriter17• 8 years ago

Given how significantly many people have misunderstood Damore's claims, this seems to open up a hole for companies to mischaracterize someone as a racist/sexist/etc and then fire them over it.

No, it doesn't.

Because the interpretation of the firing company doesn't determine the legality. Whether, on the evidence, a firing is solely due to actually legally unprotected statements (not statements that the employer chooses to misconstrue as unprotected) is.

Aunche2• 8 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

People really did exaggerate how bad the memo really was. That said, it definitely has portions that brought up stereotypes without citing direct evidence, like how men have a higher drive to achieve status. Google considered these statements "discriminatory," which sounded reasonable enough to the NLRB. It doesn't matter whether these statements were actually discriminatory because they clearly fall outside the bounds of protected speech.

leereeves25• 8 years ago

He did cite evidence for his claims, but the most widely circulated copies of the memo removed his citations.

manfredo7• 8 years ago

He cited multiple academic sources to back up the claims made about gender. He also belabored the point that averages and general trends of a demographic should not be used to make judgements about individual members of the demographic.

bjourne5• 8 years ago

I don't agree with Damore's message. But Google cultivated an environment were open discussion were encouraged. So firing him for stating his opinion is truly, hypocritical bullshit.

People should get fired for not doing their jobs -- not for writing what they think. And I also want to say that before you blame "the Left" for Google's behavior... Had he been fired in "Socialist Europe," the firing would have been declared against the law and Google would have had to pay a hefty fine.

I can add why I'm so sure he wouldn't have been fired. In most (many?) European countries, you can be fired for only(!) two reasons; misconduct and labor shortage. Misconduct must be specifically related to your job performance. Like, a train conductor that always oversleeps or a cock who can't boil eggs. Something quite a bit more obvious than claiming gender differences between men and women. Labor shortage is if there is not enough work to do and then the company can let go of the surplus personnel.

The walkthrough of the US laws, that tptacek provides, shows that they are completely different and much less employee friendly.

ionforce• 8 years ago

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?

oceanghost2• 8 years ago

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

Udik2• 8 years ago

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..

tj-teej• 8 years ago

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.

ng12• 8 years ago

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.

ditonal2• 8 years ago

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)

conanbatt3• 8 years ago

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.

scaryclam• 8 years ago

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!).

gowld9• 8 years ago

Citation for rules and hostility?

GuiA• 8 years ago

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.

5F36B5F62640• 8 years ago

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.

eitally2• 8 years ago

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

rurounijones• 8 years ago

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.

jdavis7032• 8 years ago

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?

debt3• 8 years ago

“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.

gowld9• 8 years ago

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.

mseebach4• 8 years ago

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.

bjourne5• 8 years ago

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.

janoc• 8 years ago

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.

bjourne5• 8 years ago

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.

jrcii• 8 years ago

Only liberals are allowed to work at Google, and only liberals are allowed to express their political opinions on HN. The liberal-tech crowd groupthink enforcement is real.

harlanji• 8 years ago

Upvoted gray. I’ve observed at least one of my comments removed from HN. I was a liberal when I came to SF, but people shut me down constantly since coming here... I determined I am being bullied for the first time; as a 30+ yo man it is an interesting thing to learn to combat. Talking to homeless guys, I’ve no doubt what happened to some of them. Today I put out a substantial demo to address this in the way I know how, tweeted on same twitter handle.

defertoreptar• 8 years ago

His cardinal sin was saying that men and women are biologically different. He could've said a lot, but as soon as he tried to give a biological explanation for why girls prefer Barbies and boys prefer toy cars, he entered taboo territory. It's a thought crime because it implies that cultural influences aren't 100% responsible for why more men are interested in STEM than women.

s73v3r_2• 8 years ago

No, he tried to use unrelated data on the biological differences between men and women to justify why Google shouldn't try to reach out more to women to diversify their workforce.

bduerst21• 8 years ago

Except he said women also lacked the abilities to be in tech and higher level management positions. This isn't just about children picking toys.

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.

alexandercrohde4• 8 years ago

I'm on Damore's side (if I had to pick a side) and yet I've been able to express myself fairly freely here on HN. I've also seen posts downvoted/killed consistently from both sides, and it's almost always well-deserved in my opinion.

ggm3• 8 years ago

What I think of his views (I disagree) is not germaine to the question: was it sensible to write and publish? It was not. That I disagree with his premise and polemic makes it easier for me to align desire and reality, but the reality of the situation doesn't change because of my desires: he was stupid to publish and Google were within their rights to fire him.

All the other observed comments about liberal/conservative/libertarian views are frankly not very interesting. The bottom line to me is that he didn't have a strong enough claim to unfair dismissal.

Court did its job. Move on.

yjftsjthsd-h• 8 years ago

he was stupid to publish

Only in the way that union organizers and whistle blowers are stupid.

ggm3• 8 years ago

In choosing to publish at risk of jobloss? Surely not: they both go into the situation expecting adversity and seeking a wider oucome. He did no such thing, either by intent or not. But I already stated I don't agree with his world view and contextually I do agree with union organisation and whistleblowing, neither of which this was. What's your point? Trolling.

azurezyq• 8 years ago

I think the problem is not if you should predict if Google will fire you because of this. It is "are you doing harm to anybody else?" Saying these words already embarrassed his female colleagues and is he still expecting Google withhold free speech within massive anger from females? Google's firing may be inevitable after a tipping point.

He's stupid. Something like liberal/conservative is totally unrelated, indeed.

leereeves25• 8 years ago

There was no court involved in this yet. This was the opinion of a lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board that they should not take up Damore's case.

ggm3• 8 years ago

Good point. He probably still has some civil court actions to take but I suspect the NLRB position is wounding to his case.

rendall2• 8 years ago

Did the NLRB memo specify exactly which statements in Damore's memo were discriminatory and hostile? Is there a copy available?

on_and_off3• 8 years ago

yes : https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-205351

you can also find the full damore memo online.

rendall2• 8 years ago

Thanks.

I checked Damore's Twitter account, and he has not yet made a statement on this, perhaps wisely following his lawyer's advice.

from the NLRB Memo: "[Damore's] statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding [his] effort to cloak comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers."

Interesting. The Board completely dismissed the scientific arguments, even going so far as to put quotes around "scientific". They didn't accept that he was making scientific statements at all! It's not clear whether they understood that Damore used "neuroticism" as a specific and uncontroversial psychological term, and not in the folk meaning of "crazy". I'm going to suppose no, since their qualifiers "heightened neuroticism" and "more prone to neuroticism" don't come from Damore's memo, and imply the "crazy" connotation.

leereeves25• 8 years ago

The two statements they mentioned specifically were:

Women are more prone to “neuroticism,” resulting in women experiencing higher anxiety and exhibiting lower tolerance for stress, which “may contribute to . . . the lower number of women in high stress jobs”;
Men demonstrate greater variance in IQ than women, such that there are more men at both the top and bottom of the distribution. Thus, posited, the Employer’s preference to hire from the “top of the curve” may result in a candidate pool with fewer females than those of “less-selective” tech companies.

pukerz2• 8 years ago

The second statement was not even in the memo

curtis• 8 years ago

This sounds like the federal government concluded that Damore's firing did not violate federal employment law. I think (but I'm no expert) that the issue of whether Damore's firing violated California employment law is still an open question.

berberous5• 8 years ago

This is correct. The National Labor Relations Board issued an Advice Memo, declining to prosecute a case under the federal National Labor Relations Act.

Damore's California lawsuit, which per the first page of the complaint, lists the below causes of action under various California laws, is unaffected.

CLASS ACTION COMPLAINT:

1. Violation of Cal. Labor Code § 1101

2. Violation of Cal. Labor Code § 1102

3. Workplace Discrimination on the basis of Gender and/or Race in Violation of FEHA

4.Workplace Harassment in Violation of FEHA

5.Retaliation in Violation of FEHA

6.Retaliation in Violation of Public Policy

7.Retaliation in Violation of Cal. Lab. Code § 1102.5

8.Failure To Prevent Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation

9.Unfair Business Practices, Bus. & Prof. Code Section 17200 et seq

10.Declaratory Relief

notconservative7• 8 years ago

I looked up the Advice Memo [0] written by the NRLB (thanks tptacek for mentioning that document) so that I could try to see what exactly they found discriminatory about Damore's paper. This is the relevant section:

The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases. statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding effort to cloak comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers.

The "these cases" reference is talking about a KKK member and someone who "made debasing and sexually abusive remarks to a female employee who had crossed a picket line months earlier". I don't see how Damore's memo is at all relatable to these.

And more importantly, the content they found to be discriminatory were the studies on differences in IQ and psycological traits by gender? How can presenting science be discriminatory?

If you disagree with some study, you explain why the methodology it used is bad or find other studies that try to explain it. You don't just claim that it's findings are discriminatory. That makes it impossible to discover why it's wrong (if it is).

[0] (PDF) http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391

tptacek40• 8 years ago

You've lost the context of the Advice Memo. The NLRB isn't saying Damore himself violated EEO laws by writing the memo. The NLRB didn't fire Damore; Google did. The NLRB is saying that although the NLRA protects concerted action to improve working conditions, those protections do not extend to action that might discriminate against protected classes, and, crucially, that because employers are required by state and federal law to comply with EEO laws, the NLRB will tend not to second-guess them about how they do that.

The important thing to remember is that in most of the US, there's a presumption that employers can fire you for any reason. Employment is at-will. Damore was appealing to a specific exception to that rule.

ankushnarula4• 8 years ago

That would be a narrow and incomplete reading of Damore's memo based on prejudice. Damore's description that on average men and women are different is not itself discriminatory or harmful since it's backed up by quite a lot of biological and psychometric science.

The question should have been "What is Damore advocating?".

And if they read the entire document then it would be clear that Damore was suggesting methods to bring Google's gender balance to 50/50 by making Google (and tech in general) more attractive to women by altering the software engineering culture to leverage inherent strengths that women (on average) possess.

ABCLAW2• 8 years ago

Would it be possible to rename the thread "Fired Google Engineer Who Authored Diversity Memo Withdraws NLRA Challenge."? I think that's quite a bit more accurate.

awesomepantsm3• 8 years ago

It's not though, because it wasn't withdrawn it was rejected.

ABCLAW2• 8 years ago

I think the official case record is not in agreement with your understanding:

https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-205351

dejawu• 8 years ago

The way this whole thing played out makes me sad, because the guy did bring up a good point - current-day social justice leaves little avenue for well-meaning but unaware (perhaps through privilege) people to start conversations and learn about the reasons and motivations for certain efforts such as affirmative action and changes in vocabulary. Damore was indeed punished for speaking out, just as he feared.

Then he started retweeting Breitbart articles and selling "Goolag" t-shirts and threw his credibility out the window, and solving the problem of "how do we bring people on-board with the diversity thing without scaring them off" is again put off to another day.

awesomepantsm3• 8 years ago

I got the feeling there was more stuff he said that never leaked but who knows

oh_sigh4• 8 years ago

There wasn't. There are extensive leakers in google on both sides of the fence who would have leaked the fuller doc if one existed.

Consultant3245217• 8 years ago

I feel like the progressive left THRUST Damore and anyone who might have similar thoughts/questions into the welcoming arms of the alt-right. I'm disappointed with the "Goolag" t-shirts, but he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed, and only a limited time to cash out. So this socially awkward nerd did what any sensible person would do, rode the wave that was sent his way the best he could. Consider his professional options compared to a standard "former Googler." They destroyed him, it was terrible.

tclancy• 8 years ago

He has no agency? He chose to speak up and then he chose to go down the path he did. It is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to both kinda sorta acknowledge the alt-right might not be a great group of guys but then also claim Damore had no choice but to pull into that port in a storm of his own making. Allow me to pour out a beaker of Soylent for the poor, downtrodden white man.

eridius4• 8 years ago

but he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed, and only a limited time to cash out.

Why are you writing this in the passive, as if this is an unfortunate thing that happened to him? He did all of that to himself. That memo created a hostile workplace and Google had no choice but to fire him. The outcome here isn't terrible, it's exactly what should have happened.

stcredzero48• 8 years ago

he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed

I'm frankly ashamed at the behavior of my classmates, who were so enthusiastically throwing him under the bus, without really knowing anything about him. I found it very odd that people who had no basis of judging his software engineering skills had very strong opinions about them.

I'm reminded of a documentary film about North Korea, where during one segment of a meeting, people went up to the front of the room and took turns condemning the United States, and were cheered the more fanatical they sounded. There is indeed "thought-crime" in the United States, and this category is at times conveniently expanded to to encompass any questioning of the new orthodoxy at all, with no basis but irrational, emotional ones.

ikeyany3• 8 years ago

For a company supposedly full of smart people, you'd think they'd be able to gracefully handle so called "problematic" views like Damore's.

skywhopper3• 8 years ago

Even at this point, he would likely be easily able to get another engineering job if he wished. So I think you are vastly overstating the damage to his career. For sure, if he had admitted he was wrong or at least naive, and shut up about it, he'd have no problems at all. By doubling down on his statements and participating in lawsuits against Google, he's making himself less and less attractive to future employers. But you severely overestimate the impact this will actually have on his prospects.

But if we're talking about consequences of his actions, what about all the women whose careers he was advocating for destroying? Who, had he continued to work at Google, would have felt entirely unwelcome, untrusted, and unrespected? What is the impact on their careers when they face constant questioning of their very legitimacy merely because of their sex?

surveilmebro• 8 years ago

As someone who was an actual classmate of Damore, I can attest to his lack of character in this regard. I understand that the tone of his memo made it appear to have come from a thoughtful humanist, but this was a careful deception. In every social or professional encounter I've had with him, he's at least made somebody (particularly women) uncomfortable. In several cases these incidents led to meetings and reprimands. I am certain that he was already fully in the alt right camp, and did not say so aloud because he is a smart person capable of recognizing bad PR.

InclinedPlane• 8 years ago

We're not talking about children, we're talking about adults. Literate, tech savvy, affluent, college graduates.

How would you imagine those folks educate themselves? Easily, by relying on the abundant resources available to them. The internet, books, youtube, etc. There's a ton of material out there, if you actually care, if you think it's important to educate yourself the resources are available. He did not do that, because he wasn't seeking to inform himself, he was seeking to advance an agenda, to encourage others to adopt a prejudice that he held.

Also, I'm getting really sick and tired of these comments that bemoan the fates that have befallen these individuals who have substantially brought it upon themselves and give short shrift to the impact they've had on others. Damore was "merely asking questions" but the questions he was asking were things like "do women deserve to be the equals of men in this field?" and so forth. As both google management and the judge here have correctly pointed out, communicating in that way is incredibly damaging. It's unprofessional, it's discriminatory on its face, and it has no place in a modern work environment. The man is a grown-up, he should be smart enough to know how to broach a difficult subject of conversation if he is seeking to learn more about it or to explore controversial topics. Similarly, you can't just blunder into a discussion about race relations in the 21st century by leading off with questions like "are people of color equal to whites?" or "was slavery really wrong?" Because, again, those are on their face discriminatory, exclusionary, and harmful.

And to claim that Damore was in any way trying to advance the cause of diversity is just plain counter-factual. It is clear, especially after the end of his google employment, that he has a much different agenda.

ThomPete40• 8 years ago

His agenda was to make Google aware of some of the consequence of their diversity politics, something they themselves had asked for feedback on.

He didn't ask whether women deserved to be equals and just the fact that you think that shows just how ignorant many commentators are in this case.

If you actually are interested in hearing his version of the story, not just your own wrongly informed and biased one here is a good interview to provide you with some of the proper contexts. Then tell me what exactly it is that he has done wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NOSD0XK0r8

hinkley• 8 years ago

I think one has to factor in the fact that we are in an industry that lionizes people who spend every waking moment concentrating on their field of expertise and nothing else.

Doubly so for Google.

Not because “how can you find the time” is an excuse, but because it’s a symptom of the problem. We have an industry that enables people with no sense of perspective. It’s not just the outliers that need to ‘wake uo’. It’s on all of us.

ThomPete40• 8 years ago

Why is his credibility thrown out the window just because he retweets Breitbart articles?

This sounds like a really lazy way fo reasoning.

rayiner9• 8 years ago

That’s an untenable charitable reading of Damore’s memo. You don’t “start conversations” and “learn” by drawing conclusions, such as the lack of women in tech can be explained by genetic predispositions. And he wasn’t talking about “changes in vocabulary.” He was attacking core assumptions about what a fair society should look like. If you want to learn, you ask questions. You try to understand the other point of view until you can explain it and address it on its own terms. Damore never tried to do that.

To use a technical analogy: it’s like a C++ programmer writing a rant about how JS dynamic typing must be for people too dumb to learn C++, and the ending it with “but I’d love to ‘learn’ more about JS!” Nobody is going to assume good faith.

ThomPete40• 8 years ago

What core assumptions was he attacking specifically? Can you point to specific in his memo?

said2• 8 years ago

You strike me as reasonable. I would appreciate if you could answer a couple of questions.

1. If there are indeed biological differences between sexes that could help explain different aptitudes/predispositions for different intellectual pursuits, should it be firable to say so?

2. If boys and men are discriminated against in order to pursue equal outcomes, should they be allowed to voice opposition?

I won't challenge anyone who answers. Thank you.

stcredzero48• 8 years ago

You don’t “start conversations” and “learn” by drawing conclusions, such as the lack of women in tech can be explained by genetic predispositions.

No, but you can start conversations and learn by asking questions. What silences conversations and prevents learning is a menacing attitude towards to having conversations and asking questions.

He was attacking core assumptions about what a fair society should look like.

Aren't the assumptions the very things which should be questioned? If your axioms are flawed, then the systems built upon them are invalidated. Why should there be equality of outcomes? Should Asians have representation in the NBA proportional to their population percentage? Why is it that Jewish people have been radically more successful than the general population at tailoring across literally thousands of years of history, in so many different cultures and contexts? Why is there a Scandinavian Gender Equality paradox?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8

(Watch that video and try and tell me that the "equalists" don't come across as unreasonable, closed minded, and ideologically driven?)

A broad reading of history tells us that cultural human capital is tremendously powerful. It also gives one hope, as the historical record also indicates that cultural human capital is also transferable. The transformation of the Irish diaspora from their utter destitution to their descendant's current place in 21st century society should tell you that. (Some historians would place the average displaced Irish peasant's wealth at something like 1/2 to 1/4th that of the contemporaneous average US slave's.) Such a reading of history also demolishes the ideology of the worst segments of the Alt-Right. (As well as demolishing that of the identity politics US far-left.)

Let's call such a world view, "Cultural Primacy." Given that cultural human capital has such deep-rooted and powerful effects, what conclusions could we draw about Google's policies? It could well be that cultural human capital would have strong and persistent effects on the preferences of groups, so it would be unreasonable to expect immediate 50/50 outcomes. In fact, it would be expected for such changes to be generational, perhaps taking 2 or 3 generations. Such a world view would also emphasize the educational pipeline, and the way the subcultures of professions and fields are perceived by under-represented groups. This also happens to be in line with James Damore's suggestions from the memo. It's also entirely in line with what Google and YouTube execs have said in public:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc

pokemongoaway14• 8 years ago

You are one of these people who can't handle losing an argument that your ideology is a part of. You don't substantiate these claims - have you actually read the memo? Your analogy kind of proves that you didn't read the memo. Furthermore, I bet anyone at Google could make your mistaken analogy and not get in trouble for it. Furthermore, do you even believe someone should be fired if they made your programming language analogy?

skywhopper3• 8 years ago

If he had stuck to the point about how ignorant-but-well-meaning people can trip over rapidly changing "acceptable" discourse, then none of this would have escalated as it did. That's an argument that can be made, and there's definitely things Google and other companies could do to address that problem.

He went much further, though, basically asserting that women engineers didn't belong at Google, and that in fact the job of software engineer is (and should be) designed to exclude women's typical strengths and preferences (as if general traits of the biological sexes have anything to do with individuals' aptitude and preferences). By so doing, he created a hostile workplace for women at Google. If that type of talk is tolerated within the company, what woman would feel comfortable working in a technical role?

ThomPete40• 8 years ago

Can you point to where he says any of what you claim? I have read that memo quite a few time and see no such claims anywhere.

hypersoar• 8 years ago

If Damore was really concerned about a lack of ability to "start conversations", then he should've approached his memo with a shred of humility. He decries Google's diversity efforts but does little to suggest he's done much research into that topic itself. In fact, he barely mentions their specific programs at all.

Here [1], by the way, is an interesting overview of diversity programs. It mentions that voluntary diversity training (contrasted with mandatory training) is among the more effective tools for this. IIRC, it was Damore's attendance of such that got him all riled up.

Edit: here's the link:

[1] https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

ThomPete40• 8 years ago

He is writing it as feedback (which was encouraged by the HR team) to the very people who set up the program, why on earth would he need to do mention that specifically? He wasn't writing it to you.

What in that memo makes you feel that you can claim he didn't start with a shred of humulity? Can you point to any specifics?

freedomben3• 8 years ago

He decries Google's diversity efforts but does little to suggest he's done much research into that topic itself.

I take it you either didn't read the memo, or read the version of the memo with all the references removed (Gizmodo, Buzzfeed, and surely others)

mcguire3• 8 years ago

Was Damore "well-meaning but unaware" before his post? Did he, in good faith, attempt to "start a conversation and learn"?

adrianmonk• 8 years ago

punished for speaking out

It wasn't merely that he spoke out. It's not just what you say, it's how you say it. Saying "women, on average, have more neuroticism" is not how you start a dialog. It's how you start an argument.

Let's not debate whether it was a factual statement, but suffice it to say that "what I said was factual so there's nothing wrong with it!" isn't a defense. There are a million statements that are factual that you don't write down and distribute throughout the whole company.

Secondary goals aside, Google's main purpose is to build internet services and make money. If I were Google's management, I'd feel justified in firing him for having the poor judgment to approach things in a way that embroiled the whole company in a fight. The lost productivity alone from the distraction must have been costly to the company.

It's possible he was just trying to help, but you don't hire/employ people for good intentions; you do it so they'll be a functioning gear in a bigger machine. If they can't do that, they aren't fulfilling their purpose at the company.

curyous• 8 years ago

"women, on average, have more neuroticism" is provably true. It's been measured. It's a shame that we can't start a discussion with the truth

pokemongoaway14• 8 years ago

You are silly because huge groups of liberal psychologists use the same technical language "women, on average, have more neuroticism" - you want to fire them too?

Secondary goals aside, Google's main purpose is getting the data right - and if you can't even speak of the data, then how are you going to get it right?

PricelessValue3• 8 years ago

Then he started retweeting Breitbart articles and selling "Goolag" t-shirts and threw his credibility out the window

What does that have to do with his credibility or his arguments? His arguments stand on its own merits. Externalities has no bearing on argument. If he said 1+1=2 and then retweeted a breitbart article, does that mean 1+1 no longer equal 2?

jakelazaroff2• 8 years ago

Given that Breitbart, Stephen Molynieux, etc, all basically support the least charitable interpretation of the memo (that women are genetically less predisposed to engineering), his active association with them makes the claim that the memo was a good-faith attempt to improve diversity rather hard to swallow.

Examples:

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/14/haidt-google-memo-c...

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/15/heres-why...

PrimHelios• 8 years ago

well-meaning

Damore cherry-picked Wikipedia articles to claim women are biologically inferior with the intent of causing an uproar, that's not at all "well-meaning".

Buried deep, deep down, he had somewhat of a point, but it wasn't at all the point he was trying to argue for.

air7• 8 years ago

I've recently encounter Jordan Peterson. He speaks very eloquently about topics such as gender differences from (IMO) a rational and scientific point of view. I'm linking an interview with him which I find fascinating: Both for the information he conveys and for the manner in which he manages to remain cool and clear-headed against a very aggressive interviewer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54&t=4m55s

_dps• 8 years ago

Could a lawyer educate me on a technical matter here?

They say that "discriminatory statements are not protected". Is "discriminatory statement" a matter of law or a matter of fact? Naively I'd expect a jury to decide if a statement is discriminatory.

pukerz2• 8 years ago

Search for 'Rekieta Law' on YouTube, he is a lawyer analysing the case in depth

ThomPete40• 8 years ago

Reading the comments in this thread is disheartening. It mostly consists of either false claims of what Damore actually said or pre-conceived interpretations of his memo as being anti-diversity without a single, not a single reference to his memo.

stormbeta• 8 years ago

I think you have it backwards - this thread is full of people making excuses for Damore.

And yes, I've read it. Just because he wrote some sentences that claimed he's in favor of diversity doesn't magically change the content of the rest of the memo.

If he was truly arguing in good faith, he should've stuck to actual, demonstrable examples of issues or problems caused by the existing diversity practices. There was no need to go on long rambling tangents about population statistics that even he acknowledges aren't really relevant to the topic:

"Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions."

You'll note that most of the memo seems to be implying the opposite.

ThomPete40• 8 years ago

I would also urge you to be more specific. Give me a specific example so we can discuss it. Just handwavy claims without any specifics is useless.

stcredzero48• 8 years ago

It's quite strange, but if you read James Damore's memo at face value, you'll find Google and YouTube execs saying essentially the same thing in public:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc

There was no need to go on long rambling tangents about population statistics that even he acknowledges aren't really relevant to the topic

It's certainly relevant. The "jury is still out" in terms of biology and gender preferences and how those are modulated by culture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8

(Seriously, watch that, and tell me which side is intellectually open and honest, and which side comes across as ideologues.)

"Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions."

You'll note that most of the memo seems to be implying the opposite.

"Seems to be implying." You are essentially admitting to an ideologically skewed, imputational reading.

DoreenMichele12• 8 years ago

My general impression is that because Damore is a big fat nobody whose career has already been flushed down the toilet by these events, it is a popular discussion to have precisely because it is relatively safe for anyone to give their 2 cents worth and explore how to talk about extremely divisive topics that can be quite dangerous to try to talk about. Kind of like it is popular to mock the Gor books because it is a safe way to express opinions about gender issues where it would not be safe to talk about actual real life situations where society expects women to be submissive and deferential.

So I really don't expect such discussions to be high quality. I think it has merit that it can happen at all, but my feeling is that much of the discussion swirling around the Damore memo is training wheels level discussion.

mcguire3• 8 years ago

My favorite part:

"Men’s higher drive for status

"We always ask why we don't see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.

"Status is the primary metric that men are judged on4, pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths."

I pity those poor men, forced into high-paying, high-status, but unsatisfying jobs like programming, management, coal mining, and garbage collection.

ThomPete40• 8 years ago

No one is asking you to pity them. But if you want to compete with them head to head you better be prepared to do the same.

That's the point.

omot• 8 years ago

Can someone remind me, what was he trying to accomplish with this memo?

Clanan3• 8 years ago

The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases.

This Advice Memo establishes the precedent that discussing biological differences between men and women constitutes sexual harassment, even if those differences are supported by scientific research.

mirimir2• 8 years ago

Oh, so now men can wear short dresses to work? Or at least, shorts? When it's hot, it sucks to wear long pants. Sleeveless tees would be cool, too.

fareesh5• 8 years ago

This is one of the few subjects where much of the HN crowd is either experiencing some shared hallucination, or is relying heavily on poor journalism.

There are many comments that classify his memo as anti-diversity (it is pro diversity), and there are many that seem to suggest that the memo claimed women are less suited for these jobs, which again is patently false to anyone who gives it a reasonable and full read.

The injustice here is that this employee was taken to a workshop/seminar, was asked for feedback, which he submitted, and was ignored. His firing only came when his memo was leaked to the public and it became the subject of a media witch hunt.

Had the memo not been public, he would still be working there. This was not a planned firing and there was nothing normal about it. The CEO cancelled his vacation to return to HQ and address the situation caused by the media outcry.

This is a cancerous cultural problem that manifests the worst forms of censorious and authoritarian practices of dictatorial regimes of the past. Diversity at this cost is not worth it. Nothing is worth this kind of environment that is openly hostile and punitive to "wrongthink".

People of various backgrounds are not tokens to be planted into various positions to fulfill some fetish or misguided sense of justice. Under-representation by a specific group or sub group is not sufficient evidence of discrimination or a conspiracy. Deeming programs and opportunities unavailable to people because they don't have the correct biological trait is disgusting, and the ends do not justify the means. To argue that favoring someone because they belong to a special genetic group is rooted in the very "essentialist" thinking that is claimed to be chastised.

There is a better solution to these issues, and at this rate it will never be found. Ironic that some of the world's most innovative people who have no problem bouncing from one design pattern to another, are perfectly content with an approach to a point that criticism of it will get you fired.

rexpop2• 8 years ago

Witch-hunts were authoritarian campaigns of gendercide. A gross, systematic slaughtering of thousands upon thousands of women. It's egregiously callous for you to misuse the term in this way.

Perhaps you men "snark-hunt".

fareesh5• 8 years ago

It's not misuse, it's intentional.

Men were not the target of witch hunts because they were the "incorrect" sex.

Today, in cases where merit seemingly takes a backseat to diversity, men are the "incorrect" sex for some opportunities, like say if you want to speak at a node.js conference, or attend some special mentoring workshop. The opposite is not true, if you are not a man, there are no instances that I am aware of where you are openly denied or discouraged from pursuing an opportunity for that reason alone.

bencalam3• 8 years ago

The shared hallucination is the one experienced by the people agreeing with the memo, and the ones who feel needlessly 'victimized' and 'persecuted' now that times are changing.

Of course, this is expected since the first ones to complain about growing equality are the ones who prospered disproportionately under inequality.

fareesh5• 8 years ago

It has very little to do with feelings though. In my specific case I am not affected by these politics and policies whatsoever as I am thousands of miles away from the United States, and I am self employed.

To constantly read about cases where biology determines whether or not people are eligible for a particular opportunity, i.e. imposing inequality of opportunity in order to arrive at equality of outcome, is violating the very principles one claims to be opposed to. The excuse for this kind of implementation is that it is justified, in order to fix historical inequality. The people who are being discriminated against had no say in historical inequality. They were born into this kind of a society by accident of birth. If a young boy in Saudi Arabia goes to get a driving license and is told that he is no longer eligible because they have decided to randomly reject 4/5 male applicants to correct for historical injustice, he is being penalized for something he had nothing to do with. When a young boy is rejected for a job he is qualified for, citing the fact that he is the wrong sex, he is being penalized for something he had nothing to do with. Nobody should be at a disadvantage imposed on them by others using biology as a reason to do so. This is immoral, and no outcome is worth this kind of violation of principle.

pokemongoaway14• 8 years ago

How is it that you feel so correct that you don't need to cite anything in reply to such a thorough analysis of events? "Prospered under inequality"? What was the name of this inequality law? Or was it "systemic" so I can't possibly understand it with my biased white male brain? The inequality we're under is the huge push to hire minorities and women. For example, as an Asian to get into Harvard, you need to have higher grades than a Black. How is this liberal policy not racist?

droopybuns• 8 years ago

If we are all honest with ourselves, we acknowledge that we have our opinions about how most men think and how most women think.

The difference between being cast out and being celebrated is that the latter keeps their opinions to themselves. This guy self-immolated for foolishness.

fzeroracer2• 8 years ago

The problem with Damore's theory he posited (that the difference in traits and abilities between men and women is why you see a certain imbalance in tech) ignores the history of computer science, where in the early days of CS you had a large amount of women entering into software followed by a sharp dropoff in the 80s [1]. The 'biological differences' argument falls flat because it implies that somehow women changed on a biological level between 1984 and today.

I also take umbrage with his civil suit against Google because it amounts to no more than a document meant to doxx google employees by revealing their names and political positions ranging from benign to the more 'punch nazis' level of discourse. There was selective censorship applied such that people he agreed with were protected, while people he disagreed with were brought out in front of the crowd. I have seen pictures floating around designed to make it easy to effectively target said employees facebook, twitter etc accounts.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...

rayiner9• 8 years ago

It's not just the history of computer science. Damore's essay was based on time-tested pseudo-scientific reasoning, the sort that has been invoked to exclude women in many different fields. When law firms offered Sandra Day O'Connor a secretarial job after she graduated third in her class at Stanford, do you think they said "we just don't like women?" Of course not. They couched their bias in appeals to the differences between men and women, and how those differences supposedly were relevant to the practice of law.

Damore is more of the same. Take, for example, his invocation of studies showing that women are more prone to be "neurotic." Aside from the fact that "neurotic" covers an immense range of personality traits--Damore leaves it as an exercise for the reader why that would be a bad thing. Among other things, "neurotic" encompasses "obsessive compulsive" or "anxious." Why isn't that a good trait in a programmer--someone who needs to be constantly on the lookout for the errant buffer overflow? He also invokes the idea that women are less able to handle "stressful" situations. Which explains why nurses--who are literally dealing with life and death every day--are mostly women? It's not that there isn't evidence of differences in personality traits between men and women, it's that all the inferences after "infant boys prefer trucks" is complete handwaving.

Back in the day, people would, with the pretense of science, invoke differences in cranial measurements to explain the economic plight of African Americans. Damore's is just the latest in a long line of pseudo-scientific gibberish. And it blows my mind that so many in the tech community are falling for it. You actually have to be bad at logical reasoning to find Damore's points compelling.

reader50004• 8 years ago

There are more male programmers than female. Please explain how invoking genetic differences explanations is pseudo scientific, whereas invoking systematic discrimination explanations is not pseudo-scientific.

Consider: There are more male rapists than female rapists. Is this because female rapists are systematically discriminated against? Does our society shamefully teach children that raping is only for boys? Or are males simply genetically more predisposed to rape relative to females?

If males are genetically more likely to rape, should we lock them all up at birth? I guess not?

Majora3202• 8 years ago

When law firms offered Sandra Day O'Connor a secretarial job after she graduated third in her class at Stanford, do you think they said "we just don't like women?" Of course not. They couched their bias in appeals to the differences between men and women, and how those differences supposedly were relevant to the practice of law.

Note that he isn't saying that women do have these traits; they are saying that on average, they are more likely to. In this example, O'Connor would just be one of the ones to not have them.

reader50004• 8 years ago

The 'biological differences' argument falls flat because it implies that somehow women changed on a biological level between 1984 and today.

Alternatively, that the nature of software work changed.

UncleMeat5• 8 years ago

In a way that aligns well with some nebulous personality difference between men and women? That's quite a claim.

It seems to me like the nature of the work hasn't even dramatically changed in the first place.

jjeaff2• 8 years ago

Just because initially, women worked on computers doesn't indicate to me whether they were more or less suited to the job. People just thought of it as women's work. They were the typists and human "computers"

gdix3• 8 years ago

I'm skeptical of the "early days of CS" narrative. Could it be that there were lots of women working with computers because it was seen as "secretarial" work. In other words, was it just bosses placing their female employees in computer-related roles as companies added those positions? If so, could it be that that "dropoff" in the 80s could be just reflective of the demographics of people who were choosing that profession. i.e. Once "computers" became a career that you could pursue, as opposed to being placed in, it attracted more men than women, possibly because men are more attracted to that type of work.

jjeaff2• 8 years ago

I know that initially, part of the reason was that only women knew how to type.

In fact, it was almost embarrassing for a man if he knew how to type since that was women's work.

So I'm sure that played a role once keyboard came into the picture.

Before that, when it was mostly punchcards, women were manual "computers" that did the calculations. So it seems reasonable that computers were considered women's work and thus that drive the trend.

Whether women were more or less suited to the job wouldn't seem to be relevant at the time.

ianamartin2• 8 years ago

My mother's college roommate went to work for NASA and worked on the Apollo projects starting in the 50s. Programming at that time was all women, and it was definitely seen as menial work. The literal astrophysicists and computer scientists were doing the "real" work, and the women were "just punching cards."

That wasn't the reality of it, of course. Those women were doing massive amounts of the work around the logic of the systems.

But there was a hierarchy, and everyone knew it. Wasn't until the 70s and 80s that things turned into a man's world. Once people figured out that there were hard problems to solve and plenty of opportunities to yell, "Yeah! We Really Fucked that problem in the ass!" Yeah, right about that time, the women started leaving.

My mom's roommate didn't quit NASA until she retired quite nicely in 1995. And by that time it was a very different place.

You can laugh and mock someone who started with punch cards all you want, and maybe even think she's a dinosaur who didn't keep up. But this woman taught me assembly, C, Lisp, C++, SQL, and Python. Not too shabby for a punchcard programmer from the 50s. I'd say she kept up just fine.

But boy, did she want out of that environment. She was not a happy camper by the time the 90s rolled around.

The thing you aren't getting is that it's the people on the ground who did a lot of the work to make programming languages not suck.

verylittlemeat5• 8 years ago

Doesn't your narrative just confirm then that "working with computers" has always been related to social norms? Women were placed there and performed as well as any later man(hence many notable women in early computer science).

When ceos started realizing the potential social and economic power of the magic typing box it was no longer socially taboo for men to operate them. Of course, no self respecting business elite man would use one, only dirty hippie social rejects.

That's what makes the whole thing extra sad. For the longest time silicon valley types had to deal with being social outcasts in the business world. Rather than learn from that to be more inclusive they just took up the mantle of the business elite they replaced and perpetuated the same system of prejudice. In fact now that I think about it part of excluding women from the profession might have been an attempt at self preservation. Early tech people knew they were already looked down upon, if they didn't amp up the sexism to make it clear they were real men they would look even weaker to their east coast elite superiors.

YeGoblynQueenne11• 8 years ago

The graph in the article linked by the OP plots the number of women majoring in computer science (and another three fields). Unless "computer science" meant something radically different in the '70s and early '80s than it does today, or secretaries' roles included coding algorithms and data structures in PDP assembly, then no, those were not secretaries, but computer scientists.

cma• 8 years ago

He says:

that these differences may [emphasis added] explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership

And he says one of the differences is a higher drive for status. That is one way it could change without the 80's thing being counter-evidence, if the status of practitioners and/or leadership in the field changed for some reason (maybe Bill Gates becoming the richest man in the world).

I'm not saying that I agree with him, or that the status drive difference is true, or that it would actually be an explanation for the difference from the 80s to now (Bill Gates might have lowered the status of the field for being socially awkward). I'm only saying that your counter argument may not work because he couched his statement in "may" and he talks about meta-level factors around the field.

fjsolwmv10• 8 years ago

This is well researched in the feminist sociology literature. When a "women's job" (like teaching or nursing) becomes more respected, pay goes up, and... The industry gets an influx of men working in it.

dzhiurgis• 8 years ago

If status hypothesis is right, it explains why women didn't change since 80s. What did indeed changed since then is popularity of tech. With more money floating around there are more people seeking for status.

rishav_sharan• 8 years ago

Are we sure that stenographers and typists were not counted as programmers in the 80?

imron4• 8 years ago

The 'biological differences' argument falls flat because it implies that somehow women changed on a biological level between 1984 and today.

This article has an alternative explanation as for why:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger...

Without implying there was any biological change at all - rather that other fields that were shut off to women (medicine, law etc) become more open.

It's a long read, but provides some interesting food for thought.

fzeroracer2• 8 years ago

It's a somewhat interesting read, but one that I cannot agree with the conclusions as the author seems to have not bothered to read up on the data with regards to gender ratio in other careers.

For example the following claim made by the author:

Women are less likely to be interested in programming than men. But if you ban the smart women from every other occupation – well, they’ll take it. Once you unban them, they’ll go to other things they like more, like being veterinarians (80% women) and forensic scientists (74% women). My guess is in 1980, neither of those careers had many women in them. Where did all those super-smart women who now dominate the fields come from? Probably places like schoolteaching and programming!

Can have doubt immediately cast on it by examining the percentage of women graduates by all degree types [1]. If we presume this to be true, then in the 80s we should see a large tick up in other degrees followed by a large tick down in computer science. And well, the data doesn't exactly support that. In fact, Computer Science is one of the few that bucks the trend of the other degrees. His entire argument essentially boils down to 'women are interested in these degrees, and men are interested in these degrees' which is a soft-argument saying that genetic or gender-related differences is why we see such large disparities between various careers. He handwaves away the statistic relating to the drop in the 80s, which makes me have trouble taking him seriously.

[1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/14/percentage-of-bachelor...

fjsolwmv10• 8 years ago

Damore was the first Doxxing victim here. He didn't publish the memo publicly.

pokemongoaway14• 8 years ago

You're on the wrong side of this thing - it is insanely silly to imply someone should be fired from a tech company for a "theory he posited" (your words).

How about some references for your second paragraph. I've seen statistics floating around proving you wrong...

kingofhdds2• 8 years ago

As we all know correlation-causation link us not that easy. In 80s programming was a very much different thing - I know it, because both of my parents were programmers (though not in US), and also it was a very small pool at that time, so direct comparison may not be so valid as you seem to believe.

stillkicking2• 8 years ago

There was no sharp drop-off in the 80s. What happened is that interest from men soared while the proportion of women choosing to study it remained relatively constant in comparison, only dropping by a little in terms of the actual percentage of the female student body choosing it over other subjects. Looking only at the ratio is completely misleading.

There was only a short exception around the PC boom and the dotcom boom, when the proportion of women choosing to study it actually increased, and then fell down again once the boom was gone. This is similar to what the Scandinavian countries found in trying to encourage women to go into engineering: when they stop the campaigns, women's participation drops back to baseline.

But rather than look at the complete picture, only the gender ratio graph is ever shown, because that's the one that confirms the preconception that women are being victimized. This "drop", by the way, only exists at the bachelor level, and vanishes at the masters and PhD level, which suggests there is nothing driving committed and talented women out of the field at all.

But even if you didn't think all of the above is valid, it is preposterous to posit that the biological differences argument implies women must've somehow changed in the mid 80s. There is a much simpler explanation: computer science itself changed, and how it relates to industry. With the birth of PCs and especially SaaS, the amount of hard CS skills required to make computers do useful things dropped pretty much to zero. Only people with a particular theorical and abstract interest need to go into it. At the same time, software development pioneered many of the async and remote working styles that are common place in open source, and which allow for individualistic collaboration rather than the always-on social setting that women prefer. You see this in engineering too. Women gravitate towards engineering subjects that feature more team work, field work and lab work, and which involve working with people. The increased appeal of the field for men could be due to the fact that a segment of people previously tortured by social styles could now excel in a more solitary setting.

None of this is a taboo when it is used to imply that women's communication and empathy skills are innately superior, a common refrain in diversity circles. But try to make the same argument about men and their abstraction skills, at a population level, and suddenly you're blaspheming against the church of intersectionality.

The double standards and shoddy science are obvious, and the NLRB should be ashamed for rendering a judgment that declares reality to be sexist because some people's feelings were hurt. The only person who got actually victimized was Damore himself, for the crime of taking diversity advocates at their word, and actually offering them the feedback they claim to want, but clearly are incapable of processing.

fjsolwmv10• 8 years ago

You are deeply misinformed. At PhD level, Bio and Agro are gender balanced. CS is 95% male. Math and Engineering are about 70% male.

Women weren't becoming less represented in CS over time, because they were never welcomed in graduate programs in the first place

http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2017/05/08/gender-gap-in-...

Udik2• 8 years ago

The 'biological differences' argument falls flat because it implies that somehow women changed on a biological level between 1984 and today.

Or that computer science, and programming, started to change around 1984, which is not at all implausible.

Also, in the article you linked there is a good observation:

The share of women in computer science started falling at roughly the same moment when personal computers started showing up in U.S. homes in significant numbers.

Which coincides with the time in which programming became a hobby you take up in childhood because you enjoy doing it, rather than a profession like any other. In other words, this could hint to a self-selection into a computer science career based on pure enjoyment of the activity as a child.

(The article instead suggests computers were marketed mainly as toys for boys- which is also not implausible, but doesn't explain why tech companies would have willingly cut themselves off half of the possible revenues of their product- I bet a 100% increase in sales would beat any prejudice).

throwestawayer• 8 years ago

Real question: having seen that many good engineers are hesitant to work at a company with very limited diversity, we have endeavored to increase diversity by hiring qualified junior engineers from less represented groups. Is this acceptable?

These are completely qualified folks, for the job of junior engineer. We purposely, from the category of all qualified junior applicants, hired those that also were from less represented groups.

Is this perceived (by “you”, I suppose) as “acceptable”?

ralusek• 8 years ago

If they are completely qualified, they should and would be hired by a system that completely ignores gender and race. While the morality of your system is up for debate, what is not up for debate is that your system is mathematically disadvantaged in terms of hiring the best engineers...because your system ignores the vast majority of the hiring pool (presumably white/Indian/east asian [straight?] men). A blind system favors/ignores nobody.

PricelessValue3• 8 years ago

If they are completely qualified, they should and would be hired by a system that completely ignores gender and race.

I can't believe you were downvoted for expressing that merit rather than race and gender should be use for hiring decisions.

ianal123• 8 years ago

We purposely, from the category of all qualified junior applicants, hired those that also were from less represented groups.

IANAL, but from my understanding making hiring decisions based on race, gender or religion is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But I really don't know what I am talking about and would be interested in hearing a lawyer's opinion.

Clanan3• 8 years ago

In your company, how much better merit-wise must a white/asian/male applicant be to get hired? Fifty percent better? My gut-feeling is that these well-intentioned policies don't weed out the upper echelons of the "over-represented" groups anyway - they'll just use position/elite network to get in the door. Instead, the policy weeds out the "working class" applicants who must rely on merit, but who have the wrong skin color.

Caveman_Coder3• 8 years ago

I have first hand experience with this. As a normal working-class white guy with poor parents and no connections (I worked my way through school), I had a hard time even landing an interview at first. As a social experiment, I changed my name/sex from Joe/male to Joanna/female, kept everything else on my resume the same, and reapplied to all the jobs that didn't want me previously. Every single company that rejected Joe was overjoyed when Joanna applied. In every case I got a email within the week wanting to meet and interview me. It was kind of eye-opening. I didn't follow through as "Joanna" because the sexist hiring policies were enough to put me off working at these companies entirely. I eventually found an employer that wasn't sexist and have been happy with them so far...

ianamartin2• 8 years ago

I strongly disagree with what the guy said. But I also find it problematic that he was fired for saying it. That's crossing a line I'm not comfortable with.

There were other legitimate points in his claim that should be addressed too. You simply can't discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. And if people are outright saying that, that's a problem.

Is he a jackass? Yes. Did he do something obnoxious with that memo? Yes. Fire him for that. Which they did. Totally fine with that.

But if the real culture at google is as described, that's something that needs to come to light in discovery. I would have preferred for this to move forward so we can see some light on things.

The problem here isn't with Damore's "theory." It's whether or not there is a pervasive, race-based bias.

My suspicion is that there isn't really anything in practice. Yeah, maybe some dude does some virtue signalling every once in a while. But in reality, I can't actually believe a competent HR team would let that happen on a systematic level.

The chances are he would've been shown to be wrong. So it's too bad this didn't go past this stage.

AHZHKPA• 8 years ago

The way we are talking to each other here is just toxic. Most of it isn’t even a conversation at all and I see very few attempts at understanding or empathy. It all just stinks of tribalism.

Every time the memo is brought up I see this same shit, and feel someone needs to call it out. I don’t care what side you are on; how we are going about this conversation is clearly not working. I wish I had a solution for this. I don’t. But understanding that there is a problem may be a good first step.

We must be better than this

Chris20486• 8 years ago

What use is calling it out when you "don't care what side you are on"?

You are ready to assign equal blame, when there are unequal incentives.

iovrthoughtthis4• 8 years ago

This is the ultimate HN bikeshedding topic.

It's a proxy for the nature / nurture debate.

I put my vote token in the nature side. Women can do what ever men can and persisting the ideas that they can't sucks.

That is my opinion and I am unwilling to change it.

DoreenMichele12• 8 years ago

I agree it is bikeshedding. But I think it is bikeshedding with a constructive purpose of serving as a safe sandbox in which people can practice talking about difficult subjects without it blowing up in their face.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16399006

iovrthoughtthis4• 8 years ago

I'm not convinced that is the case.

Members seems to be expressing views that are intrinsic to their identities. To that end, no one has an open mind on the subject.

Even I genuinely don't have an open mind on the subject!

These discussions and disagreements will only serve to cement the existing views of members.

verylittlemeat5• 8 years ago

The "constructive purpose" of the discussion for a man is to practice talking about difficult subjects. The real world implication of discussing it is suggesting that the potential of women in tech is up for debate.

Just talking about some things is enough to imply unintended conclusions. That's how it works in the real world no matter how hard you want to play Mr. Logic. To believe otherwise is extremely naive and puts you in serious danger, as Damore found out.

Opinions based around differences in human biology have a really bad historical track record. Groups and institutions have built up a natural vomit reflex for when they show up. Many might argue that this is a suppression of the truth but they also have to appreciate that that suppression might be in service of a greater good.

swat535• 8 years ago

When this discussion was initially ignited a while back, I had wondered whether I should seek the opinion of my girlfriend regarding this topic.

She is a brilliant software engineer who switched out of CS into another major, despite having top grades.

I finally caved and asked her to read the original memo.

Whilst she found the memo interesting, she mentioned this is the view of a single person and found it ridiculous that it caused such an outcry.

She is all for diversity in tech (and for all industries for that matter) and pointed out that the hypersensitivity nature of CS causes much harm than good.

While we are busy doing roundabout discussions regarding a memo, personal data of millions of people are being leaked, privacy and security of people are in jeopardy because we fail to make high quality software.

It truly sadden both of us that the brilliant minds in our Industry are focused on what should/should not be written in a personal memo, than actually pushing the boundaries of software.

When a thought provoking community such as HN calls for arms every time this topic comes up and turns into a battlefield, I do wonder whether we have already lost the fight for TRUE diversity.

Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge

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