This is my impression as well. The memo was not particularly incendiary. His behavior since then has been pretty bad. So, has he become more extreme in the backlash, or was the memo carefully crafted to legitimize bad behavior?
I suspect it’s more that he’s kinda peeved that he’s been essentally fired not just from Google, but from his entire profession, and has to make money giving conservatives what they like. What else can he do?
There are many problems with the complete ostracism of “fascist” viewpoints, and one of them is radicalization. People go where they are welcome, and if that’s with some pretty bad people, then maybe we shouldn’t send them new recruits.
This doesn’t make any sense at all, unless you believe that women and minorities hold conservative views at a higher rate than white men do. Which basically every poll ever, and every election ever, disprove.
This alienation argument might have some truth on a systemic scale, but nothing protects Damore from my opinion that he is a giant douchenozzle of a human being because of how he handled it.
Well, the old “when you realize you’re in a hole, stop digging” saying comes to mind.
I agree that he has mostly shitty options at this point due to the focus of the internet rage machine. But he also has responsibility for his future actions.
It is true that women and minorities are more liberal than white males. It is also true that they are less likely to be strongly political and more likely to have heterodox views. Married women tend to be pro-life. Black men tend to be less supportive of gay marriage. And there are some demographic groups that are more right-wing on a host of issues, from Cubans, to Vietnamese, to Arabs, to Indians. And you do have to wonder if dissent from white progressive orthodoxy was tolerated, and if that made diversity quotas harder to fulfill.
It’s simple math. If only 55% of women are liberal, then that’s an insufficient pool to drawn from. Even if you’re excluding the 10% of African-Americans who are conservative you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Much less going to the trouble of excluding the 35% of Latinos and 40% of Asians who frequently vote Republican.
This is why it’s hard to disentangle ideological discrimination from racism. Any kind of white hot discrimination is going to chase certain people away. Especially people who have enough problems and don’t need new headaches, like people hating them for their political views.
If he joins the Aryan Nation then I’ll agree. So far all he’s doing is talking to people who will listen. There’s no sign that he’s adopted their view of the world. If he is indeed autistic, he’s probably immune to such influences anyway.
Though I think Damore is an idiot, I agree with your general point here. If we value diversity it seems diversity of opinion (within reason, obviously we don’t want to embrace ideologies of hate) would also qualify. When we discriminate based on political orientation we cripple the organization just as much as other types of discrimination. Nothing good comes from an echo chamber. And exposure to people with different perspectives is valuable for all concerned, which is what we’ve been claiming all along by identifying diversity as an ideal.
I work in a sexual assault services organization with a woman who voted for Trump, and I can’t wrap my head around how anyone that passionate about ending sexual assault could vote for Trump, but it doesn’t really affect anything about our relationship because our relationship is professional and I like her as a person. Now we can talk more broadly about the toxic nature of people minimizing misogyny and sexual violence for the sake of other ideals, but that’s a separate issue from whether I can work with this person like a mature professional, isn’t it? Probably her view brings something to the table we would otherwise miss.
This echo chamber issue is why I left Facebook and why I struggle in general with some particular leftist views. People are really complicated and I struggle to boil them down to only their platform preferences and nothing more. I’m much more impressed by the ability to honestly entertain an opposing idea than the nature of the beliefs themselves (unless, again, we’re talking hate.)
Actually, now that I think about it, if this woman were to pen an All Staff memo detailing why she thinks we need to consider that women sometimes invite sexual assault, and our policies should address this ‘‘fact,’’ then we would have a problem. She would probably be fired because this viewpoint is explicitly opposed to our core values. But we are a nonprofit and things work differently when the viewpoint is directly opposed to the actual mission statement of the organization.
Part of the issue is I don’t really understand Google’s culture. I don’t understand how politics come up at work in the first place. I work for the liberalist organization that ever liberaled, and we may talk about specific harmful policies, or circulate occasional calls for action as regards specific policies, but this sort of email would never have been written, the discussion would have never been initiated in the first place. Nobody meets in forums to share political viewpoints or writes long-ass manifestos about their personal beliefs for everyone to read. I just don’t get it.
Which, of course, is possible. Google is a huge organization and it’s possible that different parts are discriminating against different people. Or that discrimination against different people happens at different times by the same organization.
It wasn’t a manifesto about personal beliefs. It was a critique of Google’s diversity policies.
I’m browsing the complaint, and most of it feels like nonsense arguments. However, there are some pretty bad things:
Not exactly who a white male is going to want on their promotion committee.
Is that sort of thing typical at Google? I honestly feel like a huge part of proving either case is going to require contextualizing Google’s weird corporate culture.
My general take on this, based on what I know :
I think it’s one thing to say you think a policy harms white men, and by extension, the company. In my mind, where he went off base was turning the question to whether women are qualified or interested in STEM, thus suggesting they don’t really belong there in the first place. Suggesting women’s neuroticism as a factor was just plain stupid. That’s the part that got him in trouble. I think if he had stuck to his own concerns about discrimination against white men, he would have been okay. Instead he had to make it about women. I’m neither surprised this was poorly received nor do I feel particularly sorry for his termination. I don’t think it’s the most outrageous thing anyone’s ever said, but it was indicative of poor judgment.
The fact that this was used as a massive media flashpoint in the culture wars is unfortunate, and the outrage of the public was really disproportionate to the act, but it’s not Google’s fault. Nor have I seen evidence that Google blacklisted the guy outside of one self - righteous jackass running at the mouth whom Google vehemently disavowed.
So while I see Damore as a victim of the public outrage machine, I do not see him as a victim of Google.
I agree that is bad (and possibly violates the Civil Rights Act?) Google could use some major policy reform. The question is to what extent those types of attitudes shaped the decision to fire him. Because I think the case can be made that it was prudent to fire him based on things that have nothing to do with discrimination against conservative white males. One thing that’s clear from articles I read about the actual board discussion on whether to fire him is that it was not a knee-jerk or reactionary decision but something pretty carefully considered.
The fact that he came away from a reasonable firing with the conclusion that he is a Victim of an oppressive liberal corporate culture tells me a lot about his maturity level. The media certainly had him on the defensive but there’s a better way to handle it than rubbing elbows and sharing a platform with virulent misogynists. That I find unforgivable, and also speaks to his true motives in penning that memo.
Burchett seems like an absolute loon. I can understand a little bit of looniness in the IT profession, I work in that profession myself and a lot of us are a little, er, odd. But she should be limited to production, not management. Management is for the stable people. Who understand legal stuff at at least the layman’s level. Her prejudices are so entirely at odds with anti-discrimination laws it’s hard to see how she keeps her job in the long run.
I’d say that depends on how the argument is presented. One is not “at fault” for sexual assault but there is no question that a person can reduce their chances of becoming a victim. If a sexual assault organization doesn’t even address that, by for example saying, “Hey, have you considered that maybe you should avoid alcoholics?” is good advice. Self defense courses don’t hurt either. If the mission statement is about helping victims of sexual assault, then that certainly fits in with the mission.
Google seems to have a very poiltical culture, although that’s not uncommon in workplaces. ALthough more in smaller workplaces. I eat at a pizzeria where they spend a lot of time chatting and arguing about politics while they work. I think the uncommon part is the intolerance. There’s political discussion at my current job too. Not constant, but it’s allowed and people work together despite disagreeing. That’s healthy. Google is far from healthy.
In Damore’s case though he was addressing a very specific subject: why Google’s diversity policies aren’t working in regards to females. REally, he should have just been shorter: There are just fewer females in computer science and engineering than males. Google’s responsibility ends there. Where he probably went where he shouldn’t was in trying to explain why fewer women are interested in those fields.
The organization takes an evidence-based primary prevention approach rather than risk-reduction, so actually it would be totally at odds with our mission. How I feel about that personally and whether or not you agree is another conversation for a different thread, but the point is, it’s at the discretion of the organization to decide whether an employee acts in a way that violates their core values. And I have no problem with private businesses, or nonprofits, making that judgment call.
The problem is… Well, intolerance is a big factor. If you have leaders that actively advocate discrimination, you open yourself up to claims of discrimination whether that was actually the case in any specific instance, or not. I see absolutely nothing wrong with policies that promote inclusivity of traditionally marginalized populations, but when you go from promoting inclusivity to actively discouraging white men, then you’ve got a problem. And probably a legal one.
Diversity is not, or should not be, a zero-sum game. I don’t like to see it treated that way.
Also, it’s a legitimate debate how far a company’s responsibility to fix the world’s problems goes. If your white male candidates are just better than your minority and female candidates, that’s not your fault, that’s society’s fault. There are certain things a company can do to do it’s part, but some companies seem to be trying to achieve an unnatural result: equal representation in an unequal society.
Companies can make special efforts to recruit and develop female and minority candidates. I think it can be argued that instead of reaching out to foreign countries for H-1B visas, which I think is lazy, how about train a local female or minority candidate who has aptitude but may not have had the chance to go to college? Especially in California, you don’t have to import a foreign candidate, foreign candidates are everywhere already! Get some brilliant kid from the barrio.
That’s probably the most shocking thing about the lawsuit. I can’t believe people post the stuff they do (1) associated with their real name and (2) on a company message board. Google seems to have the type of culture that anything and everything is open for discussion.
The amusing thing is that he went through some lengths to specifically refute this argument. He was very clear that even if populations differ, there’s significant overlap, and he specifically disavowed treating a population like their average member.
Public outrage didn’t fire him. Google did. The fact that it went viral gave a lot of incentive for Google to fire him, but they still hold the responsibility.
That would be quirky, but fine. If in fact everything was up for discussion. Instead, it reads like a fundamentalist Christian message board, with people complaining all about the same thing, some sinners publicly repenting their wrongdoing, and the ostracism of heretics.
Google is ultimately responsible, but it’s also true that companies almost never fire people for their political views absent a lynch mob demanding it. James Damore made Google money. They saw his memo and saw no reason to take action against him. Then it leaked, and he became a liability. Too bad their legal department isn’t as good as their IT department. Even if they wanted to fire him for his political views, in a state like California where there are some protections for employees in that sphere, the CEO should at least have been advised to try to find other grounds for firing him rather than coming straight out and saying they were firing him for his political views.
That’s why I think in this day and age we should probably make it illegal federally to fire employees for political opinions. Companies would probably secretly like this, as it would take all the steam out of social media mobs. “Sorry, we can’t fire him, nothing we can do.” This trend of “person gives offense, person must never work in his field again” is madness. And I really don’t think companies want to be doing this. They only do it because they want to avoid bad publicity. When someone says or does something mildly racist or sexist and it stays within the company, the person rarely loses their job.
Right, but as I said, I think an argument can be made that it was reasonable to fire him. I suspect we disagree there. But in my view, he can complain about public persecution all he wants, I don’t think his firing is conclusively an act of discrimination by Google. He clearly does think that, and he’s going to have the chance to show that in court. And even if this particular act of firing was not discriminatory, it appears some of their practices are discriminatory. I’m very curious about what the case will reveal about Google and how it might compel a change in their policy.
Even if Google itself wasn’t engaged in discriminatory acts, Google tolerated a corporate culture of harassment, intimidation, and discrimination. Damore alleges that they encouraged this quietly, not wanting to have it written down in company policies. That might be hard to prove, but the fact that Google is a very hostile workplace is hard to dispute.
Here’s my problem with that. What qualifies as a political opinion? Obama was a great President? Our foreign policy should be more hawkish? Gay people should burn in hell? This is a really nebulous concept that would be both onerous and problematic to enforce. At a place like my organization, a political opinion that universal health care is a bad idea is harmless, but the opinion that sometimes women invite violence would be actively harmful to the people we serve. So would be the case with an urban homeless shelter employee whose political opinion includes active, public support for white nationalism. Should businesses be required to tolerate views that damage their reputation or run against the best interest of their clients? How broadly would such a law be interpreted? Would that protect men in positions of power from espousing sexist views, or women from being racist?
I think businesses should retain the right to protect themselves, their reputations, their employees, and their clients. Whether they have a responsibility to ameliorate social wrongs is, in my view, beside the point. They have a right to do that as long as they aren’t running afoul of the law.
Would that opinion be harder for me to have if it was my ass on the chopping block? Yes. But I still think it’s the right call. It doesn’t mean I think firing people for their political views is a good thing. It just means I don’t see legislation as the answer.
The social media lynch mob is a separate issue and while I agree it’s a big and terrifying problem, I don’t know how to fix it. The majority of damage done to Damore was a result of media coverage, not the decision to fire him. People lose their jobs over dumb mistakes all the time. That’s not the end of the world. The problem is the insatiable bloodlust of the public.