“I was fired by Google this past Monday for a document that I wrote and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the wider tech sector,” James Damore writes in The Wall Street Journal. “I suggested that at least some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and, yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too). Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai declared that portions of my statement violated the company’s code of conduct and ‘cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.'”
“My 10-page document set out what I considered a reasoned, well-researched, good-faith argument, but as I wrote, the viewpoint I was putting forward is generally suppressed at Google because of the company’s ‘ideological echo chamber,'” Damore writes. “My firing neatly confirms that point. How did Google, the company that hires the smartest people in the world, become so ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate and reasoned argument?”
“We all have moral preferences and beliefs about how the world is and should be. Having these views challenged can be painful, so we tend to avoid people with differing values and to associate with those who share our values. This self-segregation has become much more potent in recent decades. We are more mobile and can sort ourselves into different communities; we wait longer to find and choose just the right mate; and we spend much of our time in a digital world personalized to fit our views,” Damore writes. “Echo chambers maintain themselves by creating a shared spirit and keeping discussion confined within certain limits… But echo chambers also have to guard against dissent and opposition. Whether it’s in our homes, online or in our workplaces, a consensus is maintained by shaming people into conformity or excommunicating them if they persist in violating taboos. Public shaming serves not only to display the virtue of those doing the shaming but also warns others that the same punishment awaits them if they don’t conform.”
“It saddens me to leave Google and to see the company silence open and honest discussion,” Damore writes. “If Google continues to ignore the very real issues raised by its diversity policies and corporate culture, it will be walking blind into the future — unable to meet the needs of its remarkable employees and sure to disappoint its billions of users.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Former Google engineer James Damore’s original memo, “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” can be read in full here.
SEE ALSO:
Street artist mocks Google in ads posted outside company offices following Damore firing – August 12, 2017
Here’s why the tech industry doesn’t need more female software engineers – August 9, 2017
Not surprised. The thought police will not tolerate different views or opinions. Here’s a guy who didn’t hurt anyone but just dared to give his viewpoint. Disgusting.
Sure, but we all have to personas, the professional and the private one. You can express what you like on your private one, but once you step into the professional one, expect repercautiolns. That is the way things are. I can agree or disagree with the guy, but I certainly don’t need to employee him.
“repercautiolns” Lol WTF?
“The thought police will not tolerate different views or opinions.” which is why Sears did NOT become Amaon!
Amazon. Sheesh.
Sears was devastated when an Ayn Rand fanatic tried to run the company on her principles.
https://www.inc.com/erik-sherman/sears-ceo-eddie-lampert-should-stop-reading-ayn-rand.html
I gotta read that.
Oh please, he got exactly what he wanted. A national forum, a lucrative career on the right-wing speaking circuit, and a permanent status as a martyr for the poor, oppressed white male.
Looks like we have a lot of poor, oppressed white males right here on MDN.
They must have the most pathetic lives to be as hateful as they are.
That is a hateful post. Looks like hate, imtolerance, bullying and slandor are the main tenants of being a democrat these days.
spare me your crocodile tears. MDN is where the pathetic, whiny, snively racist fuques come to pat each other on the back.
Just shut up.
selective stupidity on your part. Here is a free clue. I will never be tolerant of
Nighttime rallies with lights tend to look similar regardless of political affiliation, or reason for that matter. I have absolutely no doubt I could find indistinguishable pics of Democratic gatherings.
Although a lot of them prior to the 1960s would probably have a black man or two hanging from a tree.
Why you are absolutely correct….. except these people are white supremacist and avowed nazis. This is tRumps ameriKKKa. Ask david duke.
If nighttime rallies, crowds and lights are really of any importance, then Obama has topped them all. None prior nor future will top his. But there was good reason for that too. 1st man of African extraction to be elected to the highest office in the land given our history. He can lay claim to what no other person can.
blood and soil. You would have heard the same thing at both these rallies. it not a matter of a few torches.
sorry. never again.
No you’re just a loser who only wants to see his way or no way, my way is the way and no one else better think different then me. People like you is why the way society is as a whole. There are good people and bad people. Once you STUPID leftist, feeling good idiots get it through you’d stupid skulls, it would be a “miracle” if that could happen, things would be better. If we realized that there are people who are poor and down and out is because they are just plain LAZY. They don’t want to work and be taken care of by big daddy government and idiotic,
politically correct progressives are only too happy to give it to them without any thought for where the money comes from idiots. You will be paying taxes that go to give lazy bums those perks that you are so blindly fighting for..
The government in my area did a survey once. Since they were right wing, everyone expected them to “find” that welfare recipients are all lazy parasites.
What they ACTUALLY found AND reported was:
– Most welfare recipients are short term.
– Most get off when they can.
– Some really need it – because of severe mental problems, or severe physical problems.
– There are a relative small percentage that are the chronic, totally-fine-to-work, lazy scum parasites of your cliché.
Why are you not a multi-multi-millionaire? Because you are a lazy scumbag? Probably not. It’s more likely you don’t have the particular skills and knowledge to do that. And you never will.
Similarly, there are poor people “below” you, who cannot just up themselves to your level of income. They just don’t have the knowledge and abilities. Maybe they can gain them, maybe not. But most would like to, if they could.
Check out any one of a number of poor states and tell me there are jobs just sitting there for all the poor people to get, if they wanted. It just ain’t so, fella.
Myself and a group of 5 were reading the article and then dropped down to the comments. I said it would not take 15 seconds for a race/gender card to be dropped. 3 comments down, BOOM, card dropped. That was quick! Good job!
Yes, indeed. Great for him! …
Just have 30% of the white male employees start identifying themselves as black females. Problem solved!
Hopefully legal action is pursued against Google on this one.
On what grounds? With its non-union work force, workers have virtually no protection. They can be fired for most any reason.
Well that’s a neat thing about lawsuits. You can sue for anything.
With progressive, recent tort reform, the Bar has pushed the bar up. Higher cost to pursue a frivolous suit, higher threshold for judicial assent.
And that’s a good thing.
tort reform is a rwnj thing.
First amendment of the Constitution — freedom of speech.
Liberals are the speech police …
Glenn, you clearly do not understand the concept of freedom. It does not mean that there are no consequences.
James Damore exercised his right of free speech. He did so within the bounds of a public corporation using corporate resources and speaking out again corporate policy. There is the freedom part. He was fired. There is the consequence part.
James Damore had many avenues open to him regarding expression of his opinions. He chose to publicly undermine his employer using corporate resources. He could have scheduled private meetings with Google management and HR. He could have issued his opinions on a private blog or opinion website. He could have contacted Fox News or CNBC or others.
I have no doubt that you can find situations in which companies under conservative leadership or ownership exercised similar discretion when faced with outspoken employees who publicly challenged company policies and initiatives.
Note that I am not supporting or opposing the firing of James Damore. That is Google’s choice, not mine. James exercised his rights. Google exercised its rights. Case closed.
I will repeat once again – personal rights are accompanied by personal responsibility. Don’t start whining when there are unpleasant consequences – particularly when the consequences are easily predictable. No one ever claimed that freedom was easy. Toughen up a little, lest you become the “snowflakes” that you so despise.
@Writerguy
Read the book “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder”
This one is better: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Evolutionary-Psychology-Behind-Politics-Conservatism/dp/0982947933
The differences between the left and right evolved over time.
Posting opinion on the issue without reading his original memo is dishonest. I doubt many here actually took the time to read it.
I did. It is exceptionally well crafted text that tries to push all the right buttons. It has all the important elements: “I’m actually a progressive but…”, “Research shows that…” “We need to increase the transparency…”, etc. Without looking into the purported research that supposedly shows inherent differences between genders, one would find the arguments in the memo very convincing.
The biggest problem I have with the memo is that most of his arguments are substantiated by bogus research that has been debunked.
I agree with him on a few points. Increasing transparency (with respect to the ‘Unconscious Bias’ training and its results), stop alienating conservatives, evaluate other types of biases, etc. However, most of his letter is grounded on a fundamentally false premise. When all of it starts from wrong data, then the whole point is simply wrong.
The gist of his message is that is this… Companies have HR departments and there is a strong focus on diversity. In this case, Google sees that they have considerably more male engineers than female. The HR groups push to “correct” this “problem” by putting pressure on hiring managers to “improve their diversity numbers”. This itself is a form of discrimination.
His point is that the reasons for the disproportion of male to female engineers are many. Some of those reasons may well be due to bias and discrimination. However, there are many other reasons that are cultural and possibly even biological which influence the outcome long before the hiring process. As someone with an engineering background, I can tell you there are far fewer female engineers than males, even in schools that have a higher female population overall. That is, when the pool of engineers is roughly 20/80 female to male, why should any company be expected to have an equal 50/50 split in that regard? It won’t happen naturally, based on merit. The only way that would happen is if HR departments force a form of discrimination under the guise of “diversity”. Damore’s point is that this type of action is harmful to the company overall.
In the end, this is a discussion that needs to happen and he’s right about the echo chamber and the effects of silencing dissenting opinion. Having said that, I also agree with others in that there are repercussions for our actions. Taking such a position publicly takes courage. It takes courage, because the outcome will not be positive for his career… at least as an engineer at Google. I believe Google had the right to fire him, but I also think it was a knee-jerk reaction on Google’s part in order to appear being politically correct.
Extremely well said.
You don’t end discrimination by introducing artificial discrimination.
It is what it is and it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature …
Snowflakes run google. Fact is the truth hurts. Hope this dude wins his lawsuit and gets millions.
One thing is certain: Damore has turned himself into a holy grail of conservative pundits: “I’m a liberal, but…” is one of the most sought-after types by the likes of FOX news and similar. The idea is: “When one of their own clearly sees how bad liberalism is…” etc.
I am genuinely curious to see what trajectory his career will take after this. If he truly is what he claims (progressive liberal humanist), he is bound to be extremely uncomfortable by anyone on the right turning him into their champion. We’ll see…
THE PROBLEM with is whole situation, is that many of the weaker conservatives, the ones that need their “safe space” to not hear bad things said about the President and need to feel “special and valued” at work are latching onto this. I really never wanted to see SJW words coming out of conservatives, but here we are.
Boo hoo, look at me, I’m special but they don’t see that conSJW’s are SJW’s too!!! Sick. I hope this is rejected quickly and completely leaving SJW values to the experts on the left.
NO MORE CONSJW’S!!
Men and Women on average are not the same. Is that so terrible a statement that can get you fired? Does that make you the same as a man the sexually harasses a woman like so many men have on Fox? Women are on average smaller than men. Men do make up 95% of the prison population. Men are on average stronger than woman. These are facts that don’t fit the modern feminist narrative. We are becoming like “1984.” Good for Mr. Dalmore being brave enough to point this out.
Of course men and women are not the same. They have different genitalia. What does that have to do with hiring coders who are fancy on the outside instead of the inside? There is no generally accepted research (apart from alt-right junk science) to suggest that women cannot code as well as men.
Even if it were true that women, on average, were weaker coders, so what? Google does not hire “average” women. It hires particular men and women who may or may not correspond to a gender stereotype. They are hiring a person, not a typical representative of the applicant’s gender.
In 1964, there were probably a higher proportion of black Americans who were illiterate than of white Americans, but that did not justify preventing the qualified applicants from voting, housing, and employment. The qualifications of other people was simply irrelevant.
Women on average are weaker, but would any of you step into a ring with a women professional boxer? The nature of “average” is that some women are stronger than some men. So, even if there were real differences between the sexes that are relevant to hiring coders, it would not justify hiring a male just because he is male or rejecting a woman for being female.
This is just another chapter in the developing alt-right narrative that white Christian males are being oppressed because everybody else is envious of their obvious superiorities in every case and in every field.
“They are hiring a person, not a typical representative of the applicant’s gender.”
Wasn’t his original point that hires were being based on quotas rather than talent?
There is no evidence that Google is applying quotas. It is taking diversity into account in making its hiring decisions, but that is not the same thing. Oddly, white guys never complained about quotas when they came in the form of “gentlemen’s agreements” to limit the hiring of women, Jews, and other minorities.
The issue here is that Damore and his cohort define “talent” purely in terms of being exactly like a coder who is young, white, male, and upper-middle class. People from other backgrounds bring other talents to the workforce, but they are never going to be nerdy white guys. The assumption that the new hires are less talented is based on the assumption that all the members of a particular class (blacks, women, etc.) are uniformly less valuable employees than all the members of another class. That is an invalid argument when applied to individuals.
TxUser, I am very impressed by the quality of your posts. They are well-reasoned and logical, which is surprising for this forum. For years it has been largely dominated by vocal elements of the alt-right who value doctrine over truth or fact.
I have avoided MDN for quite a few months. But I enjoy reading your posts. They give me hope that reason and moderation still exist in this increasingly troubled world.
txuser is a fake conservative liar as pointed out by many, many times. you are of the same ilk
What is the talent pool ratio of qualified male to female engineers from which to draw from? Do you have an engineering background? If so, how many females were in your engineering classes as opposed to males? This isn’t an issue of whether males are more qualified than females. Rather, the talent pool from which to draw from is predominantly male for this job function. There are many reasons for this and most of which have nothing to do with bias or discrimination at the hiring process.
Attempting to force such an equilibrium where it doesn’t exist organically will have bad results. While I don’t agree with Damore’s position entirely, I do agree there is a problem with the way we look at and push “diversity” programs. I don’t believe using a form of discrimination under the “diversity” banner suddenly makes it okay to discriminate. Maybe you do.
“Attempting to force such an equilibrium where it doesn’t exist organically will have bad results. While I don’t agree with Damore’s position entirely, I do agree there is a problem with the way we look at and push “diversity” programs.”
Amen!
You have effectively boxed in the FAKE conservative with facts minus dogma, well done …
Still no reply?
Gee, what a surprise …
Not surprised. My country eas occupied by USSR. During 1980s when I was a kid my mother and grandma took me to the local church during a christmas eve. The headmaster of mu class, Mrs. Eva Paal was hiding in the church and wrote down the names of kids of our class she identified. Later, during an ordinary school day she riduculed those kids in front of the class. It was discusting then and is now. No matter that political rulers found it acceptable. I see a LOT of similarities between that era and nowadays leftish liberals. Eventually they will not prevail.
Clearly you were still there during the Religious Right’s rise.
If you want to find SNOWFLAKES, look no further then the straight white men whinging and whining here at the slightest questioning of their privilege. Give me a break.
AFAIC when “privilege” gets brought into a discussion that side argument has lost intellectual validity to their point… It’s meaningless.
Unless the discussion is about the privilege of those in positions of political power or agencies.
Every other kind of “privilege” is negligible.
Privilege..Here we go. The racist diatribe begins.
“White privilege” = “I can’t blame anyone else for my failures.”
If you’re a lazy, stupid, unemployable SJW, you just blame your problems on “the man.”
The boss is not always right, but she’s still the boss.
So Google’s CEO intolerantly fired a guy to protect tolerance within the company.
Is that like destroying a village to save it?
“No fighting in the War Room!”
You must be proud of what you and your kind have done today,botvinnik. Making White Supremacists Great Again.
Make no mistake. We will fight you fascists to the end.
oh, your other alias, racebaiter…how clever you are.
I am not an alias, asshol. I have been here long before you, and hate what MDN has become. There used to be some great discussions here, before the alt-MDN took over. You will only be happy once you and Fisty are the only ones left commenting. Be careful what you wish for.
You may have won the battle, but you will never win the war.
“I have been here long before you..”
no, you haven’t.
you’re not even a registered user, however, you are a registered liar.
Not that I need to prove anything to a White Supremacist, but believe it or not, MDN did not start when you crawled out from under your rock. There never used to be registered users, and by the time they started it, why the FUCK would I want to be associated with trash?
I’m only here, in hopes that I can get a taste of your big, white man-sausage, you sexy, sexy, man! Give us a kiss. 🖕🏾
Men and women are not the same?!?!! Do you seriously mean to say that a penis isnt the same as a vagina??? No way!!! They are the same!!! They are EXACTLY the same. Stop it with this silly idea that mean and women are different!! Its silly!!!
And this happened, just to point out that we humans don’t actually think on a 1-dimensional political spectrum, in case you didn’t know…
DC’s transit agency rejected ads touting the First Amendment (really)
The DC transit agency banned “issue ads.” It hasn’t gone well.
…the ACLU has a long history of defending the First Amendment rights of groups far outside the mainstream, including Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. As such, the organization hasn’t backed down from its defense of Yiannopoulos. “Protecting the First Amendment rights of all of these speakers is crucial to the ability of civil rights movements to make the change we need to make,” the group argued in a Wednesday blog post.
Back on topic:
Q: Do employees of a company have First Amendment rights while working within that company?
I’m going to let the law experts discuss that very old question.
You won’t get a debate. It may be an old question, but it has always had the same clear answer: No. Private employees, like everybody else, have First Amendment rights, but those only protect them from government action, not from their employer.
The First Amendment originally restricted only federal government action abridging freedom of speech. That was extended to the state and local governments by the Fourteenth Amendment. The First has never been held, by any court in any place, to apply to private action.
I suppose that Congress or a state legislature could prohibit employers from restricting freedom of expression, as they are currently prohibited from racial or gender discrimination. So far as I know, no legislative body has done so.
In many states, employees serve at the sole discretion of their employer, with no recourse if they are fired for any legal reason or for no reason at all (apart from one specifically prohibited by law). There are some other states (and many employment contracts) that prohibit discharge other than for good cause related to the employment.
Just for the sake of argument, let us assume that Damore was not an employee-at-will, and that Google required good cause to fire him. The “related to the employment” branch is unquestionably met. Damore wasn’t exercising free speech on his own time by posting to a third-party blog or writing a letter to the editor of the local paper. He widely circulated his memo about company policy to other employees on the internal company communications system.
That just leaves “good cause.” Damore’s memo is nicely written and cites pseudoauthorities, but at bottom it is an accusation that many of his fellow employees are incompetent bunglers who were hired despite their biological inferiority for the work. It is an explicit argument that other white male employees should share his opinion and similarly regard many of their fellow workers as inferior specimens of the human race. It is an incitement to discrimination in the workplace.
Damore cannot really have expected to circulate that memo and continue working in a harmonious workgroup with any of the people he had denigrated. He also knew that Google had no obligation to provide him with a “safe space” free of nasty women and colored boys. The only alternative was for him to leave the company, voluntarily or otherwise. By firing him, Google gave him exactly what he wanted, a platform on the alt-right talk circuit to advocate his eugenic views.
“Google had no obligation to provide him with a “safe space” free of nasty women and colored boys.”
yeah, Captain Screed, that’s what Damore’s goal. Your lying manipulation is so foul it makes a rational mind nauseated.
Actually, I think Mr. Damore just wants Google to abandon political correctness and become an employer like NBC Universal, where one recently-married employee at a company worksite on official business described another employee:
“I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married. And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.’ I took her out furniture—I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.”
And then later in the same conversation referred to still another NBC Universal employee:
“I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
For those interested, the relevant section of the 14th Amendment:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Google gave him exactly what he wanted, a platform on the alt-right talk circuit to advocate his eugenic views
AKA martyrdom.
I’ve read his WSJ op-Ed and saw TV interviews and I don’t come away with martyrdom …
Am I being too poetic? He has a point of view, he got fired for it, now he’s held as a martyr to his cause. Blahblahblah, such as this, then proceeds specifically because he was fired. If he wasn’t fired, this chatter would have fallen back to sleep again.
Adored the images, i truly like the among image_title, perfecto.|
Good depth -)|
I haven’t read the whole thing, but I generally agree with James
This “men’s rights” screed from this clown is deplorable. Men and Women aren’t different intellectually form a biological perspective, and the fact that he believes this is beyond ridiculous. He either A) has a very small penis, or B) got beat out for a coding job by a girl. This insecure asshole deserved to get fired and if he can’t handle giving others an equal chance, then he’s beyond help. What an insecure Idiot.
He certainly has an amazing ability to say a lot without actually… saying a lot.
Basically, they Jerry MacGuire’d him
And THIS HAS WHAT? TO DO WITH APPLE? NOTHING! Just more proof that MDN is a festering, right wing hate fest.
I don’t know what you’re reading. Most of hate and name calling here comes from the alt left. Expand to Berkeley, Baltimore and Ferguson are just three examples of extreme leftist hate …
Hola there!
I’m first time on here and I’m nicely impressed, because it’s like you are reading my mind.
To be a blogger is just amazing thing and I enjoy it! Thank you for the encouraging thoughts!
If you allow me one question: Which free blogging platform you consider better for a newbie blogger with zero experience after WP – Svbtle or Blogr?
My best regards :Samantha