Even in its most generous reading (yours), this sentence makes zero sense.
I'm going to guess it is the later: Lawsuit from him would cause discovery. Unlike other government lawsuit, he would actually be able to say who at Google has access to the needed paperwork/email/etc to demonstrate that he is correct in his assertion. The government would love to piggy back on him. So I'm guessing Google is cutting a very large check now.
I don't know about the discovery argument. If he was an HR insider and acting as a whistleblower to disclose an illegal practice, sure. But a regular employee can't voice opinions about something that's common knowledge and force the company to disclose a bunch of confidential information.
What are they going to do when someone else steps up and makes the same assertions with more tact? Fire him too? What about the person after them? They gave extraordinary leverage not to the person that they fired, but to the people that have not been fired yet.
It's uncharacteristically nontechnical of Google to think that of the anywhere between 30-50% of the US population that leans conservatively, there is only one of them working for Google in Mountain View and that any dissenting thoughts within the company will end with him, and that the liberal employees threatening to quit will be happy and sated just to see these few drops of blood.
It doesn't matter the size of the check Google cuts this guy, nor the next 100 individuals if they choose to also speak out. Google made a mountain out if a molehill, and they just left a very a long way for the snowball they just threw to gather some mass while rolling down.
While I think that many outlets are misrepresenting and selectively quoting the piece to make it seem more offensive than it is, the reality is that the author used a lot of loaded language and created many opportunities for misinterpretation.
If this were at my company and the article didn't blow up online I'd probably have a talk with the author to point out all the ways that this piece could easily be misinterpreted and construed as offensive and that the same ideas can be conveyed in ways that are a lot less likely to blow up in your face. If this were at my company the article did go viral like it did in real life, I'd probably let this employee go. While I would say this is placing the interests of the company over the psychological safety of my employees, the pragmatic reality is that PR and potentially internal dissent caused by retaining the employee does not outweigh the moral win of retaining an employee who wrote a tone-deaf article that went viral and was widely perceived as offensive - even if the underlying ideas aren't ourageous.
His presence inside google both legitimises his behaviour and acts a rallying point. They might not be able to prevent like minded people from seeking each other out, but they can prevent them from doing it openly. They might not be able to prevent others from acting in a similar manner, but they will do all they can to avoid emboldening them.
They are willing to deal with the external flack and legal ramifications of a contentious firing, if it helps them avoid an insurrection.
I imagine this ex-employee will get a generous severance or expect good lawyers knocking soon.
Now whether he is able to successfully sue google and make big bucks is difficult to predict at this point. But it's certain that his career is finished for the foreseeable future.
It is a profoundly stupid thing to do for anyone who likes their job as an engineer. Maybe this guy doesn't and wants to start a new career in blogging or some similar shit. In that case, this may be a great new start for him.
If Pao could sue KPC&B, I think he stands a chance, unrelated as they are, it suggests suits can go forward on slim allegations and here he has evidence clear as day they fired him for having a difference in opinion on their hiring practices. He personally didn't discriminate nor personally conduct himself untowards anyone. He offered some (unconvincing evidence about how women don't have the same aptitude as men --but you are likely to find evidence Google does have internal hiring goals and allows a culture which virtue signals against the majority culture) and they didn't like it.
Thing is, if this had been a woman or minority citing some dubious data about how more women and minorities should be hired (which I agree with but on other principles), we would not even blink at it, if it even would have surfaced)
You don't have free speech rights at work, or more to the point you can say whatever you want and the company can do just about whatever it wants in response to this speech. To go full Godwin here, if this employee had, instead of talking about how women and minorities "lowered the bar", wrote and distributed interally a manifesto about how Google had too many Jewish employees and how these employees were mostly hired because of post-Holocaust western guilt and maybe we need to reexamine whether this whole Holocaust thing really happened I can assure you that he would have been shown the door within the hour. No one is locking him up for his speech act, but Google would have had no problem in firing him for that same speech act.
Others have pointed out in great detail all of the unpleasant future consequences for any potential interaction that leads to conflict between this employee and his peers. This situation was created entirely by the employee who posted the manifesto. He can sue Google, but he will lose.
People in general can sue anyone if there's any possibility they might win. The only way her lawsuit would be thrown out if she had never worked for them, or something like that. Otherwise, the way to find out if her claims have merit is the lawsuit.
Which she lost, and was forced to pay $276k to KPC&B. So not exactly a good omen.
Here they fired him not for perf (defensible) but for difference in opinion (maybe defensible but icky) not anything bad he did. I think he stands a better chance than Pao's retaliatory suit.
He wrote the manifesto and distributed it within the workplace. That's absolutely an action he took at work, that's a thing he did.
See also the Shoe Rebellion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12022280
You don't have freedom of speech at work. Apparently in the US that's not a freedom of speech issue until the Government says you can't say certain things at work.
Pao's issue was shown to be a non-issue, yet "it brought the issue to light" ok...
I wonder why the author didn't mention the resolution of the lawsuit? I wonder why she mentioned it all? Oh right, peddling falsehoods, both explicitly and implicitly.
Government lawsuit against Google right now means that he has the leverage. The odds are the same people who are tasked with the programs to promote whatever the author carefully worded in his post are the people who received/sent emails/edited internal presentations that mentioned something that a good lawyer would be able to twist into a Google's managers admitting that Google does in fact systematically pays women less than men to do the same job. Google has a lot more to lose from that lawsuit than from the author of the memo.
[Edit: typos/clarity]
I would think, with all they have on their plate right now, they can't be bothered about some idiot who couldn't keep his mouth shut in public and just do the job he was hired for.
Government's problem in this case is the same kind of problem that government had in the US v. IBM: IBM buried government in the paperwork and government did not know where to look at to dig itself out.
Here comes the author who seems to have a very good idea of the remediation programs that Google has. The odds are extremely high the people in charge of the remediation programs/diversity programs/etc are the ones who are familiar with the issues that Google has: it is fairly logical. The author probably knows who these people are. He probably talked to them. Probably those people told him whatever he used as the basis for his manifesto. If he drags those people out into the spotlight, the government would suddenly have a beacon for their case.
That's why I, personally, think Google made a gigantic mistake firing the guy.
Whether he was right or wrong, he has hurt the company. I think he is wrong to be sure. But it doesn't matter.
It is also interesting because, a loss in a major legal case may throw up interesting possibilities in the stock market. Of course, one needs to be much more legally aware, than I am, to take full advantage of these possibilities.
However, Damore did file a NLRB claim before he was fired. So he seems prepped to sue, or perhaps to negotiate a private settlement.
Without a lawsuit: DOL gets two million "records" (emails/docs/memos) related to hiring/performance evaluation/etc. It needs to sift through those two million records trying to find the ones that support its case.
With this lawsuit: author knows who in the organization deals with this exact issue. Those people probably had emails from their managers/sent emails to others that can be made to support governments position in DOL lawsuit. Now instead of sifting through the two million records that they got, DOL focuses on 20,000 records authored by those likely to have the kind of information.
That's why such dismissals are dangerous to the company engaged in a costly/high-stakes litigation with the government.
Of course the punishment for violating this is a fine of no more than $5k, per http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....
That said, it _may_ open the door for a civil lawsuit per http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....
Whether any of that applies in this situation is entirely unclear to me, because it hinges on the definitions of "engaging or participating in politics" and so forth. You'd probably need to talk to a competent labor lawyer in California for anything resembling clarity here.
I think this comes down to is affirmative action policy a workplace condition. Discussion about workplace conditions is separate from discrimination law entirely so 'protected class' becomes a red herring here. I'm not sure this is the best article but I tried to find something from a left leaning source I find reasonably fair given that this seems to be an anti-right topic.
California law has very strong protections for employees. And it seems that firing him for the memo may actually be illegal.
The crux of the argument is that Google may have "punished an employee for communicating with fellow employees about improving working conditions", which is illegal.
Also, "California law prohibits employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular political course of action."
Furthermore, "It is unlawful for an employer to discipline an employee for challenging conduct that the employee reasonably believed to be discriminatory, even when a court later determines the conduct was not actually prohibited by the discrimination laws".
Read here for more:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fi...
It could easily be defeated as it presumes the author would not be able to demonstrate that he could be a member ( does not have to be ) of a protected class. Remember, should that be the case authors goal is not to score a touch down, it is to get a new set of downs i.e. move forward with a lawsuit.
Judges are very reluctant to toss something out that early if there's even an ounce of a possibility there could be a merit in a case.
Um, that's one possibility I suppose. But I am reminded of this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfv32dmVFw
[I work for Google, but have no insider information about this.]
For what it's worth, I do think that taking steps to decrease the false negative rate for diverse candidates is an okay system and I explain my company's process of doing this in another comment in this page. That said, pointing out that this system is increasing the false-negative rate for non-diverse candidates is 1) factually correct, and 2) not at all the same thing as calling my underrepresented co-workers unqualified. If somebody claimed that our interview process increased the false positive rate for underrepresented groups I would object to such a statement - but that is not what is said in this document.
It looks like the author is talking about setting a threshold, as in the context of creating a test. Please have a look at [1].
In this setting, it is not possible to decrease the false-negative rate without increasing the false-positive rate.
I think the author is phrasing things this way simply as a matter of rhetoric, but his argument clearly suggests that less qualified 'diversity' candidates are being hired.
For your last sentence, I did not write, and did not mean to imply anything about the number of false-positive (FP) 'diversity' candidates vs FP non-'diversity' candidates. It's true that the author hints at this comparison.
I meant to convey that, per the author's statement about 'lowering the bar', Google's practices increase the FP rate in 'diversity' candidates as compared to what would have happened without the practices.
From this perspective, the author is stating that the 'diversity' hires have a higher FP rate than might have occurred otherwise. I think this conclusion - I think it's a fair one, though we may disagree - is what people find somewhat problematic.
On a broader note, the way you're injecting a completely different message into the author's text is exactly the kind of behavior that makes these discussions toxic. I realize that might sound accusatory, but if people can't make a statement without people stuffing contradictory or unrelated words into their mouths there's no possibility of civil discussion.
This isn't a pharmaceutical trial but there's no reason why we can't follow along with the author's analogy of 'false negatives'.
Here are his words from 'The Harm of Google's Biases':
I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and
I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve
a more equal gender and race representation, Google has
created several discriminatory practices:
Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar
for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false
negative rate
EDIT:
Didn't see your statistical comment. Unfortunately, I can't think of a case where 'adjusting a bar' to decrease the false-negative rate does not neceessarily increase the false-positive rate.
The fact that the author uses the phrase 'lowering the bar' suggests that he is also thinking of this statistical requirement.
Here's one:
* Phone screens have a 50% false negative rate, and a 0% false positive rate.
* On-site interviews have a 0% false negative rate, and a 0% false positive rate.
Non-diverse candidates do one phone screen, and if passed, do an onsite. Diverse candidates do two phone screens, and if either passes, they go on to the onsite. For all candidates, if the onsite is passed, the candidate gets an offer.
* Unqualified candidates, regardless of diversity, never get an offer.
* Qualified, non-diverse candidates get an offer 50% of the time (the other 50% are erroneously eliminated at the phone interview stage).
* Qualified, diverse candidates get an offer 75% of the time (25% eliminated at the phone interview stage due to false negatives).
It seems to me that the author is advocating either doing two phone interviews for all candidates, or one phone interview for all candidates. Neither change would alter false positive rates, since false positive rates are 0% at all times.
If you're inclined to point out that all tests have a false positive rate >0%, substitute 0% for 0.00000001% and note that I stated the change in false positive rates could be trivially small to the point of omission in the comment above.
His statement about 'lowering the bar' with respect to decreasing false negatives directly implies a relationship between candidate quality and the false negative rate.
I can't comment on your hiring analogy, as you have more experience in this area than I do. My responses were only to highlight the subtle negative character of the author's statement.
Does your recruitment process have a 0% false positive rate? If not, giving more opportunities will yield more false positives unless it's proven that the extra opportunities have a 0% false positive rate.
This has been shown across society, including applications for housing, police stops, punishments in school, etc. I don't know why employment would be the one exception.
https://pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/beta-goi...
We found that the public servants engaged in positive (not negative) discrimination towards female and minority candidates
...
Overall, the results indicate the need for caution when moving towards ’blind’ recruitment processes in the Australian Public Service, as de-identification may frustrate efforts aimed at promoting diversity.
Imagine it this way: You're a fisher. The Law says that you can only catch fish which are >= 12" long. If you're caught with < 12" fish, bad things happen, but otherwise you want to maximize the amount of fish you catch.
You have two ways of measuring length: a crude wooden stick with some fat lines on it which mark approximately 12" - this is quick but only approximate. You also have a high precision caliper which can tell you the length down to .001", but it takes 2x as long to make the measurement.
You're interested in catching lots of fish, so if any fish you catch are a little close to that line, you just throw them back with one measurement.
90% of the fish you catch are red, but about 10% of the times you catch a green fish, which are really sparkly and fun, so you change your standard: if the green fish on first measurement is really close to 12"(not close enough to keep), instead of throwing it back like a red fish, you bust out the caliper and measure it more precisely, and throw out anything < 12".
So, at the end of the day, assuming red and green fish are distributed equally across lengths in the ocean, what would the distribution of kept fish look like? Would the mean and median length of your green fish be higher or lower than the mean and median of your red fish?
It looks like the author is talking about setting a threshold, as in the context of creating a test. Please have a look at [1].
In this setting, it is not possible to decrease the false-negative rate without increasing the false-positive rate.
I think the author is phrasing things this way simply as a matter of rhetoric, not to express the point you are suggesting.
Hiring the best and diverse workplaces are both virtues, but sometimes competing virtues. The problem with this entire discussion is that too many people are overly certain that one virtue is more important than the other.
Please take care not to deceptively quote the author in question. This is the full sentence:
> Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate.
The author deliberately crafted this statement to make it clear that he is referring to qualified, non-diverse, candidates being rejected at greater rates than qualified and diverse candidates - not that unqualified diverse candidates are accepted at a higher rate.