Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

Re:Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo by lurker69 on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @05:40AM (#14956069)

Yeah I also didnt get feeling from reading the memo that is was misogynistic.

James just tried to point out that reasons for gender gab in tech might not be only sexism as current left leaning agenda dictates.

I understood memo more like complaining that employees with opinions that differ from "current left leaning agenda" are afraid to express them. And google proved him right by firing him.

This political correctness has brought us very close to Orwellian double think. Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote:

> “We strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it.”

And used this as basis to fire guy who expressed his concerns.

His appeal to replace diversity of gender and race with diversity of thought is completely valid and reasonable.

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Re:Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo by roenxi on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @05:59AM (#14956150)

The response to the memo is very frustrating to me; I suspect the original author wanted to start a conversation that involved Simpson's Paradox and got a response where people typed him as a misogynist.

This incident seems like evidence that attempting a statistics based discussion about gender programs is dangerous - if you are wrong in your interpretation & work at Google you will be fired rather than have your mistakes explained.

EDIT for clarity: not that the memo mentioned Simpson's Paradox at all, but that paradox illuminates serious risk around interpreting clear-seeming evidence. I think that those style of risks where were the original author wanted to push discussion.

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Re:Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo by lurker69 on Tuesday August 08, 2017 @09:31AM (#14957606)

I think he knew what he was doing and correctly predicted reaction. If you have been following anti-SJW (for lack of better term) authors lately you can see exactly same pattern repeating over and over. After all he signed memo with his name. He could probably distribute it anonymously if he would want to keep his job. And if you ever tried to argue those points in any "left echo chamber" you probably know that before you convince anybody your account is banned.

SJWs (feminists, PC culture, LGBT, pro-Muslim, BLM, antifa...) when faced with more or less factual data that questions one of their sacred cows (women are equal to men, there are more than two genders, minorities need to be privileged, white privilege, institutional racism and patriarchy still exists...), they overreact with outrage with character assassination and shaming of meagerness. Some call this virtue signalling.

Example of this is how trump supporters are often labeled as nazis, racists, sexists...

While this works well in "echo chambers", it doesnt work as well in court. And I suspect that this guy had law suit for being fired and defamation.

This blog mentions that he already complained to NLRB:

> Damore plans to sue Google; he had previously complained to NLRB and wants to argue that his dismissal was a revenge which would be illegal. See a Damore's defiant answer to Reuters.

http://motls.blogspot.si/2017/08/james-damore-deserves-1-mil...

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