IANAL, but it is illegal for employers to use the threat of firing to compel employees to take (or avoid) a political course of action.

Furthermore, it is illegal for employers to punish employees for speaking up about issues the employee believes affect working conditions (which was largely the premise of the employees essay).

Google side-stepped the issue by firing him for statements which may (or may not) violate anti-discrimination policies that just so happened to be in his essay.

They left largely unchallenged (and it seems to me, rather reinforced) the central complaint. Namely that Google was fostering a politically stifling atmosphere.

Instead of answering his concerns, they fired him because they thought his suggestions were offensive (or rooted in offensive ideology).

Not only were they offensive, they had no grounding in reality and made it impossible for many people there to work with or trust him.

the idea that females and males LIKE different things and its IN PART based on biology, is completely real and valid and not offensive in the slightest.

That's what this "manifesto" was.

if you're saying men/women think identically, then there is even no reason for gender diversity because it only becomes physical differences at that point, do you realize that?

See also: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google...

And as to "organizing for better workplace conditions" - well yeah, there's some overlap, there. But his campaign went quite a ways beyond that, as well.

Ah that makes sense. A fair point. Still, I think that "organizing around workplace conditions" and "calling attention to possible violations of anti-discrimination laws" (both of which were mentioned in the article I referenced) are possible grounds for a suit.

> But his campaign went quite a ways beyond that, as well.

Do you mean the claimed violation of Google code of conduct that was the basis for his firing? I don't know what their CoC is specifically, but if it's anything like the other CoC's I've seen, I think it's debatable whether he did actually violated it.

Many of the claims I have seen about hurtful things in the memo (such as that the women at Google don't deserve to be there) are unsubstantiated by the text of the memo itself. The topics he was trying to discuss, the topics which the CEO himself (and at least 60% of the employees) say should be discussed, are an emotional minefield. Despite claims to the contrary, Damore was very careful with his words.

Google is one of, if not the, biggest player in terms of information served over the internet. If they are willing to censor at this level, how far will they go to protect their public image and suppress discussion they don't agree with?

Any more than I "censor" you if you come on to my property and refer to my daughter as the "c"-word. I mean... you can call my daughter whatever you like, I just don't allow you to do it in my house. That's not really censorship no matter how big the house is, that's just something that people should expect to happen. In fact... I think people should find it more strange if my daughter and I did NOT put you out of our house.

You can still call her whatever you like outside of our home. You're still free to do that.

I'm not saying you don't have the right to do that, or that in this example your son was right, I just think it would be an over-reaction and would create a chilling effect on your other children from asking questions or thinking about things differently.

Recall that the employee that was fired is an adult (and apparently in his 30s, at least).

Also yeah he had to bei in his 30th how else would he have gotten his phd? But like I said the age wasn't the point.

Worth noting: he could post this publicly on Google+, Blogspot, or any other Google platform. It's only his paycheck that's being suppressed, his views are not.

Make no mistake, it's his views that he was fired over, not the medium in which he shared them. Google made no indication otherwise.

Consider the people within Google who declare their unwillingness to work with the person that believes in science and in treating people like individuals.

Actually I found his piece to be distinctly unscientific.

It parades as scientific, for sure. But when you break it down, and consider the whole of the message it imparts... at it's core, it was very unscientific.

And I bet that those at Google who decided to terminate his employment felt pretty much the same way.

He was very good at sourcing almost every single one of his claims with references to published scientific studies.

Your statement on the other hand has zero quotes to support your claim.

I know which one I will consider "unscientific".

The last part is "the message" of a scientific publication (the "why I worked on/wrote this").

Why was his memo unscientific? 1. His choice of data presentation was almost exclusively for his side of the hypothesis, of the form "women are biologically inclined to X" without including any of the (vast corpus of) counter-studies* that directly offset many of his core supporting arguments.

2. Even if his arguments were sufficiently sound (which is unlikely as per 1.), his conclusions were a bit of a quantum leap from his "sourced" claims to "this is unfair, divisive, bad for business" (as per the TLDR). He pretty much just decided that for himself. There were few or no studies/data/observations to support that crucial step.

*going to piggyback off the sources linked in this slate article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/08/07/the_google_a...

I think the standard that you have set for the author expressing these opinions is unfairly high, and the bar that you have set for yourself for criticizing him for expressing that is unfairly low. You criticize that the author has cherry-picked his sources; you now have to support that claim by showing the deluge of counter-studies that show that it is not true that women are inclined to X personality. I've checked the Slate article and it doesn't link to sources that show that. In fact, the first paragraph of the article links to articles that agree with that WSJ article and with the author that discrim. leads to gender strife.

> the sources linked in this slate article

I couldn't find any counter-studies in the article you linked. I tried traversing the sources, but those sources don't have any studies either. Is that the link you intended to post?

I'll grant that I had a kneejerk reaction of "that can't be accurate" and assumed there must be lots of literature to back me up, but it isn't easy to find it. Personally I neither support nor oppose this manifesto, but I think given the very expectable backlash and damage potential, drawing such concrete conclusions without stronger grounds was a bit too risque to be considered scientific.

Whether a claim (or other statement) someone makes is "scientific" or not is, fundamentally, a matter of the soundness and logical coherence of the overall argument they're making. And about the aspects of the issue they sidestep and ignore (and this guys ignores a whole lot in his manifesto, actually) as much as the aspects they cite.

Not the number of footnotes, quote or diagrams it has.

This is a dangerous level of indirection. "The whole of the message". Sounds like you are reading into what it says, finding things that it doesn't actually say - without acknowledging that you are doing so.

The paper demonstrates that the author values diversity, open dialog, and science.

And many people at Google declared they were unwilling to work with such a person.

Those are the people who should have been fired, for creating a hostile, intolerant work environment.

No, it's called "assessing it qualitatively as well as quantitatively".

Which is a very useful skill, actually.

The author not only clearly stated this, he even included a picture to make it clear: https://diversitymemo.com/population-overlap.png

Does it really deserve a reaction of "You can't do that here"?

Google's decision was most definitely not in response to that graphic you linked to.

1) "... we will fire you, because you have generated negative press for us with this even though we had no explicit policy prohibiting this"

2) "... we will fire you because what you did has directly violated an explicit existing company policy"

3) "... we will give you a warning, and add 'workplace gender diversity' to the list of topics prohibited from public discourse by employees so that in the future we can fire people for this"

It's unclear whether 1) or 2) happened (I suspect it was 1), and they could have chosen 3). They didn't. And the poor sap probably doesn't want to consider a lawsuit against Google if it was 1) and not 2) even if one could argue wrongful termination. And that's exactly what authoritarianism is about, the power to make rules pretty much on the fly and expect those affected by your choices to play by them.

PS: Not taking sides here, IMHO the manifesto was dumb and the person sounded like a green'un who got a rude dose of reality from what he probably considered merely a provoking thought experiment/writing exercise.

And that's probably OK and kind of expected. To me what was interesting was that even the CEO had to not only denounce it, but also cut his vacation short to hold a staff town-hall.

That is, "really read" a select paragraph or two. Enough to make a basic determination as to what he's driving at -- and to note that we've seen variants of this message from other sources, before -- and make a decision about how much of one's attention resources it merits, moving forward -- accordingly.

As one does with any rant, or other poorly thought-out screed.

Crazy.

Did you ever actually read L. Ron Hubbard's seminal work, Dianetics? I mean, really read it? Cover-to-cover?

No, you say? And yet you dismiss it?

That's crazy.

I don't dismiss it because I have no idea what it's about. I don't approve of it either, for the exact same reasons.

Anyhow: You're comparing reading less than 10 pages of large text with generous spacing and numerous illustrations to end-to-end reading a full book almost 500 pages long.

You can't be serious.

The church he founded was one of the major annoyances of the latter half of the 20th century. If you're interested in the general history of Really Bad Ideas (and how they draw otherwise warm sensitive, intelligent people into their fold), you might want to look into it.

Let's just say I've considered the works of a lot cranks and crackpots, over the years - and a lot of viewpoints that, while not quite in that category, are just muddled and inflammatory and don't have a lot to offer to the discussion. Enough to develop a pretty reliable sense of "smell" as to whether a given piece of work merits further exploration beyond a few paragraphs or so.

So whether or not one thinks he should be fired for it -- his "manifesto" definitely does not pass that smell test.

That's my view. If you view his work differently, that's fine for you.

Is that like, a hobby? And by "considered", do you mean you read them, or skimmed them, or just heard about them from uptight censorious authoritarians on the internet?

Actually it was, for a while. And I actually did read a lot of these works; and considered their points, very carefully; and debated them with their adherents, very patiently and thoughtfully.

Until I figured out what general superstructure of thought patterns was behind their arguments (which mostly boil down to: cherry picking; what-about-ism; and "authority, authority authority") -- and moved on other things.

It was an internal memo in good civil form posted internally opening to an internal debate on a subject related to work conditions.

Despite Gizmodo's obvious attempt to frame it as such, it was not posted as a revolutionary manifesto.

It was public only when leaked by someone else. Notice how that person has not been fired.

> addresses sensitive and controversial issues.

So if a company makes a sensitive and controversial issue an internal policy, nobody should be allowed to question it? Really?

Are you still confident in your judgment?

Most likely because, whether the author intended it that way or not, the memo was draft in a way that was pretty much guaranteed to push people's buttons. And when people -- particularly very smart people who have a lot more important things to do with their time -- feel their buttons being pushed, they tend to react, and get to the root of the matter very quickly.