And they never punished the woman who leaked that internal memo.

I thought that memo was foolish and short-sighted. I don't agree with it.

However, it would have been better solved by a manager first asking him "do you really think it's a good idea to post this at work?" and having him tone it down than trying to publicly shame him and get him fired.

Google picked the wrong side on that. They should have made an example of the leakers.

You're making things up: the leaker was, afaik, never identified. Certainly not publicly. Nothing says they were a woman, except you.

As someone who vehemently disagree a with damore and is glad he was fired, I'd also prefer it if the leaker was fired, but it seems that I'll never know if that happened.

She was identified internally. And was recently promoted.

I've seen no evidence of this, and I keep track of such things. An explicit search turns up no evidence of such things. If you have evidence of such things, please share it with me (I'm easy to find @google), but in the absence of such evidence, I'm going to continue to claim that this is wholly unfounded nonsense.

> it would have been better solved by a manager asking him "do you really think it's a good idea to post this at work?"

Are you aware that Google solicited that feedback?

I'm sure there may have been some of that. But supposedly (IIRC) he didn't just post it at work, he very diligently attempted to increase it's exposure through word of mouth, mailing lists, and speaking at internal events.

I think Damore's fatal flaw was naivety. He thought his opinions would lead to a better Google and he thought Google wanted to hear arguments that would lead to an improved Google. He clearly lacked the awareness to realize he was not speaking to a receptive audience to the ideas he had. And he wrote something that lacked the... emotional awareness... to understand where the opposing view came from or how his memo would be received.

You can furthermore see that naivety in how quickly he ended up accepting offers and olive branches from alt-right personalities. It seemed like he wasn't aware who he ended up 'siding' with.

I had a weekly improv class with him and while I don't think that's enough to get a good read on who someone truly is, I think you may be projecting on the naivete bit. In the midst of the chaos he was generating, he had ample opportunity to redact, change, apologize, debate, or even acknowledge other viewpoints, but he chose to broadcast adamantly.

Even as he knew his opinion was generating controversy he didn't take any steps to admit, control, or deal with it, instead he reveled in it. He knew what he was doing.

Yep. I don't know how someone can read him as "naive". He immediately went to new sources like Breitbart and PV.

Do you know if he contacted Breitbart and PV, or if they contacted him? Because if a Breitbart journalist said to him, "We see your opinion, we think it's terrible you're being silenced, we'd love to interview you and give you a chance to say your piece", then it would be very fitting with "naive" for him to say "Sounds good!"

This article mentions Damore was diagnosed in his mid-20s with high-functioning autism. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-dam...

I'm autistic myself. Damore trying to deflect criticism by saying he's autistic is insulting.

From the linked article:

> He does not once, however, use his autism to excuse his actions. He is fiercely resistant to portraying himself as any kind of victim, and says he never informed Google of his autism diagnosis. “I’m not sure you’re expected to,” he says, “or how I would even do that.”

I mentioned it as a point in favor of the "naive" theory. The article also supports it:

> Damore concedes now that he “wasn’t really skilled enough to push back on anything” in some interviews. It’s frustrating, he adds, that he’s now associated with the “alt-right” when he’s “more of a centrist”. He admits he did not look too deeply into Duke’s background when the photos were taken, and asks me not to publish the image of him in a “Goolag” T-shirt with this article. “I can definitely see how it was damaging, but it was a free professional photo shoot and I wasn’t really familiar with politics then,” he says. “I was pretty busy and ignorant.”

> Was his interview with the “alt-right” personality Milo Yiannopoulos an error? “It’s hard to say,” he replies. “I don’t really know what the long-term consequences of any of my actions are.”

He offended a broad class of people. Women shouldn't have to pick and choose who they feel comfortable working with around the office. Or worse, be forced to work with that guy. Once he expressed views like that, his fate was sealed. You don't punish the victims.

I don't know why I'm responding to the most flippant comment here, but I think your argument, however poorly stated, is worth countering.

"I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." - James Damore

I don't think the preceding quote is an "opinion they disagree with" as much as it is pseudo-intellectualism covering up outright hate. This is stated as a fact, not cited and not backed up. It asserts that women are not fit to work at Google, and implies that the women he works with are incompetent because of biology. If your coworker asserted that you were biologically inferior at your job, I think you would take drastic measures as well.

>> distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ

>> It asserts that women are not fit to work at Google,

No, it does not. It talks about well-known well-researched differences in distributions of preferences between men and women in general.

>> and implies that the women he works with are incompetent because of biology.

Absolutely does not imply that since it relates to men and women in general, not just Google employees and not even just the tech crowd.

I don't think your statements are as self evident as you think they are. You are personally attacking the poster above you, and then just spinning words around to make a point you agree with. We understand you agree with yourself; would you care to help us try and agree with you?

Personally, I agree with your statements. I do not see the issue that you see with wanting all people to be comfortable in their workplace. James Damore outright stated that he believes that women are genetically inferior at the job he does. I don't grasp how people miss how destructive that is.

>James Damore outright stated that he believes that women are genetically inferior at the job he does.

Outright? Certainly not. It requires multiple layers of hostile interpretation to reach 'women are genetically inferior' from what Damore wrote. That's an absolutist, determinist, morally-tinged statement which is nothing like anything he said.

If you think otherwise, please give the quote where Damore outright states women are 'genetically inferior' at anything.

Damore was extremely clear about the difference between "all men have X trait more than women" and "statistically, the prevalence of X trait is higher among men than women (but some women still have a lot of X)". He even included visual aids to help explain these concepts, literally on the first page of the memo.

If your mind integrates the studies Damore cited as stating that women are 'genetically inferior', that's something you need to learn to decouple. We don't have to choose between anti-science denialism and fascistic supremacism, so please don't try to force everyone's opinions into one of those two categories.

If that's the case, then it follows that:

> You are personally attacking James Damore, and then just spinning words around to make a point you agree with.

Specifically, this following statement is a gross misrepresentation of the argument he was making, which really was only clear with the bell curve diagrams that most news media companies purposefully omitted:

> he believes that women are genetically inferior at the job he does.

Furthermore, I disagree with the part about either argument being personal. We both attacked the argument, not the person. There was no ad hominem in either my original statement nor your retort.

Shortly before the memo, there were stories and comments in HN about problems inside Google.

I vaguely remember a story about someone in HR getting fired because they didn't pull a white male out of the running for a job. (The details are too fuzzy at this point.)

If you are going to bring up controversial anecdotes like this the onus is on you to actually have clear facts behind it.

This isn't that kind of message board

I think Hacker News is probably the only message board that IS that kind of message board.

This one?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16500974