> If he is making the workplace less comfortable for particular groups of people then I certainly would have no issue firing him.

Would you be okay with firing an LGBT person because they "made the workplace less comfortable" for some conservative employees?

First of all, there are plenty of businesses that would do exactly this. It is legal in most US states.

OK, but I don't think it's right. Here's why.

We as a society have said, employers can "discriminate" (meaning "choose") employees on some axes but not others. They can discriminate based on where you went to college, where you've worked previously, how friendly you seem to be, but not based on your gender or race. That's true even if working with a Black person or a woman would make some people uncomfortable.

The question, which I'll leave as a question, is, what's the difference between these two sets, and in which one does LGBTQ identity belong and why?

Sure, if they are publishing documents about how straight people are less effective at their job then they’re causing unnecessary issues in the workplace.

This is a strawman argument, but I will assume you made it in good faith given how widely Damore's claims have been misrepresented.

From what I recall in the memo, I'm pretty sure he never said that women were less effective at their tech jobs (fortunately, because there isn't any evidence remotely suggesting that !)

What he did is that, when Google asked for feedback on their mandatory diversity training, he challenged the prevailing view being taught in these classes about why less women get into tech than men (basically: not because of inherent lack of interest but because of societal pressure)

He pointed out that the latest science on "interesting in things vs people" disagrees, and he supported his argument with citations.

In a company that prides itself on making data-based decisions, starting a discussion in this way with a reasonable argument (even if later refuted) ideally shouldn't be a firing offense.

Now, was it politically, humanly, emotionally smart for him to say things in this way without consideration for their impact on coworkers ?

Of course not. But still, I can't help feeling somewhat sympathetic to someone with child-like naiveté who spoke the uncomfortable scientific truth (or at least, a very reasonable theory) that adults don't want to hear.

Bad analogy, because Damore didn’t do that. I don’t know why this falsehood lives on, the paper is public, and it clearly says not that.

You're technically correct, still is not unreasonable to argue that accusing google of quote "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate" might have a net effect of caste a shadow over certain groups being competent enough or being "diversity hires".

So pointing out a mathematical fact about the hiring practices of your company is wrong? Google decided to implement the policy that minorities who almost passed the bar(but didn't) get special treatment.

A simple example: "On the current political climate, political platforms are being built around being "anti-pc". With the past evidence we have about astroturfing campaigns it's possible that there are some paid posters even here on HN peddling political right wing propaganda."

I'm not saying anything false, but you can clearly see that this is not only a bad faith argument, but actually poisons the discussion, and still it can be argued that indeed we need to be wary about astroturfing and social network manipulations.

I wouldn't have fired Damore, but let's not kid ourselves by saying "we're simply stating facts". Mainly because that's not really the conversation, the tacit implication of "minorities who almost passed the bar", but letting them in anyway, is that the "bar" might be wrong, and that the company might be getting more results with this kind of hires than just measuring "mad hack skillz". Damore rightly points out that "without evidence this is just veiled (left) ideology" the point where he misses is that there has been at least attempts to get this evidence, we can discuss the results and even if they're valid (reproducibility crisis), but Damore just plain ignore's it. The only extension he has to offer about this point is: "[7] Communism promised to be both morally and economically superior to capitalism, but every attempt became morally corrupt and an economic failure. As it became clear that the working class of the liberal democracies wasn’t going to overthrow their “capitalist oppressors,” the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy.”" which is just bullshit by the account of anyone who knows the basics and history of marxism or social science. So these are not even "facts", but youtube tier analysis.

They solicited feedback. He gave them feedback that was well reasoned and well supported with citations, regardless of whether it was true or not. They didn't warn him, they fired him and the outrage mob wanted to ensure he never worked again.

If you're going to solicit feedback and then fire someone because you don't like it - at least specify that it must be non-dissenting feedback. Be honest here about the dishonest game being played.

That not even vaguely what that memo was. It was a blatantly political argument. Its go link was "pc-considered-harmful". Its central thesis was that Google leans too far to the left.

I think we're talking about the same memo, just a different take on it. To be clear, it was a response to a solicitation of feedback on a diversity program.

If a company can't handle honest, carefully researched and presented feedback - they shouldn't ask for it.

Your notion is that whatever an employee does should be fine as long as it technically complies with a the wording of vague, general request made by a coworker?

That would be one way to run a company, I guess. But I've never heard of one that actually works like that.

If you want to have an insightful discussion, one should refrain from making strawman arguments.

I think Demore's memo has little place in a company, but neither does the diversity program that spawned it. Better to keep politics out of the work place. But given the context, it was fully justified, regardless of its merits or lack thereof and I think the person who leaked it committed a real sin here, as did the company for firing him.

You can't keep politics out of the workplace. Your notion that diversity programs shouldn't exist is enormously political, and company having them or refusing to have them is political either way. Especially here in America, where the rights and privileges of white men have been intensely political topics for literal centuries. You are practicing politics right here, right now.

A diversity program is inherently political, as you said. I don't think it has a place in a company. Again, I think leave your politics at home. You seem to think that's not possible, but that's how I would do things, were it up to me.

It's got nothing to do with men's or women's rights. I'm dismayed by that whole argument. Let the meritocracy rule and the chips fall where they may.

Not having a diversity program is also political. The concept of meritocracy is political. Claiming that the things fitting with your political biases are non-political is political.

If that's the case everything is political. I'm not sure I accept that.

What I want to say is I don't care about left or right or the agendas of either. Focus on the product, the customers, and the fight. Alexander the Great never had a diversity program. I'm not going to say he was the pinnacle of morality here, but maybe it's a good idea to focus on the important things if you want to be successful.

Wanting to ignore America's long history of sexism and racism is a political position. Wanting to ignore the effects of those is a political position. Your contributions here are political activism.

If you want to be a reactionary, fine. But please own it.

I'm not sure if reactionary is the label, but I'll own whatever side doesn't have diversity committees at work - or HR departments if I'm allowed to dream.

Well I'm glad we both agree you're now a political activist.

What happens if two groups/sides are equally discomforted by the other? Do you silence/fire them both? Is it majority rule?

In this case, you satisfy the group that spends disproportionate amounts of time weaponizing social media, activists, and blog journalists for their cause.

I don’t have a good answer. But at that point some kind of outside discussion facilitation is probably necessary.

What's the most human narrative you're welling to place on Damore, that he might agree with? I'll try to think up a few...

1) Damore may have felt just as uncomfortable as his coworkers with what was being said, just in the opposite direction.

2) Damore, being a little spectrumy, attempted to derive an answer to a question about gender inequality in a cold and rational way, having no understanding that what he wrote would upset people. That's not the same as suggesting what he wrote is "correct." Correctness is irrelevant. As a person also on the spectrum, I can relate to this happening all.the.time. It's very difficult to understand what will upset people if you don't already have a mental rule about it. And rules are narrow.

I can agree with #2 - I don’t believe he saw this memo as being particularly political or as an attack against anyone.

>If he is making the workplace less comfortable for particular groups of people

Not just any group of people, naturally, but particular groups.

Politics necessarily makes certain groups uncomfortable. A discussion of wealth redistribution makes the rich incomfortable, should such things be impermissible? Politics enables certain groups to be favoured, and others to be disfavoured. This is a good reason to ban politics in general, but if you allow it, you need consistent rules regarding which sorts of views are permissible, rules that aren't themselves political.

Being rich isn’t a protected group in the workplace.

There's a certain irony to saying that, considering the whole point of a workplace is to make someone richer, usually the already rich.

>This is a good reason to ban politics in general, but if you allow it, you need consistent rules regarding which sorts of views are permissible, rules that aren't themselves political.

It is impossible to have apolitical rules regulating which political discussions are allowed.

Hell, just banning political discussion - any political discussion - is a political act. It's always a political act.

>but once you’re in my ear with some misinformed ideas

How the hell do you expect to get anything done in a society if you presume that any hurtful idea is misinformed?

How can you seriously pretend that gendered differences in humans magically stop above the shoulders? You're denying realty. It's black and white.

You can bend over backwards and sweep rational arguments like Damore's under the rug, or you can accept that consistent inequality of outcome across the time and culture is very obviously indicative of at least some degree of intrinsic cognitive differences.

I don’t think it is a rational argument though?

Saying "that's not rational" without stating why is rather hypocritical.

That's why you wouldn't open the floor for political discussion. You're missing the point.

I am fascinated that on HN of all places people are suggesting that engineers should never be allowed to express opinions about workplace policy.

They are allowed. But they also need to take responsibility for the consequences of their message. If you alienate half of your colleagues, you'll probably get fired.

Google didn't fire Damore when he wrote the memo. They didn't fire him when he shared it for feedback. They didn't fire him when it was internal discussion. They fired him when it leaked to press and there was a social media furor.

The idea that Google fired Damore for anything other than bad publicity is not supported by evidence. They asked him for feedback. He provided an intelligent and well researched document. They debated it. A social media mob got mad, and Google, being greedy cowards, fired Damore.

So many truths shift on how we paint the timelines. This is a very important angle to consider.

Could you please show me your source for the claim that they asked him for feedback?

Sure. Wikipedia has a description of it citing a Guardian article.

"James Damore was spurred to write the memo when a Google diversity program he attended solicited feedback."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch...

That's an article about Damore's POV, so I believe the correct way to express it is that Damore claims he wrote it in response to a request for feedback. And given that he put it up with a go link, it's pretty clear he didn't just submit this as an email to the D&I team. He published it internally, hoping to spark discussion. So I think it's disingenuous to talk about this as if it were something Google's managers ordered him to do. Damore set out to cause a stir and got one.

I said Damore was asked for feedback not that his managers ordered him to write the document and then fired him for it. Damore claimed he originally wrote it as feedback for a diversity meeting he attended and then shared it for broader feedback.

To my knowledge this account has never been contested by Google or anyone else and is the agreed upon account. I agree it is possible that Damore is lying about why he wrote it, and that if Google said he wrote it under some different circumstances there would be ambiguity because Damore's own account could be self serving - but, just because it is possibly Damore is lying doesn't mean we should assume he is. There is no dispute about why he originally authored the memo, is there?

When you talk about how "Google fired Damore" and "They asked him for feedback" you imply that the firer and the feedback-re are the same entity. But there's no reason to think that's the case. A more plausible interpretation is that somebody running D&I programs said something general, like "we welcome feedback on our programs". But there's no evidence that he specifically was asked, and even if he were, sharing it broadly appears to be his own idea. In which case, the general request for feedback is irrelevant to him getting fired.

Damore was both asked for feedback and fired by Google. Sure, it was different individuals at Google who did each, whoever presented the diversity the diversity conference asked for feedback and the decision to fire Damore was made, I believe, by Pichai.

I never said it was the same individual though, I said it was Google. I think it's splitting hairs to take what I wrote "Google asked for feedback and fired him" read it as a claim that it's somehow the same individual firing him, and then try to dispute the unintended interpretation you just invented.

Regarding sharing it broadly being Damore's idea - true. He shared it first as feedback and then tried to develop the ideas further by sharing within the company. For opinions not verboten by Google, this is common at the company.

This does not mean that it was irrelevant he was asked. Google talked to Damore about diversity and asked for his opinions. He was working to provide it and fired by Google for it.

Your construction seems to imply that Damore was fired for sharing his diversity feedback more broadly. I don't think that's true. Damore wasn't fired or censured when he gave the original opinion and not when he shared internally. He was only fired when social media began brewing an outrage mob. The point is, it shows Damore wasn't doing anything objectively wrong. He wasn't punished until popular subjective opinion went against him. He wasn't fired for his opinion or for sharing it internally, he was fired because people were tweeting about it and Google lacks the intellectual and moral integrity to stand behind their people against mean tweets.

It is definitely not splitting hairs. The "but Google asked him to do it and then fired him" line of defense hides relevant details. He wasn't assigned to write it, he wasn't assigned to publish it, and he wasn't assigned to not back down despite how much trouble it was causing.

It's true that sharing opinions is a common activity. But that again elides key facts. A highly political document attacking company programs and company culture was not the sort of thing people normally pass around for discussion.

Your notion that Damore just, gosh golly, thought he was sharing some helpful feedback is hard to square with the content or with his subsequent behavior both before and after his firing. I think what fits better with the text and his behavior is that he was engaging in political activism, and was well aware that he was going to cause a stir.

I agree that it's possible Damore wouldn't have ended up being fired under a variety of circumstances. Maybe it's true that if it hadn't hit the press, he'd still be there. Although given that what made news was the level of internal upset it was causing, he could well have been fired anyhow. And regardless, any employee should know that, "Don't cause the company a giant PR problem" is a reasonable rule to follow. Indeed, that apparently is explicitly part of Google's orientation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23124750

Damore was asked to provide feedback at the diversity program. He did and shared his document for internal feedback and discussion. Damore was fired for this.

Your objection is that saying "Google" did each of those things "hides relevant details". I disagree given that I've explicitly stated those details in this thread. Taking a single sentence and complaining it lacks details which are readily available in the wider context seems like splitting hairs.

Your point about "what fits better with Damore's text and behavior" may be your opinion. I don't share it though based on Damore's text clearly offering suggestions to improve diversity and different ways to think about it. To me, it seems much more likely Damore interpreted the Google diversity people as being honest actors and gave his honest feedback.

Your final point about how Damore should've known he would be fired is true, and I agree he should've realized Google is not an honest actor and doesn't want genuine feedback. That's kind of beside my broader point though, which is to highlight Google's lack of integrity in this instance. Damore was naive and trusted Google, he should've known not to. We agree there.

Setting that point aside, do you think if Damore was genuinely trying to give advice, and I know you don't think that, that he should've been fired for it?

I think a person genuinely trying to give advice doesn't act the way Damore did.

But let's say you're right, that his very best effort to collaborate with his colleagues was a divisive attack on their politics. That his very best effort to collaborate involved sticking to his guns to the point it was causing a major internal problem, and then a notable external one. In which case, he's so uniquely bad at collaboration that I don't think they could do anything other than fire him.

But personally, I don't think Damore was almost uniquely incompetent.

Damore's memo was not a "divisive attack on their politics". On the other hand, lying about his memo to describe it that way does seem like a divisive attack.

I don't think you're being honest or fair here and don't see the benefit of continuing a conversation with you.

The go link was "pc-considered-harmful". I think Damore clearly understood that what he was doing was political. And starting from "PC", a right-wing caricature of left-wing positions, could not be anything other than divisive. If you'd like to argue that was somehow all accidental, that he was just incredibly bad a communication, feel free.

I'm being perfectly honest, and I'm doing my best to be fair. If you don't like that, well, I did my best.

I strongly object with characterizing being inclusive and mindful of how your speech affects others as a "left-wing positions". It's basic politeness.

I certainly would think so. But nonetheless, the US right has been attacking the US left for that for decades. As long as the politeness is being applied to historically disfavored groups, anyhow.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that in the parent comment's particular case, knowingly inviting discussion and then firing people when you get butthurt is stupid.

Not at all. When companies give power to employees, they expect that it be used responsibly and roughly in line with the goals of the company. If I give somebody root access and they just rm -rf everything because it seems like fun, or because they're trying to prove some sort of point, then I'm going to fire them.

Google correctly gave employees a lot of power to have internal discussions because they thought that would benefit them as a company. And the great bulk of people used that responsibly. Damore didn't and paid the price.

Someone abusing root access to destroy data doesn't compare at all to punishing unpopularity in a falsely "open" forum. Analogies tend to suck in debates, but yours is particularly bad.

The problem was not just "unpopularity". Many people at Google have surely said many unpopular things, and Google didn't fire them.

Why?

A lot of people here want to be the boss of their own start-up, which means they won't want their future (perhaps hypothetical) employees organising against them.

If your company had a sizable portion of racists, and an employee said something anti-racist that made the racists feel uncomfortable, would you feel compelled to fire the anti-racist?

I'm a big believer in the principle of freedom of speech. It's sad that employees don't have freedom of speech in the workplace.