
Google cancels meeting on gender controversy due to employee fears of harassment - virtuabhi
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/10/16128380/google-cancels-all-hands-meeting-gender-controversy-due-to-employee-worries-online-harassment
======
wonderwonder
I think Google is starting to realize that they jumped the gun on their
initial actions. Instead of taking a few moments to get a lay of the land they
panicked, flew back their CEO and fired Damore and publicly humiliated him and
his opinions. They then scheduled a town hall where I assume the plan was to
further demonize him while telling everyone that they still value a free
exchange of ideas as long as those ideas are the right ones.

Since that initial plan though things have spiraled for them. They have been
sued. Damore has been given mainstream press coverage where he has equipped
himself reasonably well. They have also likely realized that he followed
company policy in regards to using the google approved forums and even
formally submitted his memo to google's diversity team. His memo has also
incorporated input from other Google employees.

Google very visibly stated that if you have certain opinions we find
distasteful and express them you will be fired. Not great for moral for those
who share those opinions.

They are realizing that they have done a terrible job on this from a PR,
company moral and legal standpoint and are seeking to regroup.

I am not defending Damore's opinion one way or the other but in regards to
handling this situation I don't see how Google's executives or many of their
staff are feeling positive right now.

~~~
jshevek
I agree with everything you are saying.

It does not look like Google's management reacted fairly, nor rationally.

I believe it is vital to the health of our society, our culture, for us to
look carefully at _why_ one of the worlds most powerful companies (which
historically had a culture valuing data, evidence, and science) would behave
in such an irrational, reactionary manner. The answer is surely multifaceted,
but I believe that some parts of that answer overlap with other recent events.
(Trump's election, Evergreen University, violent attacks by antifa, etc)

------
Firebrand
You know, when you're wrongly accused of being sexist, attempting to clear
your name by having an hour-long, preening conversation with Stefan "The evil
that women do is generally invisible to society which is why there’s so much
violence in society" Molyneux doesn't seem like the best option.

~~~
pteredactyl
Yea Stefan was not the greatest choice. But I thought he did well on
Bloomberg, even though Emily Chang had it out for him.

Cancelling the Town Hall is a cop out.

~~~
danso
It's not much of a "town hall" if employees are afraid to participate.

~~~
williamle8300
Agreed. Sundar's memo was just posturing...

"We want you to feel _free_ to express different opinions..."

Proceeds to fire Damore...

~~~
rdtsc
Might not be a crazy idea, see

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign)

Invite everyone to freely share ideas. Make lists, then kick out those with
the "wrong" ideas.

The are often comparisons between large corporations' command economy and the
now failed countries with centralized command economy.

But perhaps there are interesting parallels about how large corporations
discover and weed out those with undesirable ideas and how totalitarian
regimes do it. It goes into hyperbole territory there, I know, but perhaps
there are some common underlying mechanisms...

~~~
danso
Why should Google fire people for having the "wrong" ideas, when Google has
made it clear that they'll fire people whose ideas conflict with its code of
conduct?

[https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-
conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html)

Damore asserted that his ideas should be heeded by Google (from the very first
paragraph: "This needs to change"). And he makes assertions about how Google
has been poorly conducting himself:

[https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-
uncenso...](https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncensored-
memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f)

\- Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as
misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the
homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.

\- I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I
strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they
do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on
anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and
dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the
facts.

\- Nearly every difference between men and women is interpreted as a form of
women’s oppression. As with many things in life, gender differences are often
a case of “grass being greener on the other side”; unfortunately, taxpayer and
Google money is being spent to water only one side of the lawn.

Why should Google tolerate these claims at face value? And Google truly
disagrees with these assertions and their underlying principles, why should it
respond with something less than severing ties with an employee who literally
demanded, _" This needs to change"_?

And if Google did respond with something less than termination (nevermind what
kind of sanction would be possible), how are other employees _not_ supposed to
interpret that other than a concession to some degree, i.e. that Google has
doubts, and agrees with Damore that women-in-tech initiatives are a form of
discrimination, and is "misguided"? Or that when it comes to complaints about
diversity issues, that colleagues or management having "empathy" necessarily
opens up the risk of "harbor[ing] irrational and dangerous biases"?

No need for Google to use subterfuge to fire people with conflicting ideas.
They say it loud and clear that they expect employees to agree ("follow both
its spirit and letter") with the Code of Conduct. And Googlers are all smart
enough to see that the Code of Conduct uses language that leaves the
interpretation of things more open than narrow: "Google prohibits
discrimination, harassment and bullying in any form – verbal, physical, or
visual, as discussed more fully in our Policy Against Discrimination,
Harassment and Retaliation."

~~~
pacala
> Employment here is based solely upon individual merit and qualifications
> directly related to professional competence. We strictly prohibit unlawful
> discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, veteran
> status, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy status, sex, gender identity or
> expression, age, marital status, mental or physical disability, medical
> condition, sexual orientation, or any other characteristics protected by
> law. We also make all reasonable accommodations to meet our obligations
> under laws protecting the rights of the disabled.

From the code of conduct. "XX% of hiring must be of phenotype Y" is in direct
violation of the code of conduct. "If two candidates of phenotype X and Y are
equally qualified, prefer the X candidate" is in direct violation of the code
of conduct. "Target hiring search based on phenotype X" is in direct violation
of the code of conduct.

Edit. "women-in-tech initiatives" _are not_ a form of discrimination.
Phenotype-based hiring and promotion policies _are_.

Edit2. There is no such thing as protected groups under law. There are only
protected characteristics. For example, sex. One can't discriminate on the
basis of sex, _either_ female or male. Favoring females is de-favoring males,
thus discrimination.

~~~
danso
> _" XX% of hiring must be of phenotype Y" is in direct violation of the code
> of conduct._

Does Google have mandated quotas? For which demographic, because they seem to
be either ignoring them (which would mean they aren't _mandates_ ) or aiming
pretty low when it comes to women and non-asians. Or they coincidentally ended
up with roughly the same quotas as all the other large tech companies:

[http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-
report/](http://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/)

> _" If two candidates of phenotype X and Y are equally qualified, prefer the
> X candidate" is in direct violation of the code of conduct._

"prefer the X candidate" (if X is a stand-in for a gender/racial/subgroup of
protected category) is plain illegal. So I'm assuming that's not an official
Google mandate (without further evidence).

But this would be a pointless mandate anyway as there is no such thing as
"equally qualified". Has a hiring manager ever had to decide between identical
twins who went to the same schools and internships for the same amount of
years and received the same grades and job evaluations? Is there a universally
agreed upon conversion scale upon which we know how many years at MIT equals a
year at Harvard (or vice versa), and how that translates into "qualification
points" depending on job title?

> _" Target hiring search based on phenotype X" is in direct violation of the
> code of conduct._

Uh, well since we're trying to interpret the letter and spirit of the quoted
passage in the Code of Conduct, I hope it isn't pedantic to point out that the
quoted passage specifically refers to the basis of "employment" and employment
is related to, but _not_ recruitment? I mean, has there ever been a recruiting
process that was unaffected by factors unrelated to "individual merit and
qualifications"? LinkedIn built a unicorn business off of the bias of
networks. Before LinkedIn, there was this concept called "references".

If you're suggesting it's wrong for a job search to prioritize diversity, at
what level? I'm not a lawyer but let's assume that a policy of "reject all
applications from whites and non-females" would be legally prohibited.
However, sending a recruiter to do a luncheon at Smith College or Howard
University is clearly not illegal. But is it "wrong" or suboptimal if Google
sends a recruiter to those colleges even though it's much cheaper to do a
recruiting tour at Stanford and Berkeley? Does the extra expenditure for
sending a recruiter to colleges that are mostly black/women constitute
evidence that Google has racial/gender biases, because it's spending more
money to recruit at colleges that have far fewer whites/men than the average
college? What about donating to and allowing employees to spend worktime
assisting and interacting with programs like Black Girls Code or the Society
of Women Engineers, which would presumably increase the chances that members
of those organizations end up successfully networking with Google recruiters?

Just as Damore argued in his memo, diversity is not as simple as skin color or
gender. So it stands to reason that initiatives with the aim of supporting and
increasing diversity or not simple, nor reducible to "Google hires unqualified
non-white-males in the pursuit of public relations/appeasing SJWs", which is
how Damore seemed to interpret things.

But why should we assume Damore has interpreted Google's initiatives
correctly, which would imply that the Google employees who agree or
participate in these initiatives are idiots and/or complicit in
discrimination? He didn't name any specific people or employees so it's
possible that he's had adequate interaction with the initiatives and its
facilitators to make a privileged assessment of them. If he has evidence that
these programs led to either illegal discrimination of qualified candidates,
and/or the hiring of inferior candidates, I'm assuming he'll bring that up
with his complaint to the NLRB.

~~~
pacala
I don't know what Google does, I'm merely giving examples of illegal
discriminatory hiring practices, which I've heard of in conversations with
friends working in academia / industry. Sorry for being unclear.

That being said, there is a lot of smoke at Google as well. Google recently
hired Danielle Brown from Intel. Her track record:

[http://fortune.com/2017/08/07/google-diversity-
memo/](http://fortune.com/2017/08/07/google-diversity-memo/)

Danielle Brown> Google has taken a strong stand on this issue, by releasing
its demographic data and creating a company wide OKR on diversity and
inclusion.

[https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/diversity/diversity-...](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/diversity/diversity-
at-intel.html)

Intel> We exceeded our target, hitting 45.1% diverse hiring for women and
underrepresented minorities in 2016.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/15/intel-may-have-figured-
out-t...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/15/intel-may-have-figured-out-the-
secret-to-fixing-techs-women-problem.html)

> Since it began linking bonuses to diversity hiring, Intel has met or
> exceeded its goals.

------
curyous
This article is very skewed, it's annoying that she wrote things like "which
he claimed was backed up by studies." rather than "which are backed up by
studies."

~~~
jake-low
I'm not sure it's possible to cover such a polarizing breaking-news issue in a
way that's not "skewed". Intelligent people will read the same memo and
interpret it in different ways. It's too soon for anyone to be impartial.

Here's [0] a lengthy analysis from an evolutionary biology Ph.D that concludes
that Damore built a harmful narrative around weak and cherry-picked scientific
studies. Of course it's as "skewed" as anything else in that it contains an
opinion, but it also backs up the quote you're objecting to here -- the
argument Dr. Sadedin makes is that Damore "claimed" the studies supported his
narrative but in fact they didn't.

[0]: [https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-
bio...](https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-
claims-made-in-the-anti-diversity-document-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-
August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin?share=13d40fd1&srid=Q)

~~~
foolrush
And the author of the paper (implicitly) cited disagrees with the claims.

[http://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-fires-engineer-over-
an...](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-fires-engineer-over-anti-
diversity-memo)

~~~
Smutte
From the Wired article (comment from the scientist):

"And I believe there is good evidence of both sexism (including sex
stereotypes) and real psychological sex differences (some of which may be
evolved) to be causes of the gender gaps across occupations,"

From the start of the memo: "Differences in distributions of traits between
men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of
women in tech and leadership"

They are saying the exact same thing? In what way does the scientist disagree
in concrete words with things that is actually written in the memo?

Also, to avoid further misunderstandings...

Quote from link in the Wired article to Psychology Today: "Using someone’s
biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people’s personality is like
surgically operating with an axe" This is not what the memo did, as far as I
can tell. See the quote from the memo again. He is suggesting that "biological
sex" (the scientist's words) MAY IN PART explain why the split men/women is
not EXACTLY THE SAME (sorry for caps).

Do you see how the scientist never actually comments anything concrete in the
memo, but only concepts that are related?

~~~
foolrush
There is at least a sense that the scientist in question disagrees with the
application of their research as it stands.

Further, more recent research cited here, Brian Nosek (PhD Psychology):

“My takeaways: Some observed effects are easy to attribute to culture and hard
to attribute to biology in the simplistic dichotomy. Active discrimination
occurs and is dramatic, but effects of culture seem more commonly subtle
shaping of preferences and desires. And, its a really hard problem. Still room
for bio, culture, and bioXculture interactions in ultimate accounts.”

[https://twitter.com/BrianNosek/status/895410735412543492](https://twitter.com/BrianNosek/status/895410735412543492)

And finally, perhaps one of the more well qualified individuals, Suzanne
Sadedin (PhD Evolutionary Biology, BA Psychology, and BSc Zoology):

“Yes, men and women are biologically different — which doesn’t mean what the
author thinks it does. The article perniciously misrepresents the nature and
significance of known sex differences to advance what appears to be a covert
alt-right agenda.”

[https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-
bio...](https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-
claims-made-in-the-anti-diversity-document-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-
August-2017)

TL;DR: The “facts” that many insist on, aren't quite as genuinely legible as
the screed attempts to make them out to be. Ms. Sadedin’s commentary on the
internal memo seems most critical of the interpretation.

~~~
Smutte
Yes there are other links/comments from other people that give a better
criticism. That is not what was discussed but although it is not as obvious, I
think the same agenda shines through in your links.

First quote doesn't say anything concrete. Someone thinks it is "easier" to
attribute to culture without really linking it to the nature of Google
recruiting from a small part of the population. The statement can be true
without the memo being wrong. I understand the quote sounds like its critical
of the memo, but really what does it say? That its hard to tell and that
culture might (or even is) be a bigger factor? That would not be contrary to
anything in the memo

The second comment is the "least bad" critique that I have seen. However, to
me its quite obviously written with an agenda. Read the comments under her
post. Especially the ones from Jeremy Arnold. Note particularly his tone
compared to hers and how he even points out her quite obvious agenda. Also
notice how the conversation shifts to Julie Taylor and how the climate of
discussion changed. My point is that I am not competent enough and dont have
enough time to read through and understand all sources, find my own sources to
balance her agenda etcetc. Lets hope more honest and competent people, who
have the ability to see both sides, jump into the debate.

------
RickJWag
I quit reading after a few of the inflammatory exaggerations.

Obvious bias one way or the other turns me off.

~~~
problems
Unfortunately other, less biased submissions are getting flagged as dupes.

~~~
jwilk
Links?

~~~
snerbles
Flagged:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14989835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14989835)

Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14985094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14985094)

Are the ones I've seen.

------
thrill
True leadership would be inviting James Damore to speak at the meeting.

------
letsmakeit
I believe this nonsense has deeply damaged the Google brand, almost as badly
as the Snowden revelations.

------
sysdyne
What are we going to do? Throw tomatos at Pichai? Oh, the horror! Oh, the
humanity!

------
alexandercrohde
Sounds like an excuse to me. At least I don't see what online criticism has to
do with having a town-hall, by moving the discussion in-person it prevents
online sniping, no?

Edit: All that said, probably a smart move by google. Their is clearly a very
strong divide in our culture right now and they probably made a PR mistake by
letting themselves get caught in the middle of the issue once already.

Not only a strong divide, but one that's very emotional for a lot of people,
where progress and civil discourse are especially challenging.

~~~
danso
The OP doesn't refer to "online criticism". The second sentence of the lede
refers to "online harassment":

> _Google CEO Sundar Pichai has canceled the company’s much anticipated
> meeting to talk about gender issues today. The move came after some of its
> employees expressed concern over online harassment they had begun to receive
> after their questions and names have been published outside the company on a
> variety of largely alt-right sites._

The OP cites the letter as claiming that "our Dory questions appeared
externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being named
personally":

> _We had hoped to have a frank, open discussion today as we always do to
> bring us together and move forward. But our Dory questions appeared
> externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being named
> personally. Googlers are writing in, concerned about their safety and
> worried they may be “outed” publicly for asking a question in the Town
> Hall._

Dory is Google's Q&A software [0]. It's possible, and likely, that the
Googler's who have written in "concerned about their safety" have asked that
their questions be withdrawn, which reduces the efficacy of the town hall's
Q&A format.

[0] [http://searchengineland.com/google-moderator-aka-dory-
launch...](http://searchengineland.com/google-moderator-aka-dory-
launches-14817)

~~~
alexandercrohde
So... let's be reasonable here. If our goal is to protect those individuals,
wouldn't you simply use those questions anonymously...?

~~~
danso
I haven't used "Dory" but am assuming that yes, questions could be read
without referring to their author. I interpreted from the OP's wording that
screenshots/snapshots of Dory were leaked, and these leaks would have
contained names attached to questions. The Google CEO doesn't elaborate, but
maybe the Googlers who expressed concerns to him were afraid that when the
questions were made public, doxxers would make public the identities of the
questioners?

So sure, maybe the internal Dory system should have been configured for
anonymity. Come to think of it, Google should have just used its own Forms,
which allows respondents to authenticate via email address, and for responses
to be stored into a private, management-only spreadsheet. I think it's safe to
say Google has handled many aspects of its response to Damore in a sub-optimal
way.

------
idlewords
If he was sincere in his defense of free expression at Google, James Damore
should take this opportunity to speak out in defense of his former colleagues.
Doxxing is a pure intimidation tactic.

~~~
throwaway12124
Is there a name for this rhetorical form? _If X was a true Y, they would do
what I say all Ys should do._

~~~
miranda_rights
Yeah, the "No True Scotsman" fallacy:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

~~~
danso
> _No true Scotsman is a kind of informal fallacy in which one attempts to
> protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the
> definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample._

I thought the "No True Scotsman" fallacy was something more like this:

Alice: "No programmer indents with tabs instead of spaces"

Bob: "But Guido Van Rossum liked using tabs [0]"

Alice: "No _real_ programmer indents with tabs"

[0]
[http://web.archive.org/web/20160513172920/http://legacy.pyth...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160513172920/http://legacy.python.org/search/hypermail/python-1994q2/0205.html)

~~~
parrellel
That's what he said, your example just implicitly excludes Python Language
devs.

~~~
danso
No, not really. What's the universal generalization or group here, of which
Damore is a counter-example? _" Googlers who have written memos like Damore's
and were then fired"_? Damore's situation is a specific one, and he made
specific claims about the importance of freedom of expression at Google:

A. Damore spoke out about how Googlers shouldn't feel unsafe to express
themselves.

B. People at Google are reportedly intimidated about expressing themselves.

C. We would expect Damore to be unhappy that Googlers are feeling unsafe to
express themselves.

That's not a logical fallacy. Doesn't mean that idleword's rhetorical argument
can't be criticized for being overbearing. Or for being wrong in its premises,
e.g. Damore never explicitly said freedom of expression at Google was
important, he alleged that Google management's policies stifle ideological
viewpoints. That doesn't mean Damore has an opinion about Google employees
being intimidated by the public.

~~~
stagbeetle
I see what you're saying, but it's an edge case for the No True Scotsman, with
a mix of "moving the goal posts," i.e what real sincerity is like.

>No, not really. What's the universal generalization or group here, of which
Damore is a counter-example?

"Sincere people."

There's also tinges of "wishful thinking."

~~~
danso
Don't get me wrong, the rhetorical trick that idlewords is implied to use is
just as annoying. Like, _" If pro-life people truly cared about human and
babies lives, why don't they speak up for single-payer healthcare?"_ It
involves irrational assumptions and/or over-simplification of issues. And its
implications are itself a logical fallacy: _If people who support A also
support B, and people who support C support B, then people who believe in A
but not C are hypocrites_

But No True Scotsman fallacies can occur without those pre-requisites and it's
a common enough fallacy that it deserves its own term, so that it's easier to
identify and denounce its use.

Also, I really want to know if there is a specific phrase/category that
describes what idlewords is accused of, for the same reasons of easier
identification and denunciation :)

~~~
miranda_rights
You're right, and I was wrong before - the example of "If X was a true Y, they
would do what I say all Ys should do" seems like it might be related to No
True Scotsman but it's definitely different. It seems like the fallacy would
be in the speaker's definition of "a true Y", so maybe it's using a
"Persuasive definition"[0]? I'm not certain, but I'm also curious if there's a
better term!

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasive_definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasive_definition)

