
James Damore and three others end Google suit - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-09/ex-google-engineer-who-became-right-wing-hero-quietly-ends-suit
======
mabbo
Damore committed the ultimate sin in the corporate world- he caused a huge PR
mess. Let's set aside the content of his memo (I personally don't agree with
what he said) and just appreciate that he made a mess.

As has been said before, if your CEO learns your name for the same reason he
has to end his vacation early, you probably should start polishing up your
resume.

~~~
sacks2k
He never released anything to the public. Someone who didn't like his
political views leaked it to Twitter and the press.

If I were him, I would have personally sued the person that leaked the content
and continued the fight until they had no money left. They really need to be
taught a lesson that it's not okay to do something like this with the
intention of destroying a person's life.

~~~
pjc50
.. so you'd destroy their life instead?

~~~
StephenAmar
Always assume that what you say could be on the front page of the New York
Times.

~~~
roenxi
Engineering is where most of the people go who care more about being right
than about what people think of them. There is a reason for that - it usually
matters if an approach is right or not in engineering work. Companies like
Google need to be able to roll their eyes when engineers start stupid
arguments, not sack them. The front-page rule is a technical impediment to
people being able to figure out facts. The path to the truth often leads
through patches of believing things that are wrong.

Charging into a room trying to start an argument isn't the best way to work
out what is true; but there are young engineers who are going to try it
because they are under a lot of pressure to be technically correct and not
under a lot of pressure to be socially savvy. They're in the process of
learning that it isn't politically feasible.

Even a full blown "Engineer holds crackpot opinion!" should never be front
page news unless it is a risk of a building fallen down. Let alone "Young
Engineer tries to start a Stupid Argument".

~~~
wpietri
This wasn't emacs vs vi.

Damore's goal was to materially affect who got hired and how they were
treated. That's quite a lot of people, and at one of the world's most
prominent companies. Nobody can reasonably expect that he should be able to
play at that level and have it be consequence-free when it doesn't go his way.

Damore is welcome to _have_ crackpot opinions. He's even welcome to _express_
crackpot opinions on his own time. But what he was doing was vigorous
workplace activism. Activism that not only contradicted the goals of Google
execs and the bulk of its employees, but was carried out in a way that
actively damaged ongoing Google efforts and caused a significant workplace
disruption.

You could argue that Google's management made a mistake in allowing a young
engineer this much power in the first place. Or by not reining him in earlier.
But rolling their eyes was never an option here because Damore was having a
significant negative effect on the company.

~~~
ultrawox
Google _solicited_ the feedback. This is the problem: companies want it both
ways. An open culture where people tell the truth about what they think (so
that you don't get the brilliantly dysfunctional organizations that suck up
huge amounts of money in lost efficiency) but none of the messy discomfort
that comes from people actually disagreeing in an open society.

~~~
wpietri
I've never worked at Google, so I can't say for sure. But from what I hear,
there's plenty of disagreement. And Google may have generally asked for
feedback. But I'm pretty sure they didn't say, "Hey, James, could you write a
maximally divisive political opinion piece attacking a bunch of important
internal efforts and implying that anybody who doesn't agree with you is just
a villain in an Ayn Rand novel?"

~~~
piflon
They said "please share your opinion on this specific topic [the low
proportion of women in engineering]." Regardless of how you color his
response, they asked for exactly what he gave.

~~~
wpietri
Could you point me to your source for that quote?

I'm not coloring his response when I call it a divisive political opinion
piece. It's explicitly framed as "the politics of the majority of people at
Google is a big problem". And whether or not their initial request technically
was broad enough to include his response isn't the issue.

Either Damore was reasonably smart, and he knew that this would at best be
enormously divisive. Or maybe he was just incredibly clueless. (Personally I
think it was the former.) When bosses (or anybody) ask for something,
technically complying with the literal meaning of their words is not enough.
One has to consider goals and context, and respond accordingly.

~~~
zozbot234
They _expressly_ asked him to share his opinion about an extremely divisive,
almost third-rail topic. You're just saying that his statement ended up being
divisive as well, but that's tautological. It's simply not possible to be
"politically neutral" about such a topic and say anything worthwhile.

~~~
wpietri
Could you please point me to your source for the exact wording of their
request?

------
look_lookatme
Damore does not fit into the neat ideological right or left classification but
it would be impossible for an institution like Bloomberg to have nuance on
this issue. Just because some deplorable lifted him up doesn't mean he should
be defined specifically on an ideological axis.

But, of course, who gives a fuck. The rage machine rages on.

~~~
azinman2
But he did become an alt-right / Fox News / conservative machine darling.

~~~
ekianjo
You have to consider the possibility that they were the only people who he
could actually talk to. Not that he wanted to be in such channels in the first
place.

~~~
convery
My first thought as well. You see liberals invited onto conservative outlets
for genuine debates / opinions. Rarely see liberal outlets do the same as
guilt by association, causing anyone who's ever been in the same room as an
'alt-right' to be tainted, seem to be rampant.

~~~
ausbah
"genuine debates" on conservative outlets, like what? Fox News? talk radio? a
dingy YouTube channel?

~~~
manigandham
Can you give examples of what you consider "genuine debates" then?

I care more about the content than where it's hosted.

------
kyrieeschaton
It was a joint request to dismiss with no further comment, ie, almost
certainly a settlement & a nondisclosure agreement.

~~~
duxup
I'd be curious what the agreement is if only because it didn't seem like he
had much in the way of a strong with case.

~~~
koheripbal
Are you serious? He was fired for his political views.

~~~
ryan-c
Are there protected classes based on political views?

If someone is expressing political or even religious views that are so extreme
that they create a hostile work environment, I don't see an issue with firing
them over it.

(I am not interested in debating whether or not Damore's views reached the
"hostile work environment" threshold)

~~~
LurkersWillLurk
None federally. In California, "political activities" are a protected class.
The extent to which activities and views overlap is almost certainly a messy
question of law that I'm not qualified to answer with respect to Damore.

------
somewhereoutth
I am shocked that there is even a discussion to be had on this.

In architecture (a somewhat older profession, but also concerning things
constructed by people), women previously did have a hard time, and often had
to practice under their husbands/partners name.

Mercifully this ended some while ago, and now architecture schools and onwards
are more evenly gender balanced. Nobody suggests that women are somehow
naturally 'less inclined', and the profession is richer for it.

It would be great if engineering could get to this point.

~~~
zozbot234
Not just architecture, also medicine and law. The whole question is what's
different about math, CS, engineering and the physical sciences that makes it
so much harder to reach gender balance there? If you look at the commonalities
that these fields share, the "things, not people" aspect is the most prominent
by far.

~~~
fzeroracer
That doesn't follow suit with the history of computer science however. Women
were a large amount of computer science grads back in the 70s and 80s where it
was even more difficult and arguably less social then modern development.

Nowadays software dev is highly collaborative and social. It faced declining
amounts of graduates that were women from the late-80s and onwards compared to
engineering and the physical sciences which if I'm recalling correctly have
steadily rose.

~~~
pnako
Women are the majority of CS grads in Saudi Arabia, and you'll find that they
are many women studying CS in third-world countries that typically are less
"gender egalitarian" than Western countries.

In wealthy, western countries giving men and women the choice of what to study
without having to think too much about where they'll end up in society, that's
where you see the most gender imbalance.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-
equality_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-equality_paradox)

~~~
fzeroracer
Yes, but to make this argument you would have to demonstrate that the West
somehow became much more gender egalitarian in the past 30 years in order to
explain the drop in CS grads.

So what happened from the late 80s to now that resulted in women gaining more
freedom and therefore shifting them out of CS? And more specifically: Why has
this only affected computer science? The gender equality paradox supposedly
holds for the entirety of STEM and yet we've seen woman graduates in STEM
steadily rise across the board except for CS. Therefore that would make CS an
outlier and not the norm.

That's assuming the gender equality paradox holds true which is likely not the
case considering the issues with the assertion brought up in the Wikipedia
article you linked (which I hope you read).

~~~
pnako
The fact remains that there are more women studying engineering (not just CS)
in less egalitarian third world countries than in progressive western
countries, despite the latter having campaigns, funding, etc.

The idea that male and female primates (including humans) have different ways
to look at the world seems very sensible to me, and that would explain why
"women care more about people" and "men care more about things".

~~~
fzeroracer
That wasn't the argument I was making. Please don't change the topic. I don't
dispute that there are more women studying engineering in said countries, what
I asked you was a very specific question.

Why did Computer Science of all STEM degrees face a drop in female graduates
versus the others?

And if you're making the argument that 'women care more about people' and 'men
care more about things' then I'm going to disagree heavily considering it
doesn't relate to modern day software development. Current development is
highly collaborative, constantly dealing with other people whether it's
customers or members of your team. In fact, back when CS was at its peak of
women obtaining CS degrees, that was when CS was more focused on things and
less on people as a result of software still being a niche and local thing.
That argument doesn't work considering the history of CS as a whole.

~~~
pnako
I think the answer to your question is precisely that, with all the campaigns
in the west telling women to follow their own path, do whatever they want,
etc. they ended up predominantly choosing careers they actually like (nursing,
teaching, anything that has to do with people)

There are always exceptions, obviously.

------
gameswithgo
Google has fired a few people, liberal and conservative, for being politically
insufferable. Multiple people in the news about this on various places in
political spectrum. It doesn’t mean they were wrong.

~~~
jacobmoe
There's been endless discussion about Damore. In particular podcasts you'd
think that the firing of a random engineer at Google ranked alongside 9/11 as
a defining event in modern history. If I circulated a memo to my co-workers
that not only opposed a new policy from management, but did obvious harm to
the expressed intent of that policy, I might be fired. It doesn't matter if
the memo I circulated would have gotten a passing grade in a college class.
The fact that people use that as an argument tells me that they've never
worked a normal job before.

~~~
LurkersWillLurk
I can't tell if you're trying to say that a policy from management is beyond
all reproach or if "these things just happen in the real world". Either way,
the former shouldn't be true and the latter should be wrong. Of course,
correctness doesn't stop anyone from being terminated, but that's not the
point.

~~~
ashtonkem
There are appropriate and inappropriate avenues for disagreeing with corporate
policy; publicly on a large mailing list is going to get you in hot water no
matter what the policy is.

~~~
will4274
I guess I take issue with this. Google encouraged discussion and disagreement
on large mailing lists, unlike most companies. It doesn't seem right that
Google would simultaneously sollicit such feedback and then punish somebody
for giving them negative feedback.

~~~
jacobmoe
I think what you're saying is valid, but the point I've been making is that
the entire James Damore affair is interesting for pretty much the opposite
reason to that which people who tend to bring it up claim.

"It doesn't seem right" is one thing, but that's not why it's still brought up
3 years after the memo was written. A lot has gone on in the world in the past
3 years that doesn't seem right that we've forgotten about or didn't hear
about in the first place. Damore is used as a data point (in fact, as a
central data point) in the thesis that "political correctness gone awry" or
"social justice warriors run amok" are problems that rank highly in a list of
society's most concerning. I think it's absurd. That this random dev's firing
is doing so much work in bolstering this thesis just highlights the absurdity.

------
11thEarlOfMar
If you're looking for a little irony, here is Dr. Louanne Brizendine,
Neuroscience PhD (Stanford, Yale, Berkeley) discussing how the female and male
brains are different AT GOOGLE and with very warm, positive reception:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_uGr1ZOn4&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_uGr1ZOn4&t=2s)

~~~
lawnchair_larry
She has written books on both, and they’re quite interesting.

I suppose she has to be cast to the “Intellectual Dark Web” for daring to
suggest the obvious fact that our brains work differently.

The ultimate irony is that someone can deny such differences while
simultaneously arguing for the importance of diversity. What a walking
contradiction.

~~~
11thEarlOfMar
"We celebrate our diversity, but we cannot talk about what makes us
different."

------
daenz
I remember at a previous job, a female engineer talking to other engineers
when the Damore story broke. She said "I can't believe he said that women
can't be good engineers" and indicated he deserved to be fired. As someone who
actually read what he wrote, I just had to bite my tongue. That's not what he
said _at all_ , but even making the distinction makes you one of "them" and
politicizes the workplace. It's just disappointing that these little
whirlwinds of misinformation bullshit get to circle around and everybody just
has to nod their heads.

~~~
ergothus
> As someone who actually read what he wrote, I just had to bite my tongue.
> That's not what he said at all,

As someone that also read it, those arent the words he used, but that is very
much what he was saying. A facade of misrepresented psuedoscience doesnt
change the intent, motivation, or reality.

~~~
JSavageOne
> but that is very much what he was saying

No it's not. Nowhere in the paper did he say that women can't become good
engineers. You're literally defaming his work. Either support your accusation
with evidence, or don't comment.

~~~
mabbo
> those arent the words he used, but that is very much what he was saying

> Nowhere in the paper did he say that

You both are saying the same thing- he did not use those exact words.

The parent comment is saying that despite not saying "Women can't be
engineers", the entire purpose of the paper, in the view of that reader, was
to insinuate that women can't be engineers. It's not terribly hard to promote
an idea without ever saying it explicitly. Perhaps you didn't read the deeper
meaning out of the memo.

And demanding those who interpret things differently than you "don't comment"
doesn't promote discussion, it ends it. When someone says something you
disagree with, don't tell them to shut up, ask them why they see things
differently. Debate. Discuss. Grow.

~~~
darkerside
You're right that they both talked about exact words, but you're indexing too
highly on it. Just because they used the same words in places doesn't mean
they're saying the same thing. Reading again, I don't know why you start with
that statement. It really muddies the rest of your comment.

Please take this idea with an open mind. When you arrive a singular purpose to
the paper, it may say more about your views than it does about the author's.
He didn't have a thesis that stated directly that he meant to "insinuate that
women can't be engineers", so you're literally putting words in his mouth.

And the "don't comment" line explicitly said it was in response to statements
that are unfounded, NOT statements that disagree.

Putting that all together, you seem to be having an argument with a ghost of
your own making.

~~~
dirtydroog
Parent is essentially playing the 'so what you're saying is...' card.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Be honest.

Are you saying: "This statement is false, so I must argue against it."

Or are you saying: "I cannot accept the implications of this statement, so I
must argue against it."

------
vmception
I think conversations can be had with people like him, instead of taking the
worst part of their views and ostracizing them for it. I think it is fine to
acknowledge angst in the implementation of progressive ideals, that angst will
often be mixed in with purely insensitive and uneducated thoughts.

There are productive outcomes possible by parsing and separating those issues.

I think it has been a big mistake of tech platforms - and really the people in
the geographical area they are in - to simply be content with deplatforming
people, assuming they are irreconcilable. It only emboldens, it doesn't stop
the spread of disagreement, and from my perspective there really is a lot of
common ground which is really just angst in _implementation_ of progressive
ideals.

------
throwaway4715
I still do not understand why anyone is confused he got fired. He negatively
affected both the company's brand and productivity. He simply wasn't
important/useful enough to keep around in light of that.

Want more rights then work in a union. Otherwise, don't forget you're employed
_at will_.

------
screye
No better place and time to post this.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) \-
Paul Graham's 'What you can't say'

------
bpsh
Wonder how much money he got to shut up

------
gamechangr
Its a settlement

------
thinkingemote
This discussion is almost textbook flamebait. Indeed the very topic itself was
all about flame. It's impossible, I think, to be able to discuss it rationally
without falling into our usual traps. Actually for many people to even
consider that it is possible to discuss it rationally would be problematic and
borderline offensive, for others, the lack of a rational discussion is itself
proof of a big problem.

That's my observation of these threads - it's a curious game - the only
winning move, Professor Falcon, is not to play. How about a nice game of
Chess?

------
duxup
[https://outline.com/HtuMWS](https://outline.com/HtuMWS)

------
seemslegit
"As part of and a central stipulation of this agreement, the plaintiff agrees
not to purchase a luxury convertible vehicle and drive it around Sunnyvale
while having scantily clad models recite his original memo through
megaphones."

------
spoonsies
Was it Damore or Kevin Cernekee who quietly joined Apple to work on macos? I’m
curious if they continue to be so outspoken there. My guess is their views
would have to be kept to themselves. Apple really doesn’t tolerate unwanted
attention.

------
shadowgovt
The interest in this story has always intrigued me.

What is it about this story that keeps people engaged? Are other engineers
concerned they could be fired like Damore for saying the wrong thing?

------
ravenstine
Damore was not offered a chance to receive forgiveness by either the company
or the outrage mob, therefore I don't respect what people generally have to
say about whether what he did was right or wrong. It's astounding that people
are still debating this in this very HN thread. A society of any size that
makes virtue claims while simultaneously adding an undue price to being wrong
or insensitive deserves to be mocked and ridiculed. You don't have to agree
with anything Demore said, but the fact that Google openly encouraged
political discussion, yet had an unwritten rule that if you say anything to
upset a particular political demographic that you are terminated, is patently
absurd. Companies shouldn't be encouraging employees to be political. We would
never tolerate companies that encourage religious discussion but fire
employees that say things against the Christian faith.

If you're going to come into this thread to refute Damore's memo and downvote
people who don't tow your petty little line, your need to reexamine your
principles, if you've got one.

~~~
thosakwe
1\. I don't recall him ever "asking for forgiveness," or doing anything
besides doubling down on his memo.

2\. The "outrage mob" isn't real. You know who got James Damore fired?
Himself. It's especially telling that you, and people who defend him,
attribute _zero_ fault whatsoever to the person who actually _wrote_ the memo.

~~~
jariel
Damore, trying to make an earnest intellectual contribution, got a lot of
people really upset, and they campaigned to have him destroyed.

This is the most visceral and obvious example of an outrage mob possible.

~~~
abstractbarista
I feel bad for anyone who disagrees with this. Their bias prevents them from
seeing the world as it truly exists.

~~~
wpietri
I feel bad for anyone who believes that their political opinions just happen
to represent "the world as it truly exists".

~~~
jariel
Google is entirely full of vindictive people with blatantly political opinions
- many who have acted with obvious malice towards others, so spare us the
hypocrisy.

If this were truly a matter of 'opinion rocking the boat' \- then there would
be a bunch of other firings, policy changes etc. - but that is not the case at
all.

------
Smaug123
Would it be too much to ask that we collectively say "The Damore thing is
obviously a [scissor statement]([https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-
by-controversial/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-
controversial/)), on which otherwise-reasonable people bafflingly manage to
hold different views very strongly, and we should stop talking about it
forthwith because no good can come of it"? Nothing new can be said on the
subject, vanishingly few people can be persuaded one way or the other, and
"news site primarily populated by shortform comments" is hardly the
appropriate place to hold a protracted argument.

~~~
jansan
That story you links makes for some fascinating reading. Thanks.

~~~
mLuby
Format reminds me of this cold war story:
[https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-
tail](https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail)

"It made a horrible kind of sense, for Cold War values of sense: not a real
rocket motor, but a vile way of getting your enemy’s best and brightest to
kill themselves by trying to reverse-engineer an impossible nightmare."

------
JSavageOne
It's annoying that Bloomberg refers to the memo as being "political" and
expressing "political conservatism". The memo was attempting to explain the
underrepresentation of women in tech via biological differences. That has
literally nothing to do with politics, and framing it as such misrepresents
and discredits the contents of the memo.

~~~
ravenstine
Is this what conservatism actually is, now? I'm just wondering because,
although I agree that nothing Damore said was conservative in a traditional
sense, maybe conservatism has just been made more broad in recent years.

For instance, I don't believe that I'm conservative at all, but my liberal
friends and family tend to classify me as "conservative". I find it baffling
because most of my beliefs are pretty permissive. Ask me about any individual
stance, and I can assure you that the answer will most likely be a liberal
one. But I'm considered "conservative" because my ideas are not all
Liberal(with a capital-L). For instance, there's nothing particularly
conservative about believing that biological sex has a determining(or at least
predicting) factor on a person's behavior and preferences, yet because this is
a stance that today's Liberalism looks down upon, it's considered de facto
conservative merely on that basis. The same goes for things like
libertarianism and having negative conclusions about socialism. They don't
really have anything to do with being conservative in isolation, but if they
aren't Liberal then they can only be conservative, in accordance with how the
establishment media judge these things.

There needs to be a different word than conservatism for having positions that
aren't part of the Liberal platform, but "conservative" works well from an
optics perspective because it's been effectively vilified.

EDIT: LOL Am I being downvoted because I said people think I'm conservative?
One of you people please tell me.

~~~
ultrawox
I think the modern conservative movement largely is explained by "a group of
people that oppose liberalism." That's why you have such a weird coalition of
religious groups, older intellectual conservatives, young Republicans,
business people, trolls. They really don't have a ton in common, but frankly I
get it. I live in the Midwest and while I consider myself an independent, most
of my views are moderate or left-wing. But I went to grad school on the East
Coast and I felt like an outsider and the most conservative person in class
just for holding somewhat moderate views.

~~~
mokus
This is speculation but it seems like we should inevitably see political
factions in the US being defined in this way (and it happens in the Democratic
Party too, maybe not in as obvious or extreme a way) as a result of the well-
known two-party endgame of our voting system. If your faction isn’t one of the
two, your choices are to join one or be irrelevant.

So you jump on the bandwagon with whoever you hate least, and pretty soon you
find out that’s almost all you have in common with the rest of the riders.

~~~
piflon
It may also be specific to conservative movements, given that by definition
they oppose some change in society and so would naturally be diverse in their
reason for opposing it (possibly more so than the supporters would be diverse
in their reasons for supporting it).

~~~
mokus
That would explain why in our current system the conservative faction is more
like this than the liberal faction. But what I was getting at is the reason
that the conservative faction is essentially singular. In a less broken
system, there could be multiple conservative factions and multiple liberal
factions without the sub-factions feeling needing to choose whether to band
together on every single issue or be irrelevant.

They could dynamically band together on a per-issue basis and have more
reasoned discussions focusing on those issues instead of making sure to
pronounce “shibboleth” correctly.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/PCQUT](https://archive.md/PCQUT)

------
balls187
> companies in Silicon Valley and beyond have instituted workplace rules
> designed to protect employees with alternative viewpoints and prevent
> bullying, Dhillon said.

Lipstick on a pig.

Racism is racism.

Sexism is sexism.

If you want to be a racist, sexist person, do it on your own time, not on the
company dollar.

------
ryguytilidie
Well, this takes the cake as the most toxic comments section I've ever seen on
HN.

The degree of "I'm tired of the left being outraged at the right tearing our
country apart but i also couldnt care about the right tearing our country
apart, oh also let me normalize hating women" makes me very sad for our
future.

------
saagarjha
Can we somehow get “Damore” in the title?

------
yakshaving_jgt
Seems unfair and propagandist to characterise Damore this way.

------
DonHopkins
>"Meanwhile, a judge opined it wouldn’t be easy for two fellow plaintiffs to
prevail on their “novel” theory that Google is biased against “political
conservatives” -- a term the company argued was too vague to support a class-
action suit."

Especially since anyone who rightfully calls themselves a "political
conservative" has long since left the Republican party after it left them, and
doesn't consider themselves an "alt right" Trump supporter.

------
ykevinator
Nice way to make a buck, now off to fox News!

------
aortega
Clearly a settlement, meaning he basically won. That's a big message to other
organizations implementing similar codes of conduct.

------
varjag
Plenty people here suggest Damore's something smart, can I see his GitHub?

------
olivermarks
It's not that quiet if Bloomberg is writing about it...

~~~
BubRoss
Google quietly gave a press release to Bloomberg so they could quietly show it
to thousands of people.

~~~
olivermarks
Exactly...

~~~
unnouinceput
...And we quietly read and comment on HN

~~~
BubRoss
I hope you aren't trying to make some sort of point about hypocrisy here. No
one here is claiming they are posting on a public forum "quietly".

~~~
unnouinceput
It's a joke, lighten up

------
temporalparts
I don't understand why people are characterizing his firing as political. If
you read his memo, it should be clear that he was fired for being sexist. His
memo included a section which stated that women are biologically inferior to
men. This immediately makes it very difficult to work with him for women and
their allies. I know tech skews male, but software engineers have to interface
with many other teams and many other functions, especially at Google. If he
actually left out the biological differences claim, Google might not have
fired him, but that section left Google no choice. I support discourse in
general, but from a business/society perspective, you can't immediately make
it difficult for a large plurality of your peers (and vast majority if you
include allies) to work with you.

This is only political because right-wing political organizations have chosen
to defend someone's sexist memo AFTER THE FACT, to drive the narrative of how
Google is anti-right and is a left-wing puppet company. Calling this a
political firing is only coopting their ridiculous narrative that he was fired
for expressing "conservative values" or their sexist narrative that those
conservative values include the fact that women are biologically inferior.

~~~
Pazzaz
> His memo included a section which stated that women are biologically
> inferior to men.

Just reread his memo and couldn't find this. Where did he say this?

------
epr
I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on anyone claiming that a difference
in interests does not equate to a difference in capabilities. Think about
fields you are passionate about vs. fields you couldn't care less about. Do
you honestly think you could excel equally in both fields? If you are going to
make the argument then don't insult everyone else's intelligence by watering
it down.

As freedom in a society increases, women increasingly choose different
professions than men. The extent to which these reflect their innate interests
rather than those imposed on them by society has a direct relationship to
their relative capabilities to men in these fields in the aggregate.

------
conception
This topic is quickly going downhill in the comments, but I just wanted to
clear some stuff up because there seems to be some "what he said isn't that
bad!"

People wrongly think he said women are bad or stupid but that's not what he
did say. He also didn't -just- say men and women are different.

He did say a 5-10% difference in certain traits is why there are huge
discrepancies of women in leadership and science/engineering positions. And
maybe that's ok and we should just let it be.

Sorry, but "girls don't like to make hard choices or do 'nerdy' things" isn't
a real thing. Hundreds of years of "stay in the kitchen" is what proactive
programs to bring women into these positions are trying to reverse. It's not
biological.

~~~
ralfd
80% of students of veterinary medicine are women. 75% of students in
psychology are women. It is simple math: Any woman who studies to become a
teacher, counselor or social worker can not study to become an engineer.

Being a programmer is not competing with "stay in the kitchen". It is
competing with this:

[https://www.eastvalleyanimalclinic.com/sites/site-6136/image...](https://www.eastvalleyanimalclinic.com/sites/site-6136/images/Staff%20photo%202017-2.jpg)

