
The fired Google engineer wrote his memo after he went to a 'shaming' programme - IsaakTech
http://uk.businessinsider.com/james-damore-wrote-his-memo-after-attending-a-google-diversity-programme-2017-8?r=US&IR=T
======
neilellis
Naive and privileged person starts flamewar based on their calmly reasoned
explanation of why their privileged group are inherently better suited to do
their job than other less privileged group; after attempts to show them that
they are indeed privileged and that others may also be as competent.

Due to intense backlash said naive and privileged person joins angry
privileged people on a road to genuine hatred. All the while claiming that
they are the underprivileged group.

 _sigh_

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fellellor
I feel like a lot of people are getting indignant for basically nothing. It
doesn't matter what the memo says.

I am reading Corporate Confidential by Cynthia Shapiro. It's highly relevant
to this situation. Also, for those who have read it, this particular situation
becomes an extremely interesting case study on exactly what not to do when you
are working at any company.

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SandersAK
I can't think of a better place to legitimize your argument than alt-right
YouTube.

~~~
xzel
And ironically an argument with google...

~~~
ebola1717
And after the CEO of YouTube called you out, no less

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ebola1717
This tweet was unsurprisingly prescient:
[https://twitter.com/campster/status/894749657091284992](https://twitter.com/campster/status/894749657091284992)

~~~
yannyu
Wingnut Welfare is a real thing:

Wingnut welfare is an important, underrated feature of the modern U.S.
political scene. I don’t know who came up with the term, but anyone who
follows right-wing careers knows whereof I speak: the lavishly-funded
ecosystem of billionaire-financed think tanks, media outlets, and so on
provides a comfortable cushion for politicians and pundits who tell such
people what they want to hear. Lose an election, make economic forecasts that
turn out laughably wrong, whatever — no matter, there’s always a fallback job
available.

[https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/wingnut-
welfare...](https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/wingnut-welfare-and-
work-incentives/)

~~~
jtuente
It's definitely not just right-wing

------
settsu
At first I just thought he was oblivious to some degree—regardless of his
document's veracity, it was clearly a case of "wrong time, wrong place."
Furthermore, it's one thing to "stand on principle, even if you stand alone",
but there's also something to be said for "choosing which hill to die on"...

Frankly, as additional details and background have come out—and the more he
speaks—it seems increasingly evident his motivations were less than virtuous.

------
asciimo
Sounds like Google wasn't a good fit for this guy.

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ceejayoz
[http://gizmodo.com/fired-google-memo-writer-took-part-in-
con...](http://gizmodo.com/fired-google-memo-writer-took-part-in-
controversial-s-1797658885)

> Fired Google Memo Writer Took Part in Controversial, 'Sexist' Skit While at
> Harvard for Which Administration Issued Formal Apology

~~~
Hnthrowaway768
The salient excerpt:

> while they described the skits as typically a “roast,” they emphasized that
> “the goal is not to offend.”

Really just seems like some more character assassination by Gizmodo.

~~~
MBCook
If the administration of Harvard felt they needed to formally apologize it
seems unlikely Gizmodo just gined this up out of nothing.

~~~
Hnthrowaway768
No one has looked to school administrators for moral guidance in many, many
years.

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NegativeLatency
This article is scant on details about what happened in the workshop.

~~~
chickenfries
I have a feeling the details are scant because they are banal. He probably got
some bland, generic HR talk and felt extremely uncomfortable discussing gender
and race, so much so that he wrote this diatribe. He would still have a job if
he just wrote it as a first person perspective of what made him uncomfortable
at the diversity training, instead of making it this indictment of Google and
their efforts at diversity as a whole.

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ajross
FTA:

> _Damore said: "I went to a diversity programme at Google, it was ... not
> recorded, totally secretive. I heard things that I definitely disagreed with
> in some of our programmes. I had some discussions there, there was lots of
> just shaming, and 'No you can’t say that, that's sexist' and 'You can't do
> this.'_

That is, he took a bland corporate diversity training class and tried starting
fights. The tell here is "you can't say that" with no antecedent for "that".
Yeah: if you tell your diversity class that women aren't cut out for work at
Google, you're going to cause a fight.

~~~
mikeash
This whole thing has been a wonderful example of trolling, in the old-school
sense where you say something superficially calm and reasoned but which will
inflame passions and start a big argument.

We are so prone to evaluating messages based on their form. If someone is
ranting and cursing and shouting, we fundamentally assume that they're
irrational. If someone speaks calmly and clearly and uses objective wording we
assume that they're rational.

We read this statement, see "there was lots of just shaming," and our
immediate natural reaction is to think, "Well that sucks, Google shouldn't
shame people, this guy is being persecuted."

But that's not the information actually presented here. All this statement
tells us is that _this guy felt shamed_. Was that because the people were
actually shaming him? Or was it because they stated facts that this guy feels
shamed by? Or something else? We have no idea.

~~~
peterwwillis
_> this guy felt shamed. Was that because the people were actually shaming
him? Or was it because they stated facts that this guy feels shamed by?_

I don't think it matters. As far as I am aware, no part of the business, or
any part of this industry, is trying to help people understand _why_ they
should change their behavior and thinking towards women. The only thing I see
is a sort of 'behavioral training' that tells you how to think and act,
without helping you gain the empathy and compassion, or even rational
arguments, needed for this to be a willing act. Do what we tell you to do or
you're fired, we don't care if you believe it.

This sets back the whole cause because it makes silent angry people who stew
until they get shamed at a retreat and then churn out ignorant manifestos they
are subsequently fired for writing. If the company gave a shit, they would do
more to help change minds, not just silence them.

Maybe their retreat was supposed to do that. But it sounds more like people
there were hostile rather than compassionate, and didn't do their job to help
these people understand. And now the alt-right has a new poster boy to push
their propaganda.

~~~
ajross
Your preferred solution to the problem of gender inequality is a magic ray gun
that imparts empathy and compassion?

I mean, OK. I agree, that would work. But you honestly don't think that's what
we're trying to do here? It's hard. People are jerks. All we simpering SJW's
are saying is _while_ people are still jerks, would it really hurt so much if
they were forced not to act like it in ways that actively hurt things?

You're saying that people's opinions are the problem and that doing this
thought police stuff isn't changing them, so it's not a solution.

Isn't the actual problem, though, that women (c.f. this very thread) don't
feel comfortable or welcome in tech careers? How is the inner mental landscape
of a bunch of dudes going to fix _that_? Isn't the "real" solution to, y'know,
actually make things better for women in this industry?

------
MBCook
Fun Twitter thread on how Godel's theorem predicted the final outcome of this
whole situation:

[https://twitter.com/PhilSandifer/status/894940236672794624](https://twitter.com/PhilSandifer/status/894940236672794624)

~~~
Grue3
I studied mathematical logic quite extensively, and I'm pretty sure this
person doesn't know what he's talking about. Godel's incompleteness theorem is
about facts which are unprovable in a certain logical framework. Any
sufficiently complex consistent system A has a statement G which cannot be
either proven or disproven in that system. That by itself is not a paradox,
there are plenty of unsolved mathematical problems that might not be solvable
using the axioms we have. For example "A is/is not consistent" is such a
statement.

On the contrary, any statement that _can_ be derived within the framework A
cannot contradict A because that would prove that A is inconsistent! Of course
with a real sufficiently complex logical system we cannot know whether it is
consistent or not, but that doesn't mean it is possible to prove a paradox in
it.

