Let this incident fully dislodge any tendency to cling to the belief that people in positions of authority wear their hearts on their sleeves, or that their statements can be taken at face value.
It doesn't make sense from the naive perspective because people are manipulating the narrative. If Trump's election doesn't make that painfully obvious, I don't know what will.
Imagine you are reading some code written by a colleague and comparing it against some output. After reviewing the code 3-4 times, you cannot figure out where a certain strange token, unlike the others, is coming from. Do we continue to stare at the same chunk of code, or do we look for other points in the pipeline where the file may be touched by an external process?
Companies that fail to maintain a specific type of brand persona open themselves to extremely costly lawsuits. Corporate management exists to say what needs to be said to get employees to cooperate and to keep the company from falling into legal or financial peril.
You can't take things at face value. This article indicates that Damore is 28 years old. A lot of us have to learn this lesson after a few years in the workforce, often in bitter, unpleasant ways (generally proportional to the amount of hope/optimism we have that things aren't really that way). Let's learn from Damore's experience, where his well-meaning attempt to discuss and explain the issue at hand got him terminated.
"Kumbaya" is a myth. Humans are tribal and driven by biological impulses to hoard both materials and personal control for good survival-centric reasons. There is no reason, other than naive optimism, to assume there are some fields where these instincts do not apply.
We should think about how we can change our processes to keep undeserving persons from scheming their way into positions of power, and revising a legal structure that forces everyone to act like a scared mouse around anything slightly controversial is probably a good place to start.
I hope that Damore revises his essay in 1 year's time from his now-forcefully-refined worldview.
It doesn't make sense from the naive perspective because people are manipulating the narrative. If Trump's election doesn't make that painfully obvious, I don't know what will.
Imagine you are reading some code written by a colleague and comparing it against some output. After reviewing the code 3-4 times, you cannot figure out where a certain strange token, unlike the others, is coming from. Do we continue to stare at the same chunk of code, or do we look for other points in the pipeline where the file may be touched by an external process?
Companies that fail to maintain a specific type of brand persona open themselves to extremely costly lawsuits. Corporate management exists to say what needs to be said to get employees to cooperate and to keep the company from falling into legal or financial peril.
You can't take things at face value. This article indicates that Damore is 28 years old. A lot of us have to learn this lesson after a few years in the workforce, often in bitter, unpleasant ways (generally proportional to the amount of hope/optimism we have that things aren't really that way). Let's learn from Damore's experience, where his well-meaning attempt to discuss and explain the issue at hand got him terminated.
"Kumbaya" is a myth. Humans are tribal and driven by biological impulses to hoard both materials and personal control for good survival-centric reasons. There is no reason, other than naive optimism, to assume there are some fields where these instincts do not apply.
We should think about how we can change our processes to keep undeserving persons from scheming their way into positions of power, and revising a legal structure that forces everyone to act like a scared mouse around anything slightly controversial is probably a good place to start.
I hope that Damore revises his essay in 1 year's time from his now-forcefully-refined worldview.