James Damore was a lowly software engineer and that did not save him from being canceled by the mob and losing his job. All the more outrageous because his working paper was an honest and forthright - and broadly accurate - response to an express request for feedback about how to improve working conditions. Shades of "let a thousand flowers bloom".
Is "honest and forthright" really the only qualification for working at Google?
What about being professional? Meaning... getting your work done in a way that you're not making other people hate you?
I can totally imagine a workplace where "It's not your problem if other people hate you" is the norm. And I'm happy for people who find an employer like that and enjoy that. But does every workplace need to be like that?
What's wrong with a workplace saying "you need to be clued in to how your colleagues are affected by you"?
For me, that's table stakes in being a profesional.
I hope this is intentional satire, although I fear it's not. Reversing woke discourse to protect the people you approve of isn't anti-woke, it's just more orthodoxy policing.
But they aren't abusers. How would you feel if you were a female SWE and had to work with someone who considers you "biologically inferior"? IMO Google did right by firing him
> How would you feel if you were a female SWE and had to work with someone who considers you "biologically inferior"?
A good example of something Damore did not say. Even wrt. engineering skills in the narrowest sense, it's quite possible for women to meet the same standards as men; there will just be many fewer of them since a mixture of biological and cultural factors make for a significantly bigger pipeline on the male compared to the female side. Damore suggested ways to make the job more appealing to women and reduce this disparity.
"Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate"
"I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men
and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."
And throughout the memo he keeps parroting this ridiculous line that women are more "neurotic" than men.
Sorry, but I'm incapable of reading something this insipid with a charitable eye
If you already believe he said women are biologically inferior, enough to throw quotes around it, you have a lot of work to do to unwind that bias. Most people would not be able to do it, especially if they are motivated reasoners.
I might respectfully suggest you try again.
If it will help you, he doesn't say women are more neurotic. What he says, truthfully, is that women on average score higher in neuroticism than men do in the Big 5 personality traits. It's a term in psychology with a specific meaning, it no doubt has a citation in his memo, and it has direct relevance to why there are fewer women in leadership roles. If the intent is to have more women in leadership roles, and this is true, it should be addressed, yeah? The memo suggests ways to do that.
I never said that he "said" that, I said he "considered" it. My evidence? Right here:
"Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate"
It doesn't matter whether he cites sources and tries to rationalize his position. He's in no place to be making these kinds of broad, overarching statements.
What does that mean to you? What do you think he's saying? Since you read the memo carefully and as charitably as you can, and not just scooped a quote from a news article about the memo, you will know that it's in the context of this bullet list:
> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:
> ● Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race [5]● A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates● Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate● Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)● Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination [6]
> These practices are based on false assumptions generated by our biases and can actually increase race and gender tensions. We’re told by senior leadership that what we’re doing is both the morally and economically correct thing to do, but without evidence this is just veiled left
ideology that can irreparably harm Google.
> [5] Stretch, BOLD, CSSI, Engineering Practicum (to an extent), and several other Google funded internal and external programs are for people with a certain gender or race.
> [6] Instead set Googlegeist OKRs, potentially for certain demographics. We can increase representation at an org level by either making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores) or discriminating based on a protected status (which is illegal and I’ve seen it done). Increased representation OKRs can incentivize the latter and create zero-sum struggles between orgs.
I'll note, as you no doubt know from your reading of the memo, that your quote has a link that requires a google email to open. I'm not sure what it says.
If you read that carefully and charitably, without mindreading (he "considers" indeed), it reads like a political conservative, and not someone upset about "diversity hires" per se. You can disagree with him. I do, regarding affirmative action, but you cannot, given that quote, draw a conclusion that he thinks women are biologically inferior.
I'm not sure how "We can increase representation at an org level by making it a better environment for certain groups (which would be seen in survey scores)" squares with your notions about the memo.
Ok, I don't think any of that will change your mind about the memo or Damore, so feel free to have the last word.
His paper was definitively broadly inaccurate. A number of dissections online have illustrated at how he grasps at evidence that doesn’t say what he claims it to say. He over emphasizes the nature of statistical evidence, and ignores the minimal strength of effect as well.
Besides which this wasn’t a “all of a sudden I wrote a paper and then I got fired” - he had been posting similar ideas into internal forums and was getting push back and disagreements. He got his editorial feedback already and he ignored it.
Most of these "dissections" online simply omit his references, which gives a very misleading impression of the actual paper. Strength of effect is always minimal in psych and social science: you aren't going to find any seven-sigma results. So this is a biased criticism as well.
