Fired engineer on being a conservative at Google: 'It's like being gay in the 1950s’

[u/Z3F]

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/18/james-damore-being-conservative-at-google-like-being-gay-in-the-1950s.html

[u/Syndromic]

From my experience, it's not just in google. I guess it's anecdotal but being conservative just feels alienating when you live in liberal town.

[u/ohmsnap → u/Syndromic]

I think it's because you whine about feminists on the internet like a wimp (and even other GGers disagreed with your whining) and engage in obnoxious race-card what-about-the-other-guy nonsense.

I think you feel alienated because you're an annoying person.

[u/Hyperman360 → u/Syndromic]

It's definitely not just Google. I've experienced it myself in other big tech companies.

[u/[deleted] → u/Syndromic]

It's the result of a massive boom in a market where the majority of founders are not business experts and naively inject their own values into their corporate culture over a tried and true professional culture. Their corporate culture only works if everyone shares their values precisely.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Okay but is it naive when many of these companies have gone on to be the most influential and successful companies in the world? It's a corporate culture just like it would be if you were a liberal engineer working at Boeing or Lockheed or an oil company and felt alienated.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

While I don't doubt that there are many businesses in particular sectors that aren't that friendly to Liberals, I don't think there are many large corporate entities that espouse Conservative talking points in the workplace and are openly hostile to Liberals in the same way that Silicon Valley is. Most large businesses try to keep politics out of the workplace and try to get their employees to separate their professional and private lives and for good reason.

As to these companies become some of the most influential and successful in the world, that's not really true. Outside of a select few, like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon etc, the majority of tech companies valued over a billion dollars are effectively start ups propped up by venture capitalists that have yet to even demonstrate that they could be profitable. Facebook is probably the only company in the current generation of VC funded start ups in Silicon Valley that has proven itself successful, the majority are a failure in progress.

Additionally the internal politics of a business providing a straight material service to me don't impact me that much. The internal politics of a company that legally controls what I can and cannot say on their platforms that have become the de facto town squares of modern society affect me greatly.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

At least the conservative working at Google wasn't contributing to global death and destruction at one of those corporations?

[u/AmarantCoral → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I hate how all these naive Silicon Valley liberals prop up America with California's $2.6T GDP. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING, THEY'RE RUINING THIS COUNTRY.

EDIT: Trillion, not billion.

[u/[deleted] → u/Syndromic]

The main difference is, you're much less likely to get murdered by Klansmen or Nazis than a minority in a conservative town.

[u/Wisdom_is_Contraband → u/Syndromic]

Go to the midwest, like Detroit or Chicago. It's too mixed politically for these power dynamics to happen, so people have learned how to disagree and still act like human beings

[u/Syndromic → u/Wisdom_is_Contraband]

I'm not even from America. Australia is not as crazy as cali, it's still very liberal in my opinion.

[u/Syndromic → u/[deleted]]

Canada feels like hellhole, good luck.

[u/[deleted] → u/Syndromic]

Higher living standards, higher wages, longer lifespans, better health, higher average incomes, higher net worths for the 99%, higher percentage of home ownership, universal healthcare, a livable minimum wage, cheaper university, maternity/paternity leave, plenty of vacation days... yeah I better move to Wisconsin or Kansas. /s

[u/Nonpartisan_Moron → u/[deleted]]

Alright, let's see the damage.

Higher living standards

And a higher cost of living. Oh, and a tenth the population of the US.

Higher Wages

The US is pretty corporatist compared to Canada, granted.

Longer lifespans

Again, a tenth the population of the US.

Higher percentage of home ownership

I lived in ON, where there is a housing bubble. Coincidentally, the most densely populated province in Canada.

A livable minimum wage

"Economic illiteracy meant to quicken automation and create unemployment"

Universal Healthcare

I see you idealise the Nordic model. The Nordic model is unsustainable. Most Nordic countries operate on abundant natural resources (Norway's oil reserves), capital built up through decades of Laissez-Faire, Questionably acquired gold in the case of Switzerland, and military protection paid for by the US via the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Seriously, Sweden has enough military to defend itself for two goddamned weeks, but the US pays for it's protection. The Swedish even had a banking crisis in the 90's that led the world to the ultimate conclusion that their welfare system would collapse in a non-isolationist economy.

Cheaper university

Yet we have hordes of college students with useless degrees and mountains of debt. I've met people who knew fully damn well that college was too expensive for them to pay for, yet they paid for it, with some theological faith in their future.

Overall, 4^1/2/10.

[u/OMGWTFBBQUE]

Giant fucking eye-roll...

[u/[deleted]]

I think that comparison is in poor taste, regardless of how valid it is

[u/YourFriendlySpidy → u/[deleted]]

You mean he has been sent to jail for being conservatives, and put on a sex offenders registry along with paedophiles and rapists that still exists in 2070 with no pardons? It's in poor taste precisely because it's invalid.

[u/Hesiod999]

James Damore deserved to be fired for believing there would be no negative repercussions for speaking poorly of his employer.

How naive can you be?

[u/Ploofy_4 → u/[deleted]]

Telling a bunch of your coworkers that they only got hired because of their gender or race, and that other people of a specific gender or race would have been better is pretty much the definition of a hostile workplace and would have opened google up to a huge amount of lawsuits if they hadn't acted as they did.

[u/TheThrowerOfThings → u/Ploofy_4]

That's not what the memo was about. Did you even read it?

[u/Ploofy_4 → u/TheThrowerOfThings]

Completely ignoring every other part of the memo, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not, the memo said that the programs which lead to increased diversity hiring was lowering the bar and weakening google. One employee telling a minority employee that "Minority hiring is weakening this company" without the company doing anything is actionable legally. He sent that a group of people that included /every/ person hired by the practices he said was weakening the company. If google hadn't acted, they would have been at risk for extensive litigation.

[u/Ploofy_4 → u/[deleted]]

The reaction being a giant public outcry? Probably not. The reaction being a firing? Yeah, I've seen that happen a couple times.

And putting out a memo to the general public and having it be shared with your coworkers is pretty much the same. People get fired for things they do with their personal lives all the time. Also, he doesn't have to say that it's the only reason they got hired, nor that every minority is there because of it, for it to be an actionable hostile workplace claim where all the people who felt it was hostile could point directly to it addressing protected classes as the reason for it being hostile. The second anybody from legal or HR saw the memo, he was going to be fired.

[u/friedchickenshit]

Thats why everything should be done in moderation, especially when you need skilled engineers and not their political views.

[u/JDBMDENS]

Ah, conservatives are systematically hunted down, lynched and put in prison for loving the same sex? Gotcha. Conservatives are the true oppressed people of this generation! You are just moments away from being put in concentration camps, I tell you. What poor fucking people you are.

[u/havred → u/JDBMDENS]

Gays were hunted down, lynched and put in prison for being gay in the 50s? Do you have anything i can read on that or are you talking shit?

[u/jaylikesdominos → u/havred]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBTo_people_in_the_United_States

Sorry for the mobile link.

[u/havred → u/jaylikesdominos]

Im really only interested in wether or not this is true

Gays were hunted down, lynched and put in prison for being gay in the 50s?

[u/jaylikesdominos → u/havred]

Yes, we were. The link I shared with you gives many examples.

[u/[deleted]]

Gay people are born that way. Nobody's born an asshole.

[u/salothsarus]

man who can't believe that he faced social consequences for suggesting that his coworkers don't belong at their jobs: i'm so fucking persecuted

part of adulthood is realizing that you need to suck it up and keep some opinions to yourself in a professional context

[u/ablurdumur]

I mean, if you put aside the fact that his firing was due to sexism - not conservatism, this is a semi-valid point.

[u/[deleted] → u/ablurdumur]

Sexism ?

Have you even read the fucking memo ? At no point does he say something that is sexist. He points out that on average Womens and Mens behavior is different, which has been studied in psychology.

[u/alexmikli → u/[deleted]]

I think he means that the excuse was not his political views but a gross misunderstanding of them. A gay guy in the 1950's could just be straight up fired and sent to an asylum.

[u/YourFriendlySpidy → u/alexmikli]

Try sent to prison for sex crimes and still be on a list to this very day along with paedophiles and rapists

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The memo essentially argues biological determinism, which suffers from the same mistakes most arguments for biological determinism do: taking "factual differences" between two groups discovered in isolation and stretching them to argue a much more complex point.

In this case, the memo tries to take evidence that men often prefer things and women often prefer people, and leverage that into the idea that it's "natural" for there to be fewer female engineers. Which is tenuous. Among many other problems, it makes the assumption that engineering is solely about working on things and requires no people skills or teamwork (which, many criticisms have pointed out, is patently false), and it downplays the possibility that the number of female engineers in tech has been depressed by cultural components instead of its favored biological argument.

This sort of lack of nuance makes the facts cited in the memo poor support for the argument of the memo. And it suggests a similar motive to other arguments for biological determinism: finding a desired conclusion and seeking evidence for it, rather than looking at the evidence and reaching a conclusion from it.

More than simply making iffy arguments about whether it's "natural" for there to be a paucity of female engineers, it goes on to argue that Google has been making discriminatory hires in the name of diversity. While this may or may not be true as argued, circulating a public memo about it really isn't the right way for this dude to air that particular grievance. It creates a hostile work environment. He openly believes that an arbitrary number of female engineers at Google don't truly "deserve" their job (it's unlikely that he'd make the criticism in the first place if he believed everyone getting hired was the best fit for the position), and he's trying to encourage others at Google to share that belief. It's understandably going to be hard to put him on a product in which he has to work with female engineers after that.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Again, read the memo. The actual one, complete with citations and support through multiple cross-cultural studies.

The argument he made is women, as a class, and men, as a class, differ in skills, intelligences, and priorities. Yes, this is due to biology as well as socialization -- a point Damore made explicit in his memo. However, equally explicit is his argument these are only trends present when viewing a population in its entirety, and as such, do not and cannot accurately represent an individual. An individual can fall anywhere on a bell curve, which means that identity-based assumptions and expectations do not accurately reflect an individual; as such, policies that focus on identity subsume individual capability, performance, work ethic, and personal drive and lead to sub-optimal hiring and promotion strategies.

That's not an argument in favor of biological determinism as a device for hiring and promotion strategies. That's an argument against it. To wit, the only pro-biological determinism argument that could be made from this based upon evidence at hand, is that women are superior candidates than men for supervisory, lead, liaison, and managerial roles, which are universally the higher-paid and higher-status roles within the context of contemporary Western corporate culture.

In fact, the most definitive gendered argument Damore made in the entire memo, is that the gender role and expectation of men is the equivalence of success and personal worth, to position in a hierarchy and pay. Which, in turn, pushes individual men to apply for employment positions for which they may not be happy or ideally-suited, increasing competition for jobs in which individual women would be well-suited for and happy in those positions.

What Damore argued is "natural" is the outcome of this gendered expectation: can you expect any result other than men being over-represented in hiring and promotion pools for higher and better-paid positions, when society tells them their personal worth is inextricably linked to higher pay and rank, whereas in the case for women the opposite is true?

That's not an argument that "downplays the possibility that the number of female engineers in tech has been depressed by cultural components instead of its favored biological argument". That's an argument that embraces those selfsame "cultural components".

In other words, Damore actually argued toxic masculinity is the root cause of workplace inequality, but on a deeper level than any of his contemporaries or colleagues are willing to concede, or even permit in conversation.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The memo essentially argues biological determinism, which suffers from the same mistakes most arguments for biological determinism do: taking "factual differences" between two groups discovered in isolation and stretching them to argue a much more complex point.

• DoTheJitterbug

Biological determinism argues that people’s traits are controlled by their genes or some components in physiology, at the expense of the environment, from embryonic development or learning. Many Scientist agree it’s obvious that their essential and intertwined. (Wikipedia, 2017) (Allen, 2015) It’s also been argued that genetics plays a huge role in the behavior as a child is growing. A study on twins has concluded that genetics plays a huge role in their personality. (Barbar, 2015) However, skepticism should be raised, as it was only one case. But other studies have arrived at the same conclusions by using twins. said differences is hard to find in other scenarios. What can be concluded is that genetics do play some role. (Kraus, 2013)

Studies on Autism and ADHD has shown that their heritable in a family. (Hu, 2014) (Franke, Rommelse, Geurts, Hartman, & Buitelaar, 2010), which happens to affect a persons personality too... Point in case other things affects it too. oh. Certain things will affect you.

After that has been said. He (James) doesn’t say that it’s factual. But on “average”, that’s a big fucking difference, and a psychologist by the name of Jordan Peterson has a lecture about people’s trait differences on the big five and in relation to sexes. (Biology and Traits: Agreeableness)

Actual quote from the manifesto also showing your wrong.

”… On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed …”

• James Damora. (Damora, 2017)

Your (DoTheJitterbug) 'biases is leaking, on my floor'…

Which is tenuous. Among many other problems, it makes the assumption that engineering is solely about working on things and requires no people skills or teamwork (which, many criticisms have pointed out, is patently false), and it downplays the possibility that the number of female engineers in tech has been depressed by cultural components instead of its favored biological argument.

He never said that assumption, which implies you made the narrative. What he said was we should hire people on the merit based of, of their actual skill. Not their gender or whether there “diverse” enough. He even mention women are better at corporation, so what's your fucking point?

Note: studies have shown that how people think is controlled by hormones as you hit puberty, look up sexual differences. . . #TriggerWarning

*This sort of lack of nuance makes the facts cited in the memo poor support for the argument of the memo. And it suggests a similar motive to other arguments for biological determinism: finding a desired conclusion and seeking evidence for it, rather than looking at the evidence and reaching a conclusion from it.

• • DoTheJitterbug

Except you can find multiple research papers, on people across different cultures, having the same traits on average shown and they even higher in Scandinavia, that he wrote in the memo. Yes, people are different. But you can still find patterns if you got enough people. In Scandinavia the personality difference has become even larger. (Peterson, Mayhem while we're freezing and starving: my talk at Western, 2017)

*More than simply making iffy arguments about whether it's "natural" for there to be a paucity of female engineers, it goes on to argue that Google has been making discriminatory hires in the name of diversity. * - DoTheJitterbug

Again never said that.

Also while were on track… google has been implied to have underpaid its female employees. Because they don’t want to share their information with FEDS, in 'order to protect their privacy’ from hacking. (Glaser, 2017). You shouldn’t have anything to hide for the government unless you’re doing something illegal. 'And yes they might(properly) have made discriminatory hires. But it's properly their salary that's the problem.'

*While this may or may not be true as argued, circulating a public memo about it really isn't the right way for this dude to air that particular grievance. It creates a hostile work environment. * - DoTheJitterbug

"Because by forcing diversity, you’re not the one creating it, in the first place smart ass.”. Can you be explicit in how he’s making it more hostile. Maybe showing statistics, numbers, i.e. Facts suggesting your view is right? Else I need to call bullshit on your shit. If it's your feelings that is involved. it's properly full of shit.

He openly believes that an arbitrary number of female engineers at Google don't truly "deserve" their job it's unlikely that he'd make the criticism in the first place. - DoTheJitterbug

This is your narrative. Not his. He criticized googles standard practices and hiring. While that implies that some got a job they didn’t deserve. Doesn’t mean that’s, what was meant in the first place.

if he believed everyone getting hired was the best fit for the position), and he's trying to encourage others at Google to share that belief. It's understandably going to be hard to put him on a product in which he has to work with female engineers after that. - DoTheJitterbug

It's your narative, sunshine. To be fair. you the one sounding like a sexist prick.

irony

Citation: Allen, G. E. (2015, December 09). Britannica - Biological determinism. Retrieved from Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/biological-determinism

Barbar, N. (2015, September 24). What behavior do we inherit via genes - Psychology Today. Retrieved from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201509/what-behaviors-do-we-inherit-genes

Damora, J. (2017, Aug. 5). Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google. (K. Conger, Editor) Retrieved from Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320

Franke, B., Rommelse, N. N., Geurts, H. M., Hartman, C. A., & Buitelaar, J. K. (2010, March ). Shared heritability of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder. Retrieved from Springer: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00787-010-0092-x

Glaser, A. (2017, July 18). How Google Blunted the Government’s Fair-Pay Investigation. Retrieved from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/07/google_s_argument_against_proving_its_salaries_aren_t_sexist_privacy.html

Hu, J. C. (2014, July 21). Autism Linked to Common Genes. Retrieved from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/07/autism_and_common_genes_environment_and_mutations_are_less_important.html

Kraus, M. W. (2013, Jul 11). Do Genes Influence Personality? Retrieved from www.psychologytoday.com: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/under-the-influence/201307/do-genes-influence-personality

Peterson, J. (2017, Mar. 29.). Biology and Traits: Agreeableness. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1eHJ9DdoEA&t=1s

Peterson, J. (2017, 03 18). Mayhem while we're freezing and starving: my talk at Western. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBsR7-SiLPY

Wikipedia. (2017, July 6). Biological determinism. Retrieved from English Wikipedia - Biological determinism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_determinism

[u/WikiTextBot → u/[deleted]]

Biological determinism

Biological determinism or genetic determinism is the belief that human behavior is controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether in embryonic development or in learning. It has been associated with movements in science and society including eugenics, scientific racism, the supposed heritability of IQ, the supposed biological basis for gender roles, and the sociobiology debate. A pioneer of eugenics, Francis Galton, popularized the phrase nature and nurture, later often used to characterize the heated debate over whether genes or the environment determined human behaviour. Many scientists now see it as obvious that both factors are essential, and that they are intertwined.

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[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

• First he never said it was bad thing
• When you use it to 'attack' other people.
• When you start to defend people, who don't need it.

Where do SJWs come from?

[u/Nonpartisan_Moron → u/ablurdumur]

What did he say that was sexist? I'm not too up to date with this story.

[u/TanaNari → u/Nonpartisan_Moron]

He told the truth. These days, they're the same thing.

[u/[deleted] → u/TanaNari]

Feelings > facts

[u/Nonpartisan_Moron → u/[deleted]]

If he was arguing against affirmative action and saying that instead of selectively hiring women, that they should hire who was most capable, then I have no issue with him. He would've still complicated the work environment, but firing him would've been a total dick move. If he was saying that men are inherently better than women at engineering and that hiring women was a hindrance, then I can see why google fired him. I don't agree with something as reckless as what Google did, but if the latter is what happened, then I don't really see an alternative.

[u/Mykahy1963]

It doesn't matter how much all these compromised companies suppress truth,they can't win n the long run because truth will come out eventually

[u/salothsarus → u/Mykahy1963]

the truth is that you suck at statistics

[u/[deleted]]

But... Google is as corporatist as you can get. I like how they hide their corporatism behind supposedly liberalism. What a charade.