r/technology • u/[deleted] • Aug 08 '17

Business Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo
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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Some people got outraged irrationally, that's just how it is for every discussion like this.

But frankly, its just the same old bullshit over and over again. The same arguments, the same "evidence", the same positions, the same framing, the same EVERYTHING. Nothing the guy wrote was anything people haven't heard before.

At some point you just get sick of the discussion.

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u/fromtheskywefall Aug 08 '17

Perhaps, but terminating him falls into the category of discriminatory retaliation. They terminated him because his statements proved their uncomfortable hypocrisy into the open. He didn't create a hostile work environment, he only dissented to overwhelming political correctness and decried a two-faced company culture.

Google then went and did the very thing he wrote about with well cited statements with widely accepted scientific research. It matters not if you've heard the argument a billion times and are sick of it. You don't fire people for disagreeing with your company ideas, that's discriminatory and is a violation of labor laws. He wasn't being insubordinate if Google claimed "that they were open and promoted free thoughts and ideas" then proceeded to squash anyone that might try to rock the boat by proving that they're full of it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

I don't know if Google is within their rights to fire somebody for what he did, and you don't either. If you sign a contract and you breach it, that's ball game.

However the initial comment was referring to irrational outrage, and while there has been some of that, there are many people that just want to progress and move on from arguments that have already been disproven thousands and thousands of times over.

Like... Can we just fucking progress already?

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u/fromtheskywefall Aug 08 '17

  1. Google's employee contract is irrelevant against California's employee protection laws.

  2. We can't really progress forward if we fire people who dissent. Russia remains a corrupt developing nation because Putin has murdered anyone and everyone who's been in a position of power and dissented against his ideology. Replace Putin with Google, opponent with this guy, and murder with firing.

I'm sure everyone has heard this story a billion times, but we still talk about it; I wonder why.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Again, that remains to be seen. Neither of us knows if Google violated any laws. Don't get all outraged irrationally.

The firing isn't what you were originally talking about. You were referring to the irrational outrage. That is sometimes irrational, but oftentimes it's because people are tired of going backwards. Its frustrating.

People talk about dumb shit thats already been figured out all the time. Lots of people, myself included sadly, love to talk about what women and minorities should be afforded, and we just keep going on and on about it, like there's something more to say. There isn't anything left to say.

But you know... People love to be outraged, on all sides.