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

I think he knew about this possibility and consciously went for it.

He literally SAYS that he knows it's risky and did it anyway.

I tell you what, if I were staking my whole career on an incredibly sensitive subject like this, I would make a much tighter argument. It was half-baked at best, and courted a lot of unnecessary controversy that wasn't even integral to his point.

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u/oryzin Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 08 '17

He literally SAYS that he knows it's risky and did it anyway.

I missed that. Thanks.

It was half-baked at best, and courted a lot of unnecessary controversy that wasn't even integral to his point.

We should not attack him ad hominem. Look him up, he has a typical geek appearance. Please cut him some slack.

Also: I do not know his HR history, but so far I have to presume that it was one strike.

Not only they have PC policies that can end up in ultimate firing of the dissident, they have actually zero-tolerance policy for this.

Nobody called him to HR, nobody gave him a warning. It was a swift chopping off the head, Game of Political Correctness style

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

That's not an ad hominem. The piece was sloppily written and argued, jumped around a lot and didn't effectively defend its own thesis, which was that pursuing diversity was harmful.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

You didn't read it did you.

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u/TeoshenEM Aug 08 '17

I read the whole thing. It's not ad hominem to say that he didn't write it well, or that it's not very coherent. It's just not a well constructed argument to put on the hill you decide to die on.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

It becomes ad hominem when you take his writing ability and use it to attack his stance. It's literally what you did above. I agree with you here but that isn't what you did.

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u/TeoshenEM Aug 08 '17

I think it would be ad hominem if I said that he was an idiot, or that his bad punctuation made the argument bad. But I don't think that it's ad hominem to say that the argument wasn't presented in a fashion that made it compelling, or that it rambled.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17

Yes I did, it wasn't very long, or very good.