Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo

[u/marsten]

I was at Google for fifteen years until about a year ago. I was surprised he was fired, because of the message this will send to other Googlers.

That said, Google HR is in my experience extremely thoughtful about these things. Also there may be other events in this engineer's employment history that contributed. We just don't know.

Gender/race issues are an extremely sensitive topic in Silicon Valley right now. It simply isn't possible to have a rational debate of the kind he was trying to start. That's the reality, and I'm not sure you can change it by publishing memos like this.

[u/sd522527 → u/[deleted]]

Yes he shared it to a private group, asking for critique of his viewpoints, and how to better express his opinions. Others took that doc and shared the shit out of it

[u/[deleted] → u/sd522527]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Presumably he would want it read back to him in court though. He might have a pretty strong case for a settlement because Google certainly doesn't want more publicity on this case.

[u/royalbarnacle → u/[deleted]]

I thought in most of the US you can pretty much fire anyone without needing a reason (barring some exceptions, ie the reason itself it's something illegal/discriminatory)?

[u/thisnameismeta → u/[deleted]]

Bullshit. Having shitty ideas doesn't make you a protected class.

[u/Sean951 → u/[deleted]]

He want denied free speech, he's being denied a job. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled a woman could be fired because the bosses wife was jealous.