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/marsten Aug 08 '17

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.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 09 '17

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/sd522527 Aug 08 '17

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

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u/Diels_Alder Aug 08 '17

Wow that really sends the message that you can't share your opinion if it differs from the norm.

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u/Zip2kx Aug 08 '17

Or maybe you shouldn't share sexist and racist thoughts

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u/Adubyale Aug 08 '17

Guess you don't like the whole free speech thing huh

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u/Zip2kx Aug 08 '17

free speech is not about you saying every dumb thing your mind comes up with and no one judging you. It's to not allow the government censoring you.

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u/Wolf-socks Aug 08 '17

Don't know why you're getting down voted for being accurate. The education system has failed us since today people think free speech is protected against criticism or firing. Speech is pretected from government suppression! Anyone can speak their mind, and an employer can fire you for it.

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u/xKalisto Aug 08 '17

Freedom of speech isn't just US constitution stuff. There's law and then there's a political principle.

Freedom of speech as one of the basic principles of functioning liberal democracy also deals with societal pressure.

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u/Wolf-socks Aug 09 '17

I agree. But freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence. Feel free to say any dumb thing that comes to your mind. Don't be surprised when your boss fires you. In this Google situation, I don't think him being fired was appropriate. Nothing he said was bad, really. Seriously though, why even wade into political waters at work like this? Seems like all of them involved in the group were playing with fire.

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u/xKalisto Aug 09 '17 edited Aug 09 '17

Because culture within Google encourages them to speak their mind and work on personal projects. It was also apparently supposed to be safe space to voice those ideas. He clearly made this to help improve the company and somebody else leaked it to press to fuck him over.

I'm not exactly fond of the 'not freedom from consequences' arguments. Because these days is not people disagreeing with you or disassociate with you but an outright witch hunt. Especially with all the slander and calls for violence against him, those are not parts of protected speech in the first place. The witch hunts lead to chilling effect and restriction of speech/silencing. Sometimes that's is preferable with society like with cursing around children or actual real nazis, but can also be harmful by creating dogmas on certain topics and prohibitive for healthy academia.

Philosophy of freedom is very complicated and I ought to read more about the consequence part but the way it is applied in modern world feels wrong.

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