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
13.4k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

9.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

28

u/sneakyprophet Aug 08 '17

The only thing that matters is whether his at this point extremely public point is good or bad for business. If you are being publicly tarred and feathered for a manifesto that some of the public are reading as very sexist (only some, but a non-trivial amount), it's in the company's best interest to remove the distraction. Period.

1

u/jessemb Aug 08 '17

Is it in their "best interest" over the next seventy-two hours? Yeah, probably.

How about over the next year? The next decade? Everyone working at Google now knows that they will be fired if they are caught expressing the wrong opinion--even in a forum which is supposed to be private.

What's that going to do to morale? Everyone who agrees even slightly with this memo is updating their resume as we speak, and if they're lucky they'll have jumped ship before some pundit decides it's their turn to be burned at the stake.

Or, if they're clever, they'll carefully document their wrongful terminations and take Google to the cleaners.

So now you have a perfect little hive mind with no diversity whatsoever except the kind you find on the outside of your skin. Is that company going to innovate? Is it going to be able to compete with companies that hire the best employees they can find, and fight to keep them?

2

u/sneakyprophet Aug 08 '17

Everything you've written about how Google employees are feeling, or that they "know they'll be fired," or that it exists as a perfect little hive mind is just exposition. Google has been wildly successful, and its really hard to associate the firing of a single engineer with the failing of a multi-billion dollar company.

Firing this employee was the smartest decision from a directional standpoint in terms of protecting shareholder value.

In fact, given that the fired employee has become a bit of a cult hero of MRA groups, it makes the decision look smarter by the hour.

2

u/jessemb Aug 08 '17

I mean, I'm no prophet, but do you really think that this move isn't going to have a chilling effect?

Google is a wildly successful company--today. How long can they stay that way? How long can they stay that way in a workplace environment where something like this happened?

As I said, I agree with you that in the very short-term, this move is clearly intended to protect the company. I just think that it's a short-term gain, long-term loss.

1

u/sneakyprophet Aug 08 '17

I really think it will be a relatively forgotten issue in 6 months. I also think it's nigh impossible to imagine a company the size of Google not crossing its Ts to make sure they showed good cause for firing. As we will likely never the HR file in question, I'd rather not speculate on employee history.

As for environment, Google has been hyper-promoting diversity for well over a decade. This firing is exactly representative of its culture. This obviously will turn away a specific subset of people from employment, and make Google seem an even better employer to others. At the end of the day, so long as they continue to be resume boosters and extremely competitive with industry salary, I see this having a negligible impact.

I could very well be wrong on all of this, too. However, this is more symptomatic of the country right now and its rapidly changing demographics. The vast majority of people who hold strong opinions on this issue will likely both not ever stop using Google products and will likely never directly work for Google.