[notconservative]

I looked up the Advice Memo [0] written by the NRLB (thanks tptacek for mentioning that document) so that I could try to see what exactly they found discriminatory about Damore's paper. This is the relevant section:

> The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases. statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding effort to cloak comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers.

The "these cases" reference is talking about a KKK member and someone who "made debasing and sexually abusive remarks to a female employee who had crossed a picket line months earlier". I don't see how Damore's memo is at all relatable to these.

And more importantly, the content they found to be discriminatory were the studies on differences in IQ and psycological traits by gender? How can presenting science be discriminatory?

If you disagree with some study, you explain why the methodology it used is bad or find other studies that try to explain it. You don't just claim that it's findings are discriminatory. That makes it impossible to discover why it's wrong (if it is).

[0] (PDF) http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391

[tptacek]

You've lost the context of the Advice Memo. The NLRB isn't saying Damore himself violated EEO laws by writing the memo. The NLRB didn't fire Damore; Google did. The NLRB is saying that although the NLRA protects concerted action to improve working conditions, those protections do not extend to action that might discriminate against protected classes, and, crucially, that because employers are required by state and federal law to comply with EEO laws, the NLRB will tend not to second-guess them about how they do that.

The important thing to remember is that in most of the US, there's a presumption that employers can fire you for any reason. Employment is at-will. Damore was appealing to a specific exception to that rule.

[ankushnarula]

That would be a narrow and incomplete reading of Damore's memo based on prejudice. Damore's description that on average men and women are different is not itself discriminatory or harmful since it's backed up by quite a lot of biological and psychometric science.

The question should have been "What is Damore advocating?".

And if they read the entire document then it would be clear that Damore was suggesting methods to bring Google's gender balance to 50/50 by making Google (and tech in general) more attractive to women by altering the software engineering culture to leverage inherent strengths that women (on average) possess.

[tptacek]

No, the Advice Memo repeatedly notes that much of the memo is not objectionable. The problem Damore faced with the NLRB is that Google was careful to terminate him specifically and exclusively for the parts of the memo that would advocate policies problematic under EEO laws.

They read the whole memo (and indeed summarize a lot of it, not just the prejudicial bits).

[ankushnarula]

I read it. And I'm even more skeptical now:

> ~ statements about immutable traits linked to sex — such as women's heightened neuroticism and men's prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution — were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding~ effort to cloak~ comments with "scientific" references and analysis, and notwtihstanding "not all women" disclaimers.

"Effort to cloak" and quotation marks around "scientific" are giving something away about the author.

> Moreover, the Charging Party reasonably should have known that the memorandum would likely be disseminated further, even beyond the workplace.

Damore "reasonably should have known" someone else was going to violate workplace confidentiality and code of conduct by leaking the document to the media? This seems like a failure of the employer not the employee.

> Once the memorandum was shared publicly, at least two female engineering candidates withdrew from consideration and explicitly named the memo as their reason for doing so.

This is the evidentiary component of the argument - which pivots on the not-so-reasonable "reasonably should have known" assertion.

[ankushnarula]

Yeah I skimmed the comments and just read many of your replies. Thanks very useful. Guess I'll have to read it.