[jshowa3]

Damore was fired for his contributions to this conversation". Hardly just.*

According to what you said in this post, It was completely just as Damore basically wrote a dissertation about things that were completely unrelated to any work done for any Google product. All that work would've been tantamount to a complete waste of company time and could be grounds for a firing.

Google users don't care at all about the politics of Google employees

I care a great deal about how Google employees or any employee at any company are treated. You should too since most people spend their lives at companies and policies and laws surrounding them impact people directly.

[paulddraper]

> It was completely just as Damore basically wrote a dissertation about things that were completely unrelated

It was a completely inconsistent.

Damore was not fired for debating politically-sensitive HR proposals. Many people were involved in the same conversation, with the same degree of relevance to Google's products.

Damore was fired because his proposal was contrary to the majority.

---

It's possible to maintain both that widespread workplace political discussion is a poor idea, and that Damore was unfairly treated relative to his peers.

[erikpukinskis]

If your assertion were true, all people who ever voiced a minority opinion would be fired and that’s clearly not true.

[cm2187]

I think everyone else took notice that expressing conservative opinions in writing was a fireable offense.

[erikpukinskis]

Do you really think that there are no liberal opinions that are fireable? Like if I said all men are rapists, you think that’s a safe thing to say at work?

I think people took notice that saying “women earn less money because their genes make them less good at stuff” is a fireable offense. I actually don’t believe conservatism has anything to do with it.

[repolfx]

Damore didn't say that, but that didn't stop lots of people lying about what he wrote.

I guess those few of us who actually read his memo will have to keep repeating this over and over against the wall of lying about it, but one more time - Damore argued women were less interested in computing, and that's why they are "underrepresented". He explained why they might be less interested and showed that this isn't controversial at all, neither with scientists nor anyone who ever tried to interest a pretty girl in the merits of AVX512.

He explicitly didn't argue women were worse at computing though. He said that very clearly.

You ask what liberal opinions get you fired at Google. I'd also like to know that. Here is a petition by nearly 1500 of them which claims border control is comparable to the Holocaust. That's unbelievably extreme, but apparently nobody was fired for it.

https://medium.com/@no.gcp.for.cbp/google-must-stand-against...

[jshowa3]

For someone who claims to be trying to tackle the misinterpretation of Damore, no where in the medium post you linked does it say what you claim it says. It doesn't compare CBP to the Holocaust. It sites the human rights abuses that it is enabling that has lead to the death of 7 people by forcing these people into indefinite detention for what could be, at worst argued, a misdemeanor. They're held enmasse in cages in warehouses which fits the textbook definition of a concentration camp. It's surely not as bad as the Holocaust (which this petition doesn't claim what you claim it does), but it's not any better.

[paulddraper]

> women earn less money because their genes make them less good at stuff

That's a poor paraphrase.

A more accurate one would be "Women earn less money on average because on average they are less interested in earning due to long-standing innate differences."

[paulddraper]

You're right; the criteria was incomplete.

Damore was fired because his proposal was contrary to the majority and it became widespread knowledge.

Were Damore's part of the discussion never leaked, then I assume it would have been a slap on the wrist or just a shrug.

[andromeduck]

There is some variance in the level of emotional, economic stake between issues.

[DangitBobby]

But that isn't one off Google's workplace rules, and evaluation of whether or not someone is being "just" should be partially based on how well they apply their own rules.

If I say "this thing is permitted" and then punish someone for doing that thing, it should be unjust in your eyes whether or not you would have said "this thing is permitted."

[jshowa3]

No. Why do you presume they don't apply their rules correctly? And what makes you think this isn't one of Google's rules? A diversity class usually means diversity in the sense of protected classes, not political opinions.

[DangitBobby]

I was responding to

"According to what you said in this post, It was completely just as Damore basically wrote a dissertation about things that were completely unrelated to any work done for any Google product."

My comment was explaining why i disagree with the above. It has nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree with Google's policies, past or present.

[Consultant32452]

My understanding is that Damore was asked for his response to a training class he had taken. That would make the dissertation, as you call it, a work assignment. Is that understanding incorrect?

[joshuamorton]

Yes. For a number of reasons, not least of all that such feedback optional, and to be sent to the people who managed the class.

So it wasn't an assignment, and sharing it with everyone wasn't the way to handle it.

[Izkata]

It wasn't feedback, it was a report on what he got from there so Google could improve its practices. One solicited by Google.

[joshuamorton]

That doesn't address either of the things I said, so I'll restate them:

1. Anything he did was optional, it was therefore not a work assignment.

2. If such a report was solicited (which I don't actually agree with in the way you're implying), the way to provide it wasn't to post it on public company mailing lists, but to give the report to the people in charge of the class.

Do you disagree with either of those claims?

I'll now add a third one:

3. A "report" of the form he provided wasn't solicited by Google. They solicited feedback on the class. Your claiming this wasn't feedback on the class. Therefore it wasn't solicited.

[Izkata]

The second one is completely wrong, and I think the first is though I'm not certain.

* No one was looking for feedback on the class as far as I remember.

* He went to an external session to learn how to improve their own processes, which is the report he wrote. I believe in one interview he said his did do it at some manager's suggestion, and so did use work time for the trip with their (figurative) blessing.

* He sent his report only to one or two internal groups, never a public internal mailing list (one was meant to privately poke holes so submitters could improve their arguments before submitting it to HR or whoever. I've heard conflicting stuff on the order of events, so he may or may not have sent it to HR).

* It was the internal quality group that leaked it to a public internal mailing list instead of maintaining privacy.

[joshuamorton]

This is the problem with these things. Literally every claim you've made is wrong. I don't know where you got it, but if you aren't a google employee, I can promise I'm more reliable than whatever you got it from. But nothing I can say is verifiable, except through oft-contradictory leaks. It's infuriating and unproductive, so I'll stop.

[jshowa3]

That's what he claims it was. He also posted it on an internally accessible mail list within the company. That's a very odd way to give feedback about a course. Usually you provide feedback directly to whoever is in charge of the course and not let the entirety of the company view it.