[nazca]

Slightly shocking that he didn't get fired. (yet?)

They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf, insensitive, but largely supported by research. Bobb goes on a clearly antisemitic rant, and just gets reassigned.

Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with these things changed over the past few years?

[sanity31415]

> They fired Damore for writing an email that was tone-deaf, insensitive, but largely supported by research

Damore was asked for his feedback on Google's diversity policies, and that's exactly what he provided.

Most of Damore's critics haven't actually read his memo[1], but rather formed an opinion based on the character assassination campaign against him, a campaign his employer publicly sided with.

Over the 4 years since the controversy I've asked countless Damore critics to point to the specific part of his memo that was tone-deaf, insensitive, or bigoted. I'm still waiting for an answer.

[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

[tolbish]

People take issue with the following, but I don't recall Google confirming/denying if it is true:

I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more. However, to achieve a more equal gender and race representation, Google has created several discriminatory practices:

● Programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race

● A high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates

● Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate

● Reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction (clear confirmation bias)

● Setting org level OKRs for increased representation which can incentivize illegal discrimination

[kbelder]

I don't get it. He's pointing out five problems with Google's efforts. I don't know whether they're correct or not, but I don't see anything here to criticize. If these are true, and they seem plausible, they do need to be fixed.

[sanity31415]

To my knowledge Google has never challenge the accuracy of those claims, and such practices are commonplace in many tech companies in the name of "diversity".

[jms55]

Do you think purposely hiring X group is a bad practice? From what I understand, it's not enough to say "we'll hire X if they're better than Y". When you don't actually have any X at the moment, your company might not be very welcoming to X, and so they won't join. So you purposely go out of your way to hire extra X, to account for the lower acceptance rate.

The common response is "that's not fair to Y, you should be hiring only based on quality, not on X or Y". But the issue is if you only hire on quality, but the quality X candidates don't join, then you're actually losing out on quality. So instead, you lower quality requirements, with the goal that overall you're actually promoting quality in the end, by working towards an environment where quality _is_ the only determining factor, and removing the current factors that work against X candidates.

What about this do you disagree with?

Note: This kind of handwaves over what "X won't join is". There's a lot of nuance to this. It may be that X grows up thinking the job isn't for them, because they always see Y in those types of jobs, and never bothers to try that job. It may be that X tries to join, but the people hiring them all Y, and favor Y instead because it's familiar to them, and the rest of the company is Y. It may be that X joins, but they feel uncomfortable that everyone is Y, and quits. There's a lot of different factors that goes into what discrimination looks like, which is why affirmative action is a lot more than just company policies.

[sanity31415]

I believe that people should be treated as individuals, not collectivized into groups based on immutable characteristics like ethnicity.

I believe that while "reverse-discrimination" has become commonplace in the name of diversity, it is unfair, divisive, counterproductive, and illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I'm not accusing you of making this argument, but the assumption that a particular ethnic group can't compete on a level playing field is deeply condescending towards those groups. It's "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

[jms55]

I don't entirely disagree with you. But by the same token, trying to treat everyone as an individual without acknowledging disadvantages due to race, gender, etc isn't a good idea either.

For instance, I'm trans. I'm not openly out when searching for jobs / at work, because I fear I will be discriminated for it. If I saw a company already had several trans people, and they were seeking trans people out and asking them to apply, I would maybe change my mind.

Should companies treat everyone as individuals, and say "if trans people wanted to work here, they need to apply"? Because that's how you get no trans people applying, and that perpetuates the cycle of "I can't come out, no one else in the world is trans". Sure, it would be better if companies didn't have to advocate for diversity, but until society doesn't have stigmitism, real or imagined, against minorities, then I don't think it's wrong to help them on the basis of their identity.

[shadowgovt]

The issue is the statistics show fairly consistently that the playing field starts non-level, at multiple points.

https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-06-24...

[jaywalk]

Beyond your handwaving absurdity, is there any empirical evidence at all that lowering the quality bar for X ends up actually raising quality in the end? Because it sounds like a bunch of unicorn fairytale nonsense to me.

[shadowgovt]

This may be of value.

https://blog.capterra.com/7-studies-that-prove-the-value-of-...

[nazca]

> Damore was asked for his feedback on Google's diversity policies, and that's exactly what he provided.

> Most of Damore's critics haven't actually read his memo[1], but rather formed an opinion based on the character assassination campaign against him, a campaign his employer publicly sided with.

I completely agree, but in a corporate setting one can be truthful, accurate, have good intent, and yet still be tone deaf and insensitive. The bar for insensitive is very low in this context.

I think with a fair and honest reading of his letter & the context that it came up in, its clear that he was trying to contribute in a positive way to the discussion & effort.

This is why the inconsistency between these two cases is so remarkable. Antisemitism, even if from years ago, and not related to company business, is pretty damning (esp for someone leading D&I efforts). Meanwhile, an attempt, albeit executed in a politically naive way, to positively contribute to a discussion led to a firing & character assassination.

[sanity31415]

> I completely agree, but in a corporate setting one can be truthful, accurate, have good intent, and yet still be tone deaf and insensitive. The bar for insensitive is very low in this context.

If a fair and honest reading of his memo reveals that he had good intent, and the memo was scientifically accurate - and yet he was fired and publicly vilified for it, then isn't describing it as "tone deaf and insensitive" a form of victim-blaming?

It seems similar to pointing out that the victim of a sexual assault was dressed provocatively.

[brianberns]

He suggested that biological differences between the sexes (rather than bias/discrimination) are the reason why women are underrepresented in the tech industry.

It’s not hard to understand why many people find this offensive.

Here’s the direct quote if you need it: “I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.”

[haberman]

Damore's quote says "in part" and "may explain," suggesting the possibility of multiple causes, and making clear that there is uncertainty.

Your paraphrase says "the reason" and "rather than bias/descrimination", suggesting both certainty and only a single cause.

How do you reconcile this difference between your paraphrase and Damore's quote?

[brianberns]

That’s why I used the word “suggested”, which is exactly what he did, in a section prominently titled “Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech”.

[haberman]

He suggested that non-bias causes are possible contributing factors to the disparity, yes.

Nowhere does he suggest they are the only causes, or that bias/discrimination do not exist.

[brianberns]

Parsing his sentence for tiny nuances like that isn't very helpful IMHO, but I'll indulge you.

His exact words are "these differences may explain". He doesn't say "these differences may PARTLY explain". If I say that A may explain B, the reasonable implication is that A may fully explain B. So, yes, he does suggest that non-bias causes are the only causes.

Just to be clear: I don't think this makes any real difference. The reaction to his email would've been the same either way. But the fact remains that your interpretation of the quote isn't supported by the actual words he used.

[austhrow743]

"Women, on average, have more: Neuroticism" was a big one I remember people having issue with back when this story was news.

[kbelder]

Is it false? Doesn't seem like something he would assert without a cite.

[ackfoobar]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

Male: 2.68 SD: 0.65

Female: 2.94 SD:0.67

d: 0.39

Non-native English user here, it seems the word "neurotic" has some connotation that the trait "neuroticism" doesn't? And that's why it's received so poorly?

[sanity31415]

"Neurotic" does have a negative connotation in common usage, but it's also the term used by personality psychologists, it's the 'N' in the OCEAN personality model. It means "risk averse".

[ackfoobar]

"Educate yourself" is often thrown by the left in heated conversations.

But when a academic term (that is closely related to a negative word) is used, some on the same side refuse to understand and get butthurt instead.

E.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23122068

[throwawaygh]

> Is it false?

Within the context in which the claim was made, it's "not even wrong". Lots of the claims in the Damore memo are similarly better to characterize as "not even wrong" rather than "false".

> Doesn't seem like something he would assert without a cite.

I can find a cite for literally anything.

[austhrow743]

Entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand, but afaik no.

[shadowgovt]

I'd assume they'd just direct you to the NLRB findings that Damore's firing was lawful.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K1JRtRYBLyhhgkJLXnW2Nxjo5Bn...

"... 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..."

[treeman79]

Insensitive part was being truthful. Tone deaf was not changing personal beliefs

[JansjoFromIkea]

I think the blog post is definitely worse than Damore's email (although I thought it was pretty crappy in itself), but you're talking here about a blog post from 2007 and an email that was sent via company channels while he was working there.

I can only imagine Bobb was quite apologetic and a lot more aware of how terrible his conflations are there than he was in 2007. That's also 14 years of time to have solid evidence that he no longer holds such myopic views.

[rsj_hn]

No Damore sent supposedly confidential feedback when solicited to do so by diversity trainers. That content so enraged the diversity staff they leaked it to the rest of the company. Perhaps Damore was naive in thinking the feedback about diversity training was welcome or confidential, but he definately did not send a company-wide email to anyone.

[JansjoFromIkea]

"Damore emailed his memo to the organisers of Google’s diversity meetings in early July. When there was no response, he started sending the document to Google’s internal mailing lists and forums, eager for a reaction."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-dam...

[rsj_hn]

This is the Guardian telescoping and generalizing with it's usual rigor.

There were two diversity trainings, both requesting feedback. There was no email there was a google doc, a link to which was sent as part of a feedback form in the trainings and then shared with a larger group called "skeptics" created for these types of discussions at the request of Damore's manager.

You can read the timeline here: https://www.dhillonlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/201804...

[JansjoFromIkea]

Read the timeline, so he shared it on a forum, he persisted with it through the month via various channels (who were all seemingly dismissing him, and I'd say that in itself is a huge failing on their end considering his autism), then he shared it another forum, several days later an anonymous source leaked it. So his legal testification of events isn't at all far from the Guardian's one paragraph summary.

Meanwhile, your initial summary of it was that he sent confidential feedback to the diversity team after a training session which pissed them off so much that they leaked it to screw with him.

[joshuamorton]

> called "skeptics" created for these types of discussions at the request of Damore's manager.

No, at the suggestion of a random person who was a manager. Not damores manager.

And the skeptics group has nothing to do with diversity, is open to anyone, and by sharing with the group, functionally meant that the doc was emailed to hundreds or thousands of people.

The guardian is correct.

[balls187]

I think the point being made was Damore's email was sent using company resources, while employed by the company, presumably on company time.

Bobb's blog post was from 2007.

[rsj_hn]

He was using company resources to respond to a company request for him to provide feedback to a company event.

When the company asks you "tell me what you think about the content of our diversity training, we promise your response is confidential and we are interested in hearing what you have to say", and you respond with an evidence based argument that the diversity training is incorrect, then this is a very different situation from the head of diversity making public comments on a blog. Remember Damore was a non-management developer.

If you are going to fire people for their views, which is what apparently Google has no problem doing, then the Damore situation is much less justifiable than this situation and the person with the offending views was not even fired.

[balls187]

I don't have all the facts, but this article [1] seems to refute your accounting.

The memo was initially sent to Diversity Training, then after a non-response, Damore himself circulated to a wider internal audience.

According to Google [2], he was fired because portions of his memo were found to be a violation of Google's Code of Conduct, specifically "each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."

But again, this all misses the point--a 2007 blog post when you were not an employee is much different than sending a memo internally while on the clock.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/16/james-dam...

2: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/diversity/note-empl...

[throwaway894345]

That seems like a pretty shallow distinction considering Google's "bring your whole self to work" policy and cultural norms. People at Google regularly expressed far more controversial opinions than Damore's using company resources on company time. Further, the explicit rationale for canning Damore was not that he was expressing himself on company time or with company resources, but rather the patently false notion that his criticisms of the company constituted a hostile work environment.

Of course he was only fired because he was criticizing popular regressive policies and that provoked the wrath of employees who identify with those kinds of policies, and management decided it was easier to give in to the authoritarians (indeed, Google's management the authoritarian employees in question are probably not distinct groups--they certainly overlapped).

[balls187]

> People at Google regularly expressed far more controversial opinions than Damore's using company resources on company time.

Do you have proof of this?

[themaninthedark]

Is that better or worse?

In Damore's case: He was asked to privately(?) provide his thoughts to the company(hence while employed and on company time).

Bobb's case: He decided to write a blog post. No-one asked him nor compelled him to share his thoughts.

My view is that firing people over views and opinions is dumb as long as they are not trying to force their views and opinions on other people in the workplace.

On the other hand, my view is that one's views and opinions are private and don't need to be spewed everywhere, hence why I have a dim view of social media(notes the irony/hypocrisy of posting this on HN).

[balls187]

> [Damore] was asked to privately(?) provide his thoughts to the company(hence while employed and on company time).

Except that wasn't why he was fired.

[joshuamorton]

That's not true. Damore posted his document to larger and larger making lists (it was essentially ignored on the first two or three) until it finally got a reaction. He shared it with thousands of people.

[logicchains]

>Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with these things changed over the past few years?

Simple explanation is Google's Democrat-leaning leadership are more aligned with Bobb than Damore (in the US, the left are generally anti-Israel while the right support it, and the left are pro-affirmative-action while the right oppose it).

[zpeti]

This is the correct answer. The amount of anti-semitism shown during this recent Hamas Israel conflict in the woke left has been very worrying. We are likely to see a big resurgence of anti-semitism in the next period. It's more and more socially acceptable on the left.

[Macha]

I am curious how much actual vs perceived anti-semitism there is. I've seen more people conflate "Criticism of the state of Israel" with "criticism of Jewish people" and further still with "discrimination against Jewish people" than I have seen actual antisemitic sentiment on the left.

[antisemtexism]

Criticism of Israel's apartheid policies isn't antisemitism. It's such nonsense how the two have been conflated in recent years.

[javagram]

Street harassment or violence against visibly Jewish individuals has nothing to do with “criticism of Israel” though, and it did spike and has been increasing based on news articles and counts of reported incidents. https://www.jta.org/2021/05/21/united-states/antisemitism-in...

[xdennis]

Arabs in Israel have the same rights (and more than Arabs in Arab countries).

Where is the apartheid? Is letting the Palestinian Authority govern Gaza and the West Bank apartheid?

[zpeti]

Most of the stuff I've seen recently is not criticising the "apartheid policies" (debatable) of Israel. It's actual anti jewish rhetoric.

[whimsicalism]

Seriously, most of the stuff you've seen recently?

[antisemtexism]

Well, I've seen the opposite. I suspect it's not leftists you're witnessing saying such things.

[shadowgovt]

The simple explanation is not always correct.

Damore doubled down on defending the document and asserted his right to publish it. At that point, he made himself a walking Title VII violation and tied Google's hands. Whether management wanted to fire him or not, the legal cost of retaining him was going to exceed his value as an individual contributor.

As far as I can see, Bobb is doing everything he can to work with Google to avoid the further creation of a hostile work environment. It might not be enough, but for now it seems to be worth more to the company to keep him than to fire him.

There may be one aspect, however, where your observation about relative American tolerances for hostile-environment-creating speech matters. Hostile work environment is partially decided by fellow employee's reaction to behavior. If the average Googler is, in fact, less tolerant of biological essentialism than antisemitism, that could create a corporation where one speech is punished more hardly than the other. But I think we ought not to discount the reaction of the separate actors in these two stories once caught in the spotlight.

[agentofoblivion]

They are entirely consistent. They succumb to pressure from their far left employees, which don’t like insensitivity to the Jews, but abhor any take that conflicts with their “diversity = equal outcomes” nonsense. There is no room for thought even remotely consistent with conservatism, whether or not it’s consistent with scientific consensus.

[wutbrodo]

> far left employees, which don’t like insensitivity to the Jews,

The far left doesn't like insensivity to Jews? Which far left are you thinking of? In the US, the far left is the most reliable source of public anti-Semitism. (Note specifically that I said public. I'm not going to try and divine whether rightwing anti-Semitism is worse in private, which it very well may be.)

[TheOtherHobbes]

Not everyone agrees.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/far-right-extremists-blam...

https://www.bendthearc.us/announcing_howtofightantisemitism_...

[wutbrodo]

The first link is about Germany. I specifically mentioned the US. It's also about anti-Semitic _violence_, not public statements, another thing that I made sure to clarify. I'd be pretty comfortable guessing that anti-Semitic violence is more right-skewed, incl in the US.

Your second link is interesting, thank you. Caputo in particular is a good example of anti-semitism among rightwing public figures. It doesn't dispute my impression that anti-Semitism (and other racism) on the left is much more acceptable in public statements than rightwing public anti-Semitism; it just claims that the media disproportionately focuses on leftwing anti-Semitism (possibly true).

I don't think complaining about Internet votes is particularly constructive, but this is more of an insight than a complaint: the downvotes on my original comment are a perfect reflection of how inanely most people engage with topics like these. There are "good guys" and "bad guys", and the "good guys" don't do any of the bad things. I don't use the phrase anti-Semitism reflexively, and think it's often wielded as a bludgeon, particularly in the context of criticism of the Israeli government. But the idea that one would be surprised at anti-semitism on the far left, like the comment I responded to, is ridiculous.

[zuminator]

Damore held and advanced his beliefs while working for Google. Bobb went on his "rant" (actually just one instance) back in 2007 and has recanted his beliefs. So the disparate treatment is based on disparate behavior, which isn't on its own an inconsistency nor necessarily a policy change.

[notimrelakatos]

> Is Google inconsistent, or has their policy on how to deal with these things changed over the past few years?

Nope, they're being very consistent if you use the correct ideological goggles, change Bobb's color palette and first name a little and we would have another Damore-like shitshow.

[throw1103]

A blog post from 13 years ago.. which has since been removed.. is different from an email sent internally.

Hopefully nobody will hold me accountable to all the slashdot comments I wrote 10-15 years ago. Taken out of context, I've probably made fantastically horrific statements too.

[throwusawayus]

> which has since been removed

Literally within the past day, along with the rest of his entire blog. This post was still online yesterday!

I also don't see any form of public acknowledgement or apology anywhere on his site or twitter. Perhaps he made one but I just can't find it. I'm not sure how people are affirmatively concluding that his views have changed so substantially since this post.

> Taken out of context

The full post speaks for itself. Nothing is taken out of context here; he's directly making offensive statements about all Jewish people based on stereotypes and actions of the Israeli government, which literally has no relation to the majority of Jewish people in the world.

[randompwd]

Are you the head of diversity? If no, then it doesn't matters. You won't have outsized power and influence.

Kind of hard to claim diversity matters when you install a demonstrable racist at the top.

Who else is he discriminating against that we just haven't found yet?

[mc32]

Given prior behavior around similar issues with other people I’m very surprised this person maintained their job.

I’m pretty sure if he were another person talking the same way about other people he’d have gotten fired unceremoniously.

And I doubt they have recalibrated how they deal with controversial opinions.

[DoctorNick]

"largely supported by research" is complete horseshit. It's was just reheated biological determinism: https://www.wired.com/story/the-pernicious-science-of-james-...

[KittenInABox]

Damore held and advocated for those beliefs so much so that he communicated them within the company at the time of his firing, and then legally disputed his firing.

Bobb wrote something which he has since recanted, 10 years ago, outside of Google's official channels?

[datavirtue]

Read Damore's post again and you might see the epic burn he laid on Google executives. That is why he was instantly purged.

[geodel]

Well isn't it plainly obvious to be fired one has to be targeted by rabid left.