[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.