Re: @h4rmony @Kristian Walsh
>>"Before going any further, though, I will say that I find it very hard to believe that he was fired just for writing this document."
People have often been fired due to a public witch-hunt. Hell, do you remember those two programmers at Pycon who were fired because Adria Richards was sitting in front of them and overheard one make an innocuous joke about "dongles" and tweeted to her 12,000 followers a photo of them saying sexism 'not okay' and accusing them of creating an atmosphere hostile to women? I do - because she single-handedly made women in tech everywhere look like humourless bigots in one afternoon. It was eventually and partially cleared up but it's a good example of how a company can and will throw an employee under the bus if that employee is being targeted online for racism / sexism / whatever. You're very wrong to think that he couldn't be fired for this memo. It went public. He was promptly fired. It was, based on documented emails from other employees saying they wanted to get him fired, likely leaked with that aim. You're dismissing this because you want to, not because it isn't sound.
>>Dismissing a permanent employee is not something that any company (even an American one) does lightly - it often, as in this case, ends up with both the employer and employee in court
And has done. But in the court filing, one of the emails points out that Damore and the others are employed "At will" which is common in the USA and it points this out specifically to highlight that these employees can be fired with little risk. The USA has fewer protections for employees than most of Europe.
>>This document is one part of a bigger story, and none of us know the whole story yet, but my suspicions are that it's a story in which Damore may not be the hero.
My contention is that you base this on your dislike of his memo rather than a reading of the court filings which I am now on page 27 of.
>>I didn't make any comment one way or the other on gender representation, but Damore's point about never achieving a 50/50 balance is a straw-man argument
50% is not randomly picked. It more or less corresponds to the proportions in wider society and which Google uses to assess their own diversity. He argues that it will never be 50% because he's arguing that it will never match the general population. This is a key part of his argument which you must understand. He's saying that you can't use the general population as your determiner for what is a "correct" diversity ratio in your technical hires. There's no strawman. It's the point of his argument.
>>These policies aren't looking to pass over men and replace them with women - that's an example of the "zero-sum" thinking I criticised
He cites several programs that are discriminatory to men. Some of them are innocuous (imo) such as outreach programs to encourage young women to enter tech. I have been involved in such efforts myself. Others are far more insidious such as hiring practices that lower the bar for certain groups, diversity targets for departments which incentivise preferential hiring and promotion. So you're incorrect. Policies DO exist that pass over men in favour of women.
>>I believe he is deliberately misrepresenting a policy of preferring minority candidates who meet the requirements for a position, as one where such candidates get the job without meeting the requirements.
I find it hard to credit that you can write this without seeing anything wrong with it. Policies that prefer candidates based on racial or sexual identity are wrong. And yes, I understand the distinction you are trying to draw between meeting the requirements and not. It's wrong. Also, highly hypothetical. And also contradicted by having diversity targets that inevitably is going to lead to overlooking weaknesses in the candidates from the desired group.
>>At the end of the document, he has his list of "recommendations": this is where he makes his pitch for what the ideal solution will be. And when you look at it, it's just a rollback of measures Google has taken to stop its workplaces being so hostile to people who aren't nerdy white men.
Well, setting aside the pejorative language in your last paragraph (and also that it's men in general), what is wrong with rolling back discriminatory measures? It's you that think that these policies are what stops Google being so hostile to men. Based on everything he's cited from the culture, that doesn't seem likely. Further, the policies don't 'prevent the workplace being hostile to women'. They introduce a discrimination in favour of women. It's on you to prove that any of the policies he recommends changing lead to "hostility to women" because I don't see it.
>>"But that doesn't stop this memo being a poorly argued whinge about having to share the the office with people who see the world differently to him."
Damore's memo plainly isn't that at all. And I'll support that by simply linking to it for anyone to read: Link
Biting the hand that feeds IT
