quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:
He's smarter than all of us put together.

He spent 30 minutes writing something on Friday and now (after a nice settlement with Google) should be set for life financially.

Not a bad exit at all...

Well, with all due respect, I think you are wrong. I think it could have taken him maybe 45 minutes. But the same end result.

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:

quote:

Originally posted by showpro:
It's a rambling collection of random pseudo-facts, a few actual facts, and opinions.

And he didn't have to make his point by attacking female engineers.

Can you list the facts you consider to be 'pseudo facts'?

Can you copy and paste where he 'attacks female engineers'?

I've read it now and don't see either of these points you are making.

Bama, I don't think I should write any more on this subject. Apologies, mate.

Oh my

Remember these are the people that think it is ok for a male to call himself a female and go out and win high school track meets beating all the girls, and then him reveling in all his trophies. While the real girls have to STFU and take it. Hard crowd to understand and keep current on all their self imposed unnatural rules in life.

Damore's interview with Jordan Peterson:



https://youtu.be/SEDuVF7kiPU

James Damore: "This Is Why I Was Fired By Google"

Fired Google engineer Jame Damore has penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal explaining how his good-faith effort to discuss differences between men and women in tech couldn’t be tolerated in the company’s "ideological echo chamber," adding that self-segregation with similar-minded people has grown in recent decades as we spend more time in digital worlds "personalized to fit our views."



I was fired by Google this past Monday for a document that I wrote and circulated internally raising questions about cultural taboos and how they cloud our thinking about gender diversity at the company and in the wider tech sector. I suggested that at least some of the male-female disparity in tech could be attributed to biological differences (and, yes, I said that bias against women was a factor too). Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai declared that portions of my statement violated the company’s code of conduct and “cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”



My 10-page document set out what I considered a reasoned, well-researched, good-faith argument, but as I wrote, the viewpoint I was putting forward is generally suppressed at Google because of the company’s “ideological echo chamber.” My firing neatly confirms that point.



How did Google, the company that hires the smartest people in the world, become so ideologically driven and intolerant of scientific debate and reasoned argument?



We all have moral preferences and beliefs about how the world is and should be. Having these views challenged can be painful, so we tend to avoid people with differing values and to associate with those who share our values. This self-segregation has become much more potent in recent decades. We are more mobile and can sort ourselves into different communities; we wait longer to find and choose just the right mate; and we spend much of our time in a digital world personalized to fit our views.



Google is a particularly intense echo chamber because it is in the middle of Silicon Valley and is so life-encompassing as a place to work. With free food, internal meme boards and weekly companywide meetings, Google becomes a huge part of its employees’ lives. Some even live on campus. For many, including myself, working at Google is a major part of their identity, almost like a cult with its own leaders and saints, all believed to righteously uphold the sacred motto of “Don’t be evil.”



Echo chambers maintain themselves by creating a shared spirit and keeping discussion confined within certain limits. As Noam Chomsky once observed, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”



But echo chambers also have to guard against dissent and opposition. Whether it’s in our homes, online or in our workplaces, a consensus is maintained by shaming people into conformity or excommunicating them if they persist in violating taboos. Public shaming serves not only to display the virtue of those doing the shaming but also warns others that the same punishment awaits them if they don’t conform.



In my document, I committed heresy against the Google creed by stating that not all disparities between men and women that we see in the world are the result of discriminatory treatment.



When I first circulated the document about a month ago to our diversity groups and individuals at Google, there was no outcry or charge of misogyny. I engaged in reasoned discussion with some of my peers on these issues, but mostly I was ignored.



Everything changed when the document went viral within the company and the wider tech world. Those most zealously committed to the diversity creed—that all differences in outcome are due to differential treatment and all people are inherently the same—could not let this public offense go unpunished. They sent angry emails to Google’s human-resources department and everyone up my management chain, demanding censorship, retaliation and atonement.



Upper management tried to placate this surge of outrage by shaming me and misrepresenting my document, but they couldn’t really do otherwise: The mob would have set upon anyone who openly agreed with me or even tolerated my views. When the whole episode finally became a giant media controversy, thanks to external leaks, Google had to solve the problem caused by my supposedly sexist, anti-diversity manifesto, and the whole company came under heated and sometimes threatening scrutiny.



It saddens me to leave Google and to see the company silence open and honest discussion. If Google continues to ignore the very real issues raised by its diversity policies and corporate culture, it will be walking blind into the future—unable to meet the needs of its remarkable employees and sure to disappoint its billions of users.

As a reminder, a survey of Google employees reflected the company's divisions.

Of 440 Google employees who responded to a Blind survey on Tuesday and Wednesday, 56% said they disagreed with Google’s decision to fire Mr. Damore.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...y-i-was-fired-google

First a big thanks to Para for leading me and others to Jordan Peterson.

quote:

Damore's interview with Jordan Peterson:

If you listen to this interview you will learn that Damore uses no "pseudo-facts". Jordan Peterson goes through Damore's paper line by line and says that it is not in the least controversial among knowledgeable Phycologists.
Peterson says that he will put the paper on his web site and add citations from the scientific literature supporting the points made.

Damore’s paper was not the work of a few minutes it reflects a lot of research and was carefully written and reviewed over the course of a month.


Damore did not attack female engineers (may their tribe increase) his point is that Googles “diversity” program is a denial of a rather basic fact that the population of female engineers is few in number compared to male engineers.
The ratio of males to females in the engineering population (something like 80/20) and the engineering fields females tend to choose are a biologic fact, not a social construct.
The feminists (and Google Management) who deny this fact are denying biology.

The current socio–biologic theory is that in utero testosterone permanently alters males so that they tend to become more interested in things while females tend to become more interested in people. These are strong tendencies, not absolutes, so there will be female engineers, just as there will be male nurses.
There is nothing about this that is a reflection upon anyone’s intelligence; it is a matter of the individual’s personal choice.

There are a lot of Googlites in my neighborhood (a handful are conservatives), none have said anything re this matter. I guess they don't want to get in trouble.

Frighteningly, it appears that 44% agreed with Damore being fired for cause.

My bet is that, despite being an anonymous poll, Google will be able ID those 56%ers and show them the door in time as well.

Google = Big Brother (not exactly a news flash)



"Of 440 Google employees who responded to a Blind survey on Tuesday and Wednesday, 56% said they disagreed with Google’s decision to fire Mr. Damore."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...y-i-was-fired-google[/QUOTE]

quote:

My bet is that, despite being an anonymous poll, Google will be able ID those 56%ers and show them the door in time as well.

Google has a big problem here. Engineers who can operate at the level Google expects are not thick on the ground. Wholesale firing is going to result in the loss of very competent people and probably irreplaceable talent.

My bet is that Google management and Alphabet are hoping that no more engineers step forward publically to say they agree with Damore.

Keep in mind that Damore's paper has been public in Google circles for more than a month. It was only when it went viral publically that management fired him.
The lesson here is much the same as with Jordan Peterson, keep your mouth shut, play the diversity game, and you will be golden. Publically tell people that management or the Canadian Government is parroting feminist LGBT nonsense and you will be sorry.

quote:

Originally posted by oldRoger:

quote:

My bet is that, despite being an anonymous poll, Google will be able ID those 56%ers and show them the door in time as well.

Google has a big problem here. Engineers who can operate at the level Google expects are not thick on the ground. Wholesale firing is going to result in the loss of very competent people and probably irreplaceable talent....

Irreplaceable talent that may well go to work for a competitor.

There's a lot of things I wish I could say at work but I can't so I don't.

No matter where one falls on the ideological spectrum, this guy would have been fired by every corporation I've ever worked for or with - most of the big ones in technology - for simply causing a stir and a bit of bad press.

Don't shit where you eat, kid. It rarely ever pays off.

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:
Irreplaceable talent that may well go to work for a competitor.

When I was there, it was considered sort of a stain on your abilities if you weren't recruited by another company. This was back when Facebook was coming up and if they came calling it was sort of like being noticed for your good work.

They have a hell of a time hiring people, and also a hard time retaining people. This is doubly true if their stock is flat.

One time another engineer contacted me after seeing this internal analytics project I did. Turns out he wanted to email a guy who worked in his office, but the email bounced. Guy had no idea his buddy had left. So he wanted me to come up with some metrics on job life expectancy.

Almost half the software engineers there left the job after two years and one day. Not the day before two years. Not right at two years. Two years and one day. After they got some stock vested, in other words.

As for this guy's memo, they used to tolerate a lot there, but one thing they really didn't like was people bringing the company's dirty laundry out in the open. They didn't like that a lot. You could easily get fired for mentioning an internal tool or project online by name, for example. The dude knew what he was doing and what would happen and did it anyway. So I'm curious about his motive.

quote:

The dude knew what he was doing and what would happen and did it anyway. So I'm curious about his motive.

I suggest listening to the entire Peterson interview. I think you can get the hint that Damore was naïve enough to think Google really wanted to make progress toward a solution to the problem, not blow smoke in the eyes of the public.

Damore was obviously concerned by Google's actions on the one hand and public statements on the other.
I think many of us here are also tired of continuous evasions of relatively simple facts.

I doubt he will have a problem finding another job, and I suspect that when he does, it will help others to make similar decisions.

E.O. Wilson's book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, 1975, outlined the male/female interest situation and has only been reinforced by subsequent research.
There are not now, and probably never will be, enough females interested in engineering (things) to make the diversity and social justice warriors close to satisfied. Unspoken quotas will continue to be unfilled.

I am very glad that I am retired and no longer have to fight with the HR types who want to fill ME positions with Biologists. Biologists by the way who have no interest in hot, noisy, heavy machinery.

quote:

Originally posted by Scoutmaster:

quote:

Originally posted by oldRoger:

quote:

My bet is that, despite being an anonymous poll, Google will be able ID those 56%ers and show them the door in time as well.

Google has a big problem here. Engineers who can operate at the level Google expects are not thick on the ground. Wholesale firing is going to result in the loss of very competent people and probably irreplaceable talent....

Irreplaceable talent that may well go to work for a competitor.

And such is the cycle of life in commerce.

quote:

Originally posted by oldRoger:

quote:

The dude knew what he was doing and what would happen and did it anyway. So I'm curious about his motive.

E.O. Wilson's book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, 1975, outlined the male/female interest situation and has only been reinforced by subsequent research.

Not to sound trollish, but one shouldn't go citing something that's over 40 years old if one has subsequent research.

I'm not an expert in the field, but I'd suspect a lot has changed in the field in 40 years and undoubtedly the conclusions will have been challenged numerous times. If the conclusions have been substantiated, that requires additional citation.

Since I haven't seen the research this Google engineer did, I just hope he's got more current stuff than that; if you want to attack Google academically, you need to play academically.

Women's Week: Equal Opportunity (Even for Corruption)
By Clarice Feldman

The week started off with a bang when a Google employee dared to say there were reasons why we should have an open discussion on the goals of diversity of employment and equal hiring and promotion outcomes. It ended with a clear refutation of the argument that women politicians would be more moral than men. Some of us are looking wistfully at the old patriarchy. At a minimum, we want to see a stake being driven into that hoary meme and, for once, an honest dialogue about diversity and equal outcomes.

Diversity and Google

Google engineer James Damore was fired for seeking open dialogue on the company’s diversity policies. Most of the press grossly misstated the text. You can see for yourself how distorted the coverage was. In sum, he argued:

[quote] I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that we shouldn’t try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism).

My concrete suggestions are to:

De-moralize diversity.

As soon as we start to moralize an issue, we stop thinking about it in terms of costs and benefits, dismiss anyone that disagrees as immoral, and harshly punish those we see as villains to protect the “victims.”

Stop alienating conservatives.

Viewpoint diversity is arguably the most important type of diversity and political orientation is one of the most fundamental and significant ways in which people view things differently.
In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves.
Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is require for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

Confront Google’s biases.

I’ve mostly concentrated on how our biases cloud our thinking about diversity and inclusion, but our moral biases are farther reaching than that.
I would start by breaking down Googlegeist scores by political orientation and personality to give a fuller picture into how our biases are affecting our culture.

Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races.

These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.

Have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs.

Discriminating just to increase the representation of women in tech is as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.
There’s currently very little transparency into the extend of our diversity programs which keeps it immune to criticism from those outside its ideological echo chamber.
These programs are highly politicized which further alienates non-progressives.
I realize that some of our programs may be precautions against government accusations of discrimination, but that can easily backfire since they incentivize illegal discrimination.

The best defense of the Damore point of view came from 4 scientists who say we must choose between equality and diversity because we cannot have both.

So, if the sexes and races don’t differ at all, and if psychological interchangeability is true, then there’s no practical business case for diversity.

On the other hand, if demographic diversity gives a company any competitive advantages, it must be because there are important sex differences and race differences in how human minds work and interact. For example, psychological variety must promote better decision-making within teams, projects, and divisions. Yet if minds differ across sexes and races enough to justify diversity as an instrumental business goal, then they must differ enough in some specific skills, interests, and motivations that hiring and promotion will sometimes produce unequal outcomes in some company roles...

So, psychological interchangeability makes diversity meaningless. But psychological differences make equal outcomes impossible. Equality or diversity. You can’t have both.

Weirdly, the same people who advocate for equality of outcome in every aspect of corporate life, also tend to advocate for diversity in every aspect of corporate life. They don’t even see the fundamentally irreconcilable assumptions behind this ‘equality and diversity’ dogma.

Why didn’t the thousands of people working to promote equality and diversity in corporate America acknowledge this paradox? Why did it take a male software engineer at Google who’s read a bunch of evolutionary psychology? I suspect that it’s a problem of that old tradeoff between empathizing and systematizing that I wrote about in this Quillette article on neurodiversity and free speech. The high empathizers in HR and the diversity industry prioritize caring for women and minorities over developing internally coherent, evidence-based models of human nature and society. High systematizers, such as this memo’s author, prioritize the opposite. Indeed, he explicitly calls for ‘de-emphasizing empathy’ and ‘de-moralizing diversity’, arguing that ‘being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts’. He is right.

His most important suggestion, though, is apparently the most contentious: ‘Be open about the science of human nature’. He writes ‘Once we acknowledge that not all differences are socially constructed or due to discrimination, we open our eyes to a more accurate view of the human condition which is necessary if we actually want to solve problems.’ This is also correct...

American businesses also have to face the fact that the demographic differences that make diversity useful will not lead to equality of outcome in every hire or promotion. Equality or diversity: choose one. In my opinion, given that sex differences are so well-established, and the sexes have such intricately complementary quirks, it may often be sensible, in purely practical business terms, to aim for more equal sex ratios in many corporate teams, projects, and divisions.

http://www.americanthinker.com..._for_corruption.html

It's been a long time, but the case is moving forward to discovery. Note: James Damore is no longer a part of the suit.

Story on American Thinker

The lawsuit alleging that Google discriminates against employees on the basis of political beliefs has passed a crucial test, allowing the plaintiffs to demand and receive internal documents, emails and text messages, and other records such as audio and video recordings related to their contention. Levi Sumagaysay of the San Jose Mercury-News reports:

A judge on Friday rejected Google's motions to throw out a lawsuit brought by fired engineer James Damore accusing the internet company of discrimination against conservatives, men and white people.

The judge utterly vanquished Google's attempt to shut down the case:

The court denied three different Google motions to dismiss the lawsuit. Now the plaintiffs can request access to internal Google documents to try to support their allegations, which also include some people being "denied employment because of their actual and perceived conservative political activities and affiliations, and their status as actual or perceived Asian or Caucasian male job applicants," according to the lawsuit.

Allum Bokhari of Breitbart adds:

This is potentially a huge problem for the tech giant, as previous leaks of internal documents and video have repeatedly exposed the company's extreme political bias.

I strongly suspect that in internal conversations now subject to discovery, Google employees have expressed even more extreme views about conservatives than those in the video Bokhari links to. Those could be highly damaging.

It is important to note that James Damore, who first brought the class action lawsuit, has entered arbitration with Google and is no longer among the plaintiffs. But two other Google employees joined and remain in the class.

quote:

This is potentially a huge problem for the tech giant, as previous leaks of internal documents and video have repeatedly exposed the company's extreme political bias

So the company that buys, sells, trades, and otherwise uses our confidential information against us has fallen victim to the same kind of activity...it's a beautiful thing!