Google Senior Engineer FIRED for diversity memo
Fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes”
A Senior Software Engineer at Google wrote an internal memo questioning the assumption of discrimination as the explanation for why women are underrepresented in High Tech (which he defined as Software Engineering).
I noted that questioning the religious orthodoxy of diversity was dangerous to his career, Google Senior Engineer commits diversity heresy:
There is no religious doctrine as unassailable as the claim that differences in achievement in areas where women and/or racial/ethnic minorities are UNDERrepresented is caused by systemic sexism/racism etc.
That religious doctrine, however, never is applied to fields in which women and/or racial/ethnic minorities are OVERrepresented.
The claim that differences in outcome are caused by discrimination drives the “diversity” agenda on campuses and at companies. That one might support diversity as a goal, yet question whether the problem is systemic discrimination and whether MORE discrimination really is the answer, is considered heresy and is punishable by firing, harassment, and on campuses, being shouted down….
While the memo is being regularly described as “anti-diversity,” a plain reading of the document shows that is not accurate. The Senior Engineer does not question diversity as a goal, but does question the explanations given as to why it is not being achieved in High Tech….
… questioning the assumptions underlying diversity initiatives is so dangerous to employment — one stands at risk of being accused of violating company anti-discrimination policies merely by questioning whether there is in fact discrimination. That accusation could be a career ending. Which is why people just shut up.
This memo could be used as a launching point for an open and fact-based discussion of why some group succeed in the Software Engineering field (and some other high tech fields) more than others. If you can’t identify the actual problem, you can’t meaningfully discuss solutions.
I’m guessing that that Google Senior Engineer soon will be a former Google Senior Engineer, will be outed on the internet (he already has been, but I’m not using his name), will be mercilessly harassed and doxxed, and will be driven underground. Because that’s how diversity heretics are treated.
Over the last 24 hours the Senior Engineer was identified on the internet, and there were demands that Google fire him.
James Damore is the Google engineer who wrote the meritocracy/accept diversity of ideas memo. He's being strung up. pic.twitter.com/1rVsW3Jddm
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 7, 2017
So
1) fire James Damore from Google
2) no-one else hire James Damore— nft hater (@varjmes) August 6, 2017
Recode reported on a memo from Google CEO that suggested the Senior Engineer has violated Google’s Code of Conduct:
In a memo to employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said the employee who penned a controversial memo that claimed that women had biological issues that prevented them from being as successful as men in tech had violated its Code of Conduct and that the post had crossed “the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”
He added: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”
Pichai’s wording appears to indicate that the employee is likely be fired, which some inside and outside the company have been calling for. A Google spokesperson said the company would not confirm any firing of an individual employee, but others have been let go for violating its Code of Conduct in the past.
Here is the CEO memo to employees provided in the Recode post. To put it in the lingo of the campus, the Senior Engineer was accused by the CEO of Google of violating other employees safe spaces:
From: Sundar
Subject: Our words matter
This has been a very difficult few days. I wanted to provide an update on the memo that was circulated over this past week.
First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.”
The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender. Our co-workers shouldn’t have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being “agreeable” rather than “assertive,” showing a “lower stress tolerance,” or being “neurotic.”
At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo — such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all — are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics — we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.
The past few days have been very difficult for many at the company, and we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree — while doing so in line with our Code of Conduct. I’d encourage each of you to make an effort over the coming days to reach out to those who might have different perspectives from your own. I will be doing the same.
I have been on work related travel in Africa and Europe the past couple of weeks and had just started my family vacation here this week. I have decided to return tomorrow as clearly there’s a lot more to discuss as a group — including how we create a more inclusive environment for all.
So please join me, along with members of the leadership team at a town hall on Thursday. Check your calendar soon for details.
— Sundar
And sure enough, Google just fired the Senior Engineer.
Bloomberg reports:
Alphabet Inc.’s Google has fired an employee who wrote an internal memo blasting the web company’s diversity policies, creating a firestorm across Silicon Valley.
James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote the note, confirmed his dismissal in an email, saying that he had been fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” A Google representative didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Google’s Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai sent a note to employees on Monday that said portions of the employee’s memo “violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” But he didn’t say if the company was taking action against the employee.
In a memo to employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said the employee who penned a controversial memo that claimed that women had biological issues that prevented them from being as successful as men in tech had violated its Code of Conduct and that the post had crossed “the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”
He added: “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”
Pichai’s wording appears to indicate that the employee is likely be fired, which some inside and outside the company have been calling for. A Google spokesperson said the company would not confirm any firing of an individual employee, but others have been let go for violating its Code of Conduct in the past.
This is a pretty chilling development. It completely proves the Senior Engineers point about the shaming and shut-down culture that surrounds discussions of discrimination and diversity.
Don't worry about Google firing non-pc engineer, it's not like they have access to YOUR personal info .. oh wait https://t.co/6dpUZzKT1m
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) August 8, 2017
Shocking and disturbing. Google actually fired the "Diversity Memo" author.
They've proven his point.
For shame. https://t.co/gNbdY2heka— The Middle (@TheMiddle123) August 8, 2017
The guy who wrote the #GoogleManifesto supposedly has a PhD in biology from Harvard. He's reasoned and smart. If he isn't safe, then who is?
— M_Methuselah (@M_Methuselah) August 7, 2017
[This post was updated multiple times]
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Comments
Google delenda est, and since they have abandoned the unbiased search criteria that made them the dominant search engine in the furst place they should be vulnerable to be dominated in turn by a superior natural monopolist. The barriers to entry are high but there are competitors already positioned. Microsoft could certainly make Bing competitive with a mere few billion more invested in site-crawling, mirroring, and data crunching, then they could take over, if they can just manage to avoid falling into Social Justice Warriorism themselves.
Do you really think that Microsoft would have handled this type of incident any differently?
Political correctness, Leftist virtue-posturing and obeisance to “diversity and inclusion” buzzwords and initiatives now rule the day in every single S&P 500 company in the U.S. Microsoft is no exception, even if its culture has traditionally been more staid and wooden than some of the newer tech upstarts such as Alphabet and Facebook.
Gulag Google
Predictable. So predictable that I would almost bet real money (if I had any) that he had a fallback plan. Hopefully part of that plan is a huge wrongful termination lawsuit.
In the meantime, https://duckduckgo.com everyone?
I haven’t looked into it, but I have heard that duckduckgo uses Google.
It’s fine that Duck Duck Go uses Google as long as it doesn’t display Google ads.
I’m not aware of that, can you cite any sources for this?
I use duckduckgo for everyday searches but at least 3X/day I have to resort to google for a full search. But at least the borg doesn’t get my everyday searches
Just switched to duckduckgo.
Google says they want everyone (especially minorities) to feel totally free to speak, so they instantly fire this engineer for speaking his mind.
I want Google to die.
James Damore wrote a memo describing how Google was intolerant of dissenting voices. So Google fired him for voicing dissent.
Or maybe ixquick.com
Fallback plan is to sue the crap ouyt of Google. He filed a complaint before he was fired. There are laws prohibiting firing an employee while a complaint against the company is pending.
What I’ve been using for several years now:
https://www.ixquick.com/eng/?
The message is clear; thinking at Google is anathema.
Firing of this engineer Proves the very statements he made were correct.
Trump and we all should remember this next time Google argues that we need more H1Bs because they can’t find talent locally.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/07/wapo-mar-lago-still-aiming-hire-foreign-workers-seasonal-duties/
So.
There’s that…
If I had any Google stock, I’d unload it tomorrow.
They don’t care about their investors. They care about extraneous crap.
Since it’s a law blog run by a law professor, just thought I’d ask:
– Can he win a lawsuit here?
I would have thought no, especially in the loony state of California – but the loony employment laws of California cut both ways.
At least one lawyer things he can win in this advertisement for his services, I mean article at CNBC:
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google-to-punish-engineer-over-anti-diversity-memo-commentary.html
I say file that lawsuit, and I’ll buy the popcorn and watch the blog posts fly.
I don’t think he can win a lawsuit. I found out a long time ago that an employer can do pretty much anything it wants to an employee and there is no legal recourse.
Yeah – that’s the problem with “Code of Conduct”.
“Code of Conduct” is anything they say it is.
Is there an argument that the response to his memo and the statement in connection with his firing were defamatory?
Though even a meritorious lawsuit could reduce his chances of finding new employment.
Don’t let anyone tell you that this isn’t a culture war we’re in.
Gender stereotypes do exist. The problem is that actual gender inequalities have been redefined as stereotypes in order to eliminate them from consideration and so mention of them (as actual inequalities) will bring an immediate charge of “sexism.” You can dominate the intellectual battlespace if you redefine it to exclude thoughts and ideas that you don’t have the firepower to overcome.
The problem is that actual gender inequalities …
Differences can be a matter of objective fact, even if inequalities are more nebulous.
A major shortcoming of the human intellect is the automatic assumption that an examination of differences is equivalent to an assertion of superiority by one object over another.
The idea that differences can be evaluated on their own, without a need to rank them in some arbitrary hierarchy, is really one of the fundamental breakthroughs of scientific method. It doesn’t seem to come naturally to humans; it has to be learned.
But even today, too many are just not very good at that stuff. Of course, despite the trappings, ours is not really a very scientific age.
Meanwhile, it seems that at Google, the truth will set you free. For better or worse.
“The idea that differences can be evaluated on their own, without a need to rank them in some arbitrary hierarchy, is really one of the fundamental breakthroughs of scientific method. It doesn’t seem to come naturally to humans; it has to be learned.”
Bingo.
In addjtion, it’s hard and it takes time, so #aintgonnahappen.
Elizabeth Warren ✔ @elizabethforma
“Nevertheless, #ShePersisted” isn’t about me. It’s all of us. It’s people everywhere tired of being told to sit down & shut up.
But it’s not about HIM. White males don’t count.
Well, after doing some thurough research on the major porn websites, I can now conclusively say that this engineer is right, there are biological differences between men and women! If only the Alphabet management would use their own search engine they would have concluded this too and the engineer would still have his job!????
Google discriminates against conservatives? Who did not know?
sorry mean to thumbs up this post.
no one at Microsoft should bother asking the question. Satya already had his manhood removed by the femi-SJW for his offhand remarks.
I just did a Bing search on the word “Irony” and Google was the top hit.
Yet another reason for Google and others to prefer H1b engineers–they are far less likely to make waves like this.
otoh, independent thinkers like James Damore are the ones who will invent the software that will obsolete Google. A better fate I could not imagine.
My thoughts are similar, it would be awesome if he goes to a competitor, or better yet becomes a competitor which creams Google.
Ah, those “Diversity and Inclusion” initiatives in corporate America are working well!
They are working as intended.
People are by their nature diverse, genes, random mutations, how a child is nurtured, natural talents, self discipline, are all factors in how people turn out. Some people fare far better than others, we are not created equal, and humanity is better off because of this.
The bottom line is that politically correct is by its nature incorrect.
And last, taking scalps does have consequences, and there is likely to be retribution.
“we need to find a way to debate issues on which we might disagree” The biggest lie of that entire worthless memo, the puritans have no desire for any debate. Their actions prove this. They seek to stifle or eliminate all heretics.
Unbelievable, isn’t it. They are so far gone they can’t recognize their own hypocrisy.
They have been hiding behibd the lie that they want to have a conversation and then used that access to do a lecture that they can’t even recognize it for that anymore. Voting for Trump was America saying lecture over.
Is it gender stereotyping to say that women may be qualified to play in the Lingerie Football League but not the NFL ?
Tackling on astroturf with very little clothing. It may not be stereotyping, but it is a crime against womankind.
This is intellectual socialism. You own your thoughts but we control them.
You can certainly choose to speak out as we seek to find ways to debate this, but if you offend anyone with your thoughts then you are sent to the slaughterhouse. In other words, your fate is at the mercy of a mob that can decide on a whim whether or not to be offended by your thoughts.
A sociopath will always attempt to do one of two things:
a) control you.
b) if that fails, then destroy you. (See the libtard who wants this guy unemployed)
These leftists are genuinely sick people.
So much for “Don’t be evil.”
James Damore will live on at Google as a focus of their “Two Minutes of Hate” events. He is a dangerous counterrevolutionary and must serve as a warning.
Google is now demanding ideological purity among its employees and rationality be damned. Does anyone esle see the direction this is headed and how terrifying this is? So much for the right to free speech.
There is no “right to free speech”. Congress can’t silence you, but an employer sure can and they do it all the time.
You miss the point, while freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment against government curtailment, it’s also an American cultural value. This is a cultural fight, not a legal fight. American companies do not fire employees if they express opinions different than the prevailing attitudes at a company with the exception of this modern trend of larger corporations swinging hard left with their cultural marxism and activism.
This brings us back to the secession discussion from a few days ago, and why I’m fully in favor of Calexit. At what point does the cultural values become so different that existing together under a single government become impossible? We have two sets of incompatible values, those favored by people along the coasts of the US and in small interior islands vs. the values of Americans everywhere else. To not secede might be to ask one group or the other to give up too much and to live under what they would consider tyranny.
Wow, I sure believe this! My daughter is a computer engineer in Silicon Valley (not Google, thankfully), one of the rare females in her field and a conservative to boot. She has to keep her mouth shut whenever anything political comes up. A memo like this wouldn’t affect her – she is no snowflake – because she persevered in a field (electrical engineering) that is nearly all male. The opportunities for women in her field are astonishing but the field is highly mathematical and she will tell you that most women either don’t want to study it or work as hard as she did. Which proves this guy’s point.
The doors are open to women who enter non-traditional trades.
My daughter is an associate professor of building construction, after ten years managing projects in NYC.
There are problems faced by women who wish to have children. These problems are economic in nature rather than matters of prejudice. Men wishing to reach partnership typically work more than 40 hours a week.
Coming out of beta very soon is Google Snowflake, the search engine add-on that lets you search without fear of feeling offended by your search results.
With the Progressive Left, you always have to pay attention to what they do (fire engineer for ‘having diverse thoughts’) rather than what they say (Google committed to ‘diversity of thought’).
When my child began receiving college brochures when she was a senior in high school, I would discard those colleges that had DIVERSITY as their prime claim to fame.
Seems nothing has changed in the 20 years since she graduated with a major in physics and a minor in math statistics.
Pity
Well, I suspect one thing has changed… your scrap pile would be a heckuva lot larger if she were going to school today.
This man, so far as I can see, has not been credibly accused of discriminating against any actual, live woman. That’s the only behavior which should be cause for dismissal. Observing the facts of life in general is now a thought crime. This is shameful.
Yes, the most threadbare part of Sundar Pichai’s dishonest memo is when he states that “to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.” The heretical engineer made no such suggestion and Sundar is presumably intelligent enough to understand that. I am reminded of Theodore Dalrymple’s observation that “the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.”
True. But Dalrymple wasn’t the first to notice. Vaclav Havel wrote a great essay about it titled “The Power of the Powerless.” He writes about a shopkeeper, a grocer, who gets a sign from the party and is told to put it in his window. It says, “Workers of the World Unite!” He doesn’t care about the workers of the world uniting. What the sign really says is “I am alone, weak and afraid.” Everybody who sees the sign knows that; it’s only there because he doesn’t want any trouble.
The whole point of propaganda is to force people to repeat it. Then nobody knows who they can trust. Which goes a long way to preventing revolts against the state. In order to revolt, first people have to unite.
Havel, as you may have guessed, spent a lot of years in a communist prison.
Oh,look: a #NeverTrump liar links other #NeverTrumpers lies. Unexpectedly!
Ragspierre | August 7, 2017 at 10:50 pm
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/07/wapo-mar-lago-still-aiming-hire-foreign-workers-seasonal-duties/
So.
This whole argument is just ridiculous!
Men and women are different. I spent 10 years training Police Officers and 911 Operators. Few women qualify(or want) to be Police Officers and on the other hand men are not capable of handling(nor do they want to) what it takes to be a 911 Operator.
We could demand that gender employment is 50% male and 50% female( Sorry, I left out Trans whatever) for both occupations but the quality would be so far reduced that citizens would be at rick!
If Google is so married to equality maybe they should put their MONEY where their mouth is and make everything 50/50! Just hypocrites(just like most Demoncrats)!
Sundar Pichai said: “I’d encourage each of you to make an effort over the coming days to reach out to those who might have different perspectives from your own. I will be doing the same.” He left out “So we can find the non-conformists to our ideology and fire them.”
For today’s progressives, anything that strays from their ideology is immediately crushed.
Well, yes. Both my daughters, educated professional women, report that they keep their conservative political leanings very quiet at work for fear of repercussions. Speak out and be harassed, if not fired.
I have heard a rumor that when Conservatives are found out at Google, the company is going to allow them to stay, but require them to self-identify, so that other more “normal” employees will not be triggered. The easiest way to do this will be by some piece of clothing which is quickly identifiable without any words needing to be spoken. A large Star worn on the breast would be easily recognizable, especially if it is an eye-catching color, such as Bright Yellow.
Coming soon to the Google workplace?
Well, Google is a “progressive” organization, steeped in monotonic liberalism, which is notably Pro-Choice.
Class diversity. Discrimination between individuals based on the color of their skin, their sex (i.e. male or female), etc. is logically and by definition racist, sexist, etc. A bigoted (i.e. sanctimonious hypocrisy) philosophy normalized by the Pro-Choice Church and its progressive (i.e. monotonic) liberal (i.e. divergent) acolytes.
Equal and complementary. It’s not that complicated.
Agreed.
The atheist left has difficulties with issues of “value” because if we are all the product of matter, energy, and random processes, then it is difficult to see from whence the concept of “value” arises. The only candidate left is that our “value” is based on what we do – and that is an exceedingly weak candidate. I think this is why the left is so twitchy about any disparity in outcomes. The left reasons that if some class of people has, on the average, less ability in some area which is highly valued by our socio-economic system, then that whole class of people is of lower “value”.
This way of thinking also applies on the other side. By the atheist left’s logic, those of us who are actually “unproductive” can be considered to be of no value if their existence is inconvenient. Thus abortion and euthanasia.
The initial mistake is the failure to admit the existence of God. The rest follows logically.
Many people believe that atheism is driven by excesses of religion. How many atheists did pedophile priests and the Catholic hierarchy create?
Perhaps a better place to be is secular humanism, a happy middle ground?
So your argument is that pedophile priests are God’s fault?
Secular = atheist. Secular humanism is not a middle ground.
Ok, guys, I will tell y’all the roots of this furor.
When I was a senior in high school, my class was given aptitude tests. I was in the class with the smart kids. When the results came back, I was told I was best suited to be a physical therapist, while the boys all around me got recommendations for things like “engineer.”
But when the PSAT scores came back, I and one other girl (also a military brat) were the only National Merit Semi-finalists out of a class size that should have produced 3. When we got the SAT scores back, I had outscored all but one of the boys in math, and math was my weaker score.
When I went to law school, women were 10% of the student body. In 4 years, they were almost 50%. I only had one idiot professor who was vocal about his prejudices against women. I did not respect him, and neither did his fellow professors. When I started law school, the guys (our peers, now the people running things) were saying, “Oh, only a few of them will get in.” Then it was, “Well they will get in, but they won’t make the grades.” This was followed by “Well, they may get out, but they won’t get the jobs.”
I got a clerkship with a Federal appellate judge.
In my first job out of law school, I went to a reasonably reputable law firm, and I met a paralegal who was an engineer getting ready to graduate from law school. That woman was one hell of a paralegal, although I privately questioned her decision to accept that title rather than “law clerk.” After she graduated, the firm decided not to hire her as a lawyer because she could not project the image that clients needed to have confidence in the firm. She was quite small, with a high-pitched voice. Well before then, I had seen the writing on the wall.
So, yeah, I get why the ladies at Google are up in arms.
The bottom line is, God distributes talents where He wills, and when we are considering an individual’s capabilities, statistics just do not matter.
Great story! Great bottom line!
You might like this: http://firstlikeagirl.com/
New Google Technology Autocorrects Users’ Thoughts
At a special press conference held at the technology giant’s sprawling campus Tuesday, Google engineers revealed exciting new technology that autocorrects any errant thoughts its users are having, replacing them with positions approved by the company.
Utilizing advanced retinal scan and proprietary telepathic scanning technology, the new automatic thought correction algorithm is now live for users of Google’s search engine, Android operating system, Chrome OS, and the hundreds of other apps and services the company provides.
http://babylonbee.com/news/new-google-technology-autocorrects-users-thoughts/
This is such a motivating topic. There’s a boat load of commentary. I harken back to Prof Jacobson’s tweet: “Don’t worry about Google firing non-pc engineer, it’s not like they have access to YOUR personal info .. oh wait ”
.
Rather bold since Google/Youtube shut down LI’s video, and lost part of its archive on unilateral, notice free, appeal free, nameless administrative state action.
.
Rather than sell Google stock, I suggest we all buy some, and find a way to petition the Google administrative state to rebuild trust and install due process procedures. The entity is a sovereignty that appears to answer to no one — but it’s publicly traded so it needs to be careful about shareholders who comment on the Emperor’s clothes.
.
I know it’s a long shot, but it’s a start.