There was a huge discussion on ArsTechnica.com about this incident. Unfortunately, it devolved into a mess as expected. Anyway, before the mess there were some good links posted:
Sending a 10 page memo regarding my person opinions/beliefs through a company mailing list is going to get me into a tense meeting with my boss regardless of the topic. Having it be on such a divisive topic is just icing on that poorly thought out cake.
If it was posted to an internal message board/forum as part of an ongoing conversation/discussion that would come off a lot different than sending it out unsolicited and en masse. I’ve looked around to see if any of the articles clarify how this was originally published within the company. NYTimes says “internal mailing list,” but most others are vague.
having skimmed, it seems more… mild than when I initially heard of it. But the idea that women are inherently less inclined to push for status positioned/stress areas seems false.
Just looking at my high school, almost all our valedictorians (and a majority of sals) were female. In regards to club presidency and such, same.
I do think there are trends of skills as part of gender, but it’s hard to determine what is so ingrained or develops due to ingrained cultural divides and what is biologically there.
However, yeah, calling your company an echo chamber (even if you later insist they offer great stress management options)
Employees are not allowed to discuss about gender, sex, age, race, politics, religion,… in the work place. Discussion about those topics will bring up hostility in the work place. He was fired because he violated those codes of conduct. They are usually in employment handbooks or in anti-harassment training documents. Google will be sued big time if they did not fire him.
@esobay : The full memo, with the links to the “research” that you seem to think are so valuable in explaining the author’s gender bias, is available via the link in OP’s post. If there is a “better” version, I’d love to see it. I find it hard to believe you can’t locate it, assuming it exists.
A short legal analysis of the firing. Concerted activities related to discussion of workplace conditions (unionizing) are protected under federal labor laws (NLRA). OTOH, there is no First Amendment speech protection in private workplaces, and discriminatory activities are against the law. Arguably, the guy was trying to stir a discussion of “workplace conditions,” but there is no guarantee that the guy has a strong case that the policies that got him fired were in violation of the NLRA:
@AboutTheSame . I made a mistake in that the OP’s posting does include the links to his references. The links were removed/made inactive in the gizmodo article which also removed a bunch of his graphs. When I first looked at the OP post, I assumed it came from gizmodo. I made no judgments out loud about validity of said references.
@OP If it appeared that I was maligning you, I truly apologize. I was just annoyed that so many of the “full text” articles were NOT the full text.
I am not sure how I feel about the firing. On one hand Google has a strong and well publicized culture so why work there if you resent that culture? On the other hand should someone actually be fired for distributing a memo that might be divisive in a culture that values diversity and inclusiveness? I am not sure. He says he wrote it on a long flight after attending a diversity seminar which obviously bothered him.
I linked the video of the interview below and for those who want to dig a little deeper it sheds a lot of light on the situation. Damore is very young and not at all what I expected. My take away is that he lacks a lot of what is going to propel an employee upward at Google. On paper he likely is highly intelligent in certain disciplines, but I am not sure he would be any “stand out” at Google which also values interpersonal skills. I think it is possible that he was looking for a scapegoat for the lack of recognition or promotion he may have experienced at Google. This memo was the result.
I’m with you here. As much as I support diversity, I despise this mobster-like mentality of ‘you best think like us, or you’re outta here’. It has gotten out of control in this country.
As for Google’s culture of inclusiveness, it sounds like this guy had more of a problem with unfair promotions and hirings based on diversity factors rather than merit factors. It’s a fair concern, IMO… as someone who works in engineering, I can tell you that being a female has major advantages when it comes to getting hired and/or getting promoted within a group, as most companies are trying desperately to attract more female engineers. Some males might see this as being unfair, especially if they are more qualified on paper.
IMO, it’s a tough problem. While it would be great to have more diversity in STEM workplaces, you also don’t want to be hiring incompetent or unqualified people just because they will add to the diversity. On the other hand, you also don’t want people in positions of power, like male bosses/leads, treating female employees unfairly based on old-school ways of thinking.
Damore allegedly noted in his LinkedIn profile that he had a Ph.D. from Harvard. In response to questions about this claim, Harvard reported that he did not complete the program.
Damore subsequently removed this notation from his account. As the mother of someone who is in her fifth year of a very rigorous Ph.D. program, I find lying about educational credentials to be despicable. The fact that many people do it is irrelevant to me.
He is getting far more scrutiny than he ever intended. Yet I’m sure he will leverage the entire thing to his advantage. He apparently is considering suing Google for his firing.
@raneck, I don’t know, but imo it is completely inappropriate to insinuate one has a Ph.D. when one has not completed the program. I know my D does not list that she has one on her LinkedIn profile, only that she is a doctoral candidate.
About that ABD, I hate the term. It’s meaningless. PhD is all about research and dissertation. So what does all but dissertation mean? Isn’t it a bit like saying I have a bread practically all baked when what you have is a bag of flour from grocery store? Passing prelim or qual and completing required courses if any are required just gets you in the gate.
Some places it means post defense, and so just submitting the actual dissertation documents left to do. I’ve never seen it being any earlier than post-proposal. At my school it was a formal process to go abd ( post proposal) because abd students are charged less tuition.