It is no surprise, then, that corporations are increasingly populated with young adults who do not know how to handle political views or scientific claims they have been taught are out of bounds of public discussion. When Google’s diversity officer replied to James Damore’s email, it was an incoherent affirmation of the company’s diversity policy, coupled with an accusation of sexism. It didn’t even attempt to cite reasons why the science Damore mentioned was wrong, or why his political views about diversity policy were misguided. It just asserted they were, and then used that assertion the next day as a pretext to fire him. This is what we get when university professors abuse their power and attempt to turn students into pawns in their political game, rather than autonomous agents with the capacity (but not yet ability) to think for themselves.
Combined with the problems of journalism, which are also discussed, this is a societal disaster.
[Update a while later]
Straight talk about sex differences in the workplace.
[Update mid-morning]
No one expects the Google Inquisition.
[Late-morning update]
By firing the memo author, Google validated his thesis.
[Update a few minutes later]
I don’t often agree with David Brooks, but yes, the Google CEO should resign.
[Update early afternoon]
Google is run like a religious cult:
“Conform and carry out the rituals, and you’ll be rewarded and praised; ask any uncomfortable questions or offend the wrong people, and the threats and public shaming will be swift and ruthless. The religion in this case is a kind of intersectional feminism, its central tenets are Diversity and Inclusion, its demonic enemy is Bias, and its purifying rituals include humiliating forms of ‘training’ that resemble Maoist struggle sessions.”
“This might sound crazy to a lot of your readers, but college students should understand, since it’s a similar culture.”
This is just awful.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Apparently, Damore wasn’t sufficiently afraid. He didn’t see that this was the unacknowledged rule. Google is a safe space, muffling the fear. That in itself is something to be afraid of. When sparing everyone fear is the order of the day, you need to fear you will be deemed the embodiment of the fear that others must be spared. Then you’re completely unsafe. And gone. No man, no fear.
And as Stalin would have said, “No problem.”
[Update a while later]
How about a TV sitcom titled “Everybody Loves Damore.” It would be about a young “family man” whose life revolves around his mom, his wife, his kids including the eldest who is a daughter, and his women colleagues at a fictitious graphics-arts computer company in the Bay Area called “Doodle.” And an older brother with whom there is an intense competition for his mom’s favor along with a dad who is an unredeemed sexist and general curmudgeon.
Damore is a “regular guy” software writer from a working-class background who despite meaning well and wanting to please everybody, manages to say things that displease his wife, mom, women co-workers, or sets them to bickering with each other. The rest of each episode is Damore trying to patch up the hurt feelings and set things right.
You know that would get corrupted by the SJWs before it ever hit the airwaves.
How about instead just passing this article around to your college-bound friends and their parents? I think it’s a great analysis, thanks for finding it Rand.
The Everybody Loves Raymond program along with every other such sitcom since The Honeymooners has been centered around especially male gender stereotypes. So in that sense, all of those TV programs had been heavily SJW influenced.
I am suggesting that Mr. Damore “go with the flow” and cash in on his 15-minutes of fame as an “otherwise loveable guy who says things that upset women” as there is no way of fighting this.
This woman’s article needs a fisking but I’ll just say she’s assuming woman are singled out for stress when the truth is men get the exact same anxiety but don’t claim it’s because they’re men.
Her word choices are selected to say, “we’re on to what you men are trying to suggest” when Damore didn’t suggest anything… he straight forward laid out his position which she simply dismissed (after acknowledgement as if that proves she’s being fair. Dismissal remains dismissal.)
He is a threat to our children! He is beguiling and dangerous! And he turned me into a newt!
Force him to drink hemlock!
Happened to go to The Verge for a space-related article and got a bashing of Damore by Those Who Know Better Than Us. They are so clueless they don’t understand why he calls it a gulag.
How double plus good! I can put The Verge on my own blacklist now.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/10/16127968/fired-google-engineer-compares-high-paid-tech-job-to-soviet-forced-labor
All the re-education your heart desires and all for free! Comparisons to a gulag are so inappropriate comrade. Working at Google is a virtual worker’s paradise…
I am going to need a hell of a lot more helicopters before this is all over.
The solution to 1984 is 1973.
Hmmm, there are several things here that are destructive from a business point of view. First, we have a variety of lawsuit-creating behaviors such as a huge pattern of harassment and blacklists. The blacklists in particular sound really bad because they supposed go outside of the company. That alone could generate a repeat of the hiring collusion scandal that cost Google a lot of money (they were one of four companies that paid in total $415 million).
Second, we have people whose jobs apparently are to police the company for ideological reasons. That means that the company is paying people to generate huge net costs for the company. That’s on top of creating a hostile work environment which kills morale and drives away good employees.
That looks to me like a colossal high level management failure that will destroy the company if something isn’t done about it in the next few years.
Google has the right to hire and fire anyone, for any reason, so long as those actions are within the law. I wish Google hadn’t fired Damore for this particular action, but I’m not outraged at Google. It’s “free enterprise” in action. The SJW policing and shaming stuff will either survive and ultimately become the new normal across the country and in all industries, or it won’t. People will have to decide what social codes they will live and work by. I hope the SJW stuff does not survive, but I am not certain it will recede.
The more I hear about this episode, the more I’m glad I didn’t get a job with google. And I suspect all the other major tech companies in the San Fransicko swamp area have similar culture rot.
The circumstances of this quote intrigued me.
Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.
Although I find little doubt that this is a credo Stalin would have wholehearted endorsed and in fact practiced, a quick check on Wikipedia says that this is not actually an attributable quote:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
This actually comes from the novel Children of the Arbat (1987) by Anatoly Rybakov. In his later book The Novel of Memories (In Russian) Rybakov admitted that he had no sources for such a statement.
I would love to be proved wrong on this quote, however, Stalin was monstrous enough without the need to resort to false attribution. Also that doesn’t mean that we should ignore Rybakov. In fact just the opposite.
Speaking of Stalin, this is relevant. A glimpse of our future?
And you know they don’t really see Trump as such a dictator, despite the wild rhetoric. They’re more afraid to not criticize him at every minute opportunity.
Our friends to the left sure do love the enthusiasm hurdle.