Google's Leaked Memo

It is when it affects their decision making and when they work together.

A snippy comment here or there, etc. Office politics is not fun.

The employees’ political background really isn’t important.

That’s what Google has stated, but it’s not what they believe. They believe that the political background isn’t important so long as it doesn’t offend people. If it does offend someone, as this document clearly did, then they are against the code of conduct and should be fired. I don’t think that’s right, but that’s the way that Google is being operated.

I see as both parties are in the wrong since there is no profitability on those “seminars” and an intra company social media network is stupid.

And work isn’t a place for manifestos either.

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Why I LOVE driving a truck!
Just Me and my MP3’s! When a different opinion shows up it is usually on the back bumper of a Prius :slight_smile:


On a more serious note:
Office politics matter when one side seeks to eliminate the other from the workplace and more importantly, public discourse and the arena of ideas. There is overwhelming evidence this has happened in FCC approved news stations.
This is now moving to the internet.

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Dropping another interview with the author of the memo.

Peterson’s perspective on the gender differences portion of the memo is pretty relevant, as he is one of the leading researchers in personality metrics.

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I agree an intranet social media platform is a disaster zone. However. He never sent this out in a mass email like early articles stated. I.E. buzzfeed stating he sent a mass email to all of Google.

He posted it in a blog post on the social media platform and a month after it was posted the diversity board found it and sent it out to the news. It’s all in the video @Stets posted.

I sent this forum thread to my wife who read the memo and the comments here and replied first with the statement “This is why I wish I was born a man”

Anyone else actually share this with a woman for her opinion on the matter?

Google immediately proved the guy right.

No, it wasn’t. Not at all. Read it.

I hope James Damore gets a 9 figure settlement.

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Two sisters and my mother. They unanimously thought Google made a big mistake firing the guy. Mom was pretty irritated that so many people don’t understand the difference between a stereotype and a population average. She taught college statistics.

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This is interesting, my wife has a Masters in Biostatistics and is working on her dissertation for her PhD in Statistics.

But we haven’t discussed whether Google was right to fire or not, sort of irrelevant, but more about his faux-academic writing style, loaded assumptions and lack of evidence or citations to back up his assertions.

She just sent me this link: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-a-google-manufacturing-robot-and-i-believe-humans-are-biologically-unfit-to-have-jobs-in-tech

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I’m not sure where your read the memo but a lot of “news” outlets are circulating a version with links to supporting information removed. I’m not saying this would pass for a term paper but he does have some sources. I believe this is the original:

Also there are a lot of links to look into in the description of the interview I posted earlier if you want to dig into the science pertaining to the Big 5 personality traits.

As to the writing style being “faux-academic” I think that’s a bit harsh. I don’t think the guy was trying to write a term paper so much as formulate his thoughts on an issue that was bothering him.

More of the authoritative voice.

A comment from the wife with regards to his links: "his conclusions are much more definitive than the those in the abstracts of the first few academic papers "

"for instance, the reference for the claim that women place stronger emphasis on work-life balance than men says the following in the abstract: “Recent research shows that high levels of female employment and family-friendly policies reduce gender equality in the workforce and produce the glass ceiling. Preference theory is the only theory that can explain these new trends, the continuing pay gap and occupational segregation. …However, the differences between men and women’s career goals are smaller than sometimes thought"
preference differences != biological differences”

I’m adding her input because I’m not qualified, most of this sort of language just makes me glaze over and I exist in the world of the physical much more comfortably. That said, he sounds like the snowflake he hates, talking out of both sides of his mouth with statements lamenting “microaggressions” and yet psychological safety with regard to being judged harshly for [his] words.

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I’d rather not get involved in this discussion but just commenting on his sources they aren’t particularly strong.

Agree very much with that assessment.

Also a worrying number of the sources are links to Wikipedia, personal blogs and webapages (many with quite clear biases), self help books, questionable “experts” and sites on some private Intranet or Google Group which can’t be accessed.

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I think it should be noted that if he broke company policy, I don’t know how he’d manage to bring a successful suit to bear. Granted we don’t (or I don’t anyway) know the extent of his contract, but at my job if I said something dumb and got fired, well, that’d be that.

Say dumb things, win dumb prizes.

I disagree with most of this view. Rather I think it should be more nuanced and consider non-political motives as a cause for the ‘PC’ culture.

I think the word “bias” is used too much and incorrectly. Bias implies unfairness. Google doesn’t have a left bias, it (or most of its management) has leftist values. There is nothing inherently unfair about having those values, or even about enforcing policies based on them in the workplace.

The problem is that Google’s value of ‘psycological safety’ isn’t achieved by their current policy that shuts down discussions on certain topics (gender representation being the main example here). The result is rather poorly described as a “politically correct monoculture”. The way this is worded puts Google in a bad light. But what if the topic, as in this case, is related to company policy? Is it just a political discussion or are they now openly criticizing management decisions?

What I’d like to know is how this ‘shutting down’ is done. Do managers fire people starting these discussions? Tell them to shut up and stop being offensive? Do fellow employees report them?

Even if you don’t agree that a workplace needs ‘psycological safety’, when you apply for a job a Google you should know you are entering an environment with leftist values. These values aren’t just going to change because you ask a few critical questions. Most adults are entrenched in their beliefs or have other hidden agendas. So it is kinda pointless to start a discussion about something like the gender gap that is surrounded by fuzzy facts and numbers.

This memo just sounds like the author is venting his frustration at the immutability of irrational policies, blaming a silencing culture (of questionable existence) for perceived failings of management. But management is management; they don’t owe employees a full rationale of their policies. Questioning their decisions openly could diminish their effectiveness, maybe they have reasons that are secret, such as securing special funding sources.

In conclusion, silencing can be desirable even if it aversely affects ‘psychological safety’, because the company effectiveness is the primary concern for Google. Don’t confuse a management strategy with political bias.

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The whole point of this thread is that he was fired for saying these things, that’s exactly what we are talking about by “shutting down.”

I.E he was FIRED for saying these things, not like he went around touting it either. He simply asked what people thought about what he had written. He even stated he wanted people to prove him wrong so he didn’t think he was just an idiot. He got exactly what he expected. No one even attempted to dissprove a thing he said they just “shut it down.”

Aka safe space. Silencing employees of free thought outside of the workplace that has nothing to do with work is ok? Ahhh now we really know how you feel.

So firing people for asking questions is reasonable. Ok, glad I don’t work for you.

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Nah firing people for stuff like this also means its okay for chick fil a or hobby lobby to fire people for talking about science and dinosaurs, so fuck that, I’d rather just ignore and roll my eyes at the deadbeats like this dude

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You are implying many things I never said. My main critique of the memo was that it lacked nuance, then I get some very unnuanced (borderline incorrect) comments in return. The irony.

link or it never happened :slight_smile:

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Did she say why she said that? What does she mean?

I didn’t share it but women already read it. None disagreed with the general ideas layed out.

As I mentioned in a previous post, all women who have talked about this kind of stuff in relation to this memo or before don’t want special treatment which is what a lot for these programs do.

I don’t think anyone is arguing that it’s a perfectly written memo but no one said it should be, he states himself that this was just thoughts and he wanted discussion, that he was talking in generalisation and almost nothing said applies to all people.

The work life balance thing was brought up on an interview that the research shows that it is there and a valid question, but not fully understood/explored yet. He never disputes that.