Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

There's a post from someone who's just left Google, and would have been in a position where he could fire someone like the manifesto's writer, which among other things lays out the grounds under which the writer would be fired immediately: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

I'm not sure that makes sense, tipsy mothra - it's not like every book that comes out, the mob tosses a coin.

were you not invited to the last coin tossing

I don't think it would be too hard to run afoul of these always changing guidelines.

I wonder upon what grounds you'd fire someone who put his name in a professional context to the opinion that women are silly creatures and inferior coders.

I imagine breaching the no-fedora policy would be a promising start but possibly there are other loopholes he could be caught out on

hmm yes, I wonder *scratches chin*

at the very least, even if they're really into people publishing little manifestos about how projects can best be run, it really seems like there would be some guidance as to what's acceptable.

I think the giant hole in the middle of his logic is specific examples of how his, um, "philosophy" applies to specific staffing and HR decisions google has made, and the point where the rubber meets the road is probably where he got run over

t's not like every book that comes out, the mob tosses a coin.

Yeah, I just mean it seems dicey for authors to encourage author-harassment. Live by the call-out, die by the call-out.

You talked about a need for discussion about ideas; you need to learn the difference between “I think we should adopt Go as our primary language” and “I think one-third of my colleagues are either biologically unsuited to do their jobs, or if not are exceptions and should be suspected of such until they can prove otherwise to each and every person’s satisfaction.”

Difficult not to concur although again, there's a discomfort in applauding the firing - I suspect someone higher up the chain at Google could make such statements and not be fired for them, although granted this is more to do with how much job security you get at different levels of the hierarchy, than with what is and is not acceptable to say

Did you just hi 5 your post

I wish people were better and learned to actually ask questions of their peers, and recognize others as their peers even if they don't look and sound the same or lead the same sorts of lives. If this aggrieved guy had a peer group that wasn't focused on angrily proclaiming some bizarre logic/emotion divide on messageboards that's messing with their lives, they might talk to real people and figure out their ideas need some work... and are based in an emotional response, not a logical one.

There's so much underlying anger and frustration in rants like these that it really outlines who is working from emotional responses and not rational discussion. Rational doesn't mean cherry-picking a list of "facts," it means examining your premises and using reason, not didactic language

That's laudable but it p much always imo comes from a position of "I'll change u u fucker" afaict

xp Yuh. This def seems like someone that's been hanging around MRA/redpill sites or at the very least getting building a view of life based on information about gender from questionable sources almost definitely online

In fact - if that's the case we're looking at same underlying problem with both this guy and that YA fiction drama story

Yeah. The YA thing and the Google thing are an interesting contrast, because they are both being shared in right-wing social media as examples of political-correctness-run-wild, but from a liberal standpoint they raise really different questions.

not sure I follow, darragh. if I ask my friends if I have a point here, are they really going to pounce on me like that?

Call it deeperlying than that perhaps.. But the p under the mattress has an ounce attached def

An example of the pea under the mattress perhaps. Again from that Zunger article:

Engineering is not the art of building devices; it’s the art of fixing problems. Devices are a means, not an end. Fixing problems means first of all understanding them — and since the whole purpose of the things we do is to fix problems in the outside world, problems involving people, that means that understanding people, and the ways in which they will interact with your system, is fundamental to every step of building a system. (This is so key that we have a bunch of entire job ladders — PM’s and UX’ers and so on — who have done nothing but specialize in those problems. But the presence of specialists doesn’t mean engineers are off the hook; far from it. Engineering leaders absolutely need to understand product deeply; it’s a core job requirement.)

^ this makes tons and tons of sense and is a very nice rebuttal to the idea that engineering isn't about 'people', but Zunger also admits:

People who haven’t done engineering, or people who have done just the basics, sometimes think that what engineering looks like is sitting at your computer and hyper-optimizing an inner loop, or cleaning up a class API. We’ve all done this kind of thing, and for many of us (including me) it’s tremendous fun. And when you’re at the novice stages of engineering, this is the large bulk of your work: something straightforward and bounded which can be done right or wrong, and where you can hone your basic skills.

'The novice stages' is a nice way of saying 'When you're making a lot less money than me and have to do lots of work in the uncertain hopes you'll be promoted to my level eventually'. Zunger sort of lets slip that this guy that got fired would have been doing a grunt job at the time, in which people skills and empathy probably would look surplus to requirements.

So, like, I dunno. It sounds like the fired guy was putting out a load of stupid, insulting ideas in his manifesto (effectively slagging off a chunk of his colleagues on the grounds that they were women). But I'd be willing to bet working at Google comes with certain pressures.

there are only so many higher-level positions available, and he probably learned he lacked the soft skills for them, and his response was to write a rant about how soft skills are bad

Yup that's a likely scenario too, although my experience of work leads me to be suspicious about the idea that the higher level positions are handed out to people based purely and cleanly on their possession of these 'soft skills'

There is no such serious contention

oh every organization is broken in its own ways and there's no meritocracy

tbh the best soft skill is making a high-level person think you're promotable

^^^

Yuh I take it we've all met that type of 'people person' who is at the same time barely human. None of that really justifies Google man's saying that women should all go away. I do find myself wondering if these high profile ... breachers illustrate deeper, less visible patterns of prejudice that many of their peers hold, but don't express so crassly, and so get away with

That was not a constructive memo but if Google really has a policy where they encourage employees to speak their mind on controversial issues -- as they're claiming -- he shouldn't be fired.

People believe all kinds of stuff. Some of it is bad. The Atlantic said this memo "reveals tech's rotten core" and I think this is the wrong way to understand a single memo representing the viewpoint of one individual who was widely condemned in the tech world and then fired.

I wouldn't want a world where everyone agreed with me.

i don't like to generalize but that ex-google engineer looks basically like i imagine a dude who doesn't understand women would look like.

That was not a constructive memo but if Google really has a policy where they encourage employees to speak their mind on controversial issues -- as they're claiming -- he shouldn't be fired.

I don't know, I thought Zunger's points about how the guy had poisoned his own well were valid. Plus there's a difference between speaking your mind and writing a jeremiad against your company's own stated policies and goals. He doesn't like that Google prioritizes diversity, fine, but Google (apparently) does, or at least wants to give the appearance of doing that. He wasn't disagreeing with them on how to achieve the goal, he was questioning the goal itself. I don't see why an employer is obliged to keep around someone who is at odds with their stated priorities.

it's also important to consider that it would make it difficult for a lot of people and likely all women at Google to want to work with him, not that he was good at working with people before (just a guess)

1/ Censorship is for losers. @WikiLeaks is offering a job to fired Google engineer James Damore. https://t.co/tmrflE72p3

— Julian Assange 🔹 (@JulianAssange) August 8, 2017

lol at that link, he is such a garbage human being.

This thread speaks for me.

Dude tried to stop a top-level initiative by sending out a companywide memo filled with subreddit bullshit, expecting he’d be hailed a hero

— Tim Carmody (@tcarmody) August 8, 2017

there's a difference between speaking your mind and demonstrating your lack of communication skills

if I think my coworker needs to bathe more I don't walk up and say "YO YOU STANK" and slap him in the back of the head

you have to speak to other people in mutually respectful terms in hopes of opening a dialogue, not just dump a bunch of "hurrr women think different here are some charts"

btw no one else has mentioned it, but the charts he used are ridiculously bad

that Tim Carmody thread unperson linked is good, this one also stood out:

"Excuse me, I think company leadership has dangerously ignored the following eternal truths of human nature" Get the entire fuck out of here

— Tim Carmody (@tcarmody) August 8, 2017

https://heavyeditorial.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/james-damore-e1502162420575.jpg?quality=65&strip=all&w=466&strip=all

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTkwNjMwMDAzN15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwOTU3NjMwMTE@._V1_UY317_CR8,0,214,317_AL_.jpg

why is my dude out here looking like a homunculus

i'm not usually one to comment on physical appearance but

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Side-black.gif/800px-Side-black.gif

His "why won't women date me" screed from reddit should be turning up any second now.

tbf jeans from the 90s are cool again

if I think my coworker needs to bathe more I don't walk up and say "YO YOU STANK" and slap him in the back of the head

― mh, Tuesday, August 8, 2017 2:02 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This sounds like many restaurants i worked at

see, context matters, gotta gauge your workplace

although "I got fired for slapping Sergey Brin and telling him he smells bad" would be an excellent reason to get fired from gooogle

Otm

I don't see why an employer is obliged to keep around someone who is at odds with their stated priorities.

Hum hmmm

As a student media advisor, I'm legitimately torn about UF's decision to deny Richard Spencer an invitation to speak on campus.

On on hand, it's illegal for public universities to regulate speech on the basis of the speaker’s point of view. Public university administrators can't order students to invite or rescind invitations to speakers invite to campus on their own initiative, in much the same manner that public uni administrators can't dictate content to student newspapers. Moreover, the Brandenburg case sets a very high bar for challengers of inflammatory speech, i.e. the speech has to provoke the crowd into immediately carrying out acts of violence.

I'm not a lawyer; this is how I understand First Amendment law at public universities. It's possible that the UF president's actions have inspired a law suit which he and his institution may lose based on case law. In addition, UF has enough time before the event to station as much university and local officers on campus as required to ensure everyone's safety. This is the argument we'll likely hear in court.

On the other hand, Charlottesville. I don't know if students invited Spencer to speak. If they didn't, it's a grey area. Either way, I don't want uni administrators shutting down, say, a student newspaper because its content was likely to provoke violence, according to their general counsels.

I don't usually post this sort of thing on ILE, so polite responses requested.

I think the problem is different than it was in Brandenburg or Hess. The "imminent lawless action" is from the simple presence of the speaker on or near campus, since Spencer's presence guarantees that a bunch of nazis and a bunch of protesters are going to show up and at some point it is likely they will throw punches or much, much worse.

The "it is likely" is the grey area. Nazis showing up isn't an incitement, according to the courts.

Yeah, this is a safety issue not a free speech issue imo. Spencer's presence on any campus would cause mayhem. White suprematist shitheads would almost certainly try to start trouble with the people who will protest Spencer.

It's a different situation than Charles Murray or someone like that.