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Google Burns a Heretic
James Damore is fortunate that we don’t burn heretics at the stake, because he has blasphemed.
The fired Google engineer might as well have been writing a script designed to prove that one of the world’s largest companies embodies every left-wing stereotype imaginable — blinkered, intolerant, and authoritarian. Damore’s memo alleged that one problem with Google’s corporate culture is that people feel “shamed into silence” on important questions and, bam, they fired him. Hollywood might have rejected such a script on the grounds that Google would never do something that so confirms people’s suspicions about the left. These are supposed to be the smartest people, right?
Damore told the truth. This is not to endorse every word of his memo, but he was completely right that the subject of innate differences between men and women has become taboo. He pointed out, fairly, that whereas some on the right reject science on questions of climate change and evolution, some (many?) on the left resist science on issues of biological differences between men and women. Among left-leaning intellectuals, and that includes the types who run Google, it is not only assumed that all observed differences in traits, interests, and choices between the sexes are the result of oppression (or “socially constructed”), but it is heresy to question this view.
Left-wing outlets like Vox have labelled Damore’s memo a “sexist screed,” and Danielle Brown, Google’s vice-president for “diversity, integrity, and governance” issued a statement declining even to link to the memo because “it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender . . . and it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes, or encourages.” That doesn’t quite capture it. Google suppresses dissent, just as the memo warned. Orwell lives.
So what did he say that was so intolerable? Did he say women aren’t smart? Did he say that women should not be recruited to work at Google? Hardly. He offered that perhaps biological differences between the sexes may partially account for the fact that women are not 50 percent of the engineers at Google (though they are about 48 percent of Google’s non-tech employees). He observed that, on average, men tend to be more interested in things and women more interested in people. What a scandal! Except, in 2015, women accounted for 20.03 percent of all engineering graduates, but 84.43 percent of health professionals. As Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute noted, the share of women holding tech positions at Google (20 percent) is close to the percentage of women computer science graduates (18 percent).
Damore said that men are more competitive and women more cooperative. Studies of the effects of testosterone and other hormones confirm that there is a biological foundation for these differing traits. Damore noted that women prefer more workplace flexibility than men and that accordingly, Google might want to permit more part-time work to accommodate women’s preferences. He pleaded, above all, that Google treat every person as an individual.
It is remarkable to me that any difference between the sexes is presumed to be a disadvantage for women – to the point that facts must be suppressed and orthodoxy enforced.
Our society erupts in routine firestorms about women in technical fields because that is one of the few that is male-dominated. But women far outnumber men in many other realms. Besides earning 56 percent of all bachelors degrees, women comprise 55 percent of financial managers, 59 percent of budget analysts, and 63 percent of insurance underwriters. Sixty-one percent of veterinarians are women, along with 72 percent of Ph.D. psychologists. Why are these disparities tolerable?
What Damore said about men being attracted to things and women to people is of course a generalization. Individuals will vary. Some women are into engineering and technical subjects, God bless them, just as some men are drawn to pediatrics and social work. But the bell curves are different, and the fact that men lag behind women in veterinary medicine is not necessarily due to structural sexism or discrimination. It may be a matter of preference. That was Damore’s point about engineers at Google.
The other truth that is obscured by this frenzy is that the economy is tilting in the direction of women’s natural advantages, not men’s. The post-industrial economy rewards communication skills, interpersonal skills, and cooperative efficiency. Men’s physical strength, willingness to endure danger and other hardships, and independence are of diminishing value. Those are challenges we must address for everyone’s good. But as Google just showed to its shame, you can’t say that and hope to survive in corporate America.
Published in Culture, Science & Technology
That is what I do not understand. What this guy published would get any white male fired from about any modern day company. This is not surprising. Nor will he have any sort of employment case, though Google may settle to make this go away and bind him with an oath of shut up.
She is a lukewarmer. National Review put out a editorial that basically said that as well. In essence, they believe that some of the slight rise in aggregate temperatures is due to carbon dioxide. That don’t agree that the world is ending because of it and lukewarms tend to be quite hot on free markets.
That’s an interesting point. Has anyone heard of this nonsense being done to a woman or a non-white person? Or is it like how Muslims are never forced to bake a gay wedding cake.
I doubt it unless Google wants to settle because they want this to go away. I am sure that Google’s HR department required James Damore to sign documents that state his employment was conditional on him not creating a harassing work environment defined by things that make others uncomfortable.
Another difference between Hobby Lobby and Google is that Google is part of the government. Google was willing to be hauled into President Obama’s office to talk about ways of combating terrorist recruitment on social media, i.e. to combat conservatives and especially Christian conservatives. That makes this a First Amendment issue.
And…posted this on the other post dealing with the Google action. For those who haven’t seen this video, Peterson delves into gender diversity in the workplace, unconscious bias testing and other SJW idiocies. Yes, it’s a long video but it’s well worth your time to watch it.
Talking to the President and expressing left leaning view points doesn’t make Google part of the government.
Not officially in a sense that affects its tax status. And not for talking to the president and expressing left-leaning viewpoints, which is not what we’re talking about. But in allowing itself to obey President Obama’s command to come to its office to discuss ways to shape narratives on social media, yes, for practical purposes it is a part of the government.
Anyone have a handy link to the Damore text itself?
https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320
Exactly, I was with her until that last paragraph:
Men’s physical strength, willingness to endure danger and other hardships, and independence are of diminishing value?
To whom?
We may be on the brink of war now. When the military has to actually become a fighting force again, instead of B. Hussein’s playground for social experimentation; when the US reinstitutes the draft as we will have to when the carnage mounts up–
the “diminishing value” of those masculine traits will do a dizzying reversal.
That’s where he made his bloomer—a partial buy-in of the diversity myth. Had he realized that there’s no particular advantage to workplace “diversity,” he might have been content to keep his head down and his divergent thoughts to himself.
And the irony is – the Left denies the realities of human nature to which they succumb every day.
This is a management failure. No one seems to be happy.
I converse with a few google employees regularly, and I like their technical goals. The software industry is rife with half implemented hacks and awful fragility. The security or lack thereof has shown how bad it is. This stuff is hard, smart people are very aware of if and working very hard to fix these difficult issues. Same with the awful state of web programming; I use some corporate web sites and they are unbelievably bad; 1986 IBM Pc with 5 1/4 floppy disk running dBase bad. They are bad because to make them good is very complex and expensive.
They have tried to attract smart people and make their workplace pleasant. Fine. But their mistake has been the people they hired to implement it.
I work in a male dominated industry. It isn’t that there aren’t women who could do the job, but that there are few men able to do it and even fewer women due to the nature of the work. If I wanted to attract female job applicants I would have to restructure the industry, I would have to change everything from the products we use (and are available) and the locations where they are installed. I have better things to do with my time.
I’d suggest that Google restructure their HR mentality. Recognize what makes what they do on the engineering end of things predominantly male. That doesn’t mean boorish. Politeness and toning down the ugliness is not unreasonable. But don’t impose some ridiculous artificial standard upon people getting work done. Work with the natural gifts and abilities of people, don’t try to fix or fit round pegs in square holes. There are very capable women in those fields, I have had some contact with them. Learn from them. They know how to do it. So do the men.
Ultimately the ugliness comes down to trying to impose some utopian ideal upon reality. You don’t have time to do that. There are more pressing problems to be solved. Your making the tools to enable building interconnected businesses will have a lasting effect upon lots of people, you might even turn the productivity problem around. But your utopian silliness will be one more bad mistake upon the pile of historical errors.
No it doesn’t.
This is just goofy and indefensible. Are you being a troll or do you really believe this? If President Trump called you and asked you to come to his office would you? That wouldn’t make you a government agent.
Well, I think the actual thing that Google should be investigated for was their collusion with Obama and Hillary in altering search results so that pro-Democrat propaganda would be promoted. Same with Facebook and Twitter. These corporations essentially control thought. And I’m trying to reconcile my strong belief in the freedom that belongs to private corporations to what they’ve essentially become: political propaganda sources that have a deleterious effect on the national consciousness.
Thanks. My thoughts exactly.
The leadership of Google openly supported Obama in 2008 and Clinton in 2016. I agree that participating in an event at the White House does not make them a government agent, but the leadership leans left to far left IMO.
I think we should investigate whether there was any quid-pro-quo between Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and the Obama administration or the Hillary campaign.
I realize that leftists often don’t need any quid-pro-quo, because this is a religious crusade for them. It’s ideological. But what the heck, let’s turn over every rock.
As it turns out, Unsk wrote the same thing. His mistake was not writing “et al” he wrote et all. But you both are writing the same thing.
Yes. That’s why I responded with agreement (see the word “yep” up there?) and then added an article with a nice list. For further information.
I agree they lean too far to the left and I am trying to figure out how to reduce Google’s revenue from my eyeballs to as close to zero as I can (anyone have any ideas for a decent non-android, no-ios smartphone?). But they are not the government.
Indeed. I think conservatives are getting this story largely wrong. It’s not about “diversity” at all.
He wasn’t fired for being a sexist bigot. He was fired for questioning the silicon valley hamster-wheel corporate culture.
Look at all the suggestions he made for how to make the Google work experience better for women. Better benefits. Better work-life balance. More flexible hours. Etc. Etc. Etc.
These are the sort of desires that companies like Google try to beat out of their staff. They create the reality distortion field that their company is such “a great place to work” precisely so that employees never ask for things like … better benefits, better work-life balance, more flexible hours, etc. etc. etc.
By framing his memo as a “diversity” thing, the author really shot himself in the foot, because he handed Google the ideal cover for them to fire him. He might as well have tried to unionize the place!
The stuff that Damore mentions in the memo is exactly the sort of cult-like stuff that Dan Lyons discusses in this video:
Of course I believe it, and it is disheartening to see that so many conservatives were not outraged by what happened.
Meeting with President Trump on substantive issues could make me a defacto government agent, which is one of many reasons I doubt I would come. I can’t think of a good reason why a President would want me there. If there is something we would need to communicate, there is always e-mail. Anything appropriate that President Obama needed to communicate with the big social media companies could have been done via e-mail or press releases.
I remember working as a night guard at a factory that was having some labor disputes (back in the mid 70s). My supervisor told me what had happened on the previous shift. Congressman Rick Nolan (now back in Congress after all these years) had showed up. The plant manager stopped him and ordered him off the property, in words that probably violate Ricochet’s CoC.
That action represents the proper relationship between private people or businesses and big-shot politicians. In more recent years, when politicians would come to my university workplace for a dog and pony show or whatever, I would usually try not to be around, and if that wasn’t possible (e.g. because I was needed for technical support, or was part of the dog-and-pony show) I’d be sure not to put myself in a position where I’d be expected to shake hands. This was the case even for politicians who were half-way decent. I have nothing to add to their lives and they have nothing to add to mine, so why?
Why do you think President Obama had all the social media companies come to meet with him? What legitimate objective could there possibly have been for it?
Yes, it does. A president was enlisting private companies to interfere with freedom of speech.
This WSJ article gets it:
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/memo-to-a-google-engineer-1502234200
The National Labor Relations Act guarantees employees “the right to act together to try to improve their pay and working conditions, with or without a union”.
Damore’s memo was all about improving working conditions at Google.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/09/james-damore-solid-grounds-sue-google-discrimination/
Pawn. Stooge. Puppet. Mouthpiece. I’ll buy all these descriptors. But “part of”? Not in any meaningful sense of those words.
I wonder if we’ll see a drop in revenue for Google in the upcoming quarter. I think Twitter’s mind-controlling behavior has certainly cost them.
Twitter didn’t add any new users last quarter