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Silicon Valley Snowflakes
By now you’ve heard about the memo that circulated at Google excoriating criticizing the company for its politically correct corporate culture, mindless “Diversity uber alles” policies, and intolerance for people with different opinions. To demonstrate their commitment to diversity, Google hunted down and fired him. In Silicon Valley, it would seem opinions critical of political correctness and diversity are ‘violence’ because ‘ they make people feel afraid.
How glad I am not to be a mewling snowflake. But if one of the points alleged by the memo is that some women (and weak, effeminate millennial beta males) are so emotionally fragile that they are a detriment to the workplace, doesn’t skipping work because a memo hurt their feelings kind of prove the point?
Published in Science & Technology
Or boycott. I had already begun moving my activities away from Google due to their corporate support for the Democrat party and left wing causes.
Search – done
News – done
Maps – next
Gmail – gonna be a pain in the behind, but using it via an e-mail client denies the webmail page views.
Youtube – toughest of all
Even making the changes I already have, I’ve probably cut their pageview revenue from my account by 90%.
Victor, you’ve been on fire lately! I sure have enjoyed your output!
He’s Vikingthekitten!
Simple: They’re not very smart.
Software Engineers might be smarter than average but they’re not necessarily geniuses. And even though Google is considered a top company, it still employs 57,100 people. They simply cannot all be cognitively elite.
That assumes the person who wrote that tweet is a Software Engineer at Google, which is an extremely charitable assumption on my part. The Great Recession has created a class of otherwise unemployable people who know how to nothing except engage in this sort of grievance mongering shakedown of the technology industry, sinply because it’s the one industry that seems to be still doing well and is mostly free from government regulation.
Because they have lead sheltered snowflake participation trophy lives and have never seen true violence or the actual results of true violence.
They are the type of people that put rainbow filters on their Facebook page or send James Taylor to sing a song to terrorist victims and think that has solved the problem.
The only real surprise here is that it took Google so long to fire him. I would’ve thought about an hour.
And note how the left’s “words as violence” theme is picking up steam. I’d expect it to be pretty much everywhere very shortly.
And the corollary “violence is speech” as per ‘antifa’
What Google has demonstrated is that those in-house platforms are mere window dressing, and that free sharing of ideas and opinions not in line with the already dominant opinions is not welcome. My large company employer has some such platforms, but I do not participate, as I have assumed that opinions not aligned with standard Leftist Corporate Opinion would not be welcome, and could result in adverse employment consequences.
The fear against expressing different ideas spills over to technical and business ideas, too. As anonymous (comment #23) noted, the memo was a warning about a dysfunctional work culture that was likely to be bad for long-term business. It doesn’t take many punishments to discourage most employees from submitting ideas or making suggestions.
My corporate management keeps wondering why employees don’t submit more new ideas for the company to pursue. We now have a specific Exhibit A to cite to corporate management. This is not good for the long term health of the company.
This is upsetting, but not surprising and I don’t think it requires any action on my part. I think it is silly when people boycott Chic-fil-a for political differences and I decided long ago I wouldn’t boycott google for our political differences. At least not until some other company can provide the same level of service (like my phone plan which replaced verizon ($140/month 2 lines and data) with google Fi ($45/month same deal).
Meanwhile I choose to believe that in the long run these practices will hurt not help these companies. Right now google can afford to spend money and invest in projects I think are harmful to its corporate success. When the unexpected new competitor or replacement comes, and it will come – and it will be a surprise, the investment they’ve made and changes to their culture will not help them. Then they will either change, or go the way of Kodak, Sprint, etc. That is… if the government stays out of it.
The guy in the exchange who was claiming that words can be violence got 17 likes on his first comment; the guy who chimed in to disagree with him got 324 likes, and words can be violence guy’s response to dissent got 0 likes. So, there is hope. The “words as violence” theme is picking up steam in some circles, but I don’t ever expect it to be everywhere: you would have to attended an elite university to be dumb enough to believe such a thing, and Thank God, most people haven’t, and aren’t.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Leftists are now roaming the countryside policing your words, and will seek to have you punished for thoughtcrimes.
A couple pieces from the Federalist on this alarming trend:
Reporting People To Authorities For Disagreeing With You Is Creepy Bullying, Not Heroism
Lena Dunham Epitomizes Our Self-Enforcing Police State
Lena Dunham turning informant on politically incorrect airline employees shows how the Left is training us to internalize the ethos of the police state.
One of the problems is that crazy, fringe views (like “words are violence” or “speech we don’t like should be outlawed” or “there needs to be a law to force Fox News to stop telling lies” — all stupid things I’ve seen discussed with increasing frequency) are amplified by the nature of the internet. So yes, “words are violence” might only get a small number of “likes” but it also gets spread far and wide, because when the left-wingers at Google and Facebook and Twitter can pretty much control what you see on the internet, they will ensure that “words are violence” is spread farther than “You’re a complete nutcase for thinking that.”
In order to rescue the next generation from turning into left-wing idiots, the first thing to do is get them away from social media. After you achieve that, see if you can get them away from the internet altogether.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.
What Google did was within their rights. I suspect that the employee signed some of the same HR stuff I did that basically says you can be fired if you make others feel uncomfortable or harassed.
As for him ever working again. That is pretty much over at any decent company. He might get a job as a contractor since they do less checking in those positions but as a full time employee he is done, at least for a decade or so.
The problem is that, detailed in some other reporting on this issue, Google managers freely admit to keeping ‘blacklists’ of people they will not work with based on their ‘dunderheaded’ political viewpoints. Even to the detriment of the business. Tells you where the Company culture is. The 324 will quickly get the point that it’s the opinion of the 17 that count.
I’m glad he didn’t know better. It will be a sad day when we reach the point where Google’s behavior is no longer shocking.
I could be mistaken, but I think I read somewhere that the posting was originally anonymous. Probably had to take sometime time to de-anonymize it.
I would guess that the firing got run past Legal as well.
Silicon Valley is making it perfectly clear. The future doesn’t include you.
This would be good, but can it happen? I’m thinking the more likely beneficial route is to hope that they become so immersed in social media and the internet that they never actually leave the house to do anything.
Heh. That’s an option. But I actually want to rescue kids from social media. Which is essentially a hell-hole. When I read about a 12 year old who committed suicide because she was bullied on social media, I’m more convinced than ever of my decision to keep my own 12 and 13 year old daughters far, far away from it.
Also . . .
https://twitter.com/SethAMandel/status/894745632056922112
I read through a good portion of the former Google employee’s post and much of it aligns quite accurately with what Jordan Peterson has said about workforce diversity initiatives – particularly about the eventual gender preferences of men and women that aren’t the same.
He thought he was helping Jerry MacGuire style. Oh my. 35 yr old men don’t like being told they’re impotent losers, too much reality. Too much violence.
I remember an article on Slate.com about a decade ago suggesting that we don’t need to worry about “Big Brother” — the notion of an all-powerful government observing our every choice and punishing us for them. Rather, worry about “Little Brother” — the millions of people out there with smart phones who will report your wrongthink and stupid decisions to the internet mob for their amusement or righteous anger.
From the engineer who got fired:
It sounds like the media is circling the wagons and doing everything it can to mischaracterize the memo as
“anti-diversity” and claiming that the author said women don’t belong in engineering positions.
Which is a lie. But a lie in the service of thought control is no vice, right?
Excuse me while I change into something more comfortable.
It will be interesting to see how Damore’s anti-retaliation complaint goes with a Trump-Administration NLRB. It’s not clear to me that the NLRB thinks white guys have equal-opportunity rights, so I hope all of his eggs aren’t in that basket.
Maybe iWe has an opening for him?