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A Closed Mouth Gathers No Foot
Last night while playing cards, a friend of mine asked me my opinion of the whole “Google memo” affair. I told him the truth: I had no opinion.
In order to have any kind of reasonable, intelligent opinion, I’d need to look into the details, not just the headlines or what other people are saying about it. We’ve already crossed the line into this being “a thing,” and anyone writing about it at this point will emphasize some details and obscure others, to push their particular narrative or agenda.
So I’d have to read the memo myself, all 10 pages of it, examine the charts, follow the citations, and so forth, as well as details about the author, the circumstances of his termination, and what he did in the aftermath. And to be honest, I just don’t care enough about it. I got the slightest gist of the story and ran the other way. But I told my friend, who did do all that, and whose intelligence and opinion I respect, to please share his opinion with me. And he did.
And while I said I had no opinion, I do have one thing to say:
Any memo of that sort, no matter the merits of his argument, is a dicey proposition at best. The tone would need to be perfectly correct to communicate his point without causing a backlash, and that is incredibly difficult to do. That’s not a statement on political correctness, or victimhood, or “social justice warriors,” or anything of that sort. It has to do with basic prudence and communicating with other people, especially within a large organization.
Setting aside all the other stuff people bring to this issue, there’s a virtue to keeping one’s yap shut on certain issues in a workplace. I’m a person of … strong opinions. I’m also a talker. I like to share ideas, I like to explain things. But there are things that I choose not to talk about at work. It’s not because I’ll be repressed or because I’ll be burned as a heretic, but because they’re dicey to talk about. Nobody needs to hear my opinion about them, no good would come from it. It would negatively affect the work environment and my relationships with people. And relationships between people are essential to the functioning of an organization.
So let’s paint the best-case scenario for this guy: Say he’s doing this for benevolent purposes and that his argument is 100 percent correct on the merits. Even then, the memo is still all but guaranteed to upset people. No matter how correct a statement or a piece of information may be, it needs to be presented correctly in order for it to be received by the audience. If it’s something like “the sky is blue,” it’s simple. But depending on the complexity of information and the subjection matter, it may be more difficult. Considering the spectacular failure of his memo, the author clearly wasn’t up to the task.
I already see this guy being turned into some kind of political correctness martyr by people on the right. Color me unsympathetic. I’m not moved by anti-PC grievance mongering. As far as I see it, this guy’s crime wasn’t having the “wrong” opinion on gender differences (or whatever it was), it’s that he created a massive disruption in the work environment for no appreciable benefit.
Even if his goal was entirely benevolent and it was to improve the organization, unless he got the tone absolutely perfect, it was all but guaranteed to fail. He either knew that or was oblivious to that fact. If it was the latter, it means he didn’t understand the organization that he was a part of, its corporate culture, or how to relate to other humans.
Published in General
Try working in a hostile environment sometime, and you maybe won’t feel so smug about those who have the courage to speak up.
Maybe the memo doesn’t help his specific cause, but the unintentional publicity (no, that did not appear to be his intent) calls attention to a very real problem.
Klavan’s article
https://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/2017/08/09/google-had-done-a-horrible-thing-to-its-employees/
has me thinking about GExit. Who knows the best alternative to GMail?
What’s comforting is that social media is lit up on this and there is a lot of spirited debate on sites like LinkedIn and Wired and Damore has thousands of supporters willing to take on those who, in many cases, haven’t bothered to read the memo (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), but are mischaracterizing it as an anti-diversity screed. This is a (Inter)net good.
I think it’s already happening. I just read about something like this, but I think it was more like suing Google for being a threatening work environment because horrible people felt free to express their non-PC views.
You must have done more research than you let on to hold this opinion.
I should add that I’m in agreement with much of what you say, but if we must do exhaustive first-hand research to have a meaningful opinion, we should just do away with democracy here and now. The bar is too high.
I don’t think the premise of this post–
–holds up very well if these “certain issues” are being freely discussed by everyone else, in multiple fora.
The problem that his Leftist coworkers had with him was not that he brought up a controversial subject matter out of nowhere, it’s that he didn’t conform to their opinion on that subject matter.
Generally, one should understand such things. But that doesn’t excuse the corporate culture from being oppressive, or the other humans from being unreasonable.
Face-2-face conversations.
Yeah, here it is:
More Than 60 Women Mull Class-Action Sexism Lawsuit Against Google
Thank you Trinity. Genius is not a title taken lightly, so I am anxious to read the “memo” in full. Fred makes an excellent point – that in the lightning speed of today’s social media, we should not rush to comments until we peel back the onion that spawns the headlines. This is the way journalism and quality reporting used to be done.
On that note, since Fred created the post about the Google story, I feel he should read in full the memo and give his opinion, and not expect his card-playing buddy to do it for him.
Well, according to Damore: I actually published this about a month ago and it was only after it got viral and leaked to the news that Google started caring.
Assuming that’s true, he wasn’t the one who caused the massive disruption in the work environment there at Google. Whoever leaked his memo to the public did that.
Actually, even this limited statement is false. The second link is people rather than things, to an article in a social psychology journal. The larger point is that most of the references are to scholarly journals and that representing them otherwise is misleading.
As I say, we’ve become a society of snitches. Don’t like what someone is saying? Dox them. Leak their documents. Contact their employers and get them fired. To the left, free speech is hate speech, so they will do all they can to silence those they disagree with.
And of course, that’s their tactics toward the President as well. Washington is leakier than a waterbed that’s been run over by a lawn aerator.
Well, as Fred makes perfectly clear, the technical merits of Damore’s memo are tangential to the point he’s making. Anyone with a bare minimum of common sense understands that there are certain topics best not broached in the workplace, at least not publicly and doubly so as a WMO. Google certainly overreacted but workplaces never have been, and I don’t think should be, free speech laboratories. This sad example illustrates why.
Granted, however, it sends a mixed message when you create forums to solicit honest opinions from your employees, and then punish employees for giving the wrong honest opinions.
I fear we’re becoming too comfortable keeping our heads down, staying silent, not rocking the boat, as in Havel’s Lesson of the Greengrocer in his “The Power of the Powerless“. We know what we must do to get along, and we obediently do it.
This, too, is dangerous for a society.
We’ve turned The Emperor’s New Clothes on its head. The little boy who declares the Emperor to be naked does not cause everyone to suddenly feel free to speak the truth. Rather, we quietly look the other direction as the boy is hauled off and imprisoned for saying out loud what everyone knows is true.
The opening post does not ask if the child was telling the truth about Emperor Google. Rather, it declares that this problem child “created a massive disruption in the work environment for no appreciable benefit.” Naturally, he must be punished.
Truth isn’t all that important, because “I just don’t care enough about it.”
As has been pointed out, Damore didn’t ” broach” the topic. It had already been broached, with vigor.
Having read the memo (it’s not that difficult) and watched Damore’s interview with Peterson, I would say that Damore innocently believed that the muckety-mucks at the company he worked for and liked a lot (he was happy working there, he says) were merely misinformed. Once he’d provoked a real exchange of ideas and information, it was possible that Google could save time, money, energy and angst by easing up on the pressure to create a workforce in which women and minorities existed in exactly the same proportions as in society more generally.
Having had the same, earnest feeling myself (“if I just tell them these facts, they’ll understand the situation better and will actually be happier!”) I can easily sympathize. Also, I’m a woman, so I can easily sympathize, ha ha.
Google, like other organizations, has caught the PC virus. One of the end-stage symptoms is that its immune system has begun ejecting healthy cells while retaining the infected ones.
For the third time, the first two links that I happened to click – I did not click in sequential order, I just picked two – were both Wikipedia. As I am 100% confident you were not sitting next to me when I clicked them verifying what I was clicking or monitoring my out-of-order clicking, you have no possible reason to suggest that this is false. After I saw those, I didn’t follow up to check all the rest; I lost interest.
I never claimed anything about the percentage of items that were scholarly vs. wikipedia: I only made a statement about my experience when clicking on a few links in the article. My experience was: “oh, wikipedia? I’m out.”
And for the last time, those were not representative. To imply that they are is misleading.
Confirmation bias much?
It is easy to sit in judgment of Mr. Damore and proclaim that he should have known both of these important concepts, even at his young age:
• don’t get between a mama bear and her cubs, and
• don’t come between “progressives” and their virtue signaling.
Damore now knows that, despite his Herculean efforts to document his sources, and express his sincere support and sympathy, that his words will be vilely twisted, not only by the media, but also by his own (now former) CEO. The media will have today’s scalp, and the “progressives” will bask in the warm glow knowing that another heretic has been cast out in the name of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion.
This is what happens when you come between “progressives” and their virtue signaling.
However, please correct me gently if mistaken, but the OP seems to be suggesting that we who think differently should just go along to get along, to avoid rocking the boat, and to accept that our options are very limited. That, as Mark Twain said, we should “never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.”
That is a sad present, and even sadder future. There is already too much of that.
I’ve had to attend seminars to receive training in the newfangled twaddle: microaggressions, trigger warnings, and the like. At such meetings, the few of us who don’t just stare dully ahead, or down at our phones, might occasionally make furtive eye contact. I know I wonder whether that person who just looked away might think as I do: that this is enervating and stupefying at best. There are likeminded people out there, even on campuses that have been made the most safe for diversity, but they can be so hard to find.
We need a secret handshake, or something.
Yes, we do have reeducation camps in America. It’s called “diversity training.” But we’re not being trained to mouth leftist ideology so much as being trained to stay silent and never speak out.
And what’s wrong with Wikipedia anyway? It’s always near the top of my Google search results.
But, though I didn’t read it, I’ll opine about it.
Ah, well, sure we’re about to get insightful analylitics, here
“Yet, I feel I must post about it.” Pray, continue.
There’s a record, there.
Preach it, Fred!!
Wait. What? My brother Fred Cole, you an es’plainer?
I am so glad you have this mature, considered foundational philosophy when it comes to engaging other people.
I know people like that.
Do tell.
Outstanding observation. Thank you, Fred.
My God…
.
Not saying Wikipedia is bad, though that was clearly the implication of the original comment about it. I’ve edited a few articles and contribute money so I’m not hostile to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is great for finding references to original sources, though the selection of sources can be biased. On subjects that touch on politically sensitive issues, it pays to be skeptical of Wikipedia entries. On straight science, it’s usually great. This is an example of an article of extremely high quality that’s devoid of slant. (I had nothing to do with writing it but it is in my field.)
I went through diversity training once. I found it to be a waste of time, yes, but it would be hyperbolic to the point of offensive to call it a “reeducation camp.” Although perhaps your experience was different than mine.
Yea, maybe I’m just old and cynical but my first reaction to seeing a corporate communication soliciting input on diversity would be, “I’m not touching this with a pair of tongs.” I certainly wouldn’t write a 10 page mini-dissertation no matter how well intentioned or researched. I also think casting this as some sort of free speech issue is a bit overwrought. Workplaces, particularly big, bureaucratic ones have never been places where one should go expecting to find “truth.” “Corporate conformity” isn’t a cliche by accident.
Try not to confuse hyperbole with wit and sarcasm.
It could be I’ve just reached my limits with the conservative victimhood mentality.
I think you have an unconscious bias.
You are invited to elaborate.
You missed the point entirely. And calling my comment offensive means you were properly trained.