[Discussion] James Damore and the Google Manifesto

The Manifesto Mr. Damore wrote, it's implications, facts, or opinions, the hostile work environment it creates, the action of Google firing him, and the consequences of all of the above.

Arise, thread!

So apparently The Guardian is claiming that Damore’s autism diagnosis is the cause of his Google manifesto and his doubling down.

The Mary Sue has a pretty good write up on how this is messed up on several counts.
Nope, James Damore’s Autism Is Not the Cause of His Misogyny
Obviously, I’m kinda ticked off both as a woman and as person on the spectrum.
Being autistic is never an excuse for being a sorry excuse for a human being.

Thoughts?

Can I be ticked off too? That seems ridiculous on its face.

Eleima wrote:

Thoughts?

So we've abandoned the "well he has a point" defense and moved on to the "it's not his fault" defense?

Eleima wrote:

Thoughts?

Damore's realized that alt-right blogs and Patreon aren't going to pay the bills like being an employed, non-dickhead software engineer so him being a racist, sexist asshole is really autism.

I saw this tweet a few days ago, after the article was published.

https://twitter.com/twoscooters/stat...

OG_slinger wrote:
Eleima wrote:

Thoughts?

Damore's realized that alt-right blogs and Patreon aren't going to pay the bills like being an employed, non-dickhead software engineer so him being a racist, sexist asshole is really autism.

Being on the spectrum and being an asshole aren’t mutually exclusive, Damore.

He's just an asshole. Also, this thread says it better than I ever could:

https://twitter.com/jbu3/status/9314...

OG_slinger wrote:
Eleima wrote:

Thoughts?

Damore's realized that alt-right blogs and Patreon aren't going to pay the bills like being an employed, non-dickhead software engineer so him being a racist, sexist asshole is really autism.

Autism doesn't mean that you're a racist sexist asshole. You can't say " being a racist, sexist asshole is really autism." That's just him being a racist, sexist asshole.

Eleima wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Eleima wrote:

Thoughts?

Damore's realized that alt-right blogs and Patreon aren't going to pay the bills like being an employed, non-dickhead software engineer so him being a racist, sexist asshole is really autism.

Autism doesn't mean that you're a racist sexist asshole. You can't say " being a racist, sexist asshole is really autism." That's just him being a racist, sexist asshole.

I suspect you might have missed OG's hidden sarcasm tag there.

James Damore just filed a class action lawsuit against Google, saying it discriminates against white male conservatives

Tech Crunch wrote:

James Damore, a former Google engineer who was fired in August after posting a memo to an internal Google message board arguing that women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering, has filed a class action lawsuit against the company in Santa Clara Superior Court in Northern California.

His claims: that Google unfairly discriminates against white men whose political views are unpopular with its executives.

Damore is joined in the suit by another former Google engineer named David Gudeman, who spent three years with Google working on a query engine. According to Gudeman’s LinkedIn profile, he left the company in December 2016 and has been self-employed since.

The lawsuit, filed by Dhillon Law Group, says it aims to represent all employees of Google who’ve been discriminated against due to their “perceived conservative political views by Google,” due to “their male gender by Google” and “due to their Caucasian race by Google.”

More specifically, it accuses Google of singling out, mistreating and systematically punishing and terminating employees who “expressed views deviating from the majority view at Google on political subjects raised in the workplace and relevant to Google’s employment policies and its business, such as ‘diversity’ hiring policies, ‘bias sensitivity’ or ‘social justice’…”

Damore isn’t holding back any punches here. According to his filing, Google employs “illegal hiring quotas to fill its desired percentages of women and favored minority candidates, and openly shames managers of business units who fail to meet their quotas—in the process, openly denigrating male and Caucasian employees as less favored than others.”

The suit also claims that “numerical presence of women celebrated at Google” was based “solely due to their gender” while the “presence of Caucasians and males was mocked with ‘boos’ during companywide weekly meetings.”

Somewhat redundantly, it adds that Damore, Gudeman and “other class members” were “ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males.”

The lawsuit is seeking monetary, non-monetary and punitive remedies.

I literally just exclaimed "are you effing kidding me?"

Except I didn't saying effing.

Eleima wrote:

I literally just exclaimed "are you effing kicking me?"

Except I didn't saying effing.

But you did say "kicking"? That's a new phrase I haven't heard before.

Well I guess that's one direction this whole story could go.

DAMORE: "They were being mean and hurtful to me!"

JUDGE: "Who was?"

DAMORE: "The snowflakes!"

"The court hereby sentences you to not being hired by anyone in their right mind going forward."

Because who wants to hire an employee who will not only create a hostile work environment, but then subsequently sue because they created a hostile work environment?

You all just don't understand what it's like to be a white man in technology.

oilypenguin wrote:

You all just don't understand what it's like to be a white man in technology.

There's no better possible response to this than, "Well, actually".

ClockworkHouse wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

You all just don't understand what it's like to be a white man in technology.

There's no better possible response to this than, "Well, actually".

bump set spike, essentially.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

You all just don't understand what it's like to be a white man in technology.

There's no better possible response to this than, "Well, actually".

"Literally, who?"

oilypenguin wrote:

You all just don't understand what it's like to be a white man in technology.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

You all just don't understand what it's like to be a white man in technology.

There's no better possible response to this than, "Well, actually".

So Damore's lawyer directly implies that Damore is a Nazi. This would probably be funnier in a time and when being a Nazi actually did result in universal condemnation, but still.

https://twitter.com/kateconger/statu...

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTC9-gOW4AUul5N?format=jpg)

Gunning down Nazis used to be the lazy enemy option for video games. Wow.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Eleima wrote:

I literally just exclaimed "are you effing kicking me?"
Except I didn't saying effing.

But you did say "kicking"? That's a new phrase I haven't heard before.

Oops!! I blame the autocorrect on my phone. I meant "kidding", of course.

oilypenguin wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:
oilypenguin wrote:

You all just don't understand what it's like to be a white man in technology.

There's no better possible response to this than, "Well, actually".

bump set spike, essentially.

And it was glorious.

A point I hadn't realized: the lawsuit itself is another form of harassment, and directly exposes individuals at Google to harm:

Wired: James Damore's Lawsuit is Designed to Embarrass Google

LAST AUGUST, GOOGLE fired James Damore shortly after the engineer’s internal screed against affirmative action at the company went viral. Monday, Damore sued Google for illegally discriminating against whites, males, and conservatives, demonstrating that the company cannot rid itself of its controversy-courting former employee so easily.

Damore’s complaint includes 86 pages of screenshots from internal Google discussion forums, presented as evidence of alleged “anti-conservative” and “anti-Caucasian” bias, or Google’s alleged support for political violence (such as Nazi-punching). Immediately, the images became among the largest troves of internal Google discussions exposed to the public, including some images with the full names and profile pictures of Google employees, some of whom previously have been harassed for their opposition to the memo. Many are written with the earnest, unguarded candor of people who did not expect their words to travel outside of Google.

And yet again I have to voice my bewilderment at how support for Nazi-punching can be embarrassing these days when wholesale Nazi slaughter on the battlefield used to be a point of patriotism.

LarryC wrote:

And yet again I have to voice my bewilderment at how support for Nazi-punching can be embarrassing these days when wholesale Nazi slaughter on the battlefield used to be a point of patriotism.

Honestly? The US also considered the slaughter of communists and socialists on the battlefield to be a point of patriotism. You are asking conservatives to think deeper than propaganda, when that is all the right has anymore. They are not reality-based.

So this line of attack works on Fox News, which is all that matters to them. It's all propaganda.

Jayhawker wrote:
LarryC wrote:

And yet again I have to voice my bewilderment at how support for Nazi-punching can be embarrassing these days when wholesale Nazi slaughter on the battlefield used to be a point of patriotism.

Honestly? The US also considered the slaughter of communists and socialists on the battlefield to be a point of patriotism. You are asking conservatives to think deeper than propaganda, when that is all the right has anymore. They are not reality-based.

So this line of attack works on Fox News, which is all that matters to them. It's all propaganda.

Part of me thinks that the GOP is forever irritated that the only nations we have ever lost to in war are the ones run by communists.

LarryC wrote:

And yet again I have to voice my bewilderment at how support for Nazi-punching can be embarrassing these days when wholesale Nazi slaughter on the battlefield used to be a point of patriotism.

Because they are Nazis and they don't want to be punched.

All the screenshots will probably be ruled inadmissible as evidence for the reason of breach of Damore's then contract of employment as to confidentiality. So he did it as a way of harming Google when he himself has little to lose. They are throwing low blows probably to get Google to pay them hush money. Google being what it is will probably bury them in legal fees. This isn't going to end well for Damore unless his far right sponsors find a way to dig him out of the future bankruptcy heading his way.