Google Employee Fired for Political Beliefs

[CaptainYesterday]

[deleted]

[straightouttamordor]

No one should be fired for political or religious beliefs. Because everyone has them and they're not all monolithic. They may even change their mind in time, who knows ?

Some credit Voltaire for the quote, " You can tell who your enemies are by who you're allowed to criticize." Its true whether he said it or not. 

A large organization will have a cross section of society that will contain many different opinions. If you attempt to squelch all dissent you may find yourself silenced or worse one day.

[Cimmerian]

Mhm, if it did cross the line into sexism or whatever, fine. But since we're also looking at this from a different angle: I agree, I'd always rather know what someone's "evils" are outwardly rather than be dealing with a hidden grudge that I'm unaware of. There's a lot that people say that I don't like but I'd rather know who is willing to say what and make my own determination of them than have a larger entity decide what can or cannot be said (political speech) because then you never know who your enemies are, and that becomes a weapon to silence anyone the current rulers-in-power dislike the opinions of.

[Guest]

Google is a private company and have a Code of Conduct you agree to follow when you get hired. In the same way I am expected, as a Public School employee, to uphold the Code of Conduct IRL and on social media (even private social media), they are expected to within the company. For me, that means I must uphold a professional public persona online and off, even when not on the clock. For them, it means don't send an internal memo blasting the company you work for and their policies, just because you don't like one of their policies. 

 

No matter what political party is in charge, companies will never extend freedom of speech to the work place. This person was not fired for political beliefs. This person was fired for sending an internal company memo that directly violated the Code of Conduct every employee has agreed to. They made a political statement, publicly, against the company they work for. Most companies aren't going to take that from an employee. Even CSR people agree to CoCs that say "If you have an issue, do not post it in public, speak to us about it". Especially when your internal memo gives further evidence for the lawyers against your company to use in an open discrimination lawsuit from the Department of Labor.

 

I mean... I really don't see how this person expected anything other than to be dismissed. Even if it wasn't about this particular topic and they had targeted other policies in the same manner, I bet they would have been. You just don't attack your company in internal memos like that and expect no consequences. Especially when you hurt a huge lawsuit case they're working on by doing it. 

[Sally]

17 minutes ago, Serran said:

Google is a private company and have a Code of Conduct you agree to follow when you get hired. In the same way I am expected, as a Public School employee, to uphold the Code of Conduct IRL and on social media (even private social media), they are expected to within the company. For me, that means I must uphold a professional public persona online and off, even when not on the clock. For them, it means don't send an internal memo blasting the company you work for and their policies, just because you don't like one of their policies. 

 

No matter what political party is in charge, companies will never extend freedom of speech to the work place. This person was not fired for political beliefs. This person was fired for sending an internal company memo that directly violated the Code of Conduct every employee has agreed to. They made a political statement, publicly, against the company they work for. Most companies aren't going to take that from an employee. Even CSR people agree to CoCs that say "If you have an issue, do not post it in public, speak to us about it". Especially when your internal memo gives further evidence for the lawyers against your company to use in an open discrimination lawsuit from the Department of Labor.

 

I mean... I really don't see how this person expected anything other than to be dismissed. Even if it wasn't about this particular topic and they had targeted other policies in the same manner, I bet they would have been. You just don't attack your company in internal memos like that and expect no consequences. Especially when you hurt a huge lawsuit case they're working on by doing it. 

All of the above.  This person got fired, basically, because they insisted upon being an idiot.

[CaptainYesterday]

[deleted]

[Guest]

41 minutes ago, CaptainYesterday said:

I believe he posted it on an internal board that Google encourages people to post such matters to.  You know, Google is that kind of new-agey company, they'd have a sort of "suggestion box" like that right next to a bean bag chair smoothie station or a slide leading to a ball pit or something ridiculous like that.  Someone else leaked it to the public.

 

Do you have any information on this? The article you linked just says: 

 

Quote

 

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has fired an employee who wrote an internal memo blasting the web company’s diversity policies, creating a firestorm across Silicon Valley. 
 

 

 

Quote

 

Damore’s 10-page memorandum accused Google of silencing conservative political opinions and argued that biological differences play a role in the shortage of women in tech and leadership positions. It circulated widely inside the company and became public over the weekend
 

 

 

I doubt a 10 page document was put on an internal bulletin board thing. Sounds more like he sent it out via internal company email, as a memo sent to his department or something and it got shared around the company, before being released to the public. Which, if that is the case, he clearly violated CoC that pretty much any major company would have. And the lawsuit alone would force them to dismiss him for it, because otherwise, they risk it being used against them in the case. 

 

If he released it as a memo within the company, it was unprofessional and I don't see how he'd expect anything but being dismissed for it. 

 

If he had written it for something else and someone else shared it, then it wouldn't be OK to use it against him, imo.

 

But, it sounds from the article you linked, like he made it company-wide himself and the employees who disliked it made it public to the media. 

 

As for how to stop using google... you can use firefox, other emails and not use YouTube if you feel that strongly about it. But, no boycott of them will matter. Just like no boycott of Wal-Mart would matter. If I boycotted every company that I disagree with, I'd have to grow all my own food and make all my own clothes. 

[Busrider]

33 minutes ago, CaptainYesterday said:

I believe he posted it on an internal board that Google encourages people to post such matters to.

My horizon is limited; I never worked inside a big company for long. 

Traditionally corporate or institutional thinking works the way that the head sketches and defines a skeleton and others suggest flesh that could be added to it. 

I am challenged to imagine an internal board where people are encouraged to entirely disagree with the corporate policy. Don't get me wrong; It is absolutely fine to type out a weird opinion bottle it and toss it into the ocean. - The issue I see with a corporate board: A whole lot of folks are supposed and paid to read, digest and in case of a less aligned opinion also forget it. 

Radio discipline boosts efficiency.

[Polygon]

The contents of the "Manifesto" didn't particularly bother me, but if you make a document such as that against a private company you should expect to be fired. It doesn't matter if right or wrong, left-leaning or right-leaning, if an employee has done something to harm a company's image or mess up morale/team dynamics, it's grounds for being fired. 

 

Regrettably, it wasn't an issue that stayed in-company. His name's out, and I imagine a lot of his career options are tanked. That, I feel bad for, but it should have been common sense not to propagate controversial shit that will rile people up specifically within the company. If he'd just vented on Reddit or something he'd still have his job and his message would still be out. 

[CaptainYesterday]

[deleted]

[CaptainYesterday]

[deleted]

[-1=e^ipi]

23 hours ago, CaptainYesterday said:

Google is so powerful, you can't even really boycott them over this.

Bing.com. Minds.com. Vid.me.

 

23 hours ago, CaptainYesterday said:

How long before they start censoring search results that they disagree with?  Have they already begun?

They've already started. Even worse what they are doing with youtube. They are demonetizing anything 'controversial', promoting certain political views in their search results and in their trending section, and they plan to create a 'limited state' for videos that don't violate any policies, but are flagged enough times or deemed 'controversial', where such videos won't turn up in search results, won't ever be suggested, and will have comments and ratings disabled.

[-1=e^ipi]

@Serran that is incorrect. The person didn't get fired for a memo. They got fired for 'perpetuating gender stereotypes'.

[-1=e^ipi]

22 hours ago, CaptainYesterday said:

My other point, how do people who disagree with this hold Google accountable for their actions given how massive they are?

Bing, Minds.com, Vid.me

 

22 hours ago, CaptainYesterday said:

it's weird having to balance this with my Libertarian views.

Then reject your libertarian views, or at least if they are non-consequentialist libertarian views. Utilitarianism is so much more practical.

 

Most developed countries have competition laws (Canada, EU, called antitrust laws in USA). Competition laws restrict actions by certain companies with too much market power in order to prevent them from abusing market power to harm the public interest (such as preventing cartels from forming and artificially raising prices). I suggest that competition laws should be extended to protect the free marketplace of ideas, which is in the public interest to maintain. If companies that have excessive market power, such as Google, Youtube and Facebook, are abusing their market power to harm the free marketplace of ideas then they should face financial penalties. If Germany is allowed to threaten to fine facebook if they 'allow hate' on their website, then USA should be able to threaten to fine facebook if they 'prevent hate' on their website.

[-1=e^ipi]

11 hours ago, CaptainYesterday said:

but I'm having thoughts like "maybe losing net neutrality will knock these tech giants down a peg,"

You are mistaken if you think the loss of net-neutrality will help. If anything, companies will be pressured to utilize their new ability to discriminate when it comes to internet traffic in order to 'prevent hate'.

[-1=e^ipi]

This is the SJW backlash against Trump. Since Trump got elected, and he's literally Hitler and all, we need to ensure that we censor/block/demonetize all 'controversial' opinion to help prevent the evil Nazis from taking over the country and in order to help spread 'social justice'.

 

Also, Pewdiepie paid some Indian boys (or were they sri lankan?) to hold a sign that says 'death to jews', and because of that all of youtube needs to be demonetized.

[shockkkk]

"You should expect to get fired", and "you can legally get fired" are two very different things, and is something I expect this guy will challenge in court and ultimately win (likely via settlement). My guess is that he was close to leaving and expected to get fired after making this public. 

 

If you actually read what he wrote, it is in fact very reasonable. Pretty discouraging to see this from a company like google.

[chair jockey]

Businesses are not democracies. They can't be if they want to avoid bankruptcy. Also, businesses are not political entities. They are financial entities only. Suggesting that democratic rights such as free speech and freedom of creed should apply within a strictly business context such as an employment agreement is totally misunderstanding the difference between a nation and a business.

 

I don't agree with Serran that a business has any cause to monitor or control an employee's private activities beyond ensuring that they are within the bounds of applicable law. "Codes of Conduct" that turn an employee's free time into a glorified advertising poster for the promotion of the company are entirely inappropriate, and that is how Serran describes their own employment situation. But that is completely separate from Captain Yesterday's erroneous argument that a necessarily non-democratic and strictly financial entity is obligated to uphold political freedoms within the context of an employment agreement.

[CaptainYesterday]

[deleted]

[-1=e^ipi]

With respect to anti-trust laws, the fact that google has as much power as it does is arguably a result of poorly enforced anti-trust laws. Youtube used to be separate from Google and was competing with Google videos.

Why wasn't the acquisition of Youtube by google blocked? If it was, we wouldn't have such a monopoly.

[Cimmerian]

2 hours ago, shockkkk said:

"You should expect to get fired", and "you can legally get fired" are two very different things, and is something I expect this guy will challenge in court and ultimately win (likely via settlement). My guess is that he was close to leaving and expected to get fired after making this public. 

 

If you actually read what he wrote, it is in fact very reasonable. Pretty discouraging to see this from a company like google.

Where'd you find what he wrote? All the articles I've found wouldn't or couldn't say-- making this whole issue rather annoying to try and discuss at all.

[shockkkk]

51 minutes ago, Cimmerian said:

Where'd you find what he wrote? All the articles I've found wouldn't or couldn't say-- making this whole issue rather annoying to try and discuss at all.

There's two versions here:

 

https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/evzjww/here-are-the-citations-for-the-anti-diversity-manifesto-circulating-at-google?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=amp&utm_source=motherboard.vice.com-RelayMediaAMP

 

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf

[CaptainYesterday]

[deleted]

[Homer]

Stupid. Firing this person proves him right in what he criticized in the paper.

[Yatogami]

They've been censoring Google searches since mid Trump election. I know, beause I could no longer find anything. So some people began archiving them.

[paperwishes]

I haven't read the memo but as far as I can tell, didn't he only criticize Google for hiring women just to fill diversity quotas? I think he mentions that women aren't biologically as good for meticulous computer work...? Which of course is questionable, but I have to say I agree that hiring just to appear diverse is a problem if that is truly happening.

 

14 hours ago, -1=e^ipi said:

Also, Pewdiepie paid some Indian boys (or were they sri lankan?) to hold a sign that says 'death to jews', and because of that all of youtube needs to be demonetized.

Pewdiepie was proving that people will do literally anything for five bucks. He was proving a crazy point. But yeah, Youtube is owned by Google, and of course they don't want to look like they support satire  RACISM.

[Guest]

https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-biological-claims-made-in-the-anti-diversity-document-written-by-a-Google-employee-in-August-2017/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin

 

[Cimmerian]

Hm, since there is second thread on this topic now, I finally got curious enough to try and find the memo the guy who got fired posted to see if it was as bad as it was sounding like. Here's what I found for anyone interested in reading it: https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncensored-memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f

 

(Edit: I completely forgot that I asked shockkk about this! His link has an easier-to-read size of the document: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf )

 

One part I found interesting was this before the listing of study findings on average personality differences he said this: "Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions."  (Bolding emphasis is mine.)

 

So, while there were a couple parts that could be concerning if read out of context (such as interpreting the average findings he mentions afterwards as "majority" instead of the middle of the extremes), he emphasizes that "reducing people to their group identity and assuming the average is representative ignores this overlap [between the populations]" and his point seems to be that these are only some factors found that could be being ignored when pushing for exactly equal diversity in his tech sector-- that is, that some of these could be reasons why it is more difficult to get exact equal diversity in this sector, he also lists non-biological aspects that may play into this like a greater desire for work-life balance.

He also points out that the characteristics of some jobs are capable of being altered to appeal to more people while still keeping the job as it needs to be and other jobs have less of this flexibility, simply based on the tasks required of them, and that if the gender gap is due to the tasks the "average" is drawn to then there may not be a way to fix that aspect and that the company shouldn't claim otherwise because it would be the detriment of both Google and the employees they're hiring with this false impression.

 

I don't see him saying anything so crude as "women biologically are not suited to the tech industry". He's simply looking at some of the same kinds of studies many other people are examining regarding women in STEM, personality trait differences by gender/sex, and characteristics and factors that both genders weigh when determining what kinds of jobs both genders choose, and then trying to see if there is a way to decrease the gender gap based on this knowledge without compromising the needs of the individual job tasks. He also seems to be saying that when you only try and address the concerns that would belong to the "average" woman according to these studies you effectively ignore the rest-- "I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another
member of their group (tribalism)."

 

This really seemed to have come out of an entire discussion of how Google handles diversity internally and how some of their programs and attempts may be counterproductive or more divisive because they're only looking at small aspects of diverse groups or may be playing to the very biases they claim to be trying to fix (programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race, according to him).

[binary suns]

my response to this is - companies will fire people for various reasons, those who are fired or who agree with those reasons will complain of it. 

 

[CaptainYesterday]

[deleted]