The first thing everyone needs to know about this is what the case was about, because it implicates one of the most powerful and least known rights tech company employees have.

According to Section 8(a)(1) of the NLRA, employees can't generally be disciplined for exercising the rights provided under Section 7 of the NLRA. These rights are commonly understood to be about unionizing (ie, you can't be fired for trying reasonably to organize a union), but are actually broader: the NLRA protects an employee right to almost arbitrary "concerted action" to improve working conditions.

Damore was terminated by Google for authoring his anti-diversity memo. During the time he was authoring and distributing internal copies of the memo, he worked with (apparently) a bunch of other engineers at Google that shared many of his viewpoints (the memo covers a lot of ground). He was terminated after the memo, an artifact of his concerted effort to change aspects of how Google was managed, was published. He and his lawyer mounted an 8(a)(1) complaint.

As a starting point --- people with real-world experience or understanding of the NLRA should correct me where I'm wrong --- NLRA complaints get filed with the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB adjudicates claims internally. If a complaint is found valid, the NLRB will try to convince the employer to settle with the employee; if that goes nowhere, the NLRB will itself effectively sue the company. If the complaint is found invalid, the NLRB will inform the complainant that NLRB is done with the case.

Most of these cases (there are tens of thousands annually as you'd expect) are handled by grunts in DC. Novel or high-profile cases are escalated to a special department in the NLRB called the Advice Division. This particular case was not only escalated but apparently handled personally by the director of the division, an NLRB lawyer who'd been with the board since 1988.

The NLRB turned down Damore's complaint. I think he could theoretically still sue in civil court? I don't think that's commonly done? Either way, his complaint was denied.

The basis for the complaint is super simple and kind of obvious in retrospect: employers in the US are required by federal and usually state law to avoid discrimination against protected classes. To the extent that Damore's memo was about organizing against discrimination of conservative viewpoints --- a phenomenon that is almost certainly real in SFBA tech! --- it was protected. But to the extent that it attempted to organize around changes to Google management that might (might) themselves violate EEO laws (for instance, any kind of official recognition that men are better suited to software development at Google than women), they were not. You can't use the NLRA to organize in opposition to federal employment law. Wa-waa.

As it turns out, this was apparently super-apparent to Google legal and Google HR, who fired Damore precisely by the book, exclusively for promoting stereotypes about women and advocating for the inclusion of those stereotypes into Google's management processes.

I think an important thing to consider --- I'm no lawyer and am probably wrong about lots of this stuff --- is that if the memo had been exclusively about how SFBA tech discriminates against conservatives and could in a number of ways be made more accommodating to them, Damore would had been protected from retaliation. The Advice Memo says as much!

So for someone like me, who believes very strongly in both the importance of employee organizing rights (I think tech should organize into professional associations; "unions lite") and who believes strongly in the absolute innate equivalence in aptitude for our profession between men and women, this is the best possible outcome. There's a lot to take heart in here; we do in fact have the right to organize that we've been saying we have.

The NLRB turned down Damore's complaint. I think he could theoretically still sue in civil court? I don't think that's commonly done? Either way, his complaint was denied.

There's still a civil lawsuit going ahead as the article notes.

Right, but it's on a different set of claims, isn't it? I thought it was not a case brought under the NLRA.

if the memo had been exclusively about how SFBA tech discriminates against conservatives and could in a number of ways be made more accommodating to them, Damore would had been protected from retaliation

Probably, but the entire conversation would have been different then, likely not even leading to his termination and the lawsuit in the first place

Thanks for that explanation, it was both thorough and frankly, illuminating in a way that I wasn't expecting.

Do you think if he had kept his original memo to those acceptable points(the hostile attitude toward conservative views), that they might have gone forward with it? Or would it have still been too difficult to prove with the case?

Yes. I'm summarizing not the Bloomberg article but the Advice Memo itself, which is on NLRB's case website (you can just go read it).

It's a little fuzzy because the Advice Memo asserts up front that it's assuming arguendo that the memo, in both its protected and unprotected components, constituted protected concerted action. So it's possible that NLRB never really reached the question of whether this kind of organizing truly constitutes organizing for "mutual aid and protection" under the definitions of the NLRA; it didn't have to, because whether or not you're organizing under the NLRA, the memo says there's pretty extensive case history saying you can't do it to work against federal anti-discrimination law.

The NLRA does not eliminate employment at-will! You can get fired for all sorts of dumb superficial reasons. You just can't be fired for exercising your specific rights to concerted action for improved workplace conditions under the NLRA.

But before you go flex this particular right --- and really people should start doing this, like, a lot --- go talk to a labor lawyer and dot your 't's.

This turns out to be pretty easy to do: you can just contact @michelleimiller at Coworker.org, who facilitates this kind of stuff.

Does the Advice Memo go into detail on exactly which parts of Damore's memo are discriminatory and which parts aren't?

Yes. Despite "limiting language" like "studies show" or "on average", the NLRB found that the Damore memo's claims that women are susceptible to "neuroticism" and that they have lower variance in IQ constituted valid cause for Google to terminate.

It's important I think to understand that the NLRB isn't saying that it's unlawful to write the Damore memo. They're not even saying that Damore's IQ and psychology claims violate EEO law. Instead, what they're saying is that they're close enough to the underlying issue of anti-discrimination compliance that the NLRB isn't going to second-guess Google's decision to terminate.

"It's important I think to understand that the NLRB isn't saying that it's unlawful to write the Damore memo."

Well, they did call what Damore wrote "sexual harassment" and "discriminatory", and sexual harassment is illegal and violates EEO, so that is basically saying that what he wrote is unlawful:

"The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases. [His] statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding [his] effort to cloak comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers."

It is probably not generally unlawful for a rank-and-file employee to make discriminatory statements. You can be fired for doing that, but the government is unlikely to step in and do that for your employer.

Do you have a link to the Advice Memo?

I'm having trouble finding it on nlrb.gov's site or Google w/ `site:www.nrlb.gov`.

It looks like it may be this [0][1]. But, that case doesn't mention Damore as a participant, though it does list his lawyer: Dhillon Law Group, Inc.

[0] NRLB Case: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-205351

[1] Advice Memo (PDF): http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391

No, this is 32-CA-205351. (I have a local copy I downloaded but not the link).

Didn't I link 32-CA-205351 (both the case page and the PDF)?

Having "conservative viewpoints" is not a protected class.

Having "conservative viewpoints" is not a protected class.

In California, it is illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee on the basis of their political beliefs [1], so to that extent particular political ideologies (including conservatism) can be viewed as protected classes.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... and https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

In context, that appears to be referring to voting or supporting a candidate in elections, not for discussing platforms or issues.

The line between those seems quite thin. Showing support for a candidate is quite literally showing support for a certain set of platforms or political idea.

No. You can't put the law "in context" while outright ignoring case law. Courts have consistently found 1101 and 1102 to offer broad protection. I'm not a lawyer, nor want to do the research. AIUI from learned legal commentary, the broadness has not been tested for exactly this sort of issue, but that doesn't make it slam-dunk unprotected either.

You're claiming to put something "in context," but rather than clarify you're obscuring. This type of fake-smart comment is what makes me hate hacker news.

People organizing with other employees who share conservative views to engage in concerted action to improve their working conditions is a protected class, though, because people organizing with other employees to engage in concerted action to improve their working conditions is a protected class no matter what other descriptors you add.

"their" means employees', not just a subset of them. Suppose some people thought it'd improve their working conditions by freedom to share KKK rally times and places or organize porn watching parties at the workplace. The law isn't some robotic computer of legal rules. Context often matters.

and who believes strongly in the absolute innate equivalence in aptitude for our profession between men and women

I believe in it also, but shouldn't this idea be quantifiable in order to be a legit basis of a firing? I.E. where is the line between "promoting stereotypes" and "promoting science?"

I think? the answer is that it probably doesn't much matter. The Advice Memo states explicitly that the NLRB gives deference to employers on this matter, because they're required by state and federal EEO laws to suppress discrimination of protected classes.

So where this might become a material question is if you were an employer who was receptive to the "scientific" arguments for superior male aptitude, and you had employees that shared that view, and your employees organized to promote that view organically. Like, maybe you couldn't discipline them at the insistence of some other employee?

But in general it sounds like if the workplace issue you're organizing around is "does our employer go too far in trying to comply with EEO laws", the NLRB is not going to have your back.

So, what if you were an employer who was receptive to the "scientific" arguments for completely equivalent aptitude between males and females, and you had employees that shared that view, and your employees organized to promote that view organically. Then someone dissented from that view and a large number of those employees demanded the head of the dissenter? In that case, the NLRB has your back!

But in general it sounds like if the workplace issue you're organizing around is "does our employer go too far in trying to comply with EEO laws", the NLRB is not going to have your back.

Well, for one thing, I think the issue James Damore was organizing around is, "does our employer effectively make it thoughtcrime to question how they comply with EEO laws on the basis of differing average preferences." The NLRB's answer is that, yes the employer can make it a thoughtcrime, the NLRB has your back on that, and furthermore, that a lower level NLRB functionary can adjudicate on matters of truth in science.

Basically, what the NLRB has done here is to "instantiate into law" through the back-door of regulations and regulatory bodies, ideologically driven junk science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate

I assume you write this knowing (a) that I do not at all agree with your conclusions about "science" and (b) do not really care, because science is not the issue here. Google has an anti-harassment policy. Damore violated it. The NLRB defers to employers in the enforcement of anti-harassment policies. Damore cannot use the NLRA to "overturn" Google's anti-harassment policies. This part of Damore's game is over.

absolute innate equivalence

Is hacker aptitude some kind of conserved quantity that is conserved over sexes based on some natural symmetry ?

Why not just say, absolutely pretended equivalence.

The null hypothesis is to assume there is innate equivalence; the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate otherwise and the attempts I've seen so far are lacking.

The null hypothesis would be to accept the state of things as they are.

If there are very few women in computer science, you wouldn't assume it was due to some conspiracy or "systematic discrimination" without any proof. You wouldn't enact policies of reverse discrimination (affirmative action) to correct some supposed imbalance of the system.

You'd simply admit you don't know why, and search for proof of the reason.

You seem to understand this better than me, so can you explain a few things to me I find (as a non-American) confusing?

The NLRB turned down Damore's complaint

Can you explain where you got this idea from? Not this article, because it states several contradictory or non-commital things such as:

Damore withdrew his complaint in January

And

"a federal agency lawyer concluded."

And

an associate general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board wrote in a six-page memo disclosed Thursday

Is this just an opinion, or an actual ruling? In other words, is this a PR exercise by the NRLB, or is it an official ruling in some way?

https://nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-203891 appears to be the case - AFAICT as the dates lineup with the withdrawl statement, and https://www.google.com.au/search?q=site%3Anlrb.gov+james+dam... shows this as the only link. As a non-American, I'm not going to file a FOI request, so I have no idea what any of this is, or how to find the memo that Bloomberg quotes.

Can you (or anyone else) shed any actual, source not third party light on this?

If you reread my comment, I spend a couple paragraphs explaining the procedural background to this. If the NLRB had found Damore's complaint valid, they would have intervened on his behalf. They did not, so they will not.

Apparently, there's no private right to action under the NLRA. Enforcement is public, and goes through the NLRB. If the NLRB decides against pursuing a case, that's probably the end for you (maybe short of suing the NLRB itself).

Just to clarify:

1. You believe that Damore's lawyers withdrew the claim because the NLRB said they wouldn't pursue it. Is that a correct assessment? That's the timeline AFAICT anyway. Does that make the memo a public statement of what they informed Damore of? Is that common, for the NLRB - or similar institutions - to release a memo about a withdrawn action? I'm not American so this all seems very odd to me. I just can't imagine a government body commenting on a withdrawn complaint here.

2. You have not read the memo itself. Is that true? Do you know where it is or where I can read it? How would I even start?

I'm not being critical, I just have no idea how the US's state and federal laws combine, and it all seems very complicated, procedurally odd and very overlapp-y.

You are looking at the wrong case, this is the correct one and contains a link to the Advice Memo, which is dated January 16: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-205351

This is what an Advice Memo is: "The NLRB analyses referred to are NLRB Advice Memos, which are prepared by the Office of the General Counsel (GC), a division within the NLRB, to respond to requests for advice from various NLRB Regions across the country about the proper response to some specific fact pattern under the Act. In answering these requests, the General Counsel considers the facts of the specific question posed and analyzes Board precedent relating to the situation.

The GC then reaches a conclusion whether the particular fact pattern violates the Act or not. If the fact pattern does not violate the Act, the Office of General Counsel indicates the unfair labor practice charge should be dismissed. If it finds a violation, it will direct the Region to issue a complaint if the matter is not settled in accordance with its analysis of the law.

All this analysis, and the conclusions, are incorporated into a document known as an Advice Memorandum. These Advice Memos are distributed for the information of all NLRB Regions so that they will all have the same guidance and can address similar questions in a coordinated and consistent manner throughout the United States. The Advice Memorandum does not have the same authoritative force as a published decision of the Board, but it does set out the agency's enforcement position on the questions covered and provides guidelines that will be followed by all Regions when faced with a similar situation.”

So what happened was Damore filed a complaint under the National Labor Relations Act with the National Labor Relations Board. The regional office turned it over to the central office for advice, given the novel issues. The central office decided to decline the case, viewing it as not a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. I don't know whether Damore could still privately sue Google for violating the National Labor Relations Act in court or appeal this decision somehow; perhaps he had some rights, since from the link it looks like he withdrew his case on January 23, a week after the date of the advice memo. He does, however, still have a pending lawsuit against Google, which at the very least, could allege violations of numerous other laws other than (and perhaps also including) the National Labor Relations Act (e.g., California state law).

Well played! How on earth did you find that? and why did Google return the other one? In any case, THANKS!

But to the extent that it attempted to organize around changes to Google management that might (might) themselves violate EEO laws (for instance, any kind of official recognition that men are better suited to software development at Google than women), they were not.

Was he trying to do that, though? As I understand it, he was protesting policies that sought to actively promote diversity. EEO laws require no such active promotion, afaik. He fell all over himself to be clear that he was not saying that Google should prefer hiring men, or that they should restrict women to specific roles within the company. He was questioning Google's active efforts to specifically recruit women above the background level that would otherwise apply. Whether or not this is a good idea is certainly up for debate, but it does not, to my knowledge, violate EEO laws to merely not actively and specifically target women for recruitment.

who believes strongly in the absolute innate equivalence in aptitude for our profession between men and women

Curious, why do you believe in that? Have you evaluated the evidence and come to that conclusion, or is it a priori for you?

"... absolute innate equivalence ..."

As was already stated in this thread, this is the null hypothesis. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16397321

The comment you linked states the opposite.

It's one thing to assume the null hypothesis. Quite another to discard ANY experience or data because it violates the null hypothesis.

Damore certainly cited many studies, and while there's valid criticism of their validity, "they disagree with the null hypothesis, ergo they are false" is not right.

Nor is "I have not read them, therefore the null hypothesis is right".

Damore certainly cited many studies,

He did no such thing. Please stop spreading misinformation.

He linked to blogs and magazine articles then people started calling his footnotes “research”.

The one legit study he linked came to the opposite conclusion of what he claimed.

I suggest you go read his links for yourself and consider the sources. It might be illuminating, unless you are already biased in favor of the argument he made.

Curious, why do you believe in that? Have you evaluated the evidence and come to that conclusion, or is it a priori for you?

Curious why you question his belief?

All of the half-way reputable studies I've ever heard of have either concluded that there is no difference in male/female intelligence or that there are small differences in certain silos, with men scoring slightly higher on average in visuospatial while women score slightly higher on average in verbal.

Even if you accept the latter as fact (which there is no clear cut evidence-based reason for doing so, if you look at the studies in aggregate) it says basically nothing about suitability to "our profession" as both of those skills are important.

Given the choice between someone with higher than average overall IQ and outstanding visuospatial skills and someone with higher than average overall IQ and outstanding verbal skills, I'd generally prefer the latter as a colleague.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-m...

My views are in part informed by this essay. It mostly deals with issues of interest, rather than ability, but the cumulative effect of interest divergence culminates in aptitude divergence.

That being said, i'm open to hearing contrary evidence. To the extent that i've read about it, there are non-trivial difference and they are large enough to at least partially explain some of the discrepancy in jobs like software engineering.

It is still unclear though, why a belief in lower or higher aptitude of a particular group (as a whole) for a some specific type of activity should lead to any kind of discrimination. I realize, it often does, but attempt to silence the research and potentially, the truth, for some political reason does not sound good.

Nobody is silencing any research, unless you think broadly circulating a memo at a tech company constitutes "research".

It is legal to research pornography, but try to view it at a lot of companies in the office.

Context is important. He sent it out at work, not to arxiv.org.

It's not silencing research, but silencing talking about research is a chilling effect. This research isn't off-topic pornography, it was research specifically on the topic of who works in the office.

But it wasn’t research. It was a sloppy regurgitation of some cherrypicked sources which made some sweeping claims, and oh by the way management was wrong and should let him tell them how to do it.

Consider the alternative: say his goal had actually been to learn what most scientists believe or to see how it applied to Google. That would be things like a representative literature survey, lots of questions about how you could measure effects, what the implications those effects would have, etc. Rather than just assuming current staffing was the optimal outcome, you’d ask how you’d even measure such a thing, etc.

Remember, before he joined Google he has experience working in a real research lab. There’s no way he doesn’t know what scientific discussion looks like – it just wasn’t as important as trying to portray his personal political beliefs as objective truth.

So management decisions don't need any scientific backing, but criticisms of management must be PhD quality or GTFO?

The memo did not claim that women were less intelligent. It claimed that women _prefer_ to work in fields other than tech. This is a statement of women's choices, not their ability. It also claimed higher variance, but not overall differences. In other words that there are more men on both sides of the extreme.

This is a statement of women's choices, not their ability.

Wrong. The memo is poorly worded, but it does make the leap from just preferences to abilities in this sentence, despite not having evidence for the latter:

>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.

This is exactly in line with what I wrote. This quote talks about distribution. Not averages, which was the parent comment's claim.

The quote talks about abilities, which you said the memo did not say anything about. Damore was positing that both women's preferences and abilities is why you see less women in tech and leadership positions.

From my original comment in this chain:

...also claimed higher variance, but not overall differences. In other words that there are more men on both sides of the extreme.

This is in reference to what the memo says about abilities. The memo does claim higher or lower overall averages, too, but those are in terms of preferences.

Let me lay this out point by point if I phrased this poorly before:

* The memo claims that women and men have different averages in preferences.

* That men and women have different distributions of abilities.

* The memo does not claim that there are different average of abilities.

Point #3 is what the parent comment claimed, among other things, and that is wrong.

Abilities follow from preferences at the level being discussed (potential hiring pool at Google).

I am not good at being a nurse because I chose to become a software developer. I chose to become a software developer because I prefer working with computers over people. My preference in adolescence resulted in my being more capable as a software developer for a company like Google.

That this one statement keeps getting taken out of context and misinterpreted shows how flimsy the claims against the memo are.

That this one statement keeps getting taken out of context and misinterpreted

Wrong again. When you look at the full context, Damore specifically says that it's not socially constructed like you're describing. Damore isn't arguing that women lack the ability for tech or leadership because they prefer to be nurses, his argument stems from biological differences:

> On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:

> ● They’re universal across human cultures

> ● They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone

> ● Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males

> ● The underlying traits are highly heritable

> ● They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective

> 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.

That's not the full context, though.

The full context is that he's writing this memo in the first place to propose alternatives to a hiring policy. That is: the relevant group is the hiring pool for Google. By the time men and women reach the point where Google's hiring policy is relevant toward their outcomes, the distribution of their abilities is already quite different. That's not even really questionable: It's why there are so many fewer women in the hiring pool.

It's selective interpretation to read this outside the context of the hiring policy.

Note that there are differences in certain abilities (most famously mental rotation) that are known to be affected by sex (male and female babies already perform differently). Now mental rotation isn't exactly relevant to software engineering, but there are other biological traits such as autism spectrum disorders that are anecdotally beneficial for software development. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a correlation between sex and programming ability.

However, the number of skills required for software development is quite large and any correlation is likely to be very small. Additionally, there is no a priori reason to assume that the average woman isn't better suited to it than the average man, since there are lots of other effects that could drown out an underlying difference in ability.

So Damore is technically correct, but that doesn't really matter in the end because he doesn't show that effect sizes are large enough to support his conclusions against the policies he opposes (whose evidence is also pretty weak).

> Wrong again.

Ow. I agree with you, but can you please not preface your comments with "wrong", "false", "no" etc? You're going on to argue (pretty convincingly) that the parent is wrong anyway, what's the point of cranking up the disagreement volume a notch, like that?

This is a statement of women's choices, not their ability

That's simply not true. The memo (as the other comment chain litigates) absolutely makes reference to both preference and ability.

Please identify where the memo claims they women have lower average ability than men. As a hint:

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.

This statement references distributions, not averages. E.g men may be more prevalent at the top of the scale but also at the bottom. This is entirely in line with what I wrote about the memo referring to variance.

Please identify where the memo claims they women have lower average ability than men

The claims about their average tolerance for high-status jobs is a direct statement about average ability for certain job roles. You can perhaps argue that it accurately reflects the psychological research (which is a different discussion), but it absolutely is directly a statement about ability.

He also specifically says women generally have “a harder time...leading”, which is a direct statement of reduced average ability in all roles involving leadership.

He was terminated at Google's discretion under at-will employment, the same standard that might allow you to be fired for coming to work with blue hair. He sought relief under an exception to at-will, the NLRA, which protects concerted action to improve working conditions. The NLRB determined that because the substance of his action involved requests that Google might reasonably determine would be problematic under EEO law, that whether or not Damore's actions were unlawful, Google was within its rights as a US employer to terminate him.

It might help to pivot away from EEO law and to some other regulatory regime we work under. For instance, you could attempt to organize around reworking the way your company complies with the HITECH laws. What you'd be doing would certainly not be unlawful! Nevertheless, despite that fact and the fact that the NLRA generally protects employee organization, the fact that your employer has a legal obligation to comply with HITECH would mean that the NLRB gives them substantial extra deference in whether or not they can fire you for doing that.

On the other hand, if you were to organize around, I don't know, closed-door offices instead of open-offices, no such extra deference would apply.

(Re: my beliefs: I provided them as a cards-on-the-table disclaimer, not an invitation to litigate them; they're the least interesting part of this story).

IMHO, the Advice Memo's conclusion is summarized by this sentence:

Damore's statements about immutable traits linked to sex — such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution — were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding his effort to cloak his comments with “scientific” references and analysis and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers.

I find this disturbing.

I don't know whether Damore's assertions are scientifically accurate, but the NLRB appears to be saying that it doesn't matter. Stating an unpleasant truth would constitute discrimination "notwithstanding scientific references and analysis".

Why is this chilling?

There are many much-less-disputed things which are obviously factually true but which, nonetheless, could put you on the hook for harassment depending on how, why, and how often you say them.

For example, suppose I have a co-worker who is an ardent believer in the cause of the southern states during the US Civil War. It is factually and indisputably true that the southern states lost that war, and were subjected to a humiliating period of military occupation afterward. If I were to, say, constantly bring it up and rub it in my co-worker's face, my co-worker could certainly go to HR and claim I was committing harassment.

A more accurate analogy might be a memo claiming that southerners are poorer than northerners because they lost the Civil War. Would you consider such a memo harassment?

Maybe? Most of the challenges on this thread seem to be premised on the idea that Google needs ironclad justification to terminate an employee. The opposite is true. We have, as conservatives vigorously argued for, at-will employment in pretty much the whole country.

The NLRA will protect your right to improve workplace conditions. The NLRB will not enforce that right if what you're doing isn't really about workplace conditions, or is about a desire to change those conditions to something that might conflict with your employer's requirements under the law.

My challenge to the NLRB's opinion is premised on the idea that Google employees have a right to discuss Google's diversity policy. The NLRB seems to agree, repeatedly saying that Damore's memo contained protected speech.

But when that discussion brings up unpleasant scientific findings, the NLRB and I diverge; IMO a scientific explanation should not render otherwise protected speech unprotected.

Why is this chilling?

Because he wasn't actually saying anything particularly bad. Instead, he was terminated on the emotional reaction to what others imputed he was saying. This reveals a breathtaking level of authoritarian ideological adherence within Google.

Because he wasn't actually saying anything particularly bad.

Careful there. What you mean is he wasn't saying anything you personally consider particularly bad. This is not the same thing as "objectively not bad". This is not the same thing as "something no reasonable person could object to".

And jumping from your personal opinion that it wasn't bad straight to "a breathtaking level of authoritarian ideological adherence" is, well, quite a leap.

Finally:

he was terminated on the emotional reaction to what others imputed he was saying

The issue with the original "diversity memo" was that there was absolutely no way to read it with the principle of charity in mind and also end up with the interpretation of it his supporters wanted (in order to support the "he didn't say that" narrative). So much of the "he didn't really say that" boils down to ambiguity in the text, but if we assume he had some purpose in mind that he thought was important, and that he was making what he believed was a rational evidence-based argument, and then try to figure out "what important thing is he arguing in support of here", well, there aren't a lot of possible conclusions to end up at.

This is not the same thing as "objectively not bad".

Anything that requires an imputational and emotional interpretation (which can't be supported by particular facts) to be "bad" is "objectively not bad."

if we assume he had some purpose in mind that he thought was important

Here, you're basically admitting that the reading required to support your position is an imputational and emotional interpretation which can't be supported by particular facts.

then try to figure out "what important thing is he arguing in support of here", well, there aren't a lot of possible conclusions to end up at.

There are lots of possible alternative conclusions. Here's one: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=16398682 (Overwhelming persistent effects of human cultural capital.)

It's entirely possible that a best-effort fair society with perfect equality of opportunity would still result in other than a 50-50 distribution in a given field for any number of complex, ever changing reasons, in much the same way that it would be impossible to have a vast liquid ocean with no waves. Or are you effectively making the questioning the validity of "equality of outcome" a thought-crime in and of itself? There are plenty of reasons to question "equality of outcome" without ever having to invoke the superiority of anyone.

It doesn't matter not because the NLRB is settling the science for itself, but because the NLRB doesn't want to intervene in cases where employers enforce anti-harassment policies. There's a case history about this, cited in the memo.

Remember, the presumption at law is that Google has the right to fire employees for virtually no reason (conservatives should find this congenial). Damore was attempting to avail himself of an exception to that rule.

You're right, the NLRB isn't settling the science. It's saying that discussion of the science renders otherwise protected speech unprotected ("so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected"), and effectively removing workers' legal right to engage in science-based discussion of whether a 50/50 gender ratio is the appropriate goal.

You don't have a legal right to engage in science-based discussion of anything at your workplace!

Damore's claim is subtly different. He relies on the fact that you do, under the NLRA, have the right to organize to change workplace conditions. But your right to do that is enforceable only through the NLRB, is an exception to at-will employment, and is trumped by federal and state EEO laws. When employee organizing conflicts with employer legal compliance, the employer's low burden to justify a termination is even lower.

If we have a legal right to discuss something at work, we should also have a legal right to a science-based discussion of that topic.

The Advice Memo seems to agree that discussion of Google's diversity program was protected speech, until it strayed into scientific findings that some people found offensive.

And I may be reading a bit too much into the "ruling", but I expect that their decision would have held even if employees did have a right to engage in "science based discussion" as GP posits. That's why they cite the Honda ruling. Essentially even if the content is not a-priori problematic, the way it is presented was.

You don't have a legal right to engage in science-based discussion of anything at your workplace!

This is the point that I think most people aren't getting. It seems like people are starting from the position that one should be able to have free and open conversations in the workplace. That a company shouldn't be able to fire an employee for dissent.

But this is _absolutely_ not the case with at will employment. If you say just about _anything_ in the workplace (or not at the workplace!) that your employer doesn't like they can terminate you.

I think the quoted sentence is the key to understanding this all. Your 1A rights only protect you from the government. Your employer may not—and does not have to—tolerate a "marketplace of ideas"

Damore has basically 3 points in his memo, in increasing order of disputability:

1) Conservatives are discriminated against at Google, which is a problem for working conditions

2) Google pushes an aggressive voluntary affirmative action policy which aims to hire women and underrepresented minorities at rates much higher than they appear in the relevant sector of the workforce, and the way this is pushed internally is a problem for working conditions

3) The reason women are underrepresented in the tech job market is biology

Notice that 3) has nothing to do with working conditions, it's just an elaboration on why 2) upsets Damore so much; it could have been left out and he would have been covered under the exemption, while still making his point about working conditions and hiring policies.

People within Google are totally free to disagree about whether a 50/50 gender ratio is an appropriate goal, and they are protected under this law as far as protesting those goals as they relate to working conditions. But the ruling says that the specific arguments you bring into play may still be in violation of company policy, and such arguments are not automatically protected by virtue of being connected to a working conditions complaint. Especially when they could be construed as hurting a company's ability to abide by laws regarding hostile work environments.

There's probably room for disagreement about the correct interpretation of the law, but I don't see it as a matter of removing the right to discuss freely, it's merely a tight technical interpretation of where the at-will exemption ends.

Why do you separate 2 and 3? Point 3 is Damore's detailed criticism of point 2. He's arguing (clumsily) that the goals of the policies in point 2 conflict with certain scientific research.

But the ruling says that the specific arguments you bring into play may still be in violation of company policy, and such arguments are not automatically protected by virtue of being connected to a working conditions complaint.

In effect, the ruling ratifies a particular squishy, ideological interpretation of science.

There is no such “legal right” to discuss things in the workplace. Where do you get that from? Maybe there should be one, but there isn’t.

According to the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Act grants workers the legal right to discuss work-related issues with each other.

https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/employee-rights

This comes from Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act: "Employees shall have the right to...engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection."

In this specific case, the Advice Memo refers to protection for "expressing a dissenting view on matters affecting working conditions or offering critical feedback of its policies and programs".

> were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding his effort to cloak his comments with “scientific” references and analysis and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers.

I find this disturbing.

I find this very disturbing as well. The only way that even the most ardent opponents of Damore's memo can come to a "discriminatory" and "harassment" interpretation, is to disregard a literal, face-value reading of the memo and impute motivations to him. So basically, any employee commentary on an employer's policies with regards to the EEO's goals can be held to be "discriminatory" and "harassment" because it "sounds bad" and "sounds like" it's against EEO's goals, even if that can't be demonstrated on a factual basis.

You will fall in line, and you don't even dare sound like you're secretly against us. How is that not "thought-crime?"

You can call it that if you want; then, in the US, you can be fired for "thought crime". The only thing at issue here is that you can't be fired in retaliation for workplace organizing --- but that protection doesn't apply if what you're organizing about pertains to an area where the NLRB gives deference to employers.

There's a case history in the Advice Memo. They didn't make this up just for Google.

that protection doesn't apply if what you're organizing about pertains to an area where the NLRB gives deference to employers.

Those precedents exist to prevent employees from organizing active resistance to the NLRB's goals. If you read Damore's memo at face value, he's proposing modifying the way in which Google pursues those goals, taking differences in preferences into account. Strangely enough, Google and YouTube executives have spoken in public and have basically taken James Damore's memo's position and advocated the same kind of action he proposes in the memo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrOp8ewzJDc

Given the broad power possessed by the NLRB, how can this situation not result in a moral hazard?

What broad power are you referring to? Without the NLRB, Damore would have no recourse under "protected concerted action". He was an at-will employee.

It's Google, it seems to me, that has the broad power --- and that's a situation conservatives brought about.

I find it bizarre that you basically concede the ground that it is similar to a thought crime and feel no need to defend your stance that his memo should be classified as "anti-diversity." Or is saying "you can call it a thought crime if you want" authorizing his use of this language, from a position of moral authority?

This amorphous right commenters on this thread seem to think Damore had not to be fired, he didn't have. That's what employment at will means.

You don't even know whether I think his termination was reasonable. All you know is that I believe --- and so does the NLRB in this instance --- he did not enjoy special protections against unreasonable termination.

What I find especially funny about this is that Damore is a conservative, lobbying for more protections for conservatives in the workplace. But employment at will isn't just a conservative value --- it's a signpost conservative value, one of the basic principles on which we organize our market economy. It is, in conservative thought circles, one of the pillars on which American entrepreneurship rests, and a reason that the US excels over Europe in commercial dynamism.

Damore is in this instance a conservative the same way the nihilists in The Big Lebowski were nihilistic. But he gave up his toe! He expected a million dollars!

How is that not "thought-crime?"

Given that there's nothing criminal in any of the allegations, I don't see how _crime_ is even applicable in your label.

Maybe a better question might be how is that not "thought-firing?"

Your questions and concerns would be alarming and frightening to me if Damore had received a criminal indictment. He didn't, so I'm much less concerned about the case.

Your questions and concerns would be alarming and frightening to me if Damore had received a criminal indictment. He didn't, so I'm much less concerned about the case.

That's the old canard about how, "it isn't the government." Google isn't the government, but they have incredibly broad power over modern media. Speech isn't free if it becomes open season on you by powerful entities for exercising it. The fact that Google and YouTube are such extreme ideological echo chambers calls to question their stewardship of so much power in our society.

Google (at least in this case) wasn't acting in their capacity as a power-broker over wider internet speech and discourse.

They were acting in their capacity as an employer. Their power over society as an employer is much more limited and doesn't concern me.

If you want to have a conversation over whether twitter and Google as companies have enough power that their actions should be judged in a 1A context that's fine. We can have that conversation. But it's not the one that's being had in this thread or this discussion.

The only way that even the most ardent opponents of Damore's memo can come to a "discriminatory" and "harassment" interpretation, is to disregard a literal, face-value reading of the memo and impute motivations to him.

Motivation isn't what defines harassment; effect on others is what is relevant to harassment; not only is imputing a motive not necessary to finding harassment in the act of presenting the memo as he did, it isn't relevant to that conclusion.

Is there legal backing to your assertion, or is that just your opinion? Clearly that can’t be true either. Otherwise, I can claim that socks and sandals are offending me, and it becomes your problem to modify your attire, not my problem to tolerate it.

Motivation isn't what defines harassment; effect on others is what is relevant to harassment

So this is why hysterical ideologues have latched onto "harassment." It basically short-circuits due process and the necessity of proof. It also scores huge emotional points. It's the perfect vehicle for moral panics and witch-hunts and mob behaviors. Is it any wonder, then, that it is now exploited for political gain?

> You will fall in line, and you don't even dare sound like you're secretly against us. How is that not "thought-crime?"

Well, to begin with because nobody said it's a crime, rather a valid reason for his employment to fire him.

Second, "thought-crime" refers to the rules of a society with a certain type of government (an imaginary one, in Orwell's book). Google is not a society, it's a private company and you can't really think of its internal rules as defining crime, or being laws etc.

The great fear around this topic. What would be the consequence if it were scientifically proven that men had a slight biological advantage over women in software engineering?

I sense the mob puts a noise layer because the mob has an opinion of what to do in that case that it doesnt want to accept.

He was terminated at Google's discretion under at-will employment, the same standard that might allow you to be fired for coming to work with blue hair. He sought relief under an exception to at-will, the NLRA, which protects concerted action to improve working conditions. The NLRB determined that because the substance of his action involved requests that Google might reasonably determine would be problematic under EEO law, that whether or not Damore's actions were unlawful, Google was within its rights as a US employer to terminate him.

Ya, I understand that. I was objecting to the notion that his protests would have violated EEO law were they realized. That seems to me to be an uncareful reading of his opinions on the part of the NLRA board.

He was terminated at Google's discretion under at-will employment, the same standard that might allow you to be fired for coming to work with blue hair.

Exactly. Google had the right to fire him. Which is why he should have published his memo anonymously. Unless, like Snowden, he felt that authentication was important, and was willing to face the consequences.

I think there is something pernicious about Google saying "tell me your opinion", "This is my opinion", "You are fired". In moral or practical sense, that can be a breach of contract.

As far as I know, this memo was published within a space where controversial topics are debated, and was made public by someone else. The person that leaked the memo did actual measurable damage to Google's reputation and PR efforts: were efforts expended to find and fire that person?

Lets not kid ourselves: damore was fired because of public outrage, not because of google policies, or the law, or "because no team would take him".

(for instance, any kind of official recognition that men are better suited to software development at Google than women)

This was where Damore's got his words twisted in his mouth: He never claimed that!

The problematic claims he did make are that women - on average - "have a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading" and are more prone to "neuroticism". Nowhere in the memo does he touch upon women's fitness for SWE jobs -- even though everybody seems to think so.

Whether he promoted stereotypes about women is another story (although most of his claims seem to have some backup by actual science) but the whole thing would have never blown so badly out of proportion if it wasn't for people who circulated a malicious and wrong summary of this memo, either intentionally or by being hanger-ons.

The NLRB turned down Damore's complaint. I think he could theoretically still sue in civil court? I don't think that's commonly done? Either way, his complaint was denied.

Technically the NLRB didn't act on Damore's charge because he withdrew it. The Advice Memo was requested by and directed to a Regional Director at the NLRB. If the charge had not been withdrawn the Regional Director likely would have refused to issue a complaint, i.e. dismissed the charge. That decision could have been appealed to the General Counsel, a Presidential appointee. The person that wrote the memo, the associate General Counsel for the Division of Advice, reports directly to the General Counsel. If the General Counsel upheld the decision to dismiss the charge, that decision would not be appealable to any court. Nor can the relevant provisions of the NLRA be enforced directly by private lawsuit.

If his memo had been exclusively about discrimination against conservatives, he wouldn't have been fired in the first place. The obvious reason Google fired him is that he was now poison in terms of working with others, especially women, because he was saying that women as a whole were either less suited or less inclined to be engineers.

Less inclined (which was what he said) can be tested factually are you saying that it's ok to be fired to state something factually correct?

Some of the bits in his memo were pseudoscientific bunk, no better than phrenology. Making a lot of noise about 'facts' doesn't help here, in fact it does the opposite. So it seems your stand here is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Some of the bits in his memo were pseudoscientific bunk, no better than phrenology.

One of the cited studies from the Damore memo was done across 55 countries, and effectively has a P value which is eyebrow-raisingly high. (They used another stats test.) It's definitely an important result, and is acknowledged as such by a big swathe of Psychology academia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Ge...

Total breakdown of trust is a valid reason to fire someone.

You can fire people for more or less anything we are talking about whether its fair. Not sure how you get to total breakdown of trust.

sorry I should have said it is a fair reason to dismiss.

First, you have to establish that it was a total breakdown which I think you will have a hard time establishing in any meaningful way. But by all means. Let's hear the argument.

The Boss says I can not trust this person again nor can their coworkers for x y z reasons (And I Am afraid Mr Danmore has done this) and the employee is toast.

This is a civil matter so its on the balance of probabilities this isn't a criminal court.

The NLRB has a vast reach that many employees are completely unaware of. Several years ago I was the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against an employer. About 6 months after I filed the lawsuit my employer fired me for fabricated "disciplinary" reasons (not unexpectedly on my behalf, it did take them longer to react than I had thought). Of course, my attorneys immediately sunk their teeth in this termination.

Almost immediately my attorneys launched a two-pronged approach. They filed additional complaints to the lawsuit and they had me file a complaint with the NLRB. Prior to this, I had never even heard of the NLRB and when I read their website I still thought it was a protection for unionized employees. This is far from the truth. My NLRB complaint consisted of two complaints, one for wrongful termination and the second was centered around the employer trying to stop my organizing the class action by terminating my employment (I was the only member of the class that was terminated at this point). At this point, I was also separated as a plaintiff from the "class" and had my own lawsuit against the employer that encompassed the wrongful termination complaint.

The NLRB almost immediately assigned an investigator (a staff attorney) to explore my complaint. This lasted a couple months with several meetings between myself, my attorneys, and the NLRB interviewing the employer and other current employees.

One thing I learned is that there is nothing an employer hates more than a federal agency digging around their business. In the end, the NLRB found both my complaints valid. They offered a settlement to the employer that involved monitoring and random complaince checks for a period of time.

At the same time, my lawsuit continued through the courts. What did help my case was the NLRB findings. It was hard for the employer to deny complaints when they had already settled complaints with the NLRB. In the end, we ended up settling the entire case.

After the case was settled the employer ended up terminating most, if not all, of the employees that were involved for various reasons (mostly false allegations).

Overall, the NLRB does provide a level of protection for the common employee and working conditions not just for unionized employees that I, and I am sure many others, are completely unaware of.

If you don't mind my asking and if you are at liberty to say, what was the basis of the original class action suit?

This is well argued but some of the assumptions are false.

1) Damore never argued men were better suited to software engineering than women.

2) Damore never argued for google to violate EEO laws, and in fact it’s the opposite.

It’s very sad to me that there is such widespread misinterpretation of Damore’s nuance in his memo. In every possible factual way it’s a pro-diversity memo, but because it cites research on the average personality differences amongst men and women (which are 100% true), he gets crucified as a bigot and an anti-diversity zealot.

Furthermore, when it comes to matters such as these, “belief” should not play a substantial role. We’ve already proven that men and women don’t differ much on intelligence. No need to believe one way or another.

Damore never argued for google to violate EEO laws, and in fact it’s the opposite.

While this may not have been his intent, this ruling appears to imply that the EEOC thinks that the content of his words do amount to that.

You can disagree, but my expectation is, being that they are EEOC lawyers and you are not, their understanding of what does or does not violate EEO law is better than yours.

I do disagree. This is on multiple thorough readings of his memo and a sound mind. He never advocates for Google to discriminate against anyone in his memo, nor does he advocate for Google to not prioritize diversity. There is no quote in his original memo to prove otherwise, legal opinion notwithstanding.

And that's your right, my point is that the experts seem to disagree, and that should, at a minimum give you pause.

It did give me pause, then it gave me concern, then it fizzled into lack of surprise.

Damore lost the PR battle long ago. PR justice, while disheartening, isn’t anything new. Challengers to popular ideology are never right at first, but he’ll be right eventually. One day it’ll be more faux pas to assume there are zero average personality differences between the sexes.

“Much of" Damore’s memo was probably protected under the law. ... But ... Google discharged Damore only for his "discriminatory statements," which aren’t shielded by labor law.

Given how significantly many people have misunderstood Damore's claims, this seems to open up a hole for companies to mischaracterize someone as a racist/sexist/etc and then fire them over it.

Isn't employment in places where these companies operate at-will? Meaning they can fire you because you waved your hair funny in the morning?

Yes, but (IANAL) if the employee suspects that there was an illegal reason behind it, they can probably sue and subpoena documents revealing management motivations.

Like, sure, a manager could wake up and just fire you because they were grumpy. But if it is discovered that there was internal communications about their political opinions leading up to it, then there would be a case.

Allow me to suggest that both Google and the NLRB understood Damore's claim, and that any misunderstanding falls on the side of those who disagree with what they found.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

People really did exaggerate how bad the memo really was. That said, it definitely has portions that brought up stereotypes without citing direct evidence, like how men have a higher drive to achieve status. Google considered these statements "discriminatory," which sounded reasonable enough to the NLRB. It doesn't matter whether these statements were actually discriminatory because they clearly fall outside the bounds of protected speech.

He did cite evidence for his claims, but the most widely circulated copies of the memo removed his citations.

I mean the citations weren't particularly thorough, and he took some liberties with interpretation.

Not to mention cherry picking what to cite in order to support his arguments.

I agree Damore's sources were unconvincing, but I've searched for sources disputing one of his most controversial claims (that women are more "neurotic" - an unfortunately named Big Five personality trait - than men) and haven't found any.

Do you know of any?

Are you implying the lawyers in the case didn't read the citations? Please.

He cited multiple academic sources to back up the claims made about gender. He also belabored the point that averages and general trends of a demographic should not be used to make judgements about individual members of the demographic.

Not all of them. He also misinterpreted several, and stretched the conclusions beyond what was reasonable.

This is exactly what happens in academia all of the time, when you have factions who believe in competing ideas. Side A thinks that logic and rationality and the data is on their side, and that side B stretches the facts and don't have support for their claims, and vice versa for side B.

Are all of these issues in academia settled which you refer to? Or is it that, maybe, Damore accepted side Bs views, whereas you accept side As views, but this isn't settle in academia?

Could you point out, perhaps, the most offensive, non-supported statement that Damore had in his memo?

There's a good breakdown here, that was eventually run in Forbes:

https://www.quora.com/What-do-scientists-think-about-the-bio...

Is it a good breakdown? The author seems awfully bought into the narrative of power structures being the dominant reason for sex differences, and is obviously extremely angry. Hardly an unbiased observer.

I don't agree with Damore's message. But Google cultivated an environment were open discussion were encouraged. So firing him for stating his opinion is truly, hypocritical bullshit.

People should get fired for not doing their jobs -- not for writing what they think. And I also want to say that before you blame "the Left" for Google's behavior... Had he been fired in "Socialist Europe," the firing would have been declared against the law and Google would have had to pay a hefty fine.

I can add why I'm so sure he wouldn't have been fired. In most (many?) European countries, you can be fired for only(!) two reasons; misconduct and labor shortage. Misconduct must be specifically related to your job performance. Like, a train conductor that always oversleeps or a cock who can't boil eggs. Something quite a bit more obvious than claiming gender differences between men and women. Labor shortage is if there is not enough work to do and then the company can let go of the surplus personnel.

The walkthrough of the US laws, that tptacek provides, shows that they are completely different and much less employee friendly.

So firing him for stating his opinion

Do you think it's possible for his stating of his opinion to have side effects like creating a toxic work environment, which would be the antithesis of doing his job well?

Google is a toxic work environment. He was fired for pointing that out.

Downvoted but true, look at direct physical threats to Damore in the lawsuit by people Google still employs. Yet he got fired for violating code of conduct...are threats not violations? It's a double standard, if you threaten people deemed conservative there are no repercussions, even though I consider that far more hostile than a doc.

This is not unique to Google. If you don't "vibe" with your company's culture, you are more likely to become a scapegoat. The outsiders leave or get fired, keeping the culture pure (people get fired for lack of culture fit). This mentality is indeed toxic, but the bottom line of any company benefits from harmony between all of the employees.

Yet been the top place to work six years in a row. Nobody else done it even two years in a row. How can they be both?

http://fortune.com/best-companies/google/ Google: #1 on 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2017 | Fortune

You should not be put in prison for writing what you think - I think any company should be able to fire people for publicly making statements which are antithetical to the company's values.

This was _not_ public. It was internal for Google employees. It was made public by someone who disagreed and resorted to publicly sharing the memo.

The fact that Google has not addressed this is a more damning condemnation of their culture than anything else.

No, here in "socialist Europe" he'd have been fired as well. He broke clear company rules and made the working environment hostile for others. That's not acceptable over here the same was as it's not in the US. However, had he written this out on a personal blog, or just has an adult conversation with HR I believe he'd had been safe on both sides of the pond.

People don't just get fired for not doing their jobs. If I bully a co-worker or start stating at work that I think someone is less capable for any reason linked to their biology, religion, sexuality or age I will be putting my job at risk. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's worked in a professional environment for any amount of time (or heck, even a fresh graduate who bothered to read the company handbook!).

If I bully a co-worker or start stating at work that I think someone is less capable for any reason linked to their biology, religion, sexuality or age I will be putting my job at risk.

He didn't really say women were less capable, though (biologically or otherwise).

He said that there are differences not related to capability, and that the current environment in tech is such that the work environment is more acceptable to people on the "male" side of those differences, which makes capable women less likely to go into or stay in tech. To increase diversity he suggested that we need to make the tech environment more friendly to women.

For example, he said that men on average are more competitive, and women more cooperative, and that women tend to value work-life balance more then men, and men tend to value status more. There's a fair bit of scientific literature supporting those claims. (To what extent these differences are biological rather than learned is less clear--but does it actually matter?)

Currently tech tends to favor competitive status seekers who will make their career the focus of their life (especially for management and leadership positions). Cooperative people who want a good work-life balance get left behind. He suggested Google move toward more pair programming and other cooperative ways of doing things, and make it so that it is easier for employees to balance their outside life with work. That should get more women coming into tech and increase the retention rate.

It is worth reading the actual memo if you have not. A very large amount of the discussion of it has been based on what people imagined it said, not what it actually said.

He didn't really say women were less capable, though (biologically or otherwise).

Did you read the memo?

>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.

That says nothing about the abilities of his female coworkers who are already working at Google and who are already in the minority there.

He's saying that going full steam ahead trying anything and everything to get to 50/50 may be impossible without lowering the bar for women which is bad for everyone.

So which is it then? You're going from "He didn't say that about women" to "He said that about women but he didn't mean that about his women coworkers" - i.e. no true scotsman.

Even so, Damore did not specifically say that about "non-coworker women", he said it about women.

The firing was over his methods (and the adverse impact they directly had on the broader organization), not his opinions.

As far as I know his methods were to post his document to an internal mailing list specifically for feedback on potentially controversial topics[1]. This seems a "by the book" method (although I am surprised such a mailing list exists).

Someone ELSE then disseminated it more widely (Internally and externally).

[1] I cannot find any citations on this right now though, google-fu appears to be failing me.

“But Google cultivated an environment were open discussion were encouraged.”

“People should get fired for not doing their jobs”

When you’re hired to write code all day and instead are writing a long sexist rambling memo at work during work hours and posting it to a work forum, you’re not doing your job.

The memo was written as part of a company training event. Damore attended a training and then wrote a response when asked for feedback. Very much doing his job.

It's worth keeping in mind that Europe certainly isn't one place when it comes to labour regulations. Some places you barely fire people at all (prevalent in the South, apparently getting reformed in France) and in some places it is significantly easier (several countries in the North), if not quite at will. The "easiness" generally has to do with the burden attached to showing insufficient performance.

Indeed, the laws are different. But in this case it doesn't matter much because the example is extreme.

Even if the employer could show that the manifesto caused a toxic work environment (hard), and that that was also Demore's intent (even harder), the employer would also need to show that they had tried to resolve the situation with other means. For example, by asking Demore not to publish similar manifestos in the future. Had he then refused to comply, their case would have been stronger.

Not even the examples I gave -- a cock not able to boil eggs, a train conductor always oversleeping or an active member of a Nazi party -- are completely clear cut in all countries. And Damore's manifesto is very, very far from it.

That's the point. Under some of the more liberal legislations in eg. Denmark, you can fire people for "cooperation difficulties". The bar is higher than at-will, but it's not very difficult to meet. The employer just have to show that it has tried and failed to remedy the "difficulties" first (so you can't just fire people the next day). It's unclear that the statements found to constitute sexual discrimination could reasonably be meaningfully "remediated" (especially if the employer isn't in fact committed to it, it just have to show that it tried).

The employer must be able to document that the termination is due to cooperation difficulties. Google didn't provide any such documentation. Hence terminating Damore for the manifesto would have been illegal in Denmark. That's the point -- Damore's dismissal was so obviously unfair that it wouldn't have been allowed in any Western European country.

That's just a detail. Google didn't hire or fire Damore in Denmark, so obviously they didn't bother to follow Danish law. My point is that Google could most likely fairly easily have argued that the memo caused insurmountable cooperation difficulties and terminated him on that basis.

The exact steps, the time taken and the phrasing of the arguments would have been different, but the substance (he got fired for the memo) would have been the same.

You are wrong. Read the link here: https://gettingthedealthrough.com/area/18/jurisdiction/52/la...

"Similarly, ‘conduct of the employee’ means that dismissals based on sickness absence, underperformance, etc, will usually be considered reasonably justified. In most cases, however, it will be a requirement that one or more written warnings have been given before the dismissal to allow the employee to remedy the situation and thus avoid dismissal."

Google didn't issue one or more written warnings. The dismissal would therefore have been judged unjustified.

You are very very wrong. In most of Europe (including here in France with their famously rigid labor code) you can be terminated for pretty much anything as well, with a few exceptions. In many cases the employer doesn't even need to justify the firing. The only difference is that in some countries they may have more paperwork with it than in others and that you may get severance or some other benefits in certain situations.

Moreover, what Damore got fired for would be very likely qualified as a gross misconduct here. He was advocating stuff that would go straight against the anti-discrimination laws which are standard Europa-wide. It could be perhaps qualified even as incitement to hate or discrimination against certain groups of population which is actually a crime - typically used to prosecute racism, antisemitism, hate speech against LGBT groups, etc. but not only.

Hate speech laws are MUCH stricter in Europe than in the US, lots of the stuff that is fair game in the US is routinely prosecuted here. And committing a crime (you don't even need to be convicted yet, being indicted is often sufficient) is a valid reason for termination pretty much anywhere in Europe.

Only liberals are allowed to work at Google, and only liberals are allowed to express their political opinions on HN. The liberal-tech crowd groupthink enforcement is real.

His cardinal sin was saying that men and women are biologically different. He could've said a lot, but as soon as he tried to give a biological explanation for why girls prefer Barbies and boys prefer toy cars, he entered taboo territory. It's a thought crime because it implies that cultural influences aren't 100% responsible for why more men are interested in STEM than women.

No, he tried to use unrelated data on the biological differences between men and women to justify why Google shouldn't try to reach out more to women to diversify their workforce.

The memo had a section dedicated to changing Google to make it more welcoming to women. It mentioned "pair programming" as one female-friendly culture change.

Except he said women also lacked the abilities to be in tech and higher level management positions. This isn't just about children picking toys.

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.

It is entirely uncontroversial and well-supported to say that there are many more extremely stupid, or criminal, or violent, or genetically ill men than women at the bottom of the bell curve.

Why is it so unbelievable that there are more men at the other end with extremely high ability? Just the fact that we have two different chromosomes X and Y is enough to increase our genetic variance (because if a gene on the X is faulty or extreme, we have no backup).

It's not so much as unbelievable as in the burden of proof is not met for causation.

Observational correlation does not mean causation. It's analogous to how a racist would argue that because there are more african american men in U.S. prisons, they are there because they are biologically inferior - when in reality, socioeconomic factors are demonstrably one of the largest causes and there aren't links to genetics.

This is the argument that Damore was making, that there are less women in engineering and leadership positions not because of social constructs, but because of biological factors. The evidence he provided did not demonstrate ability differences. Sure, differences in preferences, yes, but those could be caused by the social constructs he was arguing against, and he didn't want to admit that.

Edit: Forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't you also the HN user that tried to argue for taking away reproductive rights from poor people?

What I think of his views (I disagree) is not germaine to the question: was it sensible to write and publish? It was not. That I disagree with his premise and polemic makes it easier for me to align desire and reality, but the reality of the situation doesn't change because of my desires: he was stupid to publish and Google were within their rights to fire him.

All the other observed comments about liberal/conservative/libertarian views are frankly not very interesting. The bottom line to me is that he didn't have a strong enough claim to unfair dismissal.

Court did its job. Move on.

he was stupid to publish

Only in the way that union organizers and whistle blowers are stupid.

There was no court involved in this yet. This was the opinion of a lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board that they should not take up Damore's case.

Did the NLRB memo specify exactly which statements in Damore's memo were discriminatory and hostile? Is there a copy available?

yes : https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-205351

you can also find the full damore memo online.

Thanks.

I checked Damore's Twitter account, and he has not yet made a statement on this, perhaps wisely following his lawyer's advice.

from the NLRB Memo: "[Damore's] statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding [his] effort to cloak comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers."

Interesting. The Board completely dismissed the scientific arguments, even going so far as to put quotes around "scientific". They didn't accept that he was making scientific statements at all! It's not clear whether they understood that Damore used "neuroticism" as a specific and uncontroversial psychological term, and not in the folk meaning of "crazy". I'm going to suppose no, since their qualifiers "heightened neuroticism" and "more prone to neuroticism" don't come from Damore's memo, and imply the "crazy" connotation.

The two statements they mentioned specifically were:

Women are more prone to “neuroticism,” resulting in women experiencing higher anxiety and exhibiting lower tolerance for stress, which “may contribute to . . . the lower number of women in high stress jobs”;

Men demonstrate greater variance in IQ than women, such that there are more men at both the top and bottom of the distribution. Thus, posited, the Employer’s preference to hire from the “top of the curve” may result in a candidate pool with fewer females than those of “less-selective” tech companies.

This sounds like the federal government concluded that Damore's firing did not violate federal employment law. I think (but I'm no expert) that the issue of whether Damore's firing violated California employment law is still an open question.

I looked up the Advice Memo [0] written by the NRLB (thanks tptacek for mentioning that document) so that I could try to see what exactly they found discriminatory about Damore's paper. This is the relevant section:

The Charging Party’s use of stereotypes based on purported biological differences between women and men should not be treated differently than the types of conduct the Board found unprotected in these cases. statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding effort to cloak comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers.

The "these cases" reference is talking about a KKK member and someone who "made debasing and sexually abusive remarks to a female employee who had crossed a picket line months earlier". I don't see how Damore's memo is at all relatable to these.

And more importantly, the content they found to be discriminatory were the studies on differences in IQ and psycological traits by gender? How can presenting science be discriminatory?

If you disagree with some study, you explain why the methodology it used is bad or find other studies that try to explain it. You don't just claim that it's findings are discriminatory. That makes it impossible to discover why it's wrong (if it is).

[0] (PDF) http://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391

You've lost the context of the Advice Memo. The NLRB isn't saying Damore himself violated EEO laws by writing the memo. The NLRB didn't fire Damore; Google did. The NLRB is saying that although the NLRA protects concerted action to improve working conditions, those protections do not extend to action that might discriminate against protected classes, and, crucially, that because employers are required by state and federal law to comply with EEO laws, the NLRB will tend not to second-guess them about how they do that.

The important thing to remember is that in most of the US, there's a presumption that employers can fire you for any reason. Employment is at-will. Damore was appealing to a specific exception to that rule.

That would be a narrow and incomplete reading of Damore's memo based on prejudice. Damore's description that on average men and women are different is not itself discriminatory or harmful since it's backed up by quite a lot of biological and psychometric science.

The question should have been "What is Damore advocating?".

And if they read the entire document then it would be clear that Damore was suggesting methods to bring Google's gender balance to 50/50 by making Google (and tech in general) more attractive to women by altering the software engineering culture to leverage inherent strengths that women (on average) possess.

No, the Advice Memo repeatedly notes that much of the memo is not objectionable. The problem Damore faced with the NLRB is that Google was careful to terminate him specifically and exclusively for the parts of the memo that would advocate policies problematic under EEO laws.

They read the whole memo (and indeed summarize a lot of it, not just the prejudicial bits).

Would it be possible to rename the thread "Fired Google Engineer Who Authored Diversity Memo Withdraws NLRA Challenge."? I think that's quite a bit more accurate.

It's not though, because it wasn't withdrawn it was rejected.

The way this whole thing played out makes me sad, because the guy did bring up a good point - current-day social justice leaves little avenue for well-meaning but unaware (perhaps through privilege) people to start conversations and learn about the reasons and motivations for certain efforts such as affirmative action and changes in vocabulary. Damore was indeed punished for speaking out, just as he feared.

Then he started retweeting Breitbart articles and selling "Goolag" t-shirts and threw his credibility out the window, and solving the problem of "how do we bring people on-board with the diversity thing without scaring them off" is again put off to another day.

I got the feeling there was more stuff he said that never leaked but who knows

I feel like the progressive left THRUST Damore and anyone who might have similar thoughts/questions into the welcoming arms of the alt-right. I'm disappointed with the "Goolag" t-shirts, but he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed, and only a limited time to cash out. So this socially awkward nerd did what any sensible person would do, rode the wave that was sent his way the best he could. Consider his professional options compared to a standard "former Googler." They destroyed him, it was terrible.

He has no agency? He chose to speak up and then he chose to go down the path he did. It is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to both kinda sorta acknowledge the alt-right might not be a great group of guys but then also claim Damore had no choice but to pull into that port in a storm of his own making. Allow me to pour out a beaker of Soylent for the poor, downtrodden white man.

It is an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to both kinda sorta acknowledge the alt-right might not be a great group of guys but then also claim Damore had no choice but to pull into that port

It's an impressive feat of mental gymnastics to put people like Dave Rubin, Gad Saad, and Steven Pinker into the category of "Alt-Right." (The first two being an openly gay man in a gay marriage, and a Lebanese jew.) There is no logic there. Basically, if you're not a true believer who has drunk the Kool-Aid, you must be one of the lurking enemy harboring evil thoughts. Sorry, but there are a lot of people who are happy to live and let live, but who have different ways of interpreting the world.

The comment you replied to does not describe those figures as alt-right. On the other hand, the very first person Damore engaged after being fired was Stefan Molyneux, who is undeniably alt-right. It's also insipid to suggest that being gay or Jewish precludes being alt-right or otherwise bigoted. What would that make Milo Yiannopoulos?

Stefan Molyneux is not alt-right where do you get that idea from?

Milo was one of the most hated people by the alt-right, his husband is black, how much more do you need for him to most probably no being alt-right?.

I refuse to believe that anyone who sincerely and honestly spent any time looking into the actual opinions of Milo, Ben Shapiro, Molyneux etc and not just cherry-picked soundbites would make such claims about them. Milo is extreme in his provocations but he is hardly anything close to alt-right.

I certainly don't agree with everything these guys have to say but I would urge you to actually listen to what they are trying to say before you judge them.

To the downvoters. At least provide me with a reason for the downvote. What did I say that's so wrong?

How is Milo not espousing alt right views? He was employed by Breitbart.

How is Milo not espousing alt right views?

He's an active and vocal critic of the Alt-Right. He devoted an entire chapter of his book to criticism of the Alt-Right. Just what views of his would you cite as "Alt-Right?" Can you back those up with quotes? As far as I can tell, he's an amoral opportunist who will stoop to saying vile things, but he's not Alt-Right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blJfibQnTgU

He was employed by Breitbart.

He left.

If you want to see how easy it is to be defined as alt-right take a look at this tweet from someone here on HN who now claims that I love alt-right.

https://twitter.com/albedoa/status/964709008559964161

That's how little it takes.

It's really absurd.

Yet, in your reply, you question the fellow's literacy?? That's not acceptable.

We have taken the art of discourse and replaced it with barbs designed wholly to get likes, or whatever the hell Twitter calls them now. This does not help anyone.

Both Politico and the Washington Post describe Molyneux as alt-right.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/trump-alt-ri...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/...

Do they make distinctions between the 4 major sub-groups? Molyneux is, as far as I know, a kooky Libertarian. Mainstream media is getting pretty skewed and desperate for eyeballs. If you're not shocked and dismayed, you're not looking very hard. Basically, in these death-throe days of old media news, you have to do your own fact checking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0ykkHNRAro

It's a despicable thing to destroy someone over an idea, despite the contents of that idea.

I think tech workers are easy targets. For instance, we've all heard about the need for diversity in tech, but never hear about accredited investors being < 6 % female and < 1 % black.

I think what this Advice memo is about isn't the idea itself, but how he poorly he handled the idea. The disruptive way he handled the idea is not protected from being fired in an at-will employment company. Google even worded that in the termination:

Your post advanced and relied on offensive gender stereotypes to suggest that women cannot be successful in the same kinds of jobs at Google as men. I want to make clear that our decision is based solely on the part of your post that generalizes and advances stereotypes about women versus men. It is not based in any way on the portions of your post that discuss Google's programs or trainings, or how Google can improve its inclusion of differing political views. Those are important points. I also want to be clear that this is not about you expressing yourself on political issues or having political views that are different than others at the company. Having a different political view is absolutely fine. Advancing gender stereotypes is not.

Gender stereotypes are sometimes supported by fact (even if they may primarily came into being by anecdote or plain ____ism). When they are, it is not fair to dismiss someone as "advancing gender stereotypes" whenever they make an "on average"-type claim (based on evidence) that happens to align with a gender stereotype; the problem comes when you forget the "on average" part of it (which he did not seem to).

It's a despicable thing to destroy someone over an idea, despite the contents of that idea.

Well, if I find out anyone holds nazi ideologies I'm happy to socially "destroy" them over those ideas. I agree that the government shouldn't punish them for those ideas, but I think individual citizens and entities have every right to disassociate and socially punish someone for those ideas.

Now, I'm not saying that Damore's ideas are that extreme. However, it puts an upper bound for me on how much I can agree with your statement. There are ideas that I'm fine imposing social punishments on people for believing.

I agree that Damore probably shouldn't be "destroyed" for his ideas (for whatever a definition of "destroyed" is that obviously isn't literal destruction), but I don't see why being fired is problematic for the way he shared those ideas in the workplace.

Edit: This post previously had a typo that stated: "I agree that Damore probably should be 'destroyed' for his ideas". That was not the original intent, and I've corrected "should" to read "shouldn't"

That serves to do is cause those who have been destroyed to seek out others like themselves and create an echo chamber where they get more extreme, alternatively it gets others to simply go dark in regards to their thoughts -- they still have them (possibly even more re-enforced because now you have given them an enemy) and they will toe the line until they can get into a position to push back.

You stamp this out instead by finding out how the people ended up with those views to begin with, by being able to engage with those who view the world different from you, and by not fueling their hate.

Does this work for ever person - no, but it should be at least attempted.

(fyi - this is more a general comment about social media slayings that are way too common, I'm not being sympathetic to anyone who considers themselves a nazi).

I agree that Damore probably should be "destroyed" for his ideas (for whatever a definition of "destroyed" is that obviously isn't literal destruction), but I don't see why being fired is problematic for the way he shared those ideas in the workplace.

I'm the OP whose comment started this mini-firestorm of a discussion and I think you and I are probably very closely aligned. I'll try to state plainly how I feel about the whole situation.

I'll start with a quote by Albert Maysles, "Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance." I can definitely see how a percentage of his memo can be interpreted as offensive. I don't know all the internal information about how everyone was behaving, but I'd like to think that if it were my company I would have treated this as a teachable moment and had a frank discussion with him in HR. That said, I fully support Google's right to fire him even if I take the most generous interpretations of the memo, because frankly I'm a huge supporter of at-will employment.

The problem that I have is the way the national media and general public responded to this situation. Damore is a nobody with no power who might have some incorrect ideas about diversity policy. I should have never heard of him. And I definitely should have never heard of him under national front page headlines with titles about an "anti-diversity manifesto." This is a meek and mild super-nerd, not David Duke. Thrusting him into the national spotlight in this way was clearly going to destroy his career and was completely unnecessary.

Lets make a distinction in socially destroy. If you found a nazi that worked for someone who knew he was a nazi and was fine with it, his wife was fine with it and all his friends were fine.

In this case how would you socially destroy them beyond pointing out to those around them what they have been hiding?

I think it's plausible that had the memo not been leaked externally he'd still have his job. In that respect he truly didn't have agency.

but he did lose his livelihood, had his professional reputation destroyed, and only a limited time to cash out.

Why are you writing this in the passive, as if this is an unfortunate thing that happened to him? He did all of that to himself. That memo created a hostile workplace and Google had no choice but to fire him. The outcome here isn't terrible, it's exactly what should have happened.

Nope. 100% disagree with you. Nobody should be fired for speaking out and/or starting a meaningful conversation. The opposite is censorship.

Creating a hostile workplace is not “meaningful conversation”. The memo constituted pretty blatant harassment of all his female colleagues. You don’t have the right to say whatever you want. People absolutely should be fired for harassing and discriminating against their colleagues (which is effectively what the memo was). It’s toxic and incredibly hurtful and cannot be tolerated.

An hostile workplace is one firing an employee for the mere act of sharing an opinion. As the memo was not directly addressed to any female and did not insult them it is clearly not harassment. Questioning the hiring policy is not like attacking people directly. This is sad to see how much everything got conflated in an angry prêt-à-penser ideology that justify every of its excesses against the non believers.

No you're right, he didn't address harass a single coworker. Instead he harassed all of the women he work with at the same time. Just because he didn't name names doesn't mean it's not harassment; he deliberately insulted an entire demographic of people, and then tried to pretend it was "scientific" when it was just a load of bullshit, as if that makes it any better.

If his memo was railing against, say, the Irish, would you still think he wasn't harassing any of his Irish colleagues?

any female

Now I understand. Go back to redpill please.