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Author Topic: Shame on Google  (Read 21030 times)

Rajan Parrikar

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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2017, 12:28:10 am »

Amen, brother!

Paulo Bizarro

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2017, 09:43:17 am »

Should be interesting to see Google's arguments/reasons for the firing. I will not comment on the original piece, or political "sides". But to me, Trump is neither Left or right: he simply is for himself and his business.

SrMi

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2017, 11:38:13 am »

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RSL

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2017, 12:13:38 pm »

Right on, Rajan. And, as Slobodan says, "Amen!"
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Robert Roaldi

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2017, 04:46:28 pm »

Well, he seemed to have gone public (or was it made public later?) with a controversial memo that contravened Google's internal policies and culture. Google is a private company, so they have the right to fire people who don't fit in, I would have thought. I would have thought that conservatives would approve of that right.

What are you guys in approval of, exactly, that women aren't suited to high-tech jobs like his memo asserted? Or is there some other principal at stake here that I am missing?
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tom b

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2017, 07:43:11 pm »

+1

Respect,
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James Clark

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2017, 08:07:47 pm »

Well, he seemed to have gone public (or was it made public later?) with a controversial memo that contravened Google's internal policies and culture. Google is a private company, so they have the right to fire people who don't fit in, I would have thought. I would have thought that conservatives would approve of that right.

What are you guys in approval of, exactly, that women aren't suited to high-tech jobs like his memo asserted? Or is there some other principal at stake here that I am missing?

Who hell knows? :)  I, too, would expect conservatives to rally around the right of a private employer to do as they please.

By the way, what do you suppose the overlap is between those who believe Google is wrong, but still support the "right" of individual American businesses to deny service to same-sex couples on that basis?  (I suspect it's disturbingly high.)

Regardless, personally I wouldn't have fired the guy, probably, or at least not initially. In general, I believe it's critical to protect objectionable speech, and I believe we all benefit from having a conversation about objectionable ideas.  If it became incendiary to the point that Google's business or culture was suffering, then an appropriate business decision should be made, but merely having controversial ideas shouldn't be cause for termination, as I'm not a fan of "thought crimes." 


« Last Edit: August 08, 2017, 08:20:53 pm by James Clark »
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2017, 09:14:30 pm »

Who hell knows? :)  I, too, would expect conservatives to rally around the right of a private employer to do as they please....

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should  ;)

Quote
... In general, I believe it's critical to protect objectionable speech, and I believe we all benefit from having a conversation about objectionable ideas.  ... merely having controversial ideas shouldn't be cause for termination, as I'm not a fan of "thought crimes." 

Finally we agree completely! :)

Robert Roaldi

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2017, 11:29:19 pm »

Regardless, personally I wouldn't have fired the guy, probably, or at least not initially. In general, I believe it's critical to protect objectionable speech, and I believe we all benefit from having a conversation about objectionable ideas.  If it became incendiary to the point that Google's business or culture was suffering, then an appropriate business decision should be made, but merely having controversial ideas shouldn't be cause for termination, as I'm not a fan of "thought crimes."

That's sort of how I felt at first, when I hadn't really been paying much attention to it and hadn't read any details. But then when I saw that he had made some claims about females not being suited to high-tech work, it got me thinking that keeping him on would annoy all the women in the company. I don't know how high up the ranks he was, but you can see the dilemma if he had women reporting to him (and even if he didn't).

I agree with others here that prosecuting people for thought crimes is a bad thing, but this was more than thought, he wrote his ideas down and distributed them. I'm not saying he should be arrested for committing a crime, but no one should be too surprised that the company decided they didn't want him anymore. I can only assume that's because he was in a position where having expressed those ideas would interfere with his work.

You can have all the opinions and beliefs you like, but that does not mean there aren't consequences. About 40 years ago my first wife worked in HR, and they had to let a manager in her company go because he believed in astrology. What he had done was to align the astrological signs of the people reporting to him with the requirements of their individual jobs and based their performance reviews and salary recommendations on that. He didn't think he had done anything wrong, he was a true believer, but you can see where his direct reports might have cause for complaint.
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Rajan Parrikar

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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #11 on: August 09, 2017, 12:47:25 am »

Typical left knee-jerk reaction - everything is racist, bigoted or misogynistic - or in this case "anti-diversity." If anything, it is anti-false and anti-forced diversity, and rightly so.

SrMi

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #12 on: August 09, 2017, 01:33:13 am »

It was to be expected that J. Damore becomes a cause célébre of alt-right.

If an employee prevents a company from running at 100%, then he does not belong in it. That is not a leftist mantra, AFAIK.

Google has been named as the best company to work for (http://fortune.com/best-companies/). They must be doing something right.
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Rob C

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #13 on: August 09, 2017, 05:20:40 am »

I think there's a tendency to overreact, in such matters.

Of course, it doesn't surprise me at all, because we have exactly the same technique of shaming people into silence at play all over the world. Every group is using it. I would even suggest that it has been a strong factor in the Brexit decision: people have been scared and threatened by legal and cutural punitive reaction if they dare to object to the changing ethnicity of their own neighbourhoods. When it becomes a "crime" to voice your disapproval at the construction of a "church" devoted to an alien religion being built just behind your residence, then you become tarred and feathered by accusations of bigotry and racism. When you realise that the higher birth-rates of some immigrant communities outstrip those of your own, that it needs no revolution or civil war for your "tribe" to become outnumbered and, thus, democratically lose its position perfectly legally through the ballot box, you must be crazy not to sit up and take note of what's going down worldwide. The death of Europe as we knew it?

When you state that you believe that children brought up in single-sex relationships cannot possibly grow up unaffected by that unusual and - to many - unnatural relationship, you will again be pilloried for being insane or, at least, just reactionary or whatever else it may suit the rabid proponents of such "civil rights" to brand you.

It's called political correctness, and from the start, it has been a curse flying in the face or reality and common sense.

Far from preserving or defending women, it has objectified them far more than have the forces supposedly the traditional culprits. Was a time - perhaps I just knew a better class of women - when women could get pretty much anything they wanted out of life simply by being women and using their natural abilities to be homemakers and nourish family and affection through example. It was a far happier time when kids, younger ones especially, could go home from school to a welcoming family environment. With the increased cost of living, largely caused by the double-income ethic, in my opinion, causing higher prices to be possible, women now find themselves obliged to be out working at something just in order to survive or help the family unit to survive financially, if not spiritually. That has led to the permanent quandry: how much education should a woman have, how many years of her life should she spend in university if, when she starts to work, her life becomes a choice between career and children? That's a stress level that I, as a male, would hate to have had to face!

I believe that if a female student shows the aptitude, and many show far more aptitude in school than do their male counterparts, no career choice should be closed to her, But, at the same tiome, I do not believe that any special concessions should be available either. If you want to join in the race, then you better be able to run on your own. It's simple, and it's fair: you should be doing what you are capable of doing without artificial assistance which then become unfair to the rest of the runners. It's just doping under another guise.

And as with pretty much everything else that's amiss in this world, you can bring it down to greed and the desire to have more and more of more and more useless, shiny crap. The myth of perpetual growth is madness: it can only lead to explosion.

Rob

jeremyrh

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #14 on: August 09, 2017, 05:48:06 am »

If you want to join in the race, then you better be able to run on your own.

That would make sense if all the runners started from the same place.
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graeme

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #15 on: August 09, 2017, 06:24:30 am »

No female posters on this thread?
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #16 on: August 09, 2017, 07:33:42 am »

No female posters on this thread?

I demand that LuLa starts banning male members immediately, until the diversity reaches 50/50!

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #17 on: August 09, 2017, 07:38:16 am »

For all those peddling "diversity," start by demanding that the diversity of the NBA league matches the overall demographics.

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Robert Roaldi

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Re: Shame on Google
« Reply #19 on: August 09, 2017, 09:37:38 am »

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-09/google-misfires-on-diversity

The debate, in general, is not without merit, but why would it be Google's responsibility to further the discussion? Their only concern should be their own bottom line.
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