Before you downvote/call me a Nazi, I'm a mixed race woman in tech.
I definitely see people hired just because of their minority status. I also see people hired who are minorities but also great at their job. It's not a binary pattern. But those who are hired just because they are a POC or female, yet are terrible at their job stand out. People notice it, but few say it.
Our company recently hired a black woman as a "Software Engineer" who can't write a SQL statement. She has a "taken some tutorials" level of programming skill as far as I have noticed and produces things very, very slow. People notice this, and it makes them angry. I'm sure the other engineers talk about this even more when I'm not in the room. Our boss is proud of how much he is "making the team diverse" yet it's only going to cause problems for the team.
I like to think I was hired based on my skillset, not to improve the numbers. I've worked hard to get here. People likely forget or don't care how "diverse" I am when I am working because I produce. And I fully support bringing in diverse candidates, it's essential to get those viewpoints, so long as they are a qualified candidate to start with.
I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women. Almost all of the women from my social circle are smart, pragmatic, driven and successful yet have zero interest in a technical career. They excel in their given industries but ours they want no part of. I don't believe intelligence is more prevalent in either gender, but I do believe there are some traits that shape who we are.
That's something that's rarely addressed, for fear of being ostracized.
As far as his "conservative white male" discrimination claims, I've seen that too. My boss specifically requested candidates that are not middle-aged white males. But it's nowhere near the same level of discrimination that people of color or women have endured for decades. Perhaps the reason people don't feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an "old school" company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It's not that way for white guys, sorry.
Many of the media interpretations of what James Damore wrote were very biased, and effectively amounted to hit pieces. His use of terms like "Trait Neuroticism" were direct uses of psychological terms which just sound bad as everyday English. Evolutionary Biology also tends to have a "dismal" feeling to it, like Economics can.
One can't take fields like Evolutionary Biology and Economics as morally prescriptive. In that direction lies madness, clearly. However, to then take a knee-jerk ideological stance towards science and declare that everyone must be equal inside is just the West's version of Lysenkoism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
As is usually the case, reality is complex, requires a nuanced understanding, and might sound depressing if you give it a pessimistic read:
Most of the pieces about the memo didn't take time to highlight that "neuroticism" and "agreeableness" refer to Big-5 personality traits, not the everyday understanding of the words.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between descriptive and normative statements.
Most of the pieces didn't distinguish between statements about distribution of something within a population, and statements about all members of that population.
It also saddens me that a number of Damore's suggestions to make the workplace more "nurture-trait-friendly" got overshadowed by those dubious extrapolations. It seems interesting and fruitful to me to explore the work dynamics and psychology present in more "nurture" fields and see how well they translate to software development and collaboration.
There is a silver lining to all this for me: it shows that whereas women used to have little voice in the public sphere, "American women" as a class now have a sufficiently loud voice that even its less-well-thought-out ideologies have traction and influence in civil society (along with all that entails, including having possibly self-proclaimed representatives and "thought leaders").
My guess is that he will be settled with to avoid the annoyance or simply destroyed in court.
Obviously my statement is not evidence either. I only wanted to point it out because this is so often overlooked when it comes to these issues. This is an arena where our cognitive biases are especially pernicious, and any discussion needs to address them.
Of course taking this into account cannot completely eliminate selection bias, and the sample size either way is probably too small to be all that meaningful. It sounds like the attitude of her manager towards the incompetent developer is actually the most significant point here: this incompetent developer is being retained and in fact praised by her manager for diversity despite the obvious issues. Does the manager treat incompetent male developers the same way? The implication of the post is clearly "no", but again selection bias is possible.
I have met plenty of white men who have masters level CS education, have worked for Google and other top name companies, and can't produce a line of useful working code to save their lives.
The reasons why corporations frequently hire people who don't actually produce anything are varied and complex, but it happens, a lot.
If someone is incompetent and also happens to be from a minority group then everyone starts complaining about how they are a "diversity hire" but with incompetent white males they just shrug and go "that's the way it is." In other words, it is so common with white males that no one even notices.
If you just base it on what you see, yes. But if you're partial to top brass interviews and conversations about getting this or that person to pad diversity, and of talk about overlooking skills since "we need more X", then no (of course that would still be partial knowledge of the overall state of the market).
Not really. I have a lot of faith in our engineering staff so I wonder how he got hired and how he avoids getting fired. The uncomfortable truth is that if he was an employee that "looked good" I would know the answer to those questions.
Also nobody ever seems to ask: diversity of what exactly? What's the target? Life experience? There is no qualitative score for that, nor is any single person's life more or less interesting and influential than anyone else.
The only thing we can objectively and accurately measure is merit, motivation, and results, and we should use those metrics alone for hiring and advancement, in addition to fighting subjective bias (like removing names and photos from resumes) and making sure there's equivalent opportunity for anyone to try. After that, it would be best if just let people do what they want to do and move on.
I don’t know to what extent this is true, or even how to measure it, but it would help explain why “diversity” initiatives seems so illogical some times, which has perplexed me too.
Jon Stewart gave a post-retirement interview in which he talked about this issue in the comedy world. He initially wrote off criticism of the lack of diversity in the writer's room for The Daily Show, since he always told people that he was interested in hiring more women and minorities. He eventually realized that the channels along which people came to the job was already selecting for white males, and that more diverse hiring required rethinking those channels.
Clearly not when every company recruits from the same 10 schools.
https://www.bis.org/review/r160531e.pdf asks literally "Diversity of what exactly?"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/07/01/google-apolog...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/08/09/faceapp-spa...
https://www.rt.com/viral/400927-robots-racist-sexist-bank-lo...
http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-huawei-smartphone-bea...
But why does that make it okay? I absolutely believe that you're right in that there has been worse discrimination over the decades and that maybe old white men can find jobs elsewhere, but that doesn't make discrimination okay. It's not okay when those "old school companies" discriminate against any minorities and it's not okay when some discriminate against old white men.
Say 100% discrimination is the KKK lynching people. Say 50% discrimination is redlining and refusal to hire. Then what are white males facing? Maybe 10%? Yes, it matters. And also yes, it's not in the same league as what other groups have had to face.
More recent studies don't show any bias against women in callback rates. In fact, some show slight bias for women (and if you're willing to look at non peer reviewed sources, more than a slight: https://talent.works/blog/2018/01/08/the-science-of-the-job-...)
"The trial found assigning a male name to a candidate made them 3.2 per cent less likely to get a job interview."
"Adding a woman's name to a CV made the candidate 2.9 per cent more likely to get a foot in the door."
source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tria...
I agree on the data thing. I think when you get down to the bottom of things, lumping people under a label and treating them as a cohesive unit is part of the problem. If that’s true, getting permission from a small cohort of that group is still bad, because you’re assuming if these three people are okay with it then it’s okay.
It’s that incident with Chevy Chase and the n-word that started this line of thought for me. I don’t care if Richard Pryor said it was okay. He is one voice. Don’t act surprised if other people don’t agree. Being surprised means you’ve already decided all black people are the same and a sample size of one means you’re okay to do something.
Then there must be a biological difference between women from different cultures that's also contributing, because I've only observed this "lack of interest" in Anglosphere women.
From my experience, for instance, Indian women have no such problem and are in fact strongly represented within the IT profession and I've worked alongside several of them. Women in my country of birth (Greece) have no such problem and about two fifths of the Greek programmers I know are women. In the British universities I studied and the British workplaces I worked in the last few years, on the other hand, women are about a tenth of all programmers I've met.
So because it's a bit absurd for Anglo women to be so specifically genetically programmed to stay out of the IT professions, I'm going to assume it's not a genetic, but a cultural thing going on.
Btw, I've discussed this with a female Indian software engineer I was working with and she explained that in India, working in IT is seen as an office job and so more suited to women. Traditional gender roles, innit.
Now this doesn't mean women are incapable or bad at copmuter engineering or anything in IT. Quite the opposite, women are just as capable and can be just as good in IT as men, there is no reason they can't.
If what you say is true and indian culture views IT as an office job and therefore a woman's job, then I don't see how that contradicts the assertion that there are biological cognitive differences, women can do the same job, they are just less inclined to be interested in it. On average.
So while gender roles may play a role (pun intended) in the distribution of gender in the IT job, expecting a 50/50 representation is entirely fictional, there will be a bias towards one or the other based on simple cognitive development tendencies.
---
0: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-017-1600-2
1: doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2013.10.011.
It’s very obvious to me that the negative reaction was greatly amplified by the ever-outraged and ever-posturing social (media) justice contingent.
(it's secondary, but FWIW, I'd debate that the Damore memo contained a lot of truth: yes it contained some truth, but it contained more/deeper falsehoods and wrong conclusions, IMO. So it's a bit unproductive to focus on the "truth" part. OTOH it's horrifically unproductive and wrong to fire someone for expressing a misguided, but not inherently evil/malicious p.o.v.)
I don't think anyone believes in the opposite, that biological difference in gender plays exactly zero part in lack of interest in tech from women. The memo was suggesting this could play a part, but not whether if biological differences are significant or even meaningful.
To the best of my knowledge, we can't disentangle biological from cultural biases across gender. Hunting down biological reasons isn't productive and threatens gender equality initiatives, hence the massive backlash.
Should we question the ideals of gender equality in the workplace? That's probably the discussion the memo wanted to inspire, but it only led to out cries of "sheeple better wake up" and "hell no."
Its not that way for white guys to receive hundreds of Nos?
How do you know that they were hired just because of their minority status?
That maybe one of the saddest statements in the history of modern discourse. It’s not your fault for saying it, it’s that you needed to say it.
We have reached the point where identity matters more than content. This is the exact opposite of the MLK dream as I understood it.
No offence but I think it's kind of harmful to everyone when you make arguments based on your race and gender.
Why would it matter that you are "a mixed race woman in tech"? Your comment should be judged only by its content, not by its author's race or gender, right?
Of course. They'd get fired.
Could you elaborate a little more about its "ugliness"?
That's just it; it really did not. It contained a lot of things that people who aren't members of those groups he targeted think are plausible.
"I do think that men and women are biologically different and, it likely does contribute to a lack of interest in tech from women. "
And what, specifically, would those differences be?
The balance of the evidence, is that there are some biological differences in preferences. Both biological and cultural factors are at play. As groups, women and men are about the same in terms of average IQ, however, men tend to have a higher population of the extreme outliers. (Both extremely smart men and extremely stupid men.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n691pLhQBkw
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
b - higher capacity of empathy might be in part to biological: "Testosterone may reduce empathy by reducing brain connectivity" http://www.psypost.org/2016/03/testosterone-may-reduce-empat...
c- people who have a higher level of empathy might be interrested in fields which need a higher level of empathy, or seek to join fields that directly interact with people [ I don't have a source for this one. It seems logical to me, but it is unproven. if you know a study that proves or disproves it. Please link it]
d - higher levels of women interessted in other fields leads to less women interrested in tech
Although at the same time and despite being pretty far right on the political spectrum, I think there is some truth to the idea that big companies "should" hire visible minorities over and above those that are fully qualified, but it shouldn't be done at the expense of legitimately qualified people, or that it causes significant harm to product quality.
The hard truth is if you only hire white guys from Stanford you've got a ton of overlap in their background and the way they think. If you only hire black women from Somalia it's the same. You're going to have significant similarities. Making teams more diverse is extremely important and beneficial as long as all are otherwise qualified.
That's most definitely a cultural thing, and I believe its what diversity programs try to address.
> As far as his "conservative white male" discrimination claims, I've seen that too. My boss specifically requested candidates that are not middle-aged white males. But it's nowhere near the same level of discrimination that people of color or women have endured for decades. Perhaps the reason people don't feel sorry for conservative white males is that if they are rejected by one company they can keep trying and will find an "old school" company that will hire them. We have not had that luxury, for blacks and women it was 100 nos for every 1 yes. It's not that way for white guys, sorry.
I get that, but I think your boss was still wrong to think and phrase of it that way. No one should be disqualified simply because of their race or age. Give more points to minorities? Yes definitely. But reducing points because you're of a certain race and age just sounds icky, and is probably illegal.
If it's a cultural thing, why is one version (attitude/culture) towards it considered better than the other (and thus one has to be "addressed")?
If it is a cultural thing, then surely the correct response is not to mandate gender balance in corporate hiring practices, but to alter the education and socialization of girls. Whether it is cultural or biological, the results are the same: fewer women have the interest to excel in specific fields. App Camp for Girls might be a better approach than diversity hiring.
The history of women in tech completely contradicts your belief. The lack of representation is a real problem, we can debate how to fix it, but to claim it doesn't exist is baseless and harmful.
https://hackernoon.com/a-brief-history-of-women-in-computing...
The issue is that it doesn't matter. Women might be less interested in tech, as in if you took 100 men and 100 women and measured their interest the men might be higher.
That doesn't mean no women are interested in tech, or that those who are interested are less competent.
I do think the idea of "less interested" is shallow and ignores every other explanation. For example, women are a majority in health care but a minority of doctors. Why?
Two such arguments for this kind of policies:
- by giving them jobs which they wouldn't otherwise have the skills to fill you are trying to break the "cycle" (more on that below)
- having different viewpoints in a team can be beneficial beyond the skill set those people should bring according to their role (ex. for developing apps that don't just cater to the hipster young)
Another thing to consider is that the way you measure performance may be biased, resulted from decades of privileged groups having the leadership role in that domain/area and having developed it in certain ways that caters to their skill set.
For the "breaking the cycle" part, I mean that systematic discrimination results in people of certain origins simply not having the opportunity/chance to have developed the skills to be competitive with the privileged classes. And no, you can't just fix this by giving them a "chance to learn", some of the negative impacts on these groups of people are permanent and happen in early life. Obviously trying to handle this problem in the workplace is just a "hack", it's too late already but it does have the benefit that now those people get included in a social environment that they would normally be cut out from, get payed more than they would otherwise and, hopefully, this will trickle down to their children and grandchildren so in a few generations of doing this we don't actually need to be doing it anymore.
I'm not saying that all of this means I'm convinced affirmative action is doing more good than bad, just that I see it has possible benefits.
Irish immigrants started out from a culture, where the typical peasant was 1/2 to 1/4th as wealthy as the median pre-Civil War American Slave. There was a period of time when ethnic Irish political machines helped to place the party faithful into cozy government jobs. This was beneficial, up to a point. However, there is a point where such subgroup politics becomes so corrupt, the leaders of that group keep their people in deliberate isolation to maintain their power.
The IQs of many ethnic immigrant groups to the US can be shown to have increased after several generations. The Polish and Italian immigrant groups' IQs increased from 85 to over 100 over the 1st half of the 20th century. There seems to have been a reversal of such trends for African American communities starting in the 60's. There are also studies of the African American children of US armed forces personnel in Germany. Their IQs are the same as other children growing up in Germany. My conclusion is that the leadership of the African American community and the influence of the US political Left, by glorifying a toxic subset of their ethnic culture, is holding the group back, in cultural isolation, in such a way as to harm the prospects of their children as strongly as lead in the water of Flint Michigan.
So he realistically has a choice between becoming a paid speaker for fringe ultra-right organizations, trying to sue Google and retire off the proceeds, or leaving tech and becoming a noname blue collar or a freelancer forever hiding his face.
I hope they will settle for an amount sufficient for retirement and the dude's life won't get ruined due to a stupid political game he didn't even realize he was playing.
As a European, I find all these things very absurd. Like the guys with the "dongle" joke that both got fired [1], and if I remember correctly, so did the woman reporting them.
Maybe you should all start by treating each other with more respect, whoever it is. And don't go witch-hunting.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes...
Europe has its holy cows as well. Try publicly questioning the Syrian refugee program or come up with scientific evidence that nationals coming from war conflict zones have a higher chance of becoming criminals - you'll get crucified the same way.
Sometimes old cultural artifacts go away in the "mother country" but persist in "the colonies." Seems like the witch-hunting mentality is something that's stuck around in the US, infecting both the political Right and Left.
Or maybe you mean to say that in Europe all men are so sensible that nobody cracks dongle jokes in presence of female coworkers?
Or maybe that majority of the European women would not complain to the HR if someone did crack that joke because they are not stuck up?
Because lemme just make it clear, they didn't get fired for the dongle jokes, they got fired for the shitstorm which arose because of their jokes and how people on twitter were rallying to fire those guys.
Also, the woman who caused the shitstorm was also fired from her company due to the counter shitstorm which ensued.
Maybe you mean to say that in Europe, a company wouldn't fire someone if a shitstorm is created due to an employee's juvenile actions, because I am pretty sure that it is incorrect too.
EDIT: Also reminder some googlers kept politically motivated blacklists, if those blacklists were on company computers, Google will be hammered for it. Discovery could go wrong for Google in a million ways.
https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/google-manifesto-blacklists.h...
Since they were G+ blocklists, they were obviously on company computers. OTOH, it's not clear (despite the lawsuits characterization, which is pretty directly contradicted by the posts and emails offered to support it) that these were motivated by ideology rather than disruptive manner of expressing that in the workplace. Moreover, it's not clear they they were, in fact, used for any problematic purpose.
> Discovery could go wrong for Google in a million ways
Which is why there won't be a settlement; it's clearly a politically motivated suit aimed to hurt Google as badly as possible; if Damore and the other individually named plaintiff were seeking to maximize the probability and magnitude of personal recompense, this would be a direct action. A settlement with no admission of guilt, no discovery, and just a go-away cash payment that’ll mostly be assigned to the attorneys won't achieve the goals for which they are filing the suit.
This is probably a discussion where painting with a broad brush muddies the waters. Specifically because we're talking about distinctions between individuals within the group you're calling "conservatives".
Also, I get the impression that you're conflating conservatives and populists on this issue. Is that intentional? Because populism and conservatism seem pretty orthogonal to me.
or do you mean google settles? maybe. I kind of wish they would just let their lawyers run wild with this though.
Generally I wouldn't have minded if he went to right wing outlets, as long as he had also gone to left wing outlets. I was willing to listen to his reasoning. But it became clear after the memo came out that he didn't engage with left wingers and maybe he was indeed just appealing to the right.
[1] I don't want to use "right wing" in a disparaging way. I think classical liberalism is perhaps right of center today. I think some of the right wing narratives make sense, but with big caveats. The far right is just a slip away, though. And they would hunt people like me down...
Edit: I don't mean right wing in a disparaging way. I enjoy Joe Rogan (his interviews with NDT and Lawrence Krause are a lot of fun), Dave Rubin (his interview with Faisal is fantastic) and Jordan Peterson. But they are clearly classical liberal, which is arguably right of center today.
Maybe I was extreme in saying far right is just a slip away. I think similar things can happen on the left too of course. Let just not go to the "far-*"...
It's like the people on the right saying Edward Snowden is obviously a traitor/spy because he went to Russia. Uhhh... something very obvious is being ignored there.
Also, come on ... Joe Rogan is definitely not right-wing. Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin do not self-identify as right-wing. And your [1] just seems a little extreme. "The far right is just a slip away from the reasonable right, therefore the reasonable right is dangerous?" But you don't apply that same idea to the left? Why not?
The real pattern here is that he went to the shows that would have him as a guest for reasonable discussion.
I also listened to the James Damore episode, and while I thought James did a good job of making his point and Joe did an AWESOME job of interviewing him while not taking sides, it felt like James was pretty disingenuous and lacked a general understanding of how to behave in a workplace as well as how to treat other people.
Have you watched any of his right wing outlet interviews? Literally on every interview he mentions "Nobody from left reached out to me, only the right wing outlets reached out to me". I'd definitely recommend watching his Dave Rubin interview (even though you think he is a right winger).
If you were him, you'd rather go out and present your side, than to be portrayed in whichever smear light the media wants to portray you.
There are people who lost the narrative from both left and right (like Milo) and that is definitely worse than losing the support for only one side.
Also, hypothetically it sounds great that you show up to both sides on a divided issue like this, but that isn't possible anymore in the polarized society we live in (a great example of this is you classifying Dave Rubin as 'right wing', just see how many people are calling you out on it).
Of the ones that did, it was heavily edited to present a certain bad narrative of him.
I read the memo. If one is familiar with the research and evolutionary biology, there is nothing in there to react that strongly against, unless one takes a biased, insincere reading of what he actually wrote.
him immediately going to right wing YouTubers like
Those were the only people who would talk to him without trying to make it a hit piece, same as Bret Weinstein.
Stefan Molyneux,
Not sure what Mr. Molyneux is, but given his Libertarian bent, he really doesn't fall in with the mainstream North American right. I'm really skeezed out by his past calls to his audience for "de-fooing" which reads like a cult leader asking his followers to isolate themselves from society and listen only to him.
Jordan Peterson
Terms himself a classical liberal, but also terms himself a conservative, which isn't contradictory. He's been kinda "adopted" by a northern Native American tribe. People who try to paint him as "Alt-Right" aren't actually listening to what he's saying, and are effectively in an evidence-free cloudcuckooland. (He isn't anti-trans. Rather, he's against some nefarious anti-science and compelled speech tactics employed by activists who claim to speak for all trans people. He has received numerous letters from trans people in support of his message.) I have yet to see genuine criticism of him which stands up to scrutiny.
Mike cernovich
Don't like this guy, or his politics. Why do you lump this guy and Molyneux in with people like Jordan Peterson? Doesn't make any sense to me, except as a poison pill.
Joe Rogan
Would have passed perfectly fine as a liberal in the 90's. I think the far left doesn't like him simply because he won't play along with their politics. I find him refreshingly honest and highly intelligent. (Yes, he was a moon hoaxer at one point, but unlike a lot of stupid people, he had the wherewithal to listen to arguments and change his mind.)
Dave Rubin
Terms himself a liberal, also a "classical liberal." He's made a turn towards Libertarianism. He strikes me as sincere in wanting to give everyone a chance to be heard. I think he has intellectual integrity, and as such, he's willing to change his mind. His sincerity and intellectual integrity are the best things he has going for him, though I judge him to be just at a layperson's level intellectually.
Steven Crowder
I don't think Mr. Crowder is as funny or as smart as he thinks. I think he falls down a bit in terms of his intellectual honesty and in his scholarship. (Or course, he uses the "comedian" card to get out of that.) I think his effort to expose Antifa was creditable, but I wish he did a better job of having substance. All of these topical comedians are 10X funnier when they have substance. Colbert used to be funny, and it's because he had that.
etc. is suspicious. [1]
Given that you grouped all these people together, I find your list very suspicious.
Let's say you're a shy/introverted engineer working at Google. You are going to a bunch of diversity events because it's an easy way to progress in your career. You find things you disagree with, or think are potentially illegal, but overall agree with the end goal: more women / PoC at Google, and so put forward an analysis that supports the same goal, even asserting that diversity is a good thing, but indicating that Google's methodology is problematic, and possibly illegal. You shop it around, including to HR, who rejects it, get lots of constructive criticism and feedback from peers, revise it, and continue hoping you eventually do cause a good change in your organization.
Someone then sees it, gets angry, and proceeds to leak it to the press. A few days later, nearly every mainstream news organization has an article calling you a woman-hating sexist, calling your memo a "screed" and treating you like some kind of Nazi. Peers you've never spoken to start sending you threatening and hateful messages, not having even read your work, instead relying on clearly defamatory claims made by "news" organizations, totally misquoting what you've said, and even putting words in your mouth. Then you're fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes" when you've explicitly drawn a line in your work between societal expectations on gender expression and biological predisposition due to sex, that is, you're fired for something you didn't actually say or do, and it's final, there's no appeal.
You're this young guy here, with such negative publicity, and stuck in a part of the country that's 90% leftist or left-leaning, being called all sorts of horrible things by thousands of people you don't even know. You check Twitter and see your name is associated with some of the most hateful words you could imagine.
Now, in this situation, do you respond to CNN who has just printed their 17th hitpiece on you, and hope they'll be fair to you, because you're not assertive enough to deal with the confrontation required if they start putting words in your mouth or asking leading questions? Or do you seek to tell your side of the story from people who are already presenting the story in a more neutral way?
He's got a footnote in it about how complaints about gay rights are just an attempt by Marxists to undermine capitalism for goodness sake! In an internal corporate communication about how to better deal with diversity. The mind boggles.
This is the danger of progressive supremacy and the only way out of this hell-hole is encouraging true diversity and inclusiveness -- diversity of thought that includes right-wing conservative viewpoints in addition to those of the left.
Some of these aren't like the others.
And to make sure that people know: He's a liar. Even if you ignore him intentionally misrepresenting his PhD status, he boldly lied about his FIDE chess master status.
Isn't that what he's been doing through his twitter account where he muses whether people join the KKK because they have cool titles? Or his interviews with people like Milo?
Is this just an attempt to extend his relevance a bit longer?
That was just a joke, stop pretending he is a neo-nazi.
I was once identified as a chartered statistician, presumably sympathetic, by a fringe group (fun people collecting Nazi memorabilia, something that happens to get you in jail where I was at the time). Several members reached out to me to draft or sign op-eds on things like homosexual parenthood, sexuality transmittable disease and ethnicity, etc. They were clearly well financed and they had an opinion to defend (which actually makes the job easier). I refused because they didn’t have any data to support their claim so I wasn’t sure what I could do other than discrediting myself instantly (I was not very politically savvy at the time). I had a clear feeling there was a path from paid drafts to signed papers, to book deals that would have made me rich.
Whether James Damore is willing to go there is a more difficult question.
Or create "Not James Damore Consulting, Inc." and hire himself out through that.
I've never made a fuckup of nearly the same magnitude, but the times I made a mistake in public apologizing always made things worse.
"Ruined?" Because he might have to take a non-tech job? Please.
He went to a diversity training event which should've given him a clear idea of Google's stance on the issue. Then he published an internal memo arguing against that stance. He knew the game he was playing. He just played it poorly.
Regardless, he'll be fine.
There are more tech jobs than those at Google, Facebook, etc.
I predict he'll be able to find a nice tech job eventually, and the biggest barrier he'll have to overcome is this lawsuit. There are plenty of companies who aren't so sensitive to this kind of PR and and flap around his hiring will die out quickly.
Palantir or Peter Thiel will just have him well.
If he didn't know exactly what he was doing he deserves whatever happens to him for being so oblivious to the world around him.
If anything Google will settle because the proof of misrepresentation is in James's favor.
Sure there are lots of things you could and Google could have argued. But they chose to respond to what had to be either a different paper or their emotions.
You make mistakes in an industry and you own the impacts to your reputation. He has done serious harm to the work of so many by his actions and absolutely deserves to own the consequences.
And let's be serious here he has zero chance of winning against Google.
Initial filing for a court case is crucial for establishing what we're actually sueing over, and this will be an interesting one, because the chances of his legal team winning this one are definitely non-zero.
Don't be so sure of that. Federal law prohibits firing an employee who is trying to improve working conditions. And that's what he is claiming he was doing with his memo.
And there are a number female SJW Google employees who have made really vicious, public, anti-male statements and no one batted an eyelash. So I think his claim of gender-based discrimination is quite supportable.
> women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering
Why do news outlets persistently misrepresent what he actually said? I've read his memo and just about every news article says it contains claims that it doesn't. I have no view on whether he's right or not, but I remain shocked at the misrepresentation of his views throughout the tech media.
> 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.
Edit: ebbv beat me to it
People barely have any idea about how to hire a software engineer, much less judge someone's true "ability".
Preferences are also very complicated. People may prefer things very differently given the environment. That quote, along with many others, demonstrates the absolute lack of genuineness on the part of Damore.
Damore throws away any pretense of being objective/scientific when he makes claims like this based on metrics that are hardly measurable. A decent scientist would recognize that making claims with very serious implications like this is greatly irresponsible.
As for the distibution of preferences based on sex. While some might claim that sex does not affect preferences. A Meta-study found robust sex differences in children’s toy Indicating that sex "might" be a factor in deciding factor. The categorical refusal of this claim to the point the mere fact of suggesting that it "might" be true let alone asserting it is taboo, is scientifically unfounded.
source: Study finds robust sex differences in children’s toy preferences across a range of ages and countries http://www.psypost.org/2017/12/study-finds-robust-sex-differ...
I think many women have preferences that steer them away from engineering, this may be societal or genetic in nature but that's something that is being debated at this point.
I think saying his use of the word abilities is what gets him in a lot of trouble here.
So no, I would say the original quote is not a good summary of the quote you quoted.
Because this creates controversy, controversy creates engagement and engagement brings more ad revenue to the news outlets.
"Misunderstanding statistical distribution" https://medium.com/@martinweigert/misunderstanding-probabili...
This is different from discriminatory hiring of women to be forced into a male oriented role. This is a substantive claim, which he accuses Google of doing. Discriminatory hiring is illegal, and also stupid, from a free market standpoint.
Tldr: If women aren't buying your product (not applying to Google), it's not the fault of women, its your product that needs to change to suit their wants and needs.
This is only sexist if you think men and women don't, as a general statistical rule, tend toward different interests along a bimodal distribution. But they do.
"James Damore, a former Google engineer who was fired in August after posting a memo to an internal Google message board that was perceived by many to argue that women may not be equally represented in tech because they are biologically less capable of engineering"
They can also point out that he denied he argued this, and that there is plenty of disagreement over whether his memo said it or not.
I know plenty of folks are saying they read it and don't see how one can interpret it any other way. But the fact that you get so many comments indicating they did not interpret it that way is a strong indicator of a lack of consensus. The way the article is written implies a certainty, and does not reflect the reality around the memo.
Essentially, to insist that this is what Damore meant, based only on his memo, is insisting that a huge number of HN posters are playing the same game Damore is. It's much easier to believe that there are other valid interpretations of the memo and to allow for the possibility that Damore had one of the other interpretations.
He was fired for a reason.
I'm having some difficulty understanding your statement. Would you mind clarifying a few things?
- Do you mean all Americans, or just some?
- When you say "do not understand", what do you mean by that?
- I'm unclear as to why you specifically mentioned Americans. Are you comparing them to some other group(s)? And if so, which one(s)?
From 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.
Minus a bit of softening language ("in part", "may"), proposing that women are on average less biologically capable of programming is exactly what he's saying.
Also, because I know how HN works, let me pre-empt the inevitable reply to this one: "but what if there ARE sex differences?! shouldn't we be allowed to talk about that!? Freedom of speech!?!"
Scientists who study this stuff (including those cited by Damore) can and do talk about it, and the consensus is that biological sex differences are not that big of an effect, certainly not enough to explain the gender disparity in tech. What effects there may be are absolutely dominated by sociological factors.
Sociological factors that some companies are attempting to counter, which is what Damore didn't like, which is why he issued his complain-y memo to start with.
And THAT is why people are upset with him. Not because he's an amateur biologist with a day job as a programmer who just earnestly wants to have an innocent conversation about sexual dimorphism. It's because he's just another brogrammer whose jimmies got rustled by the thought of women being his peers, and decided to insult (on average) his female colleagues and create a hostile work environment for which he was (quite correctly) fired.
I am happy he got his ass fired.
[0]: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/18/james-damore-like-g...
[1]: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/450202/google-employees...
> 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.
He said exactly that, right there. Why do conservatives always appear to defend this guy and try to pretend the memo wasn't full of repugnant crap.
I cannot believe that most of you still go with the media narrative that Damore claimed "women are worse than man at engineering" while this is a very obvious misrepresentation of what he wrote in order to fill a narrative.
This is all part of a politically driven agenda that destroys everyone trying to question the unique, politically-correct acceptable way of thinking.
And it kills me that smart people in HN are falling for it so easily.
> 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 all part of a politically driven agenda that destroys everyone trying to question the unique, politically-correct acceptable way of thinking.
This is nonsensical. He wrote bullshit, he caused a problem at his office of employment, he was fired. End of discussion. If you end up pissing off most of your co-workers it leads to a hostile environment so you remove the fewest amount of people to fix it. It doesn't even matter if what he wrote is or isn't correct at that point.
Its two problems our industry literally created: Sensationalist click farming and information overload. Our industry does not take these problems seriously enough. Damore was fired because of the outrage, not because of the article, but the outrage was manufactured by a sensationalist click machine and information overload culture literally championed by the company he was fired from.
He says he is only trying to start a conversation or discussion, but circulating a secret memo around your company and then going on a self-promotional media crusade really is not a great way to do that. It looks more like a political stunt, which is pretty much the opposite of a conversation.
What he did was speak heresy. I’m sorry that it sounds like I’m a butthurt male but the fact is diversity is dogma in these companies and you either buy in wholeheartedly, constantly, to the exclusion of all other priorities, or you’re ex-communicated.
There are something like three to five times as many autistic males than females, depending on the cutoff point and study used. I'm honestly astounded that people are rejecting the biological claim, given how strongly it attracts autistics.
IMHO, a lot of inclusivity-in-tech movements are horrifically ableist for wanting to destroy this niche in the pursuit of making the programming niche more welcoming to other groups. It's about goddamn time there's some push-back against these sorts of gentrifying movements, they're incredibly bad for the work environment interests of autistics.
The worst thing about your post (that isn't at all your fault), is that there isn't a strong argument for them palatable to the hegemony short of "ableism."
If the explanation in your first paragraph is true, then does it stand to reason that there are non-autistic people with weak soft skills? Or simply prefer an individualistic, distraction-free workplace?
My answer to this rhetorical question is: Yes, obviously, as long as you don't tautologically define anyone with a below-threshold appetite for social interaction at work as autistic.
It's fashionable in SV to talk of empathy, tolerance, acceptance etc... Yet from the outside I see a very close-minded bubble that demands people comport to so many social standards that nobody actually finds necessary for professionals to work productively. They'll let people get away with non-conformance only if they've got an excuse that would be a political landmine to cross (e.g. ableism re: autism).
However, if you check the ratio of people even moderately high on the Asperger’s scale among programmers, it is much higher than other more social profession but still a small portion overall. That difference doesn’t come close to explaining the gender gap. Maybe you care for all introverts (who resent interruptions) including the majority of introverts who are neuro-typical. I do believe most programmers are introvert but I’m not familiar with the gender distribution of introversion but I’d be surprised if it were large enough to explain the gender disparity in tech.
But instead of identifying a specific, readily identifiable class that is affected, the classes in this suit are defined as any Google employee against whom Google engaged in certain classes of illegal discrimination in California in a given timeframe; this require litigating individual discrimination claims for each potential class member to determine if they are a class member. Since class members have to be identified and given a chance to opt-out before settlement or trial, this is impractical—its what a class action exists to avoid.
Compare to the Microsoft sex discrimination class action, which defined the class as all women employed in defined roles and levels in particular parts of the organization during a given timeframe.
Also, a class lead plaintiff’s claims—not just the law claimed to be violated but the specific manner—are supposed to be typical of the class; while it's very hard to make any guesses of what would be typical of such an ill-defined class, Damore’s case seems to all appearanced to be sui generis. Maybe I'm missing something, but the class action aspect here seems to be either a complete Hail Mary or a ploy for additional media attention.
How else would several subthreads of subthreads report 40+ replies in an hour once the whole thing is collapsed? There be demons.
Replace "white men" with "black woman" and they'd have a field day clutching pearls and fanning themselves silly.
Damore may be an insensitive autist... Or maybe he's one of the few sensitive to see through all the posturing.
Whether or not this is illegal, or true, this is an anti-pattern. If you want representation (and PR) hiring quotas are great; however, if you truly want to empower they work against your goals. At the end of the day any person who walks into a job because of a quota will question, "did I get this job because of my gender/race/creed/orientation?" While you have provided them with opportunity it would be very difficult for that person to fairly evaluate themselves and especially determine whether they are making progress in their career.
Another reason could be that it is easier to obtain emotional distance on a decision when you're not personally involved. Believing that something is best as an abstract policy doesn't always make it easy to believe it is best for you.
A third possibility is that he does believe that the market should decide, but that he also believes in taking full advantage of the system as it exists today.
As far as the second point, the free markets no longer operate that way, marketing has emerged as a white washing effect for any ill a company can get themselves into, as long as they spend enough on marketing they can work their way out of it on top.
What does this even mean? People booed simply because they were white and male? I honestly don't get it. And who did the booing?
If you had a high-profile case like this, are you choosing to defy the arbitration agreement? Anyone ever gone through this and willing to share the process?
I wouldn't be surprised if an employer chose to leave claims to which those rules apply out of the coverage of any arbitration agreement; leaving the employee on the hook for court costs is probably a better discouragement to claims, especially meritless ones, than arbitration is.
[0] https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=160495945137091...
Would be interesting to hear the opinion of the people with legal experience: what are the merits of the lawsuit?
My personal unqualified opinion is that they will settle out of court for wrongful termination. Since white males are not protected class, the discrimination case is much weaker.
It is much easier for Google to settle this lawsuit than to deal with hundreds of others they would get should they kept Damore on payroll.
I think regardless of the merits of TFD this lawsuit is a good thing because companies would be less inclined to punish people for objecting groupthink.
Yes they are. Or at least whites and males are a protected class (at the suit alledges discrimination against these classes independently, not just their intersection).
It is true that the intent of the anti discrimination laws was to protect non-whites and females, codifying that into law would be a clear violation of the equal protections clause and make any such law unconstitutional.
>My personal unqualified opinion is that they will settle out of court for wrongful termination.
The wrongful termination argument defiantly seems stronger here. However, it is worth keeping in mind that they have not settled yet. I assume Damore's laywers would have tried settling before even filing [0]. If Google wanted to settle they should have done it back than, before the PR hit of the suit being filed happened. Coming up is the PR hit of discovery, which is going to bring to light a lot of skeletons that Google would rather keep hidden. (Even if Google did nothing wrong with regards to this case; no organization the size of Google can go through discovery without something coming out)
[0] Assuming their actual goal is just money. They claim to be doing this to effect change. While their public statements on motivation are highly suspect, it is within the realm of reason that they are actually interested in this case for the political agenda, in which case they would want to take it to court.
0: [https://www.scribd.com/document/368689407/Damore-vs-Google-C...]
I have stopped reading TechCrunch, ArsTechnica and Vice magazine because they continually report this inaccurately (at best) if they are not outright lying.
Once again, Damore never says that women are biologically less capable. Nothing like this is every stated nor even implied. In fact he goes out of his way to say this is not so, in the memo. Frustrating.
> Should I be forced to hire a neo-nazi or a terrorist sympathiser so long as they're up to the job?
Just like you should be "forced" to hire a Greenpeace member, or a union organizer, or someone outspokenly pro-choice, or someone outspokenly pro-life, or someone running on the libertarian ticket, or someone running on the Communist ticket.
How this would play out in practice if someone "brought their politics to work" and the case went to court, I can't tell you; I'm not an expert in California labor law. But if people aren't bringing their politics to work, firing people for political views would be an even more concerning precedent, to me.
(In Damore's case, the politics was very much brought to work, and not just by him. I make absolutely no claims about what that means in terms of the above-cited law, or morality, for that matter.)
What Damore may be trying to do is establish a legal understanding that the political discrimination (which definitely happened) was connected to racial discrimination (which would need to be proven in court). If Damore can do that successfully, he should be able to win the lawsuit.
But I don't think it's possible. At least it shouldn't be possible. Like you suggested, companies must be able to discriminate against political behavior at work that is disruptive.
Damore's memo was released in an unruly manner that disrupted Google's bottom line. It also brought down company morale, alienated fellow coworkers, and caused undue internal strife. His resulting unwillingness to help contain the drama demonstrated his lack of allegiance to the company's interest. Behavior like this cannot be protected from termination.
The king of search finds it too hard to compile data.
http://fortune.com/2017/05/27/google-gender-wage-data-report...
Just like you aren't asked to strip search when going through TSA, `just because`. There needs to be a legitimate reason and suspicion.
PS. Being told that "You are only here because you're a diversity hire, you can't actually do the work," is creating a hostile working environment.
Read the memo before telling people what it said...
Twitter has eroded out society.
Being fired from Google has been traumatizing. He's gone farther and farther into the "unrecoverable from a PR standpoint" zone, and that's really horrible. 10 years from now, he's going to have a hard time finding employment or basic living possible. He's still a human though. If he committed himself to being humble and actually trying to work on himself, it would be really positive. Even the PR thing can go away -- everyone loves a redemption story.
The problem is that moves like this just deepen the hole. A lot of people are cheering for his demise, and seeing that hole get bigger is eye candy. But again, he's still a human. He still has hopes, dreams, fears, etc., just like the rest of us. Maybe positive encouragement to change is a better route to go than just watching him keep digging. In no way do I support his ideas -- quite the opposite -- but is it fair to characterize someone as fully a lost cause this early?
I just feel like this is a wishful thinking on the part of left. There are plenty of fields which do not care about his opinions. There are plenty of technological ventures who explicitly look to hire people who are 'uncucked' (term a recruiter used when reaching out to me) run by people HN and left in general absolutely hates (Occulus guy, Pharma bro, Peter Thiel). Plus the job of technology is such that as long as you're writing code, and pay taxes, you can make a decent living.
Not to mention the numerous developers blockchain industry hires, nearly nobody there cares about it, because majority of them are located outside US.
The technological right has money, and not everyone in technology needs to maintain an image like Google, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft etc.
Given today's tight labor market, he has plenty of options. If he was good enough to get into Google, at the bare minimum he could do fine in corporate IT. In a lot of red states, his past might even be an asset. If he's willing to keep his head down and feign contrition, he could probably work just about anywhere except the top tech companies.
Saw an interview with him and saying he needed to have his GF filter what he writes. I was thinking no that is not the issue. Instead do not share these things if they are in your head. Swear him saying that just made it worse. He clearly still does not get it.
Damore was fired because he was bad for business. Not because he's white, male, conservative, or the contents of his memo. Had the memo not been leaked publicly, I have no doubt he'd still be working at Google and his memo ignored and/or forgotten. He simply became too much of lightning rod for Google to continue to employ him.
Google will settle for the same reason. It is better for business to pay him off and make sure he never talks about it again, than to drag this out.
The only people who will be financially better off in this whole deal will be the lawyers, and nothing will be resolved in reference to the larger issues surrounding this case.
Is this just a reminder to be careful what you post at work?
link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289616...
Abstract Utilizing MRI and cognitive tests data from the Human Connectome project (N = 900), sex differences in general intelligence (g) and molar brain characteristics were examined. Total brain volume, cortical surface area, and white and gray matter correlated 0.1–0.3 with g for both sexes, whereas cortical thickness and gray/white matter ratio showed less consistent associations with g. Males displayed higher scores on most of the brain characteristics, even after correcting for body size, and also scored approximately one fourth of a standard deviation higher on g. Mediation analyses and the Method of Correlated Vectors both indicated that the sex difference in g is mediated by general brain characteristics. Selecting a subsample of males and females who were matched on g further suggest that larger brains, on average, lead to higher g, whereas similar levels of g do not necessarily imply equal brain sizes.
Highlights • Sex differences in brain morphology and general intelligence were examined.
• MRI and test data of the Human connectome project were used (N = 896)
• Males and females differed in total brain size, gray, and white matter volumes
• The male-female difference in general intelligence, g, was d = 0.25.
• Sex differences in brain morphology mediated the sex difference in g.
The idea that the tech industry needs to change their approach to incentivizing women to the workplace still stands regardless.
Is that really illegal? If someone was not hired on account of his being a White supremacist, would he have any basis for a lawsuit?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt
to coerce or influence his employees through or
by means of threat of discharge or loss of
employment to adopt or follow or refrain from
adopting or following any particular course or
line of political action or political activity.
Discriminating against someone for their political beliefs is not illegal. Federally political affiliation is not a protected group and in California apparently 'political affiliation' is according to wikipedia[1] however I couldn't find the relevant section of the CA statute on the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) of CA[2].
If he was discriminated against because of his race or gender, then that is a problem. But firing him for having conservative views should be entirely valid. I am not saying that believe firms SHOULD fire people who have X view or Y view so much as they should have the right to.
While we can debate the merits of James' individual views, let's take a more extreme example. If an individual regularly spouted off white supremacist and neo-NAZI views, I don't think any of us would have a problem with a firm firing that co-worker. Firms are trying to create a culture that aligns with their objectives and enhances employee/workplace happiness and harmony. Some views are antithetical to that.
Furthermore, we can back away from such extreme views and still find cases where it would be legitimate to make decisions based on individual's views and perspectives. If you owned a company focused on selling sustainably sourced, carbon neutral products. Hiring a sales person who does not believe in climate change and is actively hostile the the concept of environmentalism would be a bad idea. It is entirely logical to hire/fire people based on non-religious beliefs.
Beliefs are choices individuals make, and thus they should be judged by their choices.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160909163923/http://www.dfeh.c...
In Cali it is. These laws were enacted in the 30/40s when people were blacklisted for being Commies.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio... https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
It would be interesting if this goes to the supreme court and the conservative court rules these laws unconstitutional on freedom of association grounds.
He openly published a memo condemning his employer, tarnishing the brand and bringing the company under considerable negative press. I figure there must be some clause in any employment agreement stating that you can't actively cause damage to the company.
Edit: Looks like the memo wasn't intentionally released to the public, but it still caused damage. If I drop tables unintentionally on production, I'm not surprised if I'm fired- even if it was an accident.
False. He published a memo internally for other Google employees in a culture of internal openness and intellectual discussion which had been implied to exist inside the company for a while.
His memo was then leaked outside the company, possibly by an ideological enemy. Hard to say he was "actively causing damage to the company".
This will probably come up.
https://www.employmentattorneyla.com/blog/2017/06/can-you-be...
The person in question is talking about what they presented at a meeting, but I don't think it should be interpreted that the booing actually occurred during the meeting itself. In any case, it's not really the best look, but the suit is mischaracterizing it IMO.
He is alleging three separate basic things (it's really a triple-class action; there are three separate classes that the case seeks to represent)
(1) Violation of California's law against employer control/coercion of employee political activity.
(2) race discrimination,
(3) sex discrimination.
(There's other charges, but they are basically derivative of those.)
In USA, discrimination due to sex is illegal.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
Also, my understanding of how discrimination laws work is that the question of 'protected class' doesn't come into it - if the discrimination was based on race or gender, it's illegal.
Cause really, that's all it should take. "He made his continued employment here impossible because he pissed off his coworkers". Sounds like a completely valid reason to fire me.
Update: one moment this gets up voted and the next moment it gets down voted and this repeats, is anybody willing to actually argue? Call my bs, I have thick skin.
There are people that might generalize and think all right wing people feel this way about women.
I have right wing friends and know that is not true but others might.
Instead Damore has become some kind of right wing matre which seems really strange.
I mean we have an employee who does not work in HR and I do not think a manager working on something that has nothing to do with their job. Something people are fired for everyday.
Then on top is negative no matter how you look at it towards other employees that makes it impossible to keep and have him on a team. Double firable offence and Google would be wrong not have.
Then it is freaking California where the law is in the employer side.
But somehow it has become some weird rally call for the alt right and the abuse of white guys which I am actually am one of.
Someone should write a book. It is just insane how easily some are being manipulated. But there must be something deeper inside that makes it this easy that for some reason I am missing as a white guy.
Why do we have angry white guys? Why not me?
(and just to make sure : people should be treated just great even if they're different, meaning they have different abilities somehow, somewhere, and we don't know them all because science isn't advanced enough yet to make any kind of definitive statement).
EDIT : And for those with a great desire of flaming people in public, i suggest tracking people that :
- don't believe climate change is due to human activity
- don't believe public social security should cover every expense
- don't like electric cars, or keep driving SUVs
- have been found watching (racial) porn at the office
- have made any kind of bad joke on any minority
- have made public declaration (at the office cafetaria to his neighbor) supporting any decision by president Trump.
- has bought a gun for his home
- think Google should pay its taxes. Oh no, wait this one is still too controversial.
pretty sure we don’t want anyone watching any sort of porn at the office
Every culture is shaped by the people it's comprised of by definition. Do you have a problem with the fact that Chinese culture is "shaped by 1000 years of Chinese dominance"?