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.
You could be right this is definitely a possibility. I did not intend to suggest that all white male programmers are awesome, certainly not the case.
Personally, I'd be very interested to see Damore's code. We already know that he lied about both a PhD and being a chess master. [2] I would not be shocked at all to find out that he's not good at programming.
[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourna...
[2] https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/18271/is-james-dam...
"23. Damore was diligent and loyal, and received substantial praise for the quality of his work. Damore received the highest possible rating twice, including in his most recent performance review, and consistently received high performance ratings, placing him in the top few percentile of Google employees. Throughout the course of his employment with Google, Damore received approximately eight performance bonuses, the most recent of which was approximately 20% of his annual salary. Damore also received stock bonuses from the Google amounting to approximately $150,000 per year.
24. Damore was never disciplined or suspended during his entire tenure at Google.
25. Based on Damore’s excellent work, Damore was promoted to Senior Software Engineer in or around January 2017—just eight months before his unlawful termination by Google."
> Damore received the highest possible rating twice, including in his most recent performance review, and consistently received high performance
How are these ratings done, by the team/manager or externally? IME when it's done by the same team then reviews are more about politics than performance.
I'm fascinated how one can reconcile both beliefs
So I'd still like to see his code. And talk with some of his coworkers.
No, he did not lie about this. You are lying about it. His linkedin listed him as having been part of a PhD program and people took it to mean he had a PhD. There is absolutely no evidence he ever intended to mislead anyone about this.
So, please stop spreading lies.
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PS I know because I actually saw the linkedin profile before he edited it. It did not say he had a PhD. It clearly listed that he was in the program for 2 years, which any person reasonably familiar with PhD programs would immediately suspect meant that he had not finished. And indeed, I followed up by looking up what publications he had, and while his name was on a couple of papers he had clearly not published a dissertation. So, to anyone who wasn't deliberately looking to discredit him for malicious or self-interested reasons, as Business Insider's Natasha Tiku almost certainly was, would not have been fooled for a second by his profile nor would they have believed that Damore intended to fool them.Note the business insider article you linked uses these weasel words:
James Damore, the fired Google engineer who wrote the now-infamous memo on diversity at the company, has removed mention of PhD studies in biology from his LinkedIn profile.
The removal comes after Wired writer Nitasha Tiku confirmed with Harvard that Damore has not completed his PhD.
He then goes on to call out the "Right-wing argument" appealing to his credibility because he had a PhD.
If you read carefully, you'll see that they frame as if it was this embarassing thing that they'd shamed him into doing, to encourage lazy, non-critical readers to reach the same conclusion that you did, while using the technically correct words to avoid defamation liability. But, careful analysis of the facts shows that I am correct. He did not lie about the PhD, others either lied on his behalf without his knowledge; or were confused by careless/overly-optimistic reading of the LinkedIn profile.
So at the very best, his resume was misleading because he was incompetent at putting together a resume. That doesn't jibe with the theory that he's so very brilliant. The fact that he quickly edited it when called out confirms even he saw it as misleading; that he didn't comment or apologize suggests it was not a simple mistake.
Ah, and now that I go look for images, it did not list him as being part of a PhD *program". it just said "PhD, Systems Biology" under education:
http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/598b0f3776084a30198...
I'm glad to hear you weren't misled by that thanks to your expertise, but there's no denying that is misleading to a general-audience reader.
1. Damore truthfully specified he's a PhD student
2. You (I assume innocently) and others (some innocently, some maliciously) misconstrued this as a claim that he has a PhD degree
3. Despite Linkedin information being completely true and whole error being contained in your bad reading alone, you and others called Damore a liar.
4. Damore removed that true information to avoid further confusion
5. You construe it as a proof that Damore was a liar, since if he removed completely truthful information that some people misread and used it against him, he must have intended to mislead from the start, and that's why he specified his PhD student status exactly as it truly was.
6. This also proves Damore was incompetent, since he wrote his Linkedin page in a way that a hostile or inattentive reader was able to misunderstand his page where it suited his preexisting notions, which would never happen if Damore was any good at writing Linkedin pages, as it is known that well-written (or merely competently written) Linkedin page is impossible to misread or misinterpret, no matter how much you try.
7. This is further proven by the image, since Linkedin design and forms do not allow to distinguish incomplete PhD study in progress from a finished one and display merely a length of the study but not the completion status, clearly Damore intended to mislead by using the only options available in the Linkedin interface.
This sounds like extremely tortured logic aimed at arriving at predetermined conclusion that Damore is a bad person. Looks like you're continuing to mine for something that explains why Damore is a bad person (failing at the premise he's a bad programmer above), to avoid addressing what he said on merits - since if he's a bad person, he can't be right on merits, obviously, no bad person has ever said anything true.
Note, you don't have to address it if you don't want to, but if you do, personal attack is not the best way to go, even if a very common one.