Was Google right to sack anti-Diversity engineer?

Space_Time · Jan 17, 2018

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/ok-google-youve-been-served-1516044100

OK Google, You’ve Been Served
The company may find its political monoculture hard to defend under California labor law.

A Google exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 9. PHOTO: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
By Allysia Finley
Jan. 15, 2018 2:21 p.m. ET
346 COMMENTS
Does Google discriminate against white, male and conservative employees? Two former Google workers allege as much in a class-action lawsuit they filed against the company last week. While they may have difficulty prevailing in court, they make a strong case that Google aggressively promotes a political agenda and is far from a neutral broker of information.

Former Google engineers James Damore and David Gudeman claim they were fired for failing to conform to the company’s progressive culture. Last summer Mr. Damore published what was initially an internal cri de coeur against Google’s “ideological echo chamber” that criticized its intolerance for alternative views and suggested biology may make men better suited, on average, for tech jobs. Many Google employees demanded Mr. Damore’s termination and a purge of those who shared his views. Senior managers allegedly told Mr. Damore that he was fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.”

Mr. Gudeman was fired after he questioned a Muslim co-worker who claimed he was being targeted by the federal government because of his religion. According to the lawsuit, Google claimed Mr. Gudeman had accused the colleague of terrorism.

Messrs. Damore and Gudeman claim to be victims of sex, race and political discrimination. Discrimination in employment on the basis of race, sex, national origin and religion are prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But federal law doesn’t forbid employers to discriminate based on their political or cultural views. So the plaintiffs are suing under California labor law, which prohibits employers from “forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics.” Employers also cannot discharge or threaten to terminate employees to coerce them into political action.

To win certification as a class action, the plaintiffs must demonstrate that numerous Google employees suffered a common injury. To win their case, they’ll have to show that Google itself adopted or enforced a policy that forbade employees from engaging in politics and led to systematic discrimination against white, conservative men—or alternatively that Google fired Messrs. Damore and Gudeman to force employees to adopt progressive views.

Google’s likely defense will be that it pledges to “create a respectful culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, or unlawful discrimination of any kind,” and that the firing of Messrs. Damore and Gudeman was in furtherance of this policy. But the plaintiffs make a good case that Google has selectively and unfairly enforced its policy, and in doing so has promoted a hostile workplace.

Mr. Damore alleges that after he and some co-workers complained about Google’s ideological conformity and diversity training—“bias busting” seminars on “white male privilege” and the like—they were shunned, denounced and punished. One manager sent out a mass email describing Mr. Damore’s memo as “repulsive and intellectually dishonest” and allegedly “promoted posts that advocated for physical violence” against him. A co-worker emailed Mr. Damore: “You’re a misogynist and a terrible person. I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. [Expletive] you.” Mr. Damore says he forwarded the email to the human-resources department and was told to work from home. He was fired soon after. Another manager allegedly threatened to ask Google’s employee-relations department to sift through old posts on Google’s “conservatives@” mailing list for code-of-conduct violations.
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chris155au · Jan 17, 2018

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Let's hope he wins. Unlikely though, unfortunately.

Space_Time · Jan 28, 2018

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https://www.wired.com/story/the-dirty-war-over-diversity-inside-google/
AUTHOR: NITASHA TIKUNITASHA TIKU
BUSINESS
01.26.1806:00 AM
THE DIRTY WAR OVER DIVERSITY INSIDE GOOGLE

“Now it’s like basically anything you say about yourself may end up getting leaked to score political points in a lawsuit,” one employee says.GETTY IMAGES
FIRED GOOGLE ENGINEER James Damore says he was vilified and harassed for questioning what he calls the company’s liberal political orthodoxy, particularly around the merits of diversity.

Now outspoken diversity advocates at Google say that they are being targeted by a small group of their coworkers in an effort to silence discussions about racial and gender diversity.

In interviews with WIRED, 15 current Google employees accuse coworkers of inciting outsiders to harass rank-and-file employees who are minority advocates, including queer and transgender employees. Since August, screenshots from Google’s internal discussion forums, including personal information, have been displayed on sites including Breitbart and Vox Popoli, a blog run by alt-right author Theodore Beale, who goes by the name Vox Day. Other screenshots were included in a 161-page lawsuit that Damore filed in January, alleging that Google discriminates against whites, males, and conservatives.

What followed, the employees say, was a wave of harassment. On forums like 4chan, members linked advocates’ names with their social-media accounts. At least three employees had their phone numbers, addresses, and deadnames (a transgender person’s name prior to transitioning) exposed. Google site reliability engineer Liz Fong-Jones, a trans woman, says she was the target of harassment, including violent threats and degrading slurs based on gender identity, race, and sexual orientation. More than a dozen pages of personal information about another employee were posted to Kiwi Farms, which New York has called “the web’s biggest community of stalkers.”

Meanwhile, inside Google, the diversity advocates say some employees have “weaponized human resources” by goading them into inflammatory statements, which are then captured and reported to HR for violating Google’s mores around civility or for offending white men.

Engineer Colin McMillen says the tactics have unnerved diversity advocates and chilled internal discussion. “Now it’s like basically anything you say about yourself may end up getting leaked to score political points in a lawsuit,” he says. “I have to be very careful about choosing my words because of the low-grade threat of doxing. But let’s face it, I’m not visibly queer or trans or non-white and a lot of these people are keying off their own white supremacy.”

Targeted employees say they have complained to Google executives about the harassment. They say Google’s security team is vigilant about physical threats and that Danielle Brown, Google’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, who has also been targeted by harassers, has been supportive and reassuring. But, they say they have not been told the outcome of complaints they filed against coworkers they believe are harassing them, and that top executives have not responded assertively to concerns about harassment and doxing. As a result, some employees now check hate sites for attempts at doxing Google employees, which they then report to Google security.

Google declined to respond to questions due to ongoing litigation, but a Google spokesperson said the company has met with every employee who expressed concern.

The complaints underscore how Google’s freewheeling workplace culture, where employees are encouraged to “bring your whole self to work” and exchange views on internal discussion boards, has turned as polarized and toxic as the national political debate.

Aneeta Rattan, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the London School of Business, says organizations such as Google that want to foster an open environment have to establish norms and rules of engagement around difficult conversations. “They don’t want to have a giant list of things you can’t say,” but they should identify parameters, says Rattan, who has studied prejudice in the workplace and the ability of groups of people to change their minds. “A lot of this is about stoking complex thought, which means everyone will leave somewhat unhappy,” she says. “That is not something all organizations want to foster.”

The politicized tension inside Google echoes the challenge that Silicon Valley tech giants face moderating divisive content on their social-media platforms. Tech companies sold themselves as open and neutral forces for good, espousing free expression both on their corporate campuses and on the internet. But critics say that too often, the social-media sites have become hotbeds of hate speech.

Some anger from the alt-right is now aimed at the tech companies themselves. After Damore’s memo became public in August, a Breitbart headline screamed, “Google’s Social Justice Warriors Create Wrongthink Blacklists.” Earlier this month, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas posted surreptitious video of Twitter employees discussing the company’s moderation policies.

Yonatan Zunger, a high-ranking veteran engineer who left Google eight months ago, says the internal culture has become a textbook case of the "paradox of tolerance," the notion that if a society is tolerant without limit, it will be seized upon by the intolerant.

The combatants represent just a sliver of Google’s more than 75,000 employees. Executives seem to want everyone to get back to work, rather than be forced into the awkward position of refereeing a culture war. “Just like they’re reporting me, I’m reporting them as well,” says Alon Altman, a senior engineer and diversity advocate. After Damore’s memo was disclosed in August, Altman says the complaints from both sides amounted to “a denial-of-service attack on human resources.”

Google is an important symbol in Silicon Valley’s struggles with diversity. Damore’s suit claims Google discriminates against whites, males, and conservatives. At the same time, Google faces a Department of Labor investigation and a private lawsuit from four former employees claiming that it discriminates against women in pay and promotion. The company was the first tech giant to release its diversity numbers in 2014, but has not made significant progress since.

Diversity advocates say that by trying to stay neutral, Google is being exploited by instigators, who have disguised a targeted harassment campaign as conservative political thought.

One flashpoint is Google’s training for employees about sexual, racial, and ethnic diversity. In his memo, Damore said the programs “are highly politicized which further alienates non-progressives.” But one black woman employee offers an opposing complaint. She says the programs lack context about discrimination and inequality and focus on interpersonal relationships, instructing employees to watch what they say because it might hurt someone’s feelings. “It robs Google of the chance to discuss these issues,” and leaves criticisms unanswered, she says. She says co-workers and her manager have described diversity as “just another box to check and a waste of time.”

Zunger, the former employee, says Google managers often are put in an impossible position while trying to resolve disputes. As a consequence, sometimes managers tried to restore calm by telling everyone to knock it off. Zunger says this was well-intentioned, but ultimately counterproductive. “Once an awareness of contempt is present in the room, not talking about it doesn't make it go away,” he said.
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Was Google right to sack anti-Diversity engineer?

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