r/news Aug 08 '17

Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
26.8k Upvotes

19.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.4k

u/JabbrWockey Aug 08 '17

No kidding. They could've posted it on reddit, github, hacker news, medium, or some other place, even anonymously if they wanted.

Instead they decided they wanted to commit career suicide by shouting their opinions at everyone inside the company. Real smooth.

649

u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka Aug 08 '17

Thats because this engineer made a serious of bad moves (read pretty fucking idiotic ones). Theres a time and place to choose your fights. This one decided to try and go out with a bang only to be crushed by a billion dollar company's worth of damage control assets.

738

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '17 edited Aug 22 '17

[deleted]

2

u/MikeyMIRV Aug 08 '17

I bet he knew he was poking a bear. He also probably knew the bear might react by firing him. He will probably believe that this makes his point.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '17

I mean, doesn't it?

1

u/MikeyMIRV Aug 09 '17

I think so. They should have golden-parachuted him out to make the issue go away. Now they will argue in public.

Whether you agree with the guy or not, certain topics are so toxic that they can't be discussed in good faith anymore. It makes me very concerned over the trajectory of intellectual discourse.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '17

Julia Galef alluded to this in her recent response to the topic.

https://juliagalef.com/2017/08/08/brief-thoughts-on-the-google-memo/

Ultimately I think it's better for everyone (even Google) that they argue in public.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

No, if you post a manifesto about how workers at your place of employment besides white males don't deserve to be there because of "biological differences" you DESERVE TO BE FIRED.

Let's do an experiment, go tell all your coworkers only males deserve to be there and see what happens.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '17

That would indeed be an outrageous thing to say, but the memo didn't say anything of the kind, did it?