If you go to her original post linked in the article, there is an interesting and fairly detailed account of what happened from the other side’s view in the comments. That view is much more focused on the fact that she broke protocol for installing the notification just because she wanted to, and if everyone did the same thing, there would be some chaos.
It's hard for me to believe that anyone doesn't understand that, though. Of course there would be chaos if people were allowed to create popup windows to communicate whatever they want. That ought to be clear as soon as you read that she created the popup and Google didn't want her to.
Agreed. Imagine if everyone was allowed to abuse their positions. After years of working in enterprises, I know many that would create popups about the silliest things. The Security VP quoted in the article stated that she abused a security tool, and I agree.
My best story is a popup every time you connected to the main corporate wifi, saying that you've connected and you should disconnect if you're not authorized to connect.
>Imagine if everyone was allowed to abuse their positions.
So it's okay if some people are allowed to abuse their positions by firing someone who essentially added a little footnote on one website in particular with a reminder as to what Federal law actually dictates?
That's my issue with that logic. We are all citizens first. Corporate shenanigans should never undermine civil rights. The right to organize and to do so at work, is protected, just as the right of a corporation to spew as much anti-unionization propaganda is protected. Period.
The employer will find any other excuse besides the blatantly illegal thing on which to pin the rationale for the firing. They just want to reap the benefit of the outcome (one less active organizer) without the hassle of being called to the carpet for a clear violation of labor law. That's how it works. It's all about how to get what you want while having an out to fall back on when someone calls you out. This is why legal departments exist. To ensure a jury in the event of getting called out will have to slog through every conceivable distraction before the company can be held accountable for their actions.
She has the legal right to do union organizing at work, but she doesn't have the right to subvert the company's tools to do it. The idea that misbehavior becomes okay once you say "well I was organizing a union" seems incredibly toxic to me, and fundamentally incompatible with the kinds of freedoms software developers generally enjoy. If Spiers gets her way, and Google is legally barred from expecting line staff to use their powers responsibly, that just means Google will start requiring manager approval for everything potentially disruptive.
Yes, that seems like a really good reason to have a limited set of people who can create such popups. Which Google did.
If someone makes an alert that management wishes to overrule, that seems like a really good reason to be able to revert commits, which I believe Google's version control system is able to do.
If they made a really bad mistake and you want to make sure they don't do it again, that seems like a really good reason to have their manager call them into a meeting.
If they made a really, really bad mistake, then perhaps there's formal disciplinary action, like a negative performance review or a docked bonus.
None of this seems like a reason to fire someone. Definitely none of this seems like a reason to drag them into a conference room and interrogate them to disclose the names of other people they're organizing with. That's what you would do if you were threatened by the content of the notification instead of unhappy with an abuse of process.
We'll never know exactly how the disciplinary process went down. But from Spiers' Medium post, it sounds like they tried to have meetings multiple times and she doubled down. If she told Google what she's telling the public, that she did nothing wrong and it was illegal for Google to stop her, that seems like a plenty good reason to fire her.
Mandatory pop ups are mandatory pop ups; no matter how useful or relevant the message is, it doesn't mask the fact that it's annoying and disrespects the user of the browser. No one would be happy to receive a pop up window every time they visit a site.
It actually took a second for me to understand you were talking about the article here, because Medium itself insists on serving me a mandatory popup explaining that I can create an account.
Yes that tool was preexisting. But no, all other messages served by that tool are throttled, meaning if you visit an offending site several times, you get the pop up once. She overrode the throttle for her particular message. That turned her message from a gentle reminder to a nanny nag. It's a clear abuse.
I don't think that really makes sense. If someone edited build tooling to print a labor notice after every compilation, "no it's my job to manage that build tool" would be a really dumb defense.
It's somewhat curious to me that neither she not Google are spelling out exactly what was changed in the code.
The "policy notifier" existed already as an internal use Chrome plugin. It apparently had a list of sites that would merit it popping a policy reminder.
So, she clearly mapped a policy reminder for that website. But, elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21961447) it's suggested that she also made a special rule to show it every time for that site, where other sites would only show it on first visit.
I think so. Note that there's likely not a huge distinction between the two, because Google uses some pretty complicated configuration languages that are often Turing complete (e.g. Blaze essentially allows arbitrary Python). It's all checked into the one true monorepo as well.
This is another article about Kathryn Spiers, the fifth person recently to claim that Google fired them for organizing. Earlier ahem spirited discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21813619
This is the precedent that says that while parts of Damore's memo would be protected by labor laws, "the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected" and if "an employee’s conduct significantly disrupts work processes, creates a hostile work environment, or constitutes racial or sexual discrimination or harassment, the Board has found it unprotected even if it involves concerted activities regarding working conditions," and concludes "that the memorandum included both protected and unprotected statements" and Google only fired him for the latter?
Yes, I imagine they're happy about that. It confirms that they're protected.
NRLB ruled that citing scientific studies is "so harmful as to be unprotected", which is a bad joke. If citing studies is bad enough to be fired, what about the academics who wrote them? That agency has got no credibility anymore as a consequence.
So if the agency has no credibility, then there's no sense in appealing to the agency's mistaken opinion in the Damore case that he should have lost his protection, and so these employees should not lose it either, right?
Kind of a big difference between being fired for trimming to organize (which is protected by law) and being fired by pushing pseudo science to marginalize a certain group of colleagues.
Damore was advocating for improvements in workplace conditions, which is also something that's protected by labor law. He was doing the very opposite to "marginalizing" a group of colleagues; he explicitly stated that this group of colleagues would enjoy their work more and become more productive if Google found ways to increase their social involvement in the work, by expanding on practices such as pair programming. And plenty of actual scientists have stood behind his claims.
I read the memo and you are right. I also agree with GP about reaping what you sow.
However, I suspect that a lot of people will fail to see the parallels between both stories because their political beliefs requires them to engage in cognitive dissonance.
I just take solace in the fact that there are some folks out there that can look at these type of issues logically.
Damore wasn't encouraging discrimination, hate or violence on any group of people in his memo. I know this because I actually read the thing and I didn't rely on the second hand account of an perpetually outraged group of people who are disproportionately loud.
I also read the memo and I think a lot of the science or logic was completely bonkers. For example, he claimed that women were more neurotic, and computer science very stressful, therefore it makes sense that women would naturally not pursue computer science. He also claimed that women were more social, and computer science quite lonely, and therefore it makes sense women would not pursue computer science. These assumptions on how the field of which he worked in were not backed by any science, and IME were completely wrong from basic counterarguments:
* Nursing and social work have a majority women workforce, and are much, much more stressful than any Google job by any reasonable definition of 'stressful'. At least at Google you're not worrying about being exposed to literal biohazardous material or handling actual, extensive child/elder/domestic abuse.
* Being a politician, a director, or a CEO are all extremely social positions- in fact they rely almost entirely on one's capacity to be socially persuasive. They are all almost entirely majority men.
* Computer science is very social in the workplace, by sheer need of doing code reviews. Hell, the popular workflow-du-jour is Agile, which requires regular standups, meetings, review, etc.
Computer science is quite social and pretty low-stress. By women who are apparently biologically directed to social, low-stress positions, a desk job like software development should be perfect!
Damore never claimed that women were "more neurotic". He pointed out that women have slightly more on average of a personality trait that's conventionally labeled Neuroticism, but (if anything) is perhaps better thought of as the reverse of emotional stability. He also didn't claim that computer science was "lonely", only that it emphasizes dealing with "things" as opposed to people, and that women on average are somewhat more likely to find such an emphasis less appealing. The claims are not nearly as "bonkers" as you say, they're about slight variations which are only even detectable at the scale of very large groups, and say nothing whatsoever about what individuals are like in day-to-day life.
They are bonkers because how can computer science deal with "things" when it's almost entirely dealing with people's needs? How can women have on average the "reverse of emotional stability" and yet be driven from an incredibly cushy job (programming at google)?
Programming involves sitting on your own most of the day talking to compilers. Hence developer's famous dislike of distractions, meetings and other social events that disrupt the flow of concentration. It's pretty much the epitome of a job that involves working with things; claiming it's not can only be the product of intense political bias. If computer science is "almost entirely dealing with people's needs" then what kind of job does count as working with things?
> Programming involves sitting on your own most of the day talking to compilers.
Only if you write really, really bad code. Once you're able to write code that works, the interesting question is what code to write. Professional software engineering does in fact mostly consist of talking to people. I say this based on the "intense political bias" of having been a working software engineer for many years.
I don't think there are many jobs that consist primarily of working with things. I suppose jobs that are lonely by nature, like trucker or lighthouse operator, or jobs where your work product is usually developed by one person, like sculptor or fiction writer?
I've also been a software engineer for many years. If you're spending more time talking to people than coding, you aren't a programmer anymore, you're actually more of a business analyst.
First of “neurotic” is a psychological term. He was using it in the scientific way, not the colloquial way.
Second, the point is not that all women cannot be programmers. It’s the fact that if the goal is to increase the number of female programmers, you need to change the nature of programming to make it more appealing to the average female. There will always be brilliant female programmers, I’ve worked with many that are better than I ever will be and I admire and learn from them every day. And there will always be women that can thrive in make-dominated areas because of their internal make-up.
But you will never get complete 50/50 gender equity until you change the nature of the job so that the average female will be more interested. That’s the point Damore was making. By making the nature of programming more appealing to more females by making the job in grain with what scientific research says are the differences between men and women, that’s how you fairly increase the number of women without biasing against men.
I am using neurotic in the way Damore is using it, which is the scientific way, that women are in general less capable of handling the 'stress' of computer science work.
>First of “neurotic” is a psychological term. He was using it in the scientific way, not the colloquial way.
Whether or not it was used scientifically doesn't mean much. If I say all HN users named amw have been shown to be sociopaths, does that remove the social burden of the negative association with sociopathy even though I'm specifically referring to the diagnosis from DSM IV?
To the rest: Yes, Damore was making the point that not all women can be programmers. And he was making it with pseudoscience and "intuitive" beliefs that haven't really been shown to have any backing in the essentialist way that he and other apologists have shown them. It's kind of like saying that Charles Murray is "just" demonstrating that professional work just isn't for black people thanks to the "scientific" differences in their IQ: He's not "just" demonstrating anything, he's cherry-picking science for a conclusion he likes, a conclusion that happens to be inherently (and needlessly) discriminatory.
Yes some of his jumps from fact to argument are debatable. The neuroticism idea can be a positive. Those more aware of things going wrong can make great managers, pulling the team up from pitfalls.
I disagree with a straight programmer as being a particularly social role, yes you interact with others. Most of your brain work is optimized towards a machine and that is worlds away from nursing or sales where the primary focus is on social work.
Yes, advocating for improvements in labor conditions is protected.
No, creating a hostile work environment in the course of such advocacy is not protected, no matter how many scientists back you up. I recommend you read the NLRB decision: https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45826e6391
Are you aware that Damore's memo was only sent to a specialized group of people who were specifically interested in diversity issues, and everything that happened thereafter (leading up to his firing) was the result of people leaking his memo in an abridged version which deleted all references to the actual science? Someone was very clearly creating a "hostile" work environment, right then and there - but it wasn't Damore.
I'm aware of this. I've argued at length over the Damore memo on this website before and I'm not interested in doing so again. (If you think the NLRB decided wrongly, convincing me does no good, convince the NLRB.) I am simply disputing that the Damore decision from the NLRB gives Google precedent to fire these employees. If you think Damore should have been even more protected by labor law than Damore was, great, then these employees were definitely protected and firing them was definitely illegal.
I tried to understand the point Damore was pushing, but I faiked because all I could see was some crazy opinion not supported by my experience in tech.
My kind interpretation is that Damore really wasnt talking about gender at all. Because what you say does not seem gender specific.
From what I've gathered the point Damore was getting at is that current "inclusivity" practices don't help women in the long run. Or at least they don't help enough and it could be done better.
How do you know that Damore doesn't care about diversity in tech? From what he wrote and has spoken about it should be apparent that he was putting forward reasons, when asked by people working on the problem, why the current programs had failed.
I find the Damore case quite odd, because if that's how people are treated when they seriously try to tackle the problem, then that creates a chilling effect on people solving the problem. You're much more likely to get half-measures that don't make it better.
As an aside, I think that a lot of gamergaters did care about ethics in videogame journalism. Obviously not all of them, but some of them. That's why even years later they talk about obvious bias in certain video game outlets. They're no angels and the community is changing, but some of them did care about the ethics point (or I guess it depends on how you define gamergater).
