Google Must Face Lawsuit Alleging Hiring Bias Against Conservatives, Judge Rules (theverge.com) 258
Google will have to face a California lawsuit accusing the company of bias against conservative job candidates as part of a legal challenge first brought against the company by James Damore, author of the infamous 2017 "Google memo." The Verge reports: Damore exited the lawsuit last year and entered arbitration with the company. But the suit, which argues Google's hiring practices are biased against white and Asian people, conservatives, and men, will move ahead after surviving a dismissal motion from the company. In a statement, the law firm representing the plaintiffs said the suit will now move into the discovery phase. The plaintiffs in the case are seeking class certification to represent others they believe have been discriminated against, a decision the court will make at a later date. In legal filings, Google has disputed that conservatives are an identifiable class under the law. In a decision, the judge on the case said the court "indeed has doubts" about the viability of the idea, but it is, for the time being, letting the case move ahead. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Re: RIP, James Damore, now Jill Damore... (Score:1)
You are a deluded idiot.
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"If we could have cleared Trump of the charge that he committed crimes, we would have.
Who is being delusional here?
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Anonymous Coward writes, "I would like to know which laws were broken"
The illegal meeting with Russian criminals in Trump Tower was in violation of 52 USC 30121.
Lying about the illegal meeting with Russian criminals in Trump Tower was in violation of 18 USC 1001.
Getting together to discuss lying about the illegal meeting with Russian criminals in Trump Tower was in violation of 18 USC 371.
Any other questions?
Re: RIP, James Damore, now Jill Damore... (Score:1)
This is fucking hilarious.
Your list of events were explicitly and thoroughly covered in the Mueller report.
He explicitly stated that they were not illegal, were not in violation of any law, and did not constitute any crime. Additionally, President Trump did not have any knowledge of or participation in the Tower meeting, crime or not.
You are a delusional fucking moron. You were lied to and duped by Rachel Maddow and the Democrats. You uncritically swallowed a baseless conspiracy theory for years.
Now that it
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Discovery (Score:4, Informative)
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What is even more hilarious is watching 'conservatives' (yeah....no) argue that a company should be regulated to let them work there...
What next, affirmative action for conservatives. Or for that matter: white men.
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What next, affirmative action for conservatives. Or for that matter: white men.
Affirmative action is discrimination. I don't think Damore or the other people behind the suit are in favour of discrimination, and indeed are seeking protection from it.
That'd be the difference you're failing to understand.
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I doubt the lawsuit will change anything in a material way (minor penalty fee at best), but this will probably be great court-room drama.
Re:Discovery (Score:4, Insightful)
The data I really want to see are the internal numbers of how much ad spend goes to click fraud, but that's not likely to get released.
Re:Discovery (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't say I care about Damore much
Whether you agree with him or not, you should be appalled at the way he was treated. He was assigned to attend diversity training. At the end of the training Google solicited his feedback. They asked him to write the memo. He did, and submitted it privately and quietly. It was someone that opposed his viewpoint that distributed it to a wider audience. Yet Google fired him for "creating a hostile work environment", when he had done no such thing.
Google justified his firing by saying "to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK." But if you actually read his memo, he never said any such thing. He said women were less interested in tech, not less capable, and he was very careful to make this distinction.
I don't agree with everything he wrote, but he stated his case reasonably, and I don't see why anyone should take offense. If they don't agree, they should have an equal right to speak out and say why. Silencing one side of a debate is not the answer.
Re: Discovery (Score:2)
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I note the opprobrium for Google having positive discrimination for women and minorities. If you don't like that then go work for someone else. I doubt this lawsuit is going to succeed, after all how do you tell if someone is a conservative?
Re: Discovery (Score:2)
Re: Discovery (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are referring to me, I don't mind if Google has positive discrimination for minorities or women.
... and if GPP is referring to me, I don't have any problem with it either.
I applaud their efforts to bring more women into tech. I know first hand how difficult that can be. I mentor an elementary after-school tech enrichment program, and work hard to encourage girls to get started in tech, including recruiting a nerdy mom to be my co-instructor. The boys are there because they want to learn about robots and programming. The girls are there because their parents made them sign up.
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Would you support it if it was a "positive discrimination" for whites?
Yes. I have done this myself.
90% of the kids signing up for the after school tech program that I mentor are Asian. The fee is $100 per semester. The school also has an after-school daycare that costs $200 per month. Why would anyone pay $200 per month ($800 per semester) to basically warehouse their kids, when they could be in the classroom next door learning Python and Mindstorms for a fraction of the cost? The only reason that I can see is because white people are stupid. So I have talked to the par
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Would you support it if it was a "positive discrimination" for whites? How about only Europeans? Jews? Men?
Of course, look at the great work being done to get more men into nursing and primary level education. There are numerous examples of schemes aimed at helping these groups where they are under-represented.
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I'm tired of the identity politics of all these subgroups, and I'm tired of people like me getting the short end of the stick.
Normally I'd let the free market punish a company that let its SJW agenda cause it to hire suboptimal talent at the expense of Whites, Asians, and Conservatives--but these major companies shape society too much to lose representation, because once we are out it will be difficult to overcome the cultural inertia that would allow us to regain an equal seat at the table.
I to
Re: Discovery (Score:1)
Um what?
There is no "work" being done to support men in those fields. They are actively discouraged, at every level, and openly discriminated against.
Once again, you demonstrate that you are a total fucking imbecile who has no idea what they are talking about.
Citation: I'm a male RN who experiences this every day.
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The boys are there because they want to learn about robots and programming. The girls are there because their parents made them sign up.
Remind me, what is the reason to force girls do stuff they don't want to do?
Re: Discovery (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who opposed him did have the right and opportunity to respond to what he wrote. The fact that they tried instead to silence him means simply that they couldnâ(TM)t refute his inconvenient facts.
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It was someone that opposed his viewpoint that distributed it to a wider audience.
That is incorrect, Damore himself posted it to an internal mailing list and has admitted as much.
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
http://fortune.com/2017/08/08/... [fortune.com]
How did he end up in diversity training... (Score:1)
... in the first place?
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if the difference in interest is argued to be caused by biological differences, the argument is once again similar to the argument of difference in capability.
Not really.
If the problem is a difference of interests, then efforts to get more women interested should be effective at reducing the gender imbalance.
If the problem is a difference of ability, then efforts to get more women interested will fail, because they can't do the work.
All the evidence that I have seen points to a difference in interests, not ability.
Of course, the 3rd explanation is that the problem is discrimination and hostility, which I think is nonsense. Everywhere I have worked, male programme
Re:Discovery (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of James Damore's paper, sadly overlooked, was that Google's interviewing practices inadvertently discriminated against women, because it focused entirely on the area of software development that women are statistically less likely to find appealing: the introverted, code-in-a-corner part. He wanted to improve that.
From my own experience interviewing at Google, I see his point. The interview was frankly off-putting, and I walked away from the process (not just for the overly technical focus, all the very senior people who I talked to looked very stressed out and unhappy). Only time I've ever ghosted a recruiter after an interview.
Excepting fresh college hires, coding is maybe half the job - less if you're senior. Yet, unlike other big tech companies, I wasn't asked a single question about things like how I led a contentious technical issue to a consensus, or how I led a migration effort to a new internal product where most users didn't care, or what's my proudest moment in mentoring. That sort of stuff is 2/3s my job now, and everyone else seems to realize it and interview appropriately.
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You guys are pushing society towards something you're not ready for. I hope you guys realize soon before its too late. I don't think you understand the way your "divide and conquer" strategy is going to end. You're going to end up getting a lot of people on both sides killed for no good reason, for some bullshit that could have been civilly handled. The problem is you guys try to shut down any discourse you disagree with. That is very bad for a society as a whole. The sane among us would like to see it not
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Hah down modded. Looks little freeze peach is not for wrong think.
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James Damore is an INCEL crybaby turned SJW, his case will fall apart because it has no legs.
Incel, eh? Are you implying James Damore's case will fall apart because he can't get between a pair of legs?
Depends (Score:1, Insightful)
Are they conflating 'conservative' with 'racist asshole'? Because that's usually the case in the US these days.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes that must be it, because it couldn't possibly be the obvious fucking racism of the US Republicans. Nope, couldn't be that.
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"Sheesh"
The wife of a billionaire is no more a whore than you or I, who marry for perfectly altruistic reasons.
Re: Depends (Score:4, Insightful)
She was absolutely not vindicated by the DNA test. Being somewhere between 1/64 and 1/1024 native American does not in any way pass for using ethnicity to gain a false advantage. In Canada, for example, one of your parents, or a grandparent or uncle/aunt/cousin must have had treaty status to even be considered native. Canada is not only further to the left of the US politically, they're one of the few countries we can actually compare on how native status is determined. https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1462808207464/14628080233170
So no, you're absolutely wrong. Elizabeth Warren not only defrauded people with her false heritage, but in all likelihood she displaced legitimate native Americans who were vying for the positions she's held.
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whore wife's
What's with the slut-shaming? You think people should be shamed for their sexual proclivities?
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Rachel Dolezal's book is quite good, and tells her very sad story.
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Also, since when is being a right winger a protected class?
Since 1937.
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.... [ca.gov]
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Texan here. All conservatives do is fucking cry. Boohoo the Mexicans boohoo red cups boohoo fucking whiny fucking cunts that should all be ground up and used as filler in zoo animal feed.
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I mean who wants people like James Damore around? Nobody. He complains unrealistically and unprofessionally in the workplace, he creates drama, and he's full of himself. People like that deserve unemployment frankly. Google did nothing wrong firing his punk ass and should be applauded for that basic common sense.
I have to say I'm rather glad we've exported assholes like you overseas.
Love the hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
Conservatives: Discrimination? What's that? Get a better education or be better at interviewing. Stop whining about discrimination when none exists.
Also conservatives: We're being discriminated against! We need to sue!
Re:Love the hypocrisy (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Love the hypocrisy (Score:4, Funny)
It's almost as if not everyone who shares some ideologies shares ALL ideologies. Weird.
Oh come on. Next thing you'll be claiming is there's some sort of a political spectrum, and various people's beliefs and philosophies fall are scattered all along that spectrum from the far left to the far right and points in between.
That's just crazy talk.
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it is due to there being other spectrum's such as authoritarianism.
Re:Love the hypocrisy (Score:4, Insightful)
it is due to there being other spectrum's such as authoritarianism.
"It's not authoritarianism or tyranny if you're convinced you're right! We just have to shut *those* people up, and then dissent & inconvenient facts will go away!" said every tyrant and authoritarian regime ever throughout history.
Remaining seemingly incapable of learning from history despite all the horrendous consequences that we've endured over and over through the centuries as a result is one of the biggest reasons we can't have nice things.
If you allow any government sufficient power to enslave you, a slave collar is in your future.
Strat
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Authoritarianism comes in many forms, of which government can be one. Lots of petty tyrants in business and it seems any social group.
Re:Love the hypocrisy (Score:4, Insightful)
Authoritarianism comes in many forms, of which government can be one. Lots of petty tyrants in business and it seems any social group.
Any time that too much power is concentrated in too few hands, tyranny becomes inevitable. The form of the government and all the best intentions of those who helped expand it's powers makes no difference in the eventual outcome. In the US we have corporate power in collusion with certain political and ideological groups both within and outside government attempting to control the population through a myriad of methods from controlling the public narrative and what voices can be widely heard to outright de-personing people from the ability to even have a personal banking account.
Witness the MSM currently attempting to damage their competition and control the narrative through attacks on small creators on Youtube when one of the loudest recent MSM attackers (the VOX guy) has made Twitter posts telling his readers to commit *criminal battery* against those on the Right. But I guess because "rules for thee but not for me", breaking the law and committing violent crimes is OK as long as you shout "NAZI REEE!!!" first regardless of whether or not the victim is actually a Nazi.
If there were half as many actual Nazis and Nazi sympathizers as the Left claims, we'd nearly all of us already be smoke from an oven. I wish people would stop calling anyone they disagree with a Nazi unless you're trying to normalize being a Nazi and create more. I sometimes feel like I'm having to explain this to kindergartners.
Strat
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It's just the latest victim narrative that all ideologies are prone to.
"Group X is attacking you, vote for me and I'll protect you" has always been a populist trope. Sometimes group X is the Jews, sometimes the Chinese, sometimes liberals, sometimes homosexuals... Practically every identifiable group has been used at some point.
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Not rich, though wealthier on average than liberals. But yes, they are about 90% white. And mostly men. In fact, mostly white men.
Also, often very repressed. But not oppressed, except in their minds.
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I think they're confusing republican/democrats parties with actual political views and attitudes (conservatives-progressives-regressives, liberals-authoritarians, various religions/cults/atheist, etc).
It's too complicated for many so they resort to simpler a two-parties all-or-nothing world view.
Go woke go broke (Score:2)
/popcorn
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Go woke go broke.
You think this lawsuit will make google go broke? Can I have what some of you're smoking?
On what basis? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:On what basis? (Score:5, Informative)
There are only three jurisdictions in the United States that explicitly bans political affiliation and activity discrimination, California, D.C., and New York.
Re:On what basis? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:On what basis? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since when was political ideology a protected class?
I agree that it's silly, but in California political affiliations or activities are a legally protected class. From what I can find, this was put into law as part of a larger list of protected classes sometime in or about 1991. Here's the particular part of the California legal code [ca.gov] related to this.
In my opinion no one should be forced to associated with anyone else for any reason as long as they're a private citizen or business and aren't being subsidized by the government. My view is that companies which refuse to do business with otherwise willing customers for stupid reasons will eventually be put out of business by companies that don't discriminate.
I guess that if Google really doesn't like the law, they could always move to other states that don't have such laws on the books. I suppose they could also take it through appeals court to try to have the law struck down as unconstitutional, but that's a long and expensive process itself.
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So much for Silicon Valley. Time for the tech industry to move to Oregon. Partisanship is basically the only legal, legit discrimination here.
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My view is that companies which refuse to do business with otherwise willing customers for stupid reasons will eventually be put out of business by companies that don't discriminate.
Yet history shows that that doesn't happen, at least as long as the discriminated are a small percentage of the population.
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Besides all the government contracts, corporations /are/ government subsidies.
Partnerships are the non-subsidized form.
The unfortunate flip side of that is that the courts are so out of control that corporations are almost required for business people who don't want to do time for doing nothing wrong in the eyes of any reasonable people.
Biased *against* white and Asian people? (Score:3)
So they're trying to rebalance the distribution [diversity.google]? If it is biased against those groups, the bias doesn't seem to be operating very well.
So, like FoxNews (Score:2, Interesting)
But the other way 'round.
So, "Conservative" is now a protected class? (Score:2, Informative)
Last time I checked, political beliefs are NOT considered a "legally protected class" in the U.S. Since they're not, Google is free to base hiring/employment decisions on an employee's Left/Right, Liberal/Conservative leanings. Not saying that's a good idea, but it's not illegal.
Re:So, "Conservative" is now a protected class? (Score:5, Informative)
They are in fact a protected class in California, where this lawsuit is taking place.
Re:So, "Conservative" is now a protected class? (Score:4, Interesting)
How does that work? There are some pretty extreme political ideologies out there which would create a hostile working environment. What exactly does the law say?
Many years ago I had to fire a guy who wouldn't work with women. His religion wouldn't allow it. Would that be protected in California?
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Step 1 - mandate that political discourse is not appropriate within the office
Step 2 - discipline people that breach this policy for failing to comply with corporate policies and/or creating a hostile workplace
Step 3 - if they continue to be cunts, sack them
At no point has anybody been prevented from holding a political view, running for office, espousing their views outside the corporate environment or being a cunt in their private life. No law broken, other employees protected, job done.
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Politically conservatives in the US are substantially white [..] discriminating against conservatives doesn't discriminate against whites because there's plenty of non-conservative whites.
Not all women are short, just as not all white people are conservative. So your argument fails unless you can explain why height/weight requirements aren't discriminatory.
We could also look at the outcome of the corporate practices: Are white people represented at Google in proportion to their population demographics? No.
So something's going on.
(A more interesting comparison would be Google's proportion of white employees relative to the IT industry as a whole, but that's horribly skewed by foreign workers
Re:So, "Conservative" is now a protected class? (Score:5, Informative)
Considering the craziness that we've seen in the internal communications Damore brought up in his lawsuits that included things like managers expressly stating that they will not work with, hire or promote people with political leanings they deemed distasteful this probably isn't going to be that far from a slam-dunk case. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to settle it out of court like they're doing with Damore at the moment simply to avoid the embarrassment from when they get to do discovery and then present their findings in court.
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> originally meant to protect left leaning workers from right leaning employers
Almost certainly we did that to do just that, but it's sad it's now being used against us.
Re: So, "Conservative" is now a protected class? (Score:1)
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You have no idea how hard it is to actually prove a discrimination case, it's far from slam dunk to be sure. James Damore wasn't discriminated against for being a Conservative, which is a big problem for his case also.
However you are correct that there could be some embarrassment for Google - yet it'd be embarrassing either way, and if they actually don't "really, provably, all the time" discriminate against Con's, they probably won't fold.
Damore has an impossible case to prove given his widely-reported whiny crybaby "open letter" that actually got him fired. It has nothing to do with Conservatism.
Normally you would be right. But that's because normally people that are doing discriminatory actions know that what they are doing is wrong and tend to hide it in euphemisms and vagueness. That's not the case here. Managers stated outright refusal to work with people with his political leanings which is the protected class in this case. Do a quick thought experiment. Switch political leanings with race. Now replay that refusal in your head. See the problem yet?
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THIS could have interesting consequences for SNS (Score:2)
Right now, political affiliation or party status, is not considered a "protected class" under the law. So if there was a SNS platform that wanted to basically moderate or filter out content that falls along political spectrum lines, they could without much in the way of legal kick back (internet outrage over censorship, being a different thing entirely).
If the court or the laws change to include political status as a protected class though, its going to be super interesting to see how that is handled when a
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I figured that out after I read the other comments. This case is going to be interesting. I'm kind of curious why all the conservatives that have been booted from Twitter and the like, haven't tried to sue Twitter or the like in California on some grounds of discrimination then.
They're going to lose (Score:3, Insightful)
Which HR have you seen? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've experience HR in many places. None were SJW types. All were various amounts of useless and/or arsehat, but not SJW.
I think you are imagining things. I have found that conservatives project their desires as fears: "Those lefties want to round us all up and exterminate us!" means "I as a conservative want some way to get rid of lefties (up to and including extermination) and assume that lefties spend all day trying to get rid of us because that's what I spend all day doing".
Conservatives and progressi
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Spent my life working in tech companies and watching the old gits being escorted off the premises every year to make room for the new graduates. Finally I was an old git too and got disposed of. This discrimination lawsuit is going nowhere because it is a joke.
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Let's count the idiots who didn't RTFA. 1. 2. 3....infinity.
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Interesting. Do you have a link to this article?
The only thing I've read that he wrote is the memo he circulated at Google, in which he attempted to identify why the company wasn't meeting the needs of potential female employees and how they might be able to change to provide a more inclusive work environment.