jamesdamore
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Google hopes to quell internal fighting with new rules
Google has long encouraged staff to share ideas with each other, but that's becoming toxic enough that the company is taking steps to rein things in. The Wall Street Journal has learned that Google has instituted new rules disciplining employees who attack colleagues, discriminate against them or participate in discussion that are "disruptive to a productive work environment." In other words, it's hoping to rein in the sort of chats and discussions that led to James Damore's anti-diversity memo, his firing and the subsequent lawsuits.
Google is still very white and very male
Google released its annual diversity report today and though strides have been made in some areas, in others, the company has shown little improvement. Globally, Google is 69.1 percent male and in the US 53.1 percent of the workforce is white, 36.3 percent is Asian, 3.6 percent is Latinx, 2.5 percent is black and 0.3 percent is Native American. Compared to last year, the biggest gains were made in the representation of Asian employees, which increased from 34.7 percent. But the percentage of women in Google's workforce as well as the representation of black and Latinx individuals saw hardly any change, increasing just 0.1 percentage point over the year. Native American representation didn't change at all.
Google faces lawsuit for firing critic of anti-diversity memo
Google fired James Damore last year, in part, because of a leaked memo alleging that the company culture unfairly targeted white males and political conservatives. Now Google is being sued by a former employee who claims he was targeted for speaking out against Damore on internal message boards, according to The Guardian. Tim Chevalier, a site reliability engineer who identifies as queer, transgender and disabled filed a lawsuit saying, in part, that he was ousted for "calling out discrimination and harassment for what it was."
Labor board says Google legally fired diversity memo writer
James Damore may claim Google was wrong to fire him over his memo criticizing the company's diversity culture, but a federal government overseer begs to differ. The National Labor Relations Board has published a January memo recommending a dismissal of Damore's then-active complaint. Board attorney Jayme Sophir found that Damore was protected under federal law when he criticized Google, but that he wasn't protected when he suggested that women were biologically inferior at programming. His remarks were likely to create "serious dissension and disruption" in the workplace, Sophir said, and that actuallly happened -- women pulled their candidacy for engineering positions after hearing of Damore's memo.
Ex-Google employee behind anti-diversity memo sues for discrimination (updated)
James Damore, the Google employee who was fired after circulating an anti-diversity memo last August, isn't over his dismissal apparently as he has now filed a lawsuit against his former employer. Damore filed a class-action complaint today in a California court alongside another former Google employee, David Gudeman. Both men say they were "ostracized, belittled and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males."
Facebook shut down an internal forum because of harassment
Last year Facebook was home to an internal forum spouting sexist and racist comments, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and Business Insider. The forum, called FB Anon, was set up in May 2015 for employees of the company to voice their opinions of the workplace freely and anonymously. But in the month's leading up to President Trump's election it was increasingly populated by right-leaning staff and, according to Mark Zuckerberg, used to harass others. The group was abruptly shut down in December 2016. These reports come during an increasingly challenging time for tech companies. In the wake of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, where violence resulted in the death of one protestor and injuries for many others, companies have taken a zero-tolerance approach to hate speech. GoDaddy and Google have revoked domain registrations for neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, crowdfunding sites have pulled campaigns supporting white supremacists and social media platforms have banned whole groups expressing violent alt-right ideologies.
