You’ve probably heard this story by now. I’m not going to give this any more emotional attention, but wanted to throw down a few quick things that have been bothering me:
- Damore’s “freedom of thought” is not under attack. Once you have written a 10-page screed and issued it to your fellow employees, some of whom are women who have to work on your team, you have crossed the line from “freedom of thought” to intimidation and harassment.
- Racial and gender diversity are not antithetical to “diversity of thought.” People who come from different racial/gender/class/etc backgrounds invariably bring their varied experiences to the table, creating diversity of thought. Unfortunately, for Silicon Valley types, “diversity of thought” seems to only refer to the right to bring libertarian and right-wing ideas to the table.
- Those arguing that Damore shouldn’t be fired for his words seem to lack understanding of how his pseudo-scientific, misogynist ideas affect the women who have to work with him, and place Damore’s feelings and well-being above theirs. It’s a delicate balance for sure, but at a company where women only make up 31% of the global workforce and 20% of the technical workforce, Google should be placing the well-being of women above the well-being of misogynists…that is, if they actually want to change their statistics.
But on the other hand…
- Damore is clearly sexist and thus I shall cry not even a microtear for him, but I will say this: If he’s right that employees don’t feel comfortable expressing their political views in the workplace (no, not in an intimidating 10-page screed, but in the workplace), then maybe Google does have a problem. But the reasons and solutions for that problem that Damore has identified are pseudo-scientific, misogynistic, and wrong.
5 replies on “On the “Google Memo””
I found it striking how you highlighted the impact of Damore’s views on the workplace environment, especially for women. The statistic that women only make up 20% of the technical workforce at Google really puts things into perspective. It reminds me of discussions I’ve had with friends about diversity in tech and how important it is to create a safe space for everyone. We need more resources like Apostate Verity that promote positive conversations around these issues. Thanks for shedding light on such an important topic!
Japanese text can meet a character target and still fail a technical limit if the destination checks encoded data size. That distinction matters for forms, legacy systems, and file-based submissions where the visible text length is not the only constraint. Showing バイト数 alongside ordinary character and manuscript-page counts gives writers a more complete final check without adding unnecessary steps to drafting.
Simple time boundaries can reduce the friction of getting started on a task. An online timer that opens in the browser and accepts hours, minutes, and seconds is useful for reading, cleaning, exercise intervals, or focused work. Keeping pause, resume, and reset controls close at hand makes it adaptable when an interruption occurs. An audible completion signal is also a helpful handoff from one activity to the next without requiring constant clock-checking.
A profile bio has very little room, so each visual element should serve a purpose. Symbols can separate a location, interest, or contact line without adding another sentence. The most reliable combinations are easy to recognize at small sizes and do not depend on unusual fonts. Curated bio symbols give people a starting point for building a compact layout that remains legible when copied into different social platforms.
Small notation details can create avoidable errors when material moves between a document editor, a webpage, and a codebase. A clear math notation reference can help by placing the visible glyph beside its encoding and input options, rather than treating copying as the whole task. It is also helpful to explain the intended relation in plain language, since similar-looking symbols can carry different meanings. Approximately Symbol frames these checks as a single lookup problem for students, writers, and developers.