Dear James Damore: Buh-bye.
Oh those poor white men are becoming such an endangered species in the tech industry. So repressed! So discriminated! So — thin skinned!
Let’s face it, I’m a white guy too, but you don’t see me complaining about Google’s hiring practices. In fact, since I don’t work at Google or even in California for that matter, let’s broaden this to the extend that James Damore wanted. Those “Men’s Rights Activists” (more like Men’s Rights A**holes) who hole themselves up in their little He-man Woman-haters Club in the far corners of the internet…basically 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit.
Publishing a 10 page manifesto on a blog outside of work: No problem. Publishing a 10 page manifesto on your company’s internal company email: That’s a problem, and quite possibly a one way ticket to unemployment.
Your boss may have a different view of politics that you do. And in the workplace, it is generally not acceptable to talk about politics in the event your boss happens to have an extreme take on politics like Damore felt was going on. However, when your company makes $21.5 Billion per year, maybe then you can go onto the company email server and take a big dump on any diversity program your company has to encourage women and minorities to work there. Until then SHUT UP!
This isn’t about left-vs-right, liberal-vs-conservative, which Damore seems to think that Google is perpetrating authoritarianism because the “big bad company fired him because they didn’t like there being women at work”.
First off, Jimmy, you are in CALIFORNIA.
You know. “The Left Coast”. What did you expect from a mult-billion dollar Silicon Valley startup in the 2010s? Fat white guys telling women to do things?
Dude, didn’t you see this PSA when you were growing up? That crap just doesn’t fly anymore, and with good reason. Women do deserve our respect. And in the office, you should be polite and exercise some manors, especially with people of the opposite sex.
Still, Jimmy goes on to tell the world how his manhood is being tortured.
To be honest, not everybody gets to enjoy working in the company of co-workers. In the small startup I work for, I wouldn’t mind there being someone other than my boss to talk about stuff or work on projects with. It’s a luxury many of the people working at Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Facebook take for granted.
To write about how you are being put into a disadvantage as a straight white Christian male in the United States with no disabilities or dependents, is not only petty but selfish. To moan about how your company says “this is how we do things here to be more open and accepting” isn’t cause for insubordination but it is not cause for you to send a company-wide email saying “Ew! Girl cooties!” or “Do I have to talk to people outside my race?” or “Things like this never would have happen if Ron Paul was president!”
No, you don’t get to do that at work! On Facebook, definitely. Even more so if you know how you can block your boss from your Facebook wall and set your privacy settings such that your posts don’t leave the website.
TL;DR, Jimmy: Your company sets the policy. When you sign up to work there, you sign papers to agree to abide by the company policy even if you do not agree with those things. And if you are unhappy with those things, there is a department that you can go to talk some one about it: Human Resources.
Of course, if you don’t like how things are at the company, you can always look for work elsewhere and write a company letter to your manager that has two words in it: “I quit.”
