The alleged Googler describes this “How Google Screwed Over James Damore” but it really explains how Google covered its tracks and manipulated both the media, the legal system, and even a government agency as part of its coverup.
I was involved in the internal decisions involving James Damore’s memo, and it’s terrible what we did to him.
First of all, we knew about the memo a month before it went viral. HR sent it up the reporting chain when he gave it as internal feedback, but we did nothing. There wasn’t anything we could do, except admit to wrongdoing and lying to our employees. We just hoped that no one else would see his document.
Unfortunately, the memo started spreading within the company. The floodgates opened and previously silent employees started talking. To quell dissent, we: told executives to write to their employees condemning the memo; manipulated our internal Memegen to bias the ratings towards anti-Damore posts (the head of Memegen is an “ally” to the diversity cause); and gave every manager talking points on what to tell their reports about the memo. In all our communications, we concentrated on how hurt employees purportedly were and diverted attention from Google’s discriminatory employment practices and political hegemony, never mind the science.
We needed to make an example of Damore. Looking for some excuse to fire him, we spied on his phone and computer. We didn’t find anything, although our spying probably made his devices unusably slow, preventing him from organizing support within the company. When we did fire him, our reputation and integrity took a hit, but at least other employees were now afraid to speak up.
Firing him without an NDA was a huge risk though. He was a top performer and knew too many compromising secrets, like Dragonfly, the secret censored search project in China. He had also reported several legally dubious practices in Search that still exist. Only God knows why he never leaked Dragonfly or the other issues, but I think it’s because he actually cared about Google.
Our response after we fired him was equally disgraceful. We were supposed to have a Town Hall TGIF to answer employees’ questions about the controversy. However, after questions started coming in that we couldn’t reasonably answer, we had to cancel it. We shifted the blame onto “alt-right trolls” and have avoided talking about it openly since then.
To control the narrative, we planted stories with journalists and flexed Google’s muscles where necessary. In exchange for insider access and preferential treatment, all we ask for is their loyalty. For online media, Google’s ads pay their paycheck and our search brings their customers, so our influence shouldn’t be underestimated.
We dealt with his NLRB case in a similar way. People are ultimately lazy, so we found a sympathetic lawyer in the NLRB and wrote the internal NLRB memo for her. No one wanted to spend the effort to oppose it, despite it being laughably weak. Then, after Damore dropped his NLRB case and filed a class action lawsuit, we had the NLRB publicly release their memo. Our PR firms sent press releases saying “the NLRB ruled the firing legal”, which was, of course, manufactured bullshit.
All of our scheming was over the phone, in deleted emails, or through an external PR firm, so we can deny all of it. Now that we’ve forced him into arbitration, we’re close to screwing him over completely.
The connection here is that Sundar Pichai blamed the canceled Town Hall TGIF on this very blog, due to my exposure of various internal communications during the Damore defenestration. It’s intriguing to learn that was merely a diversion and the real reason was that the executives simply wanted to avoid answering questions from the employees. It also shows that the mainstream news narrative can NEVER be trusted. Never. Not even if they report that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
However, this attempt to sweep their evil and illegal doings under the rug may yet fall apart, as James Damore has already begun looking into verifying the redditor’s claims. And while I don’t know what arbitration system they are using, I know the major ones all have a broad range of options for discovery.
Whoah, this would explain a lot. I can’t verify its authenticity, but the OP is correct that I was one of about 100 employees that knew about Dragonfly. I also did report several legal issues in Search that they probably haven’t fixed. My phone and computer were also extremely slow after the document went viral. Other parts of the post include knowledge that only a Googler would know.
One ex-Googler finds the charges legitimate, if not necessarily true.
Even though this is obviously written by either a current or ex-Googler, strictly speaking that’s not a guarantee that any of it actually happened.
That said, as a former Googler myself I find this account believable. The internal atmosphere for anyone who disagrees with any aspect of the current liberal dogma is quite suffocating, and there are significant numbers of very vocal people who just post SJW bullshit on internal Google+ and seemingly do little else. The list of grievances and positions labeled as wrongthink grows more and more ridiculous by the day. Attacks on people who disagree intensify. Because manufactured outrage culture is rewarded by making a person essentially non-fireable (especially if they’re female and/or black and/or LGBTQ), offense is taken liberally, with lots of histrionics, and at the slightest provocation.
People deadass come into the office expecting to wage social justice war against their co-workers, who on the whole are quite sympathetic to the cause already, but may have slight disagreements along the more extreme margins, like James did. And no, as an employee you don’t get a chance to ignore all of this BS. It’s a constant, unending barrage that only gets worse over time.
I also don’t doubt for a second that the response to the Damore incident was strictly coordinated, especially after his memo became public, and so was his firing. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive beyond belief.
It’s true. I have seen hundreds of examples of absolutely outrageous behavior that would get people fired at any normal corporation. What I posted here last year was just the tip of a very large and ugly iceberg. And if you’re wondering why I haven’t posted all of it already, well, you really just don’t know me at all.
