> Instead of firing him, though, Google is moving Bobb into a STEM-focused role.
That's surprising, but I think it's good. He's obviously not viable in the diversity role, but there's no reason to go ballistic over a 15 year old blog post.
Yeah, seems like a good compromise. There's a big difference between "we don't want our spokesperson to say X" and "we want to make people saying X unemployable". I wish the second didn't happen at all. I wish all people saying things hateful to me could find nice jobs and get assimilated into live & let live. What else should I wish, that they'd die poor in a ditch and their kids too?
That's several steps beyond what most in society are capable of foreshadowing.
A society of mad kings (on all political sides) who want anyone not like them "taken away" with little solutions on actually fixing the problems that caused the disagreement.
I don’t know. I’m not Jewish, but I’d have trouble working with someone with views like that. I guess if they were extremely contrite and enough time had passed since they had said it (and no other incident since then).
Sounds like you're the one with the problem then. He barely said anything offensive, just misspoke - if you look at the full blog post text, the intent is clear.
> but there's no reason to go ballistic over a 15 year old blog post.
While I agree in principle I hope this is part of a new trend rather than an exemption for this case because his content is so much more offensive than anything Teen Vogue editor Alex McCammond ever said.
I'm a Jew. If he apologized publicly and it was a long time ago, I think it would be ok. We have to be able to give people second chances and the ability to evolve their views. If someone was a neo nazi as a youth and grew out of it and regretted their past then they should be allowed to live a normal life. Preventing this just leads to more radicalization.
While in sentiment I agree with you, this is not being applied consistently throughout society. We are currently in an environment of maximum consequences, no tolerance afforded. Until something pulls us back from the brink, it needs to be that way consistently or more tensions will be inflamed.
You are not wrong in that enforcement is definitely applied inconsistently and with extreme bias with regards to race and gender. I struggle with the correct approach to take though and if its cracking down on everyone or hoping that this at least is a crack in the door and people will realize the current trend of punishing people for decades old comments is wrong and should be stopped. Unfortunately it is likely that the rules will just continue to be unevenly enforced stoking anger and further dividing people.
C'mon, if we go back 20 years, I'm sure A LOT of Americans wrote and said unspeakable things about middle eastern people. Same goes for a lot of Iraqi and Afghani people, after the invasion.
Point is - war and conflicts brings out emotions, and people say things they necessarily don't mean under normal circumstances.
What's more, people mature and change. The person you were 10-20-30-xx years ago, isn't necessarily the person you are today.
There’s lots of circumstances where you’ve gotta accept that your coworkers might believe offensive things. Imagine being a gay man and finding a devout Muslim on your team who wholeheartedly believes it’s wrong to be gay - if she’s willing to treat you respectfully and not bring it up at work, would you insist she be fired?
A major goal of a diversity leader in a tech-focused company like Google is to influence the behavior of engineers. A fellow engineer is often able to do that far more effectively than someone without a strong technical background.
That's surprising, but I think it's good. He's obviously not viable in the diversity role, but there's no reason to go ballistic over a 15 year old blog post.