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I agree with that. I don't talk politics on the job at all, I feel we're all the in the same boat with the same mission to succeed and everyone on the team deserves equal respect.

I'm not saying I want to write a workplace manifesto like James Damore. I just want to be able to express my opinions outside of work and not have that influence hiring decisions.

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James Damore is a good example. By expressing an opinion in a somewhat careless way, and by the repetition of its simplification in even more careless ways, he managed to alienate about half the workforce at the company he worked for (and almost everywhere else).

I learned to use the Bernard Meltzer criteria: "Before you speak ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid."

You’ll need to cite the careless opinion. I read his email and it seemed very well intentioned and carefully thought out.

It seems I need to re-read it.

After re-reading it[1], I stand by my previous statements. D'Amore's own political biases show through almost everywhere. One example is that the gender differences in psychology overplay the characteristics more often observed in women and contrasts them with fitness for leadership. The differences in the Machiavellianism scale alone would suggest that an organization should prioritize the promotion of women to positions of leadership over men, based on observation of an increased tendency of men to act egotistically rather than morally[2].

[1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-Ideol...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780121744502/studies-in-...

Thanks. I'll need to study up myself.

He was actually almost painfully careful about how he expressed that opinion, specifically because he knew that some people would try to misrepresent him. To the extent of continually citing research papers to back up what he said, to constantly caveat everything and so on. In the event, progressives lied about what he said anyway despite his care, knowing full well that their sort of people wouldn't read the actual memo so they could claim anything they liked about it.

He certainly didn't alienate half of all people, that's a wild overestimate, but Google tolerates extremely disruptive behavior from certain types of employees to the extent that it will give in to nearly any demand no matter how unreasonable.

He definitely didn't say anything untrue or even unkind. And he was responding to an explicit request for feedback, so it wasn't unnecessary or unhelpful either. So the Meltzer criteria seems pretty useless there.

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