When free-market types like myself hear about a worker who is made uncomfortable by inappropriate language or inappropriate physical contact on the job, our usual response is: quit. You don’t have to work for a crude, or worse — abusive boss. And of course, you are free to quit, and many do. But what is clear from the MeToo moment we’re in is that many people couldn’t quit. Or at least they felt they couldn’t. They stayed in abusive work relationships. Women privately shared information about who to stay away from and who not to be left alone with. But they often stayed on the job and endured humiliation, gross discomfort and sometimes, much worse.
It’s a long, sensitive, thought-provoking essay. The issue is whether workers are only treated well if employers are “nice,” either by choice or by government dictate, or whether the forces of competition are sufficient to protect workers. My thoughts:
1. Russ brings up sexual harassment in Hollywood, which indeed does look like exploitation. I do not see how this phenomenon would have developed if there weren’t a very high ratio of wannabe actresses to prominent film producers.
2. I think that as the economy becomes increasingly specialized, it becomes harder for competitive forces to work in employer-employee relationships. The specialized worker has fewer firms to choose from, and the firm needing specialized skills has fewer workers to choose from. This creates more scope for social norms and idiosyncratic negotiating skills to affect compensation levels.
3. The phenomenon that I talked about, consolidation, also is a factor. If my hypothesis is correct that differences in executive skill at overseeing and deploying software are driving consolidation, then I would expect the high-caliber management teams to attract the best workers, in part because they can afford to offer higher compensation. But the strong firms also have leverage, because workers want to affiliate with them for better long-term career development. Meanwhile, I would expect workers at firms with mediocre management to have no bargaining power, assuming that they do not meet the standards of the stellar firms. Poorly-managed firms are threatened with extinction, which gives their workers no scope for demanding more compensation.
4. Getting back to social norms, I hope that going forward women feel empowered to say no to harassers and to get help from HR departments or Boards of Directors in getting harassers removed. But I do not think that public shaming ought to be the weapon of first resort.
5. I am worried about what can be defined as harassment. Back in the 1950s, there was a presumption that “nice girls don’t.” A man had to be patient and seductive in order to get consent. With the sexual revolution, there no longer was a presumption that men had to be patient. But “seduction” minus patience is hard to distinguish from harassment. Some people, especially on college campuses, think that the solution is to make the process of obtaining consent formal to the point of being legalistic. I think we would be better off, in a lot of ways, if instead we could somehow get back to requiring patience.
1. In terms of norms of the 1950s, remember ‘good girls’ did not work for a career either (They worked for a while but a not career). The right choice for women was to ‘good’, do work for awhile and then get married to have children.
2) In terms of changing norms, it was the work place ‘harrassment’ and sexual activity that pre-dated the sexual revolution. The rom coms of the late 1950s and early 1960s were all about sex in the workplace. (The Apartment is still the best move on how the company screws you because it comes across as metaphoric.) History is lot uglier on sexual harrassment than we remember it.
3) I suspect the main reason one reason why sexual harrassment grew so much in the 1980s was it a way ensure work place equality. The 1960s and 1970s this was a huge activity and had long term consequences on women careers. Notice the two worst examples of harrassment, Weinstein and Ailes, came from that era for their early career. (I know there is a self selection bias as no men could have done that in the 1980s at the beginning of their careers.)
4) Notice how much conservatives are coming to the glorify James Damore who felt discriminated against.
5) At a certain level how much of MeToo is in reaction to Trump’s election and some of the conservative blowback of types like Jordan Peterson. What should worry conservatives is not that MeToo grows and women arguing with Jordan, but taking his advice. So it is better to be more aggressive in the workplace and take leadership.
6) I don’t think the consolidation of firms is much of a factor here as I bet more modern firms would rather have productive women in the job and get rid the pigs in the organization.
For many of us classical liberals (“conservatives”?), it’s not a question of “glorifying” James Damore. Rather, it’s concern about the reaction from Google, which was… disturbing, to say the least.
Yes there is a lot of concern on Google but he is being celebrating by a lot of conservatives today. (Not necessarily the economic libertarian ones like Arnold.)
1) Google is overdoing the diversity stuff as they are very global company. (their CEO is an Immigrant by the way) However the company culture is very pro-diversity and Russ/Arnold point if Jame Damore did not like it, he could always leave still holds.
2) Google probably faces lots of sex/racial harrassment & discrimination lawsuits and Damore’s memo would have been Exhibit A for the ten years. So giving Damore $3M saves Google ~$25M the next ten years.
3) I still have a belief that Damore intentionally got fired with a memo that could get published in National Review (some editing) but is not good for workplace. It had enough of women too emotional arguments to be acceptable in the workplace. So James Damore goal was not to fix Google but to become the next James O’Keefe type and raise lots of money against Google while settling for $2 – $3M from Google out of court. (TBH I really don’t know but he is heavily promoting himself on conservative grifting media.)
Note on Point 3) is there is a lot of right wing devising a separate set of tech companies to share their ideas on. (This is reaonable for them to do so in my opinion.)
Regarding your various points:
> However the company culture is very pro-diversity and Russ/Arnold point if Jame Damore did not like it, he could always leave still holds.
First of all, he was not “anti-diversity”. He simply believed that there were limitations in Google’s approach and concerned that they might be breaking laws.
Second, they asked explicitly for feedback, which he gave and they ignored for a long time.
> Google probably faces lots of sex/racial harrassment & discrimination lawsuits and Damore’s memo would have been Exhibit A for the ten years. So giving Damore $3M saves Google ~$25M the next ten years.
Certainly, there is an economic calculation to be made here, regardless of the moral merits of either side. However, you would think that if Google really cared about saving themselves the hassle of lawsuits, they would have clamped down harder on the blacklisting and threats of violence towards employees who did not toe the line.
> I still have a belief that Damore intentionally got fired with a memo that could get published in National Review (some editing) but is not good for workplace. It had enough of women too emotional arguments to be acceptable in the workplace.
That is such a baloney sandwich. Let me count the ways:
1. people with political aspirations, or inclined to go that route, do not pursue areas of niche scientific and technical expertise. Even if they don’t start out in politics, political types always pursue careers that involve taking social risks and demonstrating verbal intelligence, things like business management, journalism, law, community organizing, preaching/ministry, etc.
2. Have you seen the man give an interview? Does he look comfortable to you? I mean, maybe now he’s become more acclimated, but if you look at his early interviews you can tell he really doesn’t want to be there.
3. Google (and the various journalistic sources that first broke the story) did such a smear job that Damore had no choice but to become a public in order defend his public image.
4. He has lamented before about his choice of language, but he was simply trying to be consistent with the scientific literature upon which he based his arguments.
5. I don’t think you realize what an enviable position Mr. Damore was in as an engineer. He was working for one of the top engineering teams at one of the top engineering companies in the world. He was working in a specialty that for a seasoned engineer could pull easily $500k in salary, not to mention stock grants and other compensation. He also achieved the highest rating possible from his manager. He was clearly passionate about what he was doing. Make no mistake: he did not want this.
Does companies really want to hear all the truth from their employees? Of course not! Learning to signal the correct things at work is an important trait.
1) Google does appears to have real problems with managers not listening to employee concerns. And they are over-doing diversity training. I believe this is true and it is across as discrimination.
2) I hope James Damore has a really clean record at the office though.
2) In terms of scientific research, is it wise for a husband to note woman more emotional to his wife? Hell, no! Google even with ~20% of coding performed by women, really want to hear from a fellow employee they are more emotional. Answer is No and would men like to want to work with a woman who states all men are poor listeners?
3) I don’t know about James Damore goals but the memo was both well written and just enough arguments to cross the line. As stated Google throwing money on Damore saves them money in the long run. And seems like every company would make the same choice. Again, I am not surprised strong conservatives are looking to build alternative websites.
> Does companies really want to hear all the truth from their employees? Of course not! Learning to signal the correct things at work is an important trait.
Of course, I agree as a matter of practical consideration one should guard their words carefully. But not everyone is equally able to detect what the appropriate social signals are or what the consequences will be.
One of the most interesting conflicts in this whole political correctness issue is the contingent of people arguing (using the progressive axis from TLP) that political correctness imposes an undue burden on those who have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or other “non-neurotypicals”.
Now, as I recall Damore is (mildy) ASD. But let’s also not forget that the company specifically asked for feedback, and additionally that Google has billed itself as a far more open-minded environment that your bog standard corporation. The second group he sent the memo to (after HR) was an internal “skeptics” group! And people at Google are far more open about using internal platforms to discuss normally taboo topics (e.g. sexual lifestyles). Also, employees have done some pretty publicly humiliating things for the company without any real consequences [1].
This looks less like “misreading the social signals” into a more “the social signals are actively deceptive”. It also makes Google’s position, even if economically prudent, look far less sympathetic.
For that matter, I’m neither convinced that is was in their economic best interest or that economic interest was even the deciding factor.
They certainly claimed it was
politicalvalues decision. And I think that between the Damore case and the recent recruiting scandal at Youtube, Google’s going to suffer some pretty severe financial penalties.[1]An employee accidentally published publicly what was supposed to be an internal document that cast Google in a pretty negative light next to Amazon regarding their business strategy. Arguably this could have (and may very well have) had a negative impact on Google share prices, but the employee serious consequences.
https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX
One last point with regards to the optics of the situation:
I would argue that the broad public perception (especially among the tech community, which while being typically very progressive is not entirely politically correct) is that Google throw a decent, articulate, and productive employee to the wolves. Even most of the employees think that he should not have been fired!
What do you think that does to your hiring pool when you tell them that you’re willing to sacrifice them for your own vanity?
He was fired for being autistic. He was harassed for being autistic. He was vilified by journalists for being autistic.
Is he autistic? I guess I better google his diagnosis.
#5 is an interesting point. That’s sort of where my mind has gone in the midst of this #metoo movement.
I would add that the sexual revolution didn’t just appear out of nowhere: absent cheap, effective contraception, there wouldn’t have been a sexual revolution. It significantly reduced the downside risks from sex before or outside of marriage. You reduce the cost, you get more of it.
Also, in some sense, contraception resulted in a prisoner’s dilemma situation for women. Instead of snitching on their compatriot, they would be taking birth control and putting out. They would be better off because they have a greater likelihood of attracting a man, while other women would be worse off because of less of a likelihood.
I’m really not sure where I stand on this, but I’d say it’s still unappreciated. Norms like, “women should be more patient” don’t just fall out of the sky. They’re shaped by the decisions every person faces.
There are women who aren’t patient, and they become persistent or they get peeved. Best case scenario, they’re persistent. At least then they tire themselves out after a couple months, and move on to some other guy. But some women feel so instantly insulted and affronted by her target’s lack of interest she just snaps, turns against him, as if his rejection of her is just impossible to make sense of.
My assumption is that a sexually aggressive man doesn’t feel personally insulted the same way. He’s playing a numbers game, so he moves on. But a sexually aggressive woman will not let it go. She has to punish the man who, inexplicably, rejected her. In her mind, she’s irresistible. So if she doesn’t get her way he’s gay, or he’s a virgin, or he’s a gay virgin or maybe he’s a legendary ladies man who thinks 23 is too old to bother with. She’ll come up with any number of explanations to avoid thinking, “I’m actually not God’s gift to men.”
Who knows what’s she’s thinking. “I keep talking about my rabbit and how all my naked selfies are the best. Why isn’t he chasing me? What’s wrong with him that he can resist my undeniable charms?” Whatever she’s thinking, she must need to blame him for not being interested. It probably doesn’t even occur to her that she’s committed sexual harassment, and the women writing MeToo stories are writing, as it happens, about her treatment of men.
/boggle.
The labor ‘market’ in not the standard value chain that we consider ‘market’ . Labor recruiting is designed to conceal and create inside information. Hiring managers who act as intermediary are expensive, and in short supply during transitions. That extra step in shoring up the hiring managers causes the large limit cycle on unemployment during downturns.
One of the interesting things one observed during the recent “harassment / informal prostituion”-related media cycle was that a few individuals – even feminist progressives in mainstream press outlets – tried ever so cautiously and gently to open up some kind of discussion on trying to settle upon and more clearly define the appropriate limits on both sexual behavior, public disclosures of private matters, and informal, extra-legal social punishments which potentially risk the personal ruination of innocents who lack opportunity for effective recourse.
And what one noticed was that all such discussion (let alone any kind of social agreement or compromise on settlement) has become entirely impossible and futile. And this even among people who are all committed to denying (or at least avoiding any mention of) some ugly truths about sexual relations that are as indispensible to any possible sane and reasonable outcome as they are untouchably radioactive. Still, no hope; there is no longer any “Zone of Possible Agreement” on this* and a whole set of fundamental normative issues in our society. Polarization means the distribution is bifurcated and bimodal. Norms are no longer “normal”.
What this also reveals is that the genuinely desired “standard” isn’t a standard at all, but a desire – originating in primal inconsistent and contradictory impulses and status game instincts instead of any purportedly coherent system of moral philosophy – to have complete subjective discretion to impose a particular social interpretation and consequence on any activity of an arguably sexual nature.
Of course if one tried to articulate this goal explicitly it would run so afoul of our current norms, understanding of human nature, notions of justice, and system of law, that all but a small fraction of true radicals would reject it outright. That’s why it’s strategically best – if one can get away with it – to just not engage in any attempt to settle anything, and leave everything quite vague and uncertain and subject to major shift at any moment. If the end result were to nudge behaviors and norms back to some traditional understanding of sexual propriety then perhaps one could go along with it anyway, but the truth is that it’s causing precisely the opposite consequence, circumspice.
(*Compare the extended and almost comical travails of the ALI’s recent attempt to draft updated sexual assault laws for the new Model Penal Code. Kevin Cole has some good write ups about it and the vague standard of “contextual consent” as an alternative to consent, affirmative consent, or enthusiastic consent.
The truth is that “consent” is a kind of instrumental legal fiction that has overgrown its most appropriate domain for application (i.e., the simple, rational business deal between arms-length, sophisticated and experienced entities and absent various kinds of psychological pressure,) by means of being incorporated as a central value in grand moral ideologies, that influence and skew the way people see and understand themselves and their world. It’s always dangerous to try and attach names to what we imagine to be particular psychological states of mind, that are composed of countless cellular interactions we don’t understand and can’t observe. The tacit and fluctuating way actual humans interact with other in friendly or intimate real-life circumstances, and the options they want to preserve about the ways they want their social groups to interpret those interactions, just doesn’t map well to abstract notions of voluntariness.
If you think about it, you’ll see that it’s just another way of “imposing an unrealistic model on the world” instead of “looking at the world,” and to the extent we lose sight of that we are bound to make huge, horrible mistakes.
“a very high ratio of wannabe actresses to prominent film producers.”
Oh, I don’t think that’s correct. I think its a very high ratio of wannabe actresses to viable jobs as an actress. My anecdotal perception is that the MeToo phenomena is strongest where there are hordes of young women trying to land one of very few jobs. Academia, politics, and the media, primarily. To a lesser extent, Big Tech. Those are the places where there are so many women that some women will do anything / put up with anything for a job. And I don’t just mean put up with demands for sexual favors. They also give up or delay childbirth, work long hours for a low wage for years, allow themselves to be demeaned and yelled at, etc.
Men have to do some of that, but not all of it.
The CallOut culture is an even better example of this, because at least sexual harassment is real, and the MeToo moment is about the actual world. But in CallOut culture there’s nothing there. There’s just a void at the middle of CallOut culture because these are people on Twitter who want a job in publishing and they will personally bring about the death of the author to get a job in publishing. Not by literally murdering older authors, but by bringing about their social death, their ostracism, their excommunication.
Jonathan Kay wrote about this idea (“Why They Hate Margaret Atwood”) that, if you want a little space on the bookshelf you have to get rid of other authors. You need their books banned and taken out of libraries and removed from polite society, because their authors are guilty of thoughtcrime and of causing aggrievement. But there’s no there there. It’s a squabble and a brawl and a clawing and tearing at each other, but at the base of it, there’s nothing.
If my hypothesis is correct that differences in executive skill at overseeing and deploying software are driving consolidation, then I would expect the high-caliber management teams to attract the best workers, in part because they can afford to offer higher compensation. But the strong firms also have leverage, because workers want to affiliate with them for better long-term career development. Meanwhile, I would expect workers at firms with mediocre management to have no bargaining power, assuming that they do not meet the standards of the stellar firms. Poorly-managed firms are threatened with extinction, which gives their workers no scope for demanding more compensation.
I don’t think this is even the pattern in software itself. Only a minority of tech worker are in Silicon Valley/Seattle or work for the largest firms. And the majority who aren’t in those places are generally well-compensated — not just in comparison to other workers in their regions but even compared to Silicon Valley once you factor in cost of living. I live in one of those leafy, campus neighborhoods in a college town that consistently makes it into ‘top places to live’ lists. It’s not cheap by any means. But an equivalent home in Palo Alto would be probably 6-7x as expensive. I’m sure I would have made more had I relocated. But nowhere near that much more. Not enough more to afford a better quality of life.
It’s also the case that it isn’t necessarily that great to work for Google or Facebook. Their startup cultures are long gone (which was inevitable — it’s the nature the large, mature beasts these companies have become). They do hire a lot of really smart people, but many of them end up doing rather boring work on obscure little parts of big systems. This kind of thing makes for interesting reading:
https://www.quora.com/How-boring-is-it-to-be-a-software-engineer-at-Google
The response of the academic to on the job problems has always been to just quit. Broadly, it has never been recognized that sometimes life situations make it almost impossible to quit. Finally, some are starting to realize that sometimes workers just don’t have that many choices and that employers have a significant advantage.
Steve
And the presumption that the next will be any improvement at all rather than even worse.
Good blogging but I would like to see an extended series on the libertarian view on property zoning.