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0 pointssmsm428y ago0 comments

> My argument is that if in LinkedIn's education section you list a school and a degree -- which he did -- people take that to mean you have the degree. Ergo, he falsely claimed to have a degree he didn't

People that read that are wrong (at least sometimes), since Linkedin shows degrees-in-progress and completed degrees the same way. Not ideal interface, for sure, but that's what it is. People that do not know that make mistakes. It's their mistake.

> Could that be an accident? Might it just be incompetence? Maybe.

Surely, it may be incompetence - not understanding how Linkedin profile works. But it's not Damore's incompetence.

> That he then quickly removed things when called out with neither explanation nor apology

If people misunderstood what was on his Linkedin page, and undeservedly called him a liar and attacked him for that, and he removed the controversial item despite it being true - I think demanding apology from him for you misunderstanding him and falsely calling him a liar is taking the entitlement thing too far. If somebody owes an apology, it's people who called him a liar despite him publishing completely true information - but of course I do not hold by breath for that.

> fits in with the "lies to make himself look good" narrative.

Surely it fits your narrative. The problem is it is not true.

> A person who had made an innocent error generally feels bad about the error and says so.

Nobody owes you feeling bad for telling the truth and you misunderstanding him. It would be nice if people who did the misunderstanding felt bad and did not blame others for their mistake, but I recognize this is not how the Internet works. If you misunderstood something, it's other guy who should be feeling bad for not working harder to prevent any chance of you making a mistake. The other guy is always responsible, he's clearly either a liar or an idiot for letting you to misunderstand him.

> Your thing about LinkedIn form design seems to be pure fiction. I just checked: you can enter any text you like, including no text at all.

That misunderstanding thing happened to you again. I haven't said you cannot enter free text in Linkedin. I said the form does not have completion status for education. Yes, you can hack around that by adding various text to a degree program name or any other field. If Damore knew in advance there would be a mob of hostile attackers scrutinizing everything he ever did under a microscope to find even a tiniest flaw and blow it up out of proportion, he would probably do it too. But he just wrote true facts about his educational record, without thinking about being extra defensive and using tools given to him by Linkedin. Linkedin provides tools to set beginning and end time for educational record, and program name, but does not have a setting for "incomplete" or "in progress" status.

> This is not a personal attack; this is me pointing out facts of his behavior and reasonable inferences.

You "reasonable inferences" - which, as far as blaming others for your misunderstanding goes are not reasonable at all - are what is the personal attack, since they seek to impugn Damore's character without addressing his actual arguments. That's the definition of personal attack.

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wpietri8y ago

No, LinkedIn does not "shows degrees-in-progress and completed degrees the same way". LinkedIn lets you type what you want. And in the examples I've looked at, most people are very clear about how it turned out. If they are in a PhD program, they say so. If they left with a Master's, as Damore did, they either claim the Master's or are explicit that they didn't finish the PhD.

That is exactly what people do on paper resumes, which also let you type what you want. Why? Because falsely claiming (or even giving the impression of claiming) an academic degree is a giant no-no. People get fired for that.

You repeatedly ignore that he also falsely claimed to be a chess master. Is your theory there that it was also just an accident, forced by software? That the word processor somehow made him put "FIDE Master in Chess (>99th Percentile)" and that he as a computer expert just couldn't figure out any other way to use the tool?

I'm not the one fitting a narrative here, pal. I see your DARVO.

Goladus8y ago

People get fired for that.

I call bullshit. Show me three examples of people "getting fired for giving the impression of claiming they had a PhD on LinkedIn" when there's a plausible case to be made that it was an innocent mistake with at least equal blame on the reader.

I just looked at my LinkedIn profile, which I haven't updated in at least 2 or 3 years, probably more. For reasons I don't know, it lists two entries for my education.

    [UNIVERSITY XYZ]
    Bachelor of Arts, Computer Science, [Second Major]
    [YEAR] - [YEAR + 4]
    
    [UNIVERSITY XYZ]
    Bachelor of Arts, Computer Science
    [YEAR] - [YEAR + 4]

I do have two BA degrees that I earned concurrently. I really have no idea why it shows one entry with both degrees and one entry with a single degree. Did the LinkedIn database change at some point in the last 15 years? Did I really fill out the degree fields redundantly?

Damned if I know. Did I intend for it to be confusing? Certainly not, I'm sure I just filled out the forms with what I thought the program could work with and would make sense. Maybe I used some Wizard-style Q&A format that they don't use anymore. I really have no clue at all. But there it is, ready for someone to screencap and use to embarrass me if they wanted to, mocking my apparent inability to create a properly formatted LinkedIn profile.

I also note that there's nothing filled in for "description" or "activities" or anything like that. When I was young and did not have much of a resume of relevant accomplishments in my work history, I often included, on my paper resume, an honor society membership and an elected treasurer position I'd held for two semesters in a student group. These seem like details I would have added to LinkedIn, had the interface had a section for it(as it does now). But there isn't anything there. Did I remove them? Did I just never bother to add them? Or was the "activities, etc." field added to the schema after I created my profile? Certainly, the javascript-based interactive editor available now, was not the editor I used when I originally created my profile.

What I do know is that I've never directed anyone to my LinkedIn profile. I've never encouraged an employer to review it and the only interactions I've had come from former co-workers and recruiters. At this point I consider it more of a professional obligation than anything else, and log in every so often mostly to check messages and update endorsements.

I also know that I've seen work histories that look really weird, often when people work in multiple positions at the same company for years but that company also changes ownership multiple times. So you have a bizarrely fragmented presentation of a story I know to be fairly simple. Something like "was hired entry-level, switched departments, got promoted, and is now Senior Account Manager for Whatever domain" winds up looking like a career with 5 different positions on 4 different teams in 3 different companies. I consider that to be a decent indication that many people either don't spend a lot of time on their profiles, or else find the interface cumbersome enough that they're unwilling to deal with it long enough to convey a real resume-style work history.

wpietri8y ago

People get fired for resume fraud all the time: https://www.google.com/search?q=fired+for+resume+fraud&tbm=n...

There is no plausible claim that the reader is to blame here. If you show his entry, sans name, to 100 people asking them what degrees he claims, I'd be that at least 90 would say he had a PhD and a BS. Just as people looking at his current LinkedIn profile would understand he now claims an MS.

smsm42OP8y ago

> No, LinkedIn does not "shows degrees-in-progress and completed degrees the same way".

It does.

> LinkedIn lets you type what you want.

It also does, it doesn't contradict the previous sentence. As I said, Linked in does not have data item for degree being complete or not (I am not sure how familiar you are with data modeling, but situation of having a model for some property and deriving it from ad-hoc texts in unrelated data items are very different). Some people do extra work by using degree name or other fields to work around this, some don't bother. Neither are liars.

> That is exactly what people do on paper resumes, which also let you type what you want.

No, that's a very different case. Paper resume is completely freeform. Linkedin has set of forms, some of which are free text, which you can use - if you want to - to cover for shortcomings in other places, like use degree or program name to express completion status. Some don't bother to because they think it's be clear from context. Sometimes it is not. It happens. It'd be good to recognize that.

> Because falsely claiming (or even giving the impression of claiming) an academic degree is a giant no-no. People get fired for that.

People get fired for all kinds of things, like expressing unpopular opinion, as it turns out. But there's world of difference between claiming the degree on resume (which didn't happen) and somebody misreading ambiguous output of a site.

> You repeatedly ignore that he also falsely claimed to be a chess master.

Why I should address this unrelated claim before we address the one at point? If you admit you were wrong on the Linkedin part - and recognize the fact both claims are personal attacks, since they have little to do with the claims Damore is making or you were making - we can consider the chess thing. Before that it's just a distraction - what about this? what about that? what about that third thing? forget that I didn't prove the first two, what about the fourth thing? Nope, won't work this way. You have to substantiate every one of your claims, not just bring a new one once previous one was questioned.

> I see your DARVO.

You are implying that you're somehow a victim here? Nice one. So far you are the one denying the facts (as in, ones about Damore's performance) and personally attacking him (as in, bringing irrelevant claims about his character to discussion about his factual claims), and of course claiming that somebody here is "offender", without any proof of offense made - unless you consider you misunderstanding Damore's Linkedin profile as "offense" to you and you being "victim"? That'd be rich. The fact that you have a nice acronym in your pocket doesn't change any of that.

wpietri8y ago

The claims of "falsely claimed a PhD on LinkedIn" and "falsely claimed to be a chess master on his resume" are not "unrelated". They are closely related examples of the same behavior. If he's a liar on his resume (and he is), it is much easier to believe that he's a liar on LinkedIn.

Spare me the condescension on data modeling. LinkedIn barely has a data model; it is a modestly structured version of a resume, with a bunch of free text fields. It is not a "very different case". People will often ask for "a resume or a LinkedIn link" in job applications because they serve the same purpose. LinkedIn will automatically render your LinkedIn profile in resume form. They are in practice the same.

And in either case, if you say "PhD, Systems Biology, Harvard" in the education section, reasonable people will believe you claim to have a PhD. That's how I read it. That's how many people read it. And if you did a user test, I'm sure that's how most people would read it. That anonymous Damore fanboys now claim they'd read it differently is not proof of anything about the wider world.

You can claim that it was a mistake on his part (and others have), or that his documented social ineptitude (as his fellow students talked about) mean that he just didn't understand the social implications of what he wrote. But then you would have to grapple with the other lie on his resume, which is why you are spinning so vigorously away from it.

I am not denying any "facts" about Damore's performance. I agree he worked at Google and didn't get fired for a while. I agree that he claims his performance was great. Those are facts. As I said at the beginning of this thread, I'd like to see that for myself. People who lie on resumes are not trustworthy sources for their job performance.

Goladus8y ago

Yeah that's another point. It's a category error to apply interpersonal social expectations to a "man vs media+internet mob" scenario.

When you mislead an individual in real life and that person suffers actual consequences from that mistake, apology and forgiveness help repair the relationship.

A media hack writing about this has not suffered a real interpersonal offense over the issue, nor have any of the self-righteous audience passing judgment. As these people have not suffered any actual harm they are not owed an apology, nor would an apology given under such circumstances function as it is supposed to. There is no interpersonal relationship to repair in the first place.

wpietri8y ago

He published his resume to the world on LinkedIn. I suppose he could try to track every reader down individually, but that seems like quite a challenge. Which is why published errors usually are followed by published corrections with explanation and/or apology. Even media hacks do it, so presumably Damore could manage.

Goladus8y ago

He did not invite the entire world to look at that LinkedIn profile for any material reason. You're playing fast and loose with the term "published" and holding Damore to absurd standards that you obviously do not even adhere to yourself. If you held yourself to the same standard you held Damore, you would not have published the reckless, incredibly unprofessional, and possibly even defamatory comments about his coding ability. When called out on it you would have apologized and maybe done some soul-searching about why you felt so comfortable engaging in such careless slander of a young engineer you have never met and know almost nothing about.

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