It may not be any different. In any case, and irrespective of this specific case or how anyone might feel about it, I think it's probably a good idea to be critical of claims like bad cultural fit when coming from corporate execs. Yes, there are some people who are unable to act in a way that most would agree is a professional manner, and indeed these people are toxic and pretty much impossible to work with, however, I have a strong suspicion that bad "cultural fit" in many cases is probably just an instance of bias and essentially a weasel term to make it acceptable to only want to hire people of specific demographics.
At this point I really wish tech would just abandon this whole "culture" thing were the company hopes to be a center of social activity and just go back to being a place people work and get a paycheck in return.
I feel like this is a "keep the politics out of everyday life" thing.
Ultimately if you're working together, then personal differences come into play (just like they do in other sphere of life). There are ways of professionalising environments, of course
I think once you reach "people management" itself, then its basically in the job description that this sort of stuff matters.
Bad press and complaints aren't sufficient conditions for legal firing.
e.g. Employee reports OSHA violation. Company gets bad press for workplace conditions. Company can't fire employee for reporting unsafe work conditions.
You cannot prove either ways on whether James was right or wrong, because his memo was a scattering of everything. But, his idea proves to be a serious obstacle for fellow google engineers especially women to collaborate with him. This is good enough reason for Google to fire him.
Perhaps not. But I don't see the fact that he wrote it as the proximal cause for his firing.
I suspect it's the fact that his PR event caused by the memo makes it harder for the company to hire women and to draw a clear distinction between Google company culture and, say, Uber company culture.
Or, put another way, the PR makes it harder for Google to defend itself in lawsuits from current or former female employees alleging discrimination. Would failure to discharge Damore itself constitute grounds for a complaint of a hostile work environment?
There is some heavy legal machinery firing underneath the covers here, forcing Google's hand.
> I suspect it's the fact that his PR event caused by the memo
In which case they should be firing the people that leaked it outside google. At the moment it seems as though they are rewarding the leakers (who I suspect disagreed with the memo) by giving them what they want.
I'm willing to bet Damore would win his case with the NLRB if not for the new Trump members that will be on the board by the time he gets there. Eager to see some deal with their simultaneous passion for speech freedoms and disdain for the only remedy here—strengthening labor protections.
The statement by Google's CEO categorizes some specific sections of the the article into the "okay" bin, and some sections into the "fireable" bin. That's about as good as a start as you are likely to get.
> To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK
I don't know, I read the article and it seem to me his point was pretty clear that men and women have biological differences that make them drawn to different types of work, and to find enjoyment in different things.
I actually found his point in saying we should increase cooperative work (such as pair programming) to make it more desirable rather refreshing. I also am drawn to people and would find more enjoyment in more cooperative work.
I'm going to get downvoted to hell by saying this but...
He also implied that women who get into google are there because the bar is lowered. This implication means when he sees a female coworker, he automatically assumes they're less "effective" than a male co-worker and they're only there because the standards were lowered for them. Essentially this makes the workplace hostile. If you're a woman, you know that this guy thinks "less" of you because of the way you were born. He basically put into words his implicit and explicit biases towards women.
The document is the definition of sexism and a perfect example of why we still need diversity laws and programs.
Despite the attempts to provide disclaimers, many of the comments he wrote were explicitly sexist. For example the sections "Personality differences" and "Men's higher drive for status".
Sexism means prejudice related to gender. Prejudice means pre-judging a group. For example the belief that women do not have as high as drive for status can (and previously has been) used as an excuse for promoting men instead of women or a particular man instead of a particular woman.
And other comments. In the context of discussion of things like hiring, promotion and pay, acting on the beliefs he stated has been outlawed (even though unfortunately these biases are still very prevalent). If they do not fire him, the document will be used as evidence in discriminatory lawsuits.
These sexist beliefs are still just as popular as ageist and racist beliefs. Many may be able to find scientific studies that back up their prejudice. There are usually studies backing up just about any view, just due to the nature of science. Regardless of how well accepted or not these studies are, the laws have already been made years before. So if you want these types of prejudicial beliefs to be openly consulted in hiring, promotion, etc. decisions in companies, those laws will need to be changed.
Would it be a prejudice to say women on average are less tall than men? Where do you draw the line between "pre-judgement" and "statistics" (can we call it post-judgement?). Height is OK but work drive is not OK to post-judge?
The author took great pain to distinguish between traits having a tendency to exist at higher rates within a group, and traits being exhibited by an individual. You don't seem to have comprehended his point. Barring diversity programs allowing members of select groups to pass a lower hiring/performance bar, a person sitting at the desk next to me at work is just as likely to be a competent engineer as anyone else, regardless of their gender. But if you were to take 1,000 women and 1,000 men from a young age and treat them precisely equally, there are strong scientific arguments that we should expect to see a larger number of the men go into tech than women.
To reiterate, this says precisely nothing about the qualifications and competency of individuals who actually enter tech, it only speaks to the relative number of men and women we ought to expect our workforce to be composed of. It could be that the natural result of equal opportunity for all men and women to enter tech is for there to be more than 50% men, possibly quite a bit more. Again, there is a lot of research that indicates this (for citations, see the "manifesto").
How does this apply to other countries where women are higher in STEM and tech than men? For example, in Iran more than 60% of STEM students are female.
I am not particularly knowledgeable about that, so I don't have much to offer here. I'll take a stab, but I don't have anything to cite, and my opinions aren't well informed -
For various reasons I don't want to go into on this thread, Iran is not a society that I think should be looked up to and emulated. It frequently gets cited as an example of highly misogynistic culture, and as far as I know has plenty of laws / official practices that codify inequality of women in a way that many other developed countries (e.g., the United States, countries in the EU, etc) don't. I'm happy to be corrected on this as I really don't know all that much about Iran, but I strongly suspect the people decrying the google essay as being sexist would agree that Iran is not a good role model for egalitarian society. Regardless, from what little I do know, if the structure of Iranian society/culture is what it takes to get high representation of women in STEM, is that really worth it?
I have one more thing to add - I found this video to be thought provoking:
(I've linked to a specific time where the material is particularly relevant, but the whole thing is worth a watch)
To summarize, that video makes the observation that less wealthy, less egalitarian countries have higher rates of women in typically male professions. Conversely, very rich and egalitarian countries have a lower amount of women in them. The explanation for this phenomenon that is proposed in the video (if I remember right, I watched this years ago) is that when factors like wages, status, family expectations, etc are given less and less importance, and people are therefore relatively more free to choose professions based on desire rather than need, women tend to avoid jobs within STEM fields. To be clear, that's merely one interpretation of the data (although it sounds plausible to me), there are likely other valid ones.
Oh I was definitely not saying Iran should be a role model for the rest of the world. I'm saying examples exist that prove the negation of the "biological" argument.
Which brings doubt into, if we're raising boys and girls without considering gender norms would boys really outnumber girls in tech?
I would not go so far as to say they "prove" the negation of the biological argument, when there is so much evidence that points the other direction, and a practically infinte number of confounding variables are involved if all you're doing is pointing at a couple of countries like Iran and saying "look at that". So I don't actually think it brings doubt into anything.
Personally, I think it's very likely that if a large number of men and a large number of women were each given exactly equal opportunity to pursue whatever career they wished, more men would pursue tech than women. I haven't seen any data that contradicts this belief, but if I did I'd like to think I would change my mind. Of course, I have no idea what range we should expect the proportions to fall into. 51/49? 60/40? 90/10? Obviously this also means that I have no idea if the gender representation we see in tech currently accurately represents the population of people who would be interested in it, given the opportunity. But I think the weight of the evidence that we should expect more men than women in tech is much higher than the weight to the contrary. Not knowing the exact numbers simply means that we should focus our efforts on making sure everybody has equal opportunity to pursue whichever career interests them the most, as opposed to trying to reach some arbitrary numerical threshold. As long as all people are free to make their own choices, we shouldn't be concerned how the distributions turn out.
> How does this apply to other countries where women are higher in STEM and tech than men? For example, in Iran more than 60% of STEM students are female.
That's because in iran, the government sets the "standards for women's and men's study". Women are FORCED to take these classes.
Also, iranian women outnumber men in STEM within iran because iranian families with money send their male children overseas to study.
The numbers are even more skewed for UAE, Kuwait, etc. There, the women are like 80% of the local university populations because the wealthy arabs send their sons to study abroad in US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.
There are political scientists/psychologists who say that the lack is choice is why women in iran and middle east are so well represented in STEM. In the west, females have lots of choices and they have a say in what they study. The government/fathers can't tell women you have to study this or that. That's not the case in iran. If iran ever opened up and liberalized, the thinking is that a large portion of the women will choose non-STEM fields, just like they do in the West.
In short, why do they study stem? They study STEM subjects for the same reason they wear burqas. They have no choice.
I would love some examples of your accusation. You say it's the "definition of sexism". So you must have plenty of examples from his writing.
> and a perfect example of why we still need diversity laws and programs.
Yes. The fact the guy got fired for having his own opinions proves that we are in a dire need for diversity of thought and ideas.
> For example the belief that women do not have as high as drive for status can (and previously has been) used as an excuse for promoting men instead of women or a particular man instead of a particular woman.
But that's societal/evolutionary theory proposed by some scientists/thinkers? Also, the belief that women can't compete with men physically is used as an excuse to created women's tennis assocation, WNBA, women's hockey, women's soccer, etc? Is that sexist? There is sexism and there is biological facts/inquiry/etc.
He was just offering a possible explanation for why more men are in leadership roles.
"The greater tendency for men to be interested in having a higher status fits with a long line of biological research dating back to Darwin. It seems men believe that higher status brings the mating opportunities that come with being top dog."
You're not parsing the difference between "equality" and "identicality".
Equality is about the rights one has, and how one should be treated as an individual — equality before the law, and before society. We strive for a society where men and woman are equal, blacks and whites are equal, straights and gays are equal.
Universal equality, however, does NOT require us to believe that people are identical in personality, in intelligence, or in any of the other dimensions you've listed above. We don't even have to believe that specific groups, taken together, are identical to all other groups in mean, median, and standard deviation on these attributes.
People can be EQUAL without being THE SAME.
Edit: really bummed I missed the opportunity to make a JavaScript joke about == vs ===.
That may be what "equal" means to hard-core feminists but to everyone else it is a synonym for "identical". Wiktionary defines it as "the same in all respects".
If you are talking in non-feminist circles you probably want to use standard language, e.g. "treated equally". You'll get fewer arguments about words that have been redefined by a small group.
Edit: New accounts cannot reply so I rewrote my comment
I'm talking about equality in terms of attributes. The distribution of traits in males and the distribution of traits in females, are not equal. So I will not say males and females are equal. They do qualify as equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_relation
I believe people should be treated as individuals, if you take two distinct persons A and B, I don't believe they are equal. The only person equal to person A is person A. On this vein, you can't say Group A is equal to Group B, unless Group A and B are the same group.
You can apply equivalence relations to groups, which is basically a lower threshold for equality.
I'm not sure where "equivalent" came from, and haven't really heard it used in this context before. What do you mean by that?
Anyway, I think you've got it backwards. "Equivalent" suggests that men and women are functionally interchangeable, which neither of us believes. "Equal", on the other hand, has a long history of being used to carry social and political meaning.
Because evolutionary biology is fundamentally at odds with the core tenets of Feminism.
Feminism is founded on the idea that males and females are equal. Biological research over the past 30 years; specifically from the fields of genetics, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary biology; directly contradicts this premise. Evolutionary biology research tells us there are sex differences in human males and females during all phases of the human lifecycle, including prenatal, childhood, adolescence, mating, parenting, grandparenting, and death. Behavioral ecology tells us we see these same effects in non-human species too. Genetics tells us these traits are heritable and not socially constructed (for example, the correlation between a parent's IQ and their child is around .80, even accounting for adoption).
How does one reconcile evidence from a field of science, that directly contradicts one's own beliefs? To protect one's identity, to avoid the cognitive dissonance, the obvious answer is to discredit the field, discredit the arguments, and discredit the person citing it.
That is why there is a concerted effort by Feminists, and supporters of feminism in the media to squash statistical evidence that goes against their ideology.
It is akin to telling a Christian that God is not real. You will receive a similar response. Heretics must be punished.
And the fact that you're writing this under a throwaway drives home how difficult it is to have a discussion that goes against these ideas. You run the risk of being bullied or shamed into quitting or simply fired.
Beautiful summation. The pretzel logic these folks are engaging in is quite hilarious. I don't know if the term's been widely used but I call them Gender Deniers.
Thank you. It's something that I think needs to be said.
One thing, about your point on 'gender deniers', I would try to avoid using the term 'gender'. It's a term perpetuated by the left to avoid direct conversation about biological sex. There has been a concerted effort to separate the concept of gender and sex through justification by the social sciences. This phenomena is not new, historically the social sciences have always been used to justify the predominant ideology of the time.
Gender is considered a 'social construct' under the theory of social constructionism, a philosophical theory not based on statistical evidence. Once you start debating about what is 'Gender', you've already fallen into their trap. I would use the term 'biology deniers' because it avoids people from making roundabout arguments on what is gender.
We ban accounts that use HN primarily for political and ideological battle, regardless of which flavor they favor.
It's fine for community members who use HN as intended (i.e. for intellectual curiosity) to also comment on divisive topics as long as they do so thoughtfully. It's not fine to make throwaway accounts to post boilerplate ideological talking points. Since that's what you've been doing, I've banned this one. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.
No matter which side one takes it's a bit sad to see these stories getting flagged because most of HNers are very civil and it's nice to read each side's arguments and opinions.
> "He conducted research in computational biology at Harvard, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining a Ph.D. program at Harvard. He dropped out before completing the program."
P.S this is not a quote from James Damore directly
Lets see what he wrote that was so offensive, remembering that it was to a private list and only posted to the wider Internet by Googles 'diversity' chief Danielle Brown.
Let this incident fully dislodge any tendency to cling to the belief that people in positions of authority wear their hearts on their sleeves, or that their statements can be taken at face value.
It doesn't make sense from the naive perspective because people are manipulating the narrative. If Trump's election doesn't make that painfully obvious, I don't know what will.
Imagine you are reading some code written by a colleague and comparing it against some output. After reviewing the code 3-4 times, you cannot figure out where a certain strange token, unlike the others, is coming from. Do we continue to stare at the same chunk of code, or do we look for other points in the pipeline where the file may be touched by an external process?
Companies that fail to maintain a specific type of brand persona open themselves to extremely costly lawsuits. Corporate management exists to say what needs to be said to get employees to cooperate and to keep the company from falling into legal or financial peril.
You can't take things at face value. This article indicates that Damore is 28 years old. A lot of us have to learn this lesson after a few years in the workforce, often in bitter, unpleasant ways (generally proportional to the amount of hope/optimism we have that things aren't really that way). Let's learn from Damore's experience, where his well-meaning attempt to discuss and explain the issue at hand got him terminated.
"Kumbaya" is a myth. Humans are tribal and driven by biological impulses to hoard both materials and personal control for good survival-centric reasons. There is no reason, other than naive optimism, to assume there are some fields where these instincts do not apply.
We should think about how we can change our processes to keep undeserving persons from scheming their way into positions of power, and revising a legal structure that forces everyone to act like a scared mouse around anything slightly controversial is probably a good place to start.
I hope that Damore revises his essay in 1 year's time from his now-forcefully-refined worldview.
1. There are biological differences between men and women.
2. Because #1 and <personal biases> and evolutionary psychology, this makes women bad engineers.
3. Because #1 and #2, diversity programs are harmful.
Saying one of those three things creates a hostile work environment. Nothing in that manifesto provided any unique, novel, or original insight. It was the same old, same-old, 'computers are for boys, talking to people is for girls' nonsense.
From what I can tell, he shared his controversial opinion in a forum specifically for controversial opinions, that is not a lack of tact.
I don't know if this is true, but after reading "journalists" summarize the memo random internet comments from purported googlers seem about as reliable.
Google is pretty clear about what is and isn't inside the lines for their code of conduct, and they make you take a mandatory refresher course every year on your anniversary of employment.
Which is partly why this guy was so pissy about the echo chambers rules: They're always in his face.
> Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
Women are neurotic, emotional and can't handle stress! Awesome! Haven't heard that one before.
> We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.
And because they are emotional and can't handle stress, that's why they don't get promoted, and become top leaders! Mystery solved! No unconscious bias here, especially not from people who share the author's opinions.
> Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things
> We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration...
Software engineering, as we practice it, is not for girls. We can change it to make it more for girls!
As I said, this is the poster child for "Computers are for boys, talking to people is for girls," mixed with some suggestions. Have you read the essay?
> Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
Neuroticism is a precisely defined term in psychology:
The author cited many sources from scientific studies which have consistently found that on average, women score higher on that scale than men. The wording of your juvenile mocking of that statement seems to imply that you didn't comprehend the most fundamental point the author made through his entire essay; he is not saying that "women are neurotic", he's saying that out of a large sample of women, we'd statistically expect more of them to be above some arbitrary neurotic "threshold" than out of an equivalent sample of men. If tendency to be relatively more neurotic is negatively correlated with pursuing a career in tech, we'd expect more men than women to want to pursue careers in tech. Please explain what is sexist about that observation.
> We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.
The commentary you provided here is coming entirely from you, not the author. You've assigned the author biases that you believe he holds, and are assuming motivations behind his statements that are not there, and there is no reason to think they're there. If you don't believe this statement is true, please provide a citation indicating that women are equally willing as men to work long hours and endure stress in the workplace. The author provides several indicating otherwise, do you have anything to disprove him with?
> Women on average show a higher interest in people and men in things > We can make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming and more collaboration...
Your interpretation of this is very baffling to me. This struck me as a fantastic idea! Without even considering whether it appeals to women in particular, this seems a wonderful way to try to make software engineering more appealing to those who like working actively and in close proximity with other people. Imagine if it was an industry norm for software engineers to have "partners" who they frequently/consistently worked with, pair programming style. Personally that does not appeal to me at all, but I can easily imagine people who never would consider software engineering as a career reconsidering it if that was an aspect of it. Having a programming "partner" who you work as closely with, and could potentially form as much of a bond with as police partners could potentially draw people into our field who currently don't think they would like it. These are the kind of interesting ideas that are worth discussion, but that discussion is being shut down by outrage.
> As I said, this is the poster child for "Computers are for boys, talking to people is for girls," mixed with some suggestions. Have you read the essay?
To be frank, this summary of the essay is so wildly inaccurate that you are either lying about having read it, your reading comprehension is shockingly poor, or (and I think this is the most likely) you have strongly held beliefs related to the topic at hand, and are reacting violently in the face of a decently well reasoned argument that challenges those beliefs. It's not the greatest essay ever written, everything in it isn't gospel truth, and in some places where the author veers away from relaying scientific stuides to offering his personal interpretations/opinions, I don't agree with him. But to dismiss it as you did is a poor reflection on your ability to engage with those you disagree with and have a constructive conversation.
1. Google is not not employing an arbitrary, randomly picked group of women. Even if neuroticism in the general population were negatively correlated with engineering performance (Which he has no citations for), that would not be relevant, as the candidates are not randomly selected from the general population. What this does, is reinforce a harmful sterotype about his co-workers. (Or it is a complete non-sequitur about people who will never become co-workers. The average man can't do software engineering either. So what?)
Black people do a lot of crime[citation, citation, science, citation], but that's not relevant to why they struggle to get promoted.
2. The author asserts that women are biologically different. The author asserts that this biological difference makes them less capable of succeeding in tech [citation needed]. The author presents this as an obvious solution for why they aren't succeeding in tech!
What else could this train of reasoning possibly mean?
3. Software Engineering is already highly collaborative, but that is a non-sequitur.
The implication here is that currently, it's not for girls, because they aren't interested in things. But if we change it, we can make it for them! This means that it is currently not suited for them. Because biology.
4. Yes, there are worthwhile bits of discussion in this essay. In fact, the overwhelming majority of it, while controversial, is not espousing the inherent inability of a random subset
of women to do engineering, as currently practiced.
The small part of it that is, though, is the problem. It's also the kernel of the argument.
Liberals / progressives keep missing the point - silencing your opposition and calling them names only shows how weak your side of the argument is. That's how you get 4 more years of Trump.
Fight bad ideas with better ideas, better arguments.
> Liberals / progressives keep missing the point - silencing your opposition and calling them names
You're conflating a political movement with a company doing PR damage control. Google management didn't "call him names".
You're not thinking about it like a corporate manager. Google is trying hard not to be seen as just another Frat startup like Uber (albeit an older one). They are actively trying to hire the best engineers in the world and this memo just put a dent in their hiring process for 50% of their potential hiring candidates.
> Fight bad ideas with better ideas, better arguments.
Of course.
The irony is that social conservatives are usually the ones to cry foul when an employee sues a company for firing the employee for social/cultural reasons. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, both political poles are shown to be hypocrites.
> You're conflating a political movement with a company doing PR damage control. Google management didn't "call him names".
Google is heavily invested in the political movement. Lets not pretend google is an objective observer in this.
> They are actively trying to hire the best engineers in the world and this memo just put a dent in their hiring process for 50% of their potential hiring candidates.
Can you point to anything specific that was written that would scare 50% of potential hires? That is quite an assertion and I would love to here the rationale for it.
> Now that the shoe is on the other foot, both political poles are shown to be hypocrites.
That's the point. Why are you defending one foot and not the other?
>Google is heavily invested in the political movement.
What "political movement" did the guy they fired represent? "All men are created equal" is a political statement, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" is a political statement, "Half the world's population is unsuitable for technical work because of their gender" is bigoted nonsense. That he tried to use discredited pseudo-science to back up his statement doesn't make it any more valid than bigoted nonsense from less educated people.
If he had kept his nonsense to himself, it wouldn't have been a major issue for Google. But because he chose to share it with his coworkers, who then leaked it, they were put in a position where if they kept him on, they would be seen as endorsing the nonsense, but if they fired him, they were seeing as joining in some kind of political crusade.
Bottom line: the core thesis of the "manifesto" was on par with eugenics, anti-vaxxer propaganda, or anti-climate FUD. If someone in their HR department was seen as embracing those ideas and encouraging their coworkers to put them into practice, Google would probably fire them as well.
> "Half the world's population is unsuitable for technical work because of their gender"
Much more than half the world's population is unsuitable for technical work because of their lack of skills or interest. Is that bigoted nonsense? The guy wasn't making a blanket affirmation that women aren't suited for tech - just why there is a different level of interest for this field between genders.
> What "political movement" did the guy they fired represent?
Extreme liberalism. The same condition sadly afflicting much of media.
> "Half the world's population is unsuitable for technical work because of their gender" is bigoted nonsense.
Where did he say that? You are quoting it as if he wrote it, so please point out where he wrote those exact words. The fact you are making things up and misattributing it to him is rather disturbing.
>Bottom line: the core thesis of the "manifesto" was on par with eugenics, anti-vaxxer propaganda, or anti-climate FUD
So point it out.
You make outlandish claims but provide no specifics. It's almost as if you are making things up to further your agenda.
Also, feminists claim half the world's population is not fit enough to compete with men in baseball, football, soccer, hockey, tennis, etc and therefore need their own leagues/tournaments. Are these feminists sexists?
They fired him for making women and minorities at google feel unwelcome due to their gender and ethnicity respectively. That's a violation of the company code of conduct and kind of a dick move. People who work hard to become experts in their fields should not have to continually prove that they are in fact good enough and smart enough for the positions they have earned.
Automatically assuming that women are there because the standards were lowered for them. Indicating that when he's working with a female co-worker, he thinks they shouldn't be there and the only reason they're there is because of "reverse discrimination".
He spoke about affirmative action as well, but most of his arguments were against women.
> They fired him for making women and minorities at google feel unwelcome due to their gender and ethnicity respectively. That's a violation of the company code of conduct and kind of a dick move
And also creates a situation which potentially exposes the company to legal liability under state and federal laws if not addressed, independent of company policy; hostile work environment based on sex or race is itself employment discrimination under the law.
Companies fire people for lack of cultural fit. How is this any different?