I no longer have a burning hatred for Jewish people, says Googler now suddenly no longer at Google
- Reference: 1626740231
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/07/20/amr_awadallah_jewish_people_google/
- Source link:
Egyptian-American Amr Awadallah, who joined Google in 2019, had a month earlier posted on LinkedIn a 10,000-word [1]missive , with an accompanying two-hour YouTube [2]video , declaring: "I hated the Jewish people, all the Jewish people, and emphasis here is on the past tense.
"Yes, I was anti-Semitic, even though I am a Semite, as this term broadly refers to the peoples who speak Semitic languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, among others."
[3]
The piece continued by describing how antisemitism was ingrained in him as a child by those around him, and even by the time he arrived in America from Egypt in 1995, in his mid-twenties to study a PhD at Stanford, he "still held deep resentment towards the Jewish people."
I was irrationally prejudiced
"I was irrationally prejudiced," the now-50-year-old Awadallah wrote. "But here in the US, I started to see the humanity of the other side. I started to see the truth. And I emerged from the Matrix of hate that my mind was submerged in for so many years."
Awadallah, who described himself as "a proud Muslim with a touch of healthy agnosticism," said he was "cautious" of his PhD research advisor Mendel Rosenblum, who later co-founded VMware with Diane Greene. She went on to be the boss of Google Cloud from 2015 to 2019. Both Rosenblum and Greene, now married, invested in Awadallah's startup [4]Cloudera , which just made him a pretty penny by [5]going private four years after going public. Awadallah described Rosenblum as his "first 'Jewish angel,' he solidified the elimination of prejudice from my heart."
[6]
[7]
The post continued with Awadallah rattling off the Jewish people he came to admire, from John von Neumann and Albert Einstein to Adam Sandler, and how he realized he was wrong to harbor so much hate. The cloud industry veteran also threw in some views on Palestine and Israel for good measure, plus rules on owning dogs, some DNA test results, and quite a bit more.
Crucially, there was an all-hands meeting last week, led by Awadallah, in which Googlers brought up the essay; it was a conference call described as "beyond car-crash television" by one person familiar with what was discussed, as the veep fought to defend his point of view. Before the week was out, Awadallah had exited the business, as first [8]reported by CNBC.
[9]
“I wanted to share that today is Amr Awadallah’s last day at Google,” Google Cloud veep of product Eyal Manor wrote in an internal email on Thursday. “Effective immediately, the Cloud DevRel organization will report into Ben Jackson, who will report into Pali Bhat.”
[10]Four women suing Google for pay discrimination just had their lawsuit upgraded to a $600m class action
[11]Accused of underpaying or snubbing women and Asian techies, Google spends pocket change to make it all go away
[12]Memo man Damore is back – with lawyers: Now Google sued for 'punishing' white men
[13]Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired for opposing hiring caps on white, Asian male nerds
One concern among some Googlers was that the protracted piece about how he carried so much hate for at least half his life might be a red flag to those who want to work with or within the mega-corporation. There was also tension over Awadallah's leadership style, complaints of which were brought to the fore by the manifesto.
Daniel Golding, a Google director of network infrastructure, told Awadallah on LinkedIn: “On the one hand, I’m grateful that you not longer hate my children. On the other, this has made my job as one of your colleagues much harder."
"The previous situation has made being a Jewish leader at Google tough," he added without suggesting what that situation was. "This has made it almost untenable."
In a tweet regarding his swift ejection from the cloud goliath, Awadallah [14]said he was "speechless," adding: "I am still in complete shock. I admire every single person I worked with at Google and truly believed in their mission."
[15]
In an email to The Register , the executive told us: "I am still demoralized and in shock by what just happened. Please give me a few days to get over the shock."
No one was available at Google to comment. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-one-amr-awadallah/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCfrtPi1ejA
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YPZKXBSv9ubCLDRiYQOOewAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2017/04/03/cloudera_finally_confirms_ipo/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/01/cloudera_goes_private_in_53bn/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YPZKXBSv9ubCLDRiYQOOewAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YPZKXBSv9ubCLDRiYQOOewAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/16/google-separates-with-cloud-vp-after-employees-complain-about-manifesto.html
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YPZKXBSv9ubCLDRiYQOOewAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/28/google_class_action/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/02/02/google_discrimination_settlement/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/09/james_damore_sues_google/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2018/03/02/google_recruiter_fired/
[14] https://twitter.com/awadallah/status/1416271810358910979
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YPZKXBSv9ubCLDRiYQOOewAAAMc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
This is confusing
Or at least I am confused
Re: This is confusing
Basically, if you ever thought something about something, you will always think that and can not ever be thought of as thinking anything else. There is no rehabilitation for anyone, about anything, at any time. Ever.
Remember those scatological jokes you thought were so funny in the third grade? How about the locker room humo(u)r when you were 14? Ever compare a classmate to something nasty, or laugh at a "funny" accent, or the way someone in another country does things?
Ever been seen laughing at George Carlin? Jackie Mason? Bill Cosby? Dave Allen? Benny Hill? Are You Being Served? The Goodies?
Be afraid, be very, very afraid. The Ultra-PC are taking over. You might very well be next to be ostracized over something you USED to think (or think funny), but no longer do.
Ummmm
Maybe just don’t put everything about yourself online.
Just a thought.
I don't know if this essay was in earnest (or wasn't a bit nuts), but surely it is a good thing to be hearing people say such things? Role models for the capacity of the individual to discard bigotry? To acknowledge that the values they were raised with might be wrong?
To me, this man is just an abstract concept who might as well not actually exist. Those words are very real though. I will therefore judge the message rather than the man, and the message sounds pretty good.
That all may be true, but every person he hated while in their management chain can now sue Google, etc. for any perceived or actual negative events. Perhaps Google is cutting the anchor rope while the rope cutting is good.
That sounds entirely plausible. And maybe the guy is a prick, I don't know. All I'm left with is a perception that somebody is being punished for expressing a positive message.
I'm just looking forward to Google and the other tech behemoths collapsing in on all their woke bullshit.
I continually am amazed that people feel the need to put these screeds out in the world.
And then they're shocked when people flip out. It's bizarre.
So the message Google are sending is basically saying they fired him because he is no longer prejudice and doesn't hate Jews?
So what, hating Jews and being anti-Semitic is a requirement to work at Google?
With the limited facts available this sounds like a harsh but ultimately fairly predictable outcome from publicly sharing an opinion about anything remotely controversial in these hyper sensitive times.
Although why people persist in sharing these kinds of opinion and social commentary pieces on LinkedIn, which is supposed to be a network for professionals, is beyond me.
I've had a few friends over the years who'd been brought up that way who'd learned better coming to the West and actually meeting and working with Jews. Kudos on the guy for sharing, sucks he gets to pay such a high price.
I somehow think if this was some white supremacist who'd "come clean", he'd have been praised.
Shakespeare
Methinks he doth protest too much . . .
No insight into the person nor the situation. But a 10k word "missive"?