Google memo

"Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" is an internal memo written by American-based Google engineer James Damore on the company's ideological stance toward diversity. In the memo, Damore argued that Google had shut down the conversation about diversity, and suggested that gender inequality in the technology industry was, in part, due to biological differences between men and women. Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded by saying that the memo "advanc[ed] harmful gender stereotypes", and on August 7 Damore was fired for violating the company's code of conduct.

The memo and subsequent dismissal provoked a strong reaction from commentators on both sides.

Course of events

The memo provided an initial summary with the following points:

• Google's political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
• This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
• The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
• Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.
• Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

Damore's memorandum claimed that bias within Google clouded their thinking about diversity and inclusion. He wrote "the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership". According to Damore, those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing), that women tend to be more social, more artistic, and are more prone to neuroticism and anxiety, and have a lower tolerance to stress. The memorandum also went over suggestions on ways to address those differences in order to increase women's representation in tech and without resorting to discrimination.

Dated July 2017 and initially shared on an internal mailing list, in the first week of August the memo was leaked to the general public resulting in a controversy across social media. Google has formally expressed they don't support the document and several current and former employees were highly critical of it. According to Wired, Google's internal forums showed "plenty of support" for Damore who said he received private thanks from employees who were afraid to come forward.

Damore was fired by Google on August 7, 2017. The same day, prior to being fired, Damore filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (case # 32-CA-203891). The complaint is marked as "8(a)(1) Coercive Statements (Threats, Promises of Benefits, etc.)".

Google's Vice President of Diversity & Governance, Danielle Brown, responded formally to the memo on August 8, 2017 and stated: "Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws". Google's CEO Sundar Pichai in a note to Google employees stated, "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK ... At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK".

Reactions

Scientific views

David P. Schmitt, a personality psychologist writing for Psychology Today said that "in my view, claiming that sex differences exist in negative emotionality is not an 'incorrect assumption about gender.' It is an empirically well-supported claim," but that such differences were "unlikely to be all that relevant to the Google workplace", and were "not very large".

The BBC reported conflicting scientific opinions of the memo with Geoffrey Miller, a professor in evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico, stating that Damore got "most of the science right" and showed "pretty good judgment about what we know and what we don't know". Gina Rippon, the chair of cognitive brain imaging at Aston University in Birmingham, England, disagreed. She told the BBC: "The key thing for me is that he's got quite a lot of the science wrong."

Free speech concerns

Damore's firing has raised questions regarding the limits of free speech in the workplace. As noted in several articles published after Damore's termination, First Amendment free speech protections often times do not extend into the workplace as employers have a duty to protect their employees against hostile work environment. The tension between hostile work environment laws and free speech is a decades long struggle resulting from governmental pressure placed on companies to implement employee behavior restrictions (such as speech) that the government is barred from implementing.

Others

Cathy Young in USA Today argued that the memo "had legit points on gender" but that it probably overstates things, while Google's reaction to the memo was harmful since it "lend credence to complaints in the modern workplace, [that] men are the beleaguered sex.

Several employment law experts noted that while Damore could challenge his firing in court, his potential case would be weak and Google would have several defensible reasons for firing him; the discriminatory content of his memo could be cited as evidence of a "hostile work environment" in sexual harassment lawsuits against Google, and that Damore would be unable to fairly assess or supervise the work of female colleagues.

In an opinion article for The Guardian, science journalist Angela Saini wrote that the memo reflected common misconceptions about the biological differences between men and women, and demonstrated a flawed understanding of the research it cited.

Megan Smith, a former Google vice president, said of Damore's memo "It's so offensive to see what this young man was writing, but it's helpful to see it in the public..." and characterized Damore's statements as "insidious" and that in reading his memo, "...women of all races, men of color, experience what I call death by a thousand paper cuts".

Christina Cauterucci of Slate Magazine drew parallels of arguments from Damore's memo with those of men's rights activists.

Erick Ericksen, a conservative writer for RedState, criticized Google's decision to fire Damore, writing that it showed that "views outside left-wing groupthink are not shareable inside Google."

See also

• Criticism of Google
• Sexism in the technology industry
• Women in STEM fields

Further reading

• Wingfield, Nick (August 8, 2017). "The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

External links

• The memo as PDF or as a web page
• Stefan Molyneux's August 8, 2017 interview with James Damore (YouTube, 45 minutes)
• James Damore interview with Jordan Peterson (YouTube, 51 minutes)
• James Damore's interview with Bloomberg Technology (YouTube, 8 minutes)
• Google Video on Unconscious Bias - Making the Unconscious Conscious by Life at Google (YouTube, 4 minutes)

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