Fired Google engineer files complaint, weighs legal options

The board declined to comment.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday said in an email to employees that, while he supports free expression by company workers, Damore’s memo crossed the line of the company’s code of conduct “by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.” Pichai added that he was cutting short a family vacation overseas to address staff in a town hall Thursday.

“To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK,” Pichai wrote.

The engineer’s widely shared memo , titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” criticized Google for pushing mentoring and diversity programs and for “alienating conservatives.”

Google’s just-hired head of diversity, Danielle Brown, responded earlier with her own memo, saying that Google is “unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success.” She said change is hard and “often uncomfortable.”

Damore’s memo, originally circulated on an internal Google discussion group, begins by saying that only honest discussion will address a lack of equity. But it also asserts that women “prefer jobs in social and artistic areas” while more men “may like coding because it requires systemizing.”

The memo says biological differences between men and women may explain why women are not equally represented in the technology industry.

Damore’s filing with the NLRB cites a part of the labour relations act that gives employees the right to engage in “protected concerted” activities. That includes being active on social media , though it’s unclear if his memo, written on a Google Doc and submitted to an employee-only forum, qualifies for such protection. The first tweets about the post by other Google employees began Friday, though a company spokesperson said the document appeared to have been created weeks earlier.

The Twitter hashtag #JamesDamore was drawing a storm of opinions both attacking Damore for his memo and his qualifications as an engineer, and criticizing Google for his dismissal.

The battling messages come as Silicon Valley grapples with accusations of sexism and discrimination. Google is also in the midst of a Department of Labor investigation into whether it pays women less than men, while Uber’s CEO recently lost his job amid accusations of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination.

Leading tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Uber, have said they are trying to improve hiring and working conditions for women. But diversity numbers are barely changing .

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Associated Press writers Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, and Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report.

Ryan Nakashima, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Fired Google engineer files complaint, weighs legal options

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