Google fires engineer who “crossed the line” with diversity memo
Google fires engineer who “crossed the line” with diversity memo

                      
                      
          Google has fired James Damore, an engineer who wrote a controversial essay arguing that the company has gone overboard in its attempts to promote diversity. Damore confirmed the firing in an e-mail to Bloomberg.
“At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership,” Damore wrote in an internal posting that went viral within the company over the weekend. The posting was subsequently leaked to Gizmodo. However, he argued, that’s “far from the whole story.”
Biology is partly responsible for differences between men and women, Damore wrote, and “these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.”
Google condemned the post after it became public on Saturday. Danielle Brown, Google's vice president of diversity, integrity, and governance, wrote in a response to Google employees that it “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender” and is “not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes, or encourages.”
On Monday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai piled on. “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK,” he wrote. “Portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”
Now Pichai has followed through on that assessment by showing Damore the door.
Recode reports that the essay sparked a massive debate within Google. “It has been really toxic,” one Googler told Recode. “It’s a microcosm of America."
Disclosure: My brother works at Google.


          
                      
                  