Gender Gaffe at Google

Gokul Nath Sridhar
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

What happened: On Friday, an internal Google memo on the company’s diversity efforts (goals to include more women and minorities in engineering roles) went viral. The 10-page document titled Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber, has been published in full by various media outlets.

Who wrote it: The author of the memo is James Damore, a 28-year old engineer who had been with the company since 2013. He holds a PhD in Systems Biology from Harvard University, and has now been fired from Google. He is currently contemplating legal options against the company for unlawful termination and what he perceives as censorship.

What the document said:

  • The document sought that Google change from pursuing gender diversity to ideological diversity. By ideological diversity, the author seeks to challenge the predominantly liberal culture which he says discriminates against conservative ideas such as his own.
  • The document also argued that women are biologically less qualified than men to be a programmer. It also mentions that women are more neurotic and prone to anxiety than men.
  • The document also questioned Google’s gender/race-specific mentoring programs which the author saw as preferential treatment to ‘diversity’ candidates.
  • The document argued that diversity efforts are a political correctness measure and are not rooted in logic.

What the problem is: Silicon Valley has long struggled with the problem of the white bro, meaning much of the workforce has been comprised of white guys. Companies like Google have exclusive programs dedicated to increasing diversity, especially in engineering roles.

Only 31% of Google’s workforce is comprised of females and a whopping 56% comprised of white people.

Pro-diversity groups have pointed to the author’s ethnicity and sex to show that he does not understand the discriminations females and minorities face. Kara Swisher of Recode, a famous tech blog, put it in the plainest way possible: Some male techies don’t seem to like women around computers.

On the other hand, many (especially male techies) feel that making diversity a primary goal lowers the quality bar — that is, if you are going to hire women for the sake of hiring women, you maybe hiring subpar programmers. This argument has found support even inside Google, which strengthened the author’s case.

Conservatives outlets like Breitbart and other prominent people including WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, have accused Google of censoring differing viewpoints — Assange has even offered a job to the fired engineer.

What Google’s official stance is: Google’s recently-hired VP of Diversity, Danielle Brown, who is only two weeks into the job, quickly circulated a memo to all employees. She mentioned that diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of Google’s values. She added that she would not link to the employee’s memo because “it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, a minority himself, who cut short a family vacation to rush back to California, penned a response to the memo in the company’s official blog. In the post, he welcomed dissent from employees and mentioned that the document had raised a number of valid concerns which Google needed to work on. However, he added that the memo crossed a line and violated the Code of Conduct, which led to the firing of the Google engineer.

What could happen now:

  • Google could likely be sued, although people say that the chances of the engineer winning the case are slim — but he does have a case.
  • Closeted conservatives in Silicon Valley maybe emboldened by Damore speaking out, and a number of tech companies could have an issue like this on their hands.

Simplifilter.

Distilling hot, complex stories into simple bullet points covering multiple perspectives.

Gokul Nath Sridhar

Written by

Small-time startup founder and technophile. Love products that are tastefully designed.

Simplifilter.

Distilling hot, complex stories into simple bullet points covering multiple perspectives.

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