Fired Google engineer files complaint and weighs legal options

MENLO PARK, California — A 28-year-old former Google engineer who was fired over a memo he wrote about gender differences said Tuesday he’s exploring all his legal options and has already filed a labour complaint over his treatment.

James Damore, whose weekend memo caused an uproar online, said in an email that he was sacked on Monday for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” He said that before being fired, he had filed a complaint with the U.S. National Labor Relations Board and that “it’s illegal to retaliate against a NLRB charge.” A filing by Damore with the board Monday alleged he was subjected to “coercive statements” while at Google.

Google said Tuesday that the company could not have retaliated because it was unaware of his labour complaint until reading about it in the media after his dismissal. The company said it had not been sent notice of the complaint by the board. The board declined to comment. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees on Monday 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 on 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.”

In her own memo, Google’s head of diversity, Danielle Brown, said the company 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.”