Google was wrong to fire its heretic

James Damore, a software engineer at Google, wrote a memo in which he argued that there are differences between men and women that may explain, in part, why there are fewer women than men in his field of work. For this, Google fired him.

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, explained to his employees that “much of what was in that memo is fair to debate,” but that portions of it cross a line by advancing “harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

Pichai did not specify which sections of the memo discussed issues that are fair to debate, and which portions cross the line. That would have been difficult to do, because the entire memo is about whether certain gender stereotypes have a basis in reality. Damore argues that there is evidence to show that women, when compared to men, tend to: l Be more interested in people. l Be less interested in analyzing or constructing systems. l Have higher anxiety and lower tolerance of stress. l Have a lower drive for status. l Be more interested in balancing life and work.

Damore is careful to point out that the evidence for these claims does not show that all women have these characteristics to a higher degree than men. He says that many of these differences are small, that there is significant overlap between men and women, and that “you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.” He says that to reduce people to their group identity is bad.

There is scientific research supporting the views Damore expresses. There are also grounds for questioning some of this research. In assessing Google’s action in firing Damore, it isn’t necessary to decide which side is right, but only whether Damore’s view is one that a Google employee should be permitted to express.

I think it is. It addresses an important issue. Google is rightly troubled by the fact that its workforce is largely male. Sexism in many areas of employment is well documented. Employers should be alert to the possibility that they are discriminating against women, and should take steps to prevent such discrimination.

But once such anti-discrimination measures have been taken, to the greatest extent feasible, does the fact that a workforce in a particular industry is predominantly male prove that there has been discrimination?

If the view Damore defends is right, it does not. And surely this issue — whether there is or is not sexism in a workplace — is one we ought to be able to discuss.

Pichai, Google’s CEO, says that “to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”

But Damore explicitly, and more than once, made it clear that he was not reducing individuals to a group, and so was not saying that the individual women employed by Google as software engineers are less biologically suited to their work than men. The target of Damore’s memo was the idea that we should expect women to make up half the software engineering workforce, and that Google should take measures directed towards achieving that outcome.

Pichai also quotes Google’s code of conduct, which expects “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.” Damore’s memo did not harass or intimidate anyone, and in a society that protects freedom of expression, there was nothing unlawful about it.

Was it biased? To show that it was, it would need to be demonstrated that Damore was biased in selecting certain scientific studies that supported his view while disregarding others that went against it. Perhaps that case could — and should — be made, but to do so would take some time and research. In any case, Pichai does not attempt, in even the most cursory way, to make it.

Ironically, what Pichai has done, in firing Damore, is precisely contrary to the passage that he quotes. He has created a workplace culture in which those with opinions like Damore’s will be intimidated into remaining silent.