Google: Ex-engineer claims memo led to firing
He wrote memo that challenged diversity efforts
Months after a memo he wrote highlighted tensions around gender in Silicon Valley, former Google engineer James Damore has sued his former employer for discriminating against him for his political views.
Damore was fired in August for writing a controversial document that not only advanced arguments for the biological superiority of men over women in software programming but suggested workplaces should not discourage discussion of such concepts.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Superior Court in Santa Clara County, Damore said that he was harassed and threatened by other Googlers and fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” He is asking the court to grant class-action status for his lawsuit. Another fired Google engineer, David Gudeman, who also believes he was discriminated against for his political views, joined Damore in the suit.
“Damore, Gudeman, and other class members were ostracized, belittled and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances being Caucasians and/or males,” the lawsuit says.
Google said in a statement that it looks forward “to defending against Mr. Damore’s lawsuit in court.”
The lawsuit details instances where Damore says people with viewpoints that chal-
lenged Google’s diversity initiatives were ostracized by others. Teams that were less than half female were “shamed” by Google managers at a company event, he said in the suit, and white people and men were booed at meetings. In some cases, people were blacklisted from joining teams because of their political views, according to the lawsuit.
“Google employees and managers strongly preferred to hear the same orthodox opinions regurgitated repeatedly, producing an ideological echo chamber, a protected, distorted bubble of groupthink,” the lawsuit said. Damore made similar claims about an “echo chamber” in his original memo.
A Google spokesman said that blacklists violate the company’s code of conduct.
Damore said he felt encouraged to share his memo after attending a company event about diversity, doing so on internal discussion groups. At some point, the memo was leaked to the media. Damore said he was not the leaker.
Damore said he received harassing messages, like one from an engineer who promised to “keep hounding you until one of us is fired,” the lawsuit said.
In a memo in August, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said part of Damore’s memo violated the company’s code of conduct, which says Googlers should “do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.”
Pichai said he believes the memo crossed “the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in the workplace.”
“Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives,” Pichai wrote. “To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.”
Damore said at a news conference on Monday he doesn’t understand how his memo could be interpreted as a violation of Google’s code of conduct. He said he would be open to coming back to the company and that he’s still unemployed, which he attributes to the backlash that followed the memo’s wide distribution.
“This has definitely affected me,” Damore said.
Damore’s attorney, Harmeet Dhillon of the Dhillon Law Group in San Francisco, said class-action status could apply to more than just white men. Men of other races who feel they were discriminated against because of their gender, or nonwhites who feel they were discriminated against at Google because of their political beliefs, can also join the class, she said, adding that the issue is not just limited to the Mountain View company.
As tech companies have worked to increase their workforce to include more women, some people have pushed back, saying hiring processes have discriminated against men.
“We hope that other tech companies see this complaint, recognize their own behavior and wake up and stop doing this to people,” Dhillon said.