Google's Ideological Echo Chamber

"Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", often referred to as the Google Memo, is an internal memo written by American-based Google engineer James Damore on the company's ideological stance toward diversity. In the memo, Damore argued that Google had shut down the conversation about diversity,^[1] and suggested that gender inequality in the technology industry was, in part, due to biological differences between men and women.^[2] Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded by saying that the memo "advanc[ed] harmful gender stereotypes", and on August 7 Damore was fired for violating the company's code of conduct.^[3]

The memo and subsequent dismissal provoked strong reactions.

Course of events[edit]

The memo provided an initial summary stating the following points:^[4]

Google's political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don't have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership.
Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

Damore's memorandum claimed that bias within Google clouded their thinking about diversity and inclusion.^[5]^[6] He wrote "the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership". According to Damore, those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing), that women tend to be more social, more artistic, and are more prone to neuroticism and anxiety, and have a lower tolerance to stress.^[7] The memorandum also went over suggestions on ways to address those differences in order to increase women's representation in tech and without resorting to discrimination.^[5]^[6]

Dated July 2017^[8] and initially shared on an internal mailing list, in the first week of August the memo was leaked to the general public resulting in a controversy across social media.^[2]^[9] Google has formally expressed they don't support the document and several current and former employees were highly critical of it. According to Wired, Google's internal forums showed "plenty of support" for Damore^[10] who said he received private thanks from employees who were afraid to come forward.^[11]^[12]

Damore was fired by Google on August 7, 2017. The same day, prior to being fired, Damore filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (case # 32-CA-203891).^[13]^[14]^[15] The complaint is marked as "8(a)(1) Coercive Statements (Threats, Promises of Benefits, etc.)".^[16]

Google's Vice President of Diversity & Governance, Danielle Brown, responded formally to the memo on August 8, 2017 and stated: "Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws".^[9]

Reactions[edit]

Google[edit]

Google's CEO Sundar Pichai wrote a note to Google employees, supporting Brown's formal response, stating, "much of what was in that memo is fair to debate........ , To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK ... At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK".^[17]

Shortly after the note was published, James Damore was fired.^{[citation needed]}

However, an anonymous survey conducted by corporate chat app Blind, comprising employees from Google and other major Silicon Valley companies, found that the majority (56% of Google employees) of respondents felt that Damore should not have been fired.^[18]

Scientific views[edit]

David P. Schmitt, a personality psychologist writing for Psychology Today said that "in my view, claiming that sex differences exist in negative emotionality is not an 'incorrect assumption about gender.' It is an empirically well-supported claim," but that such differences were "unlikely to be all that relevant to the Google workplace", and were "not very large".^[19]

The BBC reported conflicting scientific opinions of the memo with Geoffrey Miller, a professor in evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico, stating that Damore got "most of the science right" and showed "pretty good judgment about what we know and what we don't know". Gina Rippon, the chair of cognitive brain imaging at Aston University in Birmingham, England, disagreed. She told the BBC: "The key thing for me is that he's got quite a lot of the science wrong."^[20]

Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and a Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, stated of Damore's content that there are "serious articles, published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, supporting it." On the issue of Google firing Damore, Singer stated "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."^[21]

Jordan Peterson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, said "It's a pretty straight-forward document as far as I'm concerned, and I've gone through it with a fairly fine-toothed comb as a behavioral scientist, and I would like to state for the record that I believe that what you said in there, if not accurate, was at least representative of the current state of art among well-trained psychometrically informed psychologists who are experts in the field of individual difference."^[22]

Free speech concerns[edit]

Damore's firing has raised questions regarding the limits of free speech in the workplace. As noted in several articles published after Damore's termination, First Amendment free speech protections often times do not extend into the workplace, as the First Amendment restricts government action but not the actions of private employers, and employers have a duty to protect their employees against a "hostile work environment".^[23]

Others[edit]

Cathy Young in USA Today argued that the memo "had legit points on gender" but that it probably overstates things, while Google's reaction to the memo was harmful since it "lend credence to complaints in the modern workplace, [that] men are the beleaguered sex."^[24]

Several employment law experts noted that while Damore could challenge his firing in court, his potential case would be weak and Google would have arguably several defensible reasons for firing him; the discriminatory content of his memo could be cited as evidence of a "hostile work environment" in sexual harassment lawsuits against Google, and that Damore would be unable to fairly assess or supervise the work of female colleagues.^[25] However an expert in Californian labor law said to Business Insider that Damore could win the case and his chance is above decent.^[26]

In an opinion article for The Guardian, science journalist Angela Saini wrote that the memo reflected common misconceptions about the biological differences between men and women, and demonstrated a flawed understanding of the research it cited.^[27]^[28]

Megan Smith, a former Google vice president, said of Damore's memo "It's so offensive to see what this young man was writing, but it's helpful to see it in the public..." and characterized Damore's statements as "insidious" and that in reading his memo, "...women of all races, men of color, experience what I call death by a thousand paper cuts".^[29]

Christina Cauterucci of Slate Magazine drew parallels of arguments from Damore's memo with those of men's rights activists.^[30]

Erick Ericksen, a conservative writer for RedState, criticized Google's decision to fire Damore, writing that it showed that "views outside left-wing groupthink are not shareable inside Google."^[31]

References[edit]

Jump up

External links[edit]

The memo as PDF or as a web page
Stefan Molyneux's August 8, 2017 interview with James Damore (YouTube, 45 minutes)
James Damore interview with Jordan Peterson (YouTube, 51 minutes)
James Damore's interview with Bloomberg Technology (YouTube, 8 minutes)
Google Video on Unconscious Bias - Making the Unconscious Conscious by Life at Google (YouTube, 4 minutes)

[1] McGirt, Ellen. "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber". Fortune.

[2] Jump up to:a b "Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'". Motherboard. Retrieved August 8, 2017.

[3] Jump up^ "Google fires author of memo criticizing company’s diversity program". The Washington Times. August 7, 2017. Retrieved August 8, 2017.

[4] Jump up^ James Damore (July 2017). "Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber: How bias clouds our thinking about diversity and inclusion". includes abstract entitled "TL;DR", table of contents, diagrams, footnotes, citations, references. Retrieved August 9, 2017.

[5] Jump up to:a b "Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google [Updated]". gizmodo.com.

[6] Jump up to:a b Friedersdorf, Conor. "The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo".

[7] Jump up^ "Google fires employee behind anti-diversity memo, reports say". August 7, 2017.

[8] Jump up^ "The fired Google engineer wrote his memo after he went to a 'shaming,' 'secretive' diversity program".

[9] Jump up to:a b Emerson, Sarah (August 5, 2017). ""Google on Anti-Diversity Manifesto: Employees Must 'Feel Safe Sharing Their Opinions'"". Vice. Archived from the original on August 6, 2017. Retrieved August 6, 2017.

[10] Jump up^ "Internal Messages Show Some Googlers Supported Fired Engineer’s Manifesto".

[11] Jump up^ Masunaga, Samantha (August 7, 2017). "Here's what Google workers are saying about an employee's controversial diversity manifesto" – via LA Times.

[12] Jump up^ Wakabayashi, Daisuke (August 8, 2017). "Contentious Memo Strikes Nerve Inside Google and Out". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.

[13] Jump up^ Booth, Robert; Hern, Alex (August 8, 2017). "Google employee fired over diversity row considers legal action". The Guardian. Retrieved August 8, 2017.

[14] Jump up^ Finley, Klint (August 8, 2017). "Google Manifesto Author Just Might Have A Legal Case". Wired. Retrieved August 10, 2017.

[15] Jump up^ Kovach, Steve (August 8, 2017). "The engineer Google fired over the diversity memo has filed a complaint with federal labor officials". Business Insider. Retrieved August 10, 2017.

[16] Jump up^ "NLRB". nlrb.gov. Retrieved August 11, 2017.

[17] Jump up^ "Note to employees from CEO Sundar Pichai". August 8, 2017.

[18] Jump up^ Bort, Julie (August 10, 2017). "Over half of Google employees polled say the web giant shouldn't have fired the engineer behind the controversial memo". Business Insider. Retrieved August 11, 2017.

[19] Jump up^ Schmitt, David (August 7, 2017). "On That Google Memo About Sex Differences". Psychology Today. Retrieved August 9, 2017.

[20] Jump up^ BBC, Was Google wrong to fire anti-diversity memo author?Nalina Eggert, 9 August 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-40865261

[21] Jump up^ "Why Google was wrong". Retrieved August 11, 2017.

[22] Jump up^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDuVF7kiPU&t=2882s

[23] Jump up^ Naguchi, Yuki (8 August 2017). Google Memo Raises Questions About Limits Of Free Speech In The Workplace. NPR. Retrieved 10 August 2017.

[24] Jump up^ Young, Cathy (August 8, 2017). Googler fired for diversity memo had legit points on gender. USA Today. Retrieved August 9, 2017.https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/08/08/googler-fired-diversity-memo-had-point-researchers-agree/548518001/

[25] Jump up^ Wiessner, Daniel; Wolfe, Jan (August 8, 2017). "Google memo writer faces tough legal road challenging firing". CNBC. Reuters. Retrieved August 11, 2017.

[26] Jump up^ "James Damore has an 'above decent' chance of winning his legal case against Google". Business Insider. Retrieved 11 August 2017.

[27] Jump up^ Saini, Angela (7 August 2017). "Silicon Valley’s weapon of choice against women: shoddy science". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 August 2017.

[28] Jump up^ Romano, Aja. "Google has fired the engineer whose anti-diversity memo reflects a divided tech culture". Vox (8 August 2017). Retrieved 9 August 2017.

[29] Jump up^ O'Connor, Clare (August 8, 2017). "Google Fires Anti-Diversity Memo Writer, Drawing Ire In Right-Wing Circles". Forbes. Retrieved August 9, 2017.

[30] Jump up^ Cauterucci, Christina (August 7, 2017). "The Google Anti-Diversity Memo Cribs Its Worst Arguments From Men’s Rights Activists". Slate. Retrieved August 9, 2017.

[31] Jump up^ Erickson, Erick (August 8, 2017). "Why Google's firing terrifies social conservatives so much". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 11, 2017.

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Pages

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Google Fires Engineer James Damore Who Questions Gender Diversity Policy

Google's Ideological Echo Chamber

Contents

Course of events[edit]

Reactions[edit]

Google[edit]

Scientific views[edit]

Free speech concerns[edit]

Others[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

Google memo

Contents

Text

Reactions

Google

Others

See also

References

Further reading

External links

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