Google engineer fired for anti-diversity memo defends his view

By KwakMin-jung Posted : August 11, 2017, 18:30 Updated : August 11, 2017, 18:30

Google Senior Software Engineer was fired after his anti-diversity essay was publicized on social media. [Courtesy of Pixabay]


Google engineer, James Damore, lost his job after his 10-page essay directed to his colleagues posted on the internal forum leaked on social media and went viral. Damore titled the essay, "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber". The post has triggered outburst on social media, and Google later released Damore from the company.

His essay points out that there are differences between male and female in characteristics that suggest women are often unsuitable for the highly stressful engineering jobs. His reasoning was that females tend to be more focused on social, emotional, and aesthetic aspects than the systematic thinking, ideas, and things. He wrote females have more "extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness", and explained that this trait "leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."

Damore then topped his points with women's "neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)" as reasoning to oppose Google's gender diversity program. He explained women's neuroticism "may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs." 

There have been a lot of talks around in the tech industry that women in Silicon Valley have been experiencing and hearing from their male colleagues similar to Damore's view.

Since the essay was publicized, Google has reassured the angered public that it will continue its efforts to achieve more gender and race equality in their hiring process and in the work environment.

After Damore was fired from his position in Google, he has been speaking out to defend his views and how he was unfairly fired. He is preparing to sue Google currently. 

James Damore was a Senior Software Engineer at Google. He studied at University of Illinois majoring in Molecular Biology, Physics, Chemistry and at Harvard majoring in Systems Biology, Master of Science. Before joining Google in 2013, Damore worked as a research intern at Harvard and Princeton University, and as a research scientist at MIT. 












Kwak, Min Jung = abiel@ajunews.com
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