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 employment diversity. In the memo, Damore argued that Google had shut down the conversation about diversity, and posited "that 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". Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded by saying that the memo "[advanced] harmful gender stereotypes", and on August 7 Damore was fired for violating the company's code of conduct.

The memo and Google's subsequent dismissal of Damore were widely discussed in the media, and triggered fierce social media discussions.

Course of events

James Damore became motivated to write a memo after attending an "unrecorded" Google diversity program, whose rhetoric he described as largely "shaming and 'no, you can't say that, that's sexist'". He characterized this as an almost cult-like work environment in which dissenting opinions could not be voiced. After trying to discuss the issue with peers and being mostly ignored, Damore wrote the article while on a flight to China.

The memo proposed that Google's approach to diversity was informed by political bias to the point where their policies were unable to be questioned. Calling the culture an "ideological echo chamber", the memo asserted that while discrimination exists, it was "extreme" to fully attribute under-representation of women in technical and leadership roles to oppression, and that it was "authoritarian" to correct for this with reverse discrimination. Instead, it argued that the gender disparity could be partially explained by biological differences between women and men. 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 on average have a lower tolerance to stress. The memorandum also listed multiple suggestions on ways to use those differences in order to increase women's representation in tech without resorting to discrimination.

The memo was dated July 2017 and originally shared on an internal mailing list anonymously. It was later updated to begin with a paragraph affirming the author's opposition to workplace sexism and the use of stereotypes. On August 5, the memo was published by Gizmodo, initially with charts and hyperlinks removed from the citations backing up its argumentation. The Memo's publication resulted in a controversy across social media, and public criticism of the memo and its author from several Google employees. According to Wired, Google's internal forums showed "plenty of support" for Damore, who said he received private thanks from employees who were afraid to come forward.

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). The complaint is marked as "8(a)(1) Coercive Statements (Threats, Promises of Benefits, etc.)". A subsequent statement from Google asserted that its executives were unaware of the complaint when they fired Damore, as it is illegal to fire an employee in retaliation of a NLBR complaint. On the same day, Damore announced his intention to pursue legal action.

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". Google's CEO Sundar Pichai wrote a note to Google employees, supporting Brown's formal response, and adding that many of the contents of the documents were fair to debate. His explanation read "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." Unauthorized ads criticising him for the firing were put up shortly after.

On August 7, Damore was offered a job by Gab which describes itself as a pro-free speech platform. On August 8, Julian Assange offered Damore a job at WikiLeaks. One of Damore's first interviews on the events took place on the channel of alt-right YouTuber Stefan Molyneux. Following that, he did one with The Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro. Damore's point of view on the events was published by the Wall Street Journal on August 11. The aftermath at Google was set to involve a town hall meeting fielding questions from employees on inclusion. However, questions submitted in advance began to appear on Breitbart News and other right wing websites along with the names of their authors. Sundar Pichai confirmed that the meeting was cancelled for this reason. Danielle Brown began to receive harassment online and temporarily disabled her Twitter account.

Reactions

Scientific views

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". He also wrote, "Using someone's biological sex to essentialize an entire group of people's personality is like surgically operating with an axe. Not precise enough to do much good, probably will cause a lot of harm. Moreover, men are more emotional than women in certain ways, too. Sex differences in emotion depend on the type of emotion, how it is measured, where it is expressed, when it is expressed, and lots of other contextual factors. How this all fits into the Google workplace is unclear to me."

The BBC reported 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". However, he also said that "given that ... the sexes have such intricately complementary quirks, it may often be sensible, in purely practical business terms, to aim for more equal sex ratios in many corporate teams, projects, and divisions".

Gina Rippon, the chair of cognitive brain imaging at Aston University in Birmingham, England, disagreed with Miller's assessment. She told the BBC: "The key thing for me is that he's got quite a lot of the science wrong."

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", but added, "there are also grounds for questioning some of this research". 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."

A Quartz reporter, Oliver Staley, focused on the claim in the memo that "men are more competitive than women" for innate biological reasons. He described a 2009 study by economists from University of Chicago and University of Maryland who conducted field experiments to test whether the proclivity for competition was due to nature or nurture. The study found, contrary to the assertions made in the memo, that in patriarchal societies men were more competitive, but in societies where status and wealth are inherited through the mother, the opposite is true.

Debra Soh, a sexual neuroscientist at York University who writes about gender science, called the memo "fair and factually accurate". Arguing that scientific studies "have confirmed sex differences in the brain that lead to differences in our interests and behaviour", she said prenatal testosterone was correlated with "a preference for mechanically interesting things and occupations in adulthood" which explains the higher percentage of men in technology-related fields.

Jonathan Haidt, of New York University's Stern School of Business, and Sean Stevens, of the Heterodox Academy, compiled a comprehensive list of the peer-reviewed meta-analyses on the subject and concluded that studies support Damore's claims that genders exhibit different traits, but that it was "extremely important" to distinguish between interest/enjoyment, rather than ability. They also said that such a conclusion does not deny that bias, harassment, and discouragement exist in Silicon Valley and contribute to outcome disparities.

Jordan Peterson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, who interviewed Damore said his points were supported by scientific evidence and his memo was "certainly not an anti-diversity screed".

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote a response to the Google memo called "Differences between men and women are vastly exaggerated". Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg helped to circulate it in a post that named "cultural stereotypes" as the cause of gender disparity. The blogger Slate Star Codex has published a detailed critique of Grant's arguments, and Grant replied to it the comment section of the critique. However, Adam Grant's research comes from psychology/social science. Scientific study has shows that 75% of social science data is unreliable.

Rosalind Barnett, a psychologist at Brandeis University, coauthored an essay with Caryl Rivers which argued that "much of the data that Damore provides in his memo is suspect, outdated or has other problems". They listed studies which contradicted the ones cited by Damore and identified non-biological factors to account for the gap in stress levels between women and men. A closer look at her sources reveals that individuals in charge of her study were feminist activists.

Cynthia Lee, a computer science lecturer at Stanford University stated that "regardless of whether biological differences exist, there is no shortage of glaring evidence, in individual stories and in scientific studies, that women in tech experience bias and a general lack of a welcoming environment, as do underrepresented minorities". She argued that the scientific evidence on biological differences was a red herring because correcting those bias problems is more urgent than, and clouds the study of, whether biological differences might account for a proportion of the numerical imbalances in Google and in technology.

Employment law and free speech concerns

UC Hastings legal scholar Joan C. Williams expressed concerns about prescriptive language used by some diversity training programs. Noting that engineers like Damore can be "a particularly intransigent group when it comes to addressing attitudes and feelings", she recommended that diversity initiatives be phrased in problem solving terms.

Yuki Noguchi, a reporter for NPR, said that Damore's firing has raised questions regarding the limits of free speech in the workplace. 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.

Several employment law experts noted that while Damore could challenge his firing in court, his potential case would be weak and Google would arguably have several defensible reasons for firing him; had Google not made a substantive response to his memo, that could have been cited as evidence of a "hostile work environment" in lawsuits against Google. Additionally, the memo could indicate that Damore would be unable to fairly assess or supervise the work of female colleagues.

However, an expert in Californian labor law, Valerie Sharpe, a labor lawyer based in the San Francisco area, said to Business Insider that Damore could win the case and his chance is "above decent". An Adjunct Assistant Teaching Professor at the Notre Dame University, Margot Cleveland, who is also a lawyer and a CPA, opined that "James Damore can present a prima facie case of illegal retaliation from Google" under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, protecting "concerted activity", and make a viable claim of discrimination pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When discussing with Bloomberg the viability of James Damore's potential claims before the National Labor Relations Board, the former Chair of the NLRB under President Barack Obama, Wilma Liebman, stated, "I think it's an open question. It's not a slam dunk either way."

Others

Cathy Young in USA Today argued that the memo "had [legitimate] points on gender" but that it probably overstates things, while Google's reaction to the memo was harmful since it "[lent] credence to complaints in the modern workplace, [that] men are the beleaguered sex". Margaret Wente in The Globe and Mail assessed that "the tone, although occasionally injudicious, was mild" and opined that Damore was fired because "in the world of liberal dogma, all of this is wrongthink". Erick Erickson, 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". Libertarian author Megan McArdle wrote for Bloomberg View that she agreed with Damore's claims about differing levels of interest between the sexes. Specifically, she recalled leaving a technology consulting job in her past because she felt male coworkers were more passionate about the subject than she was. CNN's Kirsten Powers stated that the memo, although flawed, "bears no relation to the hysterical, biased media coverage of it". David Brooks of the New York Times criticized some actors in the Google diversity controversy; he suggested that Sundar Pichai should resign as Google's C.E.O., writing that "either Pichai is unprepared to understand the research (unlikely), is not capable of handling complex data flows (a bad trait in a C.E.O.) or was simply too afraid to stand up to a mob"; he characterized the response of Google's vice president of diversity, Danielle Brown, to the memo as "ideology obliterating reason" and stated that the media's "coverage of the memo has been atrocious."

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. Kara Swisher of Recode said that the memo, after the first paragraph, was "sexist twaddle, wrapped in the undeserved protection of free speech". She chose not to name Damore, fearing that he would be targeted online. Christina Cauterucci of Slate Magazine drew parallels between arguments from Damore's memo and those of men's rights activists. Laurie Leshin, president of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, criticized the memo as displaying a pervasive and harmful bias. She wrote "the overwhelmingly negative response it has received gives me hope that we are moving the needle".

In addition to Sheryl Sandberg who linked to scientific counterarguments, a number of other women in technology condemned the memorandum. 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". Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, wrote an editorial in which she described feeling devastated about the potential effect of the memo on young women. It began with a quotation from her daughter, asking if there are "biological reasons why there are fewer women in tech and leadership?"

Several analyses focused more on reactions to the memo than on the memo itself. For example, Jesse Singal wrote "A memo can’t just be off-base or overly simplistic; its author has to be a reactionary monster, the embodiment of gender inequity in tech." When Eric Weinstein announced objection to the firing, Donna Harris wrote about her experiences of sexual harassment, in response to his tweet which she felt downplayed the issue. In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf took issue with the commonly applied label "anti-diversity" and warned that "every prominent instance of journalism that proceeds with less than normal rigor when the subject touches on social justice feeds a growing national impulse to dismiss everything published about these subjects". Later, he published the viewpoint of English professor Alan Jacobs, opining that Sundar Pichai's reasons for firing Damore were ambiguous. A Slate article by physicist Chandra Prescod-Weinstein, which blamed the incident on flaws within science itself, was condemned by biologist Jerry Coyne and other commentators.

A poll showed that 56% of Google employees surveyed thought James Damore should not have been fired. Other tech workers have shown similarly split views, depending on the company.

See also

• Chilling effect
• Criticism of Google
• Gender disparity in computing
• Hjernevask
• Sex differences in intelligence
• Sex differences in psychology
• Sexism in the technology industry
• Thoughtcrime
• Women in computing
• Women in STEM fields

Further reading

• Wingfield, Nick (August 8, 2017). "The Culture Wars Have Come to Silicon Valley". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
• Lippa, Richard A. (2002). Gender, Nature, and Nurture. Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 9780805836066.
• Baron-Cohen, Simon (June 7, 2012). The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain. London: Penguin. ISBN 9780241961353.
• Campbell, Anne (May 16, 2013). A Mind Of Her Own: The Evolutionary Psychology of Women. OUP Oxford. ISBN 9780199609543.

External links

• The memo as PDF or as a web page
• James Damore's interview with Stefan Molyneux (YouTube, 45 minutes)
• James Damore's interview with Jordan Peterson (YouTube, 51 minutes)
• James Damore's interview with Ben Shapiro (YouTube, 9 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)