Google's Ideological Echo Chamber
After withdrawing this complaint, Damore filed a class action lawsuit, retaining the services of attorney Harmeet Dhillon,[7][8] alleging that Google was discriminating against conservatives, whites, Asians, and men.
[1][14] Alluding to the work of Simon Baron-Cohen,[15] Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait).
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).
[38] Damore gave interviews to Bloomberg Technology and to the YouTube channels of Canadian professor Jordan Peterson and podcaster Stefan Molyneux.
[42] He wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, detailing the history of the memo and Google's reaction, followed by interviews with Reason, Reddit's "IAmA" section, CNN, CNBC, Business Insider, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Ben Shapiro.
The meeting was cancelled a short time before it was due to start, over safety concerns as "our Dory questions appeared externally this afternoon, and on some websites, Googlers are now being named personally".
[3][4][5][50] After withdrawing his complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, Damore and another ex-Google employee instead shifted focus to a class action lawsuit accusing Google of various forms of discrimination against conservatives, white people, and men.
[67] Columnist for The Guardian Owen Jones said that the memo was "guff dressed up with pseudo-scientific jargon" and cited a former Google employee saying that it failed to show the desired qualities of an engineer.
[68][69] Feminist journalist Louise Perry in her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution comments on the affair saying that she is sympathetic to Damore and that the science he quotes is perfectly sound.
[74][75] In addition to Sheryl Sandberg, who linked to scientific counterarguments, a number of other women in technology condemned the memorandum, including Megan Smith, a former Google vice president.
[78] Kara Swisher of Recode criticized the memo as sexist;[79] Cynthia B. Lee, a computer science lecturer at Stanford University stated that there is ample evidence for bias in tech and that correcting this was more important than whether biological differences might account for a proportion of the numerical imbalances in Google and in technology.
[81] Libertarian author Megan McArdle, writing for Bloomberg View, said that Damore's claims about differing levels of interest between the sexes reflected her own experiences.
[12] Yuki Noguchi, a reporter for NPR (National Public Radio), said that Damore's firing has raised questions regarding the limits of free speech in the workplace.
[90] Others objected to the intensity of the broader response to the memo in the media and across the internet, such as CNN's Kirsten Powers,[91] Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic,[14] and Jesse Singal, writing in The Boston Globe.
