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James Damore's Memo: "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber"

During July 2017, an internal memo was shared by Damore raising concerns of political bias and discriminatory practices causing an uproar within the company. When first leaked, it included a public response to misrepresentation and abstract as follows:

Reply to public response and misrepresentation
I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can’t have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber. Despite what the public response seems to have been, I’ve gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired. This needs to change.

TL;DR

● 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.
    ○ Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
    ○ Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
● 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.

Media Reaction...

On August 5th, 2017, existence of the internal memo was first reported on by Vice's Motherboard and shortly leaked by Gizmodo, excluding any charts and sources, reporting it as an "anti-diversity screed.” Many publications followed with similar "anti-diversity" takes including Fox News[1], CNN[2], ABC News[3], Reuters[4]. NBC News[5], Time [6], Slate[7], Engadget[8], The Huffington Post[9], PBS[10], Fast Company[11], The Atlantic, and many others.

Damore was fired that same weekend. [12]

The Atlantic later wrote about how misleading this representation is.