The Google Memo: What Could It Mean Someday?

This past week, we began the largest corporate culture brouhaha since Amazon’s “bruising workplace” article was published in The New York Times two years ago.  It started with a 10-page memo, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” sent by 28-year-old company software engineer and Harvard master’s degree holder James Damore.  The missive, described since as “anti-diversity” and a “screed” (Gizmodo, which published it at http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320, and Salon), “inflammatory” (The Verge), and a “manifesto” (The Verge, yahoo.com, and Salon), made a case for Google to not be concerned about its staff being 69% male.  The piece, sent internally, said most if not all “population level differences” were because “men and women biologically differ in many ways,” naming attributes which “women, on average, have more” of.  He added material on other related subjects, such as:  the pressures faced by men, such as being “still very much tied to the male gender role,” the existence of “swaths” of them “without support,” and being compelled by a “higher drive for status,” causing many to accept positions which “require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life,” which he maintained was something women generally sought more; naming Google’s “discriminatory practices,” specifically “programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race, a high priority queue and special treatment for “diversity” candidates, hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates,” and “reconsidering any set of people if it’s not “diverse” enough, but not showing that same scrutiny in the reverse direction”; an equating of liberals’ rejection of “biological differences between people” with conservatives’ denial of evolution and climate change; and requests that Google “stop alienating conservatives” and “have an open and honest discussion about the costs and benefits of our diversity programs,” which, if they were intended to increase the share of female workers, were “as misguided and biased as mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts.” 

Whew.

After Damore’s memo went public, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a response, on Saturday, saying that, although “we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves,” and that “much” of Damore’s writing was “fair to debate,” nonetheless “portions” of it “violate(d) our Code of Conduct and cross(ed) the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”  He also announced he was shortening his just-beginning “family vacation,” “as clearly there’s a lot more to discuss as a group.”  Although Pichai’s response was cautious and noncommittal, it showed great concern under the surface, and two days later, on Monday, Damore was fired.   Also on Monday, Pichai announced a Thursday all-employee meeting to discuss the issues Damore brought up, which Pichai cancelled that morning, saying some workers felt they would be endangered if they spoke up.  The CEO, as The New York Times put it, “said the company would find other ways to gather and engage employees on the subject in the coming days.”  As we can see, the subject is not only far from closed, but is just getting started.

Commentators are now, as I write this Thursday evening, weighing in.  So what can I add?

First, almost regardless of the merits of what Damore wrote, Google was well within its rights to fire him.  As the expression would more accurately go in the corporate world, the squeaky wheel gets replaced.  Goring sacred cows, which Damore did multiple times in a memo for which he had no reasonable expectation of limited distribution, can be deadly to careers.  While I was not dismissed, my 11-year upward trajectory at AT&T’s information technology unit ended with reactions to a mail message I sent to my group explaining why an excessively beloved software package we used was in fact poor quality and destructive to our business objectives.  It is common knowledge, cynical or not, that high-level managers at large companies will say they value independent thought right up the time they fire you for it, and Damore, if in fact he wanted to keep his job, should have been aware of that.      

Second, the foundation of Damore’s work was a series of interesting and reasonable but debatable assertions:  that sex differences are “universal across human cultures,” “often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone,” and are “exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective”;  that women, on average, “have more… openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas… a stronger interest in people rather than things… extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness… higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance,” “are more cooperative,” and are “more agreeable,” and “humans are generally biased toward protecting females,” which, in part, “likely evolved because males are biologically disposable”; that it is “culturally universal” that “for heterosexual romantic relationships, men are more strongly judged by status and women by beauty“; and that “conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness.”  Each one of these could be, and probably has already been, the subject of multiple individual books.  Accordingly, having sources, which Damore claimed but did not include, even of successfully replicated first-rate research, is not enough to make these propositions clearly correct.  With that said, these ideas all have real merit, and nobody should fear at least considering them.   

Third, in understanding the situation here we need to avoid two related logical gaffes.  One is the assumption that Damore and those agreeing with him think that all women and men fit the tendencies he mentioned, when, in fact, he is saying that the sexes form two overlapping bell curves.  The other is to forget that when these attributes differ at all between entire populations, they cause differences in overall mean values, which do not describe everyone accurately.  If the average annual income of Americans under four feet tall is $2,000, because maybe 95% are children, that is insufficient reason for the remaining 5% to claim that low figure means they are being discriminated against.

Fourth, although we can argue about the extent, it is absurd to say that women, with different body structures, different brain characteristics, and the only sex which can get pregnant and give birth, are identical to men.

Fifth, even if as Damore claimed Google management implicitly believes that women’s disadvantages are due to sex-role stereotypes, many if not most cannot viably be retrained.  Google exists to seek maximum profits from the software business, and needs the best workers, not those who might have been better if enormous social patterns were different.

Sixth, reverse discrimination is discrimination.  Our choices of prohibiting, condoning, or encouraging it do not alter this statement’s validity.  

Seventh, if there are any overall, average differences at all between groups of people, equality of opportunity will not produce equality of results.  That is an iron fact we need to accept.  James Damore has, I hope, put us on the way.