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| Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, in May. Mr. Pichai cut short a vacation to address the fallout from a worker’s memo questioning the company’s diversity efforts. |
SAN
FRANCISCO — Google on Thursday canceled a scheduled companywide meeting
at which executives had planned to discuss a memo that questioned the
Silicon Valley giant’s diversity efforts after employees expressed
concern that they would be exposed to harassment online.
Google
is grappling with the fallout from the memo, which was written by a
software engineer who argued that biological differences — such as women
experiencing higher levels of anxiety and a lower tolerance for stress —
helped explain why there are considerably fewer women than men in key
engineering positions and leadership roles at the company.
On Monday, the company fired the memo’s author, James Damore, who worked in its search division, saying he had crossed a line “by advancing harmful gender stereotypes.”
On
Thursday, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, sent an email to
staff members canceling the meeting a half-hour before it was to start.
“We
had hoped to have a frank, open discussion today as we always do to
bring us together and move forward. But our Dory questions appeared
externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being
named personally,” Mr. Pichai wrote, referring to Dory, the company’s
internal moderator system. “Googlers are writing in, concerned about
their safety and worried they may be ‘outed’ publicly for asking a
question.”
Google
had received hundreds of questions from employees before the meeting.
The top ones involved how the company was dealing with employees being
harassed for speaking out against Mr. Damore’s memo. Other concerns
included how to make it clear that Google did not have lower standards
for hiring women and minorities, and what it could do to make political
conservatives feel more welcome.
This week, some Google workers were on the targets of online harassment after screenshots of internal message boards leaked to Breitbart News that showed employees saying they planned to blacklist people who did not support the company’s diversity efforts.
As
the harassment continued, it focused on specific employees who had
spoken out in favor of Mr. Damore’s dismissal. One Twitter account
encouraged Google workers to expose the true identities of colleagues
and “ruin their lives.”
Mr.
Pichai, who was on vacation in Africa as the controversy over the memo
spilled into the open, returned to California to hold a town hall-style
meeting at Google headquarters in Mountain View.
“In
recognition of Googlers’ concerns, we need to step back and create a
better set of conditions for us to have the discussion,” he wrote. “So
in the coming days we will find several forums to gather and engage with
Googlers, where people can feel comfortable to speak freely.”
Mr.
Pichai said a “vast majority” of the emails he had received supported
the decision to fire Mr. Damore but he noted that some employees had
raised concerns about being unable to speak freely.
Mr. Damore’s memo, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,”
and his subsequent dismissal have exposed divisions within the company.
A number of employees said the memo was offensive and proved that
Google still had work to do in terms of diversity. Others argued that
Mr. Damore’s firing only reinforced his message that Google had created
“a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming
dissenters into silence.”
The outcry over the memo’s handling also touched a nerve outside of Google. Right-wing groups seized on Mr. Damore’s ouster as another example of what they said was Silicon Valley’s intolerant stance toward conservatives, while hailing him as a hero with the courage of his convictions.
To
many in the technology industry, which has struggled to explain why
women are paid less than men and promoted less frequently to leadership
positions, the memo was evidence of the false justifications offered for
the unequal treatment of women.
Mr.
Damore has become a celebrity in the right-wing media. He participated
in his first video interview about his dismissal with Stefan Molyneux, a
YouTube star among the so-called alt-right whose videos include “Why Feminism Hurts Women” and “Why Feminists Hate Men.” Mr. Damore said he had grown tired of what he saw as hypocrisy in the way that Google behaved.
“There was a lot of just shaming,” he said in the interview. “‘No, you can’t say that. That’s sexist. You can’t do this.’”
After
being fired, Mr. Damore said he was reviewing his options because he
viewed the company’s actions as illegal. He said he had filed a
complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the company
of “making threats of unspecified reprisals.”
In an editorial in Fortune,
Susan Wojcicki, the chief executive of YouTube, which is owned by
Google, said she had faced slights throughout her career because of the
idea that biological differences could explain why there were fewer
women in leadership roles in the tech industry.
“But
while people may have a right to express their beliefs in public, that
does not mean companies cannot take action when women are subjected to
comments that perpetuate negative stereotypes about them based on their
gender,” wrote Ms. Wojcicki, one of the most powerful women at Google.
“Every day, companies take action against employees who make unlawful
statements about co-workers, or create hostile work environments.”
Source:nytimes
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