Google engineer who wrote controversial gender memo says he was fired

Google banner at a LGBT march in Germany
(Image credit: John MacDougall/AFP/Getty Images)

On Monday afternoon, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent an email to employees saying that parts of a controversial internal memo written by a senior software engineer that went viral outside of the company over the weekend "violated our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace." On Monday night, the author of the document, James Damore, told Bloomberg that he had been fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes." Google did not confirm the news, saying it doesn't comment on individual employees, but did not dispute it.

The memo, widely read inside Google before Gizmodo published the entire 10-page document on Saturday, is essentially an argument against efforts to hire more women for engineering and tech jobs without first changing the internal culture of Google to better fit innate biological gender differences. It contained some pretty broad generalizations about women and men that the author argued were due to biology and evolution, and said conservatives inside Google felt they couldn't discuss such issues as affirmative action openly without fear of shame or punishment.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.