Google CEO Sundar Pichai Says He Does Not Regret Firing James Damore (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google CEO Sundar Pichai responded today to the firing of employee James Damore over his controversial memo on workplace diversity, stating that while he does not regret the decision, he regrets that people misunderstood it as a politically motivated event. Speaking in a live conversation with journalist and Recode co-founder Kara Swisher, MSNBC host Ari Melber, and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki in San Francisco, Pichai said that the decision to fire Damore was about ensuring women at Google felt like the company was committed to creating a welcoming environment.

"I regret that people misunderstand that we may have made this for a political belief one way or another," Pichai said. "It's important for the women at Google, and all the people at Google, that we want to make a inclusive environment." When pressed by Swisher on the issue of regret, Pichai stated more definitively, "I don't regret it." Wojcicki, who has spoken publicly about how Damore's memo affected her personally, followed up with, "I think it was the right decision."

Comments

For what it's worth

[rsilvergun]

most of the studies he cited are highly suspect. I think Google over reacted firing him (they're terrified of losing women engineers since it's a large, untapped labor pool) but I don't think that makes his arguments sound. Also, having worked in IT for 20 years the "locker room" talk gets pretty bad. I could see most ladies not wanting to be anywhere near that. Google's trying to reign that in. That said, they're doing it the wrong way, and I'm fairly certain that California law is such they'll lose the upcoming lawsuit (though almost ironically I'm pretty sure federal law wouldn't be enough to protect Damore, so it's those libby libs that will more than likely make his suit fly).

Re: Epic bullshit

[AmiMoJo]

That sounds awful, but it's not got anything to do with the Damore case. If you read the actual memo and ignore all the people misrepresenting it, you can see pretty clearly how he created a situation where Google had no choice but to fire him.

Anyway, I think we need to wait for the lawsuit to progress before we can really make a final judgment. The material filled so far is pretty damming, it's clear that both of them were in an untenable position.

Re:Article slanders Damoore

[quantaman]

The now-infamous “Google memo,” written by engineer James Damore, argued against diversity initiatives at Google and said that female engineers were less capable of leading others.

They must be talking about a different memo. Because his memo did not does say that female engineers are less capable of leading. The closest thing I can find is this:

I think context is important.

The traditional justification for discrimination of all types is that the segregation is the natural expression of talents. Aristocracy was justified by claiming the superiority of Nobel lineage. Slavery by the primitive nature of the enslaved. Lack of women's suffrage because women were too emotional and irrational to be trusted with the vote. etc, etc.

By claiming that women are just naturally less inclined to be engineers and leaders he's really feeding into that traditional narrative.

The other big issue with the memo is that while he acknowledges that discrimination exists he's very dismissive about its significance. I've worked with a lot of women in technical roles and it's very apparent that they're often not taken seriously. As a straight white male I find it fundamentally hard to relate to microaggressions because I don't personally experience them. But I also realize my experience is not universal. People are perceptive and there are a lot of women and minorities who can clearly perceive that they're being treated as less qualified on the basis of their gender or race. By not only brushing away the significance of microaggressions and but actually endorsing some of those stereotypes (IQ differences between races, women are neurotic, women/minorities are diversity hires and therefore assumed to be incompetent, etc). I can understand why the memo really pissed a lot of people off.

I think it's unfortunate what happened to Damore, I think he was sincerely trying to help, but unfortunately he didn't understand the other side of the issue and he managed to write something that understandably offended a lot of people.