Skip to main content

Over half of Google employees polled say the web giant shouldn't have fired the engineer behind the controversial memo

Google employeesBusiness Insider / Jillian D'Onfro
Former Google engineer James Damore's memo on diversity generated lots of controversy.

So too, as it turns out, has the web giant's subsequent decision to fire him.


Employees across Silicon Valley are deeply divided about Google's move, according to a survey conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday by Blind, an anonymous corporate chat app. When Blind asked its users if they thought Google should have fired Damore, over 4,000 from different companies weighed in.

Perhaps most pertinently, 441 Google employees responded. Of them, more than half – 56% to be precise– said they didn't think it was right for the company to fire Damore.

The former engineer actually had significant support among all the corporations represented in the survey. But it did vary from company to company.

At Uber, 64% of employees who participated in the survey thought Google shouldn't have fired Damore. Employees at Apple and LinkedIn were nearly evenly split in the poll but leaned slightly toward approving Google's decision. Meanwhile, 65% of respondents from Lyft were good with the way it went down.
Blind poll fired egnineer

Blind poll fired engineer Blind

Damore lost his job Monday after a firestorm erupted over the weekend when his memo went viral. In it, Damore accused Google of a left-wing bias, questioned the effectiveness of its diversity programs, and suggested that biology, not just sexism, may contribute to the lack of women in tech and leadership roles.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai called the memo "not OK."

During an interview with a far-right YouTube personality on Tuesday, Damore stood by his memo.

"I've gotten a ton of personal messages of support, which has been really nice," he said. "I got that at Google before all of this leaked. Lots of upper management was shaming me."

Damore has already filed a formal complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming his rights were violated.

The divisions over Damore highlighted by Blind's poll reflect those in the Valley at large. Some in the tech industry support the basic premises he laid out in his memo. Others don't agree with his ideas but believe he shouldn't have lost his job for expressing them.

The controversy over Damore's memo and firing follows what had been a growing movement to counter sexism in the tech industry. Several high profile cases of sexual harassment have come to light recently in the Valley. Meanwhile, Google is facing a lawsuit by the Department of Labor that alleges it underpaid female employees.

More@ https://www.technapping.com

Source: Business Insider

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WTF is bitcoin cash and is it worth anything?

Early yesterday morning bitcoin’s blockchain forked — meaning a separate cryptocurrency was created called bitcoin cash . The way a fork works is instead of creating a totally new cryptocurrency (and blockchain) starting at block 0, a fork just creates a duplicate version that shares the same history. So all past transactions on bitcoin cash’s new blockchain are identical to bitcoin core’s blockchain, with future transactions and balances being totally independent from each other. For practical matters, all this really means is that everyone who owned bitcoin before the fork now has an identical amount of bitcoin cash that is recorded in bitcoin cash’s forked blockchain. But it’s not exactly this easy. If you control your own private keys, or hold your bitcoin in an exchange that said it would credit users’ balances with bitcoin cash, you’re fine and can access your newfound cryptocurrency right now. If you held your bitcoin with a provider like Coinbase, which said before the fork t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Google Maps suggests BlaBlaCar for long-distance rides

Google Maps on Android and iOS now has a new transportation option. If you live in a country where French startup BlaBlaCar operates, you can now open the BlaBlaCar app and book a ride straight from Google Maps. Google isn’t adding a new tab just for BlaBlaCar. Instead, BlaBlaCar appears as a new option in the public transportation tab. For instance, if you’re looking at ways to go from Paris to Lyon, Google Maps suggests taking the TGV train — and now also BlaBlaCar. The app gives you an ETA for each transportation mode so that you can compare how long it’s going to take if you opt for the train or BlaBlaCar. Google Maps uses the same ETA for BlaBlaCar and a normal car ride. It also estimates the cost of a BlaBlaCar ride. BlaBlaCar is a ridesharing service for long-distance rides between two cities. It has tens of millions of members in dozens of countries. Think about it as a sort of Airbnb for carpooling. When you are driving from one city to another, BlaBlaCar can help you fi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Carwow, a UK startup that helps you buy a new car, raises $39M Series C

Carwow , a platform that helps you buy a new car, has closed $39 million in Series C funding. The round was led by new investor Vitruvian Partners, with existing investors Accel Partners and Balderton Capital also participating. At today’s exchange rate it brings total funding to approximately $62.6 million. Founded in late 2010, Carwow originally launched as a car review aggregator before pivoting to become a site that claims to improve the experience of buying a new car. It allows consumers to compare offers online and buy directly from ‘trusted’ dealers that are registered with the platform, specifically avoiding the arduous but otherwise necessary requirement to haggle over price and in a way that potentially introduces more transparency. Specifically, through Carwow you can research, select and configure new cars before receiving and offers from U.K. franchised dealers. The idea is that you can then make an informed decision on those offers based on price, location, dealer rating...
Post a Comment
Read more