Ex-Google engineer James Damore says problems with the company’s culture prompted him to write the memo on gender differences that ignited a social media firestorm and led to his dismissal.
Damore, who went from employee to outcast upon the memo’s circulation, said in his first public comments that he penned the document out of a love for Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Damore was a software engineer at the search giant’s Mountain View headquarters until Monday afternoon, when he said he was fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.” His missive — published internally to Google employees late last week — argued that conservative viewpoints are suppressed at the company and biological differences explain in part why more men work in software engineering than women.
“A lot of this came from me seeing some of the problems with our culture at Google, where a lot of people who weren’t in this group-think just felt totally isolated and alienated,” he told YouTube chat-show host Stefan Molyneux in an interview posted online. “There were many people that came to me and said, ‘Yeah I’m thinking of leaving Google because this is getting so bad.” ’
“I really thought this was a problem Google had to fix,” he added.
Damore had stayed largely silent since the weekend, only confirming to a few news outlets including Bloomberg why he believed he was fired and that he was currently exploring legal remedies. In the video, the software engineer revealed he created the document after attending a “secretive” diversity training session that rubbed him the wrong way.