James Damore, the now-former Google employee fired for sharing his “anti-diversity manifesto,” says he feels “betrayed” and “shamed” by the tech giant. He was let go when the document became public.
“I’m definitely hurt. I love Google and I’ve always been a fan of Google even before I joined,” Damore told Bloomberg Thursday. “So it really feels like they betrayed me in some way.”
Damore said that nobody at Google really minded his document until Gizmodo published the memo in full over the weekend, making it a focal point in the media.
“The whole point of my memo was actually to improve Google and Google’s culture and they just punished me and shamed me,” he said. “Even though there were many people that looked at it, it was only after it got viral that upper management started shaming me and eventually firing me.”
Damore said he is trying to make “the world a better place” by providing scientific evidence that was stated in the manifesto.
The memo rocked the tech company after it became public; it criticized Google’s efforts to increase diversity, arguing that the program discriminated against some employees.
Damore’s dismissal followed an email over the weekend from Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai to the company’s employees, saying that the memo writer violated company policy, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday night.
“We strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it,” Pichai said in his email to staff.
“However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace,” he continued.
Pichai added that the code of conduct requires “each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination.”
On Friday, Motherboard reported that the senior software engineers sent out a revision to the company’s diversity initiatives, instead calling for and encouraging “ideological diversity.” The 10-page document is the employee’s personal opinion, and was sent to a company mailing list before going “internally viral,” according to Motherboard’s source inside Google.
Damore also said that men were generally better at engineering jobs than women and that a liberal bias among executives and many employees makes it difficult to discuss the issue at Google.
Damore said he isn’t “racist” or “sexist” and distanced himself from the alt-right during his appearance on Bloomberg.
Check out the video above.