Google House of Glass

           This week Google employee James Damore was fired for posting an internal memo questioning the methodology and efficacy of his company’s diversity initiatives.  His memo addressed the corporate cultural biases that have arisen and the suppressing effects it has on dissenting views.  He also contrasted the average personality traits of men and women.  These comments were provided to explain the disparity of participation and success in the tech field.  The points and conclusions he made would not be unusual or controversial in a behavioral or social psychology course.  Nonetheless, James Damore was neither a psychologist nor was his role at Google to assess the ethics and efficacy of the company’s diversity initiatives.  He was terminated for creating a hostile work environment.

The legality of his firing and the ensuing court case will be interesting to follow.  Also worth debate is the wisdom of posting such a discourse at a time when sexual harassment in the tech industry as a whole and pay discrepancies based on sex at Google specifically are being exposed.  The topics addressed herein are the authoritarianism, hierarchies, and self-serving biases that were brought up in the document.

As a company, Google has a limited number of positions of power and pathways for promotion.  These are resources for which there will be competition.  Google itself operates in a domain of competing companies and the regulations of state and federal laws.  The diversity initiatives that govern its hiring and promotion practices should not be seen as corporate altruism.   These measures appease the scrutiny of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and employment divisions in the state and federal departments of justice and labor.  Laws and regulations lead to employment and promotional criteria based on group identifiers: male/female, abled/disabled, white/colored, heteronorm/queer, dominate faith/minority faith, and so on.  Individuals vying for positions and promotions become no longer candidates but categories.

Altering the nature of the competition does not mitigate the self-serving bias.  In fact, by introducing the elements of equal rights and justice, corporate promotions become a subject of morals and ethics arbitrated by legal interpretations.  Within such an environment the individual who loses a position or promotion will see the winner as undeserving of it, because the winner is simply fulfilling the role of a token.  Furthermore, group identities and shared goals are not static.  Under such inconstancy those receiving preference in redressing under-representation may soon be declared “privileged” and another group will take its place in line for restitutions.  An authoritarian system will be necessary to control arbitrary distribution. 

Google’s corporate leaders, declaring themselves moral judges, asserted James Damore’s challenge to be inherently immoral and unjust.  Yet, this morality was not generated by corporate culture nor does it necessarily serve in the cold calculus of competition among companies for the finite resources of customers and workers.  Governments, however, exist in an arena with no rival and are the final judge in moral and ethical debates, distorting markets as well as social and corporate behavior.

The imposition of initiatives meant to serve the mutable and abstract concept of diversity alters and complicates the calculations of commerce and societal norms.  It remains unchanged that any preferential allocation can be occupied only by a single individual—not a statistic or a category—and is to the exclusion of all others.  Requiring the inclusion of a diversity factor brings into doubt the viability and validity of the outcome.