James Damore, the Google engineer who penned an anti-diversity manifesto that has shaken Silicon Valley, is seeking ‘legal remedies’ after his firing.
At Wednesday’s shareholder meeting, a Google employee will step up to the microphone to argue that executive compensation should be tied to diversity goals.
The push for a shareholder proposal opposed by parent company Alphabet marks a sharp escalation in the increasingly public disagreements between the Internet giant and some of its 80,000-plus staff.
The activism is shaking up Google, which isn’t used to being publicly challenged by its own employees. They’re partially driven by their young workforce, as Millennials gravitate to jobs and products that align with their values.
Liz Fong-Jones, a Google site reliability engineer, says she and a group of employees felt they had no choice but to take the unusual step of speaking out at the shareholder meeting after efforts to get management to address concerns proved unsuccessful. She hopes protest votes from concerned investors will motivate executives to make diversity a priority.
James Damore, the engineer Google fired after the leaking of his internal memo suggesting gender differences could explain why most of Google’s engineers and leaders are men, attacked the Internet giant in the press and claimed in a lawsuit that it discriminates against white men and conservatives.
