A new poll out of Silicon Valley appears to throw support behind James Damore, the Google employee who was sacked on Tuesday for penning his now infamous manifesto that implied men were better suited to working in tech industries than women.
Blind, an anonymous corporate chat app, has surveyed some 4000 Silicon Valley employees on Damore’s sacking with some surprising results.
Of the 441 Google employees who responded to the survey, some 56 per cent of those didn’t believe the now former software engineer had done enough to get the bullet. It’s not to say they necessarily agreed with Damore’s comments, but he didn’t deserve to get sacked for them.
It follows Damore’s own admission in an interview yesterday that he’d had far more letters of support than he had condemning him. “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.”
Most supportive of Damore was the respondents at Uber, with 64 per cent of them saying he should not have been fired. While those at rival Lyft were least supportive, with 65 per cent of respondents agreeing Google did the right thing in punting Damore.
Damore has said he will sue Google for wrongful dismissal and suppressing his freedom of speech. However, many have doubted his ability to win on either of the two counts.
