Fired Google Engineer Says Company Execs Shamed and Smeared Him

The former Google engineer, whose controversial memo has triggered a nationwide debate on gender differences and diversity efforts in technology, defended his views in an interview Wednesday with Bloomberg Television, saying company executives are smearing him in its wake.

James Damore, who until Monday worked as an engineer on video and image search at Alphabet Inc.’s Mountain View, California, headquarters, said he initially shared the 3,300-word memo internally a month ago. But it was only after the memo went viral that company leaders banded together to make him an outcast, he said on Bloomberg TV.

When he initially circulated the memo, “no one high up ever came to me and said, ‘No, don't do this,’ even though there were many people who looked at it,” Damore said. “It was only after it got viral that upper management started shaming me and eventually firing me.”