Google Engineer to James Damore: 'I Will Hound You Until One of Us Is Fired'

In a recently filed class action lawsuit, former Google engineer James Damore has revealed just some of the threatening and offensive emails he received following the publishing of his famous viewpoint diversity memo.

In a recently filed class-action lawsuit brought against Google by former software engineer James Damore, a number of emails and threats made against Damore have been revealed. One, in particular, comes from a Systems Reliability Engineer at the company, Alex Hidalgo. Hidalgo emailed Damore personally after the publishing of Damore’s viewpoint diversity memo from last year with the subject line, “You are a terrible person.”

In the email Hidalgo insults and threatens Damore, encouraging him to pass the email on to Human Resources, when Damore did this, little was done by the company’s HR department. The email from Hidalgo reads,

Feel free to pass this along to HR. Keep them in the loop for all I care. May as well do it early.

You’re a misogynist and a terrible human. I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. F*ck you.

-Alex

Damore did what Hidalgo suggested and forwarded the email onto the company’s HR department. Google HR told Damore that he should work from home for some time until “emotions cooled down,” claims the lawsuit. Hidalgo’s email came just days after a Director at Google, George Sadlier, sent a mass email condemning James’ memo and James himself. Hidalgo worked under Sadlier who called James’ memo “repulsive and intellectually dishonest,” according to the lawsuit, and promised that an HR investigation would be done into Damore as an employee. The lawsuit also claims that Sadlier encouraged posts that called for violence against James.

The class-action lawsuit, headed by Damore and his lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, states that, “Hidalgo’s email was another example of how Google’s management team encouraged rank-and-file employees to attack other Googlers who expressed political viewpoints outside the Company’s very narrow views.” In another case, the Google Recognition Team awarded the coveted “Peer Bonus” — which are usually reserved for outstanding work performance — to employees that argued against Damore’s views. One employee gave a Peer Bonus to an employee stating that the bonus was for “speaking up for google values and promoting [diversity and inclusion] in the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is [Damore’s Memo].” This was reviewed and approved by the Google Recognition Team.

Colm Buckley, a high-ranking systems reliability engineer director at Google, also received no punishment for his comments that seemed to call for violence against Damore, and openly stated his intent to stifle discussion on Google’s internal message board. Colm discussed Damore’s memo on the message board stating, “Yes this is ‘silencing’. I intend to silence these views; they are violently offensive.”

The lawsuit can be read in full here.