Bloomberg TV 
 
 The former Google engineer behind a controversial memo on diversity efforts is standing by his views and says the company is trying to smear his reputation. 
 
 James Damore, who was fired by the search giant on Monday, defended his views during an interview Wednesday with Bloomberg TV. His 10-page manifesto sparked outrage from Google employees after being posted to an internal network. It argued biology prevents women from being as successful as men in the tech industry and criticized the company as having a "left leaning" bias. 
 
 Damore said he initially shared the memo a month ago, but "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 told Bloomberg. "It was only after it got viral that upper management started shaming me and eventually firing me." 
 
 Now playing: Watch this: Fired Google engineer defends controversial memo 
 
 In his memo, Damore argues that women are underrepresented in tech not as a result of bias and discrimination. Instead, "the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership." 
 
 Damore said that while some Google employees expressed support for him, it's not surprising no one from the executive ranks did so. 
 
 "There was a concerted effort among upper management to have a very clear signal that what I did was harmful and wrong and didn't stand for Google," Damore said. "It would be career suicide for any executives or directors to support me." 
 
 Google representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 The controversy comes as Silicon Valley companies grapple with how to increase workforce diversity in an industry dominated by white men and permeated with corporate cultures that seem biased against women and female engineers. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other tech companies now regularly release diversity reports, highlighting low percentages of women and minority employees, with few moving up the management chain. 
 
 Damore was fired by Google on Monday -- the same day Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees that the memo's author violated company rules by circulating the controversial memo. He said it's "not OK" for employees to feel that they can't "safely express their views (especially those with a minority viewpoint)." 
 
 Pichai said he believes Damore brought up valid concerns about Google's training and whether the diversity programs it has put in place are sufficiently open to all. But Pichai said the memo crossed a line. 
 
 Damore has said he believes his dismissal was illegal and that he would "likely be pursuing legal action." Before his firing, Damore said he submitted a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board charging Google's upper management with "misrepresenting and shaming me in order to silence my complaints." 
 
 Solving for XX: The industry seeks to overcome outdated ideas about "women in tech." 
 
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 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.” 
 
 The memo, which was leaked to the public over the weekend, argues that conservative viewpoints are suppressed at Google and that biological differences between men and women explain in part why so few women work in software engineering. Even if someone in Google management had agreed with some of the arguments put forth in his piece, they wouldn’t have felt safe speaking up, he said. 
 
 “There was a concerted effort among upper management to have a very clear signal that what I did was harmful and wrong and didn't stand for Google,” Damore said. “It would be career suicide for any executives or directors to support me.” 
 
 
 
 Damore also said that some Google employees who expressed support for him have been contacted by human resources. 
 
 “That's absolutely untrue," a Google spokesman said about the claim. The company declined to comment further beyond a memo that Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai wrote to employees on Monday, which said that “to suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.” 
 
 In response to his memo, Susan Wojcicki, head of Google’s YouTube, wrote on Wednesday that she “felt pain” and asked if the argument would also stand if applied to underrepresented racial minorities in tech. Damore said that was “a false analogy” that was “trying to smear my image rather than just looking at the evidence.” 
 
 
 
 Damore worked more than four years at Google, joining the company after holding research positions at Harvard University, Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor of science degree in 2010, then completed a master’s at Harvard. 
 
 Damore has been pushing back against the company before and after his firing. He said he had several meetings with human resources last week about what he described as illegal hiring practices inside Google that favor certain candidates because of their gender or race. He also filed a charge Monday with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Google threatened his “protected concerted activities,” according to a filing of the complaint. A Google spokesman disputed Damore’s claim that the company’s hiring practices are illegal. 
 
 Damore said he is planning to pursue legal action but declined to say on what grounds or whether he had hired a lawyer. He also said he had been advised not to talk to the press. 
 
 He said there are “many capable women at Google” and that he wrote the memo to help the company improve its policies and prompt conversations that weren’t happening. 
 
 
 
 “I'm trying to make Google and the world in general a better place by not confining us to our ideological echo chambers,” he said. 
 
 Challenged about the message women would take from his memo, Damore maintained that his views won’t discourage young girls who are considering going into software engineering. 
 
 “There are simply fewer women that want to get into these fields,” he said. “If you're a girl and you're interested in technology, that's great.” 
 
 “If anyone is interested in technology they should just pursue it,” he added. “It's a great field.” 
 
 
 
 -- With assistance from Candy Cheng ||||| FILE - This Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, file photo shows Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Google’s new head of diversity has rejected an internal commentary from an employee who suggested women... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013, file photo shows Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Google’s new head of diversity has rejected an internal commentary from an employee who suggested women... (Associated Press) 
 
 MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — A 28-year-old former Google engineer who was fired over a memo he wrote about gender differences said Tuesday he's exploring all his legal options and has already filed a labor complaint over his treatment. 
 
 James Damore, whose memo over the weekend caused an uproar online, said in an email that he was terminated late Monday for "perpetuating gender stereotypes." He said that prior to being fired he had filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board and that "it's illegal to retaliate against a NLRB charge." 
 
 A filing by Damore with the board Monday alleged he was subjected to "coercive statements" while at Google. 
 
 A Google spokesperson said Tuesday that the company could not have retaliated because it was unaware of his labor complaint until reading about it in the media after his dismissal. As of Tuesday afternoon, the company said it had not been sent notice of the complaint by the board. 
 
 The board declined to comment. 
 
 Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday said in an email to employees that, while he supports free expression by company workers, Damore's memo crossed the line of the company's code of conduct "by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace." Pichai added that he was cutting short a family vacation overseas to address staff in a town hall Thursday. 
 
 "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK," Pichai wrote. 
 
 The engineer's widely shared memo , titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber," criticized Google for pushing mentoring and diversity programs and for "alienating conservatives." 
 
 Google's just-hired head of diversity, Danielle Brown, responded earlier with her own memo, saying that Google is "unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success." She said change is hard and "often uncomfortable." 
 
 Damore's memo, originally circulated on an internal Google discussion group, begins by saying that only honest discussion will address a lack of equity. But it also asserts that women "prefer jobs in social and artistic areas" while more men "may like coding because it requires systemizing." 
 
 The memo says biological differences between men and women may explain why women are not equally represented in the technology industry. 
 
 Damore's filing with the NLRB cites a part of the labor relations act that gives employees the right to engage in "protected concerted" activities. That includes being active on social media , though it's unclear if his memo, written on a Google Doc and submitted to an employee-only forum, qualifies for such protection. The first tweets about the post by other Google employees began Friday, though a company spokesperson said the document appeared to have been created weeks earlier. 
 
 The Twitter hashtag #JamesDamore was drawing a storm of opinions both attacking Damore for his memo and his qualifications as an engineer, and criticizing Google for his dismissal. 
 
 The battling messages come as Silicon Valley grapples with accusations of sexism and discrimination. Google is also in the midst of a Department of Labor investigation into whether it pays women less than men, while Uber's CEO recently lost his job amid accusations of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination. 
 
 Leading tech companies, including Google, Facebook and Uber, have said they are trying to improve hiring and working conditions for women. But diversity numbers are barely changing . 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, and Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report. ||||| In the course of just a few days, the Google engineer fired Monday over his 3,300-word memo on gender differences and the tech industry has become a rallying point for almost everyone: a pariah to some, a martyr to others. 
 
 James Damore was a software engineer at the search giant’s Mountain View headquarters until Monday afternoon, when he said he was fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes” in his manifesto. It was published internally to Google employees late last week and argued that conservative viewpoints are suppressed at Google and that biological differences explain in part why more men work in software engineering than women. 
 
 Many in Silicon Valley denounced Damore’s arguments, including Google chief Sundar Pichai, who said Monday in a memo to employees that the engineer’s manifesto violated Google’s Code of Conduct and that suggesting “a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK.” 
 
 But others – mainly right-wing groups – agreed with his description of a “politically correct monoculture” and in particular, saw Google’s decision to fire him for voicing an unpopular opinion as proving exactly his point. Julian Assange tweeted that WikiLeaks would hire Damore, adding “Censorship is for losers.” Gab.ai, a far-right social network, also offered Damore a job, calling his writing “a beautiful work of art.” Other supporters raised more than $5,000 on a crowdfunding campaign to help Damore fight his firing. 
 
 Damore has said that he is currently exploring all legal remedies. He filed a complaint against the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday, contending he was subject to ``coercive statements.’’ 
 
 Damore explained in an online video that he wrote the memo because he thinks Google’s culture needs an overhaul. 
 
 “A lot of this came from me seeing some of the problems with our culture at Google, where a lot of people who weren’t in this group-think just felt totally isolated and alienated,” he told YouTube chat-show host Stefan Molyneux in an interview. “There were many people that came to me and said, ‘yeah I’m thinking of leaving Google because this is getting so bad.”’ 
 
 In the video, the software engineer revealed he was inspired to create the document -- partly written during a 12-hour flight to China for work -- after attending a secretive diversity training that rubbed him the wrong way. 
 
 “There was a lot of just shaming: ‘no, you can’t say that. That’s sexist.’ There’s just so much hypocrisy in a lot of the things that they were saying,” he said on the video. “I decided to create the document to clarify my thoughts.” 
 
 Damore’s publicly available biographical details, mostly from his LinkedIn profile, are not all true: He says that he has a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Systems Biology, which his supporters frequently noted as a credential for him to talk about the biological differences between men and women. A Harvard spokeswoman said Damore only completed a master’s in systems biology, a field that uses quantitative methods to study biological systems such as cells and organisms. A spokesman for the University of Illinois confirmed he has a Bachelor of Science degree in molecular and cellular biology from 2010. An online resume says he was a competitive chess player and held research positions at Harvard, Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
 
 An online CV and Facebook profile suggest Damore hails from suburban Chicago. His Facebook page only has a few snippets: an album of charcoal sketches, including portraits of actors Will Smith and Keira Knightley, and posts such as one from 2013 saying how excited he was to be starting a job at Google in Mountain View soon. 
 
 After getting his master’s in 2013, Damore joined Google as a summer intern, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was hired after the internship and worked at the company for about four years as a software engineer. At the time he was fired, Damore was a level-five employee on Google’s internal 10-level ranking system, according to two people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the issue is private. 
 
 The firestorm is likely to continue. Pichai, who was away on a family vacation, cut his trip short to return to the Bay Area Tuesday, he said in his memo. He is expected to address the topic at TGIF, a company all-hands meeting, on Thursday, according to a Google spokesperson. 
 
 Damore could face an uphill battle if he tries to pursue a wrongful termination suit, legal experts said. The right to free speech typically protects only some government employees; Google has the right to fire workers for things they say at work or at home. Damore would have to prove he was trying to organize collective action among his fellow employees and was fired in retaliation for that, said Wilma Liebman, who chaired the National Labor Relations Board under President Barack Obama. 
 
 In the interview with Molyneux, Damore wasn't asked about and didn't discuss his legal options. 
 
 "There’ve been a lot of negative reactions in the public, but very few of them send me messages,’’ he said in the video. ``They don’t want to have a debate on why I’m wrong. In contrast, I’ve gotten a ton of personal messages of support, which is nice.’’ 
 
 --Mark Bergen contributed reporting. 
 
 For more on gender imbalances in Silicon Valley, check out our podcast Decrypted:
– A male Google engineer who authored a controversial memo on why he thinks women aren't suited to tech jobs is now searching for new employment. James Damore confirmed to Bloomberg that he was fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes" and that he's "currently exploring all possible legal remedies." In the memo, which can be seen in full here, Damore argued that pursuing diversity policies was "unfair, divisive, and bad for business," partly because of biological differences like female "neuroticism" that he believes explain the gender gap in the technology world. The memo circulated widely among employees. In internal discussion posts seen by Bloomberg, many employees supported the firing. Google declined to comment on the firing, but CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the controversy in a memo to employees Monday, the Guardian reports. "Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives," he wrote. "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK." Pichai also addressed concerns about employees now feeling unable to "safely express their views," saying people should feel free to express dissent. He said some of the issues raised in the memo "such as the portions ... questioning the role of ideology in the workplace" are "important topics" that people should feel free to discuss.