No, the right move would have been to take Damore aside, say "dude, you stirred up a mess. You aren't wrong but the mess is a PR disaster. How about we hand you a big pile of money, you go find your next job elsewhere, and we agree not to throw mud at each other?"
I can see not doing that when you are cash poor but Google is paying engineers as much as $600K/year in total comp, they could have landed $10M on Damore and never noticed it.
My personal opinion is much like Brook's - Pichai was pandering to the mob. That's not true leadership in my opinion.
Edit: don't understand the downvote, this is HR 101. Companies don't want this sort of attention and they'll pay to avoid it. I'm very surprised that a cash rich company like google didn't take that route. Are you suggesting with your down vote that it is better for google to be in the news cycle for months/years while this works its way through the courts?
I can see not doing that when you are cash poor but Google is paying engineers as much as $600K/year in total comp, they could have landed $10M on Damore and never noticed it.
My personal opinion is much like Brook's - Pichai was pandering to the mob. That's not true leadership in my opinion.
Edit: don't understand the downvote, this is HR 101. Companies don't want this sort of attention and they'll pay to avoid it. I'm very surprised that a cash rich company like google didn't take that route. Are you suggesting with your down vote that it is better for google to be in the news cycle for months/years while this works its way through the courts?