Hasta La Creative!

In almost two years as Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai has weathered multiple storms with relative ease. His search engine came out of the fake news brouhaha largely unscathed. He watched his employees walk out en masse over immigration restrictions ordered by President Trump, lending his support without drawing heat from the White House. He avoided major fallout after scores of advertisers boycotted YouTube over offensive video content. And he’s continued to post double-digit sales growth, helping to propel shares of parent company Alphabet Inc. to records — even as the European Union ratchets up its antitrust scrutiny.

But a single memo is shaping up to be Pichai’s greatest trial yet.

On Monday, Google fired the engineer behind an internal posting that decried efforts at the company to diversify its workforce. The memorandum set off an explosive debate inside Google, which has prided itself on letting employees air opinions, and beyond once it became public. Pichai was on a family vacation when the controversy boiled over. He sent a note on Monday afternoon that said language in the memo violated company policies, writing that it “clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender.” He told his 70,000-plus staff he was returning home to deal with the crisis. On Tuesday, some managers at Google held open-door sessions to address the still-brewing issues, according to one employee. Pichai was set to address the entire Google staff about the issue on Thursday at its weekly all-hands meeting.

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