The Google memo isn’t sexist or anti-diversity, it’s science

Speculation not from a social scientist as their job but a worker within Google apart from being grossly misplaced begins to sound eerily similar to the ravings of self obsessed supremacists cherry picking science. This is what hostility looks like.

And women then should be rightfully wary of all these fragile men who will watch them like hawks looking for any excuse to confirm their bias.

Google should send a memo explicitly stating anyone who thinks women or any group lower the bar should leave. This is not a place for bigots. It's a place for mature educated well adjusted adults to work together.

Anyone who supported that letter should in good conscience leave the organization which is 'lowering the bar', a definition no random individual not suffering from extreme hubris is 'qualified' to set and the prerogative of the organization and experts qualified for it.

If you are obsessed with diversity lowering the bar you can become a 'measuring the bar expert' and invest the time required educating yourself to become an expert before presuming to speak with authority you do not possess about a scientific field that does not trade in certainties.

Okay, now let's extend that argument out from the engineering sphere.

Using the same logic, the following attitudes should be accepted: 1. physically disabled people are inherently less suited to being mobile, so we shouldn't put in effort to allow them to be as mobile as non-disabled people 2. Men are inherently less suited for child care, so we shouldn't put in effort to help them be as good at child care as women

I wouldn't be surprised if some of you endorsed the attitudes I've just presented, but that would make you immoral by modern standards, so you could then assume that you're being immoral on the gender diversity issue.

This whole thing comes down to a fundamental lack of empathy. If you're not going to have empathy for women in tech, there's no reason that anyone should have empathy for you in areas that you're not suited to. So, if you accept one, accept the consequences of the other.

I would be open to going directly to HR to discuss it. I, for example, have done this to discuss team vs individual compensation at my job. While not the hot topic that this was, HR was super responsive.

In general, I think before you try to present on a public work forum one side of an argument about some biological subclass and their on average work ability/habits -- I'd think twice. Even with the absolute best intentions you can really isolate and offend people. And when this subclass is already a minority and less powerful, the effect can be compounded (at the end of the day, even the affirmative action programs are designed and implemented largely by white men).

I have very little patience with arguments rooted in "but that's not exactly what he said", because I have been on message boards for approximately the entire literate span of my 40 years on this planet, and the technique of couching inflammatory assertions in half-hearted hedges and deliberately ambiguous abstractions is the oldest trick in the book.

He allocated a whole subhed to his point, and the whole document builds to it. The subhed is: "the harm of Google's biases". The biases he's referring to are towards women and against men. The harm he refers to is "a lowered bar". His point is plain.

(I'm confident people aren't going to like this comment, but it is what I honestly believe, after what I believe to be pretty significant consideration, and no part of this thread is made better by me pretending otherwise.)

I don't really understand the forum he submitted to. It sounds like a huge public internal mailing list. That sounds like the wrong forum to me. This probably could've gone to the new VP of diversity directly.

Maybe I'm overly paranoid but I pretty much never write anything about race, religion, gender, disabilities, age, etc... at work. And if I ever felt I needed to I'd do so very carefully, probably with the assistance of HR.

It's easy for the dominant majority in power to see this as holding back the one aspect in their life where they feel as if they are limited in what they can do/say. But these limits and implied apprehensions exist for good reason, IMO.