Whether there exist biological/psychological differences between sexes that affect career choices is a discussion that needs to be had in an academic setting rather than a political setting as the author sought to do (read the first section).
Secondly, it does not belong in the work place where it is rightly perceived as an aggression by the female coworkers (Telling them the bar was lowered to recruit them, they are inherently inferior to men at the job etc etc.)
Edit: To all the downvoters - I'll be charitable and assume that you are just subconsciously biased and not outright sexists. To see your bias in this situation just try to imagine that 40 years back some employee working at the Google of the day wrote such a manifesto against positive discrimination in favor of African Americans, citing all sorts of statistics claiming how they are lazy, lack commitment etc. Would you guys have wanted to 'hey let's talk about it' as well?
Was the bar lowered to recruit female or minority candidates? That's not a rhetorical question and I don't presume to have an answer to it. It was, however, the subject of the original memo, which suggests that some policies or proposed policies exist that lower standards for diversity candidates in the author's opinion. One example is, in the author's words: "Setting org level OKRs for increased representation." If such policies do exist, is it not okay to acknowledge their existence and argue for or against their merit?
As to "aggressions", I would challenge anybody to find a quote from the memo that could be considered aggressive. There are likely scientific inaccuracies, as with any hastily written and/or poorly cited piece. But I think the author did, on the whole, as good a job as can be expected at staying academic in tone and content. Lampooning him as aggressive seems disingenuous.
I think you are suffering from the same delusion that many have regarding this so-called bar. At the level of recruiting done by the big-five you end up with a pool of candidates who all make it over "the bar." You only need a couple, so now you get to decide on additional criteria like how well they seem to work in teams, how well they can communicate with their peers, how easily they can adapt to new situations and shifting goals...all things that have very little to do with the pure technical criteria that you initially filter for, but which seem to end up contributing more to any particular candidate's impact on the org than simple coding abilities.
tl;dr they don't need to lower the bar to diversify the company.
That's wrong though. Pretty much all high profile, successful tech companies right now have more open positions than they can hire for. My significant other (also a highly successful engineer) and I all get recruitment emails from Facebook/Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple/whatever every couple of weeks. They get countless applicants, but most of them are not what they want.
That means if you're trying to diversify, out of those thousands, it would be exceedingly easy to just pick all the ones that match the current flavor of the day in term of diversity, regardless of skill, and be done with it. Even though certain combinations of gender/ethnicity are (relatively) rare, there are a few, especially if you include bootcamps, self taughts, promoting from other departments, etc. If you hired 100% of them, it would probably make a bump in the company statistics.
My current employer is, IMO, doing it reasonably well. They don't lower the bar as far as I can tell, but widen the net (open offices in other regions/countries, have hiring events at more colleges/universities in more cities, organize diversity events to attract people, etc). It's not "enough", but it does move the needle and everyone that I've interacted with have been really good.
One of my previous employers straight up lowered the bar, no ambiguity. We would interview someone from a diverse background, they were obviously terrible (like, by a landslide), and they'd be like "Well...we really don't have many people from <this ethnicity/gender>, maybe we could hire them anyway". And sometimes they did. It did not end well (and gave fodder for racist/sexist people, ugh).
There are a -lot- of companies right now that do the later, and they hurt everyone, because they force those doubts and discussions to happen. It's easy, and if the people who have to pick up the slack end up bitching, you can just call them out for discrimination. I don't work at Google and have no interest to do so, so I don't know where they fall. One of my friends who work there and is a fairly vocal activist tells me its relatively okay /shrug.
> As to "aggressions", I would challenge anybody to find a quote from the memo that could be considered aggressive.
The entire premise of the manifesto is that one third of the company only has a job because of their gender. In what world is saying to thousands of people "We only hired you because you don't have male genitals" is not an aggression? Maybe it's not to people who don't give two shits about their work, or their accomplishments at it, or whether or not they'll have a job next week. Most people aren't in that category.
Has you ever been in that kind of situation? Where somebody reduces your entire justification for existence to the color of your skin, or which chromosomes you've got?
While the author used dubious rhetorical tactics (e.g. stating scientific "facts" without citation), he was never hostile towards any one person or group of people. Even if the argument he was making was that Google should fire or cut the pay of its female software engineers (which it wasn't), it wouldn't necessarily be aggressive. That word is not applicable here.
And yes, I have been in a situation where my merit as an engineer was called into question (I'm sure most engineers have). At the time I felt that the assessment was unfair. However, even if it had been demonstrably, objectively unfair, it would be incorrect to call it aggressive unless the intent had been to cause or threaten physical or psychological harm.
Aggression is an accusation that hinges entirely upon intent. Even an act that actually causes physical harm is not aggressive unless the intent of the perpetrator is violent or hostile. Similarly, even a memo that actually causes psychological harm is not aggressive unless it was the intent of the author to inflict that harm.
"While the author used dubious rhetorical tactics (e.g. stating scientific "facts" without citation), he was never hostile towards any one person or group of people."
Most of the members of those groups would highly disagree with you. Most of the female Google employees who have expressed opinions about it on twitter are quite angry over it. And, regardless of how it was meant, saying that a third of the people at the company don't deserve to be there is hostile.
> he was never hostile towards any one person or group of people. Even if the argument he was making was that Google should fire or cut the pay of its female software engineers (which it wasn't), it wouldn't necessarily be aggressive.
Let me present an argument:
"Black people are killers, thieves, and lazy layabouts. Statistics [Citation, Citation, Citation] support me. The only reason <company> employs black people is affirmative action. Draw your own conclusions, folks. ;)"
How is this not aggression? What would be aggression, at this point? Dressing up in a white hood, and circling the office with a wooden cross? Do we need to have rational, calm, logical debate about whether or not the statistics I'm citing are correct?
Physical violence isn't the only form of aggression. Telling your colleagues that they aren't wanted in your workplace is absolutely a form of aggression.
> And yes, I have been in a situation where my merit as an engineer was called into question (I'm sure most engineers have).
Was your merit called into question because of the colour of your skin? Or your gender?
There is a world of difference between being treated like crap for <some reason>, and being treated like crap because the asshole you're dealing with is prejudiced towards you. It really has to be experienced to be believed.
> Black people are killers, thieves, and lazy layabouts.
Introducing "killers" and "thieves" to this example distances it from the discussion we are having, since you introduced words with violent connotations. Let's leave it at:
> Black people are... ...lazy layabouts.
This is still a far cry from the contents of the memo, but we can work with it. There are a lot of negative adjectives that can be applied to this sentiment: Racist, wrong, counterproductive, even evil. But aggressive is still wrong. It just doesn't fit the definition. Stereotyping a group of people as "lazy" or even "useless" is not violent. It doesn't threaten violence, and it's intention is not necessarily to cause harm. Have a talk some time with an actual racist who is otherwise a peaceful person. They used to be very common. You'll hear them make all sorts of generalizations about black people that sound totally insane and horrible to us, but they don't mean it in an aggressive way. They wouldn't wish harm, physical or otherwise, on anybody. They genuinely believe that that is simply "how God made them" or something like that. Judging from the tone of the memo, plus the benefit of the doubt which we owe even those we disagree with, I think it's plain that the author of the original memo feels similarly.
Again, aggression is all about intent. You have little evidence to back the idea that our author guy wishes women, or any other person or group, harm.
It's the same category of argument. It also has 'indisputable' statistics supporting it. It does not attack particular persons, just the policy of hiring them. It disparages their co-workers for being born wrong. Much like the manifesto, it's a slam-your-head-into-the-textbook example of racism.
People have also made that exact same argument for decades. Racism was not a moustache-twirling Klanner setting crosses afire (Although it was that, too.) It was the reasoned, fact-supported argument for why people of colour are not as good as Real Americans. Ever since the civil rights movement, it has somewhat fallen out of fashion in the workplace - possibly because most of us accepted the radical notion that the color of your skin has no influence on the quality of your work.
Secondly, it does not belong in the work place where it is rightly perceived as an aggression by the female coworkers (Telling them the bar was lowered to recruit them, they are inherently inferior to men at the job etc etc.)
Edit: To all the downvoters - I'll be charitable and assume that you are just subconsciously biased and not outright sexists. To see your bias in this situation just try to imagine that 40 years back some employee working at the Google of the day wrote such a manifesto against positive discrimination in favor of African Americans, citing all sorts of statistics claiming how they are lazy, lack commitment etc. Would you guys have wanted to 'hey let's talk about it' as well?