A Google employee named James Damore wrote an email to colleagues saying that the company is too ideologically narrow (liberal), and could sure use more diversity of thought. The company thanked him, took his recommendations seriously and are talking over his proposal at the next board meeting.
Just kidding! It’s 2017, you guys. You still think this Thoughtcrime is tolerated? Damore was abruptly fired.
Nothing in Damore’s 10-page message implied that men and women are not equal. He simply stated that we are not the same.
Women, he says, are more biologically inclined to nurturing roles and jobs that require person-to-person communication. Men are more geared toward working with objects rather than people. Women cooperate; men compete.
Nearly everything in the now-infamous Google Memo is supported by findings in Stanford Medicine’s journal, “Sex, Gender, and Medicine.” Researchers found that women have better long-term memory than men, but men outdo women in short-term memory. Men do better at spatial reasoning, while women outscore them (on average) on verbal tests.
These differences are not simply the result of socialization (little girls steered toward English and away from math, or little boys told to play with Legos instead of Barbies). When researchers looked at infants as young as two months, they found marked differences in “spatial-visualization ability.” Baby girls start babbling and speaking faster than boys, and unless there’s some nationwide parental conspiracy to give infant sons the silent treatment, we can safely conclude that this is nature – not nurture – causing the discrepancy.
Damore, an engineer (a scientist!), made a case based on academic studies and scientific findings. By just noting that fewer women choose to go into engineering, he crossed the Google line.
Google should love this take! Their workforce is 69 percent male and 31 percent female. If they can chalk it up to a hiring pool of more interested and qualified men than there are women, the company can dodge criticism for hiring mostly men.
If Google really thinks that women are every bit as interested and qualified as men to do the jobs they need, then such an overwhelmingly male staff would point to something acutely wrong with their hiring practices.
Instead, by siding with Damore’s analysis, the company could even retire their diversity department and save a lot of time and money.
The hiring pool for any tech company is going to be mostly male. Only 17.9 percent of bachelors in computer science degrees are earned by women. In engineering, only 19.3 percent of bachelor’s degrees go to women.
Interestingly enough, the push for more women in tech hasn’t been matched by any similar push for men. There’s no drive to recruit more male nurses or more male elementary school teachers. Only in STEM does the left want to socially engineer the gender makeup of the workforce.
Google probably harmed itself by firing someone who was willing to logically argue an unpopular opinion in front of his colleagues. The company definitely harmed itself by signaling to every employee that challenging the status quo is a fireable offense.
Perhaps Google will listen to the nation’s most prominent woman in tech, Sheryl Sandberg. When you’re faced with a challenge, ‘Lean In’ and engage instead of simply waving the problem (or firing it) away.
