It was a busy weekend for the diversity and inclusion crowd.
It started as an anti-diversity memo published on Google’s internal mailing list on Friday. Then it tumbled—first in bits and pieces, then in its entirety—into public view.
“Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” is a 10-page manifesto published by an anonymous Google software engineer that argues several points, chief among them that the search giant’s left-leaning biases are shutting down conversations about its flawed diversity agenda. “[W]hen it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.”
After a bit of throat-clearing, he makes his case. “At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership,” he says. “I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes,” and further, “and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.”
The memo’s existence was first reported by Motherboard, then later published in its entirety by Gizmodo.
The online response was swift and angry. (Fortune’s David Z. Morris has an excellent recap here.) It also briefly pulled back the curtain on the search giant’s efforts to do what, to some, seems impossible: Transform a culture of tech machismo into one of harmonious inclusion.
Danielle Brown, Google’s brand-new vice president of diversity, integrity, and governance rushed to introduce herself to the company, before weighing in on the memo. “[L]ike many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I’m not going to link to it here as it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages,” she wrote in an internal note obtained by Motherboard.
An executive response was essential, particularly as the company currently faces an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor for paying women less than men. But the company also has some decisions to make about what to do with a man whom no female engineer is going to want to work with anytime soon.
It’s not just Google. That an engineer at a blue chip firm felt it necessary to explain, in excruciating detail, how a woman’s biological tendencies (agreeability, neuroticism, empathy, etc.) makes her less equipped than a man for certain jobs, serves as a reminder on why tech continues to be, in large part, a walled bro-garden. There are fewer women (or people of color) in tech because they know how awful it can be to work there. No bullet-pointed memorandum cheering for “viewpoint diversity” can put lipstick on that particular pig.
Much of the online debate understandably focuses on whether the memo was proof that Google’s attempts to change its culture has failed, or worse, was more performative than prescriptive. (For what it’s worth, I think that it’s too soon to call time of death on an inclusive Google just yet. Here’s why.)
But on Saturday, engineer Yonatan Zunger posted an equal and opposite manifesto which reveals a bit more about how Google’s famously secretive culture is reacting to the memo.
Zunger was most recently a Distinguished Engineer at Google, working on the privacy team. (He just left the company to work on a yet unannounced project.) “I am no longer even at the company and I’ve had to spend half of the past day talking to people and cleaning up the mess you’ve made,” he says in an open letter to the Googler. ” I can’t even imagine how much time and emotional energy has been sunk into this, not to mention reputational harm more broadly.” As Zunger sees it, the “meritocracy” as described in the memorandum does not represent a radically conservative path to business success; it is merely a fresh defense of a socially-acceptable version of a hostile workplace.
For what it’s worth, it sounds like Zunger would have fired the engineer the day the memo posted. For his epic explanation as to why — and his take on the true collaborative power of engineering — click here. It’s really something.
On Point
| More on the Confederate backlash |
| Television critic Nina Metz weighed in on the bigger question of art and entertainment, which is this: Just because you are allowed to make a show, should you? “How much — from the inside — does a writer or director or producer need to know and understand, in their bones, about a place or a culture in order to portray and explore it with nuance and intelligence?” The answer is complicated. She takes three examples in the news lately, Kathryn Bigelow’s feature film Detroit, a new show in development on Chicago gang life in the 1990s, and of course, Confederate, recently announced by HBO. Her analysis is excellent and offers food for thought regardless of where you currently stand on the issues. “Entertainment doesn’t have to promote good behavior or ideals, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum either,” she says. “Television is a medium that ‘magnifies the importance of things even as it shrinks their size,’” she says, quoting Time. And that’s what we should be worried about. |
| Chicago Tribune |
| In poverty because of traffic tickets |
| In the fight to raise revenue, many municipalities return to a renewable resource: The vulnerable people who live in their communities. A lawsuit filed in Detroit states that some 100,000 mostly poor Michiganders have lost their licenses while struggling to pay fees and court costs for minor infractions, a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Filed by two consumer law groups, the lawsuit accuses Michigan’s Department of State of "running a wealth-based driver’s license suspension scheme that traps some of the state’s poorest residents in a cycle of poverty." |
| Detroit Free Press |
| Opinion: Asian Americans refuse to derail the debate on affirmative action |
| Jo-Ann Yoo, the executive director of the Asian American Federation, an advocacy and research non-profit, is not here for the Trump administration’s attempt to lump Asian and white students together as victims of affirmative action in higher education. It’s familiar territory, she says. “Asian Americans and the issue of affirmative action have long been used to drive a wedge between communities of color and obfuscate the real purpose of the program, which brings opportunity to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.” The majority of Asian Americans continue to support affirmative action programs, which continue to uplift families, particularly those from disadvantaged groups and low-income families. |
| Fortune |
The Woke Leader
| What it’s like to be black at an elite college |
| Bottom line, you get asked for your credentials, early and often and it's exhausting. Mic asked eight current or former black students how they thrive in majority white academic environments. What persisted was the expectation that they were unprepared, admitted to fill a quota, or getting an unfair leg up because of a “black sob story.” “It would be hard to overstate the durability of the notion that black Ivy League students are undeserving imposters,” says G’Ra Hannibal Asim, of his experiences in Columbia University’s MFA writing program. “What bothered me most about those experiences is that I worked extremely hard to get into college, to earn a scholarship, and even harder to keep it,” says Kristian Dudgeon, University of Kentucky, class of 2017.“Nothing was given to me or any other person of color in college. If anything, we have to work harder to prove ourselves.” |
| Mic |
| Come, test your own confirmation bias! |
| This simple, fun quiz tests the power of our most basic human quirk: We hate to hear no. As a result, people are more likely to believe information that fits their views of the world, and they tend to stop looking for new information once they believe they have enough evidence execute on a grand plan. It’s a short quiz that has big implications for policy and corporate decision-makers, for starters. |
| New York Times |
| A Japanese grandmother, her one-year-old granddaughter and a giant poodle |
| No, it’s not the start of an epic joke, though I predict your face will hurt from smiling at the extraordinary photos. One Japanese grandmother has taken Instagram by quiet storm, documenting her granddaughter Mame in a series of delightful scenes with Riku, one of three patient and oh-so-fluffy giant poodles who provide endless joy for the family. Together they don costumes, find Waldo, read books and play house with an unmatched whimsical flair. Enjoy. |
| My Modern Met |
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| —Larry Page |
