A Google software engineer’s polemic against diversity efforts has left female staff “shaking in anger” and forced the tech giant to defend its patchy record on racial and gender equality.
The 10-page “manifesto”, which Google executives acknowledge was written by a company software engineer, initially circulated internally but was leaked to the public. The author’s identity remains unknown.
The manifesto argues that the lack of women in tech and leadership is the result, at least in part, of innate differences between in men and women. “I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership,” the author writes.
After a number of female staff described their disgust at the document on social media, Google sent out a company-wide memo saying it did not represent the company’s views.
The document’s author claims that the company’s problem is “left bias”, but the row will raise questions about attitudes to women among some members of staff and force Google back into uncomfortable discussions of its record on gender equality, which progressive critics say is poor.
The US Department of Labor found in April that there were systemic issues with equal pay across the company, and described discrimination there as “quite extreme”.
Google’s perceived political leanings also came under fire, with the author arguing that those with conservative views currently have to “stay in the closet” to dodge open hostility.
“When 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,” the author writes. “Conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.”
The document fuelled alarm and outrage on social media and sent Google executives scrambling to disavow its message. Hours after it became public, Google’s new vice-president of diversity, integrity and governance, Danielle Brown, sent an email to company employees saying that its “incorrect assumptions about gender” were “not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages”.
On Twitter, women in the tech industry called for Google to take action. Brianna Wu, a US-based software engineer, asked who was going to be fired over the manifesto, while Jaana Dogan, a programmer at Google, tweeted:
If HR does nothing in this case, I will consider leaving this company for real for the first time in five years.
— Jaana B. Dogan 👀 (@rakyll) August 4, 2017
Others were less surprised to hear what they called a pervasive attitude in an industry long dominated by men. The manifesto “is the Silicon Valley mindset in many ways,” said Vivek Wadhwa, a distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon University college of engineering and a frequent critic of the tech sector’s lack of diversity. “You could take this to a lot of people and you would hear: ‘Yup, we agree with this.’ People used to say things like this fearlessly.”
Wadhwa said the document was an example of the resistance companies such as Google encounter as they attempt to make their firms more equitable.
The company’s own record has come in for frequent criticism. Google was one of the first tech giants to disclose demographic information about its workforce in public. The first time the company released the data, though, it revealed Google to be more white and male than the likes of LinkedIn and Yahoo.
The company released figures in June showing that the proportion of female and black employees across the company as a whole had not changed from 2015 to 2016. There was a modest increase in the proportion of women in tech and leadership roles and the number of Latino employees, but only 20% of Google’s tech roles were filled by women, below the national average of 26%.Asian employees made up 35% of the company’s workforce, but they were underrepresented in leadership roles.
The manifesto claims that men have a higher drive for status, that women might not like coding because they have more interest than men in “people and aesthetics”, and that the low number of women in “high stress jobs” is down to them having more “neuroticism”. “We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism,” the author writes.
The document also claims that the gender wage gap is a myth, but Google is locked in an ongoing battle with US labour regulators claiming to have evidence that the company systematically undercompensates women.
“The government’s analysis at this point indicates that discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry,” a US Department of Labor lawyer said in April, adding that the agency had “compelling evidence of very significant discrimination against women in the most common positions at Google headquarters”.
Google disputes the agency’s claims, saying it has eliminated its wage gap.
In her letter to Google employees, Brown also took issue with the notion Google stifled certain political opinions. “I’ve never worked at a company that has so many platforms for employees to express themselves,” she wrote. Employees of different political views should feel free to voice their opinions, she said. “But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment.”
The vice-president of engineering at Google, Ari Balogh, also weighed in on the latest furore with an internal memo criticising the manifesto. “One of the aspects of the post that troubled me deeply was the bias inherent in suggesting that most women, or men, feel or act a certain way. That is stereotyping, and it is harmful,” he wrote. “Building an open, inclusive environment is core to who we are, and the right thing to do. ’Nuff said.”
