Good grief. What a bunch of girls.

Quite a lot of people who respond as you do actively don't want to understand. But in case you're one of the ones who is actually curious:

Historically, sexism has been a problem. For millennia, women were basically property. The last couple hundred years, we've been unwinding that. E.g. less than 100 years ago, women finally got to vote. They didn't have equal access to credit cards until 1974. In the 1990s, US states finally all made marital rape illegal. In the early aughts, women reached parity in the proportion of people getting medical and legal degrees. (The proportion of actual doctors and lawyers hasn't caught up yet; it's around 33% now, and I'd guess it will hit 50% about 2040.)

One place that sexism still resides is in language. That language at least sometimes shapes thinking. Many women in professional contexts reasonably object to gendered language that excludes them. So to be polite, many workplaces are shifting to use more inclusive language.

So, TL;DR: we're in the middle of overturning millennia of pervasive sexism, a language shift is part of that, and if we're lucky we'll be done with the project in only decades.

If you think "guys" is gender-neutral, how about a thought experiment. You're a man, you started dating a woman. Do you tell your friends, "hey, I just started dating this great guy!" Nope. So why use that as your generic pronoun for your coworkers? It unnecessarily makes people feel excluded, even if you don't intend to exclude them.

Saying "guys" in English refers to a masculine group or a mixed-gender group historically. Same with Spanish, for example. The suffix -o is masculine and -a is feminine. But -os is plural masculine or mixed gender group, -as is feminine only group.

That's generally just how language works. When I personally speak to any group (or person) I don't use gendered language, but although I like your example, I don't think it holds up to scrutiny.

Once you're done with them though, you only have the rest of the Romance language derived world. I don't think it's a fight worth having lol.

This is a group of guys: http://goo.gl/AvjTzz

The modern definition of guy is man. Unequivocally. Beyond the very seasonal references to the effigy in England, that definition is not in general discourse outside of tomorrow's holiday and your archaic definition is certainly not used by anyone save etymologists.

The modern defining to mean man is not purely an Americanism by any stretch.

The pluralisation is also contemporary.

Regardless of etymological technical "truths", can you really say with intellectual honesty that there's no masculine connotation inherent in "guys"?

I'm sure there is to certain people. But to me, my family, friends, and coworkers I have not found it to be the case, no.

In fact, I hear female coworkers use the term neutrally every day. We as a team even use the term over conference calls with people all across the country and I have yet to hear anyone take issue, offer correction, or purposefully use alternative terminology.

I simply don't see this as a problem, nor can I understand why it needs to be purposefully corrected. It's the same PC attitude that causes people to take issue with those who call African Americans black. To me, black is a more useful term. If it wasn't in my repertoire, I'd have no way to distinguish Idris Elba from the rest of an essentially all white cast ...

Here's a fun test. Tell me which gender connotation the following terms hold: Cheerleader, Usher, Flight Attendant, and Comedian. If you said female, male, female, male, you'd be wrong as all are gender neutral.