So evidently Google can demonstrate modest improvement. And it sure seems like the Guy Who Got Fired felt like he was seeing the undeserving and huddled masses approaching his ivory tower.

But I'm not sure exactly what you'd like. On the one hand, "Someone needs to do something" and on the other "this blatantly favors one class of people." But I'm not entirely sure that last part is true. Google has quietly improved a lot of feminist hot-button issues that benefit men disproportionately in the last 3 years as well.

For example, Google increased its paternity leave policy. I know because one of the folks I met while interviewing there was ecstatic about it. They've also taken a lot of steps to improve life for families. I know because while interviewing I toured the day care facilities. Hell, Google quietly helps employee kids get into nearby schools and funds (and even runs) after school activities. You don't even need a woman involved to trigger them, Google offers its -ternity leave to adopters as well.

These things disproportionately benefit men by the simple fact that there are many more men in the workforce at Google, so any family related benefits or policies (and these are important, real issues that deserve to be solved) are really a massive win for men who want offspring.

So this whole angle about biases towards "specific groups" is really just a terrible prism. While I'm not saying this is your angle, it's all too often used as a way to shut down any sort of concessions for minorities with unique challenges.

And the business value is really, really clear: a larger workforce means more supply and less demand. From a large business's perspective, the 5 year operating costs of these programs is tiny compared to the savings a 5% reduction in minimum hiring costs would be.

But you can google search for articles from previous years (google controls the comparisons so you can't free query the data).

It looks like there's been a steady up trend for gender diversity (starting from 2014), even if women to men in tech positions are 2:8.

Although, the racial diversity is abysmal.

And once you normalize that kind of environment as "balanced", an attempts to correct it are going to appear to be a new bias. With few exceptions, this is something like a Mystery Spot illusion where you're normalized to such a skewed perception that even balanced and fair ideas can appear to be unfair.

Come on. It's self evident that it's working.

Whether that results in effective outcomes for the business is a different matter; but if your KPI is just 'ratio of XXX in employees' there's no question its doing what it's literally designed to do.

There can certainly be a blurry line in some places that makes it difficult to identify whether a given program has an (unintentional or otherwise) discriminatory effect but a lot of the stuff he objected to is very clearly positive assistance for people who need it, and not anything that harms men in his position.

No, this is the topic that is being debated in this chain and "It's self evident that it's working" is not sufficient to refute the point.