As far as I understood he says google has a positive discrimination policy to hire minorities and want to achieve a 50/50 gender diversity (or at least something that doesn't match the diversity in the pool of candidates). That was my conclusion from sentences like this from the document:

- "Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races."

- "Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership."

- "I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism)."

If this is not the case he should apologize for it.

Note: I mostly agree with his arguments.

> If this is not the case he should apologize for it.

Even if your understanding is correct for which of the 3 points he should apologize for. My opinion is none.

Well the manifesto is a clear claim of the positive discrimination in Google during the hiring process but if this is not true (which I am not sure), he should apologize.

The top comment says the diversity programs only focus in increasing the amount of people in the hiring process but the selection is the same for all. The author of the manifesto says there is positive discrimination (artificial bias) to hire minorities, the lower the bar for them. So if Google doesn't lower the bar for anyone there is no way to say anything against them, everybody is treated equal.

Can I quote a specific sentence for this? No, I would have to quote the whole manifesto.

For me, it's this line:

"This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading."

Sure, there are statistical differences between genders. This is a total non-sequitur from that, with no citation in sight to try allay blame. This is just the 1950s calling with its stereotypes.

Women may be more agreeable, and more less assertive. However you had better provide fairly convincing proof that we are speaking up too little, rather than merely less than men do.

I think there are studies that probe that claim. In my experience when I told some female friends to ask for a raise because they deserved it, some of them decided not to do it because a list of non-sense excuses (afraid to talk with their supervisors, that they will look for another job in the future, that their bosses don't like them, etc)

Bear in mind the published doc don't have the references the original work had. They removed them when they made it public (not the author)

He said "women generally having..."

You said "women may be more..."

What he said is fine, what you said is sexist.

He is talking about a distribution curve, you are talking about an entire gender.

Not what I'm discussing. I'm using hyperbole to make a point, because I'm annoyed.

I'm discussing the inference that people who possess more traditionally feminine traits are any less good at leading.

So you're just as annoyed for men with traditionally feminine traits as you are for women?

Good for you. That's a consistent philosophy. Something to be discussed and debated.

But this guy just got fired for this discussion, which puts google in the evil camp for me.

Nah, as Sundar's response says, and I agree with, he didn't get fired for discussing things that shouldn't be discussed, or criticising ideology. That should be welcomed. http://fortune.com/2017/08/08/google-anti-diversity-memo-sun...

He got fired for the other bits, the casually implying 40% of the workforce were, onr average, somehow inferior and less suited to their work than men, and for not taking it down but stirring the pot, when he realised that he'd wildly misjudged the reaction people would have to it.

Gizmodo and other sites removed charts and citations from the memo. The full version with links to references is here:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

I've read it. That claim has no backing whatsoever. It's unmeasurable.