I've met a dozen or so Google engineers over the years and am very confident as labelling them all as quite clearly very intelligent.

I'm surprised we're even having this conversation.

Might depend on your definition of "intelligent" though. I've met quite a few, too, including friends and relatives. Sure, they better than average programmers, but general intelligence seems to be the same as in your general college educated population. Otherwise we'd be arguing that Damore (or, say, Altheide, if one has ideological preference for one or the other) are also "very intelligent".

> Otherwise we'd be arguing that Damore (or, say, Altheide, if one has ideological preference for one or the other) are also "very intelligent".

That seems pretty likely.

I think you may be equating "good enough at programming to get hired by Google" with "generally intelligent". My point is that these are entirely different things.

Damore wasn't just "good enough at programming to get hired by Google". If you look at what team he was hired for, how he was recruited, and the fact that he was (reportedly) exceeding expectations suggests that he likely is quite intelligent.

> My point is that these are entirely different things.

Entirely? I'm sure that Google employs plenty of fools (as do all large corporations) but to suggest there is no correlation is preposterous on its face.