I've kept my mouth shut because I value my job, I don't trust the system to protect me from retaliation, and the guy in question isn't dumb enough to make his confessions in written media.

> In one hiring round, the team was allegedly instructed to cancel all software engineering interviews with non-diverse applicants below a certain experience level, and to “purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline.”

My central point was not that Google only hires PC engineers (although the James Damore debacle seems to support this), but that engineers like me (since I can only speak for myself and my peers) don't want to work for politically-correct organisations. Why? Because if you want to work on great products, you can't be concerned with politics. If the politics were aligned with product, it would be considered an apolitical organisation, or a product company.

Here in South Africa, racism is economically sanctioned by well-intentioned BBE (black economic empowerment) "diversity" laws, which made it illegal to do business with government unless your company is majority black-owned. This guaranteed the creation of countless rent-seeking middlemen, which increased costs for the poor majority they were designed to protect and caused valuable skills to leave the country. With widespread power outages, South Africa is not doing so well.

If diversity does not arise naturally in an equal opportunity environment, then either the opportunity is unequal, or the homogeneity is inherent in the makeup of the hiring pool. If you try to compensate for this by hiring for diversity in your company instead of excellence, you will lose in the marketplace.

Of course, I support giving everyone an equal opportunity, but I remain unconvinced you can reconcile forced diversity with excellence.