> I don't really understand the negativity being leveled at this guy. I read the memo and I'm not sure how you can overlook how sexist and demeaning the memo a

> I don't really understand the negativity being leveled at this guy. I read the memo and I'm not sure how you can overlook how sexist and demeaning the memo actually is. I'm talking about content that is front and center starting on page 3, under the heading "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech". Specifically content like... > I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Right there he's asserting that there are less women in technical leadership roles because biology. That's an asinine assertion and it's insulting in a pretty aggressive way. > Because as “society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian, innate dispositional differences between men and women have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality traits becomes wider.” We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism. This is also pretty insulting to everyone who has been the victim of sexism in the workplace, during a performance review or while interviewing for employment. We know that sexism in software engineering is a real issue, yet here the author makes a sweeping dismissal. From here on the document simply gets worse and worse. There's the backhanded assertion that maybe men are in leadership because they don't value a balanced life and strive for status. There's the bit where he talks about how the work itself needs to be changed to be more social. And on and on. Remember that people aren't asking for software engineering itself to change, they are simply asking for fair and even-handed treatment despite their gender. That this person feels that, in fact, fair and even-handed treatment despite gender is unreasonable is, in fact, deeply upsetting to a lot of people (myself included). Many have tried to make the argument that he's saying something different, but I'm hard pressed to find that in the actual memo. For sure, he's talking about how maybe the gender gap in technology can never be truly eliminated and yes, I agree that may be a goal we never achieve. But he's also arguing that maybe we shouldn't bother, or maybe we should carve out a specific niche of work for a specific gender and that's unacceptable and insulting. Should he be fired? I don't know, nor care. But he's not being persecuted for his speech. He embarrassed his employer publicly and suffers the same consequences that you or I would for doing the same: he's lost his position.