Google always used to make a big song and dance about how scientific and data driven it is. They even wrote about how data driven their hiring processes and HR

Google always used to make a big song and dance about how scientific and data driven it is. They even wrote about how data driven their hiring processes and HR operations are. This article from 2013 is an example http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/01/google_people_operations_the_secrets_of_the_world_s_most_scientific_human.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/01/... “What we try to do is bring the same level of rigor to people decisions that we do to engineering decisions. Our mission is to have all people decisions be informed by data.” Damore's memo may look idiotic to people who work in "normal" workplaces, but it is consistent with Google's previous rhetoric on what sort of company it wants to be: namely, one that isn't normal.