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"... if James Damore deserves to be fired from Google, for treating evolutionary psychology as potentially relevant to social issues..." I don't believe that's

"... if James Damore deserves to be fired from Google, for treating evolutionary psychology as potentially relevant to social issues..." I don't believe that's why James Damore was fired. He was fired for a much more obvious reason: he was working against their efforts to have a more gender diverse workforce and he embarrassed the company in a very public way. "First, let me say that we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it."[0] Google admits that there are some things in the memo that are debatable, even though Google disagrees with Damore. "It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects ‘each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination"[0] And that is why he was fired: deliberately working against Google's workplace culture goals. There may be room to argue about what Damore may have meant, in his heart, when he wrote the memo. However, since the memo is a physical artifact that we may all inspect, it's clear that the text of the memo is unabashedly sexist. He clearly states that he believes the gender gap at Google is not caused by sexism and that's at clear odds with Google's goals. "We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism."[1] As if it needs to be said, that is clearly not the case. The primary cause of the gender gap is very much sexism and it's a real problem that needs to be dealt with. While we may disagree on which steps will be most effective, there's no benefit to denying the problem exists. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/google-fires-memo-author/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/google-fires-memo-author/ [1]: https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncensored-memo-with-charts-and-cites-339f3d2d05f https://medium.com/@Cernovich/full-james-damore-memo-uncenso...

manyoso 9y ago
The primary cause of the gap is unknown and may very well not be sexism. And stating that does not make me sexist. If you believe it does, then you are not using reason to arrive at that conclusion. It is a logical fallacy.
- cmiles74 9y ago
  I'm not here to name call (although I am certainly prone to name calling). If we take a look at the recent spate of articles covering sexism and harassment in the workplace at companies in the field, it is clear that there is a problem. If someone were at the point in their lives where they were choosing a field in which to place their career, they may very well choose one where their gender would be less of an issue. That causes a gender gap.
  - chongli 9y ago
    If we take a look at the recent spate of articles covering sexism and harassment in the workplace at companies in the field, it is clear that there is a problem. It's clear as day to everyone that there is a problem. It is not clear that the problem is sexism. In my view, the problem is economic inequality which is ratcheting social pressures up to a fever pitch. Many people see their quality of life slipping away and the intellectual class fighting for their chance to tighten the screws. Social entropy is increasing dramatically and the social contract is in dire peril.
    - matthewbauer 9y ago
      I don't think you can shoehorn this into "economic anxiety". Sexism doesn't magically increase during recessions.
      - vanattab 9y ago
        >Sexism doesn't magically increase during recessions. I am not so sure about that. I would not be at all surprised if racial resentment increases during times of economic turmoil. My understanding is that during tough economic times industries like alcohol/gambling preform far better then the market as a whole. I would not be surprised at all if scapegoating of "outgroups" (both black and white) incresses during economic tough times. See Nazi Germany circa 1930s.
    - mistermann 9y ago
      > In my view, the problem is economic inequality which is ratcheting social pressures up to a fever pitch. This is something I haven't read before regarding this debate, I think it makes a lot of sense - if the economic consequences weren't so significant, people on both sides would likely be far less passionate about this topic.
- berdario 9y ago
  The gender gap in IT is definitely caused by sexism. You might argue that the gender gap in other industries has other reasons, but for IT the case is already closed. There are a bunch of bunch of different ways in which sexism is enacted, maybe different sexisms altogether, but at its very core is: discrimination based on gender, uncorrelated with any relevant objective metrics. It's the western society since the 80s that is out of line: if you look to the past, or look elsewhere past some borders, you'll see that obstacles that are preventing more women to get in IT don't necessarily have to be there.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
biofox 9y ago
I agree with you that sexism exists in tech, but it seems like a huge leap to say it's the primary cause of the gender gap. Gender imbalances exist in many professions (teaching, nursing, social work, counselling). I'm not sure sexism is sufficient to explain all of these.
- cmiles74 9y ago
  Fair enough, you have a good point: there are many things that contribute to this gender gap. I don't think it's a huge leap, however, to say that sexism in the field of software engineering is a substantial contributor to the gender gap in that field. In my opinion, the regular trickle of articles on this subject could be enough to discourage people who are currently thinking about entering the field, thus widening (or maintaining) the gender gap. To put it another way, I believe we would need to make real and measurable progress on sexism as the cause of the gender gap before we start looking for other reasons or, as Damore would have it, deciding the status quo is as good as it gets.
  - manyoso 9y ago
    That is a fair comment. I would not be surprised if sexism turns out to be a substantial contributor. Not surprised in the least. However, I still don't know that it is the primary reason and certaintly have not seen convincing evidence proving the case. It is a hypothesis even if a well motivated one.
  - DuskStar 9y ago
    >I believe we would need to make real and measurable progress on sexism as the cause of the gender gap before we start looking for other reasons There is actually another way to move past sexism as the primary cause - show that sexism is comparable in other fields with a much smaller gender gap. If Engineering has 2 "sexism units", Medicine has 2.3 and Law 1.5 for instance, that might imply that sexism isn't the cause of Engineering's gender gap - because otherwise we'd expect similar gaps in Law and Medicine.
- twodave 9y ago
  I always thought it was obvious that the gender gap in tech begins long before adulthood. Classrooms in high schools and universities that are technical in nature tend to be dominated by males. I think it has more to do with young people fulfilling traditional roles in academia. And I don't think that's inherently "wrong". Why is a gender gap considered "bad"? In and of itself, I think it's neutral. Does sexism exist in tech? Sure, but I'm not sure it's any more pronounced than any other field. I also don't think females are always the victims. Should we try and right moral wrongs where we see them? Yes, I think we should. It's really easy to highlight bad behavior as a cause of a "problem" that might not even be a problem. In other words, if we can focus our attention on eliminating sexism where we see it, the gender gap becomes a non-issue (even if it persists).
Diederich 9y ago
I'm not going to comment about whether Google was following their own policy statement when firing Damore, one way or another. > it's clear that the text of the memo is unabashedly sexist Just to be sure, I looked up the definitions: sexism: "prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex" sterotype: "a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing" Do these seem like reasonable definitions to you? If so, I wonder if you can take a moment to clearly connect points in the memo to these definitions?
mdorazio 9y ago
Please provide a source for your last statement since that is not at all clear. By your logic, the primary cause of the gender gap in public school teaching must also be sexism. Do you believe that as well? The primary cause of the gender gap is tech is the lack of a gender-balanced candidate pool for tech jobs. If you're a hiring manager posting developer jobs and 80% of the applicants are men, is it sexist that you end up hiring mostly men? The real sexism problems are happening much earlier in life than when people start looking for jobs. If you want gender balance in tech jobs, we need to get more women into tech-focused college degrees, which means we need to get more girls interested in tech in primary school, which means we need to encourage teaching and parenting in early development that leads to an interest in tech later... etc. But wait, prenatal hormone exposure predicts toy choices in young children [1], so it's not that simple. This is exactly what Damore was trying to get at. I think we need to split the gender problem in tech into a few different categories and tackle each independently rather than throwing everything in the "tech is sexist" bucket and looking for magic umbrella solutions. At a minimum, there are problems with getting girls interested in tech, keeping girls on an education path that leads to a tech career, eliminating subconscious bias in hiring practices, moving startups away from bro culture, and retaining women in tech when work-life balance becomes more important. All of these are important and require different solutions. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15693771 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15693771
- matthewbauer 9y ago
  That's an interesting study you link to but I don't think it fits in this discussion. The underlying problem is not that boys like "boy" toys and girls like "girl" toys, it's how our culture defines which toys are which. Buying a sewing machine for a girl and a video game system for a boy is somehow "normal" but switch those around and it's at least a little weird (at least 20-30 years ago it was). Some sort of quota system for women in tech might actually have an effect on that (certainly not guaranteed to, though).
  - showdead 9y ago
    I am reminded of this comic strip every time this comes up (despite it being from about 7 or 8 years ago): http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883
js8 9y ago
> he was working against their efforts to have a more gender diverse workforce It seems to me like quite a strong statement. Let's say you are doing something using strategy X. I come over and point out, maybe the strategy X is not quite working and you should rather try strategy Y, for these reasons. Would you call this "working against your efforts"? AFAIK, he didn't sabotage anything, he just disagreed and wrote it up. You don't have to read it, you don't have to switch to strategy Y, you don't have to do anything, you can just not care at all.
- matthewbauer 9y ago
  Yes that's the problem for most people. Google fired him not because of the memo but because the memo became viral. If no one at Google shared his views and shared that memo, this could have been quietly ignored.
- mistermann 9y ago
  This also assumes their stated goal, a more gender diverse workforce, is actually their goal. I have a feeling their actual goal is more likely avoiding controversy and having employees be as "happy" as possible. If one forgets (as I always do) that when dealing with human beings, perception is reality, you might not realize that that is realistically about the most pragmatic approach you can take with this sort of policy. And this memo certainly works against both of those goals.
  - js8 9y ago
    > This also assumes their stated goal, a more gender diverse workforce, is actually their goal. Well.. if I genuinely want to help you, and you misstate your goals, for whatever reasons, you are only hurting yourself. Here Google probably lost a decent engineer. This sometimes happens in authoritarian organizations, where people who genuinely want to follow the orders from the top will misunderstand the indirect meaning, causing more harm for the organization (and sometimes it can be exploited). Actually, I believe that's why authoritarian organizations are less effective than democratic ones.
AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
>their efforts to have a more gender diverse workforce The employers are not supposed to discriminate based on gender, race, religion, sexual orientation. An externally enforced gender diversity is discrimination. If a company has 100 programming jobs, decides to keep 50 for one specific gender, the company has created discriminatory hiring practice. It has discriminated based on gender. Damore challenged this discrimination and got sacked. I think he can easily make a legal case for discrimination. If Google had said that they wanted 50/50 gender based representation at the level above Damore's title, then he clearly has a standing. Any male who was denied employment at Google has a standing to know if he was denied because of gender quotas. Damore's argument is to not take gender into account in hiring practices at all. "Diversity" policies are, at the base of their argument, asking for discriminatory hiring practices. There is no "diversity" law or mandate. If Google can define a diversity goal for some chosen slicing of the population into groups, may be based on race, may be based on gender, may be based on sexual orientation, may be based on height, and then goes on to seek equality of representation between those groups, then would it OK if some other company define equality based on if you are right handed or left handed? What if someone claims that all major religions should be equally represented in the workforce? Is the 50/50 split based on gender mean that the company is done with being "diverse"? Which new grouping would then stake claim at equality? Does Google believe in gender fluidity or do they believe in being cis-gendered? What if male engineers claim to be a female at the time of hiring, claiming gender fluidity, is Google going to get into business of keeping someone honest about what their gender is? Treat everyone as individual, based on the individuals abilities and choices. Assuming "diversity" goals to ensure equality of outcome by some arbitrary definition of a "group" is by definition discrimination. Individuals, not "group" based on race, religion or gender. Should Disney be forced to make movies with equal prince and princess lead roles? How about equal number of movies across all religions? Equal number of movies across all races? Please show me where I am wrong on this. I would like to have correct view on this issue.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  To try and correct for built-in bias by setting a goal is a reasonable response. Its self-serving to say "Hey! Sure men have all the jobs, but to give any to women is to hurt me! That's just as bad!" What if women actually deserved 80% of the jobs, by skill and temperament? Then the 50% goal is way under reality. I'd like to see passive processes produce an equitable result too. But in the mean time, the car is pulling to the left, so I steer slightly right to compensate. Its a reasonable short-term response. Lesser of evils.
Udik 9y ago
> He clearly states that he believes the gender gap at Google is not caused by sexism and that's at clear odds with Google's goals Your sentence doesn't make sense to me. Is it a goal for Google to believe gender gaps are caused by sexism? Although after the firing of Damore it sounds almost plausible, deciding that your goal is to believe in something is still a rather sad endeavour.
AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
>he was working against their efforts to have a more gender diverse workforce Scenario 1: Hiring policy : Best candidate for the job irrespective of race, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation. A good Engineer who happens to be a woman: I work for Google. :) Society: How awesome!!! You go, girl!!! Scenario 2: Hiring policy : We are trying to have more gender diverse workforce. A good Engineer who happens to be a woman: I work for Google. :/ Society: Nice! (Did she make it at Google because of gender diversity program?) It was Google's announcement that declared their efforts to create a gender diverse workforce, created inferiority complex in the minds of the female engineers whether they got the job because they deserve it, or because they were women. It was Google's announcement for gender diverse workforce that created hostile work environment for women because now everyone, including other women, doubt if an engineer, who happens to be woman, made it because of the diversity program. Google fired the whistle-blower. They shot the messenger.

manyoso 9y ago

The primary cause of the gap is unknown and may very well not be sexism. And stating that does not make me sexist. If you believe it does, then you are not using reason to arrive at that conclusion. It is a logical fallacy.

cmiles74 9y ago
I'm not here to name call (although I am certainly prone to name calling). If we take a look at the recent spate of articles covering sexism and harassment in the workplace at companies in the field, it is clear that there is a problem. If someone were at the point in their lives where they were choosing a field in which to place their career, they may very well choose one where their gender would be less of an issue. That causes a gender gap.
- chongli 9y ago
  If we take a look at the recent spate of articles covering sexism and harassment in the workplace at companies in the field, it is clear that there is a problem. It's clear as day to everyone that there is a problem. It is not clear that the problem is sexism. In my view, the problem is economic inequality which is ratcheting social pressures up to a fever pitch. Many people see their quality of life slipping away and the intellectual class fighting for their chance to tighten the screws. Social entropy is increasing dramatically and the social contract is in dire peril.
  - matthewbauer 9y ago
    I don't think you can shoehorn this into "economic anxiety". Sexism doesn't magically increase during recessions.
    - vanattab 9y ago
      >Sexism doesn't magically increase during recessions. I am not so sure about that. I would not be at all surprised if racial resentment increases during times of economic turmoil. My understanding is that during tough economic times industries like alcohol/gambling preform far better then the market as a whole. I would not be surprised at all if scapegoating of "outgroups" (both black and white) incresses during economic tough times. See Nazi Germany circa 1930s.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    > In my view, the problem is economic inequality which is ratcheting social pressures up to a fever pitch. This is something I haven't read before regarding this debate, I think it makes a lot of sense - if the economic consequences weren't so significant, people on both sides would likely be far less passionate about this topic.
berdario 9y ago
The gender gap in IT is definitely caused by sexism. You might argue that the gender gap in other industries has other reasons, but for IT the case is already closed. There are a bunch of bunch of different ways in which sexism is enacted, maybe different sexisms altogether, but at its very core is: discrimination based on gender, uncorrelated with any relevant objective metrics. It's the western society since the 80s that is out of line: if you look to the past, or look elsewhere past some borders, you'll see that obstacles that are preventing more women to get in IT don't necessarily have to be there.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

biofox 9y ago

I agree with you that sexism exists in tech, but it seems like a huge leap to say it's the primary cause of the gender gap. Gender imbalances exist in many professions (teaching, nursing, social work, counselling). I'm not sure sexism is sufficient to explain all of these.

cmiles74 9y ago
Fair enough, you have a good point: there are many things that contribute to this gender gap. I don't think it's a huge leap, however, to say that sexism in the field of software engineering is a substantial contributor to the gender gap in that field. In my opinion, the regular trickle of articles on this subject could be enough to discourage people who are currently thinking about entering the field, thus widening (or maintaining) the gender gap. To put it another way, I believe we would need to make real and measurable progress on sexism as the cause of the gender gap before we start looking for other reasons or, as Damore would have it, deciding the status quo is as good as it gets.
- manyoso 9y ago
  That is a fair comment. I would not be surprised if sexism turns out to be a substantial contributor. Not surprised in the least. However, I still don't know that it is the primary reason and certaintly have not seen convincing evidence proving the case. It is a hypothesis even if a well motivated one.
- DuskStar 9y ago
  >I believe we would need to make real and measurable progress on sexism as the cause of the gender gap before we start looking for other reasons There is actually another way to move past sexism as the primary cause - show that sexism is comparable in other fields with a much smaller gender gap. If Engineering has 2 "sexism units", Medicine has 2.3 and Law 1.5 for instance, that might imply that sexism isn't the cause of Engineering's gender gap - because otherwise we'd expect similar gaps in Law and Medicine.
twodave 9y ago
I always thought it was obvious that the gender gap in tech begins long before adulthood. Classrooms in high schools and universities that are technical in nature tend to be dominated by males. I think it has more to do with young people fulfilling traditional roles in academia. And I don't think that's inherently "wrong". Why is a gender gap considered "bad"? In and of itself, I think it's neutral. Does sexism exist in tech? Sure, but I'm not sure it's any more pronounced than any other field. I also don't think females are always the victims. Should we try and right moral wrongs where we see them? Yes, I think we should. It's really easy to highlight bad behavior as a cause of a "problem" that might not even be a problem. In other words, if we can focus our attention on eliminating sexism where we see it, the gender gap becomes a non-issue (even if it persists).

Diederich 9y ago

I'm not going to comment about whether Google was following their own policy statement when firing Damore, one way or another. > it's clear that the text of the memo is unabashedly sexist Just to be sure, I looked up the definitions: sexism: "prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex" sterotype: "a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing" Do these seem like reasonable definitions to you? If so, I wonder if you can take a moment to clearly connect points in the memo to these definitions?

mdorazio 9y ago

Please provide a source for your last statement since that is not at all clear. By your logic, the primary cause of the gender gap in public school teaching must also be sexism. Do you believe that as well? The primary cause of the gender gap is tech is the lack of a gender-balanced candidate pool for tech jobs. If you're a hiring manager posting developer jobs and 80% of the applicants are men, is it sexist that you end up hiring mostly men? The real sexism problems are happening much earlier in life than when people start looking for jobs. If you want gender balance in tech jobs, we need to get more women into tech-focused college degrees, which means we need to get more girls interested in tech in primary school, which means we need to encourage teaching and parenting in early development that leads to an interest in tech later... etc. But wait, prenatal hormone exposure predicts toy choices in young children [1], so it's not that simple. This is exactly what Damore was trying to get at. I think we need to split the gender problem in tech into a few different categories and tackle each independently rather than throwing everything in the "tech is sexist" bucket and looking for magic umbrella solutions. At a minimum, there are problems with getting girls interested in tech, keeping girls on an education path that leads to a tech career, eliminating subconscious bias in hiring practices, moving startups away from bro culture, and retaining women in tech when work-life balance becomes more important. All of these are important and require different solutions. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15693771 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15693771

matthewbauer 9y ago
That's an interesting study you link to but I don't think it fits in this discussion. The underlying problem is not that boys like "boy" toys and girls like "girl" toys, it's how our culture defines which toys are which. Buying a sewing machine for a girl and a video game system for a boy is somehow "normal" but switch those around and it's at least a little weird (at least 20-30 years ago it was). Some sort of quota system for women in tech might actually have an effect on that (certainly not guaranteed to, though).
- showdead 9y ago
  I am reminded of this comic strip every time this comes up (despite it being from about 7 or 8 years ago): http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883

js8 9y ago

> he was working against their efforts to have a more gender diverse workforce It seems to me like quite a strong statement. Let's say you are doing something using strategy X. I come over and point out, maybe the strategy X is not quite working and you should rather try strategy Y, for these reasons. Would you call this "working against your efforts"? AFAIK, he didn't sabotage anything, he just disagreed and wrote it up. You don't have to read it, you don't have to switch to strategy Y, you don't have to do anything, you can just not care at all.

matthewbauer 9y ago
Yes that's the problem for most people. Google fired him not because of the memo but because the memo became viral. If no one at Google shared his views and shared that memo, this could have been quietly ignored.
mistermann 9y ago
This also assumes their stated goal, a more gender diverse workforce, is actually their goal. I have a feeling their actual goal is more likely avoiding controversy and having employees be as "happy" as possible. If one forgets (as I always do) that when dealing with human beings, perception is reality, you might not realize that that is realistically about the most pragmatic approach you can take with this sort of policy. And this memo certainly works against both of those goals.
- js8 9y ago
  > This also assumes their stated goal, a more gender diverse workforce, is actually their goal. Well.. if I genuinely want to help you, and you misstate your goals, for whatever reasons, you are only hurting yourself. Here Google probably lost a decent engineer. This sometimes happens in authoritarian organizations, where people who genuinely want to follow the orders from the top will misunderstand the indirect meaning, causing more harm for the organization (and sometimes it can be exploited). Actually, I believe that's why authoritarian organizations are less effective than democratic ones.

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago

>their efforts to have a more gender diverse workforce The employers are not supposed to discriminate based on gender, race, religion, sexual orientation. An externally enforced gender diversity is discrimination. If a company has 100 programming jobs, decides to keep 50 for one specific gender, the company has created discriminatory hiring practice. It has discriminated based on gender. Damore challenged this discrimination and got sacked. I think he can easily make a legal case for discrimination. If Google had said that they wanted 50/50 gender based representation at the level above Damore's title, then he clearly has a standing. Any male who was denied employment at Google has a standing to know if he was denied because of gender quotas. Damore's argument is to not take gender into account in hiring practices at all. "Diversity" policies are, at the base of their argument, asking for discriminatory hiring practices. There is no "diversity" law or mandate. If Google can define a diversity goal for some chosen slicing of the population into groups, may be based on race, may be based on gender, may be based on sexual orientation, may be based on height, and then goes on to seek equality of representation between those groups, then would it OK if some other company define equality based on if you are right handed or left handed? What if someone claims that all major religions should be equally represented in the workforce? Is the 50/50 split based on gender mean that the company is done with being "diverse"? Which new grouping would then stake claim at equality? Does Google believe in gender fluidity or do they believe in being cis-gendered? What if male engineers claim to be a female at the time of hiring, claiming gender fluidity, is Google going to get into business of keeping someone honest about what their gender is? Treat everyone as individual, based on the individuals abilities and choices. Assuming "diversity" goals to ensure equality of outcome by some arbitrary definition of a "group" is by definition discrimination. Individuals, not "group" based on race, religion or gender. Should Disney be forced to make movies with equal prince and princess lead roles? How about equal number of movies across all religions? Equal number of movies across all races? Please show me where I am wrong on this. I would like to have correct view on this issue.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
To try and correct for built-in bias by setting a goal is a reasonable response. Its self-serving to say "Hey! Sure men have all the jobs, but to give any to women is to hurt me! That's just as bad!" What if women actually deserved 80% of the jobs, by skill and temperament? Then the 50% goal is way under reality. I'd like to see passive processes produce an equitable result too. But in the mean time, the car is pulling to the left, so I steer slightly right to compensate. Its a reasonable short-term response. Lesser of evils.

Udik 9y ago

> He clearly states that he believes the gender gap at Google is not caused by sexism and that's at clear odds with Google's goals Your sentence doesn't make sense to me. Is it a goal for Google to believe gender gaps are caused by sexism? Although after the firing of Damore it sounds almost plausible, deciding that your goal is to believe in something is still a rather sad endeavour.

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago

>he was working against their efforts to have a more gender diverse workforce Scenario 1: Hiring policy : Best candidate for the job irrespective of race, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation. A good Engineer who happens to be a woman: I work for Google. :) Society: How awesome!!! You go, girl!!! Scenario 2: Hiring policy : We are trying to have more gender diverse workforce. A good Engineer who happens to be a woman: I work for Google. :/ Society: Nice! (Did she make it at Google because of gender diversity program?) It was Google's announcement that declared their efforts to create a gender diverse workforce, created inferiority complex in the minds of the female engineers whether they got the job because they deserve it, or because they were women. It was Google's announcement for gender diverse workforce that created hostile work environment for women because now everyone, including other women, doubt if an engineer, who happens to be woman, made it because of the diversity program. Google fired the whistle-blower. They shot the messenger.