The Bell Curves for women and men are different. There are biological and even cognitive differences. But in my career as a supervisor, I didn’t see much evidence that women are disadvantaged by their differences in performing work in a white collar setting.
To the contrary: I saw less conflict, less egotism, and more attention to detail among my female subordinates, on average.
There were outliers among both men and women under my supervision. Some men did great, others not; same with women. But there was a gender difference between those populations, and it tended to favor women.
Men tended to be more easily bored, more demanding of variety in task assignments, more likely to miss important details, more eager to challenge authority, more disruptive, more ego-driven. The difference wasn’t large, but it was there.
The most reliable workers I ever had were women. So long as I made sure they understood what was required, they tended to deliver.
Coding is one of those activities where attention to detail and boredom-resistance are valuable attributes. Either men or women can have those attributes, but I think, on average, women tend to do quite well as coders, especially as part of a team of coders. On average, men in that job are more comfortable working solo — and less likely to do a thorough job of documenting their work, since *they* know what’s in there, and knowing what others do not enhances their self-perceived value. Ego, again. Men tend to be a bit more competitive, sometimes choosing competitive strategies that aren’t helpful; women tend to be a bit more cooperative and indulge in unhelpful behaviors a bit less often.
So, some of what that foolish Googler said is right: I think there are biological differences, and those differences do manifest in the workplace. But those differences did not disadvantage performance by women in any of the tasks I supervised during my career. If anything, it tended to make them better employees, on average.
I think self-selection is probably the biggest explanation for Google’s male-dominant workforce. Women are not choosing that career field in huge numbers; men are. There are a variety of reasons why that might be true, but none of them has anything to do with women’s biologically-driven aptitude for the work.