About that Google — diversity memo

Balazs Faluvegi
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

As a Socially Responsible Investing advisor, a co-founder of a investment company focused on ethical companies, an advocate for gender equality, also someone who finds Alphabet (Google) as a highly progressive firm, I was eager to read the whole letter written by one of the company’s software engineer about diversity issues. Here it is.

  • Gender equality at workplaces are not about men and women being the same in any role. It’s actually the opposite. Men tend to have different viewpoints, strategies, even motivations than women. This is exactly why diversity works. It’s not just fair, it has clear advantages for business as well.
  • Also, any discussion must be kept open, and noone should be made ashamed because of his/her opinion, if it’s not clearly confronts evidence.

These are two points, that the Google engineer was right of, and these are very important issues to be raised in any organisations, especially in one of the leading companies in the world, both from the economical and the ethical viewpoint.

In some cases, I disagree with him.

  • Differences in women doesn’t mean they would be less fit to be leaders. Their cooperativeness is exactly why we need more women in leadership positions.
  • I also strongly disagree, that women have lower stress tolerance, and there is not any kind of biological evidence that support his view.
  • His list of the left-righ ideological differences is also confusing, and incorrect in several points, especially in the Left being idealistic and the Right progressive. It depends on the issue. That is the biased view he is protesting against. Also, if Left is open, why is he trying to persuade the reader, that Google’s culture is left-leaning AND not open to new views?
  • Moralising and politicizing issues are two very distinct concept, he is confusing them.

In the end, he proposes some ideas how to fix the problems. Mostly I agree with him, except the cases where he bases them on his own biases, eg. viewing the diversity issue just from a financial viewpoint, or being misguided about women’s abilities. I think there should be more women in tech as well, and they still have biases against them, so helping them is not discrimination and nor harmful.

He is also right, that there should be an open dialog. Google’s reaction is somewhat worrisome, especially if he was really fired because of his letter. Diversity and it’s advantages come from not only including more women, but more ideas, and being open, listening to each other.

Balazs Faluvegi

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