My darling,
The guy’s citations were trash.
BUT
I am deeply concerned AND offended by the patronizing act of firing him to “protect” women. Its horseshit. I don’t need that kind of protecting. I’m an adult.
Google was squeezed. By the dude who wrote that mess and the people he was talking about in it.
You of all people should understand what offended me the most about his ‘memo,’ namely that:
Mr. Manifesto dude is not SME for women. He has no real way to know our preferences and therefore should not go asserting them for us. He’s not a scientist or a psychologist. And even if he was, it would still mean that he doesn’t get to be the mouthpiece for women anymore than you’d tolerate me acting a mouthpiece for men.
Wikipedia, self-reporting observational studies conducted in science from 10–20 years ago and blog posts are not debate material rooted in current theory of sex linked genetics. A large portion of his citations were contradictory to his argument and he fails to grasp basic junior level engineering competencies required to be a successful programmer.
Anyone can learn to write code. Anyone. What ‘anyone’ can’t do is be a team player, choose the best code for the job, manage the relationships required to obtain any necessary tools, engage in thought leadership, mentoring others, capacity planning for human and system resources, plan ahead enough to vigorously test prior to delivery, manage the administrative red tape bullshit without hurling their machine off a roof top, know who to call at 3am when the stack blows up, know how to communicate and track troubleshooting efforts such that technical and nontechnical professionals can have the information they need to do their jobs effectively in the event of workaround process implementation, work around blockers, coordinate a release, manage versions and code repository, understand infrastructure requirements, security at every single layer and so on.
No, that guy did not have what HE needed to be an effective engineer. So he blamed those outside of himself.
Maybe he had enough talent to correct his self-aggrandizing attitude? I sure as hell wish we could have found out. Firing him for that memo was cowardly in my opinion. It did no one any favors at all. But that’s not because he was right or his citations weren’t bullshit. He wasn’t right and they were bullshit.
Firing him for the memo was bad because it confirmed his main argument — that he wasn’t safe to express his opinion — and if he isn’t, who is?
I ain’t no damsel in distress. Harassment is one thing. This guy didn’t harass any one individual (as far as we know) and he wasn’t 100% incorrect that there are many reasons for the lack of diversity in tech. But he is problem focused, rather than solutions oriented and that along with the fact that he doesn’t understand what skills he needs to grow in a tech career are the only valid reasons for firing him.
He would have shown those things in a million other ways within the next year or so if Google had just handed him the rope. In this way, they have kept all of us stuck because now he has someone(s) other than himself to blame for his ouster.
And that is the sad part. I could give two shits what he thinks of me and my vagina.
-Cyborg
