I don’t agree with all of the manifesto author’s assertions, many of which were left vague and invited assumptions of the worst intentions. However the manner in which you (Yonatan) glossed over or otherwise generalized some of these points had me expecting a silly alt-right rant about gender inferiority. I then went back and read the manifesto, and found instead that most of it was a fairly common critique of forced diversity and a specific critique of Google’s unwillingness to entertain a full spectrum of views on the topic. Let me say that as an engineer I can easily believe a company like Google might let political ideology stifle or (even passively) suppress dissenting viewpoints on the topic of diversity just as easily as an old-white-guy Wall Street firm might make it clear how uninterested it is in hearing about progressive ideas or concerns about lack of diversity in the workforce. And that’s coming from someone who is socially liberal in the traditional sense.
The author’s meandering into genetics was naturally uncomfortable… it’s a slippery slope ripe for misinterpretation. But after one reading I don’t recall seeing him say or even strongly imply that women were genetically inferior in terms of coding or engineering. More effort was spent opining about how to maximize the efficiency of different gender proclivities and strengths. What’s undeniable is that there are fewer girl geeks coming up through the ranks, even though there’s clearly more than ever. *Maybe it’s entirely cultural*, maybe it’s a combination of things… but 1) the reason is very likely not due to bias at the academic or professional level, and 2) overcompensating for this at the professional level doesn’t fix the problem… and redefining technology roles for reasons OTHER than the benefit of the corporation/culture/employees/product should be somewhat suspect.
I also think you misread (or improperly emphasized) the passage on empathy… you took it to be a call for the removal of emotional engagement (the human element) from engineering, while it looks to me as though the author was speaking about removing emotion from the diversity conversation as a whole. In other words, remove some of the emotion, the horror, the dramatic effect… and let’s deal more with the facts. You brought up some interesting points about the value of female engineers which actually highlights the disparity in traits between genders, such that it added to product development. You’ve arrived at a conclusion that the traits women have been “socialized” to be better at result in better engineers, not a definitive conclusion certainly… but right or wrong, that’s at least a discussion worth having, not a discussion that results in recrimination. Every decision or step or program or initiative or ideological perspective that places diversity above other considerations should automatically and necessarily come with a series of questions and challenges: Why? How does this benefit the product? How does this benefit the corporate culture? How does this potentially impact the workforce or the product in a negative way? What other factors do we need to take into account, and why?
If you can use reason and logic to provide rational and fact-supported answers to those questions, without an over-reliance on empathy, great! I don’t know if that’s the kind of corporate culture the author was hoping to achieve at Google, but it ought to be. And given the backlash, it doesn’t look like we’re seeing it.