Google employee sparks gender equality debate with controversial memo

A note from Google employees has raised controversy after the company claims that biochemical differences are due to absence of women in the top position.

A note from Google employees has raised controversy after the company claims that biochemical differences are due to absence of women in the top position.

A 3,000 word memo written by a male software engineer spread throughout Google and intense debate among Silicon Valley employees was caused.

The 10-page note issued by Gizmo represents an employee's view that women can not reach their highest position in the industry because of "physiological differences" between men and women, not gender discrimination and discrimination.

"For biological reasons, the distribution of male and female preferences and abilities differs partly, and these differences explain why women are not equally present in technology and leadership."

Male opinion has been highly criticized, but Google colleagues have received some support.

This line caused a reaction from Daniel Brown, director of diversity, integrity and governance newly appointed at Google.

The internal e-mail posted by the main board said: "I found that it raises false assumptions about gender, diversity and inclusiveness keeps our values ​​and our cultivated values It is a basic element of culture.

"Google took a strong position on this issue, announced demographic data, and created a company-wide OKR on diversity and inclusiveness, this strong position has caused a strong impact.Culturally difficult to change It is often uncomfortable

I have worked in this industry for a long time and I can tell you that employees have never worked in a company that has so many platforms to express themselves . Since I met a Googler in the company, please continue to tell us your opinion in the future. "

Aristotle Balogh, Google's vice president of engineering criticism, criticized Mr. Noto's note and said that "constraints and harmful assumptions" will not affect corporate culture.

In addition to causing discrimination in the workplace, the Google line caused a dialogue on restrictions on freedom of expression in the workplace.

Discussions on gender equality and the diversity of ideologies in the workplace are increasingly intense over the past few months. The promise is a 10 page internal note written by Google software engineer James Damore. A note called "Google Echo Room" relied on stereotypes of a certain gender, so I made many members of Silicon Valley uneasy. Gender gap technology industry Other Google staff criticized the large number of assumptions, so the memo quickly spread outside the organization.

Small background: Google employee James Damore has posted a note on Google's in-house forum to discuss controversial ideas. The title of the memo is "Google's echo room: the influence that prejudice has on the concept of diversity and inclusiveness". He said: "Google's political prejudice is that freedom is the same as psychological security, but humiliating silence is against psychological security." Therefore, Google fired him because his article "proposed a wrong assumption about gender." This is exactly what he did not do in the memo (Source: how to read damn memos)

Lawyers reported last month about the notorious Google Diversification Memo. This was disseminated in-house, causing a strong global resistance. Google, especially Pikai, states as follows. "Our colleagues should not worry about having to prove that they are not in a memorandum every time they open their mouth at a meeting, not" confident "but" comfortable "," stress tolerance is Low "or" Tension ". "