We tend to think of Google as a cheerfully smiling monolith, an integrated, synergistic team of people working in harmony to offer up better search results, faster internet, and a constant bounty of private data to hurl into its all-consuming, ever-hungry maw. But a crack appeared in the tech giant’s doodle-perfect facade yesterday, after a number of employees began tweeting their anger at a 10-page document that’s gone “internally viral” at the notoriously closed-mouthed company. Reportedly written by a senior engineer, the doc expresses the idea that “ideological diversity”—that is, being nice to political conservatives—is more important than racial or sexual diversity in the company’s make-up.
Write a doc about how inferior women are, then try to be a hero by offering help to save the *vulnerable* 🤢🤢🤢 Still shaking in anger.
— Jaana B. Dogan 👀 (@rakyll) August 4, 2017
If HR does nothing in this case, I will consider leaving this company for real for the first time in five years.
— Jaana B. Dogan 👀 (@rakyll) August 4, 2017
This is per Motherboard, which spoke to a Google employee who described the manifesto in detail on conditions of anonymity. (Google’s restrictive NDAs mean we’re unlikely to see the document itself any time soon.) Among the ideas it attempts to circulate:
- The representation gap in software engineering has its roots in biological differences between men and women, and not, say, the overwhelming bro-ness of Silicon Valley.
- The company should end its programs designed to encourage members of minorities and underrepresented groups from joining the company, because it’s “lowering the bar.”
- Google should have a more “open” environment, in which conservatives can, say, publish anti-diversity screeds without everybody yelling at them for being bigots.
According to Motherboard’s sources, most of the company’s employees were outraged by the memo (although there were also those who expressed support). Google is currently being investigated by the Department of Labor for an alleged systemic wage gap between its male and female employees, a story that broke amid wider concerns—like the recent Uber scandals—about sexual representation among Silicon Valley techies.
UPDATE: Gizmodo has managed to get a copy of the document, and it is, indeed, a doozy, including calls to rally against Google’s “politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence,” the opening of training and mentoring programs designed to help women and minorities to all employees, and a call to “de-emphasize empathy.” You can read the whole thing right here.
[Note: Gizmodo, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]