7 Key Points on that Google (Anti-) Diversity Memo

By now, probably everyone in Silicon Valley has seen at least some coverage of the memo written at Google by now-former employee James Damore. I’ve found myself expressing the same few key points over and over in the last 48 hours, and I’ve assembled them here in the hope that other people find them useful. This is not how I tend to use LinkedIn -- aka promoting corporate blog posts I write -- so I’ll add this is my personal point of view, separate from those of my employer:

1. Of course he was fired. Reasons: A. Any woman or minority assigned to work with him has a legit HR complaint for a hostile work environment. B. A huge number of cis white men assigned to work with him will refuse because he's clearly a schmuck who thinks empathy is a bad thing. C. Creating an *intentional* PR nightmare for your company will usually get you fired even on its own.
2. I've read, way more times than I expected, that he's being misconstrued, and he actually doesn’t think women and minorities are worse at their jobs and can't be good engineers. However, that's HIS OWN FAULT. He wrote a rambling, borderline incoherent, 10 page rant of a screed of a memo. Clear, concise, empathetic writing is critical for his job, and for any white collar job today -- if the author would claim those attributes are "feminine” (in his binary system) and "not important to software engineering", he's wrong.
3. We are well past the world of individual jack of all trade developers who do everything from UX to PM to front and back end coding. The real world demands collaboration and teamwork. However, if that was not true (let's say for a solo mobile app developer) then the real world takes understanding how other people think, what other people care about, etc, in order to create usable software (or create anything!). These are all skills this memo shows he lacks.
4. Everyone has a responsibility to help bring the change we want to see into the world. Too often, women and minorities in the tech industry (and generally!) are left on their to speak up for themselves and defend their rights to exist in the industry and space. Their voices are critically important in these conversations. However, I believe those of us who are a part of the majority of an industry that is straight white men have an obligation to use the power that brings to create opportunities for everyone to thrive. Want more on this point? Check out this or this.
5. This isn't going to go away as a topic. The President of the United States, Breitbart, and other smaller corners of the internet will beat this drum about how terribly oppressed Christians, men, straight people, and white people are. They're wrong, and it's important to speak up and make your voice be heard, especially if you have a lot of privilege already.
6. Finally, if you haven't already read it, read this essay https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788 . I agree with it nearly 100%.
7. I debated posting this on LinkedIn or not, but I realized that per a few of my other points, I wanted to share my voice on this topic, and I want to work for companies and people who care about this issue.