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I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity

(medium.com)
791 points 317070 | 2 comments | 14 Aug 17 16:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.603s | source
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msteffen ◴[14 Aug 17 17:36 UTC] No.15010610[source]▶
I worked at Google, and Alan Eustace, Google's most emphatic champion of gender diversity when I worked there, repeatedly emphasized that Google couldn't lower its hiring bar for women candidates, because that would hurt the reputation of women already there

The main forms of gender-diversity outreach that I remember Google engaging in were 1) programs for young girls, to introduce them to programming, 2) programs for women in college, to advocate for their studying computer science, and 3) the grace hopper conference for women who are engineers now. All those seem in line with the author's suggestions.

This article (and the letter last week, and similar rhetoric) really feel like they're attacking a strawman to me. I left a while ago, but have things changed that much?

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1. aoeuasdf1 ◴[14 Aug 17 17:51 UTC] No.15010758[source]▶
Wouldn't it violate US equal-opportunity laws to lower the hiring bar for women?
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2. jasonwatkinspdx ◴[14 Aug 17 18:53 UTC] No.15011437[source]▶
Nope. Affirmative action towards historically marginalized groups is explicitly permitted by the law, and in some instances there's even a duty to do so (for .gov stuff mostly). There are some complexities and details to all this, but generally speaking, affirmative action is legal in the US.