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

Some of the reasoning in this post is very weak.

It's not very long, and its kernel is an anecdote about how her son is interested in programming and her daughter in photoshop. My daughter is also more interested in art than my son (who is more interested in video games). Both would make exceptional programmers, and both have a latent interest. Both are setting a course for STEM careers, but, like all 18 and 16 year olds --- let alone 9 and 7 year olds --- neither has any clue what they're really going to end up doing.

The piece culminates in a recommendation that we focus our diversity efforts on college admissions and earlier stages in the pipeline. But that's a cop-out. We should work on all stages of the pipeline. It's unsurprising that a Google engineer would believe that gender balance can't be addressed without fixing the college pipeline, but the fact is that virtually none of the software engineering we do in the industry --- very much including most of the work done at Google --- requires a college degree in the first place.

Most importantly, though, the only contribution this post makes to the discussion is to add "I'm a woman and I agree with one side of the debate" to the mix. Everything in it is a restatement of an argument that has been made, forcefully and loudly, already. Frankly: who cares?

Edit: I added "some of the" to the beginning of the comment, not because I believe that, but because I concede that there are arguments in the post that can't be dispatched with a single paragraph in a message board comment (through clearly there are some that can.)

Riiigght... It takes years to become decent, and almost a decade to become 'really good'. Most junior engineers (first year off the school), or interns are a net negative for the first year. Including the folks that just went to hacker/training type of programs.

Hence most startups avoid them, and only large companies have the means to absorb them in large numbers. The only good right after school engineers I have worked with, had been the types that had started coding at 15. Some of them didn't even go to college, but had at least 5-8 years of practical experience before getting to the point on being hirable to the big cos...

On one hand you are right that CS degree is not required, on the other hand your argument just ignores the fact that it takes years to become decent and at least 5 to 10 years of practice to become really good. Google (and any other large company) is a business at the end of the day.

I dont think this is true. There's a reason fresh engineers are paid so much, they are almost immediately valuable.