Diversity debate divides Silicon Valley

SAN FRANCISCO — Opposition to the tech industry's diversity initiatives, thrust into the open when a Google software engineer published an online manifesto over the weekend, reflects a simmering resentment that few have discussed openly — and that puts pressure on tech leaders to address.

On Saturday an unnamed male engineer published "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber," strongly suggesting the company encourage "ideological" rather than gender diversity. The author contends women don't make up 50% of the company's tech and leadership positions because of differences in their preferences and abilities, not sexism. By early Sunday, the memo had gone viral.

The sentiment of the 10-page memo underscores the views of many at tech companies who don't agree with the diversity mandate adopted by their employers. They have argued for years that Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, where brilliance and talent are consistently rewarded above all else.

Those who haven't reaped the same benefits counter the industry's hiring practices preferentially benefit those who are young, white or Asian and male — often to the detriment of women, blacks, Latinos and others.

In response, companies have been at the forefront of introducing “unconscious bias” training in the workplace, and have funded multiple initiatives to encourage young girls and minorities to study coding. Proponents of such measures say they are necessary to bring diversity to the tech industry.

But there have been indications some tech workers resisted efforts to address racism and sexism. In February 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reprimanded the social network's workforce after Black Lives Matters slogans written by employees on the company's walls were defaced and overwritten by "All Lives Matter" after he had told staff those actions were unacceptable.

A recent study of elementary school students show dominant players — in this case, white males — feel threatened when everyone is treated equally. The same applies in the business world, said Columbia Business School Professor Rita McGrath.

"There is almost a knee-jerk reaction: Your company is spending money on diversity, so what am I getting out of it?" she said.

RESISTORS

Nancy Lee, Google's former head of diversity, underscored the deep challenges it faces in converting employees to valuing diversity. She said the company had identified roughly a third of employees who warmly embrace initiatives and a third who oppose it.

"We often talk about how we have the crusaders and the resistors and then there is an entire swath in between that are somewhat indifferent," Lee told USA TODAY in April 2015. Google was trying to bring aboard more women and people of color to reach a "tipping point where we have the critical mass to shift a culture. That's what we are trying to do."

Google an early leader

Silicon Valley's lack of diversity has long been an issue but discussions about it began to rise to the surface in 2014. It was then that Google openly published its diversity figures, breaking ranks with other tech companies that had long argued such revelations would cause them competitive harm.

That tide has since turned and today many tech companies issue their quarterly workforce numbers, hire diversity coordinators and engage in many-pronged efforts to bring more women, African Americans and Hispanics into their ranks.

The push has created a divide among tech workers, some embracing the effort as positive and helpful to creating teams and products for a diverse, global market while others deride it as being a type of reverse discrimination that pushes unqualified candidates into positions they cannot capably fill.

Google's response on Saturday was that it supported its employees' rights to express their opinions, even if the company didn't agree with them.

"Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions," Danielle Brown, Google's newly appointed vice president of diversity, wrote in a memo to employees Saturday.

By Sunday, many in the tech world were weighing in on the statements made by the manifesto's author, and most were not supportive.

One of the strongest came from recently-departed Google engineer Yonatan Zunger, who wrote on Medium that the author was not only clueless about biology but also about how any senior staffer functions in a large company.

By publishing an essay arguing that some large fraction of his colleagues were basically not good enough to do their jobs and were only allowed to stay in them because of political ideas, he created "a textbook hostile workplace environment," wrote Zunger.

"Do you understand that at this point, I could not in good conscience assign anyone to work with you?" he wrote. Had this person been one of his direct reports, he would no longer be working at Google because he could no longer work in teams.

The issue broke over the weekend, perhaps catching Google senior staff off guard. But to deal with it, Nicole Sanchez, CEO of Vaya Consulting, which works with tech companies on diversity, sees only one way forward.

“Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai needs to come out strong and clear on Monday morning saying that diversity is a non-negotiable at Google..”