> The PR backlash is going to be gigantic.

The Google thing was gigantic. This is a blip.

The Google thing is a medium splash in a big pond. This is a small splash, but arguably in a much smaller and more concentrated pond. Within the community of red teams and DEFCON regulars I wouldn't be surprised if this is much better known than the (now) ex Googler is within the more general tech community.

What Google thing?

An internal memo with astonishingly poor typography was leaked. Since Google sell a word processor and are a font vendor this made them look bad. So he was fired.

(I'm only half joking. People don't talk about how poor the layout of that document was, but it was my first and lasting impression)

Surely there is more context to that story.

It's unbelievable that it was only the memo. And quite likely just the last straw.

I can easily imagine someone that produces poor quality once publically probably did so many times privately and likely more of a symptom of underlying inadequacy than the actual reason for firing.

But you know, headlines..

And yes, have no previous experience or knowledge about this so sorry if I'm armchairing a bit.

No, it was just the memo.

Larry Summers (a leading economist with often controversial opinions) got fired from his position as the president of harvard for effectively making the same point [1] except, you know, well argued unlike in the Google manifesto.

If Larry Summers gets fired for that, a random engineer is definitely getting the boot.

[1] http://www.harvard.edu/president/speeches/summers_2005/nber....

Honestly, relative to the usual discussions on the topic (including discussions about the Google memo), the memo was refreshingly well-argued, coherent and polite.

That's just like, your opinion man.

Everyone agrees it was polite, but well-argued and coherent is where not everyone does agree.

I've seen people with advanced degrees host debates where they legitimately advocated creationism as the truth against evolutionary biologists with equally advanced degrees. They were polite, and their supporters would say well-argued and coherent. But anyone who knows anything about the topic would see that the creationists weren't actually adding to the discussion or making strong points at all. Those creationist debates are always unsatisfying and exhausting to listen to, and after a while, that schtick becomes old and non-creationists stop engaging because it's just boring. But creationists will attend and be excited every time because having a debate against a real scientist legitimizes them.

That's how this memo thing felt. Nothing new was added to the discussion (at least not to those of us who have had this discussion before) and it just seemed like an opportunity that some less savory folks jumped on to promote some out-dated views (and more importantly, for mainstream media to jump on to paint all of tech as a place where those views are the norm. That story sells despite how wrong it is).

FWIW, I do hate impoliteness though. I understand why people felt defensive for the author after watching the internet freak the hell out (in rude or dismissive ways) about the memo which was not impolite in itself.

Well yes, that's my opinion :). I found the memo coherent, in the sense that it was well-structured and followed consistent reasoning, and well-argued, in the sense that it linked to supporting research and reasoned mostly correctly from it. It doesn't mean everything there was 100% correct, but almost no one is; it still was a quality entry to the intellectual debate.

At the risk of perpetuating the disagreement, IMO if anything is similar to the creationinst debaters, it's the voices against the memo.

Going through the few recent HN discussions on the topic, I found that on the one side, you had people (including an actual scientist in the domain) telling that the memo basically got the science (even if not ultimate conclusions) right, as supported by _even more_ research people linked to, vs. the other side saying he presents "outdated" views of "biological determinism", etc., with no counter to the research cited by the memo itself (not to mention others) - just unsubstantiated accusations and dismissals.

More than 5 doctors confirmed the memo was consistent with science and his text referenced appropriate sources, as common with any paper. It's incredible that non-medical people can override science with their belief. It's Galileo all over again, fired because one shall not contradict [place godly entity here].

The paper went much further than presenting a summary of mashed up research from a variety of fields that investigate sex & gender variations. For that, all you need is some reprints of Nature and Scientific American.

Instead it wanted to connect that research to a) company policy and b) American-specific political divides. And to do that required a battery of assumptions regarding intention, merit, aptitude, worth, values.

That's where the wheels came off and everyone started projecting their own ideological interpretations, and you've been arguing past each other ever since.

The memo also put forth a position that women were, on average, biologically inferior to men at engineering roles.

In the off chance you're not making a point/being funny, they're most likely referring to the diversity manifesto

Sorry, I thought it was a vulnerability/technique impacting Google services that dropped at the convention. Now I get the connection was being made to widely reported staff behavior.