Ask a Female Engineer: Thoughts on the Google Memo
As a longtime female engineer at fintech startups, there was absolutely nothing new in Damore&#x27;s memo.  The only thing that gave these tired arguments any cachet at all was Google&#x27;s name.<p>And I really wish Google hadn&#x27;t fired Damore.  Special projects exists?!<p>For years I have worked with and continue to work with guys who think just like this.  In fact, thanks to Twitter, I now know all of my followers who also follow Damore.  Thanks for that?<p>When I interview you and ask you a technical question, you don&#x27;t meet my eyes and then you answer the guy sitting next to me.  When I present my own ideas in a group, you ignore them; fine, I&#x27;ll pregame males colleages and let them present my ideas instead.  If I brainstorm as part of the group, you think I&#x27;m asking you to explain basic programming concepts to me.  You probably think I&#x27;m not that smart.  And that&#x27;s OK.  Good news: getting things done requires multiple skills.  One of mine is overtaking you from behind.<p>Nobody ever thinks of promoting me first.  Whatever I get, I work twice as hard and twice as long for it as you did.  The existence of a female networking group does not represent an unfair advantage: it represents barely any advantage at all, on the basis of the ones I&#x27;ve attended.  And anyway, I don&#x27;t have time for that, I&#x27;m trying to figure out what&#x27;s caused the unexplained performance reversion over the past two days.<p>Whether you think I am a diversity candidate or not, I am here to code.  That is all.  Statistically speaking, biology does give me one edge: longer life span.  I&#x27;ll imagine I will still be here doing just that long after everyone else has forgot James Damore exists.  ;)