On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
I read the memo, and compared to the stuff I read from the real &quot;deplorables&quot; (on 4chan, The_Donald, etc.), it was pretty tame.<p>Yes, many of his ideas are backwards and unjustified. At the same time, many of his arguments were perfectly sane (e.g. silencing all dissenting opinions leads to an increasingly toxic and divided culture). If you want people like him to actually change their minds, you have to be willing to hear them out first. You can&#x27;t show someone where they went wrong if they&#x27;re too scared to tell you what they think in the first place.<p>Sexism in the workplace clearly exists. We&#x27;ve seen it manifest too many times for any rational person to deny it. At the same time, many of the initiatives that SV companies pursue to combat sexism are treating the symptoms rather than the cause. Googlers should try to make sure that they are consciously fighting their unconscious biases when hiring, but changing your hiring practices isn&#x27;t going to eradicate sexism. Many of these diversity &quot;action-plans&quot; are more effective at improving a company&#x27;s PR than they are at actually combating sex-related discrepancies. They become self-serving, even though their goal is noble. The author of the memo was <i>trying</i> to get at that, but that message was lost due to his problematic views on biological determinism, among other things.