Regarding the Google Document:
I will admit upfront that I have not read it, although I've seen some news reports about it. It seems like a lot of news reports go all-in on telling the story that the guy is a nasty misogynist. I haven't read the right-wing version of the story (mostly because I don't trust the right-wing news - because I see them as spin-doctors and cavemen). But, it seems like some news sources, quote the document and it sounds like the guy is actually quite mild in what it says.
I don't really trust Keith's summary of the situation - and I'm guessing that he's only heard the left-wing news version of events, so I don't begrudge him for making a poor summary of the document.
For example, here's Philip DeFranco's summary of the situation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xczeLAUkOE
I've also read elsewhere that scientists in the field say that his claims in the paper pretty much mirror the scientific community's current position on gender differences.
The Google Memo: Four Scientists Respond - Quillette
Example: Debra W Soh (Debra W Soh is a Toronto based science writer who has a PhD in sexual neuroscience from the University of York.) She says: "As a woman who’s worked in academia and within STEM, I didn’t find the memo offensive or sexist in the least. I found it to be a well thought out document, asking for greater tolerance for differences in opinion, and treating people as individuals instead of based on group membership. Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men—when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences—are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you’d be laughed at...."
From that point of view, I can't help but think that the left is trying to blow this up into a story because: controversy sells and because there are people on the left who hold very strong beliefs on this subject, and even though those people disagree with scientists in the field, they are trying to push their beliefs onto society for political reasons. Basically, they get triggered and accuse people of things of things they didn't do. (By the way, I was recently listening to the Risk podcast, and the host - a very progressive gay man - mentioned that he has listeners who write him and tell him that he's a bigot and racist and call him all kinds of names that he clearly doesn't deserve, because they got triggered by something he said or did or some story he had on his podcast. Those people are out there.)
> 2. When he explains why women aren't suited for software engineering because they are social, software engineering is a group process. You have thousands of engineers working together in the same codebase. You need to communicate and work together. It isn't lone rangers.
By in large, software developers are working alone most of the time. Whenever people talk about how software development involves a lot of talking, I always kind of laugh and wonder if people making that claim have ever written software. I write software. I spend 90% of my time working alone. This has been consistent throughout my career. That isn't to say that I don't work in a team. I do. But, conversations with the team are a small fraction of the time that I actually spend at work. Why do you think software developers have a reputation for being socially awkward? It's because developers are spending most of their working hours working on problems by themselves.