I would hate to be a minority or woman in Silicon Valley--even if you're qualified, many of your colleagues would presume you "don't deserve" to be there (see the James Damore saga).
(Posting from Throw Away to not dox my regular account.)
I used to work for AMD some years ago[1]. At that time, there was no "woke" culture there. There was no discrimination that I could see. No one made a fuss about someone being from a minority and there were multiple people, not of the same gender, in my reporting hierarchy. No one ever spoke about that and we were busy with very interesting technical problems. So, if she were the CEO at the time when I was working for them, I'd probably have always regarded her with immense respect and it wouldn't even occur to me to bring gender into it.
1: Based on an opinion and experience from a few years ago, I'd have happily recommended them as a good employer. I do not know how it is now (because I haven't stayed in touch with the folks from there).
Have you read the original memo with the citations intact? Gizmodo published an edited version. I would agree that the memo reads like a series of bigoted conjectures if you read the edited version.
The researchers who study the fields he's referencing agree with most everything he said. Hell, a few of them even gave interviews saying he was about, "90% correct".
He was trying to help, and if Google had taken it to heart instead of getting butthurt, they could have used the useful bits and discarded the inaccuracies.
