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Speaker 1: At Google. The Hot New Thing is a memo. It

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Speaker 1: was written by a software engineer at the company, and

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Speaker 1: it blasts Google's efforts to increase the number of women

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Speaker 1: and minorities working there. The memo says women are underrepresented

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Speaker 1: not because of sexism, but because of inherent biological and

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Speaker 1: psychological differences between the genders, and it criticizes Google for

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Speaker 1: creating a quote ideological echo chamber that discriminates against conservative viewpoints.

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Speaker 1: The memo came to light over the weekend and drew

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Speaker 1: a forceful response from Google's new new vice president for diversity,

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Speaker 1: Danielle Brown. She said the memo quote advanced incorrect assumptions

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Speaker 1: about gender. With me to talk about the memo and

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Speaker 1: its implications for Google is Mark Bergen. He is Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: News is reporter covering Google from our San Francisco bureau. Mark.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. What do we know about? What

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Speaker 1: do you what? What do we know about? Who wrote

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Speaker 1: this memo and how it became public? Yeah, so this point,

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Speaker 1: we know it's a it's a it's an engineer or um.

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Speaker 1: I think the origial Port City was a senior engineer

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Speaker 1: from what I from what I can tell on my reporting,

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Speaker 1: it's it's not a very high ranking executive. It's been

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Speaker 1: at the company for not a very long time. Um,

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Speaker 1: this is this memo was made you know, and one

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Speaker 1: of the internal messaging boards at Google. It seemed to

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Speaker 1: pick up a lot of speed this weekend. As you

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Speaker 1: can see some of the outcries from the staff. There

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Speaker 1: are a fair amount of people inside Google who humanly

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Speaker 1: disagreed with the memo and its contents. Um. And it's

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Speaker 1: this is a place where Google a lot do. They

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Speaker 1: have very heated internal discussions, and some of them tend

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Speaker 1: to peter out. There are a lot of employees that

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Speaker 1: tweeted about it publicly, and I think that's how it

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Speaker 1: initially tipped off reporters. Um that. And then eventually the

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Speaker 1: memo became public on Saturday. And what specifically tell us

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Speaker 1: a little more about the content of it, What specifically

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Speaker 1: does it criticize Google for? Right? I mean, the title

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Speaker 1: is the Google's ideological echo chamber. Uh. It makes the

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Speaker 1: point that a lot of the efforts around diversity inclusion,

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Speaker 1: specifically around gender diversity and inclusion enerve like counterproductive to

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Speaker 1: Google as a business and as a culture. And it

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Speaker 1: kind of goes through in a very ten page memo,

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Speaker 1: very lengthy point about how these biases, and the author

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Speaker 1: claims that that Google is a very liberal place and

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Speaker 1: sort of descends. Um. Any type of descending opinion, whether

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Speaker 1: it be conservative or something like that would disagree with

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Speaker 1: the positions on diversity are suppressed, UM and not giving

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Speaker 1: not giving enough attention. Can you give us some sense

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Speaker 1: of the gender numbers at Google? Just how male dominated

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Speaker 1: is the company so overall? And the men as their

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Speaker 1: latest figures men women, um, But the important part is

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Speaker 1: in the tech team, um, the tech employees, it's it's

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Speaker 1: much more heavily skewed. It's men. So the company, like

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Speaker 1: a lot of tech companies, has a very difficult time

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Speaker 1: in changing that ratio, even though they have for years

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Speaker 1: now they've talked about their efforts to improve diversity internally. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just what are some of the steps Google has been taking?

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Speaker 1: How how hard have they been working to try to

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Speaker 1: change those numbers? Right? I mean it's really hard to

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Speaker 1: tell from the out so they don't typically disclose that.

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Speaker 1: Then they've they've started a program called it an unconscious

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Speaker 1: biased training, and that was one of the programs that

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Speaker 1: was called out in the memo. UM. The author said

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Speaker 1: that program is unnecessary and the sort of counterproductive um

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Speaker 1: Google is now facing, you know, comes with a sensitive

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Speaker 1: time for the company. They're they're facing a Department of

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Speaker 1: Labor lawsuit about their the gap in the gender pay.

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Speaker 1: Google has argued that that also it is inaccurate that

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Speaker 1: that women are not paid any differently than men, but

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Speaker 1: they've not been willing to disclose the data to show that.

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Speaker 1: So these are rather politically polarized times that we live in.

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Speaker 1: Is there a risk for Google? Um? This memo characterizes

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Speaker 1: them as being very rigidly liberal. Um. Is there a

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Speaker 1: risk for Google if it comes to be perceived that way?

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Speaker 1: As a writer claims, Yeah, I think so. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I know, the company, like a lot of tech companies,

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Speaker 1: is very sensitive right now. And then the current administration,

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Speaker 1: everyone's sort of worried about the potential to be singled

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Speaker 1: out in one tweet. Um. President Trump has really been

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Speaker 1: willing to go after Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: there's some concern that that that attacks could also affect

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Speaker 1: some antitrust policy. Google has clearly been faced, you know,

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Speaker 1: years and years of anti trust difficulties in Europe. There

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Speaker 1: is there are some some forces in Washington, d C.

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Speaker 1: That are hoping that perhaps and with the new administration,

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Speaker 1: they can bring up some of the other anti trust

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Speaker 1: charges against Google and and the idea that they're the

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Speaker 1: sort of this bastion of liberalism and the conservatives inside

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Speaker 1: the company UM are being alienated is probably something that

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Speaker 1: might UM have some support in in certain corners in

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Speaker 1: d C. And last thing for you, but how about

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Speaker 1: sort of the risk in the other direction, is there

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Speaker 1: is there UM, if I'm what we've learned from the

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Speaker 1: action within Google, from from particular women who work there,

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Speaker 1: is there is a risk that that this sort of

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Speaker 1: memo will actually make it harder for Google to attract

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Speaker 1: women to work at the company. Yeah, we know. We

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Speaker 1: a couple of months ago we reported on this. There

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Speaker 1: was an internal email lists are called yes at Google

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Speaker 1: that was started by employees UM and it was around

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Speaker 1: the same time as a lot of sexual harassment charges

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Speaker 1: at Uber and tech companies. And this whole point was

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Speaker 1: to say these things like this, this harassment UM, these

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Speaker 1: sort of these biases against women and people of color

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Speaker 1: happened at Google. UM and this was supported by HR.

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Speaker 1: At the same time, you get the sense that UM,

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of employees there, and now someone

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Speaker 1: had tweeted over the weekend that if Google isn't take

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Speaker 1: steps to address it, that that she might leave UM.

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Speaker 1: And so we think that that could be an that

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Speaker 1: could be Actually one of the outcomes of this is

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Speaker 1: that the morales, it kind of hurts hiring and recruiting.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna have to leave it there. Thank you, Mark Bergen,

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg News Google reporter talking about that that memo that

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Speaker 1: came to light over the weekend.