• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, August 7, 2017

Google took to Twitter with a tweet to celebrate the 26th birthday of the very first published website, but on Sunday Margaret Wallace, Playmatics.com cofounder, found it an opportunity to respond with the following: "qualified women i know apply for positions w/@google all the time. they never hear back from you. why? oh, well, i guess we know why now."

Wallace's comment had little to do with celebrating the anniversary of the first published website. She found the public forum the perfect opportunity to respond to a Google software engineer’s 10-page letter against the company's diversity initiatives. The document, initially published on the company's private mailing list, shared the personal opinion of one senior software engineer. Then it went viral.  

The document called for replacing Google's diversity initiatives with policies that encourage "ideological diversity." The male who wrote the opinion piece, titled Google's Ideological Echo Chamber, argues that women are underrepresented in tech not because they face workplace bias and discrimination, but because of inherent psychological differences between men and women.

Wallace isn't the only one who disagrees with the Google engineer. Yonatan Zunger, a former engineer on Privacy at Google, published a post on Medium that "despite speaking very authoritatively, the author does not appear to understand gender; perhaps more interestingly, the author does not appear to understand engineering; and most seriously, the author does not appear to understand the consequences of what he wrote, either for others or himself."

Danielle Brown, Google's new hire -- VP of diversity, integrity and governance -- responded to the engineer's document in an internal email to employees. She refused to link to the document in her memo because "it's not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages."

And while she dismissed the context by explaining that she "found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender," Brown wrote that diversity and inclusion are critical to the success of Google. She believes that part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views -- including different political views -- feel safe sharing their opinions.

The statement published in full goes on to say: "Google has taken a strong stand on this issue, by releasing its demographic data and creating a company wide OKR on diversity and inclusion. Strong stands elicit strong reactions. Changing a culture is hard, and it's often uncomfortable. But I firmly believe Google is doing the right thing, and that's why I took this job."

Brown, who came to Google in June 2017, worked at Intel since August 2009. She led Intel's diversity group as VP, HR and chief diversity and inclusion officer and chief of staff to the CEO.

The new hire and memo written by the male software engineer come as Google battles a wage discrimination investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor. The department accused Google of "extreme gender pay discrimination" for women in male comparable roles.