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I know of at least 5 multi-billion dollar companies where senior executives came out today saying "We agree with Google's actions and if you side with the guy who wrote that memo, you don't belong here.". Granted I'm just one engineer among companies with thousands but that's not the kind of environment I wanted to work in. The crux of the thing isn't the content of the memo; but that a poorly written essay questioning corporate policy is alarming if it can lead to the ending of your career. Assume the most charitable interpretation of his writing and that all of the sources he cited check out as good science: would that have mattered? At my company it was made clear, in no uncertain terms, that the validity of his writing was immaterial, company policy is to be diverse and anything that gets in the way of that goal is not acceptable. If you assume the least charitable interpretation; that the writing was intended as bigotry and that all of the citations are bunk, the situation doesn't change because the message from senior management is "our hiring policies do not depend on evidence." The reaction from executives at the companies I know of has made my close friends hesitant to address issues of bigoty or bias at all. "Just shut up and keep vesting because it's not worth the risk." This could be me mis-interpreting an off-the-cuff or hurried statement or a person faltering in their communication on a sensitive topic but I'm not willing to risk asking for clarification. I also think that if you can be in senior management at a very large publicly traded company you're probably good at saying what you mean when communicating policy. The attitude bothers me because it breeds a culture of secrecy and mistrust. People aren't going to change their views just because the The <VP of Whatever> says "this doesn't apply here", they'll just bury their feelings and act on them in secret. This is a problem for me because I need my team to trust that they can raise their concerns about corporate policy or the work they do without fear of reprisal; it hampers my ability to do my job if they don't feel that way. It's also difficult for me to square these statements of executives with some of the rhetoric (which I do believe) like "we hire the best people we can find" and "we want you to be yourself at work" with the statements like "the correctness of our policy does not depend on the evidence to support it" or "there are certain ideas which if you are suspected of holding will end your career here (and elsewhere too)." Even if this claim applies only to hiring policy, it will make people secretive about other aspects of their job: can they doubt my technology or design choices? Can they question the value of a project that a PM wants to take on? If they think their co-workers are slacking can they feel comfortable raising it? These are the kinds of questions I was facing in 1:1 meetings today and I expect more throughout the week. I'm curious if there are any other current/former Googlers (or any other large publicly traded software company) here and how they're seeing things play out. I went out for beer with some friends: co-workers and former colleagues, all of us current or former employees of "top-20" software companies and from my circle it sounds like the response is making waves throughout the industry. If you are, hit me up in private—I'm curious how the people in your office/team are thinking. God knows I won't dare open my mouth about this anywhere near the office: that's career suicide. It's not really on the same scale when we're talking about some of these large publicly traded companies. I have a pretty good base salary for a senior engineer but not enough to have "fuck you money": low-6-figures, comparable to what I'd earn as a doctor. If over the next 4 years the company share price performs as well as it did over the last 4 then my total compensation will be about 2.7 million/4 years assuming I cash out every stock grant immediately. That's a high 6-figure total annual compensation and I'm "just some dude", a cog-in-the machine. Whether or not ≥100% year-over-year stock price growth is in the cards is another question, but when you're talking about these sorts of jobs it's important to realize that base salary isn't necessarily the interesting part of compensation plan. Even with a flat share price, my current stock compensation package is worth more than a million over the next 4 years and then salary and perks on top of that. It's easy enough to match the salary component of a career at 'GAFA', the stock portion is much harder, especially because many times you're getting options from a company pre-IPO. $250k/year in Uber options isn't going to buy me a new car because I can't exercise them and it may be years before I can.

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