[virgilp]

I'm Eastern-european, and not fully aware of the US cultural issues. I participated at a company (US) "principal scientists summit", and the issue of women in tech was brought up. As the lady presented the data, and how we're making progress on hiring more women but there's still no equality, I asked the (innocent/legitimate, I thought) question "how are we doing compared to graduation stats". Seemed natural to me to look at that data in order to figure whether we're getting increasingly worse "return on investment" by focusing exclusively on hiring, but it was immediately spun off into me being somewhat sexist for suggesting that "we don't have a women-hiring problem". Which is not what I meant to imply at all! And from there on, there was sensible tension in the air, with some people taking to take my side without making "career-limiting" statements. It's crazy how taboo some subjects are, at least in California...

(it's secondary, but FWIW, I'd debate that the Damore memo contained a lot of truth: yes it contained some truth, but it contained more/deeper falsehoods and wrong conclusions, IMO. So it's a bit unproductive to focus on the "truth" part. OTOH it's horrifically unproductive and wrong to fire someone for expressing a misguided, but not inherently evil/malicious p.o.v.)