[joshuamorton]

Only one of those 6 suggests an "easier" interviewing path. And it doesn't happen at Google, so I'm still comfortable saying the process is meritocratic.

You're trying to argue that processes to encourage women to join somehow make it easier for them to be hired. Those aren't the same.

[thu2111]

Many of those things have absolutely happened in the past at Google. I was told so directly by recruiters and had direct evidence of it myself e.g. I was one of the interviewers that one day started being allocated only female candidates; confirmed by recruiters to be an attempt to boost the numbers. I learned about the females-go-straight-to-HC policy from recruiters as well. Facebook experimented with much higher hiring bonuses for women for a while but I believe they stopped (this is in the public somewhere).

The unfireable nature of female engineers there was rather well known, at least a couple of years ago. The last I heard on that was from a fairly senior manager who after a couple of whiskeys reported he knew of managers fighting to keep female transfers off their teams. Not due to any innate sexism but because they'd realised that female transfers were far more likely to be troublemakers or poor performers than male transfers, due to HR's desperate attempts to recast unacceptable behaviour as just "not being a good fit for the team" and constantly moving them around. I had one on my team who was constantly lying to her teammates, as well as being a completely incompetent coder. For instance she was mystified by a CL she reviewed one day that contained hexadecimal, something she'd apparently never seen before! Some people left the team specifically to get away from her. But, untouchable because the bosses boss was a feminist who thought this young woman with clear management ambitions was just wonderful. Result: she was rapidly promoted into management where she wanted to be, to the disbelief of her remaining teammates.

Most Googlers were never really aware of these practices. Nonetheless, to believe Google is unbiased requires an incredible suspension of disbelief given the rather extreme publicly stated positions Pichai and the remaining senior management have taken, not to mention the Damore fiasco.

[joshuamorton]

> I learned about the females-go-straight-to-HC policy from recruiters as well

I've heard lots of things from recruiters that were wrong. So much so that I generally advise people I know to check with be before believing anything a recruiter says. But because they lie on purpose, but because they're often misinformed.

This goes for compensation, process, and policy questions where recruiter statements reliably break with policy and practice. So pardon me if I don't find recruiters to be a reliable source for hot corp goss.

> Not due to any innate sexism but because they'd realised that female transfers were far more likely to be troublemakers or poor performers than male transfers, due to HR's desperate attempts to recast unacceptable behaviour

Sounds like innate sexism to me, given that the same thing happens with men. It's really hard to get fired. Ive had to deal with (men) not being fired for ages.

> For instance she was mystified by a CL she reviewed one day that contained hexadecimal, something she'd apparently never seen before!

Depending on the language and background, this sounds reasonable. I wouldn't expect a he java or frontend person to necessarily know hex. So yeah you're making my case for me. Sounds like bias against women.