Google employees are up in arms after a senior engineer at the company penned an anti-diversity manifesto that has spread through the company like wildfire.
The manifesto apparently argued that Google should halt initiatives aimed at increasing gender and racial diversity within the company and instead focus on "ideological diversity," according to a report by Vice's Motherboard, which first reported the news late on Friday. The document also reportedly argued that biological difference between men and women are responsible for the underrepresentation of women in the tech industry.
News of the document has sparked widespread outrage on the internet, including by several Google employees who took to Twitter to denounce it.
The controversy comes at a time when Silicon Valley's treatment of women has been in the spotlight, following a string of allegations of harassment and discrimination at large companies such as Uber and at several high-profile venture capital firms. Google is also embroiled in a legal dispute with the Department of Labor, which has accused Google of "systemic compensation disparities" between men and women.
The Motherboard report did not identify the author of the controversial document but said that it was written by a senior software engineer and shared on an internal Google mailing list.
Google did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
You can read the full Motherboard article here.
Get the latest Google stock price here.
If HR does nothing in this case, I will consider leaving this company for real for the first time in five years.
- Jaana B. Dogan 👀 (@rakyll) August 4, 2017The doc was a disaster from a truly bad place. Pure toxicity. Be assured we are all with you (and feeling the same).
- Louis Gray (@louisgray) August 4, 2017