It's hard to say exactly how much it means, but it's at least interesting to note that the people that "left the group" are all women and the people added to the group are all men.
More relevantly, the people who left were all product people, and those who stayed were operations. This is hardly surprising given that Page is known as a product guy.
I noticed the same thing, though:
maps and local services, public affairs, and business
operations sound like departments best lead one on one.
I would assume the departments in the inner circle have more need for coordination and direct leadership.
It's almost like there was a big presentation, and all of these people were up on stage, and there was just one woman. Then it's almost like someone in the crowd asked about the ratio situation, and to "answer", the CEO threw the question at the one woman. And then, it's like the fire of a thousand suns flashed in her eyes.
Oh, wait, it's not just like that. It is that, because it happened.
I find this a bit unfair - taking two data points to make a statement about gender discrimination at Google.
Here's another datapoint - Google recently hired Margo Georgiadis, a female, to the 2nd highest position in Sales - a historically male function. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/24/margo-georgiadis-gr...)
The top position is taken by Nikesh who is the highest paid executive at Google. So Margo is definitely one of the highest paid VPs at Google.
How important is this position? Well, the last person, Dennis Woodside, now handles Motorola. And the guy before him became the CEO of AOL. Also, Margo is responsible for majority of revenue at Google.
This doesn't prove anything but I just wanted to add another data point to the discussion.
All of the "full birds" were up on stage, and it was a bunch of guys, just like the article reflects. Someone asked the question, and the brand new CEO threw the question to the (token?) female.
I swear her eyes almost glowed like one of those Stargate aliens for a moment before she took a breath and gave what must have been a well-rehearsed non-inflammatory answer.
This was a pretty big event: rolling out the new crew. A few thousand people saw it. Anyone else want to comment to back me up?
Yes, I just noticed the same thing. Could be coincidence, but I think having some diversity would be helpful as the remaining L team seems to be all male.
But what about the scientific evidence that the performance of mixed-gender groups is higher than homogeneous groups of either gender? Funny thing, scientific evidence...
If they controlled for it, the results from the mixed-gender groups should be more applicable assuming an normal distribution of attractiveness. That doesn't run contradictory to the hypothesis that a non-normal distribution (that is, skewed on the attractive side) can hurt said performance.
I think you're getting downvoted because it is a controversial idea. I don't think it's off-topic though. There are some taboo problems that happen in a small team of people who spend a lot of time together.
