Google was being already investigated/accused of extreme gender pay discrimination. I'm not sure how anyone could think they'd want to engage in any kind of discussion that could be interpreted as discriminating to women while being under investigation for discriminating women. sigh
Shutting down an honest discussion of something because there is an investigation and it might be revealing is pretty high up there on the immoral scale.
I think your mixing two separate things here. The discussion was shut down not because it "might be revealing". It's plain and simple because they think is more harmful to have the discussion at a point when they're in legal trouble (with the corresponding financial penalty) than the argued loss of honest discussion (whatever exactly that means for you). It's because work is not a frigging politics/social debate club. You go to work to do whatever it is you were hired to do, not to discuss topics that may actually reduce productivity on your diverse work force for feeling discriminated.
I understand there's an inevitable social/political aspect of working together, but is not the focus and if you don't agree with the political views/decisions of a company, and you can't get them (through proper channels, your manager, HR) to change, no one grants you the right to say whatever you want in the work place, especially when what you say is widely considered (by the company) as harmful to their interests.
No. I think you're jumping to conclusions. It only implies they may need to look harder to find equally skilled people in a smaller talent pool (e.g minorities interested in tech). Sure, it'd be somewhat cheaper to not worry about those constraints (if the laws were different), but I think in the grand scheme of things the different in cost is largely irrelevant.
