Isn't it enough just to have a sausage festival with a nice looking secretary? Old school corporatism prevails.

Nerds like the idea of having someone to pound into, or play "who would you do @ work" with before they go to sleep. (a la Michael Scott from The Office and you)

25% women in engineering? That's awesome. Is it even possible?

And overall, I think pussy just motivates people. It's like a phantom reward. Men are more polite around woman with the false pretense of sex later that rarely happens. Personally, I'm above that and accept the patriarchal society.

Hell, terrorists use it [pussy] as an excuse to bomb each other in the middle east. Island of 50 virgins and a the finest wine.

On that end, I personally find woman annoying. Men that surround these woman make my teeth grit. Get back to work. I want one woman, just for myself. Not much to ask. A techy? Trust me, you are supposed to be an interlocking duo, she should love you for your techness. You can love her for keeping her body a temple and interest in culinary arts. Woman should keep their bodies sculpted and perfect, their hobbies don't even matter. True woman are passive and should like whatever you show them.

@Bornean: Have you ordered your blow up doll yet or are you still saving up?

@clevernamehere: Don't put the pussy on the pedestal, brah. Pussy down, pussy down. Bitches is just good for cleaning n shit.

@Dweezil: Yes, obviously actually LIKING women and seeing them as worthwhile for things beyond cleaning is putting them on a pedestal.

What's the shipping status on your mail blow up doll?

Yay Marissa and Google!
My sister-in-law codes at NASA, and she says the culture there is really friendly to women in tech and engineering. As for me, I own a one-woman software company and find that my own 100% female corporate culture is very well-balanced.

@Bornean: As a female IT professional, I can tell you that pussy doesn't motivate me. So, is the "sausage festival" supposed to be my motivation? Hehehehe --uh, no. I'll just stick with job satisfaction, positive reviews, and great pay.

good luck hitting 25%. thanks to the stupidity and blatant (or underlying) sexism surrounding any "where are the women programmers?" discussions - evidenced already by your comments about body types, cooking, and the endless quest for males to get a piece of ass - shallow attitudes will continue to chase the smartest of the fairer sex out of this industry. grow up.

@Bornean: it's probably the women who find you annoying. good luck with that, jackass.

@Dweezil: they kept you away from the electric pencil sharpeners in school, didn't they?

@MichelleMyBelle: But you are an object.

I take that back. That was just pathetic.

it's not even touching 15 percent...they're full of shit.

@ResearchZilla: I don't know about you, but I'm touching 15% of the female employees of Google every Friday and Saturday night at Zeitgeist.

Smell the glove, ladies.

Not that having women in a company is bad, but it's pointless to talk about how 25% female software developers is good for a company when said company doesn't even sell software.

@clevernamehere: You know, I really went beyond blatant and moved into tacky, trying and painfully unfunny--and you still couldn't see the sarcasm. I don't know if that says something about you or something about me

@Bornean: Thanks and no problem. I understand it's a free exchange of opinions.

@Dweezil: You posted what a lot of guys post seriously. You'd have to get way more sarcastic than that for it to be obvious, maybe talking about your blow-up doll's skill with a broom and how she fufills you as a man. :)

Am I the only one who got the joke? It's nice to know I'm only the second-most-offensive person here.

@MichelleMyBelle: Being female doesn't get you off the hook. Will no-one think of the lesbians! O, the humanity!

@westphalia: This is what angers me about the computer world. If you design and structure programs (computer science degree, USUALLY..) they like to tag the words "Software Engineer" on their resume. Because apparently being an Engineer these days doesn't require having a BEng. I'm in school for getting a BEng, and there are no where CLOSE to 25% females in the classes I'm in. I'm sure that this number is a bit higher for Computer Science though. (There's about 10% females in my classes that I've counted. In for Mechanical Engineering.)

On that note. Call them what they are, developers! Computer Science majors! Whatever.

@adj: So, the letters after your name are what matters, not whether or not you have and/or can do the job? Credentialism is so 20th Century, don't you think?

Doesn't Wozniak have a M.Edu?

maybe they should send actual tech recruiters to, say, Girl Geek dinners, as opposed to PR flacks spouting their support

I'm intrigued by this but a little skeptical.

My office is 99% female but the boss is a dude.

25% means very little if most of the women are in entry level positions.

Good for google for at least trying, I guess.

@adj: What if they aren't developers? I actually am a software engineer - at least it says so on my masters degree. Sometimes I get called developer, engineer, systems analyst or even dickhead. As long as they spell my name right on my paycheck, I don't really care.

Okay, I'll say it. Google must have to drastically lower their standards for 1/4 of its engineers to be women. For socio-cultural reasons alone, smart women shy away from computer science. The ones that are left are often even more lacking language skills than the boys, and write laughably bad code.

(A colleague of mine wrote a number-to-text conversion function that was a tangled tree of a dozen if/elses and printfs.)

Maybe Google needs to take some recruiting advice from Melissa. That seems easier.

@ifstone: That's preposterous. Just take a look at Jessica Mah, Leah Culver and that chick who was on RocketBoom!

@ifstone: according to the NSF, women get 25% of the CS bachelors degrees these days. Try again.

@Jayne: Okay. That proportion has fallen from 37% in 1985.
[www.nsf.gov]

At the risk of pulling a Larry Summers, it'd be interesting to know more about the 25% and where they end up working. I wish there were more good women software engineers -- one of the worst things about working in this field is that it's dominated by male nerds.

Is google looking to be the first company where quotas aren't a predecessor to failure?

Meritocracy what?

Women make up the solid majority of sole proprietors and company founders. They do have a much harder time getting funding for expansion, though, so what looks like a good workaround all too often simply turns into yet another glass ceiling.

@ifstone: I know it's declined. Given that, it still stands that the CS-degree-holding workforce is at least 25% women.

So Google shouldn't have too much trouble finding enough competent women. Unless you're insinuating that women are inherently shittier programmers because they are too distracted thinking about boys and shopping or something.

What if the boys do their 20% projects in drag?

You guys do realize WHY Google wants 25% of their engineers to be women, right? It's the same reason why Google spends so much money on their food and other on-site amenities--it's to keep their engineers AT work. Why leave work to go bars to pick up women when you can do it RIGHT in your office?

It's pretty clever, really. From what I've heard, Google tends to hire attractive women.

@ifstone: I'll have you know that I'm a very competent female software engineer (from a top 10 CS program, and cute to boot), AND I got turned down from Google a few years back. So your comment is full of BS.