I have some people at work whose opinions I value highly that I occasionally run ideas and documents by before disseminating things to a wider group. It's very helpful, and has sometimes caught potential damaging misinterpretations before they were spread too widely, allowing me to reword things.
I definitely agree that if he'd simply had a few women he knew and trusted at work read it before he disseminated it widely then this all might have been avoided. If he didn't know any women at work that he trusted with this then that itself is a huge problem.
For what it's worth, he did run the document by others at Google and -- based on what I've read -- they were the ones who spread the document, not he. That's not to say he didn't intend to do it at some point, but that it was through his efforts to get said feedback that the fire started.
> If he didn't know any women at work that he trusted with this then that itself is a huge problem.
Given the fact that he was fired over this, i.e. Google thinks it's very bad, and assuming he had a hunch this was so, is it reasonable to believe he should be able to trust a female coworker with this memo not to file a complaint?
Put more generally: is it reasonable that one should expect one's coworkers to keep silent about a fireable offense?
I definitely agree that if he'd simply had a few women he knew and trusted at work read it before he disseminated it widely then this all might have been avoided. If he didn't know any women at work that he trusted with this then that itself is a huge problem.