I read it. I have addressed his points in several posts in this thread. He makes some lip service about being a progressive liberal, then talks about "left" and "right" politics, which is unrelated to organizational culture--anyone who took a basic organizational behavior class would know this. This is a very important point as it sets up the rest of the memo as something to be filtered through a political lens. This is very stupid for a lot of reasons, most notably because politics are very polarizing at the moment. Especially if he is correct and Google hires a lot of political liberals (again, political culture does not translate to organizational culture. Got to hammer that in). Might as well walk into a group of fundamentalist Christians and spit on a bible.
He then transitions into a discussion of the gender gap, which again is not an issue that should be considered "left" or "right". There's not even a cursory discussion of bias as it may relate to the gap. There are several studies that indicate that the gap can not be wholly explained away by non-bias reasons so already at this point in the document he's implied two things: 1. He says he leans left but the tone of the documents says he actually lean right, which most liberals immediately pick up on (and right-wing readers dismiss as it assimilates into their worldview), and 2. he thinks that there is no bias in hiring.
At this point he goes into a "discussion" where he makes a bunch of claims about the differences between men and women as fact. Again, if you're on the right you think nothing of this because the right takes these differences as true, most conservatives think men and women are in fact very different and most of these differences are due to biology. This is very antagonistic to liberal POV, many of whom feel that biological differences are relatively minor and most differences exist due to gender socialization which begins at an early age ("girls are told to like the color pink because it's girly" etc). This is in fact a very inflammatory position to take. The author admits as much further in the memo.
Then the memo makes some breadcrumb arguments about how many differences may be small between the genders, talks about ways Google is addressing the issue, and then devolves into the typical "diversity programs are harmful" diatribe. At this point in the article it is important to point out he posts NO academic sources here and argues from a purely emotional standpoint. It is clear that this is the real reason why he wrote this article. By the way, I actually completed an I/O psychology master's thesis on diversity programs, and had to write a whole literature review on whether or not diversity programs benefited organizations as a whole. The literature is almost overwhelming as to the actual benefit it provides for organizations, whether as it relates to creativity and innovation in the workplace or from a purely financial perspective. There are some drawbacks to diversity (example: higher chance of interpersonal conflict among some teams, but not all of them, and tends to dissipate after group cohesion is formed), but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. If you are interested in actual reading on this topic you can read
this article,
this article and
this article.
The memo is not some stroke of genius. He starts off by saying "Here, guys! I'm just like you!" then devolves into the typical "diversity programs are discriminatory to white males" and "you guys need to be nicer to us conservative white guys" that basically every schlub on the right has been parroting for the last few years. He even manages to work in a mention of IQ differences among minorities in the memo as being a no-no topic among liberals (there is a reason for this, and it is mostly due to the fact that IQ is about 50/50 heritability and environment, the latter part of that statement being quite relevant for marginalized groups with low access to quality healthcare, nutrition, and educational opportunities). It's a "woe is me, I'm a white male being marginalized" manifesto, without even a margin of understanding as to why these diversity programs are necessary for women and minorities to break through the glass ceiling in the first place. It's mind-blowingly ignorant to ignore previous and current lack of representation of women and minorities in the workplace. 6.5% of fortune 500 CEOs are women. We have *one* male African American fortune 500 CEO. Even if the author of the memo is 100% correct, these non-bias reasons for lack of leadership representation do not NEARLY fully account for the disparity in representation that exists to this very day. There's no way that it even comes close.
In sum, you do not have a problem with the memo because you focus on the things you think liberals would like to hear/agree with, and have little understanding as to why they don't.