This seems reasonable if (and only if!) people who match you on sex and skin color are unfairly overrepresented, and if the meaning is to fire those who aren't qualified, not to indiscriminately fire to meet a quota. I read both of those things as implied by that tweet and its context, but I can see how they're not obvious. Without that context, I admit the sentence is racist and sexist, but in context, it seems like a reasonable response to existing racism and sexism that has given employment to unqualified white men more than to unqualified people of different race/gender. (It is sort of like "black lives matter": shorn of context it seems to privilege one race, but in a world where black lives seem to matter less than other lives, it is a response to that existing racism.)
I am a man but not white, so perhaps this does not sting as much as it stings you, in which case I apologize for not being able to fully empathize. Anecdotally, the vast majority of the underqualified and incompetent people I've worked with in tech have been men, even taking into account the general proportion of men and women in tech. Without thinking hard, I can name underqualified men, qualified men, and qualified women that I have worked with, but would have to think hard to remember underqualified women. So I'm okay with focusing any attempts to fire unqualified people on men, or, at least, making sure that any efforts to fire unqualified people end up firing at least some men.
> This seems reasonable if (and only if!) people who match you on sex and skin color are unfairly overrepresented
Asian people are more overrepresented in tech than Europeans. If Shanley said to "fire some fuckin asian guys to get it done", would you support this comment? Why / why not?
Well, I think the context was management, where IIRC Asians are if anything underrepresented. And I anecdotally don't think I've seen as many underqualified Asian people (relative to the number of Asians) as white people -- but that anecdata feels very iffy to me, so if there's reason to believe that that's wrong, sure, I'd think that comment was reasonable. (It also gets more complicated if they're on H1-Bs or something; however disruptive firing a citizen is, firing someone on a work visa is a hundred times worse. And they have fewer options for finding a job that fits their skill level than people not constrained by a work visa.)
I would absolutely stand behind "fire some men to get it done". Or a simple "fire some people to get it done", if I didn't have strong reason to believe that tech's performance-evaluation practices are unduly harsh on women. (Which is, incidentally, why I think I see unqualified women so rarely.)
I am a man but not white, so perhaps this does not sting as much as it stings you, in which case I apologize for not being able to fully empathize. Anecdotally, the vast majority of the underqualified and incompetent people I've worked with in tech have been men, even taking into account the general proportion of men and women in tech. Without thinking hard, I can name underqualified men, qualified men, and qualified women that I have worked with, but would have to think hard to remember underqualified women. So I'm okay with focusing any attempts to fire unqualified people on men, or, at least, making sure that any efforts to fire unqualified people end up firing at least some men.