Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

mercurynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 397 posts

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#101

Post by williamgb »

phyzome wrote: post #99

As a man in technology... this seems fine. The playing field is already tilted against women in tech, so if someone intentionally levels it, that's great! And I don't really care if they tilt it the other direction. Those men will find work elsewhere, no problem. (I am not taking a stance here on Mayer's other management practices, to be clear.) Discrimination against an otherwise unoppressed majority really fails to…

As a man in tech from an underprivileged background, I couldn't disagree more. I worked as a cleaner for three years while educating myself, at the same time slowly winning freelance work. I know and worked with other men who went through similar situations. That we might be considered ripe for purging due to our genitalia is some somewhat remarkable. That people seem to support it with apparent glee is disheartening.

If you recognise intersectionality is "a thing", how can you justify supporting any measure which discriminates based on an arbitrary attribute such as gender? Surely the concept is one which demands a little more nuance in matters like this?

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#102

Post by del82 »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #73
hibikir wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really about the review process, but about making one of the biggest mistakes you can make: After you know your manager doesn't like you, you didn't do everything in your power to either switch teams or change companies. Nothing good will come out of working for a manager that doesn't like you. You'll get worse reviews than you deserve and worse raises. You'll get less exposure to other parts of the compan…

>So the real rule when looking for new jobs is to avoid places where they hire first and do allocations later This is an issue with big banks like Capital One. The management culture is absolutely awful there and they hold a tremendous amount of power and of course abuse that power as well as abuse the workers.

Just to add another view here: I'm currently a Data Scientist at Capital One and enjoy it quite a bit. I've found management to be open, supportive, and invested in my and my coworkers' success and development. They also allow and encourage people to change teams within the company, so if you find yourself in a situation that's not working out, you can move to another team.

I've also not seen anybody leave the company on bad terms. Of course I'm sure that happens, and I'm sure there are bad managers here as everywhere. I'm sorry that you had such a negative experience.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#103

Post by awesomerobot »

tomerv wrote: post #56
iamleppert wrote: post #52

Just reading this brought back memories of working at LinkedIn, and why I'll never again work for a company who has institutional performance review processes. That pretty much excludes all big tech companies and I'm perfectly fine with that. The cookie-cutter performance review process is impersonal and has absolutely nothing to do with helping people do their best work. In my case, I had a manager who simply didn't…

What's the alternative? I assume that you expect companies to promote/fire based on performance. How can you do that without a performance review process? My experience has been that the biggest factor is your direct manager. If your manager hates you, then you have a serious problem, because no matter what kind of process (or lack of process) your company has, they can get you fired. On the other hand, a good manage…

From what I've seen the performance review process in large companies allows you to mask a personal vendetta as a performance issue (and you'll get away with it).

Your manager can say "based on feedback everyone says you suck" and you can't really do a whole lot to look into it. You don't know where the feedback is coming from, or if it's even valid.

At a smaller company a manager seems more responsible to look at performance democratically. So if they have a personal vendetta and they fired someone for it, it's much easier for other employees and other managers to see what's going on and call it out (so they might not act on it to begin with).

Of course that's not universal, sometimes at a small company you might have one person with consolidated power so it doesn't really matter (and can be much worse). And of course, at a smaller company peer pressure can keep issues under wraps because you're worried about everyone knowing that you're the one bringing it up.

So yeah, a performance review process needs to exist at larger companies because it makes sense logistically... but criticism of that process doesn't mean it should be thrown out entirely, it just welcomes the discussion about how it can be improved. There are middle grounds between strict performance reviews and small-company democracy.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#104

Post by EJTH »

dankohn1 wrote: post #84
hueving wrote: post #74

This is ultimately the result of things like 'implicit biases' training that tell you to accept that you are unfairly subconsciously advantaging majorities and that you should explicitly disadvantage them to make up for your biases. Disgusting.

Implicit bias is a real phenomenon backed up by good studies: http://www.vox.com/2014/12/26/7443979/racism-implicit-racial... Whether or not reverse discrimination was taking place at Yahoo, it is worthwhile to try to reduce the implicit bias we practice in our own lives.

"reverse discrimination" What does that even mean? It really comes out as a bullshit term to be honest. How can you be reverse discriminated? It makes no sense! Its either discrimination or it is not.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#105

Post by abestic9 »

phyzome wrote: post #99

As a man in technology... this seems fine. The playing field is already tilted against women in tech, so if someone intentionally levels it, that's great! And I don't really care if they tilt it the other direction. Those men will find work elsewhere, no problem. (I am not taking a stance here on Mayer's other management practices, to be clear.) Discrimination against an otherwise unoppressed majority really fails to…

Would it be safe to assume, then, that you're in favour of massive cookie-cutter layoffs of female nurses to level out the gender imbalance there?

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#106

Post by EJTH »

phyzome wrote: post #99

As a man in technology... this seems fine. The playing field is already tilted against women in tech, so if someone intentionally levels it, that's great! And I don't really care if they tilt it the other direction. Those men will find work elsewhere, no problem. (I am not taking a stance here on Mayer's other management practices, to be clear.) Discrimination against an otherwise unoppressed majority really fails to…

How can you be fine with laying off persons based on their sex?

You come out as someone who has chucked the whole keg of coolaid.

"Discrimination against an otherwise unoppressed majority really fails to make me care." - You don't think that leads to oppression? When will you care? When white males are rounded up in death camps and ridden by BLM deathsquads, will you care then?

You don't think it is comparable to saying "Discrimination against islam - a religious majority really fails to make me care" ?

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#107

Post by NhanH »

hibikir wrote: post #57
iamleppert wrote: post #52

Just reading this brought back memories of working at LinkedIn, and why I'll never again work for a company who has institutional performance review processes. That pretty much excludes all big tech companies and I'm perfectly fine with that. The cookie-cutter performance review process is impersonal and has absolutely nothing to do with helping people do their best work. In my case, I had a manager who simply didn't…

That's not really about the review process, but about making one of the biggest mistakes you can make: After you know your manager doesn't like you, you didn't do everything in your power to either switch teams or change companies. Nothing good will come out of working for a manager that doesn't like you. You'll get worse reviews than you deserve and worse raises. You'll get less exposure to other parts of the compan…

> So the real rule when looking for new jobs is to avoid places where they hire first and do allocations later, as your picture of what the company is at interview time might be completely different than what you'll find on day one.

Oh hey that's actually a whole lot of big corps ... most prominently Google, isn't it?

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#108

Post by irascible »

hibikir wrote: post #57
iamleppert wrote: post #52

Just reading this brought back memories of working at LinkedIn, and why I'll never again work for a company who has institutional performance review processes. That pretty much excludes all big tech companies and I'm perfectly fine with that. The cookie-cutter performance review process is impersonal and has absolutely nothing to do with helping people do their best work. In my case, I had a manager who simply didn't…

That's not really about the review process, but about making one of the biggest mistakes you can make: After you know your manager doesn't like you, you didn't do everything in your power to either switch teams or change companies. Nothing good will come out of working for a manager that doesn't like you. You'll get worse reviews than you deserve and worse raises. You'll get less exposure to other parts of the compan…

IMO the majority of managers SUCK. Thankfully I've had some GREAT ones, so I can tell the difference now.

If they suck due to non-malicious ineptitude, it's usually pretty bearable, and you can self manage your way around them.. if they suck as a human being.. wooo buddy, time to bounce.

A good manager is both a buffer and a lubricant. They pave the runway, and get out of the way.. and then make you feel good about what you do, while understating their own contribution.. ( and hopefully get their fuzzies from the business stakeholders, who see the productivity and progress gains. )

Shout outs to all the good managers out there! :D

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#110

Post by whack »

dankohn1 wrote: post #84
hueving wrote: post #74

This is ultimately the result of things like 'implicit biases' training that tell you to accept that you are unfairly subconsciously advantaging majorities and that you should explicitly disadvantage them to make up for your biases. Disgusting.

Implicit bias is a real phenomenon backed up by good studies: http://www.vox.com/2014/12/26/7443979/racism-implicit-racial... Whether or not reverse discrimination was taking place at Yahoo, it is worthwhile to try to reduce the implicit bias we practice in our own lives.

Not sure why Dan is being downvoted. Implicit bias is a very well documented phenomenon. Just because Yahoo might have done something really stupid, doesn't diminish the problem of implicit bias in any way.

http://nyti.ms/1AnvWzW

Post reply on HN