Note to Google Employees from CEO Sundar Pichai

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 2:29 PM UTC

eeks wrote: post #68

se2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you have misconstrued the message Sundar was giving. The difference between having the freedom to speak one's mind, and breaching a code of conduct that you sign when you agree to work for Google is clear cut in his note.

You cannot pose as a parangon of free speech when your company just fired a dissenting voice. For all intents and purposes the content of the memo was balanced, polite, and restricted to the Google audience. The adult reaction should have been to punish the leaker (which I believe should be an actual breach of the code of conduct) and organize internal debates to allow multiple viewpoints to confront. Rallying with t…

Post by JustAnotherPat » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 2:32 PM UTC

se2 wrote: post #10

koolba wrote: post #5

Quoting Sundar Pichai (Google CEO), emphasis mine: > At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint) . They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo—such as the portions criticizing Google’s trainings,…

I believe you have misconstrued the message Sundar was giving. The difference between having the freedom to speak one's mind, and breaching a code of conduct that you sign when you agree to work for Google is clear cut in his note.

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 2:33 PM UTC

cdubzzz wrote: post #95

fwn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure whether a management decision to remove the author is helping or hurting the goal to create an environment that isn't intimidating. ..because - compared to what was written in the memo - this is a very intimidating thing to do.

This is a tough one. I think it effectively does both (help and hurt), including all the positive and negative fall out of each decision. Intimidating is a strong word for this, I think. I would call it intimidating if the original memo was a challenge to the code of conduct, as opposed to a violation of it. Either way, I agree that other employees could see this as intimidation and that makes the whole situation muc…

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 2:34 PM UTC

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #11

Moral of the story: stupid angry lynch mobs win when they are loud enough to be the majority. It doesn't matter how uninformed the majority viewpoint is.. majority > minority. There is no debate, only angry people seeing what they want to see. Get angry first, ask questions later (or never) - just people being people. Googles response is simply to appease both sides as best they can, recognizing that one is the major…

Post by rtx » Tue, Aug 08, 2017, 2:35 PM UTC

pimmen wrote: post #101

slavak wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He referred to a "lowered bar" in the form of a reduced false-negative rate for "diversity candidates"; at no point in the document did he imply his female engineer colleagues are less qualified. He also had a reference to apparently support this assertion, but since the hyperlink leads to an internal Google group we can't really know its contents unless a Googler informs us. From the original memo: > However, to ach…

Let's assume this guy knows statistics; by lowering the rate of false-negatives, you raise the rate of false-positives. This means that he's heavily implying Google has employed undeperforming engineers with these practices.