So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality" I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't…
Google staff walk out over women's treatment
231–240 of 471 posts
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
The police are not primarily there to solve civil disputes and disagreements. There is a pretty wide area where things are not illegal and possible to convict, but you would probably want to do something. The police’s mindset (at least the ones I’ve interacted with) is one of three things: 1. Deterrance from crimes to be committed (doesn’t apply here) 2. Achieve convictions for crimes (would also not apply in your si…
>Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge. This shouldn't be the job of HR either. What you describe is what civil courts are for. From societal perspective, it is their exact purpose: to dispense justice and prevent revenge. If they don't work, they need to be made to work, instead of relegating this function to random people with random training and random incentives following random…
Focusing specifically on the company's perspective, it's also a terrible option from a risk management perspective. It leaves them exposed to the possibility of a very expensive judgment. (Especially if it's a big well-known company that the courts might want to make an example of.) If they can resolve the dispute internally in a quick and satisfactory manner, then that is very much in the company's interest.
Which is exactly why it typically ends up being HR's job. And why it should officially be someone's job.
Framing it this way, I guess the company's internal culture being less dysfunctional because these sorts of problems are more likely to be addressed instead of being allowed to fester is just a happy side effect, but it bears mentioning, all the same.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#233So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality" I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't…
It actually says "inequity" which has a different meaning than 'inequality'.
Src:
https://mobile.twitter.com/GoogleWalkout/status/105780420389...
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#234How is this handled at other biggies in the valley - Apple, Microsoft etc? Do they also have the arbitration thing? There was an awesome site on the front page yesterday, that compared career levels in the companies. Someone should make one comparing these companies on things like - treatment of women/minorities, age discrimination, side project policies, access to upper management etc
I have never understood why employees accept the restrictive clauses which assign ownership for any side projects to the employer. I am not a lawyer, but this has always struck me as amounting to a type of serfdom. If you are seen as a 24/7 unit of the company, and anything at all that you creatively produce can be claimed by the company, then your working capacity and creative capacity is essentially owned entirely…
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#235All of their demands seem pretty reasonable. It looks like the big gripe is that basically there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. To draw an analogy, this would be like Google not having a process to investigate and resolve site outages - it would be unthinkable, so why aren't they treating their organisation with the same rigor they treat their website.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#236So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality" I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't…
UK Office for National Statistics publish good data for the UK. My impression (based on 2016 stats [0]) is that as most C-suiters are men, and they can get 100s or 1000s of times the money that ordinary employees get, that in the UK this likely accounts for most of the effect that's not accounted for by career breaks (childcare, for example). To reiterate, this is my _impression_ when looking at the data. Men who wor…
If the boss gets 3x the median, that's a 4% gap.
I'd like to see analysis which looks at same qualified people and charts their progression with attempts to understand why their wage changed and whether those changes have any discernible sex bias.
Men seem to fall across a wider distribution (both higher and lower paid), as appears in other characteristics.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have never understood why employees accept the restrictive clauses which assign ownership for any side projects to the employer. I am not a lawyer, but this has always struck me as amounting to a type of serfdom. If you are seen as a 24/7 unit of the company, and anything at all that you creatively produce can be claimed by the company, then your working capacity and creative capacity is essentially owned entirely…
They tolerate it because it’s largely unenforceable.
Many people aren't even aware of such draconian policies they are signing up for. And companies are probably counting on it too.
It is also possible that even the owners of the company (especially small, family owned companies) aren't aware of these dumb policies. They just trust their lawyers to write up the contracts. There was a comment recently on HN - employee reads up the contract, goes to the owner to ask about some clause, and the owner himself is surprised and calls the lawyer to sort it out.
Big companies that spend shit ton of money on lawyers have no excuse - they're likely doing all this intentionally.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge. This shouldn't be the job of HR either. What you describe is what civil courts are for. From societal perspective, it is their exact purpose: to dispense justice and prevent revenge. If they don't work, they need to be made to work, instead of relegating this function to random people with random training and random incentives following random…
Going through the civil courts is very time-consuming and expensive for all parties involved. Focusing specifically on the company's perspective, it's also a terrible option from a risk management perspective. It leaves them exposed to the possibility of a very expensive judgment. (Especially if it's a big well-known company that the courts might want to make an example of.) If they can resolve the dispute internally…
Defining what makes a non-hostile workplace is hard, enforcing it on individuals is harder, so instead delegate that responsibility to each individual company and take action on the company if it does not do that.
In no way is it a perfect system (cue tons of excessively formalized training etc), but it is the best system I know of.
Allowing companies to remove the external force of "If you do not do this, you may face civil action" breaks the model though, so I completely understand why Googlers would like to remove forced arbitration. The risk of that is a contributing factor towards compliance.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There shouldn't be a "process" set by Google when it comes to sexual harassment, employees should be able to sue, that's the process, Except that, under the law, the company’s response (including the absence or inadequacy of any process) to certain situations is part of what determines if they are sexual harassment. > sexual harassment is a crime No, it's not, and if it were the process would not be for employees t…
That’s actually not true, it varies by state, but many allow private criminal prosecutions to occur. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#240How is this handled at other biggies in the valley - Apple, Microsoft etc? Do they also have the arbitration thing? There was an awesome site on the front page yesterday, that compared career levels in the companies. Someone should make one comparing these companies on things like - treatment of women/minorities, age discrimination, side project policies, access to upper management etc
in other words, if a private settlement is agreed to, the victim's name may be kept confidential, but not the perpetrator’s.