Google staff walk out over women's treatment • Hacker News Board

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#241

Post by camelite » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

TotempaaltJ wrote: post #146

PunchTornado wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if one sex is statistcally proven to work more overtime than another sex? What if one sex takes more paternal leave than another so the other sex spends more time in the office improving skills?

Both of those can be seen as a cultural problem.

A cultural issue perhaps, and one mediated by biology at that. I very much doubt that you go around telling the women in your life that the time they spend outside the office, and lack of vocational ambition, are a social problem that need a political solution.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#242

Post by kerbalspacepro » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 3:53 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #138

rurban wrote: post #131

Sounds like pre-unionizing to me. Wonder where this will lead to...

Hopefully to more people in tech joining unions. Plenty of other well-paid professions are unionised (eg. doctors). For full disclosure I've been a member of Prospect, a non-affiliated union in the UK, for a few years. One of the advantages is free access to legal advice about employment issues.

The unionisation of doctors in America is one of the reasons that the American healthcare system is so bad though. Maybe we shouldn't encourage any industry to increase its inefficiency by unionizing, and instead just offer a set of universal regulations that keep workers (both skilled and unskilled alike) from getting shafted?

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#243

Post by jib » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #221

jib wrote: post #193

Earlier 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…

The question the parent comment made was not if the law allows an employer to fire someone for a situation like that, but if we want employers to investigate and prosecute crime when the police drop a case. Is that the role that employers should have in society, yes or no? > They do not have the same burden of proof That is a key point. At the same time we want the legal system to have a high burden of proof, but the…

I would argue that allowing the police to fire individuals from companies would be an egregious violation of human rights on par with disallowing free speech.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#244

Post by shareometry » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 3:55 PM UTC

dev_dull wrote: post #234

shareometry wrote: post #230

Earlier 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.

My understanding (from working with lawyers in the past) is that it is enforceable in some states and unenforceable in others. I'm not a lawyer, though, and so don't really know first-hand.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#245

Post by tylerl » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

This entire protest would have generally been a non-event if the company hadn't sent out a memo telling managers to accommodate people who want to participate, ensure there is no retaliation or penalty, be flexible with schedules, etc., effectively advertising the event to everyone in the process. So then it looks like employees are being unsupportive of their co-workers if they don't participate. Which sort of shuffles the understanding of a "walk out" to be a far cry from the sort of thing that happened in the union days, and puts this firmly in the Just Google Things category, where even protesting the company becomes an activity that the company officially supports.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#246

Post by HillaryBriss » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #168

StudentStuff wrote: post #125

There is no will from upper management to handle these issues appropriately, which is part of why Google as an organization is in its current state. Google has been able to paper over issues with copious amounts of money thus far, but that is breaking down as time goes on.

I think it is more than that: there is a will from upper management to actively prevent such issues from being handled appropriately. > Larry and Sergey had like this gaggle of girls who were hot, and all become like their little harem of admins, I call them the L&S Harem, yes. All those girls are now different heads of departments in that company, years later. > Sergey’s the Google playboy. He was known for getting…

another interesting excerpt from that article:

If you read Larry and Sergey’s original paper that they wrote at Stanford, where they talked about creating a search engine, they specifically said that advertising was wrong and bad and it would inherently corrupt the search engine if you sold advertising.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#247

Post by gedy » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #183

gedy wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of the hesitation is people fear kangaroo courts and termination without due process due to false accusations or exaggerations. Much as the extra legal stuff that goes on in college.

In other words, people here are more concerned with a phenomenon that is measurably rare relative to the downright epidemic that people are seeking to counteract. I think that says a lot about one's values.

In my experience "cry-bullying" is not as rare as you make it out to be.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#248

Post by ken » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #180

rurban wrote: post #131

Sounds like pre-unionizing to me. Wonder where this will lead to...

It takes, weeks to get a sysadmin up to scratch. You can't get scabs in if you go on strike. If the employees turn off google.com for 5 minutes, management will talk.

How is this different from other industries? How long does it take an aerospace machinist to get up to speed? 10 years ago, the strike at Boeing lasted 8 weeks and cost an estimated $100M per day.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#249

Post by HillaryBriss » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #139

anon1252 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. 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,sexual harassment is a crime, they can't sue because Google force them into arbitration, which should be illegal for an employer to do that to an employee IMHO. this is a denial of justice.

> 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…

it's a different country, but ... in India in 2013 some types of sexual harassment were deemed criminal and punishable by time in prison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Law_(Amendment)_Act,_...

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#250

Post by Balgair » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

shareometry wrote: post #230

justaguyhere wrote: post #174

How 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…

Because the rent is due and I have no money?

Maybe for a lot of the higher end HN devs out there, they can walk and be reasonably certain they'll pick up work in under a month. Personally, I've known a LOT of people (some in software too) that need 6-9 months to find any work in their field. Yeah, Uber and pizza delivery make some ends meet, but for a 'real' job with a 401k and benefits, it can take a LONG time. And at the end of that timeline, they can offer you really anything and you know you have to take that offer.

Anecdata: I'm in biotech and got offered 55k on the Peninsula at the end of about 2 months of interviewing for that particular company. They were the only people that would interview me over ~9 months of applying (caveat: biotech isn't doing well right now). The minimum wage of my 'stop-gap' auto mechanic job in a particular city is 60k. The biotech company would not budge at all.