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

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#271

Post by ergothus » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

alexis_fr wrote: post #269

ergothus wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's funny that you say that I think you misunderstood my point in the "answers that are out there for anyone serious to find" - I'm saying it's worth restating your arguments even if you think people "should" know the "obvious" and "proven". Nothing in that position makes it ironic that I also stated my understanding of things (Be that understanding right or wrong). > If you say data is available to support your a…

Heck, I’m at 0 HN points anyway: A male/female difference of 5% on basic criteria seems nothing, especially considering that women are nonstop drama at work when all is good, and are a legally explosive cocktail for up to 38 years if I believe the Kavanaugh accusation. I would never work with a woman anymore, plus the company loses 50% efficiency by hiring them, and then needs to hire an HR department and legal couns…

I disagree with about every single conclusion you've drawn there, but I appreciate that you're willing to be clear and honest about your positions and beliefs. I won't upvote you, but I won't downvote either.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#272

Post by truculent » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

fuzzybeard wrote: post #136

truculent wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the eyewitness accounts of your female peers and friends not count as evidence?

That's how we got the Salem witch trials and why mere accusations aren't usually enough.

I'm not saying it's the only evidence required but just that it counts > 0. I don't think that should be particularly controversial.

Particularly when you get many people saying the same thing independently, in a social context rather different to that of Salem in 1693.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#273

Post by truculent » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #70

truculent wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the eyewitness accounts of your female peers and friends not count as evidence?

No, if it's one person leveling an accusation and there is no corroborating evidence (either physical or more witnesses), it's not enough. Otherwise it would be within anyone's power to have people fired or put away for rape without evidence.

I mean I'm not saying give ultimate judicial authority to any accuser. Just that we should be able to respect our peers' opinions as being worth something more than "not at all". Granted, I should have perhaps made that clearer rather than slipping into rhetoric.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#274

Post by malvosenior » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

ergothus wrote: post #256

malvosenior wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A good point, but irreconciable with pay gap data > For people who are tired of rehashing the same old arguments with data and answers that are out there for anyone serious to find... It's funny that you say that since there is no data supporting the pay gap. In fact there are people posting data in this thread contradicting the pay gap. If you say data is available to support your argument, you should link to it.

> It's funny that you say that I think you misunderstood my point in the "answers that are out there for anyone serious to find" - I'm saying it's worth restating your arguments even if you think people "should" know the "obvious" and "proven". Nothing in that position makes it ironic that I also stated my understanding of things (Be that understanding right or wrong). > If you say data is available to support your a…

Even the wikipedia article says there's no citation given to backup the claims (see first paragraph).

> The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from gender discrimination and a difference in ability and/or willingness to negotiate salaries.

So according to wikipedia, men may have higher ability or be better negotiators? I don't see a gender pay gap here.

Here's a good article on the subject:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy...

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#275

Post by nradov » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #242

rwmj wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Very few American doctors are unionized. If you're referring to the AMA, it is specifically not a union.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#276

Post by skedaddle » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

gambler wrote: post #212

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…

>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…

Why do you think the alternative is a conjunction of randomness at every level? Why not

* the people are HR

* trained in sexual harassment prevention and response

* following a transparent policy approved by the board and a union vote (or something like it, for instance an employee rep on the board like they are asking for)

Maybe this isn't the best alternative. I'm just saying, it's not like the choice is between (a) the government works it out and (b) everything is random.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#277

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #258

ryanmercer wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unless they're bombing buildings the word you're looking for is extortion, not terrorism. You don't have to blow up a building to be a terrorist. You don't have to carry out an act of violence, or even suggest one, to be a terrorist. Organizing a walk out is intimidation, ter·ror·ism /ˈterəˌrizəm/ noun the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

You are misreading the “violence and intimidation” in that definition as if it were “violence or intimidation”; it actually contradicts rather than supports your claim.

I cited one defintion, here's one for you from Merriam-Webster

"terorrism: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion"

If you go look at press coverage right now, it looks like there's a minimum of dozens of employees at each of many worldwide locations that have walked out. If you're telling me a company doesn't feel that, doesn't feel a hundred or possibly thousands of employees refusing to work even 1 shift, because they are upset about how something was handled, that that isn't 'the systematic use of terror' to coerce Google to change policy then...

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#278

Post by astura » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

shados wrote: post #179

Something Ive never understood (not in the sense of I dont agree. What I really mean is I'm uneducated on the topic and would like to find out more, but my searches returned little, since it's a pretty heated topic), is why the company should be the primary responsible entity for this. Maybe for light cases where someone just need a stern talking to, but a lot of the cases are downright criminal acts. Having a privat…

The point of a company investigation is to investigate violations of company policies; law enforcement doesn't get involved in determining if company policies were violated, it's simply not in their purview.

If during an investigation they find criminal behavior they can (and usually should) turn over their evidence to law enforcement and let them do their job, which is investigating violations of criminal law.

Violations of company policies and violations of criminal law have huge differences in burden of proof.

People sometimes confuse the two and say things like "they should have never been punished at work because they weren't convicted in a court of law." But that's not exactly how it works, the burden of proof for work punishment is simply a large magnitude lower than legal punishment.

Most workplace harassment is not criminal. Most violations of company policy aren't criminal.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#279

Post by sjg007 » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

slivym wrote: post #5

All 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.

Maybe they should unionize? They could then elect representatives and have a seat at the table with management.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#280

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

fuzzybeard wrote: post #136

truculent wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the eyewitness accounts of your female peers and friends not count as evidence?

That's how we got the Salem witch trials and why mere accusations aren't usually enough.

>That's how we got the Salem witch trials and why mere accusations aren't usually enough.

That's how plenty of hard-working, innocent, Americans got blackballed and had their careers ruined by McCarthyism.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities resulted in many things, but the Hollywood Blacklist alone was something like 150 names of almost entirely innocent people. Those people couldn't get work because someone accused each of them of being communists, often with zero evidence.