Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that due process should include the right to face your accuser.
In the USA, that right applies to criminal prosecution but not civil cases.
[deleted]
Google staff walk out over women's treatment
371–380 of 471 posts
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone at the top is sincerely interested in resolving this satisfactorily, why the walk-out? I don't get it. That just sounds so naive. If I knew what your real disconnect with this was, I'd try to help you understand. Let's walk through the basics: * Employees have a problem with management. * Management says "we'll work on it" like they always do. * Employees may or may not believe, but they want to see action…
That just sounds so naive. I appear to be the top ranked woman on HN. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard here (under a different handle). Historical surveys suggest the membership was possibly as much as 98% male at one time. I get nothing but crapped on when I say that. I get nothing but mocked when I suggest that is indicative of personal competence on my part. People mostly ad…
I don't know anything about you. The statement is naive. Perhaps it was just poorly phrased. I never implied it had anything to do with you as a person.
I don't really care about your prowess at "winning" at HN. I don't have any clue what you're going on about.
Edit: oh, and if you regularly get kicked off of forums, perhaps it had to do with situations like these? You seem to be overreacting in a very strange and hard to follow way, that comes off kind of aggressively.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#373So 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…
Why should spending your time and effort arguing for higher salary entitle you to a higher salary? Surely, just the opposite.
So I've come to develop a nuanced opinion on this.
I used to fully believe what you said, on the grounds that willingness and ability to negotiate have no bearing on how valuable the employee will be (at least for engineering jobs - it could be different for something like sales where dealmaking ability actually matters).
However, one counterpoint I've come to realize is that if an employee doesn't value higher salary that much, it's a waste of money to pay them more. Thus, by only paying higher salaries that put time and effort into arguing for higher salaries, you make sure to only spend that money on the employees that will actually value all the extra money you're throwing at them.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#374This 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 shuff…
One view is that management knows that and did it anyway. Perhaps they felt it was worth letting it be a bigger event and taking a PR hit if in return what they get is that the employees feel that the company supports them.
Good Machiavellian way to oust competing managers as well. Personally, that would be a horrible thing to do to another person, but then again, we know at least some of these managers kept silent during this whole fiasco; we're not talking about saints here.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
That just sounds so naive. I appear to be the top ranked woman on HN. I appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard here (under a different handle). Historical surveys suggest the membership was possibly as much as 98% male at one time. I get nothing but crapped on when I say that. I get nothing but mocked when I suggest that is indicative of personal competence on my part. People mostly ad…
I don't know anything about you. The statement is naive. Perhaps it was just poorly phrased. I never implied it had anything to do with you as a person. I don't really care about your prowess at "winning" at HN. I don't have any clue what you're going on about. Edit: oh, and if you regularly get kicked off of forums, perhaps it had to do with situations like these? You seem to be overreacting in a very strange and ha…
Exactly. The walk-out is supposedly to support "women's rights." I'm a woman right here, right now, giving my opinion. I'm being downvoted, shouted down, dismissed as naive, etc ad nauseum by people (mostly men, some of whom have a known track record of pretending to be pro women's rights while treating me personally like absolute crap) defending the folks who walked out at Google.
Color me unimpressed. Methinks if all these good guys were so interested in women's rights, it would be possible for me to get a smidgen more respect here.
But, no. And pointing that out gets further dismissed as "I don't have any clue what you're going on about."
Par for the course. And it's a big part of why I am highly skeptical that anything will actually be changed by this walk-out. If men at Google really wanted to change the culture, they could start right here, right now, in this very discussion with actually taking my questions seriously and treating me with respect instead of piling on to stomp me into the ground for saying "I don't get it. Seems to me there's maybe a better way to approach this."
Anyway, before the mods* decide that my comments here somehow constitute bad behavior for baldly saying some of the things that people the world over never like having said to them about blatantly obvious hypocrisy, I think I'm done with this utterly pointless discussion.
* Not an attack on the mods here. They've been awesome. Just long experience tells me that pushing it too much is nothing but downside.
edit:
Edit: oh, and if you regularly get kicked off of forums, perhaps it had to do with situations like these? You seem to be overreacting in a very strange and hard to follow way, that comes off kind of aggressively.
Ah, yes, let's blame the woman in the overwhelmingly male forum and say she's just behaving badly by suggesting that the guys could actually be respectful to an actual woman if they actually think women's rights are important. Bonus points for this bit of "la la la not listening at all to a word she's saying."
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#376Something 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…
> 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.
Because sexual harassment is a form of illegal sex-based employment discrimination by the company. Individual unwelcome acts that don't rise to that level aren't sexual harassment (legally), but may be warning signs that if not corrected rise to the level of an offense by the company.
> Maybe for light cases where someone just need a stern talking to, but a lot of the cases are downright criminal acts.
And for those, the company’s responsibility as regards harassment does not negate the role of law enforcement as regards the criminal violation. The police are not pushed aside in favor or private action. In addition, harassment events, whether or not a crime is involved, can be directly reported to federal, or usually also state (who will dual-file with the federal EEOC), anti-discrimination authorities; the employer process mostly if a mechanism to catch conduct before it reaches the level of discrimination and to manage the company's exposure when it did reach that level.
> Shouldn't it be better to have law enforcement handle it, and have companies forced to cooperate instead?
That's not an “instead” or “better”, because the options aren't mutually exclusive; where a criminal accusation is involved,law enforcement retains their usual role in investigating and prosecuting crimes, including compulsory process which can be directed at parties with relevant information, including employers.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#377So 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…
> I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. There really aren't any differences. Just do a simple mental exercise. Imagine if the gender gap is real. Male programmers demand $100K while female programmers demand $77K for the same exact quality of work. What would this mean? It would mean all tech companies would only hire females. For…
People keep saying this, but it assumes that companies are completely rational actors in hiring, unaffected by human bias. Which is clearly bullshit. For one thing, you can simply prove this by considering the existence of discrimination in the other direction - surely, if companies were hell bent on optimizing their hiring for optimal return on investment, we wouldn't have some of the most profitable companies in the world engaging in the kinds of hiring practices that, e.g., Arne Wilberg is suing about?
See also Dan Luu's discussion of this argument: https://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, younger women friends post on Facebook how they're stopping work for the year in October (?) to make up for the pay-gap. I assume maybe that's true to some extent in USA -- they're certainly sold on the idea all the men around them are getting an easy deal.
Doesn't that just mean they'll widen the pay gap by not getting paid in October? Then next year they'll need to take two months off, and so on. At least they'll have plenty of time to post about it on Facebook :)
It's a meme "we should stop working in October [IIRC] because we are only paid for 10 months compared to a man's full year". It's not an actual plan.
I've seen this specific meme a few times; dozens of posts about gender pay gap including from under-30 part-timers who have a good chance - according to the available stats - of being paid more than men in an equivalently skilled role.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's over the top to invoke 'terrorism' in this context and at this point you're basically trolling. Please stop, and please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents.
Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,_...
In the US, many types of sexual harassment are also crimes, but sexual harassment, per se , is a particular civil wrong, not a crime.
yes. i understand.
also: some types of sexual harassment that are not crimes in the US are crimes in India.