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A note to our employees

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Re: A note to our employees

#91

Post by prepend »

fmitchell0 wrote: post #10
thoughtexplorer wrote: post #4

Serious question: Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience? Or is it just skin deep like it sounds? Edit: Lots of up and down votes. Why is this question so controversial? I'd like to see an argument as to why it's an invalid or flawed question.

Serious response: Framing it as an 'Or' implies the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Diversity is fact. The world is diverse in a variety of ways (skin, eyes, experiences, gender, language, nationality, etc.). Inclusion is the action. Equity is the goal. In the OKR framework, being able to measure your progress towards the goal is important. The real question is, which aspects of people who work for your com…

“Equity is the goal.”

I don’t think this is a good goal. Unless you mean equity of opportunity. Equity of outcome is a ridiculously foolish goal in that outcomes will vary substantially and trying to have equity at the end on arbitrary human factors with easy to measure biases (gender, race, etc).

So the goal is not 45/45/10 for gender distribution for all roles. As that is obviously impossible as roles change and then people would need to be redistributed ad infinitum (eg, project managers have “perfect” gender diversity of 45/45/10 today but now the role is changes and split into product owner and product manager. Does this mean that the roles must include the same gender mix?)

Re: A note to our employees

#92

Post by Benjammer »

thoughtexplorer wrote: post #46
Benjammer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If implied in your question that the goal should be equity in 'thought', how do you propose that is measured? OP mentioned "ideas & experience," not "thought," which seems like an intentional framing as something unbounded and immeasurable. Diversity of ideas could be measured by the average number of options/solutions that are seriously considered (and investigated/piloted) over the course of multiple projects for…

Precisely. That's what was embedded in the question. It doesn't matter what color people are. It's not meaningful diversity on its own. What they seem to be doing is judging people based on surface traits, not the content of character. Their approach to diversity is a regression and not good for progress.

I would caution you on taking such an absolute, "zero sum" stance here.

>It doesn't matter what color people are.

I hope you realize the absurdity of this statement in isolation...

Re: A note to our employees

#93

Post by reaperducer »

tdb7893 wrote: post #73
philip1209 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just ban alcohol at work? Why can't work be work, and social stuff can happen outside of it? I know it sounds a bit extreme. But, after reading "It doesn't have to be crazy it work," I feel like companies use alcohol to bribe employees to stay at the office after-hours. A midground would be drinking only with sit-down food. Nobody is doing shots while having dinner. Another idea could be making company social…

Having a beer is I engrained in American work culture. Also I've worked at multiple companies where they had work functions at dinnertime and no one got that drunk (generally there were 2 drink maximums, which probably helped) so it's definitely possible to fix the issue without just banning it

Having a beer is I engrained in American work culture

Ummm... no, it's not.

Having had dozens of jobs in five industries over the decades, I've never worked for one where drinking on company time isn't a fireable offense.

The only exceptions were at the company Christmas parties, and overnight DJ's who were tolerated doing lines of coke off of CD cases. But that's another problem altogether.

Re: A note to our employees

#94

Post by mrguyorama »

ed_balls wrote: post #17
fmitchell0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious response: Framing it as an 'Or' implies the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Diversity is fact. The world is diverse in a variety of ways (skin, eyes, experiences, gender, language, nationality, etc.). Inclusion is the action. Equity is the goal. In the OKR framework, being able to measure your progress towards the goal is important. The real question is, which aspects of people who work for your com…

from all websites I'd expect HN to NOT read OR as mutually exclusive

OR being mutually exclusive is pretty typical in the english language, for better or worse.

Re: A note to our employees

#96

Post by orangechairs »

kyberias wrote: post #69

It looks to me like US is like an alien planet. What does arbitration even mean in this context? It's crazy that employees need to know these things.

This is where organized work forces (most commonly labor unions) show their worth. It's common practice that if you are represented by a labor union, the arbitrator (private judge) is mutually agreed upon by the union and corporation, which helps mitigate massive bias in either direction. Most US companies that mandate arbitration, the employees have zero voice in selecting the arbitrator.

Re: A note to our employees

#97

Post by ConcernedCoder »

gnulinux wrote: post #86
ericabiz wrote: post #48

One of the more interesting pieces is buried in the linked PDF: "Excessive alcohol: Harassment is never acceptable and alcohol is never an excuse. But one of the most common factors among the harassment complaints made today at Google is that the perpetrator had been drinking (~20% of cases). Our policy is clear: Excessive consumption of alcohol is not permitted when you are at work, performing Google business, or at…

I never drank at work, I don't understand why people do...

You've obviously never worked in customer service...

I'm joking...well 1/2 joking anyway. (sigh)

Re: A note to our employees

#98

Post by jrowley »

gnulinux wrote: post #86
ericabiz wrote: post #48

One of the more interesting pieces is buried in the linked PDF: "Excessive alcohol: Harassment is never acceptable and alcohol is never an excuse. But one of the most common factors among the harassment complaints made today at Google is that the perpetrator had been drinking (~20% of cases). Our policy is clear: Excessive consumption of alcohol is not permitted when you are at work, performing Google business, or at…

I never drank at work, I don't understand why people do...

When you're spending more time at work than at home, occasionally it's nice to have a beer at work. Don't get me wrong - I'd rather be at home, not working, drinking a beer but it's natural that drinking and work collide when you are working too much and are already stressed.

Re: A note to our employees

#99

Post by philip1209 »

reaperducer wrote: post #90
philip1209 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just ban alcohol at work? Why can't work be work, and social stuff can happen outside of it? I know it sounds a bit extreme. But, after reading "It doesn't have to be crazy it work," I feel like companies use alcohol to bribe employees to stay at the office after-hours. A midground would be drinking only with sit-down food. Nobody is doing shots while having dinner. Another idea could be making company social…

I know it sounds a bit extreme. Not extreme at all. Except for salespeople having business lunches, in the United States, drinking on company time is pretty much verboten outside of the tech bubble.

WeWork banned meat at company events or on company expense accounts [1]. Would it be that hard to do something similar for alcohol? Then, bringing it back to Google, if people misbehave after having alcohol - then they bought the drinks, and came to a company event while intoxicated.

When I was at OpenDNS, @davidu used to say something along the lines of, "When you try to host a big company party with over 100 people, you expect to have to fire somebody for their behavior there. Don't be that person." Maybe the costs don't outweigh the benefits of work parties.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/13/wework-m...

Re: A note to our employees

#100

Post by logfromblammo »

reaperducer wrote: post #93
tdb7893 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a beer is I engrained in American work culture. Also I've worked at multiple companies where they had work functions at dinnertime and no one got that drunk (generally there were 2 drink maximums, which probably helped) so it's definitely possible to fix the issue without just banning it

Having a beer is I engrained in American work culture Ummm... no, it's not. Having had dozens of jobs in five industries over the decades, I've never worked for one where drinking on company time isn't a fireable offense. The only exceptions were at the company Christmas parties, and overnight DJ's who were tolerated doing lines of coke off of CD cases. But that's another problem altogether.

Definitely not. I am currently in an industry where getting drunk off the job can (eventually) get you fired. Mostly because drunkards are potential security threats with a well-proven recipe for developing and exploiting the opening.

Our Christmas parties are as boring as a carbide drill bit.

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