Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A note to our employees

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 421 posts

Re: A note to our employees

#101

Post by lozaning »

nrook wrote: post #49
rifung wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No mention of the employee representative on the board, either. Can someone who knows better than me explain whether this is actually a reasonable request? It sounded ridiculous to me but I admit I am not knowledgeable in these matters.

This is required in some European countries. For example, in Germany, workers have a right to 50% of the board for companies with more than 2,000 employees. (Ties break for shareholders, due to the way the chair position works.) https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Rela... Obviously, this hasn't destroyed Germany's economy, so it's doubtful it would hurt Google's profits much either.

50% of the board with votes breaking for shareholders sounds a lot like the workers don't actually have any control at all. What prevents the shareholders from just consistently railroading the workers, forcing everything to a tie, and then having the decision break their way?

Re: A note to our employees

#102

Post by CWuestefeld »

hmahncke wrote: post #59
01100011 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been through sexual harassment training? Did you feel like it was helpful? I've been through several and found that no one really takes it seriously. If the things they tell you in sexual harassment training are new to you, you probably aren't going to learn your lesson. Problem employees aren't going to change their behavior. Enforcement of standards is much more critical. Sexual harassment training is…

I went through sexual harassment training, and it was helpful because in two later situations where I had to manage situations related to sexual harassment, I knew what to do.

We have separate curricula: one for all employees telling them "don't do it", and a second for managers telling them how to handle reported incidents and other things they may observe.

Re: A note to our employees

#103

Post by will_brown »

dominotw wrote: post #84
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…

> ~20% of cases What are the other factors. Are there any higher than 20%.

Be willing to bet more than alcohol a common factor would be men being the alleged perpetrator. Another would be the alleged perpetrators are probably in superior positions/title to the victims greater than 20% of the time.

Re: A note to our employees

#104

Post by misiti3780 »

philip1209 wrote: post #52
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…

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…

Why not NOT ban alcohol at work, and when an employee fucks up, just fire him ?

Is that really not a solution here ?

at the end of the day, people should be accountable for their own actions, and i should not be punished if i want to have a beer after working hours with colleagues because a tiny minority of people at my company cant drinking responsibly

Re: A note to our employees

#105

Post by simlevesque »

dominotw wrote: post #84
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…

> ~20% of cases What are the other factors. Are there any higher than 20%.

I'd bet that more than 20% are males.

Re: A note to our employees

#106

Post by lozaning »

jfrankamp wrote: post #26
shmel wrote: post #16

Mandatory sexual harassment training sounds quite disturbing. Anybody can comment in detail how it is conducted? Is it really mandatory for everyone or only for men?

It is conducted like every other sort of corporate training around risk factors for the company, discussing principles and examples of violations and grey areas. Other examples are ethics e.g. "should I take a bribe?" and security e.g. "should i pick up a usb key in the parking lot and put it into a work computer?". Similarly the answer to "should I sexually harass my co-workers?" is also no.

Yes, usually still delivered through some horrendous flash/quicktime mashup that requires you to stay on the page for x num of minutes before proceeding to the next page.

I honestly dont mind the idea of taking any of this training, but I loathe the fact that I'm prevented from completing it at a pace I'm able.

Re: A note to our employees

#107

Post by rendall »

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

"Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience? Or is it just skin deep like it sounds?"

Well, to nitpick even further, those propositions are logically mutually exclusive.

"Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience [as well as surface traits]?" Or is it [only surface traits]"

Abstracted, could be "(p and q) OR (p and !q)" which is literally mutually exclusive.

No, I'm not usually so pedantic, I just thought it was interesting.

Re: A note to our employees

#108

Post by ocdtrekkie »

philip1209 wrote: post #52
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…

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…

Most employers don't allow drinking at work. Some allow it at company events, provided it doesn't become a problem. The funny thing is about a lot of Silicon Valley companies, I think, is that they decided in their attempt to reinvent work that they'd throw out a couple hundred years of learned experience on what does and doesn't work in a corporate setting.

The "fun places to work" eventually figure out that fun for some is often at the expense of others, and that most things corporate environments have ruled out were ruled out a long time ago because they didn't work well.

Re: A note to our employees

#109

Post by dahart »

dominotw wrote: post #84
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…

> ~20% of cases What are the other factors. Are there any higher than 20%.

There have to be, but it might be hard to get data, and/or controversial/inflammatory to talk about it. I don’t know if Google will release any statistics on all the cases they know about, and I won’t hold my breath, but that would be pretty enlightening. Things that are likely well above 20% include men being the perp in much larger numbers than the company’s gender distribution (national stats are roughly 80/20 [1]), whether the perp is a higher rank and/or direct supervisor (national stats say this is ~40%, whether the victim was threatened, and what department the people were in.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment#In_the_wor...

Re: A note to our employees

#110

Post by throwawaymath »

philip1209 wrote: post #99
reaperducer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, WeWork won't even allow employees to expense meals that have meat in them?! That's ridiculous. The environmental situation with beef is a little more complex than "less beef eaten -> fewer cows -> less methane -> less climate change."

What's even more ridiculous is that beef is the costly meat from an environmental perspective, but they've also banned poultry and all other types of meat. I can understand not serving meat, but not allowing employees to expense meals involving meat would make me reconsider working there - especially because of the heavy handed way they did it.

Post reply on HN