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A note to our employees

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Re: A note to our employees

#121

Post by williamaadams »

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.

I work for Microsoft, and the back of my employee badge says: Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

To me, this implies that our engineering organizations, and entire company, need to have an appropriate amount of empathy across a broad spectrum of geographies, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and the like. You only get that by having a diversity of talent, and more importantly, inclusion in your engineering practices.

When I talk about diversity, I usually say; "There are two forms of diversity, DNA diversity, the stuff we usually talk about in terms of color, sex, etc, things you can see, and then there's diversity of perspectives and experiences. You need the diversity of experiences and perspectives. In some cases that's conveniently wrapped in some forms of DNA diversity, but is not exclusive to that".

I don't think the question is at all controversial, and we should not be afraid to openly talk about it.

Re: A note to our employees

#122

Post by RankingMember »

ryanianian wrote: post #111
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…

A "two drink limit" fails to account for (1) how alcohol affects people differently since two drinks can make some people sloppy while others will hardly feel it and (2) the fact that alcohol usually only lasts about an hour per drink and many social events last a few hours. A couple drinks helps get me out of my own head enough to relax with co-workers. After a couple hours, the two beers have worn off and I usually…

I would argue that creating a whole drink ticketing bureaucracy including a pre-scheduled drink ticket release procedure does the opposite of treating employees like adults. It sounds a lot like kids in a school lunch line.

It drives me nuts when companies let a few bad actors ruin a loose policy rather than addressing the issue with the bad actors, but I know, legally, having a strict, spelled-out policy is safer (easier to defend against lawsuits) legally.

Re: A note to our employees

#123

Post by ryanianian »

seth__ wrote: post #119
ryanianian wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "two drink limit" fails to account for (1) how alcohol affects people differently since two drinks can make some people sloppy while others will hardly feel it and (2) the fact that alcohol usually only lasts about an hour per drink and many social events last a few hours. A couple drinks helps get me out of my own head enough to relax with co-workers. After a couple hours, the two beers have worn off and I usually…

>I'd much prefer a policy where everyone gets to decide in advance how many drink tickets they want Then you would get people like me, asking for lots of tickets as you can just discard those when you are done but you would not be able to ask for extra ones. At that point, you could just remove the ticket system as it doesn't work anymore

Sure but then if you over-indulge you're on record as someone who (1) requested way too many tickets and (2) wasn't capable of managing their own intake effectively or knowing their limits ahead of time.

The goal is to help responsible adults remain responsible adults after a couple drinks when parts of your brain tell you to drink more than you know you should.

The default of two drinks per night is a good starting point; my point is to let responsible adults decide for themselves ahead of time if more than two would be good for them.

Re: A note to our employees

#124

Post by tracker1 »

cryoshon wrote: post #51
georgeburdell wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re getting downvoted because Google and many other well known tech companies are known not to be comfortable places to work if you’re a conservative. Political ideology, like skin color, should not itself be a diversity goal, but the former often reflects differences in mindsets that may be better suited for certain projects or job roles.

there's a lot more to a person's perspective than their political ideology. i imagine at google it'd be advantageous to have people who approached problems with a plethora of cognitive approaches, however. it's difficult to measure such things, of course. political ideology can't be a meaningful diversity goal anyway, nor should it be. there may not be a "best" ideology but promoting political ideology alone would be…

I find that the mindset can be dramatically different in many cases depending on one's own experience and background. The length of which a company may intercede or donate to a different pool of candidates, as a simple example depends on the makeup from its' leadership down to its' employees.

My parents have always been right-leaning, working class. I, myself am far more libertarian leaning, with a bit of pragmatism. I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't like the political culture present in Google, and do not feel like my ideas would be respected in that culture at all. It emphatically does not mean that my point of view is less valid, but would more often than not be aggressively dismissed in that culture. Not to mention that I'm a cis-gendered, white male, which seems to be looked down on overall in a few of the large, progressive technical companies by itself.

In the end, it does matter. Culture, for good or bad, influences the makeup of a company. I tend to only have literally a couple drinks a month, or less generally not at work. That said, I don't feel there's shame in having a beer/ale/wine at lunch now and then. It should be about personal responsibility and accountability. It also shouldn't turn into a witch hunt without investigation.

Like most things in life, it depends.

Re: A note to our employees

#125

Post by mebreuer »

prepend wrote: post #91
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…

“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 th…

With a high enough sample size, shouldn't equity of outcome reflect equity of opportunity?

Re: A note to our employees

#126

Post by enitihas »

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.

I was reading about employee-employer relationship in Japan(in the context of Sony) and it seemed like most people used to work at a place for life. It might be similar for Germany in a lot of industries(Automobile, heavy manufacturing). However, wouldn't this pose a new set of problems when applied to companies where the average employee tenure is very short? I think the average tech worker tenure is very very short compared to other industries. While representing employees on the board is a good idea in general, it might need some modifications before being applied to companies with high employee churn rate.

Re: A note to our employees

#127

Post by RankingMember »

misiti3780 wrote: post #104
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…

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

I agree, though I think a warning for a first offense is more reasonable. It seems like every company would rather set policy based on the worst possible interpretation rather than leaving things a little looser and dealing with problems/oversteppers directly.

Re: A note to our employees

#128

Post by dionian »

> We will recommit to our company-wide OKR around diversity, equity and inclusion again in 2019, focused on improving representation—through hiring, progression and retention—and creating a more inclusive culture for everyone.

How does more diversity solve anything?

Re: A note to our employees

#129

Post by hkon »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #30

Look at the overspecific promises going forward! - We will make arbitration optional for individual sexual harassment and sexual assault claims Ordinary harassment and assault is still covered by forced arbitration, as is systemic sexual harassment. Good to know. - We will update and expand our mandatory sexual harassment training Everyone knows already that mandatory XY training serves to deflect liability from the…

What is mandatory sexual harassment training? If you're not a sexual harassor, it must be frustrating having to attend such an event.

Re: A note to our employees

#130

Post by aaaaaaaaaab »

prepend wrote: post #91
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…

“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 th…

Apologies for my ignorance but what does “45/45/10” mean?
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