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A note to our employees

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Re: A note to our employees

#151

Post by PavlovsCat »

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…

To the degree something is deep, it is not shallow, and vice versa. That something is easy to measure does not per se make it less or more shallow.

Re: A note to our employees

#152

Post by scrollaway »

rjknight wrote: post #70
knl wrote: post #63

I'm not a native speaker, but doesn't "We will update and expand our mandatory sexual harassment training" mean that trainings teach how to do sexual harassment, not prevent it? Shouldn't it be "prevention of sexual harassment"?

A few years ago I had to do "financial crime training", and although I had heard all kinds of rumours about what working in financial services is like, I was surprised that they were so up-front about it! More seriously, I think this is what happens when certain words or phrases become jargon terms - they're used to invoke a concept, and lose their literal meaning. Something similar is happening with "mental health",…

> Something similar is happening with "mental health", as in "we should be concerned about mental health", where "mental illness" would seem to be a more accurate term.

I don't think it's happening to the term "mental health". Maybe it is being used as a superset of "mental illness" sometimes when talking about eg. homelessness, but most of the time it talks about the general psychological health of people. Eg "People in tech need to manage their mental health".

Re: A note to our employees

#153

Post by reaperducer »

knl wrote: post #63

I'm not a native speaker, but doesn't "We will update and expand our mandatory sexual harassment training" mean that trainings teach how to do sexual harassment, not prevent it? Shouldn't it be "prevention of sexual harassment"?

It's not only about prevention. It's also about recognizing when it happens, both to you and to other people. And also knowing what to do when you see, or experience it.

Re: A note to our employees

#154

Post by RankingMember »

reaperducer wrote: post #134
RankingMember wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (e…

It drives me nuts when companies let a few bad actors ruin a loose policy At a small or mid-sized company, ½% of bad actors can be one or two or three. At a company the size of Google, ½% of bad actors can be hundreds or thousands of human liabilities.

A valid point, though I'd argue that that same "power in numbers" of companies like Google means PR can swing just as hard in a positive direction as a result of a generous policy.

I think it's a question of where to draw the line. I'm sure an argument could be made that they should get rid of the bikes on their campuses because a percentage of people will hurt themselves on them or hurt someone else and be a legal risk.

Re: A note to our employees

#155

Post by myle »

stickfigure wrote: post #114
philipodonnell wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already single out certain social things as just not a good idea in the workplace/events even though its common socially: public displays of affection, having lots of kids around, single-sex activities... Its isolating/disruptive if you can't/won't take part. Its unfair when based on things not in the job description (relationships/kids/gender respectively). I don't see why alcohol (excludes non-drinkers) or team-…

By the time you've excluded all the possible activities that someone could find isolating, you've got a pretty boring work environment. Here's the box you will be working in. Don't forget to turn off the light when you leave Friday.

That's OK. We are also supposed to have private life. If work is not fun enough without those events, maybe it is not fun in general.

Re: A note to our employees

#156

Post by ghaff »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #115
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

It's not. I think there is more acceptance in European culture for that. I learnt the somewhat hard way when I came to the US after a couple of stints in Europe. I used to think nothing of having a beer or a glass of wine at lunch with colleagues. But it did earn me a few frowns in the US. This is almost 18 years ago - so pretty sure things have changed significantly.

It used to be fairly common. Lookup "Three Martini Lunch." When I was in the oil business several decades ago, it was quite common for 2 or 3 of us to ring up a vendor to take us to lunch where we'd have a couple of beers.

I won't say it's unheard of for myself and my colleagues to have a beer or glass of wine at a work lunch in the tech industry. But it's certainly a rare event though definitely more common when visiting Europe.

Re: A note to our employees

#157

Post by docker_up »

jklinger410 wrote: post #139
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…

Kind of a step backwards in terms of accountability, no? Scapegoating alcohol seems like an excuse and really is like babysitting your adult employees. My view - Drink as much alcohol as you like! And if you imbibe too much, and do stupid things, that shows deficient decision making abilities, and you aren't fit to work here.

Unless you are an alcoholic, and you literally can't control yourself. Then parading out alcohol and then punishing her by firing her for not being able to control herself seems a bit unfair.

Re: A note to our employees

#158

Post by PurpleBoxDragon »

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

I think that English OR is Logical XOR and logical OR is English "A or B or both" or "A and/or B".

Oddly enough, my use of or seems to violates the very rule it is used to describe.

Re: A note to our employees

#159

Post by golemiprague »

mebreuer wrote: post #125
prepend wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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?

No, because certain groups in society prefer doing different things on average and certain jobs require certain capabilities which are not evenly distributed among those groups that people tend to measure.

The decision what to measure is a problem in itself which what the OP is trying to say, we tend to look at skin colour and gender, what about height, IQ, chest hair, glasses, political tendencies, levels of aggression and whatever other measurable classification I could find?

Equity of outcome usually means a gulag or a concentration camp, that's the only place where there is equity of outcome and that's the destiny of any society which aspire for such a ridiculous idea. It is evident that the more egalitarian societies are and the more thee is equality of opportunity people tend to cluster according to their preferences and capabilities and there is actually less equity of outcome because those are not equally distributed, which is actually good.

Re: A note to our employees

#160

Post by adamrezich »

lallysingh wrote: post #44
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 think it's helpful if you come from a different culture where some of those things would be considered acceptable.

Can you give a concrete example of this? I'm having a hard time imagining it.
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