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A note to our employees

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Re: A note to our employees

#161

Post by [deleted] »

throwawaymath wrote: post #110
philip1209 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ser…

[deleted]

Re: A note to our employees

#162

Post by BadassFractal »

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…

The employees are both behaving like children AND being infantilized at the same time. How do you even get to that point?

Re: A note to our employees

#163

Post by kaitai »

Aqua wrote: post #112
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.

To me the notion of a need for diversity in a workplace is absurd. Seriously, whats the point? There are and always have been professions dominated by men and those dominated by women. From the perspective of an employer, gender, skin colour or political views should be completely irrelevant when it comes to making a hire/no hire decision. By introducing rules that aim to achieve a 50/50 distribution of e.g. each gen…

You seem to be conflating quotas and diversity, and also conflating mechanisms and results. The point of a diversity office or officer is to provide a resource for discussing whether mechanisms of hiring and recruitment are fair, and trying to improve them if they're not.

Once all those studies that send out the same exact resume with the names John, Jane, T'yesha, Jamal, Xiaoying, and Shan Shan at the top find you get the same number of callbacks, then we'll actually be in a situation where people are being hired on their qualifications!

Re: A note to our employees

#164

Post by SilasX »

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.

Wait, what? That's like saying "You're not concerned with employee health, you're concerned with whether employees are sick".

Re: A note to our employees

#165

Post by ofxartem »

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.

What is wrong with that? It keeps minds focused on what should happen at work: work.

Re: A note to our employees

#166

Post by baddox »

Aqua wrote: post #112
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.

To me the notion of a need for diversity in a workplace is absurd. Seriously, whats the point? There are and always have been professions dominated by men and those dominated by women. From the perspective of an employer, gender, skin colour or political views should be completely irrelevant when it comes to making a hire/no hire decision. By introducing rules that aim to achieve a 50/50 distribution of e.g. each gen…

It may not have much value in a coal mine, but I suspect it is highly valuable even from a purely commercial/competitive perspective in industries and workplaces that are creating/maintaining products or services for a large or broad audience.

> you're forming up an artificial construct that ultimately results in poorer overall performance (since you had to reject a number of candidates that likely were more qualified for the position in order to reach your equal distribution goals).

That's precisely where I disagree. Again, in a coal mine you might just want to hire for simple traits that can be easily evaluated per individual (like physical strength). But on the types of teams I mentioned, the diversity of experiences and opinions across the team probably matters as much or even more than the sum of every individual's "talents." I would guess that this diversity becomes more important the larger the team gets and the larger the audience for their products/services gets.

To be clear, I also suspect that more diverse teams are more difficult to hire and manage effectively, and that's probably a big reason that some companies either don't care about diversity or actively resist the suggestion to increase their diversity.

Re: A note to our employees

#167

Post by ryanmarsh »

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 can't work just be a polite exchange of (various forms of) labor for money? I've been in consulting shops where the liquor flowed. I get it, it's fun but you can't run a large bureaucracy like you can a small tribe. Is that 20% of cases worth the presence of alcohol? Who would leave over removing alcohol from the office? Could that be for the better?

Lastly, I'm not an alcoholic but I have friends who've struggled with it and my heart really goes out to them. Alcohol is everywhere at work functions and I think it's really insensitive. I could live the rest of my life and never have drinks be part of a professional function and be just fine.

Re: A note to our employees

#168

Post by 706f6f70 »

gizmo686 wrote: post #14
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 don't have any experience with Google in this regard (beyond looking into the Damore case, which is a bit muddy because of the amount of public pressure Google was facing [0]). However, in my experience, diversity programs and officers tend to be about liability and checkboxes; and there is no legal checkbox for diversity of ideas. Plus, surface diversity is much easier to measure; and you optimize for your metrics…

> Plus, surface diversity is much easier to measure; and you optimize for your metrics.

I think this is key. Until "diversity" becomes so absolutely fragmented that you get back down to the level of the individual (e.g.you need a non-Hispanic Latino coder, who is Christian but not Catholic, was born poor but still got into an Ivy League, must be over 6 feet tall, and her name must begin with "A"), we will continue to burn resources, mental energy, and time on ensuring that we can't get sued.

Re: A note to our employees

#169

Post by CamTin »

aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #130
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…

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

From context I'd guess he means 45% male, 45% female, 10% non-binary.

Re: A note to our employees

#170

Post by dannyw »

aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #130
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…

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

Male, female, non-binary.
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