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A note to our employees

blog.google

191–200 of 421 posts

Re: A note to our employees

#191
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to ban anything you want at work. And the people who work there will select for if they want to be a part of it by becoming or remaining employees. (There are, of course, things that are illegal to ban) I personally want to work somewhere who values me as a responsible human being, and expects me to behave like one. The more a workplace feels like they have to micromanage their employees like children, the…

The positive aspect of banning alcohol consumption is that it's an objective measure. If somebody is a drunken lout pawing his employees, save the victim more exposure by drumming him out for the alcohol. With the possible exception of salespeople entertaining clients, there's no need to drink on duty, and if you do, there is a consequence.

I don't think the parent comment is at all disagreeing with the existence of any utility in "banning alcohol" here.

The gist of what the parent comment is saying, is that, if you have a policy in place to "compensate" for a certain "negative trait," what you are actually doing is inviting _more_ of that trait, because you are signaling that your company will put effort in to help deal with that, which means that someone who needs help monitoring their alcohol consumption would be _more likely_ to work for you, thus accomplishing essentially the opposite of what you wanted.

Mature adults who do _not_ need someone else to monitor their alcohol consumption are far more likely to inherently present with the responsible, adult behaviors that you desire. But, a mature adult who can already sufficiently moderate their own alcohol consumption is going to be _less likely_ to want to work at a place where said consumption is heavily, outwardly regulated/enforced, because why would they want to be constantly told something that they have already fully incorporated into their mature, adult habits and personality?

Re: A note to our employees

#193

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…

"Everyone knows already that mandatory XY training serves to deflect liability from the company."

That is the way things are today (mostly), but it doesn't follow that this one must necessarily be so. It might end up that way--time will tell--but the company is actually trying to avoid legal-checkbox training and to get something that actually makes a difference.

Re: A note to our employees

#194
post #112

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…

> To me the notion of a need for diversity in a workplace is absurd. Seriously, whats the point?

There are some advantages. For instance, people with different religions or cultural backgrounds will have non-overlapping holidays, so your office might be open on days that you might otherwise have to close.

Or consider if you're creating a dating app, you would absolutely want a woman's input on how to reduce harassment (see Tinder vs. Bumble).

Re: A note to our employees

#195

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 would have thought "bringing the company into disrepute" would have been enough.

Re: A note to our employees

#197
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to ban anything you want at work. And the people who work there will select for if they want to be a part of it by becoming or remaining employees. (There are, of course, things that are illegal to ban) I personally want to work somewhere who values me as a responsible human being, and expects me to behave like one. The more a workplace feels like they have to micromanage their employees like children, the…

The positive aspect of banning alcohol consumption is that it's an objective measure. If somebody is a drunken lout pawing his employees, save the victim more exposure by drumming him out for the alcohol. With the possible exception of salespeople entertaining clients, there's no need to drink on duty, and if you do, there is a consequence.

You don't need to ban alcohol in order to punish someone for being visibly drunken or pawing at employees.

Re: A note to our employees

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [0] Ideally a diversity officer would stand up for Damore. That claim depends entirely on how you interpret Damore's behavior. Tolerance does not and must not require tolerating intolerance [0]. I'm not stating a claim as to whether or not Damore's behavior should be considered intolerance. I don't have a take on that. But without having some opinion on that, you can't claim a priori that a diversity officer is obl…

I don't want to relitigate the entire Damore saga. But for the sake of conversation, I will state that my view was that he was engaging in good faith with the diversity program Google was running. The statement I made in my previous comment does not actually require this however. Even if Damore was actually acting in bad faith, fireing him would still have a chilling effect unless it was thought by every Googler that…

> Even if Damore was actually acting in bad faith, fireing him would still have a chilling effect unless it was thought by every Googler that he was clearly acting in bad faith.

You can't help side effects. If someone is acting in a way that is detrimental to the company, you have to fire them, even if you know it will upset some other people in the company.

Re: A note to our employees

#199

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.

It's controversial because it's selectively applied and advocates for D&I know it. There are plenty of Asians in tech (men and women) and yet we're always hearing about a "diversity" problem. This is why tech no longer uses the term minority - they use "underrepresented minority" instead.

Why should the representation of Asians in tech reduce the concerns about the under-representations of Blacks and Latinos in tech?
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