A note to our employees • Hacker News Board

Re: A note to our employees

#201

Post by tptacek » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

I don't understand why the "mandatory" training has a penalty for skipping it. If it's mandatory, it's mandatory.

This isn't rocket surgery; there are all sorts of mandatory training things big companies do, and they are often actually mandatory. For instance, we've worked with HIPAA-encumbered clients where you'll lose access to their network and applications if you don't complete annual security awareness training.

The "docking people in Perf" thing just seems like needless drama. Just require people to do the damn training.

Re: A note to our employees

#202

Post by aaaaaaaaaab » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

CamTin wrote: post #169

aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, I see! I wasn’t familiar with this term.

So, this system is used in the United States, right?

Re: A note to our employees

#203

Post by krapp » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

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…

>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.

What you're missing is that many employers don't have the perspective whereby gender, skin color or political views are irrelevant. Biases against gender, race and religion are part of the reason that many professions have been dominated by certain races, genders and religions (although laws have attempted to counteract this effect.)

The point of diversity in the workplace is to force an implicitly prejudiced employment market to be less prejudiced than it otherwise might be, just as the point of labor laws and the minimum wage are to force companies to care more about their employees' welfare than they otherwise would.

Re: A note to our employees

#204

Post by walshemj » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

706f6f70 wrote: post #168

gizmo686 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Non Hispanic Latino ? isn't that a moot point at his point in history un less you ant to go back to the Spanish/French system of race classification

Re: A note to our employees

#205

Post by praneshp » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #173

adamrezich wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are there a lot of people asking intentionally daft questions in this thread? "Gee willikers Wally, shouldn't we fire people for missing the highly informative HR-mandated 'be polite' video?" No? "Really? Gee, Willikers, why not?" Anyway. These things have been a complete joke for a long time: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/tv-funhouse-se...

If you're referring to `adamrezich`, then I can second that I had the same question. I'm probably daft, but not intentionally so.

Re: A note to our employees

#206

Post by learnstats2 » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

cik2e wrote: post #176

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…

Absurd. I'd never work at such a company, in part due to the type of people that kind of policy would attract. If this rule was enacted and I was already an employee, I'd spend the money to bring large meat spreads to all of the events.

Perhaps WeWork knew what they were doing.

Re: A note to our employees

#207

Post by roenxi » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 10:01 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #146

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…

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…

> I personally want to work somewhere who values me as a responsible human being, and expects me to behave like one.

Responsible human beings don't drink alcohol in the workplace. If a person is drawing a salary, they should be presenting to work fit & as prepared as possible to do it. There is no good reason for employees to be drinking at or prior to work. Unless, I suppose, there is some well-replicated study showing that alcohol in low doses increases cognitive function despite all my expectations.

Management doesn't have a magic crystal ball to tell truth from falsehood and fact from hearsay - and because of that uncertainty firing people is a far last resort for creating a safe and welcoming workspace. Banning alcohol at work is both prudent and reasonable.

Re: A note to our employees

#208

Post by zdragnar » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

philipodonnell wrote: post #78

savanaly wrote: post #60

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 see this sentiment a lot (especially on HN!) and I share it. I usually skip team dinners when I can. But there's no accounting for taste, and humans in general seem to have a taste for mixing work and "social stuff", so why shouldn't companies encourage it in that capacity?

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-…

Having lots of kids around? One of my favorite jobs had a group of parents who would come in on the weekend for play dates (in designated areas). The company supported them, often organizing age appripriate maker type events.

Re: A note to our employees

#209

Post by xyzzyz » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 10:05 PM UTC

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #187

xyzzyz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arbitration means that you don't get to sue in real court, but instead you are forced to go through "arbitration", which is a private company hired by your employer that's supposed to make fair decisions in disputes between the party that brings them continued business, and the random person that will never talk to them if they weren't forced to.

Isn’t sexual assault / harassment a criminal offence though? Surely the state should be prosecuting the moment a law is broken? Or does the US justice system work differently?

There are plenty of fireable offenses of sexual harrasment type that don’t meet the relevant criminal standard of sexual assault. Sexual harrasment is not a crime, though often it is very close to the crime of sexual assault (e.g. unwanted touching is a crime).

Re: A note to our employees

#210

Post by Aqua » Thu, Nov 08, 2018, 10:07 PM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #163

Aqua wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

Apologies, I should have been more clear as I intended to point out an example, not a fixed quota, because clearly if you consider diversity when making a hiring decision you inevitably have to end up aiming to hire more people of certain characteristics(and not necessarily qualifications) that fit your long term quota goals.

Besides, what do you mean by fair recruitment? Because personally in this context I view diversity and fairness as contradicting terms, since it would always be more fair to hire a candidate that has higher qualifications and is a good cultural fit over one that wasn't as qualified, but turned out to be a good match when it comes to meeting present quarter's diversity goals?

I believe that basing hiring decisions on physical appearance, race, religion, gender or political views is simply wrong. I recall there was a company that focused on distorting candidates' voices during phone interviews that effectively prevented the interviewers from distinguishing the interviewees' gender. If companies like Google want to actually be more "fair", perhaps they should move in that direction rather than introducing artificial quotas and justifying them with a vague "need for diversity"?