Live data from Hacker News

A note to our employees

blog.google

211–220 of 421 posts

Re: A note to our employees

#212
post #129

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.

All men are sexual harassers by default. It's in our nature. Apparently.

Re: A note to our employees

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What % of incidents were first offenses? Unless it's a really low number, firing after first offense won't reduce the total number of incidents enough.

Isn't that backwards? If most offenses are first offenses, then firing after a first offense won't help much. But if most offense are repeat, firing after the first offense would have prevented the repeat, right?

Re: A note to our employees

#214
post #207
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…

> 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 show…

Having a drink in the workplace aftera day of hard work works great for morale.

Re: A note to our employees

#215
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Fortune 100 company has us watch a video where a white IT guy stalks a minority female in the parking garage and leaves a CD on her car with a mixtape, or something, I forget. It is pretty bad. I follow a simple rule, and so far, I haven't done anything stupid: "If you think it would make someone personally uncomfortable when you say it, consider not saying it".

ok, is that scene your describing romantic or harassment, I can't really tell.

Sounds like you'd be a good candidate for additional training.

Re: A note to our employees

#216
post #176

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.

Why would that be a reasonable response to this policy? It largely seems childish, and reactionary, in the face of a policy that is (clearly!) intended to improve the world.

Re: A note to our employees

#217
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll take it a step further -- why does work need to be fun? It's my meal ticket, not my hobby; it needs to be tolerable. The "fun at work" meme is, IMO, a way to keep people in the office longer a la the GOOOOG's Gilded Cage.

I think it depends on how you define fun. For me personally, does a workplace need to have alcohol, video games, bowling alleys, and ping pong tables? Probably not. It does need to be interesting though. And my co-workers/team need to be enjoyable to be around, both professionally and personally. If I'm not consistently having a good time at work, which could be construed as having "fun", there's very little reason for me to stick around. Especially in the tech scene, there's always a better place to work, so it's competitively advantageous for companies to have "fun" workplaces.

Re: A note to our employees

#218

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…

> The environmental situation with beef is a little more complex than "less beef eaten -> fewer cows -> less methane -> less climate change."

I'm not aware of this, and would be interested in knowing more; as I understand currently, that flow really does apply.

Re: A note to our employees

#219

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.…

and what if they still do not take the training, fire them ?

Re: A note to our employees

#220

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-…

I don’t see how the presence of alcohol excludes others? Most places that serve alcohol are perfectly capable of serving juice.
Post reply on HN