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A note to our employees

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Re: A note to our employees

#241

Post by snowwrestler »

meowface wrote: post #225
krapp wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>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.) Yes, but you can mitigate those biases with gender/race-blind hiring practices. Thi…

Blind hiring techniques don't do much, for several reasons.

- They only work at the screening stages. Most hiring pipelines conclude with an in-person interview, and that can't be blind.

- People are very good at reading between the lines and can often infer race and gender from education and work history alone (or at least, infer deviations from their preferred norms).

- It doesn't address the problem of industry pipelines filtering against diversity before the applications ever get to you.

- A manager who doesn't want to hire women can just treat a blindly-hired woman badly until she leaves.

- It implies to the company that diversity is something that must be hidden rather than something that should be tolerated or celebrated.

- It implies to applicants that you have intolerant managers who need to be tricked.

Re: A note to our employees

#242

Post by shmel »

svachalek wrote: post #29
shmel wrote: post #16

Mandatory sexual harassment training sounds quite disturbing. Anybody can comment in detail how it is conducted? Is it really mandatory for everyone or only for men?

It's common in the U.S., and the second question is the sort of thing that would get you sent back to take the class again. Generally I've seen they use the "stoplight" model, in that some behaviors are "green", near universally accepted as non-harassing, some are "red", near universally rejected as harassing, and some are "yellow" meaning individuals vary. "Red" behaviors should get you fired immediately, while "yel…

>>It's common in the U.S., and the second question is the sort of thing that would get you sent back to take the class again.

I have to admit I have never been in the US. So, what is the right answer for the second question?

I suppose it should be mandatory for all, but in the same time I have read too many stories about "classes to teach men to not rape" that I am in doubts.

Re: A note to our employees

#244

Post by harlanji »

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…

I can't even identify when people are black out drunk, for some reason. There's not always a slur, and I probably keep enough distance to not smell it. But I've been surprised when a half hour into conversations people have told me they're drunk. Twice that I recall.

On the flip side, people have made up stories of me being drunk after having 2 drinks, and my having had any drinks at all makes my side of the story have no credibility. No good. Like when a cop pulls you over and asks if you've had any drinks.

So I'm all for getting booze out of the workplace. I'd had my consumption limited to 2 drinks for my past 4 jobs after being fired for saying obnoxious things while drunk. A company holiday party where the tequila was flowing was the only exception, but I kept the volume down that time. I deserved the firing, no complains there.

It's my personality to say obnoxious things, having been raised on dark and vulgar comedy. My only way to joke around authentically now is without drinking, sadly, because of the nature of accusations against people who've been drinking. Just one example, I'm sure other people have personally entertaining activities that they always do but people think they must be drunk when they do it, no matter how sober. Dancing's another one... the more sober I am, the more people ask "bro, what are you on?"

My twitter is a good example of what I feel free to say while sober. Reading it, you'd think I'm always drunk.

I also am noticing after a year on break from drinking that all drinkers are mentally lazy to some degree, and some tell lies assuming that the other party won't notice and I'm likely guilty of that from my drinking days. It's like their memory isn't good so they assume nobody else's is, yet they claim perfect memory.

A little meandering, I know... but overall I think a no alcohol policy would be great.

Re: A note to our employees

#245

Post by meowface »

snowwrestler wrote: post #241
meowface wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.) Yes, but you can mitigate those biases with gender/race-blind hiring practices. Thi…

Blind hiring techniques don't do much, for several reasons. - They only work at the screening stages. Most hiring pipelines conclude with an in-person interview, and that can't be blind. - People are very good at reading between the lines and can often infer race and gender from education and work history alone (or at least, infer deviations from their preferred norms). - It doesn't address the problem of industry pi…

There are certainly problems with this approach and it definitely isn't a foolproof way of stopping discrimination, but I'd argue there is a longer and more concerning list of issues with hiring based on quotas.

All I know is gender/race-blind hiring works fantastically for things like music auditions. For technology-based jobs where most of the interview process can be done in writing, over the phone, or over a shared virtual whiteboard or document (for coding or drawing diagrams), there's no reason why everything up to the in-person interview can't be as age, gender, and race blind as possible.

Re: A note to our employees

#246

Post by shmel »

Osmose wrote: post #62
XCabbage wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether your confusion is genuine or feigned. If it's the former, then allow me to blow your mind by informing you that non-Californians exist and use the internet.

I live in Oregon. It's not confusion so much as incredulity that this would seem disturbing to someone, especially considering it is so common that a major state[1] mandates it for some employees. California is an example that mandatory sexual harassment training is common.

I form my opinion about common practices in the US mostly based on internet stories (and they are often pretty wild!). Among my IRL friends no one ever attended a training like this.

Re: A note to our employees

#247

Post by naasking »

uxp100 wrote: post #237
naasking wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tolerance does not and must not require tolerating intolerance [0] I honestly hate how often this is trotted out. Does no one realize that this claim is not based on any evidence whatsoever? Why prefer Popper's claim over Rawls' or Jefferson's? This is typically used to justify yet more intolerance, and around and around we go.

Especially since in the full context it's a bit more measured. This portion follows what is typically quoted: "In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if ne…

> Seems Popper would not have much issue with tolerating Damore, but tolerating things like Neo-nazi marches probably crosses his line.

Probably not even then! Neo-nazis are a tiny minority that's suppressed by public opinion. Now if they were to suddenly start gaining political power, then we have a real problem.

Re: A note to our employees

#248

Post by icebraining »

ofxartem wrote: post #165
stickfigure wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope, for some of us, taking breaks where we focus on other stuff is essential to perform better.

In my case, that's taking occasional walks to the coffeeshop nearby, despite their lack of inclusiveness of people with mobility problems and those who don't like coffee.

Re: A note to our employees

#249

Post by dragonwriter »

shmel wrote: post #16

Mandatory sexual harassment training sounds quite disturbing. Anybody can comment in detail how it is conducted? Is it really mandatory for everyone or only for men?

> Mandatory sexual harassment training sounds quite disturbing.

It can be, if it is done poorly. In fact, if it's done really poorly, it can look like it was carefully designed to cause a differentially hostile workplace environment based on sex, such as when every single example or reference to a victim or potential victim specifies a female worker or uses feminine pronouns, and every perpetrator or potential perpetrator in an example or description is male. (Which happened in the first such training I attended, in 1999.)

> Anybody can comment in detail how it is conducted?

It varies. A lot. Even as to whether it is mandatory sexual harassment training or mandatory harassment training that includes sexual harassment as a component.

> Is it really mandatory for everyone or only for men?

Where it is mandatory, it is usuually mandatory for everyonein the workplace, though there is often additional training for supervisory personnel over and above what everyone else is required to take.

Re: A note to our employees

#250

Post by shmel »

bobbytherobot wrote: post #18
shmel wrote: post #16

Mandatory sexual harassment training sounds quite disturbing. Anybody can comment in detail how it is conducted? Is it really mandatory for everyone or only for men?

Why does that sound disturbing?

Mainly because to me it sounds a lot like horror stories about those college classes to teach men how to not rape (I dunno, what happens there? instructor keeps telling "rape is bad"?)
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