Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A note to our employees

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 421 posts

Re: A note to our employees

#271

Post by stale2002 »

edikit wrote: post #251
danans wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because factoring Asians (and Indians, for that matter) in to the equation changes the framing of the argument. Asians are a minority group, but are vastly over-represented in tech, to the point that even white people are under-represented by comparison. The concern about racial diversity tends to focus on the idea that white hiring managers are subconsciously selective against non-white applicants. This doesn't make…

> The concern about racial diversity tends to focus on the idea that white hiring managers are subconsciously selective against non-white applicants. This doesn't make sense though when you factor in the minority groups that are actually over-represented.

Of course it makes sense. It means that instead of subconsciously being biased against the non white category, they are instead biased against non white non Asians.

That was an easy logical deduction there.

Re: A note to our employees

#272

Post by skedaddle »

prepend wrote: post #91
fmitchell0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious response: Framing it as an 'Or' implies the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Diversity is fact. The world is diverse in a variety of ways (skin, eyes, experiences, gender, language, nationality, etc.). Inclusion is the action. Equity is the goal. In the OKR framework, being able to measure your progress towards the goal is important. The real question is, which aspects of people who work for your com…

“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…

Equity and equality are different. Equitable means fair, just, unprejudiced, considerate of all involved, etc. Equality means evenly balanced, identical on both sides, measurably indistinguishable.

I think we want an equitable outcome and that most people (regardless of any other opinion) would actually agree that equality of outcome is not necessary.

Re: A note to our employees

#273

Post by dragonwriter »

tptacek wrote: post #201

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.…

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

Because penalties for non-compliance are how mandates are enforced; otherwise, they aren't mandates.

What you probably don't understand is really why is the penalty not immediate termination, or termination after a certain period of delinquency, not why there is a penalty, and I suspect it actually is the latter, and the downgrade in internal rating is the immediate and automatic consequence of delinquency (also, I don't know how Perf works, for all I know the stated downgrade may be enough to normally trigger being put on a PIP and terminated if the problem isn't cured quickly.)

Re: A note to our employees

#274

Post by woolvalley »

vkou wrote: post #28
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 is performed by every employer in California who doesn't want to get sued for someone getting sexually harassed at work. The purpose of it is usually not educating people, but providing a liability shield. Juries don't look kindly when Billy was harassed by his manager, and Billy's employer couldn't even be arsed to put Billy through a two-hour course, that spells out why harassme…

Something I don't understand is why not for every other law then? Why does this segment of the law get a mandatory training session every year?

Re: A note to our employees

#275

Post by mcguire »

RankingMember wrote: post #127
misiti3780 wrote: post #104

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

I agree, though I think a warning for a first offense is more reasonable. It seems like every company would rather set policy based on the worst possible interpretation rather than leaving things a little looser and dealing with problems/oversteppers directly.

I don't know. It seems like either you're responsible for your behavior, or you are not. Having a first-offense warning just shows that the company isn't really serious about dealing with the problem.

Re: A note to our employees

#276

Post by zbentley »

Aeolun wrote: post #214
roenxi wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

So do many other things. If the only thing that keeps morale acceptable is providing alcohol, then you have a problem either with the people you hire, the work you make them do, or the amount of resources you're willing to expend on morale.

Re: A note to our employees

#277

Post by [deleted] »

naasking wrote: post #186
mebreuer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a high enough sample size, shouldn't equity of outcome reflect equity of opportunity?

Not at all. For instance, if there are innate gender dispositions to certain subjects, then those fields will have a much larger proportion of that gender. There's evidence this may be the case in STEM for instance, which would explain the so-called gender equality paradox.

[deleted]

Re: A note to our employees

#278

Post by jameslevy »

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #221
roenxi wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> alcohol in low doses increases cognitive function https://xkcd.com/323/

A BAC of .13 is not a low dose of alcohol. It means you are pretty heavily intoxicated.

Re: A note to our employees

#279

Post by adrr »

adamrezich wrote: post #160
lallysingh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's helpful if you come from a different culture where some of those things would be considered acceptable.

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

My wife works for a financial firm. Her European counterparts kiss each other goodbye. That's a no-no at an American workplace. The sexual harassment training I received actually discouraged us from even hugging. No contact except for handshakes. I personally don't mind that since I find it awkward to hug people outside of close friends and family.

Re: A note to our employees

#280

Post by jameslevy »

majewsky wrote: post #268
williamaadams wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for Microsoft, and the back of my employee badge says: Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. To me, this implies that our engineering organizations, and entire company, need to have an appropriate amount of empathy across a broad spectrum of geographies, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and the like. You only get that by having a diversity of talent, and mo…

> Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Did they think about what they said there before printing? Because there are plenty of organizations which we definitely do not want to achieve more (e.g. drug cartels, nazi parties).

I don't think the creators these mission statements are too concerned about the edge cases.
Post reply on HN