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A note to our employees

blog.google

341–350 of 421 posts

Re: A note to our employees

#341

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…

Would be interesting to compare office drinking in other regions.

I've heard stories about Korean chaebols that are hard to believe, but I'm sure there are intense workplace antipatterns worldwide.

Re: A note to our employees

#342
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you allow drinking at work, what BAC is ok? What exactly is the justification for endorsing drinking at work?

Marijuana is now legal in California too. What standards apply there?

> Marijuana is now legal in California too.

No, it's still against federal law, which covers California.

Re: A note to our employees

#343

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…

It's not just an environmental issue. It's an ethical issue.

Maybe some companies out there also banned slave ownership across the board. Probably seemed unfair, too. Did they not realize how useful slaves are?

Now, this seems like a silly comparison because we're all so used to eating meat for every meal, but does familiarity trump ethical concerns?

Re: A note to our employees

#344
post #337

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…

[Googler here] We have much less company-provided alcohol at work than most tech companies that I'm aware of. Mostly beers once a week, and most people don't participate. This change is mostly talking about work social events that take place off site. My team's company holiday party last year was piloting this and gave each person two drink tickets upon entering. I think banning alcohol completely would reduce the at…

Wow, piloting a program for drink tickets?! Crazy! My team at OtherBigCo did that a decade ago...

Re: A note to our employees

#345
post #6

That really said nothing. They actually previously had a policy that if you were required to take sexual harassment training and didn't you got docked 1 point? Wouldn't getting fired be a more appropriate penalty? However they take this "seriously" so I'm sure everything will be fine for Google employees.

You didn't read the post carefully, apparently. Previously there was no penalty for skipping the mandatory training. (The fact that such training is "mandatory" is required by US law. Like most companies, such training is generally done on-line. It was that way at all of my previous places of employment, including at IBM. And I'm not aware of any impact, other than continuing to get nag e-mails, at any of my previous employers for not bothering to do the training.)

Moving forward, there now is a penalty for skipping said training. More importantly, it applies for everyone, including Directors and VP's, not just individual contributors. And one point on Perf is a big deal; it's the difference between Significantly Exceeds Expectation and Exceeds Expectations (or Exceeds Expectations vs Meets Expectations), and this impacts salary increases, bonuses, and promotion.

Re: A note to our employees

#346

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…

So what would be the benefits in DNA diversity at all? If you can get a diverse views of perspectives, why bring in the DNA diversity which is going to lead to conflicts as people won't be able to talk as effectively as people who are more homogeneous?

Are you seriously arguing companies should be entirely white and male because then there won't be sexism and racism problems?!

And are you aware that non-DNA differences also create divisions?

Re: A note to our employees

#347

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…

This kind of mentality exasperates me to no end. I am a heavy drinker (never at work), and I hate it when people blame my behavior on my alcohol level. I always have to correct them, they are lucky I am drunk when bad things happen, I tend to be a very violent and horrible person when sober, for sure the outcome could be much worse. People should take responsibility for their behavior without blaming substances.

Re: A note to our employees

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of alcohol you consume doesn't really matter. It's the behavior that is punishable regardless of whether you were drinking or not.

So when your high functioning alcoholic blows a .22 after taking out a telephone pole and hurting another driver, what do you do then? What portion of responsibility will the victims attorney pin on you?

Zero. Don't drink and drive; It's the drinkers responsibility. Do you blame the liquor store? The state liquor laws?

Re: A note to our employees

#349

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…

I actually think the specific promises are a good thing. They are measurable, concrete actions that are time bound --- "By such and such a date, we will have done thus and so." Like concrete OKR's, you can tell whether or not they will have done what they said they are going to do.

You can also make vague statements such as "there is no place for harassment at $COMPANY"; those statements were made earlier, and they were made today. But concrete steps like "making arbitration optional, instead of mandatory" is one of the things that engineers who participated in the Walkout had demanded. So it's certainly something substantive.

Now, there were some specific requests from the employees that were not honored, such as treating Temps and Contractors the same as Employees; legally that really can't be done except by hiring the Temps and Contractors and making them employees. I personally would invite other companies, such as (for example) Facebook and Apple to lead by hiring all of their cafeteria workers and stop using contracted labor. Maybe Google will lead by example, even if it impacts expenses, and therefore earnings, and therefore the Stock Price. But it's certainly within the power of other companies, like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, etc. to also lead by example.....

Wait, what? Is that Crickets that I'm hearing? :-)

Re: A note to our employees

#350
post #338
post #45

This reminds me of a company I worked at where they deiced people were spending too much on travel. So they came out with new rules about travel expenses every 6 months until large swaths of people simply couldn't travel (me included). But the problem wasn't solved at all because the bulk of the absurd spending was caused by people who the rules didn't apply to....

[Googler] This is how I feel when I see an increased emphasis on training. Making a bunch of leaf-node employees like me sit through more simple online training is not going to fix the problem we have (although it can't hurt). It doesn't address the harassment that comes from extreme differences in power and a lack of accountability. Still, I am cautiously optimistic about today's announced changes.

It's the neoliberal response to everything. Make cosmetic, progressive changes but don't address underlying structural inequalities between groups.
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