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

381–390 of 421 posts

Re: A note to our employees

#381

Post by salvar »

kemitche wrote: post #264
brlewis wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree. You're assuming that only direct punishment can affect behavior, when the _threat_ of punishment after first offense can also affect behavior. As a ridiculous hyperbole: assume a life in prison minimum sentence is established for speeding, on the first offense, and that it's actually enforced. I guarantee you that very quickly we'd have everyone driving under the posted speed limit at all times.

Counterpoint to your ridiculous hyperbole: Why isn't the murder rate near zero in states with the death penalty?

Re: A note to our employees

#382

Post by whostolemyhat »

geodel wrote: post #312
throwawaymath wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Welcome to world of political correctness. Also is minority of employees claim anyone eating meat hurt their feelings companies could reasonably ban meat in office meals claiming it is creating non-welcoming workplace.

It was nothing to do with feelings. Why don't you try reading?

Re: A note to our employees

#383

Post by repolfx »

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…

The resume problem is the inverse, isn't it? The studies I've seen where resumes were having names removed before being sent to recruiters showed a slight bias against white men which is why these schemes always get shut down - increasing fairness decreases (slightly) diversity.

Re: A note to our employees

#384

Post by repolfx »

cryoshon wrote: post #51
georgeburdell wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re getting downvoted because Google and many other well known tech companies are known not to be comfortable places to work if you’re a conservative. Political ideology, like skin color, should not itself be a diversity goal, but the former often reflects differences in mindsets that may be better suited for certain projects or job roles.

there's a lot more to a person's perspective than their political ideology. i imagine at google it'd be advantageous to have people who approached problems with a plethora of cognitive approaches, however. it's difficult to measure such things, of course. political ideology can't be a meaningful diversity goal anyway, nor should it be. there may not be a "best" ideology but promoting political ideology alone would be…

Political diversity would come naturally if a company really is trying to get a diversity of backgrounds and experiences because those different experiences are the cause of political differences to begin with. In fact "political diversity" and "diversity of thought" are simply two ways to phrase the same idea.

The problem with trying to actually do it is that in recent times, one camp in particular tends to label the other as "Nazis" who must be crushed out of existence the moment they're spotted, although there are essentially no actual Nazis in the world today. In other words the side that preaches tolerance and diversity the most can't actually handle it and immediately tries to get rid of it by using the most overblown pastiches imaginable.

Re: A note to our employees

#385

Post by repolfx »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #363
lallysingh wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repeatedly asking a woman out. I recall a friend upsetting a love interest because he didn't repeatedly ask her out, as was customary where she was from. She didn't think he was serious because he wasn't trying hard enough. Not ok here, but different in other places.

In which country is it customary to repeatedly ask someone out?

It used to be quite common everywhere. The idea that you should immediately give up after a single "no" is very modern even in the west, and by no means is it an idea all women are on board with.

For example. George Clooney had to ask his wife out three times before she said yes. I believe Melinda Gates said no to Bill Gates the first time he asked her out (and of course, he was her boss). In Russian culture it's common for women to say no to a man even if she likes him, because making him work for it is thought to increase the eventual strength of the relationship (you don't value what you get for free, essentially). In fact a friend of mine is married to a Russian woman and she's said in the past she said yes to him too easily and regretted not rejecting him before - but he's told her, if she'd done that, he'd have immediately given up because he was quite burned out on dating at the time. So she sort of accepts it but has small regrets.

Just search on Google and you can find many examples of cases where men asked women out several times and are now married.

Never mix up feminists with women, they aren't the same. I've met plenty of women who wish men would chase them, but it's too risky for men to do that these days.

Re: A note to our employees

#386

Post by roenxi »

afandian wrote: post #374
roenxi wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a very narrow view of "the workplace". On the contrary, I have a very broad view of the workplace. Yes to all your questions. I don't work in tech, and there are no subsidised bars or alcohol at conferences. We got subsidised gym memberships and tea at the conferences I'm used to. If you want to drink, your money, your time, after work. If you want to get tipsy with colleagues in your own time, it is not i…

Both of my examples were after work. So we're not talking about being at your desk answering support tickets and calculating bridge loading equations. My point about taking a narrow view is that "the workplace" is not only at-your-desk time. Its geographic-but-after-hours, related but off-site social events. On a related note, a lot of the discussions around software project codes of conduct are based on the fact tha…

:P I don't understand why you are insisting that I have a narrow view of the workplace, I've read what you've written and agree. I can tell that your examples are after work, we're not talking about sitting at your desk. I'm talking about geographic-but-after-hours and related but off-site social events too.

> a subsidized bar

And if an employee does something stupid after being in that bar, it requires an absolute contortion of language to say that maybe the presence and cheapness of the grog wasn't a contributing factor. Say in a bad case a male employee sexually harasses some female coworker - the woman involved (and, I suspect, a judge) might well question why the company was enabling this. I personally think that the company should be held responsible as much as the drunk employee.

It is simply too easy to link subsidised alcohol to someone acting inappropriately due to alcohol.

> official conference social meet-up

Ditto. If the meetup is official, there should be no alcohol. Learn to socialise over a lemonade. I've seen a very large number of professionals who, somehow, manage to do just that.

> My coffee counterexample was to illustrate that your approach seems to be binary, zero tolerance. With humans involved, I think it's just not that simple.

If I, in a capacity as an employer, am going to have some responsibility for some employees actions then that employee, whilst I am responsible for them, is not going to be drinking alcohol. There risk far outweighs the hypothetical employee who can only socialise with a glass in hand.

I'm not even making that decision on any specific risk factor - alcohol leads to worse decisions, in a way that coffee does not. We live in an age where companies are often responsible for outcomes in a _very broad_ definition of "workplace". If the company might be responsible, then employees have a responsibility to be making their best decisions.

If you want to drink with your workmates the process should be organise it unofficially, go find a bar and don't wear a hat with a corporate logo on it. It isn't hard to do. If drinking is mandatory to having a career then that is the problem, not my hardline approach to alcohol.

Re: A note to our employees

#388

Post by tk75x »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #308
Aqua wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 div…

You mentioned "good cultural fit". I have heard many hiring managers mention that they want somebody who is a good fit for the team. And it's very natural, I mean, everybody is going to have to work with this person, right? This almost guarantees the perpetuation of inequality. We need to stop hiring for that kind of fit. I'm certain that I have heard of research (by IBM maybe?) that determined that more diversity ma…

> more diversity made teams more productive, but the people on the teams were less happy/comfortable.

Maybe because nobody wanted to socialize with each other so they spent more time doing work?

Re: A note to our employees

#389

Post by naasking »

claudiawerner wrote: post #259
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.

>Does no one realize that this claim is not based on any evidence whatsoever? And yet it remains an interesting thought experiment, doesn't it? Didn't it work on Reddit, in which they found that driving hateful communities out raised the level of discourse? And a possible way to structure society. Hitler himself admitted that had the Nazis not been tolerated, they wouldn't have gained the foothold they did. Not only…

> And yet it remains an interesting thought experiment, doesn't it?

Sure, but that doesn't make it a sound policy for real political discourse.

> Didn't it work on Reddit, in which they found that driving hateful communities out raised the level of discourse?

Or did it simply fuel a growing narrative of censorship and persecution which is driving the counter-PC culture and electing people like Trump? I don't think analyzing this as a closed system is faithful to the point I'm making, because these changes can and do have negative externalities.

> Hitler himself admitted that had the Nazis not been tolerated, they wouldn't have gained the foothold they did.

So basically, had the majority of the country not been sympathetic to Nazi principles, then Nazis wouldn't have gotten elected? That strikes me as absurdly tautological. A minority of people cannot be resist the wishes of a majority via intolerance, and if good people are the majority, then they can safely ignore the minority.

> Not only do I prefer Popper's claim, but I prefer the Frankfurt School's claim too[0].

This claim at that link is pure nonsense: "Tolerance is a democratic principle, since it relies on the idea that nobody has an absolute claim on the truth"

No, simply false. Tolerance is justified by the recognition that all people have intrinsic value ala Kant, that they are thinking feeling beings and that unless you wish to launch your own campaign for genocide against people with whom you disagree, then you should seek to convince them of your version of the truth using non-violent means.

The only time violence is justified is in response to violence. The far left and the far right are both guilty of violating this principle.

Re: A note to our employees

#390

Post by tk75x »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #76
svachalek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And someone invariably makes a wisecrack about how it's a bad model because everyone knows you speed up if the light is yellow and you think you can make it and rights on red are ok unless posted otherwise.

That someone appears to be you.
Post reply on HN