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Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

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Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#51

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

pjdemers wrote: post #34

Years ago, I worked at a big aerospace company (that no longer exists). I was hiring a small team of software engineers. I was flat out told not to hire anyone who was, or wanted to be, pregnant. Why? Health care cost. We were self-insured, and a baby born with severe health problems could bankrupt our plan.

If a bad outcome of a single employee can "bankrupt your plan", I think the company should stop with the euphemism of they are "self-insured" and admit to the reality that they have no insurance. The entire purpose of insurance is to spread risk to a level that it becomes acceptable if there is 1 negative outcome, which obviously wasn't the case here.

As an aside, just another example of how our f'd up healthcare system causes all these additional negative follow on effects.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#52

Post by CoolGuySteve »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #45
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened to me at Tudor Investment in NYC, which only has about 200 employees. I tried to quit when my daughter was born as I had found a better job anyways. If I didn't stay an extra 3 months, my manager threatened to fire me 'with cause' so they could enforce my non-compete without paying me in New York. So there I was working through some of the most incompetent shit from my dismal colleagues while my wife was…

Never tested but I've heard from colleagues that noncompetes without payments at the base salary level are not considered "reasonable" and would be not be enforceable in New York state. Of course that's the whole schtick with hedge funds and the like, keep the base salary lower and pay bonuses.

If you're terminated 'for cause', they are supposedly enforceable without pay in New York. Then you have to argue that their 'cause' was invalid, which takes time and lawyers.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#53

Post by cj »

takeout wrote: post #18
ben7799 wrote: post #13

I'm always amazed Google management tolerates things like internal message boards aimed at letting employees create Memes on company time. On the "evil point haired boss" level it seems these types of things like their internal message boards cause a lot of trouble for the company. On the less evil side it seems like employees waste a lot of time on these internal sites and all the internal social justice stuff. Mayb…

What do you mean by "internal social justice" stuff?

https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com...

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#54

Post by squish78 »

cronix wrote: post #49
squish78 wrote: post #2

The memo, since it's not actually linked in this Vice article, for anyone who would rather read the source material than the editorializing: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6240022-I-m-Not-Retu...

What do you mean? Literally, the very first 2 words in the article, "A memo", is a link to an article with all 6 pages of the document in question.

That hyperlink goes to another Vice article: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbmqxq/heres-the-memo-cur...

Edit - Which apparently has the document embedded, but doesn't render in Edge.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#55

Post by [deleted] »

phoe-krk wrote: post #48
squish78 wrote: post #2

The memo, since it's not actually linked in this Vice article, for anyone who would rather read the source material than the editorializing: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6240022-I-m-Not-Retu...

It is linked there: literally the two first words of the article, "A memo", link to this URL.

[deleted]

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#56

Post by clairity »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #20
Osiris wrote: post #4

I've spent most entire career at relatively small companies (25-100 employees). I've never seen these types of issues (I can't say they've never happened, I'm just not aware of any). In fact, reading these stories is probably why I've never had the desire to apply to work at any of the large tech companies. I can't say for certain what the differences are, but I think smaller companies tend of have less office politi…

My personal opinion is that fundamentally, upper management (but people, in general) will make decisions that positively impact the people they see and work with. In a small company (like where I work) where the CEO knows the bottom tier employees by name, they are going to have a very hard time making decisions that harm those people. In a large company, upper management works with middle managers, and therefore, wi…

yes, exactly. the whole point of layers of management is to insulate upper managers from the decisions they make, particularly those that slight the customer or the front-line worker.

a more generous phrasing would be that insolation allows managers to take emotions out of a situation to make the most rational decisions for the business (and its shareholders).

in any case, direct relationships are a big deal for social creatures like humans, from how you treat people to who gets the benefit of the doubt to who gets the juiciest resources, like the best jobs. we employ the ideal of the meritocracy as the polar counterweight to that tendency, to varying success.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#58

Post by dang »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #7
hundt wrote: post #6

I'm wondering, does anyone have any stories of involving HR in a situation like this (less-than-overt discrimination or harassment from a person more senior/important than you) and getting a positive outcome? At this point whenever I read that someone "reached out to HR to ask for help in navigating the situation" I assume that the main outcome will be to put the company on notice that they need to start working on t…

HR exists to protect the company, full stop. They are only interested in the workers insofar as they reveal potential legal liabilities for the company. It is almost always better to first talk to outside legal representation to understand the landscape. If there are actual law violations, they will help properly document and possibly start preparing a case, and if not then you know you should prepare to leave the co…

> this has been discussed at length every time a similar issue arises

That's probably why it was downvoted. Repetition is tedious, and HN is for curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#59

Post by jlawer »

bubblewrap wrote: post #26

Maybe the (female) manager(s) simply didn't like the woman in question. What is a manager to do, in this day and age, if they are not happy about an employee?

Maybe buck up and do their job? They are paid to manage people and get the best performance out of them even if they aren’t who you would have picked. Unless the staff are incompetent, or otherwise unsuitable, the job is to make it work effectively.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#60

Post by sandino »

The only support I received as the victim of my manager’s abuse was encouragement to take advantage of medical leave.

This statement is quite telling: first HR goes to lengths to deny that there's any seriously wrong. Then they pretty blatantly acknowledge that yes, things are so fucked up that you'll likely want to take medical leave.

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