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

Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 217 posts

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

#61

Post by sjg007 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #51
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 sys…

The CEO of AOL referred to million dollar babies once as a reason to cut benefits.

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

#62

Post by rainyMammoth »

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…

It seems to me that Google also attracts more far-left employees than any other big company.

I find it extremely ironic that those employees accept to be employed by the biggest censorship machine ever made, being paid close to the highest salaries in tech and then complain and plan walkouts in order to virtue signal and feel good about themselves.

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

#63

Post by neosat »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #22
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…

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…

Sorry to hear about your experience and naming the company - no one should have to go through that. I had no perception of the company you mentioned but now when I hear someone mention it or consider joining, I know what to say.

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

#64

Post by ci5er »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #43
whiddershins wrote: post #36

I dunno, I couldn’t read the entire memo (it just felt too long) and I’m uninterested in Vice’s editorializing. That said, I just don’t love the way the original thing was handled. A manager made some comments, it was totally feasible to just ignore them, or to make a bit of a wisecrack or say directly “hey, that feels a little harsh, no?” Instead you go to HR. I don’t know, people say dumb or insensitive things all…

I can't downvote you enough. This is horrible advice. People tend to view going to HR as "the nuclear option", but this is not the case. Most companies put their managers through training about how they put the company at immediate (potentially large) liability if you are aware of harassment, even a "gray area", and you don't report it.

> I can't downvote you enough.

Why? The point of view seemed to be politely presented. You disagree. I tend to disagree with you (for the limited number (call it ~10) of large company HR departments I have seen). What are the downvotes for?

Now - to your second point - companies do train managers to report. Yes. I believe that this is a containment device. I am not marketing this here, so don't call me a shill, but I'm working on a better way for employees to get their individual complaints anonymously surfaced all the way to the board. The upside is: less layers of battle-hardened defence mechanism against employees. The downside is: loss of plausible deniability. We'll see how it works out.

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

#65

Post by itchyouch »

hcnews wrote: post #30
kyrra wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has ~100,000 employees at this point. This is the story of a single manager within the company. When you have that many people at the company, there are going to be people that make bad choices, and then the story will fall under the umbrella of "Google" and make the news. If this was a single small 25-100 person company, it would (likely) not get any notice.

How do you know if there are 1 or 100 or 1000s of such cases without actual data? Companies should be forced to reveal number of cases per year per geography. That'll allow me to make an informed choice when joining a company. Also, its not clear to me why "HR will always help the company" has to be the status quo. This is an area where I would like the laws/judicial system to improve things.

Not to argue against regulations that force revealing of data, but in my experience, whenever places are forced to "document" issues, the culture shifts to only document the egregious while anything else that can be swept under does get swept away as to not inflate the statistics.

I wonder if there is a strategy that encourages openness, yet doesn't have the immediate impact of moving all the conversations behind closed doors in a buddy-buddy system.

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

#66

Post by ocdtrekkie »

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…

Is it possible that having a way to internally air grievances has, up until recently, made it less likely for people to air their grievances outside the company?

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

#67

Post by TAForObvReasons »

dang wrote: post #58
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

With all due respect, discussions about legal matters should never be trivialized or considered "tedious".

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by sokoloff »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #51
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 sys…

It also seems unlikely that even a multi-million dollar birth with complications would bankrupt the plan of a "big aerospace company", except for fairly small values of big.

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

#70

Post by Mountain_Skies »

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?

Realize that the person in question is the company's employee, not the manager's employee. Far too many managers see their position as some kind of feudal lord where those beneath them on the hierarchy owe personal allegiance to them. If the manager doesn't like the person, that's quite possibly the fault of the manager, not the person. The manager shouldn't automatically be the one who stays if no working relationship with the person in question is possible.
Post reply on HN