Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by trhway » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

noticeably that both managers were women. One would naively think that that would lead to deeper empathizing and more understandable accommodation due to better mutual understanding and shared experience. Well, better mutual understanding and shared experience seems to be a double edged sword. Can you imagine a male manager trying to oppose, or even just question the necessity of, something like that bedrest:

"She says that she and her baby had potentially life-threatening complications toward the end of her pregnancy, and that she would need to go on maternity leave earlier than expected.

“During one conversation with my new manager in which I reiterated an early leave and upcoming bedrest, she told me that she had just listened to an NPR segment that debunked the benefits of bedrest,” she wrote. “She also shared that her doctor had ordered her to take bedrest, but that she ignored the order and worked up until the day before she delivered her son via cesarean section."

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

#82

Post by alexashka » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

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…

People will talk regardless. I have to chuckle at this mindset of time wasted. What do you think people at Google do, work at an assembly line and are given an extra break to discuss things on a message board?

Non-trivial work requires that you goof off at least half of the time.

Regarding 'it's never happened to me' arguments. Please realize that the world is varied and complex. Basic statistics will tell you that in a group of 100k people, chances are, somebody is getting harassed legitimately, let alone thinking they are being harassed or treated unfairly. Why is that at all hard to believe? Give me any 100k population and I can write articles ranging from 'great success' to 'great discrimination' indefinitely. It's just basic odds.

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

#83

Post by rifung » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

I work at Google, opinions are my own.

If anything, having your employees spend their time on a internal site seems like a great idea because even their fun time is spent "within" the company. It's not like the alternative is they just don't do things besides work.. the alternative is they spend that time on HN, Reddit, or Youtube

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

#84

Post by jedberg » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #74

jedberg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of any cases where the aggrieved person reported something to HR and was helped, but I know of a few cases where a third party reported something to HR on the aggrieved person's behalf and it turned out well. I personally witnessed a woman at work getting harassed, and she was too afraid to say anything. I reported to HR on her behalf as a witness and the harasser was quickly removed. I think the best wa…

It's true that a third party report helps, but also, always make sure that you have the permission of the person you're reporting on behalf of.

Yes of course, I guess I assumed that was common sense, but you're right, it should be explicitly pointed out.

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

#85

Post by cdumler » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

sandino wrote: post #60

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.

From first-hand experience, I cannot stress this enough: HR's job is to protect management. Period. Full stop.

Having going through this type of situation (high-performer until on the wrong side of someone in management), I really didn't understand things until someone pointed something out. I was asked: who hired the manager? The purpose of a manager is to handle the details of the goals of hirer.

A musician hires a manager to handle the details book gigs, vet contracts, etc. If the musician doesn't like the work being done, the manager is fired. If the manager thinks he or she can get a better result from someone else, they fire the assistants, caterers, etc. The musician doesn't care, only that results are generated.

The senior execs hire managers for the exact same purpose: deal with the details to get projects completed for them. If you play ball, you'll get the rewards. Mess with that agenda, you'll get canned.

The biggest disappointment I had was how I was treated. They make you feel like it's you letting them down. They dangle in front of you all the ways out: "we're inclusive, we want to you have a great work environment, we have these resources for you to grow". And, I was there for all of it: the manager who would tell you exactly how to handle things only to lie in a HR meeting the exact opposite.

The big hint should be the HR title: Human Resources. A resource is explored, extracted, and exhausted. HR's job is provide for management, not the employees.

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

#86

Post by Bayart » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #19

takeout wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This current story does not sound like anything weird is going on but some of the stories it sounds like some employees spend a majority of their time setting up protests internally. It is hard to understand how someone can spend significant time in the office fomenting internal protests (even if they are for a good cause) and actually be getting their job done.

I'm guessing it's from people spending too much time at the company and having poor work/private life separation.

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

#87

Post by musingsole » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #56

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 soci…

> that isolation allows managers to take emotions out of a situation to make the most rational decisions for the business

I know you're playing devil's advocate, but to be on the side of angels: that isolation doesn't promote more rational decisions, only decisions absent a perspective of the company. To the extent that low-level employees don't have valuable information for the business' success, the isolation does promote more rational thinking (where that extent is most often 0).

I've never seen a situation where low-level employee wisdom was rightly quashed by boardroom decisions.

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

#88

Post by grape_eater » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #76

grape_eater wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for Google, can confirm many of the points you've made. While I haven't experienced any toxicity at Google, your analysis of the internal communication culture raises really good points. On one side, the internal social justice campaigns are incredibly pervasive due to large usage of internal message boards. On the other side, Google is one of the few companies that allows this level of internal airing of dirt…

Should have added, I worked one place we got acquired by a giant company that most here would say is really f*cking evil (TM) and even there I never detected any of the toxic stuff these Google stories talk about. That place was actually Evil enough I quit within a year to go back to another small company but it was nothing like what you read about Google. A different axis of evil.

I should've been more explicit - I haven't experienced any toxicity at Google. However, due to its internal communication culture Google is far more prone to blowups of well-publicized scandals than other companies of similar size. I'll edit my post to make it clearer.

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

#89

Post by ben7799 » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:04 PM UTC

grape_eater wrote: post #88

ben7799 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should have added, I worked one place we got acquired by a giant company that most here would say is really f*cking evil (TM) and even there I never detected any of the toxic stuff these Google stories talk about. That place was actually Evil enough I quit within a year to go back to another small company but it was nothing like what you read about Google. A different axis of evil.

I should've been more explicit - I haven't experienced any toxicity at Google. However, due to its internal communication culture Google is far more prone to blowups of well-publicized scandals than other companies of similar size. I'll edit my post to make it clearer.

For sure.. it sounds like Google has more of a problem with everything becoming public as opposed to a higher % of people behaving badly.

Stuff like being able to call a Town Hall Meeting to criticize the decisions of upper management seems unique to Google though. Imagine that happening at some place like Oracle!

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

#90

Post by malandrew » Mon, Aug 05, 2019, 9:04 PM UTC

rainyMammoth wrote: post #62

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.

It's not really that ironic. Censorship can come from both the far-left and far-right. Both ends of the political spectrum tend towards authoritarianism.