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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

#181
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…

I've spent my entire career at the big tech company named in this article, and I've also never seen anything like this happen to anyone I worked with. The closest I got was hearing about such an incident second-hand (a friend in another org had a spouse in a third org who was witness to an incident).

Smaller companies, from what I've heard, have tons of office politics problems. You hear about it less because most small companies have no national importance, and thus do not excite the press the way a large company would.

I would almost be willing to guarantee you that an incident of gender or sex discrimination has happened at one of the companies you've worked at, at least supposing you've been working more than a year or two. Just because you didn't hear about it doesn't mean it didn't happen. These things are generally kept pretty quiet -- splashing them across the headlines is the exception, not the norm.

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

#182
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole country is rather politicized (some of it actually violent). Google doesn't force employees to pretend that's not the case. Maybe a good idea, maybe bad.

Having politics free zones like work is a good idea.

"Politics-free" inherently means "maintain the status quo". This does well to serve the majority, but tends to go poorly for people who are harmed by that status quo, such as historically underrepresented groups. If I'm a gay person asking to change the company policy to allow parental leave, is that political? Is an Asian person asking coworkers to not use harmful stereotypes political? Is a trans person asking to have their pronouns respected political? It will usually be the majority to decide it's whether it's political, even if they're not affected. And that's where the problem inherently lies. The majority of people want no-politics zones until there's something "political" that affects them.

"Politics-free" also means "the ethical choice is what the higher-ups define", which would be difficult for me to stomach for its own set of reasons.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think the managers are being renegades? They know the company details that you don't know: we have too many women claiming maternity benefits, we have too many people with skill X and not enough Y, etc. Again, HR's job is to handle the needs of senior management, and only until then will HR act against a manager.

Your hypothesis is extraordinarily unlikely. Google has continuously expanded benefits for men and women going on parental leave over these last years. It would make no sense whatsoever for them to also systematically harass pregnant women out of the workforce. If they were concerned about the costs of maternity, they could just have expanded those benefits more slowly. That would have had dramatically more impact, a…

No one is saying that Google is engaging in "systematic" harassment here.

But it may very well be that they are willfully (or simply incompetently) turning a blind eye in this one particular case.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Religion and politics. Both super important. Both better discussed outside the workplace.

Does your workplace ever expect people to work after sundown on Friday? How do your orthodox Jewish employees feel about that?

A. My workplace does not require people to work after sundown on Friday. Orthodox Jews work there.

B. My workplace does require people to work after sundown on Friday. Orthodox Jews don't work there.

This isn't necessarily a religious thing though.

I also don't expect a vegan to work as a BBQ taste tester. AFAIK veganism per se isn't a religion.

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

#185
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ballotpedia.org/Transgender_bathroom_access_laws_in_... QED.

This is an extreme case, and even so HR drafts a policy and the company follows it. What part of this requires intensive debating? There's nothing employees need to do here other than follow the law and policies.

And if the policy is created by people who have no idea what the needs actually are and get it wrong? It's all well and good to say "just follow HR and the law", but it's frankly pretty naive. What happens when your very existence is determined to be political? This is often the case for trans people.

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

#186
post #81

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 sa…

A lot of modern society is a bit stacked against women actually having children. Women managers have as much a vested interest in the system as anyone but, by virtue of being women, don’t have the same kind of awkwardness and shame that a man would have.

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's code for anything that is unrelated to straight white males. Edit: Tell me I'm wrong lol.

Don't you see that you're reinforcing the image that "SJWs hate straight white males"?

I think they're referring to specifically the trend that negative usage of the term SJW is usually by cishet (non-LGBT) white men regarding discussion of policies/politics that would not directly benefit them.

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

#188
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…

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…

> Encouraging [internal] dialogue and communication but not understanding its limits at scale is one of the biggest mistakes [Google] has made. [Google] was built on principles of open company-wide communication and sharing of information, and while it clearly doesn't work as intended anymore, there's too much inertia to change the course.

Couldn’t the same basically be said of Google/Facebook/Twitter’s public communication platforms too? :-)

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an extremely detailed refutation that was published about two years ago: https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boot... It's on the first page of google search results for "refutation of james demore memo", as are several other similar pieces.

That article is just rife with attacks on Damore’s character based on speculation and hearsay, and semantic games.

No it isn't? Which sections are you talking about?
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