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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

#191

Post by nitwit005 »

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…

Used to work at Salesforce, which has it's own social network thing called Chatter. The most popular group internally was Airing of Greavances (Seinfeld joke), which was entirely to gripe.

The management has been asked about the group a few times, and they've noted it all ends up on glassdoor anyways. Old article from 2012 where it is brought up: https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforce-chatter-airing-of...

They did seem to get a lot of value out of that group over time. They had some people monitoring it and legitimately tried to fix some of the complaints (not always successfully, of course).

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

#192

Post by jvagner »

paganel wrote: post #126
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…

The employees creating memes on the company’s time is not the issue here, the issue is active discrimination against pregnant women at said company.

Scrolled down pretty far to catch this point being elevated.

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

#193

Post by manigandham »

kupiakos wrote: post #185
manigandham wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody's existence is political. That's just extreme language used to distract from the discussion.

Policies follow the law first. If there are specific requirements then, like I said, that's up to the individual to discuss. These issues are not the concern of everyone else.

No company is forced to do anything beyond the law just as the individual is not forced to work for the company. If the issue is with the law then it should be changed through the appropriate avenues, not hashed out in the workplace.

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

#194

Post by Bendingo »

Pfhreak wrote: post #159
paulddraper wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a glib answer from a position of security. I'd love to know how you figured that one out. > “Politics” is absolutely a core part of the workplace where it starts to affect your rights I am only slightly exaggerating when I say that all politics affects your rights. Again, like religion, super important. But for a variety of reasons, the workplace makes a poor forum.

What do you suggest people do when workplace must intersect with politics. For example, you need access to a gender neutral restroom or shower facility? Should you not advocate for that internally? Let's say you are an ally for someone who needs an affordance like a gender neutral facility, should you not speak up on their behalf?

> you need access to a gender neutral restroom

If you don't want to use the mens or womens, then just use the restroom with the wheelchair picture on the door. There's your gender neutral facility right there. Solved.

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

#195

Post by leereeves »

kupiakos wrote: post #187
leereeves wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everyone is advocating policies that directly benefit them. It's only ever a problem for the left when straight white males do so.

Surprisingly, straight white males are just like everyone else, advocating their own self-interest. That's not evil, that's natural.

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

#196

Post by quotemstr »

kupiakos wrote: post #182
wolco wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

No. A politics free zone is a politics free zone. Talking about C++ is not political. Talking about cookie recipes is not political. Talking about skiing is not political. Anyone can see that. Don't try to tell me that what happens every day is in fact impossible.

I regularly see elaborate arguments that non-political speech is impossible therefore employees must be allowed to talk politics at work. They're very tiresome, because ordinary people can see they're just not true. Non political workplaces are possible and desirable. Employees should ban political discussion, starting with this tedious everything-is-politics stuff.

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

#197

Post by duaoebg »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #180
duaoebg wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expanding benefits while simultaneously harassing those who take them gives the benefit of virtue signalling with less of the cost. Most people who receive harassment keep it to themselves as to be public about it is generally a career ender.

I'm not saying we can't concoct a series of words that makes it seem likely, if you suppose that all the evidence that you would otherwise expect is absent because of flimsy reasons. I'm saying that the balance of the evidence suggests that this is not part of any systematic policy, but rather an intermittent failure of a kind that one would expect given a sufficiently long timeline, even in an organization with the…

There is no need for it to be a systematic policy, it can easily be an emergent behavior. Such behaviors are common when there are conflicting objectives. It's human nature. Good luck fighting that.

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

#198

Post by lrem »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #165
lrem wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I work at Google, but this kind of stories reach me mostly via memes. Google has about 100k employees and this kind of shite seems to happen a couple times a year. Let's assume once a month. This gives an incidence rate of 0.000012 per person per year. Meaning that at 100 employees, plugging into [1], after a 100 year career in a place as bad as Google you would have a 10% chance of that happening at your…

What's the incidence rate per pregnancy?

That is a very good question. At some point the board disclosed the maternity benefits rate, I'll see if I can find it. But my guess would be on the "it's fine" side, this is the only one of the dozens of scandals I remember that involved a discriminated pregnant woman.

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

#199

Post by matthewmacleod »

manigandham wrote: post #170
matthewmacleod wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a glib answer from a position of security. “Politics” is absolutely a core part of the workplace where it starts to affect your rights, those of your colleagues, and the actions your employer takes in support or opposition of these.

If it affects your rights then it's a legal matter. There's no reason to be constantly representing and discussing politics at work.

No, this is just not correct. If my employer, for example, is providing contributions to a politician who is fighting same-sex marriage, for example. Not a legal issue, clearly politics, clearly related to the workplace. There are many obvious and valid reasons to be constantly discussing politics at work.

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

#200

Post by manigandham »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #199
manigandham wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it affects your rights then it's a legal matter. There's no reason to be constantly representing and discussing politics at work.

No, this is just not correct. If my employer, for example, is providing contributions to a politician who is fighting same-sex marriage, for example. Not a legal issue, clearly politics, clearly related to the workplace. There are many obvious and valid reasons to be constantly discussing politics at work.

What is not correct? How is that related to the workplace at all? You're hired to do work. You don't have to agree with anyone else's politics to do that work. It's unlikely that all of your colleagues agree with your views anyway, and if you really have such a problem with the employer then you can easily choose not to work for them.

I see no reason why you must discuss your political opinions with everyone else when they have no bearing on the work or job responsibility. It's neither obvious nor valid to me, and seems completely unprofessional.

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