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One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

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Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#501

Post by username90 »

RangerScience wrote: post #499
username90 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"intolerance of intolerance" leads to lynchings, that sort of behavior needs to be stopped at all cost. USA has mostly gotten over lynchings but still has way too much intolerance, you would be much better off if you were a bit more tolerant and less judgmental over there.

> stopped at all cost Including the cost of, say, being intolerant of intolerance of intolerance? AFAIK, one of the major reasons to be intolerant of intolerance is to prevent lynchings.

So we should start twitter mobs to stop the twitter mobs that target people currently? Or what do you mean? The only way to stop it is to teach acceptance and temperance. We didn't stop lynchings by attacking them, we stopped it by teaching people the value of tolerance for even the worst of criminals and giving them due process. It is when you refuse to tolerate criminals that lynchings occur.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#502

Post by RangerScience »

bregma wrote: post #364
cptskippy wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with. I've never worked for Google so I have no basis for comparison but it's very common across white collar jobs for employees social circles to very closely if not entirely overlap with work. Unless you participated in extracurricular activities that weren't school sponsored, you prob…

> due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work. I spent 7 years teleworking and had no problem grabbing a drink after work. Now that I have to physically co-locate with cow orkers I can't do that because (a) I'm driving and (2) they want to join me. Drinking alone is the best kind of drinking.

One of my local bars has a really chill Tuesday happy hour. I've been loving going there to grab a drink and read a book and be gently surrounded by people. It's fantastic.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#503

Post by jiveturkey »

goatinaboat wrote: post #142
skissane wrote: post #28

> The documents concerned a mandatory tool that was recently installed on the Google Chrome browser on workers’ computers, the employees said. In October, some Google employees raised concerns that the Chrome extension was an internal surveillance tool designed to monitor their attempts to organize protests. It would automatically report staffers who create a calendar event with more than 10 rooms or 100 participants…

Why create a Chrome extension to monitor usage of Google Calendar? Obviously for the “chilling effect”. Really rubbing it in the employee’s faces that they’re being surveilled.

can't understand why you're being downvoted. the chilling effect is indeed the obvious reason.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#504

Post by _qwfv »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #345
javagram wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really understand the relation of your comment to mine. I’ve worked at a (US) company with a prayer room that was used by some Muslim employees. As a Christian myself, I don’t think it would have been considered a problem if I used it when it was vacant to say a prayer, although my religious tradition doesn’t have the 5x/day prayer requirement like Islam does so I never did.

I don't think only Muslims could use the rooms in any stories I have read about this topic. That wasn't my point. Consider going to a Muslim majority country where the religion controls the laws (like Indonesia) and /demand/ your Christian religious needs be accommodated. From my studying, you would either be summarily dismissed or even possibly punished.

And that's the way it should be? You are arguing that we should adopt that model?

If not, this is just whataboutism. Just because other countries do something badly doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do better.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#505

Post by RangerScience »

username90 wrote: post #498
RangerScience wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, different way to explain it: Person A says "Let's kill all of Group B" Person B says "I won't tolerate Person A" Person C says "I won't tolerate Person B" Person A is being intolerant. They are breaking the terms of the notional peace treaty; the consequence of that is losing the right to be tolerated. Person B is OK because Person A has lost the right to be tolerated. They are not breaking the notional treaty.…

A more relevant example: Person A: B raped a girl, so B doesn't tolerate women! Person B: I did not! Person C: I don't tolerate person B. Person B's Friends: I don't tolerate person C since they broke the tolerance contract, B hasn't done anything. Person C's friends: I don't tolerate B's friends since they broke the tolerance contract by not tolerating A. Does this sound familiar? It was the start of the Tulsa massa…

Your first situation is not identifiable to me as anything like my described situation. I do not see how you could think the two are examples of the same thing. Your narrative also does not appear coherent to me.

The Damore example is much better. I spent a long time going down that rabbit hole, and my conclusion is that he had a number of things that should have been considered and were not, in themselves, problematic, and he also had a number of things to say that were problematic, and he said many (but not all) of those things in ways that were problematic. The ensuing cultural conversation did the usual unfortunate thing, and devolve into black/white tribalism.

This is why I go first for a conversation with the Person As before deciding on courses of action.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#506

Post by int_19h »

DagAgren wrote: post #286
int_19h wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being intolerant of intolerant actions is what is necessary to maintain a tolerant society. If you tolerate intolerant views, the paradox doesn't arise.

Views lead to actions. You can not draw a line between them and hope people will happily stand on one side of it. If you allow intolerant views, you normalise intolerance. If you normalise intolerance, you ALSO normalise intolerant acts, and they WILL follow naturally.

You don't have to hope for anything. You just wait until they try to carry out the action (paying particular attention to those who have previously expressed views that are likely to lead to it), and physically prevent that.

If you normalize cracking down on views on the basis that they're intolerant, the people who make that determination end up with a lot of unchecked power. In France, for example, you can be jailed for wearing a t-shirt that says "boycott Israel" today - it's hate speech. In Germany, many flags used in Rojava are banned as extremist symbols. And note that despite all these laws, RN and AfD still exist and thrive.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#507

Post by dang »

myga wrote: post #400

Good. Crush activists, see them driven before you and hear the lamentations of their women.

Creating accounts to break the site guidelines will get your main account banned as well, so please don't do that.

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

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#508

Post by the_rosentotter »

kelnos wrote: post #339
aedron wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 20 years experience under my belt, it is my firm belief that the workplace is not a place to discuss politics, religion, or other highly personal and divisive issues. Obviously, this extends even more to the workplace itself bringing these topics up. I'm not aggressive or even obvious about this disposition, I just gently steer clear of violating it. I feel the same should apply to companies, fine if you want to…

The problem is that, for many issues, you can't separate the politics from social issues. Many of these political issues concern aspects of morality. For example, a CEO might not want someone who is anti-LGBT representing their company in any way. On the flip side of that, I wouldn't want to work for a company where the leadership was anti-LGBT. Even if these people are otherwise good at their jobs, a person's morali…

The whole LGBTXYZ discussion is somewhat weird to me. How about letting people's sexual preferences be their own business? I would rather be free from knowing what goes on in people's bedrooms, I don't think this is an unreasonable request.

Your example of the HR person who has to make decisions about medical issues obviously falls in a different category, but even in this case discretion could be assumed to be the default.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#509

Post by Leherenn »

behringer wrote: post #355
dghughes wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with. That's something I experienced. I was laid off after 15 years and really I was laid off from my friends too. The company even monitored social media accounts which at the time seemed bizarre but now it's common. I was told by someone still working there HR declared unfriending a fe…

I had a coworker I was training start crying because she got offered a better job and was going to lose all her new friends. I had to explain to her that her coworkers aren't her friends, her friends are whoever she wants. This culture of being friends with your coworkers is odd to me. My coworkers suck as friends, the vast majority of the time. And heaven forbid you don't want to be friends anymore, because now you'…

It's not that odd, you spend the majority of your time at work.

It's even more the case I assume to people at Google or other big multinational s. People there are much more likely not to be locals, and a lot of their colleagues are going to be in the same situation. That's the perfect context for friendships.

From personal experience, clubs can be difficult if it is a tightly knit community and you're an outsider; especially so if you don't speak the language. It's not that they are not nice, it's just that you need 2 people to form a friendship.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#510

Post by dang »

notzuck wrote: post #327
baq wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

homo sapiens is a political animal and you can't just pretend (or expect) that for 8 hours in day it isn't true. you couldn't expect that from slaves so why would you expect that from employees?

Spotted the irritating person to work with.

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

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

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