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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

#561

Post by javagram »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #548
Pfhreak wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if Buddists at Amazon had protested and demanded their own space for shrines? Like... a prayer room? I'm imagining it now and... seems fine? It's hard to read your complaints as anything other than xenophobic, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the point you are trying to make?

I want the pendulum to stop swinging. This means everyone needs to stay in the middle. No religion at school and no religion at work, it's a balance that makes sure one doesn't oppress the others. When a group of people are given a pass because everyone is afraid of them, then we have the start of tyranny.

That is pretty anti-religious, and your expectation of “tyranny” from a small minority of devout Muslim believers is ridiculous. It reminds me of American liberals who believe “Christian dominionists” are hiding around the corner ready to take power in some sort of real-life Handmaid’s Tale.

In reality most people just want to be allowed to do their own private thing and be treated well by others. Going into a room in private to practice your religion isn’t tyranny, it’s reasonable accommodation. They are no more going to enact a tyranny by doing this, than I do by making the sign of the cross when I eat my lunch at work, or that a Sikh coworker does by following his beliefs and wearing his turban, or a Jew his kippah, or so on...

Employers aren’t offering the prayer room because they fear violence, it’s because they want to appeal to their employees by giving them a comfortable and welcoming place to work.

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

#562

Post by dang »

notzuck wrote: post #559
dang wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21288934

Didn't notice given there's no way to see if you have an unread reply. Sorry!

Understood. 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. We're happy to unban anyone who we believe will use HN as intended going forward, and it's usually pretty easy to get us to believe that. I'll probably ask you to rename your account though. It's mildly (well, very slightly) trollish, re which see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....

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

#563

Post by mav3rick »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #558
mav3rick wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average Google offer is way higher than Amazon. There are stats to prove this. Even without the offer the benefits are way better. The hiring bar is higher. Look around you...very few people make the opposite move. You will probably retort with some hyperbole. But everyone knows that this is the truth.

> The hiring bar is higher. I don't really understand what your point here is. Do you have any evidence that it's higher? I thought interviewing was supposed to be "random". > Look around you...very few people make the opposite move. I work with a handful of people that did, actually > But everyone knows that this is the truth. You're, uh..really not helping the brand here dude..

> Handful of people that did...

I know at least 20 that made the opposite move. All vow to never go back to Amazon.

I can't hurt the brand any more than it is on HN :) Thankfully, the Google name is respected way more in the real world.

Just go to r/cscareerquestions and grep for "Amazon vs Google" and see what most new grads and senior engineers say.

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

#564

Post by Gibbon1 »

mav3rick wrote: post #563
akhilcacharya wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hiring bar is higher. I don't really understand what your point here is. Do you have any evidence that it's higher? I thought interviewing was supposed to be "random". > Look around you...very few people make the opposite move. I work with a handful of people that did, actually > But everyone knows that this is the truth. You're, uh..really not helping the brand here dude..

> Handful of people that did... I know at least 20 that made the opposite move. All vow to never go back to Amazon. I can't hurt the brand any more than it is on HN :) Thankfully, the Google name is respected way more in the real world. Just go to r/cscareerquestions and grep for "Amazon vs Google" and see what most new grads and senior engineers say.

Vowing to never go back to Amazon is a pretty low bar tho.

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

#565

Post by cameronbrown »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #356
alfromspace wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice examples. Can we use some that are probably 100x more common at Google? Maybe you’re recruiting, and they let slip that they passed over a white male candidate because they're working on a new diversity initiative. Or maybe, after being trained constantly on gender bias and seeing vigorous workplace political debates on the subject, you investigate the issue and find no evidence to support anything other than th…

I don’t understand the point you are attempting to make. These are all political acts. The fact that you like some of them and dislike others doesn’t change that. Even the choice of sketching the “hard-done-by innocent researcher cruelly hounded out of his job” is a political act. This is the point - how do you isolate that from the workplace when it’s clearly so tied up in it?

He's/she's saying that acknowledging the effects of diversity hiring is political because it implies you don't like the concept if you're speaking against it.

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

#566

Post by DagAgren »

int_19h wrote: post #506
DagAgren wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jaile…

Yeah, no, you can't physically prevent that, not without a perfect panopticon police state.

If you allow intolerance to spread, it WILL, without fail, hurt people. Sometime, immense number of people. This is not theoretical. It happens, again and again, and the only way to prevent it is to oppose intolerance at every stage.

Your abstract ideology of absolutely free speech is not in any way worth the immense pain and suffering that will, inevitably, follow.

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

#567

Post by DagAgren »

Tyr42 wrote: post #312
DagAgren wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, none of that is the case. The first thing he did after being fired was run to the far-right propaganda outlets. That was very telling of what he actually believed.

You mean the only people who seemed to show him any compassionate, reach out to him or not interpret his actions as negatively as possible are who he started to associate with? Mild shock

If a despicable person shows me kindness, I will not reciprocate. He did. That tells volumes about him.

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

#568

Post by rumanator »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #484
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't that workplace practices can be political, the issue is practicing political activism for your own pet cause in the workplace on company time and expecting literally no retribution. A lot of the pain points come from the fact that in practice it's turning out a lot of the politics in debate are only vaguely related to the specific company's actual activity.

> the issue is practicing political activism for your own pet cause in the workplace on company time and expecting literally no retribution When the pet cause is something that affects working conditions at the company, then that "issue" you describe is simply expecting the company to follow labor laws. Workers have the right to organize with other workers and advocate for change in their working conditions without r…

> Workers have the right to organize with other workers and advocate for change in their working conditions without retribution from the company.

You're misrepresenting the facts. The newspiece states that the activists were fired for tracking and doxxing colleagues that they seemed reactionaries. This sort of abuse is hardly defensible.

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

#569

Post by rumanator »

bregma wrote: post #351
rhodysurf wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those examples are not really political, but they are illegal.

They were commonplace and accepted twenty years ago. They're illegal now because of politics and political activism.

> They're illegal now because of politics and political activism.

The point is that expecting the law to be upholded is hardly a political act. It's basic rule of law.

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

#570

Post by mav3rick »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #564
mav3rick wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Handful of people that did... I know at least 20 that made the opposite move. All vow to never go back to Amazon. I can't hurt the brand any more than it is on HN :) Thankfully, the Google name is respected way more in the real world. Just go to r/cscareerquestions and grep for "Amazon vs Google" and see what most new grads and senior engineers say.

Vowing to never go back to Amazon is a pretty low bar tho.

Op is from Amazon, hence the comparison.
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