581–590 of 603 posts
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But Google's core business is surveillance. Implementing it server-side could make it available as a GSuite feature. Bonus points for passing it through an opaque ML step for plausible deniability. "The 'culture fit' 'algorithm' determined that you hurt team cohesion".
Making it a prod ready feature would take weeks, a pile of money, and dozens of staff who may object and are in a position to do something about it. Making a single use extension takes an hour or three by a contractor who won't object. Its trivial enough that the whole thing could be built using a bottom of the barrel freelancer site with a high success rate.
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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…
On the other hand, policing actions is much easier, because the more consequential ones are also the more prominent - you don't need a surveillance state to deal with them, you just need a reaction force.
What we are seeing are the consequences of "Employee Capture". Google captured the hearts and minds of its employees for workplace productivity. Its side effects are varied. The real world only sees highlights. Googled created a bubble from which its employees can socialize without ever needing to do so with the outside world. Why talk politics with the outside world? Stay with us, where it is safe, people are intell…
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…
Do you allow colleagues to become friends?
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Op is from Amazon, hence the comparison.
Over the last 40 years of working in the bay area I've noted that a lot of people don't understand how shitty big tech companies are to work for.
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> 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.
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What this has to do with state/country level politics (sure, besides everything, but)? You are simply saying to your employer (or potential employer) that I have this need (healthcare, mothers' room, 4 day workweek, whatever), and that were they willing to provide that you are going to work there. Naturally if many people band together that constitutes a better bargaining strategy. (Sounds familiar?) But unions and a…
> You are simply saying to your employer (or potential employer) that I have this need (healthcare, mothers' room, 4 day workweek, whatever), and that were they willing to provide that you are going to work there. You are simply saying to your employer (or potential employer) that I have this need (disabled toilets, minimum wage, safe working conditions, whatever), and that were they willing to provide that you are g…
The lack of diversity of workplaces and work structures is a very big problem. (It results in dumb congestion problems, like rush hours, high tuition and student debt because of the super popular signals, peer pressure for uniformization and conforming, etc.)
Unions would just provide another very big hammer instead of incentivizing meaningful dialogue and custom agreements.
I'm not saying they would be worse than the status quo though.
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> In order to be discriminatory, they would have to be broad, ignorant statements based on personal anecdote and prejudice that he pulled out of his ass right before adding 'on average' at the end of the phrase; since they are not that in any way, but carefully researched, unbiased observations, they do not fit the definition of discriminatory. If you think that there is no difference between saying people who belong…
I'll keep it simple, so that you can't keep obtusely ignoring it: there are stats on rape. So they are fact. There are no stats on "women's assertiveness". So they are not fact.
If you think his presentation of this data is ineffective, then the productive thing to do is offer a reasoned refutation. Not exaggerate (to be generous, I'm more inclined to call these fabrications) and write that he claimed "women are genetically worse leaders" and "naturally worse negotiators."
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The problem is, though, that politics is inherently tied up in actions related to the workplace. Let’s say one of your colleagues or managers occasionally makes decisions that would be frowned upon by some people. Maybe you’re recruiting, and they let slip that they passed over a female candidate because they thought she might have a child soon. Or maybe they passed on a gay man because they didn’t think he should be…
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 really believe that people should be expected to respect inane illogical arguments just because they have a political side to it.
In fact, doing knowledge work, being unable to form a coherent argument or inability to distinguish faulty logical arguing, would in fact make you a lot less qualified for it.
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Perhaps in an non-standard understanding of what is and isn't sexual. An asexual office is sexual in the same sense that secularism is a religious stance. It's not catering to any specific religion: it is equally exclusive of all religions. Similarly, an asexual office doesn't prevent or directly influence the sexual activity of workers - it just relegates that sexual activity to spaces outside the office. > Saying "…
I'm not sure what you're talking about. An asexual office is indeed one where sex is kept out of the office. Nobody really bothers to call their office "asexual" because almost all offices are asexual. If an office instituted a policy where sex was allowed in the office, and now you have co workers having sex in the cubicle next door and making sexual advances towards you, then that absolutely is intervening in emplo…