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After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

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Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this reaction sarcastic? As if to say "I'm not afraid of people who boast of crushing others"?

Are you saying you would be afraid of this person for that comment? Part of being an adult is learning to deal with adversity.

“I crush people” is an unacceptable attitude for a manager to take regarding his own employees. Whether those employees can handle that sort of counterproductive adversity is irrelevant.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is writing about Russia a personal thing? I think I will need more context to understand this.

It sounds like it was a side task not related to the company or the company’s work, but rather the writing was at the whim of the person at issue. My framing is something like telling someone who reports to you to do your college homework.

He was training AI models, and needed some test data sets... Of course he upset many people .

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#53
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's personal because it's not work-related. He would demand people do random, pointless tasks for him to show dominance.

> He would demand people do random, pointless tasks for him to show dominance. Is this just speculation or do you know more examples where he did this? Given his background of bringing up his political activism during tech conferences he could have just been using it as background for his talks (which has included AI ethics). In that context I could see a connection to Russian politics. Still likely personal but not…

I feel if it was for a purpose like this it could be contextualized to the employee (which IMO is necessary if they're going to write anything that is useful for any purpose beyond personal interest)

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#54
post #27

This guy appears to be a self-styled liberal activist operating in the business world. According to this fawning Business Insider piece (did his PR agent write it?), he has tried his hand at fixing climate change, inequality, health care, AI ethics, and so on. https://www.businessinsider.com/mustafa-suleyman-the-lefty-a... He dropped out of his degree at Oxford and then founded a telephone helpline for Muslim youths.…

Quite a lot of people drop out of Oxford because it's an intense high-pressure environment. It may not have been out of choice, even if he's portraying it that way

Only 1.3 percent of students drop out of Oxford, versus 7.4 percent for the UK.

https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/full-version-fa...

Not at all like America where only 1/3 graduate.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#55
post #17

> "Employees said Suleyman encouraged them to use private chat groups on Signal and Telegram for work conversations, some of which were set up to automatically delete messages after a set period. Employees were also on occasion asked to delete messages from their phones, a former employee said. They were also told to notify the group once they had done so. > "Mustafa was super paranoid about Google spying on him, so…

Sounds like someone who has seen way too much of how the sausage gets made.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying you would be afraid of this person for that comment? Part of being an adult is learning to deal with adversity.

“I crush people” is an unacceptable attitude for a manager to take regarding his own employees. Whether those employees can handle that sort of counterproductive adversity is irrelevant.

We don't live in a utopia. There are going to be people that say and do things that you dislike; That's reality. Instead of running to an authority figure to complain every time you encounter adversity, like a child, people need to learn to handle those situations...like adults. Someone acting mean or making an off color comment like this are a fact of life. No amount of safe spaces and down voting inconvenient truths is going to change that.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#57

Don’t care about this guy, but why would they think that changes in the reporting hierarchy means a promotion? If my boss leaves then I would report to my skip in the interim and in many companies that’s forever. So just because there’s nobody between me and my skip I got promoted? That’s the most dumb rationale I have ever read. This guy was already the head of a prominent Alphabet division. If you move him around t…

His new job would be considered a promotion from his old job by most tech workers, if it were laid out for them without the surrounding context of him likely being a repeat abuser of his workers. The uncertainty about whether it’s a promotion is brought along by that context, not the facts of the job change itself.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#58
Just looking at Suleymans credentials, he has literally zero technical credentials. Why is he leading AI divisions within Google? Because he managed to become Demis Hassabis' lackey at the right time?

Looks like a standard issue corporate climber who demands work from his subordinates that he himself cannot deliver.

Re: After DeepMind’s cofounder was placed on leave for bullying, Google promoted him

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I crush people” is an unacceptable attitude for a manager to take regarding his own employees. Whether those employees can handle that sort of counterproductive adversity is irrelevant.

We don't live in a utopia. There are going to be people that say and do things that you dislike; That's reality. Instead of running to an authority figure to complain every time you encounter adversity, like a child, people need to learn to handle those situations...like adults. Someone acting mean or making an off color comment like this are a fact of life. No amount of safe spaces and down voting inconvenient truth…

I don’t think you read what I wrote. This has nothing to do with anyone’s ability to handle adversity. It’s about whether “I crush people” is an acceptable management style. Hint: It isn’t.
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