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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

#111

Post by kitsune_ »

xioren00 wrote: post #56
munchler wrote: post #51

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…

The only people in need of a safe space are people who say "I crush people" and then are unable to deal with the blowback.

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

#112

Post by ATsch »

oytis wrote: post #88
sillysaurusx wrote: post #16

I see a lot of people saying this seems not a big deal, or that his leadership deserved promotion. It’s because this is a second order article. The original, most substantive source that I could find is quite thorough: https://archive.is/wqdkF > "He would ask us to do personal things for him," one of these people said. "He said, 'I need you to write a briefing for me on Russian history and politics.' [...] We had abs…

It's a total mystery to me why do people feel the urge to defend him. I kind of understand this in the case of technically brilliant but socially awkward people, but this guy seems to have done nothing but management in his life. And if this is how he's doing management then I don't understand why he's tolerated at all.

My unfortunate conclusion is that a large portion of people in this industry are either like this or wish they could get away with being like this. The amount of people who always reply about how they don't see any issues is enough proof of that.

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

#113

Post by ATsch »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #87
Traster wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my old company it was a bit of a joke, you would repeatedly see shit managers become "architect"s. Management were too cowardly to get rid of bad managers, so they were forced to promote them to get them out of their role. So managers who were shit technically constantly ended up with senior technical titles - and everyone knew why.

Were they bad architects though? It's easy to paint bad managers as bad workers (or even bad people ) - but sometimes, they're just bad at managing. In such cases, it's better to shift them into roles they're more suited for than to fire them and hire new people for those roles - existing employees already know the company's procedures and products. Plus, it'll likely be cheaper salary-wise - in our industry, new emp…

Sorry, but a good architect bully is not a bit better than a bad manager bully.

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

#114

Post by Closi »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #101
marcinzm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We had absolutely no work in Russia. Wouldn't the point of such a high level briefing be because they're tying to get work in Russia but don't already have any? It's rather common for employees to not know the details of the strategic plans of the executives until the execution starts.

No. Because when you're as large as Google, you don't ask your underlings to write book reports on things that are of strategic business importance. You go through the proper channels and get them to hire qualified people to cut through the bullshit.

> you don't ask your underlings to write book reports on things that are of strategic business importance

Of course you do, that's exactly how it works.

Usually the 'underlings' do the research or collect information, and then the people higher up synthesise that information into a strategic decision.

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

#115

Post by TeeMassive »

Traster wrote: post #64
gundmc wrote: post #8

I feel like this story is overblown. He was clearly a bad manager. From what I can gather, he was placed on leave after an investigation and then moved to a policy position where he does not manage anyone. Calling it a promotion is pure spin.

At my old company it was a bit of a joke, you would repeatedly see shit managers become "architect"s. Management were too cowardly to get rid of bad managers, so they were forced to promote them to get them out of their role. So managers who were shit technically constantly ended up with senior technical titles - and everyone knew why.

At this point I'd just leave. This is an employee market now. Promotions are made by changing jobs anyway. Be sure to leave the proper feedback when leaving (what are they gonna do, fire you?)

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

#116

Post by geofft »

bradlys wrote: post #104
chrisseaton wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were these peopled hired for responsibilities including historical briefings? No? So why are they being asked to do them?

End of the day, it's a job. Requirements change. You have to do things you don't want to do that might not even seem related. If you don't want to work under someone who does that stuff then leave. I yelled at a CEO because he asked me to do something that wasn't related to software engineering role. He stopped asking me and anyone else in eng due to that confrontation. But - guess what - he wanted to fired every sin…

The CEO has a job, too, and that job is set by the board and/or the company's owners. And the most important job of the CEO is to be a good leader.

Was your CEO within his legal rights to ask you to do the job? Sure, assuming it was legal and not forbidden by your contract. Would it have been advisable for you to do it anyway, for the sake of your job? Probably. But that doesn't mean that the CEO was doing his job well by asking. And evidently he knew that, because he didn't actually fire you and the people protecting you.

In the case of Google, a public company, it is simultaneously true that individual low-level employees should act strategically and optimize for their own benefit - which might include putting up with misbehaving management to remain employed under them - and that the public has a strong interest in knowing when management, especially senior management, is being bad at their jobs.

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

#117

Post by angrais »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #92
pyuser583 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So that's 1.3% out of "more than 24,000 students at Oxford", i.e. ~310 students per whatever the counting period of that 24k number is. That's not a low number, of a population that's already heavily selected. Plenty of resourceful folks could find themselves in this group.

I'm deeply confused at your response. 310 is still 1.3%, which is both a low number and percentage. Especially when compared with the larger 7.8% of other UK universities as OP stated.

Most UK universities are heavily selected. Indeed, Oxbridge moreso and as such you'd expect the dropout to be lower which it is. Hence OPs response.

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

#118

Post by xdennis »

Ftuuky wrote: 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…

> > Mustafa was super paranoid about Google spying on him

> Interesting but I can't wrap my head around its implications.

It's not paranoia when you're on the inside. It's like saying Snowden is paranoid for typing his password with a hood over his fingers.

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

#119

Post by [deleted] »

truetraveller wrote: post #102
gundmc wrote: post #8

I feel like this story is overblown. He was clearly a bad manager. From what I can gather, he was placed on leave after an investigation and then moved to a policy position where he does not manage anyone. Calling it a promotion is pure spin.

This is today's cancel culture, unfortunately. Dramatize and exaggerate things. And hypocrisy, but that's a separate issue.

[deleted]

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

#120

Post by bradlys »

geofft wrote: post #116
bradlys wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End of the day, it's a job. Requirements change. You have to do things you don't want to do that might not even seem related. If you don't want to work under someone who does that stuff then leave. I yelled at a CEO because he asked me to do something that wasn't related to software engineering role. He stopped asking me and anyone else in eng due to that confrontation. But - guess what - he wanted to fired every sin…

The CEO has a job, too, and that job is set by the board and/or the company's owners. And the most important job of the CEO is to be a good leader. Was your CEO within his legal rights to ask you to do the job? Sure, assuming it was legal and not forbidden by your contract. Would it have been advisable for you to do it anyway, for the sake of your job? Probably. But that doesn't mean that the CEO was doing his job we…

I really don't think there's that much alignment in organizations in the sense you're speaking of. While it's nice to think that these places are acting in best interests of blahblahblah - I think selfish interests hold true more often than not and accountability is basically nigh impossible in our world.

We have so many people who have been abusing people in so much worse of ways than "write me a report on Russia" and they have little to no accountability.

The public doesn't care about how a company is managed - they care about the share price going up so they make their money.

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