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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

#231

Post by JCharante »

edgyquant wrote: post #127
truetraveller wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely fine for an exec to ask an employee to do "x" task, where there is value for the company, even if it is not in the employee's scope. This is a moot point, and I'm astonished we're even debating this. What has the world come to? So, imagine I ask my developer or even my accountant on a one-off, rare occasion: "write me a critique of this new UX design". He replies "How dare you ask me about UX design!"…

Did you just compare asking if something looks good to having them write up an assessment of Russian political history? Yeah I’ll go ahead and ask my dog walker to write me an analysis of the potential outcomes if Britain had joined against the US during the Trent affair. If they refuse I’ll fire them and write horrible reviews about them because obviously they don’t take their job seriously /s You’ve got to be kiddi…

Just google it and copy paste whatever is in the first result + the wikipedia article and turn it in, easy peasy.

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

#232

Post by TeMPOraL »

angrais wrote: post #117
TeMPOraL wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a low number and percentage in a relative sense. It's a non-insignificant number in an absolute sense.

This whole subthread was in context of the question of how often people drop out from Oxford and for what reasons. My point is that it's 310 people every year or few years (depending on how they count that 24000 number) - it's a number big enough to admit a variety of reasons and characters.

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

#233

Post by klyrs »

truetraveller wrote: post #159
krapp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're without proof, how do you know they're exaggerated and dramatized? Were you there? Do you have the proof to the contrary?

The burden of proof is on the claimant. And if your gonna post a sensationalist article about it to the public, you better provide proof to the public. Don't just do character assassination on another fellow human.

Here's a fun one:

> "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."

The burden of proof is on the claimant, sure. But if your boss forces you to delete the evidence, the stakes are that much higher.

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

#234

Post by etothepii »

Talanes wrote: post #208
jay_kyburz wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but, red tape. When you ask a business unit to do it, it becomes a whole big thing. When you ask somebody on your team to do it, it might not be as good, but it gets done.

Only if you don't actually care what "done" means. Anyone can make an omelette if you're willing to define an omelette as "literally any eggs cooked in a pan." But I'd rather just ask someone who actually knows how to make an omelette.

I think the issue here is about how hard it is to ask for the chef to make you an omelette. If you go to https://food.gle type in onellette and your desk number then great. But first you have to even know that https://food.gle exists as an internal domain which might be something your underling has as much chance of finding out as you do.

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

#235

Post by Fomite »

truetraveller wrote: post #129
oytis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We're defending him because the accusations against him are egregiously exaggerated, and without proof. I'm against screaming, but infrequent/involuntary screaming by a very senior exec does happen, and in my opinion, cannot be called abusive. In fact, I would be upset if I had a sheep for an exec. I want a exec who is kind, and who can lead and is firm. Not screaming, but almost there.

My grandfather screamed at his employees.

It was abusive, and everyone knew it.

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

#236

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

TeeMassive wrote: post #115
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.

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?)

It’s pervasive though.

Out of the frying pan in to the fire.

I’d hazard a guess if you ask at an interview if they have any bullies working there they’re either going to lie and / or you’re not going to get the job.

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

#237

Post by TeMPOraL »

geofft wrote: post #121
TeMPOraL wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How can you possibly be a good architect if you're a bad manager? Every skill of a good manager - having good working relationships and pleasant interpersonal relations, understanding conflicting needs from different teams, building trust, being able to schedule and prioritize work, etc. - is also a skill of a good architect. If you're off in a corner developing things by yourself, you're not an architect, you're an…

I disagree. Your description of an architect sounds to me like an artifact of current workplace trends - which are to punt managerial duties and responsibilities to people as they get promoted, without giving them corresponding authority.

Architects should architect. There are some social skills requirement that come with any collaborative position within a company, but I see no reason why an architect should be expected to have managerial-level social skills, vs. senior-developer-level ones. There's nothing in the actual job of architecting software systems that requires it.

But to be explicit about my original point: managing is a completely different type of job than writing code or architecting systems. It's a whole specialty on its own. Not everyone has the necessary organizational and social skill set. It's learnable to a large degree, but that takes time. Just because someone sucks as a manager doesn't mean they're a bad employee or a bad human in general - it only means they don't have the specialized skills necessary for that particular role.

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

#238

Post by joshuamorton »

Guthur wrote: post #212
jakelazaroff wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a “witch hunt” when someone doesn’t get a promotion? No one’s calling for his arrest. They’re just saying that someone who abused his power to bully people should not be rewarded with more power over people.

And so what. If you work at take it up with them. Or if it's bad for the company or will hurt them. Or if you are shareholder take it up at the next meeting. You and I have no idea of the context unless we are actually there. It's frankly none of our business. All these journalists and keyboard sycophants live to pull something down and destroy.

How would a shareholder know without such an article?

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

#239

Post by dimitrios1 »

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.

It's the same reason people defend Bill Gates or Bezos, or any other rich or powerful person for that matter. People want what they have, and they feel if they attack them, recognize their immorality or destitute nature of their souls they are in a sense attacking their future self image, and it feels inconvenient. Especially where where there are a lot of valley Elizabeth Holmes types on here that fancy they are potentially one or two exits away from that lifestyle, they would rather see past the heaps of immoral actions taken to achieve success in order to maintain their fantasies.

If I call out that successful persons immoral behavior, I can potentially be placing my future self in a morally compromised position when I encounter such a situation that may lead me to take immoral actions. No one want's to fantasize themselves being a hypocrite.

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

#240

Post by bluepizza »

password321 wrote: post #191
nicoburns wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This comment managed to blow my mind. Are we really trying to say the cofounder of DEEPMIND is too stupid / incompetent to have graduated from Oxford and came up with a charity as a front for it?

Not really about being stupid or incompetent, but about managing workload, subjects, pressure.

A lot of people don't deal very well with this, especially young students.

He was not the cofounder of Deepmind while he was a student. That happened afterwards.

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