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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

#251

Post by thereare5lights »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #173
Volundr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm against screaming, but infrequent/involuntary screaming by a very senior exec is common place. What?! I've worked with executives most of my career. Screaming was definitely not common place. I can only recall 2 examples, and neither lasted long or had any business being in a position of power. And what even is "involuntary screaming"? Has the executive just broken their leg or something? If so OK. But if they'…

Have you stopped to think for a sec that some of us like screaming, and in some cultures a lot of screaming is common place. Screaming it not out of control, its using the volume of your voice to command attention. Perhaps the abuse is the thin skin. Perhaps the abuse is the lack of forgiveness. Perhaps the abuse is the failure to recognize we all have flaws.

> Have you stopped to think for a sec that some of us like screaming, and in some cultures a lot of screaming is common place. Screaming it not out of control, its using the volume of your voice to command attention.

> Perhaps the abuse is the thin skin. Perhaps the abuse is the lack of forgiveness. Perhaps the abuse is the failure to recognize we all have flaws.

Out of all the comments supporting abuse in this thread, this is the most damning one of all.

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

#252

Post by stablechaos »

Seeing a link like this at the top of HackerNews is deeply disappointing. Regardless of the accusation or the status of a person, everyone deserves due diligence when it comes to attacks on people's character and reputation.

A brief 200-word blurb is gossip, even if she provides links. The fact that she couldn't be bothered to write any more is indicative of how little she cares about whether her criticism is legitimate or not, whether there's important context left out, or whether the statements are supportable by concrete evidence and not just rumor.

We need to take stuff like this more seriously, and not just take the words of some random gossip writer at face value.

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

#253

Post by jrsj »

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.

I imagine it’s because your personal success as a manager has a lot more to do with politics, taking credit for others achievements, and redirecting blame onto others than actually being good at managing anyone

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

#254

Post by magpi3 »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #173
Volundr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm against screaming, but infrequent/involuntary screaming by a very senior exec is common place. What?! I've worked with executives most of my career. Screaming was definitely not common place. I can only recall 2 examples, and neither lasted long or had any business being in a position of power. And what even is "involuntary screaming"? Has the executive just broken their leg or something? If so OK. But if they'…

Have you stopped to think for a sec that some of us like screaming, and in some cultures a lot of screaming is common place. Screaming it not out of control, its using the volume of your voice to command attention. Perhaps the abuse is the thin skin. Perhaps the abuse is the lack of forgiveness. Perhaps the abuse is the failure to recognize we all have flaws.

There are cultures and then their is business culture. Nobody is acting exactly the way they do at home in a business, because in order for a business to work efficiently people have to adapt to the cultural practices that can help a disparate group of people (who are usually not family) work together effectively and efficiently.

So let's talk about the effectiveness and efficacy of screaming. What is the point? To compete for attention? Won't that just lead to louder and louder screaming and the drowning out of voices of people who have the decency not to scream?

To intimidate a coworker or a subordinate?

To express anger?

I can't think of one reason screaming could be beneficial to the workplace, but I can think of many that make it intolerable. Intimidated, stressed subordinates. A culture where the loudest person (not the most competent) gets the most attention. And acceptance of a practice that can easily turn abusive and lead to a toxic workplace.

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

#255

Post by ignoramous »

ip26 wrote: post #250
dimitrios1 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pot…

Alternate theory: We want to believe the rich and powerful deserve to be rich and powerful. If they didn't deserve it, that would imply 1) the system is not fair and 2) we can't ever get what they have even if we become deserving. Thus, we defend their credibility & merits so that we can go on believing in the meritocracy.

Also: The rich and famous make for lucarative targets given their appeal and profile. Blowing things out of proportion, bias in reporting, privacy-violating scrutiny, coordinated defamation isn't all that uncommon to have happened to them.

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

#256

Post by caddemon »

sjg007 wrote: post #94

AI researchers have so many options today. I’d be surprised if this hasn’t hurt Google’s and Deep Mind’s recruitment efforts.

There are also a lot of AI researchers today though. I'm not sure about higher level positions, but for current grad students and postdocs DeepMind is still a very sought after place to work.

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

#257

Post by magpi3 »

dmix wrote: post #47
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #36

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…

Even if it he is unaware of it, it still shows dominance to ask someone to do something outside of the scope of their job. If I asked a coworker to get my coffee, you could say that perhaps I just wanted coffee. But I am also expressing a power dynamic by my expectation that the coworker will do something I can and should damn well do myself.

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

#258

Post by didibus »

truetraveller wrote: post #108
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 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!"…

To me it starts to feel more like one person is asking another to do their job.

This person actually isn't your employer, your employer is the company, so if your manager starts to ask you to do tasks that should normally fall to them, they're asking you to do their job and taking the credit, that's neither good for the employer nor for you.

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

#259

Post by thereare5lights »

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 normal way to resolve this is with violence. You should shouldn't have left that part out of your spiel.

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

#260

Post by afarrell »

bradlys wrote: post #120
geofft wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" a…

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

Thats like saying you don’t care about the fridge temperature of a restaurant, you care how quickly they get you your chicken Kiev.

> I don’t think there is much alignment…

Considering the fact that deepmind spends a significant amount on AI safety, a misalignment between their leadership and human values seems pretty concerning.

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