Any googlers have any insight into this? Or other GDS members?
A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
371–380 of 582 posts
Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
At minimum Google could have investigated the odd clustering of employees that indicated some sort of nepotistic hiring practice. Of course they might be doing exactly that, but it's not the sort of thing they can really comment on. Edit: also the self-dealing on hundreds of thousands of dollars in wine.
No, at a minimum they should have fired all these people for funding a pedophile with their salaries. Absolutely disgusting. > I found support groups where ex-members talk about their time in the group, including discussions of sexual abuse and grooming. > Members have described him grooming and sexually assaulting male followers, including minors
I don't think Google could do that when there hasn't been a criminal case. I don't particularly like this situation but I also think it would be problematic to fire employees that were not part of the specific rumored incidents.
I'll grant that destructive cults are different than established religions, but firing these workers specifically over the sexual allegations wouldn't be much different than firing an employee who happened to be a deacon in a their local church in a Catholic diocese where the Cardinal abused children.
Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm glad someone else gets my point. These were all someone else's problems to deal with, but this guy kept sticking his nose in even when he was repeatedly asked by his friend, a manager, to butt out. That manager could very well have been complicit in corruption. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in wine purchases isn't exactly trivial. That said, it sounds like the guy was just trying to keep the GDS division afl…
> certainly protecting his own paycheck either way Yeah, no. He did not protect his paycheck. He did the opposite.
>Yeah, no. He did not protect his paycheck. He did the opposite.
Admittedly my wording was a bit ambiguous, to clarify: I was referring to the manager's intent [by not taking action].
Granted your statement's probably true either way at this point.
Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
#374Just to clarify: Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion. Google cannot take action against religions (even cults) it disagrees with (even for valid reasons for disagreeing with them), unless it gets over a very high bar of impacting business behavior. The other path leads to far worse outcomes. Morally, we cannot judge what happened here without hearing from both sides. But if action is to be t…
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Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
#375So he thinks one of the Googlers he worked with convinced his employer to fire him, and now he's suing Google? Shouldn't he be suing his employer?
Well, he's suing both, but if a Google employee ordered his employer to fire him in a retaliatory manner, I imagine Google should also be a defendant.
Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
At minimum Google could have investigated the odd clustering of employees that indicated some sort of nepotistic hiring practice. Of course they might be doing exactly that, but it's not the sort of thing they can really comment on. Edit: also the self-dealing on hundreds of thousands of dollars in wine.
There was also an odd clustering among early Google employees who all came from a place called "Stanford." It may be difficult to distinguish between these two hiring patterns without asking the sorts of questions that are illegal for employers to ask.
A startup where friends hire friends is normal. Because startup's founder is risking his money (well, and investor's but that doesn't change much as the money is given to him as the founder). A middle manager hiring only among friends is more problematic because it's not their money that will be paid, but the company's money - so there's a conflict of interest in play.
Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
Catholicism has certainly compelled people to behave "contrary to their own interests" — e.g. preventing LGBT members from pursuing love, preventing unhappily-married people from divorcing, preventing women with dangerous or difficult pregnancies from seeking abortion; and that's without even referencing the many documented instances of child abuse — so I'm not sure that distinction makes a huge difference.
None of those things are in the best interests of the people involved. Homosexuals who engage in same sex activity are more propense to addictions and self harming behaviour, children of divorced couples do far worse than of couples that remained married. Abortion is killing your own child, and child abuse is reprehensible but it happens at any major institution religious or not, if you don't believe me look up how m…
>None of those things are in the best interests of the people involved. Homosexuals who engage in same sex activity are more propense to addictions and self harming behaviour, ...
So you're saying being a homosexual is not in one's self-interest. As if it's somehow inherently bad.
Did it ever occur to you that the supposed propensity to addiction and self-harming behavior may stem from the fact society's historically been less than accepting of homosexuality, owing in no small part to religion?
Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
#378Hmm. I think this guy is just looking for a payday. He was a contractor, not a full time employee.
Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t understand your point. The cult we are discussing here is accused of engaging in grooming and pedophilia. That’s comparable to a bunch of people that went to Stanford?
I think the point was that you can't really go after nepotistic hiring practices alone without also throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Nepotism happens all the time, and it's usually benign, like Stanford grads hiring Stanford grads. We want to work with our friends, people we've worked with before, and people with similar backgrounds as ours. This comment thread is about what policy, if any, can these people…
It’s insane to me that children are allegedly being groomed and molested but the topic of the day is nepotism.
The business should do what it thinks is right and deal with the fallout. Take a stand.
People are fired all the time for posting their personal opinions on FB. Especially if they make the company look bad. Fire these idiots for supporting a child molester.
Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t understand your point. The cult we are discussing here is accused of engaging in grooming and pedophilia. That’s comparable to a bunch of people that went to Stanford?
I think the point was that you can't really go after nepotistic hiring practices alone without also throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Nepotism happens all the time, and it's usually benign, like Stanford grads hiring Stanford grads. We want to work with our friends, people we've worked with before, and people with similar backgrounds as ours. This comment thread is about what policy, if any, can these people…
> I think the point was that you can't really go after nepotistic hiring practices alone without also throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The comment just said "investigate"! This is getting very strawmanny.