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A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

nytimes.com

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Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#401

Post by kazinator »

abeppu wrote: post #274

So, if the author was fired for the reasons they believe, that's pretty bad behavior. But if he had not been fired, what was management supposed to have done about the cult members working for this department? Yes, the cult's leader sounds like a pretty awful person, but he wasn't working there. What were the cult members doing in their work in the department that was clearly wrong? It's suggested that there was favo…

For one thing, if the reason someone was hired is because they're from Oregon House, that likely means they weren't hired because of their profile as a good candidate for Google. That's a fundamental conflict of interest in nepotistic hiring. Google should definitely care about that, even apart from the links between the nepotistic group and criminal activity.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#402

Post by artifact_44 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #398
jancsika wrote: post #226

Just to clarify-- this article is about a modern religious cult. Modern religious cults are groups that use a whole host of well-known manipulative techniques to trap victims in insular groups which are then difficult to escape after the fact. Leaders of those groups directly abuse those victims physically and/or emotionally (and often drain their bank accounts as well). This isn't, "My parents are worried about my w…

> Modern religious cults are groups ...whose members are protected, the same as other religious groups, against workplace discrimination by federal (and, in this case, separately also by state) law based on association, even if there are allegations, even “credible allegations”, and even proven wrongdoing by the organization (as distinct from the particular employees) itself. While it probably won't always result in…

No post body was provided.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#403

Post by glenstein »

rendall wrote: post #364
glenstein wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>First, questioning whether someone read the article is against the guidelines. Please don't do that. This thread is an excellent illustration of what's likely an unintended consequence of that guideline, and of all the places to raise it, this is probably the least constructive and least in conformance with any possible intention of the guideline. If someone doesn't RTFA but contributes really interesting thoughts o…

> But here, you're using it in response to a constructive comment expressing a legitimate point over... Not at all. It's unnecessarily rude. The point could as well have been made without it. "How can you say that? They were embezzling!"

It's an appropriate exhortation to pay attention to key details and doesn't involve any insult. And this is unresponsive to just about everything in my previous comment about why invoking etiquette in this context was unconstructive.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#404

Post by notacoward »

smsm42 wrote: post #388
seoaeu wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real enough that it’s illegal to fire someone for joining

If you can prove the firing reason was this. Which would be rather hard to establish unless he somehow gets his hands on some email from the top management saying "that bastard joined a union?! Fire him on the spot!". I estimate chances of that as fairly low.

Why would you estimate the chance as being low? Are you unaware that Google has a history of legally questionable anti-union activity? Never heard of Project Vivian? Of the case they had to settle when they fired six union organizers? Is anything less than absolute legal certainty a low chance?

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#405

Post by volume »

woodruffw wrote: post #394
throwoutway wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, google employees would be breaking the law by hiring primarily because of religious preference and thus discriminating against competent candidates of other religious (or non) preference

Cults are not religions. The body of decisions is remarkably explicit about this, when you consider how difficult the question “what is a religion” actually is. Edit: I forgot to provide references. Here’s a summary[1] of a 1988 California Supreme Court ruling in which the court determined that cult conduct does not fall under religious protections, even if the cult’s members might genuinely believe the cult’s doctri…

To me, there's a venn diagram. some cults are religions. Some are just cults and not religions.

It sounds like you're coming from a legal perspective. Is that really the end-all-be-all representation of reality?

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#406

Post by kazinator »

nitwit005 wrote: post #339
ineedasername wrote: post #277

Earlier 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.

The problem in this case would be they seem to be hiring almost exclusively from a rather obscure religious group. That means they're illegally discriminating against members other religions.

While that is true, I don't think that's such as useful take.

They are mainly discriminating against people who are more qualified for the jobs; basically the entire world that isn't Oregon House.

If the Crips gang infiltrated Google and were only hiring Crips, you wouldn't say that they are unfairly discriminating against other perfectly good gangs like Bloods, as the main issue.

(I understand that the analogy is far from perfect, because gang membership isn't a constitutionally protected class, but still ...)

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#407

Post by tomcam »

jancsika wrote: post #226

Just to clarify-- this article is about a modern religious cult. Modern religious cults are groups that use a whole host of well-known manipulative techniques to trap victims in insular groups which are then difficult to escape after the fact. Leaders of those groups directly abuse those victims physically and/or emotionally (and often drain their bank accounts as well). This isn't, "My parents are worried about my w…

No post body was provided.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#408

Post by notacoward »

smsm42 wrote: post #389

Not the main topic of the article but I was surprised the author is unemployed after 15 months. Is it that hard to find any job as a video producer? There must be some other companies doing the same as Google... I have no idea what that job market looks like, just sounded surprising to me.

Nice attempt at character assassination. Here's a more likely explanation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklist_(employment)

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#409

Post by madrox »

dubswithus wrote: post #379
madrox wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We like it when businesses take a stand on things we agree on. We don't like it when it's about, say, making a gay couple a wedding cake. What stand, exactly, are we saying Google should take? That they don't employee people associated with organizations where leaders engage in pedophilia? If so, we should also have a word with 1.2 billion catholics.

You may not like it, but figuring out policy is important to a functioning society. It's how we avoid descent into fascism and witch hunting.

Re: A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

#410

Post by soraminazuki »

blip54321 wrote: post #316

Just 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…

> Google cannot take action against religions (even cults) it disagrees with

"Disagreement" is quite an euphemistic way of describing the situation. The said cult has documented history of sexual abuse.

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