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Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

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Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#101

Post by lallysingh »

groundlogic wrote: post #95
ben7799 wrote: post #13

I'm always amazed Google management tolerates things like internal message boards aimed at letting employees create Memes on company time. On the "evil point haired boss" level it seems these types of things like their internal message boards cause a lot of trouble for the company. On the less evil side it seems like employees waste a lot of time on these internal sites and all the internal social justice stuff. Mayb…

12-20 years ago, one of my largest life goals was to work for Google. (It's not anymore. I found other fun and rewarding jobs.) I don't get why the Google management team allowed their team to get so... well, violently politicized. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but.. keeping politics out of the workplace worked very well for a very long time.

The whole country is rather politicized (some of it actually violent). Google doesn't force employees to pretend that's not the case. Maybe a good idea, maybe bad.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#102

Post by commandlinefan »

tracker1 wrote: post #99

Worth mentioning TFA is wrong about the Damore memo... it wasn't suggesting that women are less disposed to be "good engineers" only that they are less disposed to seek out a career in engineering to begin with. Quality isn't a part of it. But that doesn't fit an SJW narrative.

Nobody has ever refuted anything that Damore ever actually said - they've just said they didn't like the way it made them feel.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#103

Post by tracker1 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #102
tracker1 wrote: post #99

Worth mentioning TFA is wrong about the Damore memo... it wasn't suggesting that women are less disposed to be "good engineers" only that they are less disposed to seek out a career in engineering to begin with. Quality isn't a part of it. But that doesn't fit an SJW narrative.

Nobody has ever refuted anything that Damore ever actually said - they've just said they didn't like the way it made them feel.

TFA mentions specifically "good engineers" and the point wasn't about quality, it was about the overall pool. That's all I was saying. It's about the false framing.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#104

Post by groundlogic »

lallysingh wrote: post #101
groundlogic wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

12-20 years ago, one of my largest life goals was to work for Google. (It's not anymore. I found other fun and rewarding jobs.) I don't get why the Google management team allowed their team to get so... well, violently politicized. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but.. keeping politics out of the workplace worked very well for a very long time.

The whole country is rather politicized (some of it actually violent). Google doesn't force employees to pretend that's not the case. Maybe a good idea, maybe bad.

In hindsight.. it seems like it could become their downfall.

It also seems so counter-productive for a company that basically controls large parts of the web traffic to become so politicized. What was Larry, Sergey and Eric thinking?

Edit: Seems like I can't create new posts - I'm being rate limited. Editing this comment instead as a workaround.

I think Google's stated mission ("to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful") relies on the staff being politically neutral.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#105

Post by mieseratte »

Osiris wrote: post #4

I've spent most entire career at relatively small companies (25-100 employees). I've never seen these types of issues (I can't say they've never happened, I'm just not aware of any). In fact, reading these stories is probably why I've never had the desire to apply to work at any of the large tech companies. I can't say for certain what the differences are, but I think smaller companies tend of have less office politi…

Spent my entire career in Was definitely dumbfounded when I heard that one, but then I realize I've run into programmers with a "Well I learned [esoteric thing], why hasn't he?" Sad that people lack that level of empathy and introspection, we're all different in different ways. Your easy thing is someone's Mt. Everest.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#106

Post by adrianmonk »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #51
pjdemers wrote: post #34

Years ago, I worked at a big aerospace company (that no longer exists). I was hiring a small team of software engineers. I was flat out told not to hire anyone who was, or wanted to be, pregnant. Why? Health care cost. We were self-insured, and a baby born with severe health problems could bankrupt our plan.

If a bad outcome of a single employee can "bankrupt your plan", I think the company should stop with the euphemism of they are "self-insured" and admit to the reality that they have no insurance. The entire purpose of insurance is to spread risk to a level that it becomes acceptable if there is 1 negative outcome, which obviously wasn't the case here. As an aside, just another example of how our f'd up healthcare sys…

While you're not wrong, it's also possible that it wouldn't bankrupt the plan but would simply cost more, cutting into potential profit. It could just be a fear tactic to reduce expenses.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#107

Post by sp332 »

squish78 wrote: post #54
cronix wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Literally, the very first 2 words in the article, "A memo", is a link to an article with all 6 pages of the document in question.

That hyperlink goes to another Vice article: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbmqxq/heres-the-memo-cur... Edit - Which apparently has the document embedded, but doesn't render in Edge.

Privacy Badger also blocks documentcloud.com and assets.documentcloud.com, so here's a more direct link: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6240022-I-m-Not-Retu...

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#108

Post by lclarkmichalek »

groundlogic wrote: post #95
ben7799 wrote: post #13

I'm always amazed Google management tolerates things like internal message boards aimed at letting employees create Memes on company time. On the "evil point haired boss" level it seems these types of things like their internal message boards cause a lot of trouble for the company. On the less evil side it seems like employees waste a lot of time on these internal sites and all the internal social justice stuff. Mayb…

12-20 years ago, one of my largest life goals was to work for Google. (It's not anymore. I found other fun and rewarding jobs.) I don't get why the Google management team allowed their team to get so... well, violently politicized. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but.. keeping politics out of the workplace worked very well for a very long time.

The workplace was always politicized. It's just being politicized in different ways now.

Re: Google Employee Alleges Discrimination Against Pregnant Women in Viral Memo

#109

Post by xenadu02 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #102
tracker1 wrote: post #99

Worth mentioning TFA is wrong about the Damore memo... it wasn't suggesting that women are less disposed to be "good engineers" only that they are less disposed to seek out a career in engineering to begin with. Quality isn't a part of it. But that doesn't fit an SJW narrative.

Nobody has ever refuted anything that Damore ever actually said - they've just said they didn't like the way it made them feel.

That's not even remotely true. I've addressed it many times here in the HN comments. I'm just tired of repeatedly giving the same explanation over and over.
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