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A note to our employees

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Re: A note to our employees

#261

Post by hrktb »

thoughtexplorer wrote: post #4

Serious question: Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience? Or is it just skin deep like it sounds? Edit: Lots of up and down votes. Why is this question so controversial? I'd like to see an argument as to why it's an invalid or flawed question.

Your question has so much baggage in so few words.

Your premise is that if the CDO’s role doesn’t include your vision of diversity it is “just skin deep”. Not everyone shares this premise, and focusing on this point also makes it sound like you dismiss all the other aspect his role could have (they’re just skin deep after all, right ?)

To get back to yor question, Google has offices all around the world, I find it hard to fault them for lack of diversity of experiences, nor do I think the thousands of people they employ all have the same ideas. I’d actually think it would be harder to find people all sharing all the same ideas.

Or do you have something a lot more specific in mind ?

Re: A note to our employees

#262

Post by ppod »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #108
philip1209 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just ban alcohol at work? Why can't work be work, and social stuff can happen outside of it? I know it sounds a bit extreme. But, after reading "It doesn't have to be crazy it work," I feel like companies use alcohol to bribe employees to stay at the office after-hours. A midground would be drinking only with sit-down food. Nobody is doing shots while having dinner. Another idea could be making company social…

Most employers don't allow drinking at work. Some allow it at company events, provided it doesn't become a problem. The funny thing is about a lot of Silicon Valley companies, I think, is that they decided in their attempt to reinvent work that they'd throw out a couple hundred years of learned experience on what does and doesn't work in a corporate setting. The "fun places to work" eventually figure out that fun for…

Ever worked in the UK or Europe? Some things are culturally particular.

Re: A note to our employees

#263

Post by stale2002 »

myle wrote: post #155
stickfigure wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time you've excluded all the possible activities that someone could find isolating, you've got a pretty boring work environment. Here's the box you will be working in. Don't forget to turn off the light when you leave Friday.

That's OK. We are also supposed to have private life. If work is not fun enough without those events, maybe it is not fun in general.

That might be ok for you, but not for me.

I am not going to work anywhere that I don't enjoy. I will instead quit and go somewhere else.

You are free to do otherwise. But just be aware that people have fun at work because they like to do so. And many people would quit if they didn't enjoy their work

Re: A note to our employees

#264

Post by kemitche »

brlewis wrote: post #174
misiti3780 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not NOT ban alcohol at work, and when an employee fucks up, just fire him ? Is that really not a solution here ? at the end of the day, people should be accountable for their own actions, and i should not be punished if i want to have a beer after working hours with colleagues because a tiny minority of people at my company cant drinking responsibly

What % of incidents were first offenses? Unless it's a really low number, firing after first offense won't reduce the total number of incidents enough.

I disagree. You're assuming that only direct punishment can affect behavior, when the _threat_ of punishment after first offense can also affect behavior.

As a ridiculous hyperbole: assume a life in prison minimum sentence is established for speeding, on the first offense, and that it's actually enforced. I guarantee you that very quickly we'd have everyone driving under the posted speed limit at all times.

Re: A note to our employees

#265

Post by afandian »

Spooky23 wrote: post #234
eridius wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to ban alcohol in order to punish someone for being visibly drunken or pawing at employees.

If you allow drinking at work, what BAC is ok? What exactly is the justification for endorsing drinking at work?

Sleep deprivation affects cognitive ability. It affects everyone differently. It is sometimes involuntary, sometimes voluntary.

That said, how many hours' sleep the night before a day's work is acceptable?

Re: A note to our employees

#266

Post by erikpukinskis »

schintan wrote: post #219
tptacek wrote: post #201

I don't understand why the "mandatory" training has a penalty for skipping it. If it's mandatory, it's mandatory. This isn't rocket surgery; there are all sorts of mandatory training things big companies do, and they are often actually mandatory. For instance, we've worked with HIPAA-encumbered clients where you'll lose access to their network and applications if you don't complete annual security awareness training.…

and what if they still do not take the training, fire them ?

That is, in fact, what mandatory means.

Re: A note to our employees

#267

Post by HarryHirsch »

grandmczeb wrote: post #240
HarryHirsch wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many universities offer scientific ethics training for incoming research students. (The NSF actually demands it for projects they sponsor.) The purpose isn't to make them walk the narrow path of goodness, it's to enable them to spot temptation when it comes, as it inevitably will. With sexual harassment the line is much sharper drawn. If someone hasn't learned how to behave civilly and not to exploit a power differen…

> no amount of training is going to help. That might be true, but what's your evidence? I'm not trying to argue one way or another, I'd legitimately like to know if there's research on the effectiveness of sexual assault training in the workplace.

Still anecdotal, but a few months ago this account of a woman writing for the NY Times and her Tinder date made the rounds: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/style/modern-love-he-aske...

It gives you reason to be very pessimistic about consent training and society.

Re: A note to our employees

#268

Post by majewsky »

williamaadams wrote: post #121
thoughtexplorer wrote: post #4

Serious question: Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience? Or is it just skin deep like it sounds? Edit: Lots of up and down votes. Why is this question so controversial? I'd like to see an argument as to why it's an invalid or flawed question.

I work for Microsoft, and the back of my employee badge says: Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. To me, this implies that our engineering organizations, and entire company, need to have an appropriate amount of empathy across a broad spectrum of geographies, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and the like. You only get that by having a diversity of talent, and mo…

> Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Did they think about what they said there before printing? Because there are plenty of organizations which we definitely do not want to achieve more (e.g. drug cartels, nazi parties).

Re: A note to our employees

#269

Post by mcguire »

zaroth wrote: post #146
philip1209 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just ban alcohol at work? Why can't work be work, and social stuff can happen outside of it? I know it sounds a bit extreme. But, after reading "It doesn't have to be crazy it work," I feel like companies use alcohol to bribe employees to stay at the office after-hours. A midground would be drinking only with sit-down food. Nobody is doing shots while having dinner. Another idea could be making company social…

Feel free to ban anything you want at work. And the people who work there will select for if they want to be a part of it by becoming or remaining employees. (There are, of course, things that are illegal to ban) I personally want to work somewhere who values me as a responsible human being, and expects me to behave like one. The more a workplace feels like they have to micromanage their employees like children, the…

"(~20% of cases)"

Apparently, many of the people Google is hiring are not intelligent, respectful, ethical, empathetic, or mature. The problem is, once you've hired them, firing them requires investigations, proofs, lawsuits, internet drama, and so forth. I'd imagine going after managers would be even more problematic.

I'd just as soon work for a place that bans alcohol, including at the unofficial, optional-mandatory social functions. In fact, that pretty well describes every place I've worked.

Re: A note to our employees

#270

Post by mcguire »

Benjammer wrote: post #191
Spooky23 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The positive aspect of banning alcohol consumption is that it's an objective measure. If somebody is a drunken lout pawing his employees, save the victim more exposure by drumming him out for the alcohol. With the possible exception of salespeople entertaining clients, there's no need to drink on duty, and if you do, there is a consequence.

I don't think the parent comment is at all disagreeing with the existence of any utility in "banning alcohol" here. The gist of what the parent comment is saying, is that, if you have a policy in place to "compensate" for a certain "negative trait," what you are actually doing is inviting _more_ of that trait, because you are signaling that your company will put effort in to help deal with that, which means that some…

"Mature adults who do _not_ need someone else to monitor their alcohol consumption are far more likely to inherently present with the responsible, adult behaviors that you desire."

That doesn't seem to describe Google's employees. (Or anyone under the age of 30, for that matter, says the little tiny cynic who lives on my shoulder.)

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