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Google Protest Leader Leaves

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Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#331

Post by username90 »

r3bl wrote: post #326
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s just an obviously toxic attitude that anything bad which happens to a woman is a women’s rights issue, so I’m not sure how to engage with an open endorsement of it.

A woman? No, sorry, try again. Here's an article[0] from October. Relevant quote: > After publication of this article, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Ms. Naughton wrote in an email to employees that the company had fired 48 people for sexual harassment over the last two years and that none of them received an exit package. Unless you believe that 48 people were fired for sexually abusing the exact same…

Google has over 100k employees or even more if you count temps. 24 per year means that around 0.024% gets fired for harassment per year which is extremely low, many cities have higher murder rate than that. So it is not a sign that there is a huge problem, on the contrary the number is so low that I'd suspect that they cover up a lot of things,

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#332

Post by username90 »

paul7986 wrote: post #237
paul7986 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Google’s R&D blatantly steals innovation from female inventors https://patentpandas.org/stories/company-patented-my-idea

Hmmm ...Why is this being downvoted?

Googles patent trolling is gender blind.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/inventor-says-go...

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#333

Post by belorn »

pvg wrote: post #149
dmix wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact you're conflating sexual harrassment (which is illegal almost everywhere) with an incredibly politicized concept as "equal compensation" (which even within one's own family there are wide disparities in outcomes, as even siblings from the same house can have widely different career outcomes, let alone in society) says everything... I also don’t like being told I support sexual harassment because I don’t thin…

incredibly politicized concept as "equal compensation" (which doesn't exist [...] Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_equal_work

Wikipedia is not a authoritative source. When it work perfectly it is a proportional description of what third-party sources write in regard to a topic, and at worst it is biased opinion based on a few authors. With political topics the most commonly written opinion might not be the most scientifically correct one.

The main criticism of equal compensation is listed in the Wikipedia page in the first sentences under the title Criticism: the methodology by which the gap is measured.

For example, a common argument is that together with a pay gap there is a similar gap in worked hours, about 1hr on average for full time employees in the same workplace for the same job. Then people tend to dip into discussions about gender roles and bit by bit move the discussion further into the realm of politics.

Equal compensation is thus politics. Not because people disagree on the principle, nor because we don't have a data, but because people will disagree on the interpretation and then jump into political topics in order to support their interpretation.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#334

Post by jlawson »

qntty wrote: post #225
jlawson wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're the one paying for the work, you're entitled to say what the work will be. In this case 'you' is Google shareholders, through their representatives. Nobody is entitled to be paid to do what they choose. If you want to do something for your own personal reasons, do it off the clock.

There's no good reason to think like this. If you're the one doing the work, you're entitled to say collectively with your fellow employees what it should be.

You are completely in your rights to get together with your fellow employees - or anyone else - to do anything you want.

And others are entitled not to pay you to do things they don't want you to do.

Nobody is forced to do things they don't want.

Nobody is forced to pay money to others.

But employment is an agreement between people. The employer agrees to pay, and the other agrees to follow directions of the employer (within the limits of their specific agreement).

If you go to a restaurant and order a burger, and they instead bring you a cake, you'd be well within your rights to refuse payment and complain. The fact that the chef wanted to make a cake is irrelevant, because the chef is being paid by you. (In contrast, if you were to go to friend's house, and he gave you a cake, you could not complain because you're not paying for it.)

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#335

Post by skybrian »

Merrill wrote: post #324
KirinDave wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What did the "Open Research Group" at Google actually build? Have you made any effort to investigate who Meredith Whittaker is on your own? Her work on AI ethics was much appreciated and celebrated precisely because she was a distinguished contributor. The cultural aversion to building weapons is not novel thing in that culture.

Yes, I googled Meredith Whittaker before commenting. She joined Google in 2006 after getting a bachelor's degree from Berkeley, apparently in literature and psychoanalytic theory. By 2012 she appears to have been a program manager in initiatives regarding internet measurements. So far I haven't found any references to products or reports from the Open Research Group, which she appears to have founded sometime prior t…

I only know a little about it, but it seems like financial companies commonly have a permanent compliance department?

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/compliancedepartment.as...

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#336

Post by qntty »

jlawson wrote: post #334
qntty wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no good reason to think like this. If you're the one doing the work, you're entitled to say collectively with your fellow employees what it should be.

You are completely in your rights to get together with your fellow employees - or anyone else - to do anything you want. And others are entitled not to pay you to do things they don't want you to do. Nobody is forced to do things they don't want. Nobody is forced to pay money to others. But employment is an agreement between people. The employer agrees to pay, and the other agrees to follow directions of the employer…

The value created by employees rightfully belongs to employees and should be created on their terms. It isn't employees who are hired by managers, it's managers who are hired by employees to manage and sell the things they create. Employees ought to have the right to dictate the terms that their managers are being hired on.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#337

Post by filoleg »

CodeMage wrote: post #319
kortilla wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Protesting from within perfectly sends the signal that it’s still the best place to work despite egregious offenses.

Why must that -- and nothing else -- be the signal they're sending? People have a variety of motivations. For example, I left my country 20 years ago because I wanted a better future and I had no desire nor conviction to stay and try to make that future happen there. Of those who stayed, most had no other choice. However, there's a non-negligible number of people who stayed despite having opportunities to leave, prec…

Moving in general is difficult, but leaving a country and permanently moving to another one is infinitely more difficult than finding another job for someone who works at Google.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#338

Post by jakelazaroff »

xyzzyz wrote: post #322
joshuamorton wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct. Her day to day work is/was in the AI bias and ethics space, even within google.

Why do you think so? Do you have a source of any of her supervisors saying that?

Not sure why the burden of proof would be higher for this claim than the preceding one.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#339

Post by CodeMage »

filoleg wrote: post #337
CodeMage wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why must that -- and nothing else -- be the signal they're sending? People have a variety of motivations. For example, I left my country 20 years ago because I wanted a better future and I had no desire nor conviction to stay and try to make that future happen there. Of those who stayed, most had no other choice. However, there's a non-negligible number of people who stayed despite having opportunities to leave, prec…

Moving in general is difficult, but leaving a country and permanently moving to another one is infinitely more difficult than finding another job for someone who works at Google.

That's precisely why I wrote "of those who stayed, most had no other choice". I understand the difficulties inherent in moving from one country to another, as I've done it twice now. The difference between changing jobs and changing countries does nothing to invalidate my claim that people can have different motivations and that one of them is "I wish to stay and fight for this cause in this place."

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#340

Post by xyzzyz »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #338
xyzzyz wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think so? Do you have a source of any of her supervisors saying that?

Not sure why the burden of proof would be higher for this claim than the preceding one.

Before I left Google, I looked her up, and none of her ladder, none of her supervisors, none of the other reportees of her immediate supervisor etc. had anything to do with AI ethics. She was originally hired as a Program Manager on Google Docs. In this light, I view your statement as requiring some backing.
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