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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

#41

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

hundt wrote: post #11
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HR exists to protect the company, full stop. They are only interested in the workers insofar as they reveal potential legal liabilities for the company. It is almost always better to first talk to outside legal representation to understand the landscape. If there are actual law violations, they will help properly document and possibly start preparing a case, and if not then you know you should prepare to leave the co…

Yeah, that appears to be the "Hacker News wisdom" on this topic and it certainly seems plausible to me. I was just wondering if this is a basically universally held opinion, or if some people with relevant experience have a different view.

While that may be "HN Wisdom", when it comes to these sentences, "HR exists to protect the company, full stop. They are only interested in the workers insofar as they reveal potential legal liabilities for the company.", I usually see HN folk only think about the first sentence and forget about the second one.

That is, often times an employee and the company share a mutual interest because of the risk of liability, and it's good to understand this, because as an employee this can help you. As jedberg said in a comment above, this is one reason maybe while going to a third party (e.g. complaining to someone else, who then brings that to HR) can help. In that case, it's not so much "you vs. your adversary", but both the person reporting to HR and HR itself share the viewpoint of "If we don't stop this person he could get us sued."

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

#42

Post by cafard »

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.

Odds are you had some male software engineers. Did management forbid you to hire any that were married, cohabiting, or considering the possibility? Or did the big aerospace company not insure families?

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

#43

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

whiddershins wrote: post #36

I dunno, I couldn’t read the entire memo (it just felt too long) and I’m uninterested in Vice’s editorializing. That said, I just don’t love the way the original thing was handled. A manager made some comments, it was totally feasible to just ignore them, or to make a bit of a wisecrack or say directly “hey, that feels a little harsh, no?” Instead you go to HR. I don’t know, people say dumb or insensitive things all…

I can't downvote you enough. This is horrible advice. People tend to view going to HR as "the nuclear option", but this is not the case. Most companies put their managers through training about how they put the company at immediate (potentially large) liability if you are aware of harassment, even a "gray area", and you don't report it.

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

#44

Post by Tade0 »

ben7799 wrote: post #19
takeout wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "internal social justice" stuff?

This current story does not sound like anything weird is going on but some of the stories it sounds like some employees spend a majority of their time setting up protests internally. It is hard to understand how someone can spend significant time in the office fomenting internal protests (even if they are for a good cause) and actually be getting their job done.

Perhaps they aren't and perhaps that's not relevant because they're not important enough.

Tends to happen in large organisations.

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

#45

Post by TAForObvReasons »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #22
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…

It happened to me at Tudor Investment in NYC, which only has about 200 employees. I tried to quit when my daughter was born as I had found a better job anyways. If I didn't stay an extra 3 months, my manager threatened to fire me 'with cause' so they could enforce my non-compete without paying me in New York. So there I was working through some of the most incompetent shit from my dismal colleagues while my wife was…

Never tested but I've heard from colleagues that noncompetes without payments at the base salary level are not considered "reasonable" and would be not be enforceable in New York state. Of course that's the whole schtick with hedge funds and the like, keep the base salary lower and pay bonuses.

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

#46

Post by teraflop »

kyrra wrote: post #12
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…

Google has ~100,000 employees at this point. This is the story of a single manager within the company. When you have that many people at the company, there are going to be people that make bad choices, and then the story will fall under the umbrella of "Google" and make the news. If this was a single small 25-100 person company, it would (likely) not get any notice.

> This is the story of a single manager within the company.

No, it's a story of at least two different managers, and an HR department that supported them.

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

#47

Post by grape_eater »

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…

I work for Google, can confirm many of the points you've made. While I haven't experienced any toxicity at Google, your analysis of the internal communication culture raises really good points.

On one side, the internal social justice campaigns are incredibly pervasive due to large usage of internal message boards. On the other side, Google is one of the few companies that allows this level of internal airing of dirty laundry. I've heard stories of similar incidences at Microsoft which were swiftly shut down.

The problem is that when you encourage internal dialogue and communication at a huge company like this, you'll never have people with different opinions pitching in. You'll mostly get people with the most 'acceptable' opinions, the others being silent as they value their jobs. It's a huge risk to be singled out as someone who thinks Damore was right or that Maven should've been continued. As a result, you'll get a constant stream of one-sided social justice campaigns which inevitably leak to the press.

Encouraging internal dialogue and communication but not understanding its limits at scale is one of the biggest mistakes Google has made. Google was built on principles of open company-wide communication and sharing of information, and while it clearly doesn't work as intended anymore, there's too much inertia to change the course.

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

#48

Post by phoe-krk »

squish78 wrote: post #2

The memo, since it's not actually linked in this Vice article, for anyone who would rather read the source material than the editorializing: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6240022-I-m-Not-Retu...

It is linked there: literally the two first words of the article, "A memo", link to this URL.

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

#49

Post by cronix »

squish78 wrote: post #2

The memo, since it's not actually linked in this Vice article, for anyone who would rather read the source material than the editorializing: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6240022-I-m-Not-Retu...

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.

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

#50

Post by dymk »

hundt wrote: post #6

I'm wondering, does anyone have any stories of involving HR in a situation like this (less-than-overt discrimination or harassment from a person more senior/important than you) and getting a positive outcome? At this point whenever I read that someone "reached out to HR to ask for help in navigating the situation" I assume that the main outcome will be to put the company on notice that they need to start working on t…

Yes, I have been in situations where I've reported harassing behavior to HR, directed at both myself and between other people, and gotten a positive outcome.
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