When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices • Hacker News Board

Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#41

Post by catalogia » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

jeffk_teh_haxor wrote: post #31

tanilama wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not mistreat Chinese employee per say. The individual is operating under big stress, and the manager is deliberately playing politics to prevent him switching teams, threatening to put his job at jeperody. I don't feel like this is engineered to target Chinese. But if all proven, Facebook's internal culture seems fucked up...Maybe that is why it doesn't want even its employees to talk about it.

That's usually SOP at companies which have suicides. Suicidal ideation is contagious. They'll bring in a grief counselor, and encourage you to talk to them , instead.

> "Suicidal ideation is contagious"

That seems true. There were some studies done back in the 70s that found a correlation between fatal plane/car crashes and news reports of suicide, as well as a correlation between multiple fatality crashes and news reports of murder-suicides. The implication here being that many small plane and car crashes are actually suicides with plausible deniability.

Of course, taking this to it's logical conclusion, this story should be flagged off the front page since it broaches the topic of suicide and therefore might induce more suicides. (However I think the social value in discussing these matters openly outweighs that risk.)

Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#42

Post by munchbunny » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

smaili wrote: post #27

It's quite the lengthy article but the crux of what they believe led to his suicide is here: Relevant sources unveiled that before Mr. Chen’s last PSC, he had already been under pressure from the advertising department, so he expected to shift to other groups to maintain his job in Facebook and the opportunity to work in the United States. According to informed sources told PingWest that, Mr. Chen’s group had undergo…

The new manager reportedly gave Mr. Chen verbal approval and told him to stay on the team until the PSC, but eventually gave him the "Meets Most" rating, which factually voided Mr. Chen's transfer request because the other group is very unlikely to accommodate a new IC who just received the worst possible rating, according to Facebook internal sources close to Mr. Chen.

I've heard this pattern (manager drops performance rating to block transfer) more times than I can count on two hands. I've heard this several times within two steps of my professional network. This story shows up regularly in the gender discrimination story piles.

At this point, it should be standard practice that sudden drops in performance ratings coming after team transfer attempts should trigger raised eyebrows.

Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#43

Post by dang » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

AFascistWorld wrote: post #18

jonnybgood wrote: post #4

Is his suicide linked to some kind of maltreatment of Chinese employees at Facebook? The article doesn't make that clear.

There's no formal media report on this, the stories that hit Chinese internet headlines are anecdotal and seem quite sensationalized. The stories alledge that he argued with his Indian boss (which commonly features in all kinds of Chinese stories about Sillicon Valley tech companies), was denied request to change group, an emergency project was assigned to him, attempts to extend the dealine failed, the fear of being…

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Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#44

Post by catalogia » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #36

jeffk_teh_haxor wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's usually SOP at companies which have suicides. Suicidal ideation is contagious. They'll bring in a grief counselor, and encourage you to talk to them , instead.

Well, yes and no Suicide is one thing. But Facebook's refusal to change anything as regarding to the cause of this employee's passing is jarring, for stuff like fire fast, highly stressful Sev meeting and etc, and super high peer pressure. Even Amazon does change its way of handling internal transfer after employee's attempted suicide. Not to mention there are Facebook employees defending on other places, claiming th…

Comparing against the national average seems like BS anyway. The suicide rate of employees in any given company should be compared to suicide rates of other populations of people with comparable incomes, opportunities, etc. For instance, how does the suicide rate in Facebook compare to Google? Or how does the suicide rate in one Facebook department compare to another?

Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#45

Post by throwaway66920 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

Seems like there’s a few things at play here

Foremost it sounds like Facebook has a shitty performance management culture. Let’s forget intent for a minute. Looking at the details offered, it’s just bad. If you get a rating of “meets most”, and that’s really bad then your system is off the bat not clear.

The implied story I got was about Chinese worker and visa abuse. But it sounds like it’s more just bad company culture with high degrees of competitiveness and finger pointing. I don’t see anything especially relevant to his race or immigration status. The idea that they’re dangling anything over his head (as is a common and important problem for many low skilled tech workers, (which probably doesn’t describe this guy)) because it’s implied they were going to push him out.

The internal push to silence any internal discussion on it is shameful.

But overall this seems like the result of organizational incompetence rather than malice. And I don’t think it should be surprising to anyone that this is the case because you’re going to be selecting for a very specific profile for a company like Facebook. Namely, people who put higher value on money and prestige.

Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#46

Post by throwaway66920 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

cwmma wrote: post #3

citrablue wrote: post #2

This article appears to have some fundamental misunderstandings. Their description of the review system is not stack ranking, in which employees are ranked in a hierarchy and the lowest on the totem are fired. Instead, the "meets/exceeds" scale has been pretty standard wherever I've worked. Further, it seems that FB HR asked the source of this article to not speak to the press about an internal event that involved a…

a meets/exceeds scale becomes stack ranking when the proportion of different ranks is capped so that even if everybody on a team did well, some would have to be given the lowest ranking

Do you have reason to believe this happens?

Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#47

Post by zachguo » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

wonnage wrote: post #5

HN: takes any Hong Kong news story at face value Also HN: whoa whoa whoa, let's hear Facebook's side of things

And it was flagged to death.

Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#48

Post by throwaway66920 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

jeffk_teh_haxor wrote: post #30

My brother, a GP doctor, said that he writes a lot of scripts for antidepressants every performance review season. Performance management sucks. The racial tenor of this article seems bizarre and over the top, though?

maybe I’m missing something but people don’t normally take antidepressants to deal with one off periods of stress, right?

Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#49

Post by inimino » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

HALtheWise wrote: post #24

bigpumpkin wrote: post #8

How can Facebook be claiming to protect the family's privacy when it is in fact preventing employees from speaking to the press about bad working conditions?

By doing both? Both the family and the company want to avoid a media blowup about the death, so keeping quiet protects both the family and Facebook's corporate interests (and probably also the mental health of other employees). The argument people are making is that it doesn't protect society's interests, but as far as I can tell, Facebook isn't claiming it is.

Being quiet about the specifics of the individual case does not prevent them from having a transparent discussion of company policies and practices that may have contributed. The argument is that this does not protect employees' interests because it allows these practices to continue unexamined.

Re: When Chinese Employees Ask for Justice, Facebook Silence Their Voices

#50

Post by inimino » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

zeta0134 wrote: post #23

thaumasiotes wrote: post #16

> to hold a vigil for a Facebook employee who took his own life after allegedly [being] bullied in the company and suffering extremely excessive work pressure > Most Attendees wore black Huh. Why not white?

In America at least, black clothing (typically formal wear, the specifics vary from place to place) is strongly associated with mourning. It's traditional garb at funerals and gatherings to pay respects for the departed. This may be different in other countries, and it's not a universal practice, but it's common enough that most everyone understands the meaning.

For context for those who are not already aware, since this is being downvoted... white traditionally has the same associations in Chinese culture. So it was not an entirely unreasonable question. The answer is just that this happened in the US, not China, and wearing white in the US would be unusual.