Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

nypost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 535 posts

Re: Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

#461

Post by tablespoon »

tasuki wrote: post #274
lormayna wrote: post #226

> Olohan said he began feeling increasing pressure from his supervisor, who told him that there were “obviously too many white guys” on his management team. In July he was encouraged to fire a male employee to make room on his team for a woman, the suit claims. This is the most crazy section. Why physical characteristics like gender or ethnicity should be important in the management selection? And if yes, why only th…

Their goal is diversity. I think diversity might have been shown to lead to better team outcomes. To me the craziest part is: > Olohan was told that he had shown favouritism towards high-performing employees

> Their goal is diversity. I think diversity might have been shown to lead to better team outcomes.

I don't think that's actually been "shown," it's more of an axiom that's assumed to be true without proof. IIRC, the idea that "[sex/race] diversity leads to better team outcomes" may even just be an idea meant to mainly lend legal cover to diversity efforts (e.g. university affirmative action race-based admissions) that would otherwise be illegal.

Re: Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

#462

Post by actualwitch »

spoiler wrote: post #445
actualwitch wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in your comment is pretty reasonable until this: >And this is a direct result of lack of religion You claim this like it's proven to be true. It's not. The reason for this inherent ask for social justice in my opinion has nothing to do with religion. Instead, I feel like people got disappointed in existing justice system, looking at nasty people going through life unfazed, even though it is painfully obvio…

Not OP and also kinda disagree with them at the surface value of the statement, but maybe not with the underlying premise. One of the worst people I know are "religious". Some of the kindest people I know are also religious. This gave me cognitive dissonance for while about religion. Then I realised that all the horrible people were actually communal narcissists who grab onto the lowest hanging fruit, which is perfor…

What you describe in this comment, I would not call religion. I think the better descriptor would be "spiritual practices", and these are closer to shaman rituals of old, in my opinion. I agree, these practices including meditation and practicing awareness are very useful tools. I would even add psychedelics to the list as it can be a massive boon in self-reflection. Unfortunately nowadays in an eye of common public, everything tangential to anything woke has became tainted as undesirable so many people turn to more classic religion that is more about judging people.

> I think all these witch-craft style trends we had in the past are signs of weak, idle and chaotic minds

Can't say that I agree. I think it is more of a consequence of social media having a hard cap on empathy you can feel to a string of letters on the screen in your hands. A lot of people simply don't realize the kind of effect their actions can have on other people, all of that multiplied by mob mentality. Worse yet, social media companies are incentivized to provoke this effect because it is clearly visible in their a/b tests - angry people generate more content. I think the real solution here is in changing social media to me more empathetic, but alas I can't see it happening easily.

Re: Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

#463

Post by Slava_Propanei »

sokoloff wrote: post #268
HideousKojima wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Billy Graham/Mike Pence rule is your best bet: don't let yourself be in any situation where a false accusation could arise. Of course you'll be accused of being a sexist/misogynist/whatever instead but that's easier to ignore or overcome than false accusations of sexual harassment.

Hard disagree. If I decide I can have a closed-door 1:1 or a lunch 1:1 with some of my direct reports but not with any that are female, I’m inherently discriminating against them. I’d way rather treat all employees fairly and fade a <1% chance of a false accusation than to treat employees unequally and cut that chance in half.

[dead]

Re: Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

#464

Post by tablespoon »

jb1991 wrote: post #400
pb7 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. It added important context.

[flagged]

> The context it added was evidence of bias and increased likelihood the allegations are true.

The context it added was the accuser's social presentation and personality.

And frankly, the act of making a false accusation is both weird and malicious, in and of itself.

Re: Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

#466

Post by nerdponx »

baumy wrote: post #263
nerdponx wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen someone unqualified get hired on DEI grounds, and I haven't seen evidence that it happens elsewhere. I'm not sure what your point is.

I have repeatedly seen this happen personally, and every single person in my professional network who I trust enough to have a candid conversation with on this topic has seen the same at least once (in fairness, that is only 3 people. but broaching this topic with the wrong person is very risky). There's quite a few people in this comment section attesting to this as well. Is there a threshold you have in mind for a…

I'll happily change my mind in the face of evidence. Usually I see a lot of hand-wringing and speculating about it, rather than anecdotes and data. Proving causality in some kind of observational data set might be difficult, but I am not one to discount individual people's experiences either.

So if you have examples of unqualified candidates being hired on diversity grounds, then I'd like to hear your stories. In my own professional and social circles, it's very rare to see an unqualified hire at all, so maybe my personal sample isn't where the problem happens.

Re: Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

#467

Post by spoiler »

actualwitch wrote: post #462
spoiler wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP and also kinda disagree with them at the surface value of the statement, but maybe not with the underlying premise. One of the worst people I know are "religious". Some of the kindest people I know are also religious. This gave me cognitive dissonance for while about religion. Then I realised that all the horrible people were actually communal narcissists who grab onto the lowest hanging fruit, which is perfor…

What you describe in this comment, I would not call religion. I think the better descriptor would be "spiritual practices", and these are closer to shaman rituals of old, in my opinion. I agree, these practices including meditation and practicing awareness are very useful tools. I would even add psychedelics to the list as it can be a massive boon in self-reflection. Unfortunately nowadays in an eye of common public,…

Sorry, I meant to write witch-trials/hunts! It must've autocorrected. Thank you for spotting that and calling it out!

And to tie into your reply: the mentality you described is exactly the same one thay current social media mobs share with the "hunt the witches" mobs.

Also, my comment could use some more general word smithing, but it's too late to edit now. I think we agree both that what I described isn't religion, and I meant to say that religion itself isn't the missing bit, but some of the tools that were commonly present in religions. Meditation (and likewise psychedelics) being my favourite tool, personally.

I also agree with your observations on social media making this worse for the reasons you outlined.

Re: Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

#468

Post by Dma54rhs »

nvgeele wrote: post #385
ranting-moth wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False allegations should carry the same penalty as the crime being alleged.

No they shouldn't, because such laws will just open the door to even more abuse. Imagine you are raped by someone. You go to the police to report the crime, but unfortunately, they deny, and you can't provide any real evidence. They can now countersue because you've made a "false allegation" which ruined their life.

Falsifying a crime and not having enough evidence are very different things. It takes a lot of work or luck to prove that intent.

Re: Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

#469

Post by red-iron-pine »

jb1991 wrote: post #457
pb7 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone with blue hair is more likely to seek attention.

But calling them out as a "weirdo" is not a good look, to be honest. Such a statement carries context as well.

Sounds to me like someone has had a lot of different hair colors.

Anecdotes aren't data but when it comes to weird people, and non-natural hair colors, I've seen a lot of overlap. Practically 1-to-1, save for a few of the e-girl, OF demographic doing it to make money via cosplay and the like.

Re: Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says

#470

Post by cloudier »

grapehut wrote: post #72

These stories leave a bad taste in my mouth. It hasn't yet gone to court, so the guys allegations could be really be anything from the God's honest truth all the way to a complete fabrication. Yet there is a huge amount of irreparable damage by public stories like this. I was once personally on the receiving end of a complete false sexual harassment allegation from a coworker almost at random (someone I had almost no…

The quote from the spokesperson at the very end really makes me think that this situation might stranger than it seems:

In a statement to The Post, a spokesman for Miller denied the accusations against his client. “This lawsuit is a fictional account of events filled with numerous falsehoods, fabricated by a disgruntled ex-employee, who was senior to Ms. Miller at Google,” the spokesman said. “Ms. Miller never made any ‘advance’ toward Mr. Olohan, which witnesses can readily corroborate.”

Post reply on HN