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Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

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Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#51
post #31

I realise I might get downvoted here because of an unpopular point of view, but some of these comments raise a few flags: “I reported it up to where my manager knew, my director knew, the coworker’s manager knew and our HR representative knew. Nothing happened. I was warned that things will get very serious if continued,” So EVERYONE knew and they still disagreed with their point of view. Warned them that accusations…

> Your manager thought you were overreacting, given whatever proof / accusations you provided. Just because he / she did not agree with it, does not mean they are evil. In a company the size of google, managers aren't the people that should have an opinion on this matter. What that manager said, assuming this document is valid, is absolutely terrible. Heck, if some manager in my hypothetical company told someone that…

I often see discussions like this, but there is no specific action described. How does one test for overreaction or not, if nothing is specified? Some paranoid people may get insulted by a a single unconscious look that you don’t really control, cause it’s just your facial feature. And then think about it all day, checking in more random details.

Can someone who read it please cite it here?

Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#52
post #20

HR is not your friend and HR will never be your friend. In a post-2008 world, it baffles me that people still think that somewhere, deep-down, multi-billion dollar conglomerates have employees' best interests at heart. How quickly we forgot people losing their lifelong savings and entire pension funds going bust. Only to have the government bail out the exact same charlatans that dropped the ball in the first place.…

I completely agree. If I ever find myself in the situation of one of these stories, aka the victim, I will be going straight to an employment lawyer before HR to discuss my options. Hopefully meeting with HR with my lawyer present.

I’m curious, how do the pricing compare? Having a lawyer at an HR interview is certainly $800 already (at $300/hr), with what, 2% chances of succeeding a trial, and say 15% chances of getting a settlement, but also months of dragging. lawsuit and difficulty to focus on a new job, assuming you find a new employer. Do people really get settled for dozens of thousands of dollars?

Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#53

More evidence, as if we needed any more, that past a certain point being 'woke' is an exercise in futility. The most 'woke' megacorp in the world can't do it. The most 'woke' countries in the world can't do it. (theres more whining and complaining about socjus in Scandanavia per capita than just about anywhere else in the world). No matter how far you go in tearing down the patriarchy or intersecting the insectionali…

okay I understand people downvoting me because they don't like what I say but I wish I'd at least get an explanation why I'm constantly being flagged if I'm just stating an unpopular opinion without any trolling, spam, or personal attacks (against other commentators. People here regularly attack article subjects so I assume thats okay).

Taking HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar is against the site guidelines, so downvotes and flags are correct. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not doing that anymore?

Edit: on closer inspection, this account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle and ignored our requests to stop, so I've banned it. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#54

I realise I might get downvoted here because of an unpopular point of view, but some of these comments raise a few flags: “I reported it up to where my manager knew, my director knew, the coworker’s manager knew and our HR representative knew. Nothing happened. I was warned that things will get very serious if continued,” So EVERYONE knew and they still disagreed with their point of view. Warned them that accusations…

Good companies have policies that any good-faith reports of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, fraud or abuse at the company, or any other similar event _shall not_ be subject to any bad consequences or disciplinary action, even if the complaint/report is not found to be substantiated or serious enough for the organization to take action on. No retaliation for people raising issues. Google either doesn't have…

You have a good point. I agree that there should not be retaliation for raising issues. But I think it is also important to realise that when an investigation has taken place, and the conclusion is that nothing can be done about it given lack of evidence, going against the company is not the right approach either. In the quotes that I provided, the only case of retaliation was really a warning to stop after a lot of people looked into the accusation.

Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#55

I realise I might get downvoted here because of an unpopular point of view, but some of these comments raise a few flags: “I reported it up to where my manager knew, my director knew, the coworker’s manager knew and our HR representative knew. Nothing happened. I was warned that things will get very serious if continued,” So EVERYONE knew and they still disagreed with their point of view. Warned them that accusations…

To add to what you are saying: I feel a lot of the accusations are generic and overly ambiguous and this can lead to multiple interpretations which hurts everyone.

For example: “I witnessed first hand (and was told second-hand) of several situations where women were being belittled, insulted and ignored”

This text mentions the accusation of 'belittled, insulted and ignored'. But what exactly happened?

It COULD mean a long term pattern of horrific abuse and psychological torment.

But as a Latino working in the US, I've seen first hand other Latinos completely over-react and get defensive in situations which were completely uncalled for.

Someone makes a joke about Mexican food and they feel 'belittled and insulted'. Then because they are so insanely sensitive and tend to take everything personally, other co workers ignore them. To me, that's the logical conclusion of what happens to people with a victim mentality. I'm Latino and feel they were wrong for being sensitive. Am I wrong too?

I say this because as a Latino, I don't want WASPs to feel scared of speaking near me. If that happens, there will be segregation. And I would understand; who wants to be on the defensive all the time? Most groups of co-workers there tends to be hazings and people joke around.

This is not to say there aren't real cases of Latino discrimination, I'm just saying that the wording used in the accusations of the article is extremely vague.

When someone mentions 'sexual harassment', that can mean everything from a long term pattern of physiological torture under duress with physical attacks accompanying it (extreme cases of sexual harassment), to someone being asked out a single time in a less than appropriate manner but with no duress or obligation (maybe a co-worker though there was something and he misinterpreted a single time while drunk at the x-mass party but instantly backed out upon rejection... that too is sexual harassment).

Both of these are 'sexual harassment'. One of them would warrant a VERY strong response. The other... not so much so. I think some people when they read sexual harrasment think one extreme while others think the other. But this only leads to people talking over each other without understanding. Using words with specific and concrete definitions is necessary for communication.

At some point in the last century, words related to victims and attacks became so open ended that it's really hard to understand what is being discussed.

Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#56
To put things in perspective, 45 employees represent ~0.14% of all the women working at Google (based on wikipedia and [1]). Given my perception of humans and abusive corporate structures, I am actually quite impressed!

Obviously the article doesn't tell us anything on the collection methodology, or try to put things in perspective. The reader is free to apply their bias and infer the meaning that suits them the best.

[1]: https://fortune.com/2017/06/29/google-2017-diversity-report/

Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#57

I realise I might get downvoted here because of an unpopular point of view, but some of these comments raise a few flags: “I reported it up to where my manager knew, my director knew, the coworker’s manager knew and our HR representative knew. Nothing happened. I was warned that things will get very serious if continued,” So EVERYONE knew and they still disagreed with their point of view. Warned them that accusations…

Good companies have policies that any good-faith reports of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, fraud or abuse at the company, or any other similar event _shall not_ be subject to any bad consequences or disciplinary action, even if the complaint/report is not found to be substantiated or serious enough for the organization to take action on. No retaliation for people raising issues. Google either doesn't have…

Google already has no retaliation rules, but such rules can't rule out negative consequences which would befall them regardless. Otherwise you would encourage low performing individuals to accuse their manager of something before the manager pip's them.

Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#58
post #20

HR is not your friend and HR will never be your friend. In a post-2008 world, it baffles me that people still think that somewhere, deep-down, multi-billion dollar conglomerates have employees' best interests at heart. How quickly we forgot people losing their lifelong savings and entire pension funds going bust. Only to have the government bail out the exact same charlatans that dropped the ball in the first place.…

Don't be baffled! No one thinks this. Everyone has seen a variation of this comment a million times by now, and everyone knows it, but companies will never be able to admit it. It's all about putting stress on the lie. If a corp won't solve its issues and employees quit because of it, "well duh of course they're gonna protect stakeholders' interest" isn't really helpful or new.

Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever want to proceed with legal actions against the company then you have to put it into record somewhere which typically means reporting incidents to HR. Which ultimately leads to getting fired. What else are people supposed to do? It's a shitty unwinnable situation for employees, I've been on the shit end of this stick before at a different tech co for complaining and was retaliated against. It's not fun and…

> If you ever want to proceed with legal actions against the company then you have to put it into record somewhere which typically means reporting incidents to HR. This is not true. You don't have to record anything with HR for legal action. Its not a prerequisite by any means. Going to HR is always a wrong move. Get a lawyer.

My mother was a lawyer and did a lot of sexual harassment / workplace descriminiation work. Obviously that doesn't make me a lawyer or anything close to one, but she would have advised going to HR as soon as possible (I even asked just now to be sure.) It's important to document in/action and/or a pattern of abuse on the company's part. You can (and should) certainly document these things on your own, but if you never go to HR the company will have an avenue of escape open ("s/he never told us, this is a rogue manager, we had no idea", etc.)

BTW, you sue your company and you're gone either way.

Re: Google Employees Explain How They Were Retaliated Against for Reporting Abuse

#60
post #20

HR is not your friend and HR will never be your friend. In a post-2008 world, it baffles me that people still think that somewhere, deep-down, multi-billion dollar conglomerates have employees' best interests at heart. How quickly we forgot people losing their lifelong savings and entire pension funds going bust. Only to have the government bail out the exact same charlatans that dropped the ball in the first place.…

I completely agree. If I ever find myself in the situation of one of these stories, aka the victim, I will be going straight to an employment lawyer before HR to discuss my options. Hopefully meeting with HR with my lawyer present.

Yeah. Never underestimate domain expertise either. They love to deal with someone who's "smarter" but who lacks that knowledge.

It's weird that HR has to be such an adversarial entity though. One might naively expect them to provide some kind of useful utility beyond protecting the company, even if that's their primary purpose... In my only rather mundane interaction with them, not as a victim or anything, at the suggestion of the office manager I tested the waters with a complaint about people bringing their kids into the office and letting them roam. I still recollect a surreal feeling from the HR rep telling me how they liked how carefully and precisely worded my email was -- it felt like a sign of them telling me they know that I know not to trust them and that my distrust is justified since without such careful wording it'd be trivial to paint me as a parent- or child-hating monster, or whatever, who is the real problem. I got more than I expected out of the exchange (a reminder was sent out to the office that it's against the rules -- not that it stopped anyone the following summer) but the experience alone from satisfying my curiosity on whether HR could be useful with even this one minor annoyance was worth the risk (real or imagined) of backfire.

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