Google staff walk out over women's treatment • Hacker News Board

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#61

Post by cimmanom » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:09 AM UTC

sheepmullet wrote: post #45

cimmanom wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you believe that, why shouldn’t there be a process to investigate the claims? You think all harassment claims should be automatically dismissed as false instead?

> Even if you believe that, why shouldn’t there be a process to investigate the claims? Because it quickly becomes a witch-hunt. It is hard enough to have a fair investigation within a proper court system and legal framework - it’s far more likely any Google process will end up as a kangaroo court than the process leading to any justice.

So you think all claims should be dismissed as false and people who are actually subjected to sexual harassment and coercion at work should have no recourse.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#62

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:10 AM UTC

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #47

cimmanom wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you believe that, why shouldn’t there be a process to investigate the claims? You think all harassment claims should be automatically dismissed as false instead?

all harassment claims should be No, of course not. Symmetrically, the should also not automatically accepted as true. There should be an objective, measurable process. Given the cul-de-sac that organisations like Google have been strong-armed into, I think the obvious next step is (1) to record all work-time interaction of all employees and store them for a long time, e.g. at least 10 years. (2) Give a absolutely cle…

>No, of course not. Symmetrically, the should also not automatically accepted as true.

This. I imagine most are absolutely true, but there are some that absolutely are not. I've personally been accused by rape, online, of someone in another state that I've never even been to. Fortunately, no one took the claim serious but I imagine there are many innocent people that have been wrongly accused for whatever reason.

I also had a friend, that was using OkCupid, reject a girl very politely in the first message or two. She then went on 'cheaterville' and posted that he gave her sexual transmitted diseases/infections and made multiple accounts alleging the same, one even as him with his name. He's an actor, he was up for a role and they retracted their offer when googling his name brought the cheaterville page up on the first page. Now if these two instances have happened to 2 guys from the midwest that have no power or money, I can only imagine there are quite a few false accusations regularly. I also imagine there are many many more TRUE accusations.

We need to protect individuals regardless of race, gender and sexual orientation but at the same time we need to avoid workplace harassment turning into McCarthyism.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#63

Post by DanBC » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:10 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #49

ChrisRR wrote: post #10

So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality" I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't…

UK Office for National Statistics publish good data for the UK. My impression (based on 2016 stats [0]) is that as most C-suiters are men, and they can get 100s or 1000s of times the money that ordinary employees get, that in the UK this likely accounts for most of the effect that's not accounted for by career breaks (childcare, for example). To reiterate, this is my _impression_ when looking at the data. Men who wor…

Here's one example of the ONS data: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#64

Post by YorkshireSeason » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:11 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #43

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The salient difference is that outages are measurable. In contrast, "harassment" is an extremely controversial subject that nobody agrees upon, for example, in some legislations, calling a person with XY chromosomes "him" rather than "her" is considered a hate crime, a dramatic change from labelling conventions of just a few years ago. Indeed what constitutes harassment is a major point of contention between differen…

> what downsides are there for false harassment claims There are major downsides to making true harassment claims: you get denounced as a liar and a slut. This is the main reason why so many claims went unreported, and the #metoo movement is one of solidarity which makes it possible for people to actually report true claims without ruining their career. Actually deliberately making a false harassment claim is potenti…

    liar and a slut

How is that a "major downside"? I've been called both, and I can't say I care. I can imagine that loosing a job to a false accusation is a "major downside".

   #metoo movement

Isn't that the movement whose leader Asia Argento has been has been accused by the New York Times as a sexual harasser [1, 2]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Argento#Alleged_sexual_as...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/us/asia-argento-assault-j...

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#65

Post by hueving » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:11 AM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #25

Wouldn't it be easier to create an algorithm for compensation which clearly didn't involve gender (i.e. no deep learning stuff). Something which boils down to base salary + experience factor + google service factor. Honestly, I can imagine that being less troublesome even outside of attempting to be fair an equitable regardless of race / gender / sexual orientation.

The problem is that it can turn out men are more aggressive when it comes to getting counter offers which has a much larger impact than anything else. If that's the case then what do you propose, ban people from negotiating and lose everyone good enough to get competing offers?

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#66

Post by kaddio » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:14 AM UTC

devwastaken wrote: post #30

kaddio wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big mistake to believe those protestors are acting rationally. I'm not saying they are not, but assuming that they are is a mistake.

Those two lines of logic don't go together. If in your opinion it's a big mistake to believe they're rational, you are saying they're not being rational. There's no neutrality there. You can assume that there is unknown information being acted upon. Unless there's proof otherwise that the protest is lying you infact can and should assume it's authenticity. Or at the least not be involved without clear knowledge.

>Unless there's proof otherwise that the protest is lying you infact can and should assume it's authenticity.

Thank God that's not the way justice system works.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#67

Post by PunchTornado » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:14 AM UTC

maaaats wrote: post #41

ChrisRR wrote: post #10

So the first demand is "A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequality" I'd like to see the actual data behind this constant inequality claim. I would be genuinely interested to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. I've heard speculation that women don't argue for higher salaries as much as men, I've also heard that the data is never accurate because it doesn't…

> to see what kind of difference there is between the sexes when comparing like-for-like jobs. What if the pay is equal for like-for-like jobs, but for the higher paying jobs one sex is vastly underrepresented? Not saying it is, just that discrimination and bias often runs deeper than some simple comparison.

What if one sex is statistcally proven to work more overtime than another sex?

What if one sex takes more paternal leave than another so the other sex spends more time in the office improving skills?

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#68

Post by brobdingnagians » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:14 AM UTC

Zanni wrote: post #39

brobdingnagians wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time magazine, which doesn't exactly seem to be a bastion of conservatism, had an article about this http://time.com/3222543/wage-pay-gap-myth-feminism/ , which had more hard-facts than anyone else I've seen, but the conclusion was that most of the claims made by the wage gap supporters are cherrypicked and false. Although, if Google specifically has a problem with it, I'd definitely be willing to listen. If they are…

Working link: http://time.com/3222543/wage-pay-gap-myth-feminism/

Thank you and sorry. Updated it now

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#69

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:14 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #48

ryanmercer wrote: post #27

These people should be fired, not because they want equal pay but because they refuse to do the job they were hired to do. Different genders deserve equal pay, people of different races deserve equal pay, people with various disabilities deserve equal pay. HOWEVER, you want to walk out of work? You should be terminated. If I walked out of work, I would be fired. If I organized several people to walk out of work with…

> You don't change things by striking, Traditionally union action including strikes has been the only way to make changes in big employers.

I've never worked for a unionized company yet hey, I've been treated fairly.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#70

Post by hueving » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 11:16 AM UTC

truculent wrote: post #20

xfitm3 wrote: post #4

What can you do.

Do the eyewitness accounts of your female peers and friends not count as evidence?

No, if it's one person leveling an accusation and there is no corroborating evidence (either physical or more witnesses), it's not enough. Otherwise it would be within anyone's power to have people fired or put away for rape without evidence.