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

Google staff walk out over women's treatment

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 471 posts

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#81

Post by lukev »

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #23
slivym wrote: post #5

All of their demands seem pretty reasonable. It looks like the big gripe is that basically there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. To draw an analogy, this would be like Google not having a process to investigate and resolve site outages - it would be unthinkable, so why aren't they treating their organisation with the same rigor they treat their website.

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…

And only a few short decades ago I could fire someone for being gay, or forbid my wife from opening a bank account. And it was a mere century ago that women literally couldn't vote.

I don't see why the fact that social mores change invalidates the social standard we have today.

Furthermore, why do you folk always jump straight to the "b..b..but false harassment!" argument? All it does is demonstrate that you actually don't care at all about the original problem.

Experts place false sexual misconduct allegations at 2-10% (https://qz.com/980766/the-truth-about-false-rape-accusations...), and estimate that that number would be even lower if you include all the women who were harassed and never report to start with.

So why are you willing to throw 90-98% of harassed women to the sharks, in order to protect 2-10% of accused men? Plus there's the whole strawman that allegations are always believed. Of course there should be fact checking. In fact, even in the #metoo era, men almost never face repercussions for false allegations (and often not for real ones.)

Your statement that unfounded harassment claims do not lead to repercussions is flat out false. There is no company that would not discipline someone for bringing a harassment claim that was demonstrated to be false.

In short: this argument demonstrates that what you really want to do is only to preserve the status quo and do in fact not give a shit about a major problem in our culture.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#82

Post by prepend »

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.

I think this is part of the perception that machine learning is magical. This problem is as difficult as getting an accurate IQ.

If you’re going to base pay- something really serious- on such an algorithm, it must be open and reproducible.

Google is really good at this and that it doesn’t exist in a useful way is a signal that there is no algorithm. It would be extremely valuable to companies to know this like a credit score.

I think when there are natural incentives, resources, and open problem it means that we don’t really have resources or doesn’t exist and needs more time and innovation to solve the problem.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#83

Post by typon »

YorkshireSeason wrote: post #64
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/…

So because Asia Argento has sexually harassed someone, the MeToo movement is discredited? Some of the comments in this thread are unbelievable

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#84

Post by [deleted] »

3jckd wrote: post #31
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…

__If__ it's really a problem, the only way to actually fix this would be to remove any kind of negotation, because two people with identical CVs might settle on vastly different salaries and it's highly unlikely that the employer is going to overcompensate them. However, I've heard people argue that a right to ask for a lower pay is also an advantage in labour market because it's yet another axis of competitiveness.

[deleted]

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#85

Post by pbhjpbhj »

PunchTornado wrote: post #76
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Men under 30 earn much less than women under 30. No one cares either.

Yes, younger women friends post on Facebook how they're stopping work for the year in October (?) to make up for the pay-gap. I assume maybe that's true to some extent in USA -- they're certainly sold on the idea all the men around them are getting an easy deal.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#86

Post by sheepmullet »

cimmanom wrote: post #61
sheepmullet wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> So you think all claims should be dismissed as false

Why would you think that?

I think the majority of claims need to go into the “not really sure” bucket where they belong.

Acknowledging this basic truth does not mean you have to then do nothing.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#88

Post by slivym »

Udik wrote: post #79
slivym wrote: post #5

All of their demands seem pretty reasonable. It looks like the big gripe is that basically there's no real process in place for situations of misconduct in the office. To draw an analogy, this would be like Google not having a process to investigate and resolve site outages - it would be unthinkable, so why aren't they treating their organisation with the same rigor they treat their website.

> this would be like Google not having a process to investigate and resolve site outages - it would be unthinkable, so why aren't they treating their organisation with the same rigor they treat their website. Because, Google is a company that builds products. I am interested in their products and in the fact that their products work, not much in the behaviour of the people building them- given the fact that they are…

It's worth noting that one of their demands is dropping the binding arbitration that essentially forces employees to forgo their right to legal recourse for civil matters. Not every instance of unacceptable behaviour is a criminal matter.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#89

Post by prepend »

pjc50 wrote: post #80
hueving wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> either physical or more witnesses This makes rape un-prosecutable.

There’s substantial corroborating evidence for rape. It can be traumatic, but read through some trials of convicted rapists and review the evidence presented.

Re: Google staff walk out over women's treatment

#90

Post by typon »

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…

Do you realize that all the things that make your current job bearable like 8 hour workday, weekends and safe work environment are only possible because people in the past had the spine to strike and demand better conditions for themselves and their fellow workers?
Post reply on HN