A note to our employees

https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/note-our-employees/

by minimaxir • 8 years ago

244 396 8 years ago

ocdtrekkie4• 8 years ago

Looks like Google has tried to dodge directly acquiescing to most of the walkout's demands.

The chief diversity officer will "continue" to report to the leadership team, rather than being promoted. No mention of the employee representative on the board, either. Pichai states they'll add detail to their sexual harassment report, but doesn't commit to release it publicly, as demanded. Google also didn't address pay inequality, likely because doing so would require admitting they've been lying to the Department of Labor by claiming there is none.

But there's an end to forced arbitration, we'll see if that's enough for the walkout crowd. I kinda doubt it.

evrydayhustling• 8 years ago

The nice thing about ending forced arbitration is that it opens the lever to fix the other problems you mentioned. If they're smart they really will get ahead of the other core issues, instead of working them out in (real) courts!

rifung• 8 years ago

No mention of the employee representative on the board, either.

Can someone who knows better than me explain whether this is actually a reasonable request? It sounded ridiculous to me but I admit I am not knowledgeable in these matters.

tapoxi• 8 years ago

Elisabeth Warren is working on a bill to make this a requirement.

Personally I think its sensible to have some accountability to your employees, not just your shareholders.

vkou5• 8 years ago

It's a reasonable request, if you consider it from this perspective:

Why do shareholders get board seats?

Because they don't trust company leadership to do the right thing, without any oversight.

Leadership is currently asking employees to trust that leadership will do the right thing, without any oversight.

This is, obviously, an unreasonable expectation. Even if employees trust current leadership, what assurances do they have that Sundar's successor will do the right thing?

An employee representative on the board is the only way to ensure that leadership will do the right thing. Corporate America has figured out this accountability thing over a century ago.

devilmoon• 8 years ago

I believe it would be quite ridiculous as well, any elected employee representative would probably be somehow bought out by the company/board and become useless. That's what Union Reps in my country do at least - they are basically friends with upper management/board and just strike deals that benefit them rather than the workers

nrook• 8 years ago

This is required in some European countries. For example, in Germany, workers have a right to 50% of the board for companies with more than 2,000 employees. (Ties break for shareholders, due to the way the chair position works.)

https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Rela...

Obviously, this hasn't destroyed Germany's economy, so it's doubtful it would hurt Google's profits much either.

AlwaysRock2• 8 years ago

Do you believe they are lying to the Department of Labor? Do you have any evidence for that claim? I'd love to see it.

ocdtrekkie4• 8 years ago

Google claims they have "no pay gap". And have resisted turning over their HR data as much as possible to avoid allowing the Department of Labor to investigate it, including claiming it was to protect employee privacy, and hilariously, that it was too hard/costly for Google to gather the data.

Meanwhile, the Department of Labor says there is "systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce" and that "received compelling evidence of very significant discrimination against women in the most common positions at Google headquarters".

A fifth of Google's entire workforce (20,000 people!) walked out, in part, because of that systemic mistreatment of women, and demanded Google fix the pay gap.

The Department of Labor and 20,000 employees who say there's a pay gap. I believe them. Google says there isn't one. I do not believe Google is run by people too incompetent to notice a "systemic" pay gap. Therefore, yes, I believe they are lying.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/8/15229688/department-of-lab...

thoughtexplorer3• 8 years ago

Serious question: Does the Chief Diversity Officer include diversity of ideas and experience? Or is it just skin deep like it sounds?

Edit: Lots of up and down votes. Why is this question so controversial? I'd like to see an argument as to why it's an invalid or flawed question.

cryoshon3• 8 years ago

i would say that at google there's a chance they're including diversity of ideas and experience.

at most companies, we all know that the skin-deep diversity is the only thing the HR department cares about because it's all they're terrified about getting sued over. however, given google's unique corporate culture, i think that they might be forward thinking enough to seek out different perspectives, but probably not in a quota-driven fashion.

georgeburdell• 8 years ago

You’re getting downvoted because Google and many other well known tech companies are known not to be comfortable places to work if you’re a conservative. Political ideology, like skin color, should not itself be a diversity goal, but the former often reflects differences in mindsets that may be better suited for certain projects or job roles.

goobynight• 8 years ago

What's more important is if those values spread from the CDO down to teams, whether he holds them or not. From everything I hear as an outsider, that's definitely not the case.

fmitchell03• 8 years ago

Serious response: Framing it as an 'Or' implies the two are mutually exclusive. They are not. Diversity is fact. The world is diverse in a variety of ways (skin, eyes, experiences, gender, language, nationality, etc.). Inclusion is the action. Equity is the goal.

In the OKR framework, being able to measure your progress towards the goal is important. The real question is, which aspects of people who work for your company do you measure to ensure proper decisions around inclusion to achieve the equity goal?

It's easiest to measure by 'skin deep' factors b/c that is what human beings most easily make poor decisions on (fear, bias, stereotype, self-segregation, NIMBY-ism, etc). It is also required for companies to report to the US government on these factors because of our history of poor decisions (to put it lightly). It is therefore easiest to use that as a metric.

Serious question: If implied in your question that the goal should be equity in 'thought', how do you propose that is measured?

ed_balls• 8 years ago

from all websites I'd expect HN to NOT read OR as mutually exclusive

Benjammer4• 8 years ago

If implied in your question that the goal should be equity in 'thought', how do you propose that is measured?

OP mentioned "ideas & experience," not "thought," which seems like an intentional framing as something unbounded and immeasurable.

Diversity of ideas could be measured by the average number of options/solutions that are seriously considered (and investigated/piloted) over the course of multiple projects for a team.

Diversity of experience seems somewhat obvious to me. But if you want clarity on this as well, the idea would be to value various types of experiences in the same way that companies value diverse outward traits like gender, sex, skin color, racial identity, etc. It's a balance. You could hire a person of each gender/skin color combination, but if they all grew up in the New England suburbs and all of them went to either MIT or Harvard, you are generally NOT going to have a diversity of experience, even though everyone _looks_ different. On the other end of the scale, you could hire one person from each type of school, big state school, small technical school, ivy league, "public ivy", liberal arts college, bootcamp graduate, etc. Hire people native to your country/culture, and people who come from a different part of the world. But if they are all white men, you are not going to realize as much benefit.

I think it's important to make an attempt to combine all of these concepts to come up with something that approaches the concept of "diversity of thought."

prepend5• 8 years ago

“Equity is the goal.”

I don’t think this is a good goal. Unless you mean equity of opportunity. Equity of outcome is a ridiculously foolish goal in that outcomes will vary substantially and trying to have equity at the end on arbitrary human factors with easy to measure biases (gender, race, etc).

So the goal is not 45/45/10 for gender distribution for all roles. As that is obviously impossible as roles change and then people would need to be redistributed ad infinitum (eg, project managers have “perfect” gender diversity of 45/45/10 today but now the role is changes and split into product owner and product manager. Does this mean that the roles must include the same gender mix?)

PavlovsCat• 8 years ago

To the degree something is deep, it is not shallow, and vice versa. That something is easy to measure does not per se make it less or more shallow.

gizmo6862• 8 years ago

I don't have any experience with Google in this regard (beyond looking into the Damore case, which is a bit muddy because of the amount of public pressure Google was facing [0]). However, in my experience, diversity programs and officers tend to be about liability and checkboxes; and there is no legal checkbox for diversity of ideas.

Plus, surface diversity is much easier to measure; and you optimize for your metrics.

[0] Ideally a diversity officer would stand up for Damore. But I have no idea what went on behind the scenes of that decidion.

munificent• 8 years ago

[0] Ideally a diversity officer would stand up for Damore.

That claim depends entirely on how you interpret Damore's behavior. Tolerance does not and must not require tolerating intolerance [0].

I'm not stating a claim as to whether or not Damore's behavior should be considered intolerance. I don't have a take on that. But without having some opinion on that, you can't claim a priori that a diversity officer is obligated to enable his views.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

ianamartin• 8 years ago

It's basically the same role that chief security officers fill at large companies. The point isn't to actually secure anything. The point is to avoid getting sued for not securing things.

706f6f70• 8 years ago

Plus, surface diversity is much easier to measure; and you optimize for your metrics.

I think this is key. Until "diversity" becomes so absolutely fragmented that you get back down to the level of the individual (e.g.you need a non-Hispanic Latino coder, who is Christian but not Catholic, was born poor but still got into an Ivy League, must be over 6 feet tall, and her name must begin with "A"), we will continue to burn resources, mental energy, and time on ensuring that we can't get sued.

Aqua2• 8 years ago

To me the notion of a need for diversity in a workplace is absurd. Seriously, whats the point? There are and always have been professions dominated by men and those dominated by women. From the perspective of an employer, gender, skin colour or political views should be completely irrelevant when it comes to making a hire/no hire decision. By introducing rules that aim to achieve a 50/50 distribution of e.g. each gender in any field, you're forming up an artificial construct that ultimately results in poorer overall performance (since you had to reject a number of candidates that likely were more qualified for the position in order to reach your equal distribution goals).

kaitai2• 8 years ago

You seem to be conflating quotas and diversity, and also conflating mechanisms and results. The point of a diversity office or officer is to provide a resource for discussing whether mechanisms of hiring and recruitment are fair, and trying to improve them if they're not.

Once all those studies that send out the same exact resume with the names John, Jane, T'yesha, Jamal, Xiaoying, and Shan Shan at the top find you get the same number of callbacks, then we'll actually be in a situation where people are being hired on their qualifications!

baddox• 8 years ago

It may not have much value in a coal mine, but I suspect it is highly valuable even from a purely commercial/competitive perspective in industries and workplaces that are creating/maintaining products or services for a large or broad audience.

you're forming up an artificial construct that ultimately results in poorer overall performance (since you had to reject a number of candidates that likely were more qualified for the position in order to reach your equal distribution goals).

That's precisely where I disagree. Again, in a coal mine you might just want to hire for simple traits that can be easily evaluated per individual (like physical strength). But on the types of teams I mentioned, the diversity of experiences and opinions across the team probably matters as much or even more than the sum of every individual's "talents." I would guess that this diversity becomes more important the larger the team gets and the larger the audience for their products/services gets.

To be clear, I also suspect that more diverse teams are more difficult to hire and manage effectively, and that's probably a big reason that some companies either don't care about diversity or actively resist the suggestion to increase their diversity.

dijit• 8 years ago

This whole thread is becoming toxic; and I know my karma will be negatively impacted but I have to say:

Diversity of race or gender is not really important when it comes to working by itself.

Diversity of experience and thought is very important when it comes to working.

What I mean is a very middle-class white family and a very middle-class black family producing offspring in a house next to each other and sending their kids to the same school(s): are not going to be functionally diverse enough for what I'm about to say.

Why?: because people who are thinking differently to you are approaching problems from other sides than you are, if you can be civil then you can build your product in ways you could never do alone.

Now; people who were raised in a different kind of culture or social class than you are basically by default: thinking differently.

It doesn't have to be colour, but in the US (from a brit perspective) your class system looks like black people are sandwiched between middle-class white folk and very low-class white folk. So some people might see that 'hiring black folk would increase our diversity of thought'

or.. more likely, they're being judged on metrics and skin colour/gender is an easy metric to game for.

Giving people an equal shot is noble and we should aspire for it. The business incentives come in because your product will be better with divergent opinions and by increasing the talent pool the supply of coders will meet the demand.. (and then they can pay coders less in the longer term)

naasking6• 8 years ago

To me the notion of a need for diversity in a workplace is absurd. Seriously, whats the point?

There are some advantages. For instance, people with different religions or cultural backgrounds will have non-overlapping holidays, so your office might be open on days that you might otherwise have to close.

Or consider if you're creating a dating app, you would absolutely want a woman's input on how to reduce harassment (see Tinder vs. Bumble).

krapp• 8 years ago

There are and always have been professions dominated by men and those dominated by women. From the perspective of an employer, gender, skin colour or political views should be completely irrelevant when it comes to making a hire/no hire decision.

What you're missing is that many employers don't have the perspective whereby gender, skin color or political views are irrelevant. Biases against gender, race and religion are part of the reason that many professions have been dominated by certain races, genders and religions (although laws have attempted to counteract this effect.)

The point of diversity in the workplace is to force an implicitly prejudiced employment market to be less prejudiced than it otherwise might be, just as the point of labor laws and the minimum wage are to force companies to care more about their employees' welfare than they otherwise would.

snowwrestler5• 8 years ago

since you had to reject a number of candidates that likely were more qualified for the position in order to reach your equal distribution goals

Your assumption here is that the status quo of hiring is an optimum that must be sacrificed for diversity.

The reality is that every hiring program already uses diversity as a criterion, but unless a measurable objective is set, it will invisibly optimize for the comfort of current employees, rather than job performance.

The purpose of measuring diversity in hiring practices is to remove or control a confounding factor, not to add one.

jimbokun• 8 years ago

"There are and always have been professions dominated by men and those dominated by women."

And a lot of that was caused by pervasive discrimination.

zbentley5• 8 years ago

There are and always have been professions dominated by men and those dominated by women.

Put in the most mercenary way I can think of:

There are and have always also been professions in which hiring decisionmakers screw their own organizations out of talent by ignoring or down-ranking candidates they were bigoted against. There similarly are/have been professions in which talented people with potential to add great value have been driven away by similarly bigoted leaders.

We don't know what might have been, what potential might have been achieved, because of the idiotic/cruel things we've practiced throughout history. Acting like ethical, compassionate, empathetic people seems like a way more pragmatic way than "well, it worked so far, let's keep being bigoted assholes" to see if we could do better in the future.

morgtheborg2• 8 years ago

I generally agree with you. Certainly 50%/50% is insane when the pipeline itself isn't giving you that percentage of qualified candidates based on objective measurements.

However, as other have mentioned, there are already biases to hire people "like you" and offsetting those biases is valuable. Often, I'd argue "culture fit" is an umbrella term used to keep people who are different out.

bryondowd• 8 years ago

I think the idea is to counter one artificial construct with another. It's been shown that otherwise identical resumes are less likely to be selected when the name is clearly female or minority rather than a common white male name. That would indicate a hiring bias that has nothing to do with ability. Since it's virtually impossible to fix that bias, a common solution is to introduce an opposite bias. Not perfect, but I've never seen a better solution posited. "Just have better hiring managers/practices" doesn't seem to scale.

atom-morgan• 8 years ago

It's controversial because it's selectively applied and advocates for D&I know it.

There are plenty of Asians in tech (men and women) and yet we're always hearing about a "diversity" problem. This is why tech no longer uses the term minority - they use "underrepresented minority" instead.

danans2• 8 years ago

Why should the representation of Asians in tech reduce the concerns about the under-representations of Blacks and Latinos in tech?

williamaadams• 8 years ago

I work for Microsoft, and the back of my employee badge says: Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

To me, this implies that our engineering organizations, and entire company, need to have an appropriate amount of empathy across a broad spectrum of geographies, cultures, experiences, perspectives, and the like. You only get that by having a diversity of talent, and more importantly, inclusion in your engineering practices.

When I talk about diversity, I usually say; "There are two forms of diversity, DNA diversity, the stuff we usually talk about in terms of color, sex, etc, things you can see, and then there's diversity of perspectives and experiences. You need the diversity of experiences and perspectives. In some cases that's conveniently wrapped in some forms of DNA diversity, but is not exclusive to that".

I don't think the question is at all controversial, and we should not be afraid to openly talk about it.

majewsky2• 8 years ago

Our Mission; Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Did they think about what they said there before printing? Because there are plenty of organizations which we definitely do not want to achieve more (e.g. drug cartels, nazi parties).

shard972• 8 years ago

So what would be the benefits in DNA diversity at all? If you can get a diverse views of perspectives, why bring in the DNA diversity which is going to lead to conflicts as people won't be able to talk as effectively as people who are more homogeneous?

98codes• 8 years ago

It's controversial because you're conflating diversity in who people are (that they didn't choose, and can't change), vs. what they choose (actions and ideas that can be changed if the individual so chooses).

chasing• 8 years ago

I suspect it's controversial because HNers think you're referencing people like James Damore and/or people who wrap themselves in the mantle of "diversity of ideas" when they start making racist or sexist comments.

Is that the kind of "diversity of ideas and experience" you're talking about?

lawnchair_larry7• 8 years ago

Calm down, nobody said anything racist or sexist. How do you expect to have a discussion about this when you attack people for words that you put in their mouth before they had a chance to even engage?

Damore didn't do that, by the way.

Aeolun3• 8 years ago

It’s not an invalid question. It just tramples on a lot of peoples toes.

mattmanser2• 8 years ago

It is as, unlike people, not all ideas and experience deserve equality.

rimliu• 8 years ago

I don’t remember where I saw it first (reddit, likely), but: have you seen a msle diversity officer?

zbentley5• 8 years ago

Two, at two different companies. One had a male/female team, the other just had a guy.

hrktb• 8 years ago

Your question has so much baggage in so few words.

Your premise is that if the CDO’s role doesn’t include your vision of diversity it is “just skin deep”. Not everyone shares this premise, and focusing on this point also makes it sound like you dismiss all the other aspect his role could have (they’re just skin deep after all, right ?)

To get back to yor question, Google has offices all around the world, I find it hard to fault them for lack of diversity of experiences, nor do I think the thousands of people they employ all have the same ideas. I’d actually think it would be harder to find people all sharing all the same ideas.

Or do you have something a lot more specific in mind ?

mikekchar2• 8 years ago

How is this for controversial? Diversity of ideas and experience could also be interpreted as lack of direction. In truth, "ideas and experience" could cover anything from cultural issues to technical issues. However, I'll point out some ways that "diversity in ideas an experience" could be interpreted, just so you get a feeling for why someone might object to a non-specific label like that.

Elsewhere in the thread, people are talking about excessive drinking on the job contributing to harassment. In the culture where I currently live (Japan), drinking is virtually mandatory. In fact, I once got an official reprimand for not drinking at a company event. Within the Japanese culture, drinking allows you to relax the way your present yourself. If you are drunk, it is acceptable to clearly say what you think, even if it might be embarrassing for others. This may be the only time to provide feedback up the ladder. Additionally, people higher up in the organisation are allowed to be more familiar with those lower down, which is impossible in normal every day work. This develops an honest camaraderie up and down the organisation and without the social lubricant (or excuse is probably a better word) that is alcohol, the work culture suffers.

Now, perhaps we have several Japanese people who have experienced significant success with this corporate culture. Do we want to grant it a kind of equivalent status within our organisation? Or do we want to have a kind of veto that says, "Despite your previous experience and your cultural background, this is a no-go area for our organisation"?

Even when talking about technical rather than cultural issues, there may be times when we need to limit discussion. I may have hired someone with extensive C++ experience into my Ruby on Rails team. Having that experience is really valuable. The C++ programmer can see things from different perspectives and provide solutions that are different that what the average Rails developer has seen before. However, if the C++ programmer suddenly starts demanding that all string processing should be handled in C++, we might want to limit this discussion. The C++ programmer may have lots of wonderful tools and experience to help them with this task, but the bulk of the developers on the team are not going to be able to cope. Potentially every developer on the team has some niche thing that they would like to introduce. Do we really want to provide a stage for all of these ideas, or do we want to filter them first and work on the ideas that seem most compatible with the team?

It is entirely possible that you disagree with my standpoint. I certainly have met a few people who feel that giving every person in the company an equal opportunity to pursue all of their ideas is a good idea. I have not experienced a successful company that embraced that philosophy, however. Leadership is often about focusing on a few ideas and limiting discussion that appear to be going in incompatible directions. As much as I am frustrated when my ideas get shot down without much air time, I recognise the reality of this necessity.

It's also possible that you have a completely different point that you are hoping to make and it was lost on me due to the brevity of your comment. In that case, perhaps it would be better to try to explain your position in more detail.

leothekim• 8 years ago

Doesn't sound skin deep to me. Why do you think it sounds like that?

cryoshon3• 8 years ago

statements like

Going forward, we will provide more transparency on how we handle concerns. We’ll give better support and care to the people who raise them

and

We’re overhauling our reporting channels by bringing them together on one dedicated site and including live support. We will enhance the processes we use to handle concerns—including the ability for Googlers to be accompanied by a support person. And we will offer extra care and resources for Googlers during and after the process.

immediately set off my BS detector. whenever someone talks about meta-issues surrounding another issue without ever directly touching on the main issue itself, they're being evasive. the arbitration clause change is a good one. but the entire statement lacks any genuine taking of responsibility regarding the prior anti-employee practices. nor is there any "we're gonna try to stamp out sexual harassment".

notably, there is also no acknowledgement of other recent internal concerns, namely aiding governments in the oppression of their people (china and arguably others) and aiding governments in warfare (the US). while googlers have been shamefully complacent about getting their employers to drop these collaborations, the fact that it isn't even mentioned by pichai in a "please shut up and go back to work" letter is a bit sad.

in conclusion: googlers need to step on the gas WRT sexual harassment changes if they want anything beyond the modest changes announced in this letter and other social issues regarding the company must also be brought to the point of conflict internally.

SpikeDad2• 8 years ago

That really said nothing. They actually previously had a policy that if you were required to take sexual harassment training and didn't you got docked 1 point? Wouldn't getting fired be a more appropriate penalty?

However they take this "seriously" so I'm sure everything will be fine for Google employees.

jahlove3• 8 years ago

Wouldn't getting fired be a more appropriate penalty?

no.

craftyguy2• 8 years ago

Care to explain why you think not?

tytso2• 8 years ago

You didn't read the post carefully, apparently. Previously there was no penalty for skipping the mandatory training. (The fact that such training is "mandatory" is required by US law. Like most companies, such training is generally done on-line. It was that way at all of my previous places of employment, including at IBM. And I'm not aware of any impact, other than continuing to get nag e-mails, at any of my previous employers for not bothering to do the training.)

Moving forward, there now is a penalty for skipping said training. More importantly, it applies for everyone, including Directors and VP's, not just individual contributors. And one point on Perf is a big deal; it's the difference between Significantly Exceeds Expectation and Exceeds Expectations (or Exceeds Expectations vs Meets Expectations), and this impacts salary increases, bonuses, and promotion.

mxstbr• 8 years ago

The linked PDF contains a lot more substance than this PR-ey blogpost: https://services.google.com/fh/files/blogs/november_announce...

abalone• 8 years ago

How does this compare with the protesters' demands? Anything missing?

wffurr• 8 years ago

No employee rep on the board. Chief Diversity Officer still reports to C-team not the board.

shmel4• 8 years ago

Mandatory sexual harassment training sounds quite disturbing. Anybody can comment in detail how it is conducted? Is it really mandatory for everyone or only for men?

bobbytherobot• 8 years ago

Why does that sound disturbing?

shmel4• 8 years ago

Mainly because to me it sounds a lot like horror stories about those college classes to teach men how to not rape (I dunno, what happens there? instructor keeps telling "rape is bad"?)

Osmose2• 8 years ago

What are you talking about? Mandatory sexual harassment training is standard for managers; California requires it for companies with 50 employees or more: https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/sexualharassmentpreventiontraining/

XCabbage• 8 years ago

I'm not sure whether your confusion is genuine or feigned. If it's the former, then allow me to blow your mind by informing you that non-Californians exist and use the internet.

arrakeen• 8 years ago

i'm not sure what industry you work in, but i've had this at every single job i've held—even ones before the SJW bogeyman existed

jfrankamp• 8 years ago

It is conducted like every other sort of corporate training around risk factors for the company, discussing principles and examples of violations and grey areas. Other examples are ethics e.g. "should I take a bribe?" and security e.g. "should i pick up a usb key in the parking lot and put it into a work computer?". Similarly the answer to "should I sexually harass my co-workers?" is also no.

lozaning2• 8 years ago

Yes, usually still delivered through some horrendous flash/quicktime mashup that requires you to stay on the page for x num of minutes before proceeding to the next page.

I honestly dont mind the idea of taking any of this training, but I loathe the fact that I'm prevented from completing it at a pace I'm able.

vkou5• 8 years ago

Mandatory sexual harassment training is performed by every employer in California who doesn't want to get sued for someone getting sexually harassed at work.

The purpose of it is usually not educating people, but providing a liability shield. Juries don't look kindly when Billy was harassed by his manager, and Billy's employer couldn't even be arsed to put Billy through a two-hour course, that spells out why harassment is a bad idea.

On the other hand, if Billy's manager did go through this training, and harassed Billy, then the company can blame everything on the manager.

woolvalley• 8 years ago

Something I don't understand is why not for every other law then? Why does this segment of the law get a mandatory training session every year?

svachalek• 8 years ago

It's common in the U.S., and the second question is the sort of thing that would get you sent back to take the class again.

Generally I've seen they use the "stoplight" model, in that some behaviors are "green", near universally accepted as non-harassing, some are "red", near universally rejected as harassing, and some are "yellow" meaning individuals vary. "Red" behaviors should get you fired immediately, while "yellow" often puts some burden on the offended party to speak up about it, and it only becomes harassment if it continues.

Google's training when I took it a decade ago focused almost exclusively on the yellow/gray area and was pretty interesting because of it. Other trainings I've suffered through focused on the red zone which felt obvious, awkward, and dull.

dsfyu404ed• 8 years ago

And someone invariably makes a wisecrack about how it's a bad model because everyone knows you speed up if the light is yellow and you think you can make it and rights on red are ok unless posted otherwise.

shmel4• 8 years ago

>It's common in the U.S., and the second question is the sort of thing that would get you sent back to take the class again.

I have to admit I have never been in the US. So, what is the right answer for the second question?

I suppose it should be mandatory for all, but in the same time I have read too many stories about "classes to teach men to not rape" that I am in doubts.

bauerd• 8 years ago

I'm from Germany and I find it sounds disturbing as well, never heard of such thing before. However according to some this apparently is common industry practice. So I wonder, what exactly happens at a sexual harassment training?

jtbayly• 8 years ago

You are taught what sexual harassment is and how to do it.

ocdtrekkie4• 8 years ago

svachalek's answer is pretty good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18408466

It's usually an incredibly boring hour-long-or-so presentation employers expect everyone to go through somewhere around annually. It discusses inappropriate behaviors like quid-pro-quo, retaliation, inappropriate comments towards other employees, etc.

The general assumption behind it is that some people may not know their behavior is appropriate, and presumably, to remove the "I didn't know that wasn't okay" defense on any future violations. Of course, the issue is everyone knows that things like what Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lauer did aren't okay, but they still happen anyways.

I don't feel I benefit from it in any way after the unteenth time I've been through them, but if an employer pays me to be there, it's on their dime. The college I go to also tries to require a sexual harassment training thing, and I have declined to participate since I pay them to be there, not the other way around, and the dean's office has admitted to me in an email that the "required" training is "not mandatory".

michaelt3• 8 years ago

  I find it sounds disturbing as well, never
  heard of such thing before.

Here in the UK, you go to an independent mechanic, maybe somewhere in the workshop they have a calendar with pictures of topless women.

On the other hand, you go to a national chain, the calendar has a message about the importance of embracing teamwork.

Sexual harassment training purports to transform organisations that behave like the first one into organisations that behave like the second one. How much of the difference in behaviour is a consequence of the training and how much from other factors is obviously difficult to measure.

unethical_ban2• 8 years ago

My Fortune 100 company has us watch a video where a white IT guy stalks a minority female in the parking garage and leaves a CD on her car with a mixtape, or something, I forget. It is pretty bad.

I follow a simple rule, and so far, I haven't done anything stupid: "If you think it would make someone personally uncomfortable when you say it, consider not saying it".

hkon4• 8 years ago

ok, is that scene your describing romantic or harassment, I can't really tell.

lawnchair_larry7• 8 years ago

That's roughly what Bill Gates did, except he actually confronted her in the parking garage. And when Melinda said no, he looked up her number in the HR database and called her at home. Oh, and he was a little more than just an IT guy.

That poor woman, still being victimized by that creepy sexual predator to this day. We should try to save her.

commandlinefan• 8 years ago

or only for men

If it's anything like everywhere I've ever worked, it's mandatory for everybody, and they go out of their way to pretend their not just talking to the men about the women, but it's actually twice as uncomfortable because all of the women - for whom this training is actually for - are sitting next to the men, for whom the training is actually targeted. So you sit through an hour of uncomfortable filterspeak that would make the 80's Soviet Kremlin cringe.

AlwaysRock2• 8 years ago

There may be more men harassing women but you are writing off every male who has been sexually harassed at their workplace with your comment. Additionally you are spreading the idea that sexual harassment is only done by males to females which is incredibly harmful and short sighted.

cultus• 8 years ago

Mandatory sexual harassment training is usually ineffective [0]. The real purpose is to limit a company's legal exposure.

Actually reducing sexual harassment or other negative behavior takes a deep change in a company's attitude and culture. You can't get it from a 1 hour seminar conducted by some HR drone.

[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evidence-based-livin...

kaitai2• 8 years ago

I've been through a number of mandatory sexual harassment trainings in higher ed. Some of them were beautifully done legal CYA and poorly done in every other way: "if you do this and we didn't tell you it's bad, we're liable. Please check the box acknowledging we told you it's bad so we're not liable." Totally useless except as a means to design your harassment to fit legal parameters.

The most recent one I did was actually useful (!!!!), probably because it was geared toward helping us employees/professors/etc actually know what to do when a student comes to you with a concern and how to intervene in bystander situations. It did explain the law. Far more useful were the scenarios: "Famous Prof is creeping on your grad student at a conference. Here are three options." "A student comes to talk about their poor performance on homework and ends up telling you they were assaulted at a party two weeks prior. Who do you talk to and who do you not talk to? What are the student's options?" "You fall madly in love with a student in your calculus class and the flame of your passion cannot be extinguished. While you are their TA/prof, what do you do?"

The bystander training and training on which resources to direct students or colleagues to, with instructions on how best to contact the offices, was good. The suggested wordings for responses were good. Often "good people" don't intervene because they don't know what to say or don't want to be awkward. Imagine you're a 22-year-old math grad student TAing for the first time -- maybe you've only been in the state or country 2 weeks -- and a student tells you about a rape during the parties first week of the semester. How're you supposed to deal with that with no training?

It's the only good training I've ever experienced, actually.

ummonk2• 8 years ago

Corporate sexual harassment training is usually quite reasonable (unlike college training which can veer into the absurd).

I'm not sure how much it actually helps prevent sexual harassment though - most sexual harassers are just jerks (i.e. not people who don't know better and would stop if only they had been through sexual harassment training).

dragonwriter6• 8 years ago

Mandatory sexual harassment training sounds quite disturbing.

It can be, if it is done poorly. In fact, if it's done really poorly, it can look like it was carefully designed to cause a differentially hostile workplace environment based on sex, such as when every single example or reference to a victim or potential victim specifies a female worker or uses feminine pronouns, and every perpetrator or potential perpetrator in an example or description is male. (Which happened in the first such training I attended, in 1999.)

Anybody can comment in detail how it is conducted?

It varies. A lot. Even as to whether it is mandatory sexual harassment training or mandatory harassment training that includes sexual harassment as a component.

Is it really mandatory for everyone or only for men?

Where it is mandatory, it is usuually mandatory for everyonein the workplace, though there is often additional training for supervisory personnel over and above what everyone else is required to take.

HarryHirsch3• 8 years ago

Look at the overspecific promises going forward!

- We will make arbitration optional for individual sexual harassment and sexual assault claims

Ordinary harassment and assault is still covered by forced arbitration, as is systemic sexual harassment. Good to know.

- We will update and expand our mandatory sexual harassment training

Everyone knows already that mandatory XY training serves to deflect liability from the company. If the previous instance wasn't good enough for its purpose, the new one will certainly be.

Why not just follow policy in the employee handbook? They usually have a section on harassment and appropiate conduct, and form part of the employment contract.

jey• 8 years ago

Just putting it in the employee handbook is more of a liability deflecting move than actively training people and explicitly creating common knowledge.

snowwrestler5• 8 years ago

Sexual harassment prevention training is an area where HR and employee incentives are well-aligned today, because the risk of a sexual harassment incident has a large reputational component.

Gone are the days when a company just needed a box to tell a court that they checked. The public doesn't care about those boxes. The only way to manage the reputational risk of sexual harassment is to really try to prevent incidents. Good training can do that.

Good training does not just tell you what you cannot do, it explores hypotheticals and addresses headline topics that people are thinking about. It is educational not just proscriptive.

grandmczeb3• 8 years ago

Is there any research on the effect of training on sexual assault in the workplace?

hkon4• 8 years ago

What is mandatory sexual harassment training? If you're not a sexual harassor, it must be frustrating having to attend such an event.

always_good3• 8 years ago

Reminds me of the ethics class they started at the University of Texas in the business school because one kid lied on his resume and "made a fool of the university" with his ridiculous bullshitting during the senior-year interviewing process.

It was a comical waste of time, and the whole time you're there wondering how it could possibly change someone who already had no scruples. You're left bitter that you had to participate in a function that had no purpose beyond making some decision-maker feel like they were moving the needle on some issue.

compiler-guy• 8 years ago

"Everyone knows already that mandatory XY training serves to deflect liability from the company."

That is the way things are today (mostly), but it doesn't follow that this one must necessarily be so. It might end up that way--time will tell--but the company is actually trying to avoid legal-checkbox training and to get something that actually makes a difference.

tytso2• 8 years ago

I actually think the specific promises are a good thing. They are measurable, concrete actions that are time bound --- "By such and such a date, we will have done thus and so." Like concrete OKR's, you can tell whether or not they will have done what they said they are going to do.

You can also make vague statements such as "there is no place for harassment at $COMPANY"; those statements were made earlier, and they were made today. But concrete steps like "making arbitration optional, instead of mandatory" is one of the things that engineers who participated in the Walkout had demanded. So it's certainly something substantive.

Now, there were some specific requests from the employees that were not honored, such as treating Temps and Contractors the same as Employees; legally that really can't be done except by hiring the Temps and Contractors and making them employees. I personally would invite other companies, such as (for example) Facebook and Apple to lead by hiring all of their cafeteria workers and stop using contracted labor. Maybe Google will lead by example, even if it impacts expenses, and therefore earnings, and therefore the Stock Price. But it's certainly within the power of other companies, like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, etc. to also lead by example.....

Wait, what? Is that Crickets that I'm hearing? :-)

duxup2• 8 years ago

This reminds me of a company I worked at where they deiced people were spending too much on travel. So they came out with new rules about travel expenses every 6 months until large swaths of people simply couldn't travel (me included).

But the problem wasn't solved at all because the bulk of the absurd spending was caused by people who the rules didn't apply to....

crunchlibrarian• 8 years ago

There will be more stories coming out about Google in the coming months, they are notorious for having a whole different set of standards for their super special elite executives.

I don't know any specifics of an event or anything, but I have heard a lot about how none of the rules apply anymore once you get to the inner circles.

habosa3• 8 years ago

[Googler] This is how I feel when I see an increased emphasis on training. Making a bunch of leaf-node employees like me sit through more simple online training is not going to fix the problem we have (although it can't hurt). It doesn't address the harassment that comes from extreme differences in power and a lack of accountability.

Still, I am cautiously optimistic about today's announced changes.

noobermin• 8 years ago

It's the neoliberal response to everything. Make cosmetic, progressive changes but don't address underlying structural inequalities between groups.

ericabiz• 8 years ago

One of the more interesting pieces is buried in the linked PDF:

"Excessive alcohol: Harassment is never acceptable and alcohol is never an excuse. But one of the most common factors among the harassment complaints made today at Google is that the perpetrator had been drinking (~20% of cases). Our policy is clear: Excessive consumption of alcohol is not permitted when you are at work, performing Google business, or attending a Google-related event, whether onsite or offsite. Going forward, all leaders at the company - Directors, VPs and SVPs - will be expected to create teams, events, offsites and environments in which excessive alcohol consumption is strongly discouraged. For example, many teams have already put two-drink limits in place for events. Others use drink ticket systems. The onus will be on leaders to take appropriate steps to restrict any excessive consumption among their teams, and we will impose more onerous actions if problems persist."

As someone who's been exposed to heavy drinking culture in Silicon Valley, this is a huge step in the right direction. I hope more companies and tech events adopt this.

philip12092• 8 years ago

Why not just ban alcohol at work? Why can't work be work, and social stuff can happen outside of it?

I know it sounds a bit extreme. But, after reading "It doesn't have to be crazy it work," I feel like companies use alcohol to bribe employees to stay at the office after-hours.

A midground would be drinking only with sit-down food. Nobody is doing shots while having dinner. Another idea could be making company social functions a lunch activity, rather than a dinner one.

savanaly• 8 years ago

Why not just ban alcohol at work? Why can't work be work, and social stuff can happen outside of it?

I see this sentiment a lot (especially on HN!) and I share it. I usually skip team dinners when I can. But there's no accounting for taste, and humans in general seem to have a taste for mixing work and "social stuff", so why shouldn't companies encourage it in that capacity?

tdb78932• 8 years ago

Having a beer is I engrained in American work culture. Also I've worked at multiple companies where they had work functions at dinnertime and no one got that drunk (generally there were 2 drink maximums, which probably helped) so it's definitely possible to fix the issue without just banning it

reaperducer8• 8 years ago

I know it sounds a bit extreme.

Not extreme at all. Except for salespeople having business lunches, in the United States, drinking on company time is pretty much verboten outside of the tech bubble.

misiti37802• 8 years ago

Why not NOT ban alcohol at work, and when an employee fucks up, just fire him ?

Is that really not a solution here ?

at the end of the day, people should be accountable for their own actions, and i should not be punished if i want to have a beer after working hours with colleagues because a tiny minority of people at my company cant drinking responsibly

ocdtrekkie4• 8 years ago

Most employers don't allow drinking at work. Some allow it at company events, provided it doesn't become a problem. The funny thing is about a lot of Silicon Valley companies, I think, is that they decided in their attempt to reinvent work that they'd throw out a couple hundred years of learned experience on what does and doesn't work in a corporate setting.

The "fun places to work" eventually figure out that fun for some is often at the expense of others, and that most things corporate environments have ruled out were ruled out a long time ago because they didn't work well.

Kiro• 8 years ago

Social stuff should be banned.

zaroth• 8 years ago

Feel free to ban anything you want at work. And the people who work there will select for if they want to be a part of it by becoming or remaining employees. (There are, of course, things that are illegal to ban)

I personally want to work somewhere who values me as a responsible human being, and expects me to behave like one. The more a workplace feels like they have to micromanage their employees like children, the more I would expect their workplace to be filled with people who act like children. And I personally wouldn’t want to work somewhere like that.

Hire intelligent, respectful, ethical, empathetic, mature adults to do interesting work. Fire the ones who don’t live up to it.

I expect workplace requirements to be spelled out in terms of expected behavior, expected performance, expected results. Define the outputs.

And take responsibility up the chain. IMO the right policy is not to ban alcohol entirely. Rather, if an employee behaves inappropriately the employee is responsible, but if the manager created the environment which lead to the behavior (whether that be approving the purchase of a keg and cheering for a keg stand, or not stopping that engineer from being verbally abusive at the daily stand ups) the manager is also held to account.

cpeterso• 8 years ago

An incremental step would be for a company to not pay for alcohol. Don't allow employees to expense alcohol. For catered company events, the company could charge people per alcoholic drink or just not serve any.

x0x02• 8 years ago

The policy includes attending google-related events. Not being able to have a beer at a mixer at a conference Google sent you to or sponsored is a pretty shit limitation. Not being able to have a beer at lunch or dinner is also pretty crummy, because the vast majority of people are adults and comport themselves accordingly.

spurgu• 8 years ago

20 percent.... it's hardly the main issue.

JJMcJ• 8 years ago

Once upon a time, most companies banned alcohol completely from worksites, and certainly for company meetings, except for offsites like picnics and dinners and parties.

habosa3• 8 years ago

[Googler here] We have much less company-provided alcohol at work than most tech companies that I'm aware of. Mostly beers once a week, and most people don't participate.

This change is mostly talking about work social events that take place off site. My team's company holiday party last year was piloting this and gave each person two drink tickets upon entering.

I think banning alcohol completely would reduce the attendance of these social events, so this is a good step where we can keep the social benefits without letting it get out of hand. For instance the holiday party I mentioned was on a Friday night. I really enjoy having a few drinks on a Friday night, and I'm much more likely to attend a Google party with 2 drinks tickets than one with zero. I know that sounds silly and immature, but it's honest.

BrandoElFollito• 8 years ago

It also depends on the culture of the country.

In France it is common to have a small party (pot) during work hours when some people would have one drink. Max two.

These also can be at the end of the day but then usually this is by someone who is leaving.

dominotw• 8 years ago

~20% of cases

What are the other factors. Are there any higher than 20%.

will_brown• 8 years ago

Be willing to bet more than alcohol a common factor would be men being the alleged perpetrator. Another would be the alleged perpetrators are probably in superior positions/title to the victims greater than 20% of the time.

simlevesque• 8 years ago

I'd bet that more than 20% are males.

dahart• 8 years ago

There have to be, but it might be hard to get data, and/or controversial/inflammatory to talk about it. I don’t know if Google will release any statistics on all the cases they know about, and I won’t hold my breath, but that would be pretty enlightening. Things that are likely well above 20% include men being the perp in much larger numbers than the company’s gender distribution (national stats are roughly 80/20 [1]), whether the perp is a higher rank and/or direct supervisor (national stats say this is ~40%, whether the victim was threatened, and what department the people were in.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment#In_the_wor...

gnulinux• 8 years ago

I never drank at work, I don't understand why people do...

ConcernedCoder• 8 years ago

You've obviously never worked in customer service...

I'm joking...well 1/2 joking anyway. (sigh)

jrowley• 8 years ago

When you're spending more time at work than at home, occasionally it's nice to have a beer at work. Don't get me wrong - I'd rather be at home, not working, drinking a beer but it's natural that drinking and work collide when you are working too much and are already stressed.

shaklee3• 8 years ago

Because it's fun, and it's a good way to lighten the mood.

ryanianian3• 8 years ago

A "two drink limit" fails to account for (1) how alcohol affects people differently since two drinks can make some people sloppy while others will hardly feel it and (2) the fact that alcohol usually only lasts about an hour per drink and many social events last a few hours.

A couple drinks helps get me out of my own head enough to relax with co-workers. After a couple hours, the two beers have worn off and I usually want another one or two to keep my sociability going.

I'd much prefer a policy where everyone gets to decide in advance how many drink tickets they want and perhaps say "these tickets aren't good until X time." This would help everyone to regulate their own intake, and it treats employees like adults capable of managing their own bodies while still addressing the issue of people over-consuming by accident or in an unaccountable manner.

seth__• 8 years ago

I'd much prefer a policy where everyone gets to decide in advance how many drink tickets they want

Then you would get people like me, asking for lots of tickets as you can just discard those when you are done but you would not be able to ask for extra ones. At that point, you could just remove the ticket system as it doesn't work anymore

RankingMember3• 8 years ago

I would argue that creating a whole drink ticketing bureaucracy including a pre-scheduled drink ticket release procedure does the opposite of treating employees like adults. It sounds a lot like kids in a school lunch line.

It drives me nuts when companies let a few bad actors ruin a loose policy rather than addressing the issue with the bad actors, but I know, legally, having a strict, spelled-out policy is safer (easier to defend against lawsuits) legally.

reaperducer8• 8 years ago

A couple drinks helps get me out of my own head enough to relax with co-workers. After a couple hours, the two beers have worn off and I usually want another one or two to keep my sociability going.

If you need alcohol to socialize, then you have a problem and should get help.

That's seriously one of the signs of a problem. Ironically, I'll tell you to "Google it."

jklinger4102• 8 years ago

Kind of a step backwards in terms of accountability, no?

Scapegoating alcohol seems like an excuse and really is like babysitting your adult employees.

My view - Drink as much alcohol as you like! And if you imbibe too much, and do stupid things, that shows deficient decision making abilities, and you aren't fit to work here.

docker_up• 8 years ago

Unless you are an alcoholic, and you literally can't control yourself. Then parading out alcohol and then punishing her by firing her for not being able to control herself seems a bit unfair.

monksy• 8 years ago

I'm not a fan of the prohibitionist policies. Finding people who can't control their behavior is good.

I tend not to drink around work because of the expectation of professional behavior and I'm just uncomfortable around people I have a professional relationship. However, I've been at companies who have cut alcohol because a few people are sensitive. (I'm not referring to those who are alcoholics that have self-discipline issues) It's annoying.

BadassFractal• 8 years ago

The employees are both behaving like children AND being infantilized at the same time. How do you even get to that point?

ryanmarsh• 8 years ago

Why can't work just be a polite exchange of (various forms of) labor for money? I've been in consulting shops where the liquor flowed. I get it, it's fun but you can't run a large bureaucracy like you can a small tribe. Is that 20% of cases worth the presence of alcohol? Who would leave over removing alcohol from the office? Could that be for the better?

Lastly, I'm not an alcoholic but I have friends who've struggled with it and my heart really goes out to them. Alcohol is everywhere at work functions and I think it's really insensitive. I could live the rest of my life and never have drinks be part of a professional function and be just fine.

walshemj3• 8 years ago

I would have thought "bringing the company into disrepute" would have been enough.

harlanji• 8 years ago

I can't even identify when people are black out drunk, for some reason. There's not always a slur, and I probably keep enough distance to not smell it. But I've been surprised when a half hour into conversations people have told me they're drunk. Twice that I recall.

On the flip side, people have made up stories of me being drunk after having 2 drinks, and my having had any drinks at all makes my side of the story have no credibility. No good. Like when a cop pulls you over and asks if you've had any drinks.

So I'm all for getting booze out of the workplace. I'd had my consumption limited to 2 drinks for my past 4 jobs after being fired for saying obnoxious things while drunk. A company holiday party where the tequila was flowing was the only exception, but I kept the volume down that time. I deserved the firing, no complains there.

It's my personality to say obnoxious things, having been raised on dark and vulgar comedy. My only way to joke around authentically now is without drinking, sadly, because of the nature of accusations against people who've been drinking. Just one example, I'm sure other people have personally entertaining activities that they always do but people think they must be drunk when they do it, no matter how sober. Dancing's another one... the more sober I am, the more people ask "bro, what are you on?"

My twitter is a good example of what I feel free to say while sober. Reading it, you'd think I'm always drunk.

I also am noticing after a year on break from drinking that all drinkers are mentally lazy to some degree, and some tell lies assuming that the other party won't notice and I'm likely guilty of that from my drinking days. It's like their memory isn't good so they assume nobody else's is, yet they claim perfect memory.

A little meandering, I know... but overall I think a no alcohol policy would be great.

erwan• 8 years ago

A few years ago, I attended my company's happy hours. I was an intern and too young to drink at the time. There was an open bar and more or less everyone was intoxicated. I join a coworker and we start chatting.

Fifteen minutes later, the office manager joins in, interrupting, and starts hitting on me in a pretty blunt way. I enjoy female attention but that was a bit much. I tactfully hint that I'm not interested but she doesn't picks it up so I leave early, a bit salty.

The next morning I arrive to work and see an elevator about to close so I rush to catch it. She was inside! The following three minutes were the most awkward elevator ride in my life. I felt bad for her to be honest, maybe I shouldn't, but it must be so embarrassing when you sober up.

golergka• 8 years ago

That sounds like the most typical work party story ever. People make romantic advances, often can't judge the reaction correctly and it's awkward afterwards when everybody sobers up.

It's much more awkward the next day after drunk sex in a deserted office though.

delhanty• 8 years ago

It definitely sounds like a step in the right direction.

This is from Stephanie Hurlburt's Twitter a while back.

  Ah, game industry culture and drinking.

  I don’t drink. I also feel unsafe being in a mostly-male group when they’re all drinking.
  
  ...

https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/999707171381100544

brownbat• 8 years ago

Would be interesting to compare office drinking in other regions.

I've heard stories about Korean chaebols that are hard to believe, but I'm sure there are intense workplace antipatterns worldwide.

punchingpeople• 8 years ago

This kind of mentality exasperates me to no end. I am a heavy drinker (never at work), and I hate it when people blame my behavior on my alcohol level. I always have to correct them, they are lucky I am drunk when bad things happen, I tend to be a very violent and horrible person when sober, for sure the outcome could be much worse. People should take responsibility for their behavior without blaming substances.

acjohnson55• 8 years ago

You may be more placid when under the influence, but most people are more volatile, more impulsive, and more likely to make bad decisions. Being sober doesn't make people better, but it does make them less likely to do something harmful to others, statistically speaking.

scythe• 8 years ago

I love drinking as much as the next guy, but if you're a "horrible person" when sober, you might be an alcoholic.

antaviana• 8 years ago

In the early 90s, I was told by an IBMer in the US that if he was cought drinking beer in lunch time (even outside in a restaurant), he could be fired, no question asked.

Apparently it was a paternalistic policy that came directly from Watson, who not only banned alcohol during work time including lunch, but also paid the wage on Monday to somehow honder spending it all in alcohol over the weekend.

knl• 8 years ago

I'm not a native speaker, but doesn't "We will update and expand our mandatory sexual harassment training" mean that trainings teach how to do sexual harassment, not prevent it? Shouldn't it be "prevention of sexual harassment"?

GaryNumanVevo• 8 years ago

I'm a native speaker and it probably should be "sexual harassment prevention training" but I know a lot of companies shorten it to "sexual harassment training" the "prevention" part is obviously implied

rjknight• 8 years ago

A few years ago I had to do "financial crime training", and although I had heard all kinds of rumours about what working in financial services is like, I was surprised that they were so up-front about it!

More seriously, I think this is what happens when certain words or phrases become jargon terms - they're used to invoke a concept, and lose their literal meaning. Something similar is happening with "mental health", as in "we should be concerned about mental health", where "mental illness" would seem to be a more accurate term.

The jarring effect comes when people who use these terms frequently and for whom they have become jargon have to talk to everyone else, for whom the term carries its literal meaning. "Sexual harassment" and "financial crime" stand out because their literal meaning also carries a strong emotional charge for most people, whereas their jargon invocation doesn't.

scrollaway• 8 years ago

Something similar is happening with "mental health", as in "we should be concerned about mental health", where "mental illness" would seem to be a more accurate term.

I don't think it's happening to the term "mental health". Maybe it is being used as a superset of "mental illness" sometimes when talking about eg. homelessness, but most of the time it talks about the general psychological health of people. Eg "People in tech need to manage their mental health".

SilasX• 8 years ago

Something similar is happening with "mental health", as in "we should be concerned about mental health", where "mental illness" would seem to be a more accurate term.

Wait, what? That's like saying "You're not concerned with employee health, you're concerned with whether employees are sick".

lucozade• 8 years ago

The English construct is ambiguous but the meaning isn't so the usage is fine. In fact, adding "prevention of" or similar would imply that you had the other sort of sexual harassment training.

And there would be no shortage of wags on the Internet to point that out.

reaperducer8• 8 years ago

It's not only about prevention. It's also about recognizing when it happens, both to you and to other people. And also knowing what to do when you see, or experience it.

Shish2k• 8 years ago

English is weird and often backwards - eg the fire department are in charge of removing fires, not creating them :P

kyberias• 8 years ago

It looks to me like US is like an alien planet. What does arbitration even mean in this context? It's crazy that employees need to know these things.

xyzzyz2• 8 years ago

Arbitration means that you don't get to sue in real court, but instead you are forced to go through "arbitration", which is a private company hired by your employer that's supposed to make fair decisions in disputes between the party that brings them continued business, and the random person that will never talk to them if they weren't forced to.

dagasgasgasg• 8 years ago

This is not correct. You are not obligated to agree to the arbitrator your company selects. More on this:

http://help.legalnature.com/arbitration-agreement-faqs/how-a...

slededit• 8 years ago

The Federal Arbitration act was specifically setup to provide a lower cost avenue to settle disputes as it is widely agreed that the current court system is too expensive for the average person.

There is valid criticism that it prevents class action suits, but aside from that arbitration is better for everyone involved. Most people won't even bother to litigate a lawsuit due to the costs exceeding the relief sought, but arbitration is far more approachable.

albertgoeswoof2• 8 years ago

Isn’t sexual assault / harassment a criminal offence though? Surely the state should be prosecuting the moment a law is broken?

Or does the US justice system work differently?

orangechairs• 8 years ago

This is where organized work forces (most commonly labor unions) show their worth. It's common practice that if you are represented by a labor union, the arbitrator (private judge) is mutually agreed upon by the union and corporation, which helps mitigate massive bias in either direction. Most US companies that mandate arbitration, the employees have zero voice in selecting the arbitrator.

ummonk2• 8 years ago

We will recommit to our company-wide OKR around diversity, equity and inclusion again in 2019, focused on improving representation—through hiring, progression and retention—and creating a more inclusive culture for everyone.

What meaningful difference is there between representation OKRs and quotas?

ThrustVectoring• 8 years ago

A quota would be a documented mandate to engage in illegal behavior, while the OKRs will just encourage lower-level employees into doing illegal behavior without the documentation and the corporate liability.

Remember Wells Fargo and how their sales mandates lead to retail bankers opening up fraudulent accounts? Same concept. Don't demand anything specific, just demand that something be done and apply rewards and punishments appropriately.

politician• 8 years ago

I thought this would be about facilitating Chinese surveillance initiatives, but on reflection, I suppose that was naive.

buboard• 8 years ago

Why don't they make all their employees remote? Having them in the office only seems to bring trouble.

Or just separate men from women. It works in the middle east

cphoover• 8 years ago

Sexual harassment training... what a joke

scottlocklin• 8 years ago

Anyone want to bet whether or not Andy Rubin has actually attended sexual harassment training?

dionian• 8 years ago

We will recommit to our company-wide OKR around diversity, equity and inclusion again in 2019, focused on improving representation—through hiring, progression and retention—and creating a more inclusive culture for everyone.

How does more diversity solve anything?

travellingbuyer5• 8 years ago

If anything, diversity potentially makes it worse, because you'd have people from more distinct cultures, some of which have customs diametrically opposed to the company's policies. Unless, of course, they are talking about superficial diversity: skin colour, sex, etc. Still, wouldn't solve anything.

Joakal• 8 years ago

This whole PR looks like a CYA for the company because all if not most of these changes occur are mandatory [0] or gestures due to the power that the harassers have over their subordinates (report me and you're fired!). Am I wrong to assume that all the serial sex harassers have been managers to their targets?

How about a subordinate relationship ban? This policy prohibiting relationships already occur for between doctor and patient, teacher and student. Even the recent police and detained people sex ban? [1]

[0] https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2018/10/04/new-california-law...

[1] http://m.amsterdamnews.com/news/2018/apr/05/bill-bans-cops-s...

If I was a protester, I would ask Google execs how these policies will tackle the abuse of power for sexual activity.

x0x02• 8 years ago

Am I the only one who reads a bunch of the stuff Sundar has done recently as (1) Sundar disagreeing very strongly with how Larry handled sexual harassment issues at google (see eg Andy), and (2) making it clear that he handles them differently?

eg in his Oct memo Sundar carefully pointed out that people at google on his watch have been fired for sexual harassment, and none of them got a package [1].

[1] https://deadline.com/2018/10/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-fired-...

walshemj3• 8 years ago

Interesting I sort of got the impression that it was mandatory company provided arbitration with NDA's was one of the key elements of the walkout.

robut_98765• 8 years ago

I wonder how long it will be until there is A note to our employees version 2.0

rpvreviews• 8 years ago

Like salesforce, let companies ban the drug, sorry alcohol.

tptacek5• 8 years ago

I don't understand why the "mandatory" training has a penalty for skipping it. If it's mandatory, it's mandatory.

This isn't rocket surgery; there are all sorts of mandatory training things big companies do, and they are often actually mandatory. For instance, we've worked with HIPAA-encumbered clients where you'll lose access to their network and applications if you don't complete annual security awareness training.

The "docking people in Perf" thing just seems like needless drama. Just require people to do the damn training.

schintan• 8 years ago

and what if they still do not take the training, fire them ?

mattmanser2• 8 years ago

Yeah, why wouldn't you? Either you believe it necessary or you don't.

tptacek5• 8 years ago

Obviously, yes.

erikpukinskis• 8 years ago

That is, in fact, what mandatory means.

dragonwriter6• 8 years ago

I don't understand why the "mandatory" training has a penalty for skipping it.

Because penalties for non-compliance are how mandates are enforced; otherwise, they aren't mandates.

What you probably don't understand is really why is the penalty not immediate termination, or termination after a certain period of delinquency, not why there is a penalty, and I suspect it actually is the latter, and the downgrade in internal rating is the immediate and automatic consequence of delinquency (also, I don't know how Perf works, for all I know the stated downgrade may be enough to normally trigger being put on a PIP and terminated if the problem isn't cured quickly.)

tptacek5• 8 years ago

I think it's pretty clear what I'm asking.

It is not a norm in other companies to penalize people's performance reviews for failing to complete routine training. What is a norm is that your manager at some point simply demands that you stop what you're doing and complete the training. What would happen if you refused? Who knows? I assume you'd get fired for cause, the same way you would if you deliberately disregarded any other directive. Like I said: the most sophisticated training programs I've seen simply cut off people's access until they complete training (and thus, obviously, if you refused to complete the training, you'd be let go.)

The Perf downgrade is high-drama. For one thing: it sets a dollar price you can pay to not comply! For another, it throws the objectivity of performance reviews in question (there are multiple factors that affect your Perf level, not just this one!).

So, obviously, my question is: why does Google have this weird, elaborate, high-drama mechanism when it could instead just do what everyone else does: the CEO tells the VPs that all their reports need to complete training. The VPs make it happen, or are replaced. Recurse.

rukuu001• 8 years ago

Some things are more 'mandatory' than others.

gchokov• 8 years ago

“We will update and expand our mandatory sexual harassment training.“ That sounds as they will train how to do it properly and not get caught:)

lgleason• 8 years ago

How about banning all mandatory arbitration so that it is fair for everybody?

travellingbuyer5• 8 years ago

That would be unfair for people who want the arbitration.

brynjolf• 8 years ago

The normal way to deal with corruption, make new rules for everyone except the people committing the corruption.

A note to our employees

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