Hundreds at Google Plan Walkout to Protest Handling of Sexual Harassment | Hacker News Reader

Hundreds at Google Plan Walkout to Protest Handling of Sexual Harassment

nytimes.com

56 pointschablent35 comments

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” -George Orwell, Animal Farm

Rules have to be applied equally, not based on a sliding scale based on how high up the organization oligarchy you are.

"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge

Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with you. I just find it interesting how every pat saying has its opposite also in common coinage, and also Orwell greatly admired Anatole France and defended him from his detractors following France's death.

Time to bust out the popcorn!

James Damore was fired because his memo created a “hostile work environment”, but organizing a walkout with 1500 employees has the support of Pichai, the CEO?

And these same employees want blood from Brin and Schmidt, who are essentially among Pichai’s bosses? Things could get very ugly, very quickly.

The inmates are running the asylum.

It seems you got downvoted. But there is heavy sensoring attempt behind these. IDK why, people are not willing to talk?

Many people today seems to not talk anymore, they just fight for whatever agenda they have. My impression is many do it because they fear it will not end well. In the "best" case they just wasted their time on some meaningless talk, in worst case, someone tricks them into abandoning their important agenda, while in the other worst case they must admit they were wrong the whole time.

In my country there was a political movement some years ago which did this for a longer time, bringing those arguments for not talking with the press or other people. Since then I observed similar reactions with other crowds too. I think today, people have become so talkative about anything, that we see now a movement back into the opposite direction. At the end, not talking is simpler, faster. A downvote takes a second, talking it out can go on for minutes, hours, days and days..

Talking is only an option when both sides agree to it. Since that's observably not the case here, talking isn't an option.

Ok..and then after a while they’ll walk back in for the free food and their mid day massage, before returning to their desk for work.

One of my friend working for a big tech once told me, if you go back in time, you'll see powerful men had many women. Why do you think at Google it will be any different? Being one of the most powerful organizations, it attracts power hungry people. Not only those who want money and fame, but those who want others to submit to them and make others do whatever they want. Cleary such people see sexual harassment in similar way as coercing a small startup to be acquired or be demolished. Some speculated, efforts to increase diversity is to get executives access to more women.

Half of the women when given a choice between being ghosted or being promoted at a company, will choose to sleep with you in return of promotion/soft cornering etc...(as most of them are liberal and it happens behind the scenes anyways, sex is no longer taboo, Tinder hookup culture is very popular and accepted). Everyone will see your new Tesla and Instagram lifestyle but who will ask who you had slept with to afford this new car and lifestyle? No wonder, executives know this. Very few victims (most don't see themselves as victim but as hackers who gamed the system and ended up with more return) actually retaliate. Most are imposters, who don't believe they are good for anything. So they welcome any favour coming their way.

Executives aren't crazy to film while having sex as some other crazy hookup culture people who you might find on Tinder. Sleeping with them is relatively safe and more rewarding. They've reputation to lose and skin in the game.

Those executives probably slept with 100 employees before they got busted. Surely, they feel it was worth it.

I am simply outlining how the thing works so that people can fix the incentives around this and come up with a better system to fight sexual harassment.

Please don't fight strawman by downvoting because reading this hurts your feelings. Contest point by point, what is your company doing to avoid situations like these?

This implies women aren't capable of earning success in any way other than trading sexual favors. Also, there's a huge difference in hookup culture and casual flings vs being in a predatory relationship with a huge power imbalance.

The "ghosting" and filming comments are very odd by the way. Do you mean women are always ghosted after sex? And that men are worried random Tinder hookups are going to record them? This whole thing reads like women are evil, scheming, worthless manipulators eager to use sex against men and that high powered man pressuring them into sex is somehow a favor since it gives them an opportunity to play out those schemes.

> This implies women aren't capable of earning success in any way other than trading sexual favors.

No i never implied this. If there is shortcut to top vs 5 additional years of efforts and access to elite club. What do you choose?

>The "ghosting" and filming comments are very odd by the way. Do you mean women are always ghosted after sex?

You misunderstood my point.

If someone refuses to trade sexual favours, they often face retaliation and are ghosted (their presence/efforts are not acknowledged). They get no rewards for their sincere efforts.

>And that men are worried random Tinder hookups are going to record them?

I am not accusing women of recording them. I am saying that executives don't record victim while having sex. So there is no risk of losing reputation for victim as executive has lot more reputation to lose.

No i am painting no one as manipulator. I am explaining the reward/risk dynamics of sexual harassment.

I don't think it is accurate to say that half of women would make that choice. The damaging point of these behaviors is that people begin to assume this is normal when it is not. That is the real tragedy for Google.

I am pyscologist, I've consulted enough clients before reaching this conclusion.

If you go asking women, if they'll sleep with you for promotion. Answer will be a big NO.

Consider asking them who already faced this in real life, what did they choose?

I want companies to tackle these dynamics, so we've a much safer and fair playground for everyone.

It's very easy for people to say "no of course I would never do that" to a morally ambiguous situation when they're just discussing hypotheticals. When it comes to real life, and the other person is making a serious offer, and there's a good chance no one else will find out...I would expect the answers to be significantly different.

Isn't confidentiality a key part of your code of ethics? Why are you posting your clients guarded secrets on a public forum?

Confidentiality doesn't prevent broad generalities based on aggregated experience from being discussed.

You’ll need to back this up with numbers. Not anecdotal evidence from a therapist whose clients are likely to be people who have made questionable choices which is why they are seeing a therapist in the first place …

I know plenty of successful women who didn’t sleep their way to the top, and plenty of successful men who didn’t either.

> You’ll need to back this up with numbers.

I agree, this space needs to be opened up for more research.

>I know plenty of successful women who didn’t sleep their way to the top, and plenty of successful men who didn’t either.

Do you think people can lie to not playdown their success? Or to make you believe they deserve it.

It might be selection bias but i agree we need real numbers here.

But opening up a discussion is better to find measures to crack down on sexual harassment.

Without a union, this is meaningless.

Why?

1,500 of 94,000

What do the other 98.4% think about silently paying millions of dollars in exit packages to male executives accused of sexual harassment?

They probably don't like it but also believe that the walk out doesn't _do_ anything.

To clarify even further, there's been a lot internal messaging internally from execs condemning sexual harassment and assault since the news cycle. If one believes this messaging, then walking out adds almost nothing more to the situation. If you think the execs are lying to you at all, but especially on this topic, you probably already quit (most google employees don't have problems finding alternative employment)

No way, these employees don't get paid by the hour and they aren't going to pull from their PTO to protest. Having a bunch of employees standing around being unproductive hits them right in the wallet. Management is going to listen to this above almost any other signal.

How much does a couple of hours of people standing in the parking lot waving signs really cost them? It's not like Google is a manufacturer where the assembly line comes to a stop if nobody is on the line; everything should be automated so that a handful of people can keep the servers humming along in the data centers. Maybe a few status meetings of dubious worth don't happen, or a little less email gets shuffled around.

Most people aren't actually doing anything that really affects the bottom line in a typical software company. Maybe if a few people performed acts of sabotage as a statement, that would make a dent, but that would effectively be suicidal.

> Having a bunch of employees standing around being unproductive hits them right in the wallet

But this is already true, whether there is a walk out or not.

Even if they are sitting at their desks, if the employees are all frustrated and have other matters on their mind, are they producing good work? I would say no

Execs see the battle has already been lost, because it has been. The company morale has been hit, doesn't matter if walking or sitting at your desk or whatever.

The thing is that my whole management chain is going to the protests and have said they are for it (and they also have been changing sexual harassment policies the last few years anyway). The protest has lost a lot of value because the people we ostensibly protest against are already there agreeing with us.

That's only true if you were protesting against people and not bad behavior. Getting management to be visibly on your side should give your demands a lot more power.

Yeah but the main complaint (i.e. the large exit package) was already changed a few years before this. To be clear I'm walking out for the protest but I don't really see this as a big fight against management, if I think that my managers are lying to me at every level and they don't take sexual assault them I should just leave the company. The thing is that while I don't agree with a lot of what they say they've generally been sincere with me in the past.

how long do execs last at Google if they lie to their reports?

What other forms of protest would you suggest that _does_ do something? Or do you have an issue with protesting at all?

Can I summarize your reply as if you don't like it quit?

I think you put a lot of words into my mouth. It would wrong to summarize my argument as that because I made no recommendations to the course of action anyone should take. I only tried to explain the mentality of a non-walker (source: I will probably not walk tomorrow, unless maybe there's good snacks)

I don't have any issue with this form of protesting, I'm just explaining why I don't do it.

I like to help bring about change by 1) being the change I want to see in the world 2) convincing a small group of more personal connections to see things my way

I think if we all did that, the world could be a good place

Let’s wait and see how many actually participate before assuming only that number care?

They may be thinking that a strong enough message has been sent to the company's leadership and choose to make progress on the things they need to work on. People that have been at a company longer than five years know that organizational change is inevitable and they are making note of whether the next shift will move the organization in a direction they can support.

Hard to figure out how to effectively challenge behavior like that from the rank and file, honestly.

that due process matters

> There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

The record of peaceful protest without something more meaningful like violence, the threat of violence or serious monetary cost (stopping the machine) is not a good one.

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