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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.)

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.

> It is not a norm in other companies to penalize people's performance reviews for failing to complete routine training

It's a norm pretty much everywhere to penalize people's performance reviews for failure to perform required job tasks on time, I know of no employer that doesn't do that (or, at least, expect supervisor to do it.) It may not be normal to apply a systematic penalty of a preset value to failing this precise failing (from my experience in enterprise environments, the normal consequence for a wide range of required trainings is a nag email from HR or an HR-owned bot to the supervisor and/or employee with escalating urgency,and sometimes escalating up the org chart, until some point where more formal organizational penalties are imposed, which the supervisor may or may not also use as the basis for ad hoc penalties in performance reviews even if formal direct penalties aren't imposed because the delinquency is cleared before that point.)

> For another, it throws the objectivity of performance reviews in question

Having a defined, fixed, concrete Perf penalty for a particular violation does the opposite of calling objectivity of the rating system into question.

See, when you read my comments and try to infer what I'm saying, you seem to do a pretty good job of it. So, can I ask, rather than nitpicking (for instance, that termination is itself a form of performance-based penalty), that you simply take whatever inference you've drawn and respond to that?

You've put a whole lot of effort into clarifying what it is I'm asking --- well done! I think you've nailed it! --- but you've come no closer to addressing the question I asked.

Regarding drama: again, given only the level of a peer, you don't know whether that's the product of work they've done, or some weird protest they're making against sexual harassment training. Which brings us back to the simple question I asked: why even allow for those weird protests?

> that you simply take whatever inference you've drawn and respond to that?

I rather explicitly did that in my first response, where I both set out what I inferred you were really concerned about and responded (in a speculative manner) directly to that inferred concern.

EDIT: to be absolutely clear—

Inference: “What you probably don't understand is really why is the penalty not immediate termination, or termination after a certain period of delinquency”

Response: “and I suspect it actually is [termination after a period of delinquency], and the downgrade in internal rating is the immediate and automatic consequence of delinquency”

I mean, yes, I guess "I don't know" is a fine answer. It's fine that you don't want to engage, but weird that you want to litigate what the question itself is. But, OK.

this is a fantastic HN comment chain, I hope everyone has been able to thoroughly enjoy this gem

> I mean, yes, I guess "I don't know" is a fine answer

Maybe, but that wasn't my answer, except insofar as any answer that lacks complete certainty can be looked at as a form of “I don't know”.

The answer was, phrased an alternative way, “Most places take steps on delinquency in mandated training short of termination, often with varying potential to feed into performance assessments, with termination only as a (largely theoretical, because in practice it roughly never reaches that far) ultimate penalty; Google seems likely to be formalizing at least the immediate consequence of failure, not limiting the maximum consequence of persistent failure; other than the explicitness and implied automation, nothing particularly unusually seems to be going on here.)”

It's a norm pretty much everywhere to penalize people's performance reviews for failure to perform required job tasks on time

3 of the last 5 full-time jobs I've had were in health care. Which comes with at the very least HIPAA and, depending on the exact type of health stuff you do, possibly other training, every year in order to show compliance with relevant laws and regulations.

I've never been told "if you don't do the training we penalize your performance review". I have been told "if you don't do the training, you don't work here".

Some things are more 'mandatory' than others.

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

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

Obviously, yes.

That is, in fact, what mandatory means.

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