Google VP told employees to stop using the word “family” after staff complaints | Hacker News Reader

Google VP told employees to stop using the word “family” after staff complaints

dailymail.co.uk

8 pointsmbgaxyz9 comments

No, Google employees are not forbidden to use the word "family". I'm sorry but this is not HN-quality content. The whole thing is nothing but a sensationalist waste of time, starting from the clickbait headline down to the fact that the entire article is based off of a claimed leak from another (so-called) far-right website. Seriously?

It doesn't say anywhere, not even in the title, that Google employees are forbidden to use the word "family". According to TFA:

>The tech giant experienced a backlash from its own employees in March 2017 after a presentation about a product aimed at young people seemed to replace the term with the word 'family', leaving out various groups.

It's clickbait; they don't say it, they imply it. It is said that Google employees were "told" to "stop" using the word after complaints. No context; it conjures up the image of people being censored and oppressed in their everyday activities. In reality, "VP Pavni Diwanji ... told staff to be more conscientious about referring to family" in the context of product advertisement for children, which is absolutely reasonable since the word "family" means different things to different people. And, well, the article is garbage in many more ways than I'm willing to discuss further.

This is dissembling. How can you be "more conscientious" about using a word like family other than not using it? There isn't any other word to refer to a man, a woman and their children as a group, as far as I'm aware.

So if a VP says "be more careful using word X due to outraged employees" and the word for X is ordinary, every day and refers to an important thing, that is absolutely material that should surface in a newspaper.

Especially given the ludicrous employee quotes that accompany it, like:

'It smacks of the 'family values' agenda by the right wing which is absolutely homophobic by its very definition.'

What the heck? Families, those things required for the human race to continue existing, are now considered homophobic? This has got to be a new low in the identity politics endurance race to the bottom. As phrased I can't even tell if they think families are homophobic or just everyone who isn't left wing - both concepts are derisory.

Oh, and:

The person commented: 'My family consists of me and several other trans feminine folks, some of whom I'm dating. We're all supportive of each other and eventually aspire to live together.'

Whatever that living arrangement is, it is definitely not a family according to any dictionary I've ever seen.

But I honestly can't say I'm surprised by this. I used to work for Google and knew Pavni Diwanji quite well. She probably knows this is bizarre but is far, far too weak to do anything other than go along with the loudest crowd in the moment.

Disagreeing with something doesn't entitle employees to storm out of meetings, unless there was intentional malice. While family doesn't necessitate children to be a part of it, neither is the implication that a "high probability exists that families have children", offensive enough to storm out, act out, throw a fit, etc.

At what point will Google realize that every tantrum doesn't deserve a corporate change, some just necessitate the employees to "grow-up" enough to live in a world that's not a 100% ideal.

FYI googling "family definition" returns "a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household". How genuine can this outage really be?

The article made it sound like the complaint was about the use of "family friendly" at a company-wide meeting. I don't know how it would even be possible to storm out of such a meeting, when any meeting with more than 100 people will have people coming and going completely unnoticed. It sounds like sensational journalism from The Daily Caller.

It's a good thing that family friendly isn't parsed as anything other than two words with no implied context. It doesn't sound less awkward than everyone friendly. After what's the difference between kid friendly and family friendly.

Kid friendly normally implies that kids are the target market, and that adults may find it childish.

Family friendly implies that it is suitable for all ages.

A friendly reminder that the Daily Mail is hopelessly inaccurate.

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