Comment by heymijo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by heymijo | Hacker News Reader

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Performance evaluations are subjectivity masquerading as objectivity.

> In each of these cases, I brought these issues to HR and senior executives and was assured the problems would be handled. Yet in each case, there was no follow up to address the concerns — until the day I was accidentally copied on an email from a senior HR director. In the email, the HR director told a colleague that I seemed to raise concerns like these a lot, and instructed her to “do some digging” on me instead.

Then, despite being rated and widely known as one of the best people managers at the company, despite 11 years of glowing performance reviews and near-perfect scores on Google’s 360-performance evaluations, and despite being a member of the elite Foundation Program reserved for Google’s “most critical talent” who are “key to Google’s current and future success,” I was told there was no longer a job for me as a result of a “reorganization,” despite 90 positions on the policy team being vacant at the time.

>In each of these cases, I brought these issues to HR

Well there's your mistake. It's like going to the other guy's lawyer saying you're building a case against him. Better go for the jugular because they sure will.

I cannot not stress this enough. One of the things I do to mentor talent is to affirm two things:

First, the relationship is a merely a meeting of minds. If it's useful for you to be around and they find you useful to be around then you have a job. If that ever stops, it is irrelevant what the past is: you will be gone whether it is by your choice or not. At one point, labor unions were the means to fix companies, but that has long since passed in the U.S.

Second, the term "Human Resources" are perfectly named. A resource is something that is explored, extracted, exploited and expended. H.R. is not your friend. Their job is protect management's goals. You are a resource and fully replaceable.

> If it's useful for you to be around and they find you useful to be around then you have a job.

I do this as well, although I tend to put in in starker terms: the only reason that anyone is giving you a paycheck is because they are getting value in excess of the amount they're paying you. Your job will vanish the instant that value proposition changes. This means two important things:

1) There's no such thing as actual job security. Always have an escape plan.

2) Whatever amount of job security you can wrangle comes only when you consistently appear to be providing value in excess of your compensation.

Also, although I don't usually say this in relation to holding down a specific job, I try to make newcomers understand that nobody will care about what you did 20 years ago. It's what you did yesterday that matters.

What you say about HR is spot on as well. It seems obvious to me, but I'm frequently surprised that it's not obvious to everybody.

> the only reason that anyone is giving you a paycheck is because they are getting value in excess of the amount they're paying you

If by value you mean political value, yes. If by value you mean return to the company for the compensation, that has nothing to do with anything. If there is one thing I have learned in my storied career is that making your boss happy enough to defend your being there is all that matters. I have seen so much deadweight in a company keep their job merely because they were willing to tell their boss what they wanted to hear.

> Whatever amount of job security you can wrangle comes only when you consistently appear to be providing value in excess of your compensation

It took several years to convince my wife that my job security comes from being able to land a new job, not keeping it. I'm always working with new libraries and technologies, staying in-front of (or at least abreast of) what's currently hot. Recruiters are always trying to poach me. Amazingly enough, I landed in a job where I both get to keep my education going and implementing newer technology and my boss likes me. I am coming up on five years, but I know that could change at any moment if pressure were to come down from above.

> What you say about HR is spot on as well. It seems obvious to me, but I'm frequently surprised that it's not obvious to everybody.

Because it's not against the law for companies to lie to employees but it is against the law for you to lie to your companies. I've been in big companies and small companies. They all tell you H.R. is there to help you, to make things better, to work out issues. If you're someone the company wants, H.R. may even work on your behalf (after the manager approves). It really nails you sideways when you've had it good for years to then have the company suddenly turn on you. When you are made to feel as though you are unjustified for breathing in the company's air. It's a huge shock.

> If by value you mean political value, yes. If by value you mean return to the company for the compensation, that has nothing to do with anything.

I experienced this reality check in grad school when I summered as an associate project manager at one of the large U.S. automotive manufacturers. I sat in on hiring as well as meetings deciding a firing.

In one case, two final round candidates for a position were both female. Both were highly competent candidates with equally impressive resumes. The less attractive candidate performed markedly better though. I'll let you guess who was hired. (What was surreal was the discussion that took place when deciding between the candidates. Everyone wanted the more attractive candidate, but of course, saying so would be crazy. So, instead, the pretext became 'cultural fit'.)

In one case where someone was let go, the rational given was merely one that presented itself as a means to get rid of someone that a director had wanted to fire for awhile.

> Because it's not against the law for companies to lie to employees but it is against the law for you to lie to your companies.

Can you elaborate?

> only when you consistently appear to be providing value in excess of your compensation.

The word 'appear' should be bolded. I'll point out another thing which is the amount of effort needed to manage you is even more important than that.

> What you say about HR is spot on as well. It seems obvious to me, but I'm frequently surprised that it's not obvious to everybody.

Why is that? If you work at a company you enjoy and admire that treats you well and compensates you well, its quite natural for us as humans to feel invested in the thing.

You can't both try and empower employees to feel ownership while also making them feel wary. Which is exactly what Google is doing.

I think this adverse relationship only exists in the US, where you can be fired at the drop of a hat.

In a country with actual labor protections the way to protect the companies’ interest is often dramatically different.

So then do you believe that Google acts differently in other countries, and only (allegedly) conducts this abuse in the US?

Note: genuinely curious as to your viewpoint. Not sure what my own opinion is here yet...

Not necessarily that they want to act different, or even think different, just that they are constrained in the way they act by the law in the countries they operate.

In either the Netherlands or Japan (the two countries I have experience with), it either costs a lot of money, or is nearly impossible, respectively, to fire any permanent employee. So HR’s job would be much more focused on either getting the employee to leave of their own volition, or make sure their problem is resolved.

Well, Google legally can’t do a lot of things it does to workers in other countries that it does in the US...so yes? Labor protections in the US are absolutely atrocious compared to most of the European countries where they operate.

Hmm, in that case, it's not really Google's fault. They are following the law (maybe not in every single case, but if the protections in the US are more loose, then they can/will do things here they wouldn't do somewhere with stronger employee protection).

You can certainly be criticised for actions that are legal but harmful to others...

> If it's useful for you to be around and they find you useful to be around then you have a job.

I like how you separated those 2 points. At first glance, it seems redundant. However, like you say, it's not enough to be useful, you need to be perceived as useful, too.

I think most people tend to anthropomorphize the company and expect such issues would be solved "human to human". So they hesitate to escalate them into a war, which lawyering up first and asking questions later tends to do. In reality a company acts less like a human and more like a machine programmed to finish any fight in one blow and minimize exposure. Any "unfairness" is spread among too many people to burden their conscience, they do it for the company.

P.S. Is it me or did this post stay on the first page less than a discussion with no comments and barely a handful of votes [The Bones of Marianna]? It has at least 2-3 times more votes and comments than any topic on the front page in some of the shortest time yet it's relegated already to the bottom of the second page.

People flag posts like this all the time, sometimes out of loyalty to their employer or a general distaste for hearing from ex-employees, especially of companies they have an emotional connection to.

I suspect but have no professional qualification, that it's the same root as stockholm syndrome, in that there is a tendency to form emotional sympathetic bonds with entities strong enough to kill us in some sense, or at least exerting significant control over our lives.

The immense leverage a company has over an employee, especially when made clear, such as in layoffs or changes that are not conducive to the workforce enforced by management, leads people to rationalize this lack of security and control by creating control in the form of a narrative, that the company cares about them and they should recognize and respect that caring.

I think out propensity to anthropomorphise companies is pathological.

Most of the time it's a bunch of people following instructions/policy, like gears in a combine harvester. If you are in the way, you get run over.

it's relegated already to the bottom of the second page.

I am not suggesting it’s an organised voting ring or anything like that but it is noticeable that any anti-Google sentiment that gets upvoted in European or East Coast hours gets pounded as soon as the West Coast wakes up.

Doesn’t seem like that you - it is back on the front page but low given the number of votes and comments.

It took me a while of hearing every single story of a colleague or friend who went to HR to point out a problem with the company being moved out of the company to realize that HR was not your friend, or your advocate. Their only concern was keeping the company from being successfully sued. All of their activities speak to that mandate.

The only way you fix something like this at the executive level is to develop leverage on another executive who can change things and then using that to make them do so.

It is sad. It is wrong. It is dysfunctional. But as far as I can tell the only people that survive these sorts of things are the ones that "play dirty."

Personally, I value my integrity over this kind of gamesmanship and just move on to some other company when I can.

As a manager at a company that I believe is sincere about its message that I am required to report harassment and discrimination even if the aggrieved party does not specifically come to me or want me to (they say it’s required by law), I wonder what the actual outcome of doing so would be.

Legally I believe companies cannot retaliate in those two circumstances (harassment and discrimination), but of course nobody is going to enforce that outside of the expense and hassle of suing them if they do actually retaliate.

Any advice for this circumstance?

document, document, document.

That sounds like how Damore says he was treated. If nothing else, these scandals have taught us about how Google's HR works at high levels.

Given the way employment law in the US works, it is HR's responsibility, in general, to ensure the paperwork is in order if an employee needs to be fired.

And yes, absolutely, even large publicly-traded companies still have bosses that will fire employees because "it isn't working out" (which is the aggregate signal in the neural net with inputs such as "I don't like this person," "I think my job is harder because the company employs this person," "I believe this person's presence at the company is bad for the company," etc.). The difference between large and small companies is that large companies have more to lose if a termed employee lawyers up (and more likelihood a termed employee will lawyer up, because more lawyers will be willing to take a case that has a big-name defendant in the case name).

This is yet another scenario where the question "What are the incentives of the actors in this story" can be applied.

> it is HR's responsibility, in general, to ensure the paperwork is in order if an employee needs to be fired

It is also HR's responsibility to step in when someone fills a room with employees of one race and asks others to repeat stereotypes to them. Or, to ensure the company follows whistleblower statute.

They did step in, by determining firing the tattletale was less than the cost of trying to fix the problem. Reminds me of a classic fight club quote

should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Reminds me of the Ford Pinto debacle https://www.engineering.com/Library/ArticlesPage/tabid/85/Ar...

Recall reminds me of the 737 Max

> Given the way employment law in the US works, it is HR's responsibility, in general, to ensure the paperwork is in order if an employee needs to be fired.

I would submit that this is really their ONLY job. As in “you had only one job”.

How all HR works: protect the company, cut out the person that reported the problem.

You are always taking a big EV- gamble if you actually believe that HR is there to help you. If you experience adversity at work there is no help for you, income is the EV+ bet.

Is EV = Enterprise Value? [1]

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/enterprisevalue.asp

No, it's expected value.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/expected-value.asp

What does "income is the EV+ bet" mean in this context?

positive expected value means it is more probable that you make money in the future, so staying employed and having income is EV+. negative expected value means it is more probable that you lose money in the future, so not having income is EV-.

This is 4th blog post in a sequence and I have not yet read the whole thing - but it looks like it is spot on: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2019/12/31/does-big-business-ha...

That's definitely worthy of submitting as it's own thread.

Hearing about "Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy" was particularly chilling.

Regarding the "do some digging" task, I expect that obliges HR to go out and talk to people in order to solicit dirt (I mean ask for feedback outside the normal performance review channel) on the target.

If you ever need to lawyer up against a company it would be very wise to have your lawyer do “discovery” on any email any manager has written about you. This should be standard advice to all employees.

Why do you think companies in the US have instituted a "delete emails after 6 months/1 year" policy ?

It's wild that this continual destruction of evidence is not only tolerated but SOP. It's just so convenient! Imagine if commit messages disappeared after 6mo!

There is probably a desire to make commit messages go away after 6 months. I am guessing that the lawyers aren't putting much pressure on engineering teams because nobody has thought to "discover" commit messages in a major case yet (whereas email is routine).

Well, the alternative is for every last written thing at a company--jokes, gripes, mistakes--to be scrutinized and taken out of context in court by an opposing side's legal team.

It's wild that this continual destruction of evidence is not only tolerated but SOP.

I bet it’s still on the backup tapes. So when slapped with a court order it will be an order of magnitude more expensive for them to disclose.

You destroy the encryption keys to those backups, not the data itself. This is a problem that has long been solved.

Why?

In the article it’s explained that he only found out accidentally but I’ll bet it’s pretty common.

This is HUGE smoking gun...

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