Google HR 'suggested medical leave' for racism victims

If you're happy defending yourself to the Daily Mail (or whoever) then great! I'd be delighted by that.

But at least be aware that it could happen, and you might have to justify your actions.

Simultaneously both sad and funny is that sometimes they are genuinely trying. Which led to awkward case, when I - already leaving the company - joined so-called "haters meeting" which was supposed to bring feedback to the company, unfiltered... and I made head of HR cry by demolishing the whole "support for employee training and certification" program :(

The top management (i.e. owner representatives) didn't see anything wrong with their turbo-libertarian policy (or were unsuccessfully trying to hide that they didn't actually want to provide any support) and left HR holding the bucket. Learning that pretty much anyone who wasn't wide eyed junior that has yet to finish studies considered the whole training&certification program to be a fig leaf that was more hassle than its worth (the quote was "anyone self-motivated enough the way management claims they want, is also wise enough to not lose time on something with zero expected payoff and will get training/certs on their own - then leave for better place").

That company has later went with worse and worse HR, in fact - a friend of mine who stayed on for few more years talked about how successive changes in HR went worse and worse. The one I faced could be considered last somewhat good team :(

What you're describing is regression to the mean (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean). I would think avoiding this involves maintaining a high bar for recruiting, at the cost of having to hire more slowly and probably pay more than your competitors.

That, or you accept it and become a Java shop.

Why jump immediately to firing? Talk to people first. Don’t start the process by making someone go on medical leave (medical leave is typically paid at a much lower rate than working; it depends on who the company hires (think Aflack and similar)).

This sometimes backfires hilariously when HR is trying to do something good.

Case in point from my job history: Official policy (mandated by parent company) was that externals (i.e. contractors etc.) weren't included in christmas event or anything like that. Due to unrelated things the "externals" made a significant chunk of the workers, and well, HR actually wanted to do something good and bypass the policy.

So they send an email telling everyone in the external group to meet on day X in conference room Y. Imagine bushy-tailed head of HR coming with "hey, the policy doesn't allow it, so we're doing it off the books, everyone is invited just without paper trail" to a big conference room full of people expecting to hear they are going to be fired...

> an automated P45 printer

For the non-Brits: a "P45" is a form you get given when you leave a job, for example if you're fired.

There is an important aspect of how we interact with each other in the work place and this is indicative of a poisonous anti-human agenda to control those interactions.

Unfortunately I didn't really start it off too well and apology for being somewhat inflammatory.

right, especially as "after being told by a colleague that their skin was much darker than the co-worker expected." is a description of what happened, not an actual record of what was said. There are lots of ways that can be said, some of which could be extremely racist.

I don't think that being surprised by the physical appearance of somebody that you only interacted with online says anything about you but I assume that if you were called racist it means that you remarked on it? If so that's at the very least a bit gauche. That the type of stuff I'd keep to myself to avoid making people uncomfortable.

Keep in mind that the 10 black people in a city of 30k are probably tired of having interactions and remarks centering on their skin color, even if they're not negative.

Ironic here that you just want to be the victim, isn't it?

That you were surprised just shows that there's something wrong with the system (education, social or whatever) that so few black people end up in well paying tech jobs. Being surprised to encounter one isn't racist as long as you're not negatively surprised.

It's the same as being surprised that the CEO of a large company is a woman. That in itself is not sexist but shows that something's wrong with society.

That expectation was there because of a photograph of the employee. The expectation was violated because the employee spent some time in Egypt and acquired a tan in the process. Nothing to do with racism.

It would be more like that first half of that sentence

considering the non-African's that have darker skin color probably not. Such as Malaysian, Philipino, Mexican, etc.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Doing that is just as bad as starting it in the first place.

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Because there is no bigotry in that statement, only an awkward observation of a superficial trait?

"You are much more smart because your skin is lighter than I expected," now that would be racism.

Or "I will be happier to work with you because you are lighter than expected."

Or "You must have gotten that job because you are lighter than expected."

Remarking on the colour of some ones skin is like saying you have very blond hair. Are we in denial of skin tone or something and that it's different from various regions of earth, come on.

Is any discussion about skin color racist? If I see a picture of someone and then see them in real-life where they look different, I'd comment if it was about the color of their hair. Is it not ok to comment if it's about the color of their skin instead?

As long as it has nothing to do with work performance or other character traits, I don't see racism here. Otherwise you'd need to ban any discussion about appearances at the work place.

Context matters - and we don't know the context of the conversation.

If the commenter was being flippant or dismissive or generally uncaring in their conversation it could be taken as racist by someone sensitive to such things.

If the comment was delivered with zero malicious intent and was merely a throwaway observation then it's not racist and only someone looking for offense would take it that way.

Like I said, without background knowledge and context it's impossible to determine if it was a racist remark or not.

Playing the devil's advocate. If someone tells you 'tomorrow you'll meet your new colleague Lars from Sweden' consciously or not you'll form expectation about his skin color.

Where in that sentence is it implied that one race ( or skin color ) is superior to the other ?

Maybe that's my autism talking, idk, but I fail to see how one can find racism in that sentence.

I've been called super white and super pale. Is that racism?

Would the statement "your hair is much lighter than I expected" be racist? How about "your eye color is much lighter than expected"? Why is skin color different than any other superficial characteristic?

I'm extremely puzzled as to how you see that as racist, and even more puzzled at how you seem puzzled yourself.

It might be racism if one enjoys putting the gravest label imaginable on a situation. But if that is the worst the person experienced it is something that anyone should be prepared do deal with without invoking all sorts of institutions. I have experienced things like that occasionally because I am gay. The lightest shades of homophobia can be dealt with by just ignoring them. Just being ignored makes a decent person already think something along the lines of 'ow... maybe I should not have said that ...' and they will most likely just stop. The problem with the modern forms of equality thinking seems to be that we need to work very hard to eradicate even infinitesimal levels of racism or homophobia. This then deteriorates into a rather scary thought police that is much worse than the problem it allegedly attempted to solve. I am saying 'allegedly' because these people probably just enjoy bossing everybody around and found this issue as a means to do that rather than actually caring about he issue. The bigger problem is that when people in minorities start believing such things it makes them weaker and not stronger.

That's like someone being offended when someone gets called pasty or pale as hell.

Your right it is.

Any mention of skin tone is verboten!

We must not mention it no matter the context!

Because the parent commenter is ignorant, ignorance should be met with calmness and education instead of backlash.

What I'm reading from the description of this situation (this BBC article is scant on details, previous posts had more information) is that the suggestion for medical leave came only after a prolonged, repeated escalation/appeal of a relatively minor complaint.

Let's assume that the complaint was accurate, it wasn't a misunderstanding, and that there was an incident in 2019 where a colleague intentionally verbally insulted Benjamin Cruz for some reason. That's bad, but it's not a major issue, that's a single incident, Cruz did not claim that it was a pattern in their work environment, or that they had to continuously work with a colleague that kept insulting them, or something like that - their claims of abuse stop at that single incident. HR looked into the complaint and, one way or another, came to a decision which Cruz did not like. So far, it's a "meh" situation, not nice, but something that's still within bounds of an acceptable work environment no matter which side is right. Okay, a minor bad thing happened, people talked about it, hopefully people will try to be better. If it repeats, then you would have a reason for escalation or further complaints.

However, if a year has passed after a single insult and a HR decision you don't agree with, and you can't let it go and keep escalating that issue because it still affects you so much that it hurts your work and causes serious personal anxiety, then that's a problematic overreaction. Letting go seems like a reasonable option, seeking mental help seems like a reasonable option, and quitting seems another reasonable option, and IMHO that's it, you should pick one of these - which was exactly what (according to Cruz) was suggested by the HR.

In your opinion what should a perfect HR have suggested for Cruz to do in this situation, assuming that they have determined that some punishment to the other employee (which - in my guess - is what Cruz might have requested by asking HR to reconsider that investigation) is simply not justified?

If you expect that you'll never ever have a minor personal conflict or one-off remark at your workplace, that's an unreasonable expectation. If you expect that in every dispute with a coworker the HR must take your side and you refuse to accept a judgement that's reviewed more than once, that's an unreasonable expectation. If you expect that employer will ensure that any assholes get fired after their first asshole utterance, that's an unreasonable expectation. If you can't work because these unreasonable expectations aren't met, then that's on you, not the employer; deal with it or leave.