Google employee fired for questioning equity training | Hacker News Reader

Google employee fired for questioning equity training

foxnews.com

33 pointskypro20 comments

Article buried the lede somewhat:

“This employee in our Zurich office was absolutely not terminated for writing this or any other memo. Discussion and criticism of workplace policies is fine, but in this case there had been more than 11 complaints and 7 warnings over two years around his antagonistic and disruptive behavior in the workplace, including singling out other employees. Like any other workplace, we have rules against that," a Google spokesperson wrote.

You have to be careful with these statements. Reading them from a legal perspective, they say very little.

For example, they may absolutely not have been terminated for writing this memo, but for circulating it or refusing to take it down.

Similarly, 11 complaints and 7 warnings over two years could all have occurred in 1 month and be the result of said memo.

Not saying that is the case, but just pointing out that these public statements always designed to support the company position and seem definitive, while actually committing to nothing factually.

Most importantly, we have no information advantage in adjudicating this matter. We can only wait for further news from Google or the employee.

In these cases the offended ones are always happy to file complaints and the moderate ones never do. So the offended ones win.

I've never seen a reasonable person file a complaint. The employee describes the usual oppressive wokeness for employee control story. I see no reason to disbelieve him and Google may be doing doing a hit job:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs27FtYKEos

The link as a submission was flagged, presumably by loyal employees.

Apologies for the Fox News link, I tried to find another source but it appears no one else reported on it.

You may be more interested in the memo that got Kobernyk fired: https://www.scribd.com/document/511320061/Taras-Kobernyk-mem...

Except it wasn't the memo that got him fired? According to Google, it was numerous instances over a number of years that led to him being fired...?

I don't think you should apologize. If only Fox News reported it, and the story is true and important, doesn't that suggest that Fox News is occasionally a valuable news source?

Or it could suggest Fox News is looking to make mountains out of a mole hill?

Hope springs eternal.

There's a very good reason that you couldn't find another source. It's complete and utter bollocks.

Are you saying the story is fabricated? Or that it is true, but should not have been reported?

I've only skimmed the memo, but it seems to be written as pure politically-motivated flame bait as opposed to a real attempt at debating anything worthwhile. Yes, D&I training is badly politically slanted but it's not like anyone was unaware of this before, all I see is the author flogging a dead horse. This is nowhere near as interesting as the Damore case was - that one was all about carefully collected evidence of how political slants were harming D&I goals, which is a much more readily actionable point.

I disagree. The first bullet point is pretty alarming

In before the lock! ;)

There's just way too much to take apart here. But, like Damore, the author shows a naive understanding of D&I initiatives. Like _all_ HR related things, the purpose of such is not what's written on the tin.

Even that aside, the author is trying to shake the tree. That never works. Again, naive. Unless of course, _I_ am the naive one! The document could be performative.

I will take the risk of being lambasted, but IMHO (with very little real info, I admit) this employee was rightly fired. Not due to his opinions either way, or his [probably largely correct] analysis. But from the corporate POV. This level of dissent among the ranks simply cannot be tolerated, right or wrong. I just mean that in a corporate governance kind of way. You simply cannot allow the rank and file to point out when the emperor has no clothes.

At least the story has a happy ending. He got to be on Fox News, as he always wanted.

Oh this is hilarious[0]:

> White people do have culture. Our culture is that of colonization. Of genocide. Of taking. Of envy and of fear. The majority of white people can name no more than two generations back in their families. The majority of white people barely know where their grandparents were from, much less who their ancestors were. The majority of white people have no traditions, and the ones we have, are rooted in consumption and the superficial application of organized religion, both of which are steeped in histories of violence.

I have hard time believing it was really on the reading list of internal training at Google.

[0] https://www.terraincognitamedia.com/features/white-people-ha...

What an upsetting read. IT reeks of misdirected self-loathing.

I feel empty and superficial > I am white > Therefore whiteness is the the root of emptiness (not me)

I mean, that's OK, it's a free country, someone wrote their ramblings (using tools created in the context of the culture they criticize), but having Google and other companies use these for their internal training makes no sense to me. Especially for programmers and people with formal training in logic. You can basically take any paragraph and prove it's not true and, often, also incoherent. Imagine sitting through this kind of "training" and knowing you need to have to nod your head otherwise you risk losing your job.

This is from June.

What's even "equity training" ??

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