Google exec fired after female boss groped him at drunken bash, suit says
nypost.com
nypost.com
I was once personally on the receiving end of a complete false sexual harassment allegation from a coworker almost at random (someone I had almost no interactions with, ever). There wasn't even a sprinkle of truth in the whole thing. I was saved by pure dumb luck, where against all odds just happened to have irrefutable proof one of their claims was impossible which led to her dropping the whole thing. I'm still a bit jaded that there are absolutely zero repercussions of making false claims.
I guess I feel like "Innocent until proven guilty" is a pretty good model and running a story just amplifying one persons unproven claims kind of goes against that.
Anyway, presented with the actual recording she dropped the entire thing and yet managed to have absolutely zero personal or professional repercussions.
However, the judicial system instead of fixing the problem went ahead and created lopsided insane laws which are now being exploited.
The bitter pill to swallow is that there are people of all sexes and demographics who are shitty out there and whatever set of laws there is will be exploited by them for their own ends. Someone's inevitably going to get the short end of the stick, because the government actually isn't and can't be all knowing. (And nearly inevitably it's the disempowed who get the short end of the stick. Not because they're better than the powerful, but because the powerful are best positioned to take advantage of any social situation.)
The problem is that false allegations can be extraordinarily damaging in the short-term, though hopefully the injury evaporates in the long-term as truth takes over.
This will slide off her like an over-easy egg off a teflon pan.
There is this crime called "false accusation", you could have chased that?
Unfortunately for certain things one the damage is done most people will never notice when it changes. The thing that struck me as odd here is that the news article has photos and names. Not that it would make that much of a difference, but I do remember a time when suspects in the news would be named Ryan O. and Tiffany M. The people directly involved would obviously know who this is about.
In one of the valley startups I worked, I disliked a colleague, because I thought she wasn't good at what she did. I do mumble things(unrelated to people) when I think and I'm a generally distant person to strangers. I kinda knew the feeling was mutual, but what I didn't know until a year after I'd left was that she went around telling people that I talked about her boobs, which was such an odd thing for me to comprehend.
Anyway, if you change that to "the case was dropped" then that is technically correct, but the whole case was both so irregular and so politically convenient as to throw the allegations into serious doubt.
One of the few things we do know was that the Swedish prosecutor was threatened when she wanted to drop the case ("Don't you dare get cold feet").
It's sad and disappointing this can happen, but it also made me snort a little, because, in a way they gave her cold feet over getting cold feet.
It's entirely possible that everyone involved knows what's going on, and he's just trying to save face. People do that sometimes, after they misbehave.
Happens all the time, FAANG firms are constantly getting in trouble for it.
One difference between a courtroom and a workroom, is that a boss can often ruin his accuser's life in the latter. The justice system works because it treats all people as equal. In the workplace, you are not the equal of your manager.
Fortunately, you can always escalate your complaint into a courtroom. Unfortunately, proving retaliation is next to impossible.
In other stories with other demographic characteristics, though, employers and the press (if it gets to that point) are not nearly so judicious in their evaluations.
If you want to change that, men have to hold themselves accountable for protecting themselves against women.
You might not like that reality, it’s not a good one, but it’s true.
How do you define sexism or any other ism if not a social and or judicial issue???
Plus a series of judgements does a good job of illustrating to others that all allegations were false, and were looked at by a court (possibly multiple times) to determine if they had any validity.
3 judgements in your favor is a good rebuttal if it ever comes up again...
You'd end up costing yourself money, just in the sheer time it would take to do it.
In the context of contract law, debt collection and civil litigation, the term judgment proof is commonly used to refer to defendants or potential defendants who are financially insolvent, or whose income and assets cannot be obtained in satisfaction of a judgment.[1]
Being "judgment proof" is not a defense to a lawsuit. If sued, the defendant cannot claim being "judgment proof" as an affirmative defense. The term "judgment proof" instead refers to the inability of the judgment holder to obtain satisfaction of the judgment.[1]
If a plaintiff were to secure a legal judgment against an insolvent defendant, the defendant's lack of funds would make the satisfaction of that judgment difficult, if not impossible, to secure.[2]
Even if they can't collect, wouldn't there be some significant value to the judgement, making it less of a he said/she said thing? When confronted with the allegation, it could be rebutted with the facts that you 1) sued, 2) prevailed, and 3) and are owed a lot of money.
Edit: Don't usually wrap other people into this type of issues. But look at case of Justin Roiland, he was only charged, not even pre-trial and everyone from job to friends turned back on him (I don't judge he might or might not be guilty). But once you publicly accused you are guilty even if you proven innocent
The timeline of getting my contract not renewed was actually a chance for me to move across the country, something I had been wanting to do for over a year.
There's a new religion of social justice, and this religion is harsher than even the old religions.
The old religions you were at least judged by an omnipotent being who could see the whole picture. This new woke religion have you judged by a dumb mob. Everyone's playing the judge and everyone's responsible to punishing everyone.
As if punishing a bad person is a virtue. And as if there's nothing wrong about lynching an innocent person.
And this is a direct result of lack of religion. The absence of religion isn't lack of oppression, it's oppression by a dumb blind mob. Religion isn't the truly primitive behavior, the truly primitive behavior is this dumb mob social justice that's spreading now.
At the core is the same mechanism working in other religions. Get the sexual different to provide matrimonial contract security (aka a proto law version), which now is replaced with a provide social security. I suspect, this is one of the reasons of record numbers of men dropping out of working society. When you goto work for nothing directly related to you, why work at all..
But at least it allows those enslaved for contract security, to remain free otherwise. And it is not as repressive when it comes to new things.
I still vividly remember the demonization of video games and all things new by evanglical religions. No fiction allowed by those, who life in fiction.
TL,DR; Yes, it is a religion, but of all the religions its the least worst.
This new religion doesn't have anything like that.
Old religions were already on the decline for decades as information became mainstream.
Once the initial purpose was done, this lynch mob religion seems to be have continuted with malicious intent of stepping on others without the need for reason, just a target is enough, no need for any process.
At least old religions had the excuse of being ignorant in ancient times, what does the current one have?
Immature bloodlust for anyone considered "others".
This is why I laugh when I read that like 50% of people in X country are atheists, are you kidding me? My guess would be less than 1% of people are really irreligious, it's a difficult state of mind to be in, but it's also so peaceful when you know you know nothing.
>And this is a direct result of lack of religion
You claim this like it's proven to be true. It's not. The reason for this inherent ask for social justice in my opinion has nothing to do with religion. Instead, I feel like people got disappointed in existing justice system, looking at nasty people going through life unfazed, even though it is painfully obvious they are guilty. Innocent people going to prison over dna evidence that turns out false 10+ years later. Policemen killing innocent citizens and not getting punished. If you fix the justice system, there will be no need for social justice.
It is the lack of religion, because religion is exactly what would fill this gap in the minds of people from seeing injustice. Maybe the earthly judges failed, but I don't need to be cruel and punishing because the criminal will get what's coming for him in the next life.
It doesn't even matter if this argument is true or false, and if there is another life and judgement in it. That line of thinking clearly keeps people more civilized. Here in the present, in an objectively observable way that even complete atheists could compare.
No it was built by people like you and me. You know those useless people in your office? They're also in the judiciary. You know that stupid policy that while it may have some uses, leads to other bad outcomes but no-one can be bothered to fix? That's also present.
Is there an alternative?
Unfortunately politicians don't want to get involved, and by and large the populace don't have any dealings with the courts.
Yes - clearly the justice system has been coopted and corrupted and "social justice" is one of the expected and observed outcomes (similar but different than mob justice - which is also another expected outcome when you can't rely on actual police/judiciary).
The resolution to all this is to restore faith and trust in our formal justice system - and there are folks fighting for that also.
One of the worst people I know are "religious". Some of the kindest people I know are also religious. This gave me cognitive dissonance for while about religion.
Then I realised that all the horrible people were actually communal narcissists who grab onto the lowest hanging fruit, which is performative religion. They just want to be seen as holier-than-thou, and Churches (applies to most other religious communities, I'm just trying to be brief).
Church is no longer the lowest hanging fruit, but social media is; that's their new holier-than-thou platform.
Now, back to their core premise: I don't think religion is what these people are missing, but a sense of wholesomeness and mindfulness.
Different forms of religious practices can give people this wholesomeness and mindfulness.
My preferred practice is meditation, but I'm not really that spiritual. I guess am a bit inwardly, but I doubt anybody would describe me as spiritual.
I think it's no coincidence independent religions have developed similar methods to quiet, direct and focus the mind.
Buddhism and mediation is just the closest thing to a repeatable, scientific approach that developed. Probably because there's little externalities involved.
So, I guess their intuition about lack of religious practices is correct (In my layman opinion), but I think it runs deeper (at a mental/psychological level) rather than a divine one.
A great book I would recommend is "The Mind Illuminated" by John Yates. It covers briefly what I outlined earlier, but with a historic lense, and it also covers the colourful history of meditation and Buddhism (also briefly).
It's not so much about mediation history, but more a manual on how to meditate (written by a neuroscientists who had this same intuition about religious practices I describe above, but he explores it through his expertise as a neuroscientist, and eventually landed on mediation as the "best" practice for the mind).
There's also some spirituality in it, but if you're anti-spiritual, you can gloss over them.
Back on the topic of this thread:
I think all these witch-craft style trends we had in the past are signs of weak, idle and chaotic minds. This isn't to say every progressive person is like this (I consider myself progressive), but some are, and they paint what should be a great movement into something bad.
And let me be clear, those same weak and disregulated minds are not exclusive to the latest woke movement, they are equally as present in the opposite side, but that side just had a much smaller stage currently. That's probably because we, people as a collective, realise that being progressive is good, so we have been more tolerant of the bullshit from one side than we are from the other.
Ideally, we should be progressive without the bullshit. But alas, human nature is flawed, so we have to endure socially fad after fad in the hopes that one day we will finally learn a lesson.
Edit: wanted to add, I in no way mean to say that being spiritual or believing in a higher power is bad. If it works for some: great for them! I just think it's less "robust" if that makes sense? I'm not quite sure how better to describe it; I'd have to sit and think about better formulating it
> I think all these witch-craft style trends we had in the past are signs of weak, idle and chaotic minds
Can't say that I agree. I think it is more of a consequence of social media having a hard cap on empathy you can feel to a string of letters on the screen in your hands. A lot of people simply don't realize the kind of effect their actions can have on other people, all of that multiplied by mob mentality. Worse yet, social media companies are incentivized to provoke this effect because it is clearly visible in their a/b tests - angry people generate more content. I think the real solution here is in changing social media to me more empathetic, but alas I can't see it happening easily.
And to tie into your reply: the mentality you described is exactly the same one thay current social media mobs share with the "hunt the witches" mobs.
Also, my comment could use some more general word smithing, but it's too late to edit now. I think we agree both that what I described isn't religion, and I meant to say that religion itself isn't the missing bit, but some of the tools that were commonly present in religions. Meditation (and likewise psychedelics) being my favourite tool, personally.
I also agree with your observations on social media making this worse for the reasons you outlined.
That is no different than the dumb mob considering that "gods judgment" always needs to be interpreted. Some mobs do that differently than other mobs but they are all mobs in the end.
> That is no different than the dumb mob considering that "gods judgment" always needs to be interpreted.
I don't think you got the point. The idea is that a truly wronged party (and their allies) can still feel like justice will be done if the system doesn't work, without doing anything, because in the end God will do it.
If that's not understood, then the allies will feel justified going after the (potentially falsely) accused extra-judicially or otherwise tilting the playing field in a way that results in more innocents get punished so it's felt to guilty people get away.
Nah, they're both truly primitive. China doesn't have this "dumb mob social justice" phenomenon and is largely irreligious. Irrationality isn't inevitable.
I would even argue that the mentalities behind the worst performative excesses of social justice culture are even more present in China, by virtue of it being less democratic in practice but more democratic on paper. It’s just harder to accidentally form a mob, or at least that’s the perception.
(And when they do occur you don’t hear about them much. High-profile nationalistic riots and ethnic riots had taken place, offline, at least in the recent past.)
And a lot of religion, spirituality and superstitions, anything from Buddhism to Taoism to folk religion/superstitions to evangelical Christianity. And religious cults too. Yes, even among the educated elite.
It’s just that you don’t often hear about them, because image is everything, and _Jia-chou bu-neng wai yang_.
(Source: grew up there.)
Irrationality is in practice inevitable, because lack of information and motivated reasoning. Complete freedom and moral relativism won’t stop it. Cultural relativism won’t stop it. Authoritarianism won’t stop it. Humans are flawed. It’s better if we all got used to that concept, and both (1) thought more about what we know and how we know it, and (2) try to mitigate the impact of this. How this might work in practice, I do not have a clear idea, but growth driven by engagement metrics needs to die.
Unless you believe some deity ever really went in person at all these trials, you do realize that this is a complete indoctrinated perspective, don’t you? In all cases, this is only humans judging humans.
>As if punishing a bad person is a virtue. And as if there's nothing wrong about lynching an innocent person.
There is no need to essentialize a person for some bad behavior — did this person actually engaged in this behavior or not.
Letting a person engage in bad behavior without acting to prevent reiteration and hardening along this path is probably no more virtue.
Note that "punishment" is one way to try to bring people to more behavioral changes, but not necessarily the most efficient, nor the less ethically sketchy, and definitely not the only one.
> And this is a direct result of lack of religion. The absence of religion isn't lack of oppression, it's oppression by a dumb blind mob.
I am not especially acquainted with USA justice system, but lack of interference by religion into judiciary system is certainly not the description I would tag over the thin knowledge I have of it. Or do people stopped to swear on bible there and dropped the "in god we trust" motto?
Neither religions nor crowds are 100% sure receipt to oppression, but certainly both can be instrumentalized to achieve oppression. Just like self-proclaimed smart elites.
I am not sure I get the proper perspective after it, but it is still nice to have a feedback like that.
To my mind religion on a broad view includes practices like animism, for sure. So I would tend to believe I get your point.
On the other hand, a statement like "The old religions you were at least judged by an omnipotent being who could see the whole picture" seems to precise to match a broad sense of religions. Animism for example doesn’t imply that such a powerful entity exists and judges everything you do.
Actually, apart from Abrahamic ones, which religion out there would fit such a restrictive set of beliefs where there is an omniscient omnipotent being so concerned of judging human individuals?
The legal system is nothing to do with justice - it is a general accepted arbitration mechanism but god knows why - there is nothing good about it. In fact there is lots that is bad about it - not least the fact that the governance system can decide what is legal or illegal, but will of course never hold itself to those standards. And then it can do things like mandate insurance payments under threat of revoke your 'license to trade'. Or pass laws to retrospectively tax people for what was legal at the time. All in the name of keeping people safe or something..
The only winners in the system are the governance system that receives fines, and the legal personnel (eg lawyers) that charge fees to use their 'special license' to help their clients navigate the artificial terrain that they know something about.
Duels to serve 'justice', when your honour has been besmirched, is a better system. It is quicker and cheaper, does involve gaslighting everyone into believing in some archaic nonsense, you directly address the cause of your complaint. It would also help crystallise whether this is something one is prepared to die for, or whether it is better to pass.
Even the detail about your bank accounts being closed doesn't add up at all.
It adds up..
As far as I can tell, that was only a civil case and entirely different from the parent commenters story.
And people's excuse is that men "do the most crime", but it's like: well what about male victims who are left in the dirt, what about the fact that men are also victims of the most crime as well.
Like, that woman literally lied in court, causing you financial, psychological and image damage, couldn't you have sued for this? Theoretically speaking, I'm saying.
Like in my case I have pretty conclusive proof that part of her allegation is a lie. And that makes her look sufficiently bad that she's wiling to drop the whole thing.
But if I now tried to sue her, she'd naturally have to revert to asserting her allegations were true in the first place. But only she made some mistakes when remembering the details (oh sorry, wrong event! Trauma!). And I believe I would look vindictive and aggressive, and my real concrete proof is that one part of her allegation is a lie.
For me, it's 10000x easier to just count my blessings than personally consider anything of the sort. I only once briefly entertained the idea just to tarnish her own reputation to the point she would never be able to falsely accuse anyone again.
The stigma that it “automatically” brings just doesn’t go away. It just doesn’t. You forever become “that” person. And I really don’t know how it can be fixed. That’s just how it is.
I’d way rather treat all employees fairly and fade a <1% chance of a false accusation than to treat employees unequally and cut that chance in half.
You're not saving yourself from any false accusations. The people you have closed door sessions can accuse you of SA regardless if you're attracted to them.
It's a lot larger than 1%< depending on how long your career is and how many individuals you encounter over its course.
It means that it's far less likely that you could do so unobserved, which makes it harder to explain away the lack of observations for a false claim.
Also, it sends a message that might be a deterrent to a false claim.
Had so many problems in one office that they re-architected it so every office had (at least) a large window. Complaints of hanky-panky dropped to zero.
Not really. Ever see those "Florida Man" memes? The reason that's a thing isn't because people in Florida are particularly crazy. It's because public records are exceptionally easy to access in Florida, and those include police reports. And anything that's public record is fair game for the media.
In some states (I believe Georgia is one), there are regular publications with mugshots of people who were recently arrested in the local area. Not convicted of anything, just arrested. You can buy them at pretty much any gas station or convenience store. Get arrested for, say, public intoxication, and all your friends and acquaintances may just see your photo in the checkout line the next day.
Media vultures will not hesitate to cash in on your humiliation.
Also, if you have any evidence whatsoever that "those places are far healthier in terms of trust", I'd be keen to see it.
Point is, lots of bodies and lots of dizzying highs and crazy lows. Then add in ease-of-access to records and ecce florida-homo
I considered getting a lawyer involved because I feared this could blow up, but was talked out of it by my boss, who asked me to apologize and "let's leave it at that".
Some might have, but deciding to jump in to defend the accused would result in a decent chance of the defender getting targeted themselves, in some fashion.
It's a spectrum, and we're only talking about one of the extremes:
<---- false allegation beyond a reasonable doubt ---- | ---- false allegation ---- ||| ---- true allegation ---- | ---- true allegation beyond a reasonable doubt ---->
Are you proposing that the media should stop covering lawsuits?
Imagine the roles were reversed and it were a woman being harassed. What would the response to this comment be?
That's the pattern I normally see online, people tend to be sympathetic to victims.
I am a male who was sexually assaulted by another male. Strictly speaking I was raped, but I prefer not to use that term because of the emotive nature of it.
There is not much you've said I disagree with, but I do want to show that this goes both ways. I have never made a public accusation about the individual involved in my case because I do not have irrefutable evidence that it wasn't consentual. If I was in the jury of his court case I would find him innocent, so how could I reasonably go accuse him of anything?
Really I think we need to have two serious conversations as a society:-
* Individuals should not be able to weaponise sexual assult/harassment claims in public to the extent they do now. If anything, stories like yours make it even more difficult for legitimate victims to tell their story because the idea of destroying the life based off an accusation I cannot prove is really frightening to me. I would like someone to sit him down, privately, and educate him on consent (leading onto my next point) and to never ever do that to another individual again. That isn't an option though, it is a life destroying public circus or nothing.
* Consent, consent, consent. From as early an age we're willing to give children sex education, we should teach them about consent. Certainly in my time at school I was not once taught the legal definitions or importance of it.
Edit: Minor typos
I'm not going to use a throwaway - I am a male who was sexually assaulted by another male. It's happened to me more than once, in very different ways, and quite frankly for all that it's scarred me I consider it good experience that taught me a lot.
Clearly the only way to really test improved teaching on consent would be to change the education system and then wait 10-20 years to measure the impact once those children become sexually active adults. I don't think such a dataset is a reasonable request unfortunately.
It's interesting your phrasing of referring to people who commit sexual assault as 'monsters'. I do not think of my perpetrator as a monster, I do not believe him to be evil beyond redemption. Sure, there are some mentally ill individuals who do sexual crimes so heinous it is hard to imagine any road to recovery, but I don't believe my experience lies in that category. I personally feel a series of events in his life drove him to make that decision that day, and it is possible as a society to course correct future generations not to make that same decision. I have to believe that.
Do I have any concrete evidence beyond faith? No. Maybe all rapists are monsters born that way, but that is such a frightening concept I just can't accept that that is true.
I don't see how this all doesn't end with near total personal surveillance of one's life - audio & video.
Will culture change to accept everyone wearing body-cameras? We've made that step for law enforcement. Will there be next step? I wonder if those in charge of children will be next - teachers, priests, scout leaders etc. Healthcare workers? Politicians? And finally, everyone.
I can imagine encrypted systems that only give access to recordings in response to court orders. I can imagine a lot of people would opt-in without coercion just for self-preservation.
Well, you should be. The reputation of the other party should be completely destroyed. How can you attempt to break someone's life and just get away with that as if nothing happened?
If we're going to tell male victims that we don't believe them & that they have to prove it we can do the same for female victims; at the moment for female victims, it is treated very seriously from the outset.
However, I almost didn't bother commenting because this distinction between male and female victims will never end, it'll never change and I just have to live knowing that nobody actually really gives a shit about what happens to me; even sitting outside the heterosexual bubble, y'all still reach in with your traditional gender roles BS "men r strong & always do bad things", "women r weak and r always good angels".
In a statement to The Post, a spokesman for Miller denied the accusations against his client. “This lawsuit is a fictional account of events filled with numerous falsehoods, fabricated by a disgruntled ex-employee, who was senior to Ms. Miller at Google,” the spokesman said. “Ms. Miller never made any ‘advance’ toward Mr. Olohan, which witnesses can readily corroborate.”
This is the most crazy section. Why physical characteristics like gender or ethnicity should be important in the management selection? And if yes, why only those two characteristics and not considering others like body weight or baldness?
This is in no way restricted to US.
I understand the reasoning and benefits of positive discrimination but I have also seen rationality being relegated to the point plain bad decisions have been taken in the name of diversity.
In russia and china, some values were shared, but by now means all values were shared. Europe may come close to having the same cultural discussions, but 10 years delayed compared to the empire core.
Other regions engage in mimicry and may be doing there own thing entirely otherwise. Means, you got a small layer of "international community" among the elites, but the rest of the population, is of other opinions but also never asked.
To me the craziest part is:
> Olohan was told that he had shown favouritism towards high-performing employees
I don't think that's actually been "shown," it's more of an axiom that's assumed to be true without proof. IIRC, the idea that "[sex/race] diversity leads to better team outcomes" may even just be an idea meant to mainly lend legal cover to diversity efforts (e.g. university affirmative action race-based admissions) that would otherwise be illegal.
I think given modern technology, companies can and should be extremely regulated and monitored on their hiring and firing decisions. At-will should be federally banned. If they define objective, auditable and specific merit based criteria, they should send that information along with every applicant and every decision to look at a resume, interview, call and hire/reject to the EEOC which can look for patterns and investigate on its own to validate the reasons being given in those decisions. I think with that, there could be a path to meritocratic hiring/firing.
But make no mistake, discrimination based on gender, race,etc... is rampant. I am even all for expanding that to cover any arbitrary criteria. If I decide to wear a clown costume to work, the work has to justify why the clown costume materially prevents me from performing profitably.
To be clear, the below is not taking into account the allegations in the article, but just seeks to explain the thinking without judgement (as I'm frankly not sure which side I fall down on).
There's a school of thought that some degree of weighting helps to redress systemic issues by changing incentives, justified on the basis that there should be an equally capable pool of candidates in the underrepresented demographics.
The thinking then goes that e.g. if promotions at certain levels are biased, the argument for allowing that bias to continue is often that the pool to promote from leaves too few capable candidates of the underrepresented groups.
The problem with that, is that if (to take extreme numbers for simplicity) 100% of people being promoted from VP to SVP in a company are white men, then a lot of women and non-white people will either self-select out or not get promoted at lower level because it's a strong signal they're not valued and have no future there.
That in itself can make it a goal to diversify companies at higher levels irrespective of the current talent available for promotion at the level below.
As a concrete example, in 2006 Norway added a legal requirement for at least 40% of either gender at board level of a public limited company (ASA; usually listed companies as only ASA's can be listed, though they don't have to be) and in some other situations (e.g. companies with significant government ownership), and during the debates over this change, this was part of the arguments:
If there weren't enough qualified candidates, that was itself considered evidence of a systemic bias that making the change was hoped to help address. Both by giving women an incentive to stay on track towards board seats and give companies an incentive to address other biases to ensure there was a capable pool. Over time, it was also hoped that getting women onto boards would further strengthen the pressure from boards on companies to address the, as well as further develop a pool of women with growing board experience.
It was explicitly acknowledged by many proponents that there was a chance that it'd be hard to find suitable candidates initially, but that was seen as a sufficiently temporary problem to be addressed by companies through training and mentoring, not a justification for not changing the incentives.
*Do we say OP for the top level comment?
With respect to gender it's fairly simple. Already with respect to ethnicity it starts getting tricky to define objective rules.
It's also a tricky problem to apply at too small scale. E.g. in a small enough team or in a small enough niche, pure chance will end up with some small groups that are not diverse by pure chance even in an idealised setting with no biases. Trying to prevent that all the time could be potentially highly detrimental. Figuring out which imbalances and at which scales are by chance, and which are down to biases is a hard problem.
If we were actually concerned about tipping the scales properly based on actual income data, white men would not be the primary targets. We would be going after Brahmin Indians, Taiwanese-Americans, Jewish-Americans, men over 6 feet in height, men with facial features that are shown by studies to be associated with "leadership", men born to well-connected families, and any number of other by-birth associations that are actually demonstrated by the data to have high correlations to income level.
"White men" are fairly average when it comes to income in the United States, yet we are gunning for them far more for income equity than we are for their obvious statistical superiors.
This, alone, demonstrates the lie underpinning equity efforts.
2006 is 17 years ago. There should be some results by now. What was the failure criteria for the legislation? Did it fail/succeed according to the criteria? Did anything change at lower positions?
That said, this is a pretty wild turn of events. From the initial and continued sexual harassment/assault to the racism, and subsequent retaliation. More curious is the very direct "your team is too male" and the encouragement to fire someone. I've heard this hinted at before, but never said out loud for obvious reasons. If all of those claims can be proven I'm pretty sure this guy won't work another day in his life if his lawyer can read sentences and make it to court on time.
I would like to hear Google and Mrs Miller's side of the story before I cast any judgement though. I don't suspect we'll get that until court.
Everyone in tech knows this is happening, and it's illegal, but nobody will do anything about it. Similar to ageism back in the 2000s.
Only once or twice this egregious. Most of the time however it’s explicit diversity incentives for executives if they want to hit their perf targets. If you can’t get the hires, the other way to game it is to shrink the denominator if you fail to increase the numerator.
Someone who was the ultimate decider said that the group already had enough "pale males;" a look was given to me and guy in the wheelchair because, by virtue of our disabilities, we were presumed to already be on the Yay Diversity! Squad, despite our pallor and penisness.
That was the phrase, I was in the room, etc. It doesn't just happen, they don't really try to hide it now.
I understand that it creates a whole set of bad situations, so just asking what's the theoretical appropriate way to handle this
Document and report. Don't try to catch someone unless you're advised to do so by a lawyer or law enforcement or the like.
do you believe ageism "solved", or do you mean it's something people talk about openly these days? I thought it was discussed in the 00s too.
It's still present, but not as rampant and intense as it was. Also, note that it was discussed and acknowledged at the time, but that didn't magically make it go away. Zuck stated on record that if you're over 30, successful companies should not employ you, and he was the founder, owner, and chief exec of a major tech corporation.
Everyone knew it was going on, it was also acknowledged, and it was illegal, yet nobody did anything about it, and it kept going. Dispels your illusion of how illegal / immoral practices just go away when they are exposed. The current trend of gender and race-based discrimination won't just go away by itself, either.
https://www.businessinsider.com/laid-off-engineer-says-googl...
You get mad if you were working for prestige, connections, or power-- things you can't just replace by getting another job.
Some people do both -- from the context, it sounds like Moore also hopes to replace it with a similar job, while also venting to anyone in the media who will propagate his framing about what a horrible injustice it is that Google can pay him a fortune and keep him around for 16 years.
>You get mad if you were working for prestige, connections, or power-- things you can't just replace by getting another job.
And this fits your model of someone eager to trade personal time for the prospect of power even when his material needs are met? From the link:
>>"This also just drives home that work is not your life, and employers — especially big, faceless ones like Google — see you as 100% disposable," Moore said.
>>"Live life, not work," he added.
If so, it's a foolish move! Venting in public absolutely makes someone less employable -- making it a freedom that people with less need of employment have more of!
> And this fits your model of someone eager
I don't know him so I could only speculate and I don't really have any speculation specific to him to offer.
The reason I replied was to dispute the position you took that being mad meant he needed the job. I stated it too strongly: I should have just said "people can get mad about losing a job even when they don't need it, e.g. if they were working for prestige, connections, or power-- probably more so since these are things you can't just replace by getting another job."
In other words needing it may be sufficient, but it's not necessary. I think those other reasons are stronger reasons to be mad-- they're harder to replace than a job.
> "This also just drives home that work is not your life, and employers — especially big, faceless ones like Google — see you as 100% disposable," "Live life, not work," he added.
I've heard statements just like that from people who I know have eight figure net worths and continue to work for someone else. ::shrugs::
Eng managers, directors, and VP's make tons more money than engineers.
In New York City. You're right, that requires a big income. And puts a sizeable dent in it.
Instead of an ad hominem dogwhistle, please describe how the paper's political leanings could bias its reporting here.
At face value, it's workplace sexual assault allegations with a power imbalance.
I don't think that's what "dogwhistle" means. IIUC, dog-whistling is surreptitiously sending a message to some readers, but having plausible deniability and/or non-recognition for the rest of the readers.
>I'd like to point out that CoastalCoder wrote this comment. Take that for what you will.
See? Highlighting with this phrasing aligns exactly with your definition. The framing is defaulting to negative-neutral.
I.e., he intends every reader to recognize that he's saying that the publisher might be biased. He's not being explicit about what that bias is, but presumably he expects curious readers to look into it themselves.
>the author isn't trying to conceal his point
False. The parent asked you to draw your own conclusions!
Think of the word melancholy it has a complex definition and connotations but how could you guess what that means.
"In a 2004 survey conducted by Pace University, the Post was rated the least-credible major news outlet in New York, and the only news outlet to receive more responses calling it "not credible" than credible (44% not credible to 39% credible).[65]
The Post commonly publishes news reports based entirely on reporting from other sources without independent corroboration. In January 2021, the paper forbade the use of CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times as sole sources for such stories.[66]"
65: Jonathan Trichter (June 16, 2004). "Tabloids, Broadsheets, and Broadcast News" (PDF). Pace Poll Survey Research Study. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 23, 2004. Retrieved June 7, 2007. 66: Robertson, Katie (January 13, 2021). "New York Post to Staff: Stay Away From CNN, MSNBC, New York Times and Washington Post". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 1, 2021.
When someone cites [x, y, z], that someone is not credible instead of being not credible along with [x, y, z]?
Besides, the parent's whole point is that NY Post is the source, here!
But I would also point out that a lot of people here on HN (in past discussions) and elsewhere have noted that the New York Times and the Washington Post also publish creatively interpreted news (or outright creative writing) at times.
Despite this news articles from these sources are considered independently without outright dismissal due to past reporting.
I absolutely despise the word now, to the point I'll cringe a bit even when it's used legitimately.
In my book, it is much more reliable than the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Great phrasing. Reporting dirt on a faction will drive clicks to FROM all factions, including the smeared faction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
Of course I'll take a tabloid that might be slightly right of center over that.
Tabloidy/political/all the same.
How victims are portrayed in the media matters a great deal. Media can skewer a case by either poking holes in it or by flatly not investigating. The latter is what I feel is going on here. They could've interviewed potential witnesses at these NYC events, they could've interviewed some Googlers to find out if this "your team is too male" attitude actually exists in any contingent. They didn't do that though, instead, they plugged the hottest claims of the docket which all come from the plaintiff.
My statement was ambiguous on purpose. It says two things simultaneously:
1. If you don't believe this article, wait for better reporting.
2. If you believe this article, wait for better reporting.
I was hoping that might remind some people to temper their expectations until more information is known, which is why the last sentence is the way it is, and why I cited each of the allegations.
The parent expressly left their comment un-nuanced.
Are you redefining the term?
I’ll would add he was referring to the positioning of paper’s history of being more “low street”, sensationalist with lower journalistic standards as opposed to the high standards gold standard harbinger of Truth publications like the NYT. The reason this description looks so out of place now, it’s because the others suck so much and the Post continues being the Post.
Totally admirable intention, for sure (if only viewed from the lens of strict equality). But I’m sure the 90% of applicants that were male wouldn’t see it that way. So, poor execution.
Edit: clarified some incendiary phrasing
So that women prefer to pick other fields is STEM's fault?
I love technical things and am the father of 1 son and 3 girls. I of course would love to do technical things with all of them. With my son it's easy to get him excited about lego and such. With my girls? Well, maybe you should give it a try. I decided to play with my kids the things they like to play with. And with my girls it's (unfortunately for me) non technical things.
This preference is also highly documented in gender equal societies. So do us all a favor and stop talking bullshit while it's obvious why women don't select STEM: they don't want to.
PS: My oldest daughter is going to follow STEM next year. I'm happy, but mainly wish her to be happy. If she continues it, fine. If she decides she wants to do something else, also fine. She's good at math so that's the main reason she picked it.
In contrast this "real and documented" is just an assertion. I never saw any evidence of it.
Is this a Western/US thing? Woman STEM graduates outnumber man in a number of countries. Mine and Iran for example but most Muslim countries have strong woman numbers.
I don't think STEM in the west is discriminatory to women, out of the blue. It can't be more discriminatory than Iran? Unless, there is data and research that suggests otherwise.
These might be strong incentives for woman to pursue STEM degrees. These same incentives don't exist for Western woman since they already have their freedoms unquestioned. Also, a little note: This is just a speculation from me (less than an opinion) might be completely wrong.
What? That’s not admirable at all. That’s blatant sexism.
“(STEM is 100% historically discriminatory to women)”
Lol no, if anything it’s clearly discriminatory towards men in the false assumption that low female population isn’t an internal cause
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/E...
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/software-deve...
My point is that we shouldn't be surprised by a gender imbalance on priors. By itself, a gender imbalance only goes to show that software engineering is like a lot of other jobs.
BTW, my suspicion is that similar experiences happen in many industries, and industries vary according to (a) how horrible a given experience is said to be and (b) social norms around registering a complaint.
I think that even just five years ago I would’ve agreed with you on this, but when the attacks on elderly Asians began to happen during the pandemic, it was one of those painful things that it was the NY Post that could be counted on to make those visible.
As I’ve gotten older, I haven’t become more conservative. But I’ve realized that the left side of the spectrum is a lot sicker than I realized when I was younger, and to not automatically discount everything that goes on in the right, wince-worthy as it may often be.
Frankly, I read this article this morning when it broke on the NYP. The NYP stays in my feed but when I read their stuff I almost always cross it with other sources. There are none though because all that exists of this story right now is the docket. Miller, Google, and Olahan aren't talking.
How victims are portrayed in the media matters a great deal. Media can skewer a case by either poking holes in it or by flatly not investigating. The latter is what I feel is going on here. They could've interviewed potential witnesses at these NYC events, they could've interviewed some Googlers to find out if this "your team is too male" attitude actually exists in any contingent. They didn't do that though, instead, they plugged the hottest claims of the docket which all come from the plaintiff.
My statement was ambiguous on purpose. It says two things simultaneously:
1. If you don't believe this article, wait for better reporting.
2. If you believe this article, wait for better reporting.
I was hoping that might remind some people to temper their expectations until more information is known, which is why the last sentence is the way it is, and why I cited each of the allegations.
Changing perception is usually exactly how one would become more political.
My friend who still lives in the Valley says this kind of sentiment is incredibly common there nowadays, e.g. advertising an open position and having discussions internally that a man won't be hired for the role.
It's pretty surprising to me, because statistics show that most major careers have a gender imbalance in one direction or the other:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/E...
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/software-deve...
Yet the gender imbalance in software engineering receives unique attention, to the point where people are willing to violate ethical rules in order to try & even out the genders in that particular career.
Why is this? What is the ethical justification for why addressing the gender imbalance in STEM/software engineering should be such an urgent moral priority?
My suspicion is that there is no good justification that holds up under scrutiny, and it's all just a moral panic fueled by social media.
Your friend (and your friend's HR organization) should be aware that this is extremely illegal.
I've been in a company all hands, which was broadcast to the whole multi-office company via video link, where the CEO himself announced that the next person to fill a very senior executive role had to be a woman and it would remain empty for as long as it took to do that. Did he care that he just admitted the company would break the law, on video? No because it's not illegal, it's outright encouraged.
Fundamentally, you cannot have left wing people in charge of enforcing equality rules, whether it be legislation or company policies. They point blank will not do it because they think that handing women or racial minorities unique powers is the most morally virtuous thing they can do, and that the system they're tasked with enforcing is immoral.
DEI initiatives harm corporations long-term and will always ultimately fail because the corporation is no longer maximizing profits. This is not a new idea: IIRC even Adam Smith had something to say about such kind of activity.
Yes it harms corporations in both long and short term but the people who do it don't care, because their moral code states that corporate harm either isn't real or is actually a good thing. You can't win when arguing with someone's fundamental moral code.
Probably just because $$$. Have you ever seen someone advocate for more female coal miners or truck drivers?
All the time, as they should.
They also let women be engineers, geologists, farmers, doctors, etc.
Is this surprising to you?
[1] https://www.riotinto.com/news/releases/2022/Rio-Tinto-female...
[2] https://www.macktrucks.com.au/community/blog/2017/february/m...
0. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-26/qld-push-for-female-t...
These are all closer to home, have better hours, somewhat better pay for the light machines and exceptional rates for the Haulpaks.
My conspiracy theory is that software engineering is the last real, single, meritocratic, growing career path that costs a lot of money for employers and they'd rather tank the market by making sure the other 50% of sex is able to participate to wreck wages.
Nobody cares that nurses and teachers are majority female dominated fields ripe with discrimination and harassment because they don't make enough money. They're overstressed, understaffed, and underpaid and society needs more of both yet the bar is so low and so biased against men that nobody is even trying to fix it.
I think maybe there's a workable argument along these lines: Both nursing and teaching are bureaucratic industries with heavy government involvement. The price system doesn't function effectively in those industries, which means that a shortage of workers doesn't cause wages to rise. And the overall dysfunction means that managers in those industries don't think strategically about how to increase the supply of workers, the way managers in the software industry do.
EDIT: Another point is that the oligopolistic industry structure in tech means that big players have a stronger incentive to do things that benefit the industry as a whole.
I think at this point salary already doesn't matter as wages are already depressed. In other words, fishing for true workplace equity isn't an altruistic endeavor as much as cost savings. Once that is achieved, it's irrelevant who populates the industry. Nobody is interested in hiring male teachers as costs are already down and there's plenty of female applicants lined up, even though they actually should in the interests of equity and workplace representation.
Your government bureaucracy argument brings up an interesting tangent. Government agencies should be one of the most inclusive workplace environments, (looking at some US administrations, they generally try to espouse that trend [0][1][2]) so it's only reasonable to assume that the same principles would trickle down to heavily regulated industries. If anything, heavy government involvement would mandate such quotas. But they don't. Which leads me to believe there's something else afoot.
[0]https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
[1]https://facts.usps.com/postal-service-diversity/
[2]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/28/racial-ethn...
the tinfoil hat stays on and secure
Not exactly, teacher shortages are widespread in the US.
Police officers have a lot of power in society & are mostly male. I think there's a strong case to be made that bringing women into the force would be very beneficial, in terms of improved handling of sexual assault cases and reduced police violence. However, I haven't seen a peep about the need to make policing gender-balanced.
It's often mentioned about UK politicians too, ie the gender balance of cabinet positions.
Perhaps your view of the apparent moral urgency is because you're in the tech industry and therefore closer to it?
Fair enough, I've never seen discussion of police gender balance here in the US.
>Perhaps your view of the apparent moral urgency is because you're in the tech industry and therefore closer to it?
I doubt that's it. I feel like I've seen a lot more coverage of "Women in Tech" in mainstream news sources than any other "Gender in Career" pairing.
My mother made a left field comment a couple of years ago that I've thought about a lot. She was a programmer starting in the 70s through to the late 00s. I mentioned the lack of women in tech thing and she said "Oh. I've never noticed. I always considered it completely equal and never felt treated differently."
So there's (IMO) historical evidence that it's not inherently a "male" field; which I see as evidence that the imbalance is unexpected and undesirable.
(That said, I can't speak to why it's an "urgent" priority)
[1] Babbage invented the mechanical calculator. Ada realized you could do calculations on something other than numbers. IMO that makes Babbage the first computer engineer, and Ada the first computer scientist.
[2] one article of many on this: https://digitalfuturesociety.com/programming-when-did-womens...
Looking up the funnel, about 80% of CS graduates are male (even though females outnumber males in college attendance).
Can we conclude that the gender imbalance among veterinarians is unexpected and undesirable?
I would say tho that yes, I think it's unexpected and it's probably undesirable. What I'd want to check is how the male veterinarians felt about it. Do they feel like they're running into issues doing their job because of their gender?
>Olohan said he reported the issue to Google’s human resources department the following week, but nothing ever came of the complaint.
The HR rep “openly admitted … that if the complaint was ‘in reverse’ — a female accusing a white male of harassment — the complaint would certainly be escalated,” according to the lawsuit.
I’m not so sure it’s America vs Google. One has to wonder how inclusive and diverse the HR department is
This belief hasn’t permeated our culture, it is the rock on which the very idea of what sexual crimes are [1]. The cultural shift is the other direction thanks to people fighting for it but we’re a long way from the end of the tunnel.
[1] Which is damage to property of a husband or father sooo that’s uhh something. The laws changed on paper but the spirit lived on.
It may be like physical abuse in a relationship; roughly even between sexes, but reported and documented cases are vastly lopsided by gender.
On the more violent end of rape the majority of serial rapists I've heard about are men. And while some of them are homosexual rapists, most are heterosexual rapists.
it would be a big media storm if that aforementioned reverse thing happened.
When you have a division between salary and wage workers, HR has a certain role. Between managers, its all politics.
I kind of get annoyed when this statement is bandied about. Not because it's false, but because it's brought up in cases like this one where if HR were actually doing their job well, they would have protected the company by doing a real investigation.
That is, one of the primary purposes of HR is "keep the company from getting sued." But, in many cases, that goal aligns with someone who has a valid, verifiable complaint. For example, if you are being sexually harassed and want it to stop, a good HR team will absolutely do their best to make that happen, because if they don't they are opening the company up to huge liability.
Not saying everything is always 100% cut and dry (particularly when the accused is somewhere very high up and the company thinks it would cause great disruption to fire them), but reading through the details on this case, that doesn't really appear to be true. I'm certainly not making a judgement since we've only read one side of the story, but I do push back strongly against the idea that HR didn't intervene because they wanted to protect the company.
From an employee perspective it is a gamble to trust HR to help them, even if HR were doing their job.
In a case like this, HR expects the victim to back down. It may be assumed as a likely outcome based on the percentage of cases where this happens.
Anecdotes is not data. The fact that there are a number of high profile cases where HR royally failed in their job to protect the company from litigation is not really strong evidence that that's the norm. Most importantly, it's much more likely to get reported when HR fucks up than when they do their job as required.
This honestly makes me think that a lot of the story is heavily exaggerated. Why would HR entertain a hypothetical that could only get them in trouble?
Because it ordinarily doesn't get the company in trouble? HR cannot see into the future, you know, and from their PoV, ignoring a male's complaint against a female doesn't usually result in any media firestorm, while investigating a female on the word of a male does.
They couldn't have foreseen that this would blow up, but they almost certainly would have predicted company damage if they had NOT parroted the line about white male aggressors.
He's not the audience for that quote.
As we've seen time and time again, a mob will form against almost any company that doesn't parrot lines like that.
Companies issuing statements, whether internally or externally, are never going to issue anything that can be construed as less than 100% in support of women.
On the other hand, the HR person is just a person, and they sometimes make mistakes, like issuing a statement about their official policy when that policy is supposed to be secret.
An official statement from a department is no less official and subject to citation just because it was made to a single person.
The official making the statement to the effect of "any and all sexual harassment complaints from women* will be investigated fully and comprehensively"* is saying it because even when it is repeated it is, as far as the issuer of that statement goes, in line with "Protecting the Company from harm".
I'm very curious about why you cannot see the statement "any and all sexual harassment complaints from women will be investigated fully and comprehensively" as something that an HR person would find safe enough to repeat, and to be repeated.
That's the sad truth. Can't go to anyone and even if I did, they likely won't believe me, whereas she could retaliate and say I was the one that did the touching and she'd be believed with ludicrous immediacy. Life sucks, man.
Did you ask them not to do it again?
While I have no difficulty in believing that, in practice, a similar complaint with reversed genders would be taken more seriously in some|many|most|all (?) HR departments, I cannot believe that any HR rep would openly admit to that fact, let alone to an affected party. It may indeed have happened, but such extreme clumsiness on the part of Google's HR beggars belief.
It is so scary and damaging to be accused of moral misconduct of this type. I cannot imagine how many people (independent of the gender) are going through this kind of abuse and not daring to bring it up because of the way it is approached and the whole complexity of proving it.
I have a similar experience:
I used to work at a big tech with +100,000 employees, and had a female co-worker a few years older than me. I was groped, kissed and basically harassed to the point that I left the job that I liked the most and ended up with depression. Note that we are both software engineers.
As a guy in my 30s when I asked for advice from friends outside the company I got the advice to leave with an good excuse because if she decide to she can ruin my career and steal years of my life. I never told my partner about it nor have I spoken about it with anyone else.
I mean in dance, you hear about higher-level male dancers getting unwanted attention despite being in long-term monogamous relationships.
Maybe in a hundred years, we’ll realize that people are people, and will weaponize / abuse sexuality according to their role / gender.
What does this mean exactly? That you hope that in a hundred years people will still abuse each other sexually but due to a social role based view of gender?
But in management you've spent years at the company building up to your current role, and you're just kinda stuck with people. Can't imagine how stressful it would be to be in that person's position.
They are, but then there's this other thing called DEI...
Have you seen any evidence of this or are speaking from theory?
https://allnurses.com/affirmative-action-male-applicants-t12... > "I believe this is already quietly done. It's just not talked about. The community colleges usually do not participate in AA. It's the BSN-level colleges that frequently use AA in choosing applicants - including the application of AA for male applicants."
Is there a threshold you have in mind for a number of people who would need to speak up before you believe they aren't mistaken or lying? Would the only thing that would convince you this is happening be some kind of large scale study? If so, do you honestly believe such a study would ever actually be conducted, or that anyone would be willing to open themselves up to the consequences of gathering evidence on this? Even if someone was willing to try, do you think it would actually be possible to gather evidence that companies discriminate on the basis of gender or race when making hiring decisions?
So if you have examples of unqualified candidates being hired on diversity grounds, then I'd like to hear your stories. In my own professional and social circles, it's very rare to see an unqualified hire at all, so maybe my personal sample isn't where the problem happens.
Why should you leave your job because a criminal chose to sexually assault you?
Yes, you could find a new job, but what if you're months away from a major stock grant, a bonus, completing an important project?
Just because you're an engineer doesn't mean there's no penalty to quitting suddenly because someone victimized you.
Also, it depends on the opportunity cost. It's great to think you're such a great guy that any employer will pay anything to have you, but that's simply not true for most people. If you're losing out on a major grant or bonus, that could be far more than the new employer is willing to pay. I know because I've been in these situations, on both sides of the table. If we budgeted $500k for some job, you're not getting an extra $250k just because you'd about to get that in two months if you stayed with your current employer.
And no new employer can compensate you for the right to mention on your resume that you completed a major project you were 6 months from completing when some criminal decided to harass you.
People can also decide to pass on deferred compensation when it's not "life changing money" as I heard one individual express once when he left behind some pension or stock or whatever the carrot was that was held out in the nearish future at a previous company I was at. Basically end this deferred compensation for the promise of a better one albeit with a later maturity date.
Lots of calculus and variables involved in these situations obviously but it never hurts to ask and align on these sorts of things where possible. Folks usually don't get mad when others act in their best interest, they'd do the same if they were in the others shoes is how it seems to me.
Lawsuits follow you. Once employers do a background checks they will know about any lawsuit you are involved in any way. They are publicly available for anyone to find.
What? How can favoriting high-performing employees ever be a valid reason?
We had some sort of combined activity with some 6th grade students. I dropped my pencil and crawled under the table to get it, and got back to work and didn't think anything of it. A 6th grade girl at the table got up and left the classroom, and 15 minutes later I was called up to the principal's office. They told me I was in big trouble for looking up girls' skirts and if I had anything to say for myself. I just got really confused and started crying, I told them I had no idea what they were talking about. Fortunately they believed me, but the fact that they took things that far in the first place left a very bad impression on me regarding both school administrators and sexual harassment claims.
Edit: this was in the early 90's, by the way. I'm sure it's only gotten worse.
Not great for Google executives to be doing this.
Obviously, the federal govt or the state of CA wouldn't support that approach if it were to make its way into a courtroom, but it's accepted as a "necessary evil" in the more elevated and sophisticated circles.
And at the same time, it's the "left" kind of sexism by other meaning.
A past suit by a recruiter had emails filed as evidence to the court where recruiters were told to cancel all interviews with candidates who were not women or Black. [1]
And yet if you mention this, you're the racist. You're the White nationalist (even though the media celebrates Black nationalism).
Even so--they also have lawsuits alleging discrimination against promoting Black employees.
There's really nothing contradictory about this. Different individuals can be racist in different ways.
[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/01/google-job-quotas-fav... [2] https://www.cspicenter.com/p/what-diversity-and-inclusion-me...
This is the same company that kept Vic Gundotra until Google+ itself proved unworkable.
It's not ok no matter the gender of the individuals involved. That woman needs to be fired.
I can't say I have seen any fist-fights, though.
> When he asked why he was non-inclusive, Olohan was told that he had shown favouritism towards high-performing employees and that he was “ableist” for commenting on other employees’ “walking pace.”
Sounds like satire...
Wait, what...?
"Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense."
I envision a world with millions of 1-10 person remote companies working together. All this crap would simply evaporate.
Why is this seen as exclusion? If you are bad at your job then you need to improve or suffer the consequences.
Goodness me.
Just playing the devil's advocate here, but let's assume for a minute we could reorganize things a little to avoid matters like this becoming a problem.
Like say, we could make women stronger than men, or we could give people a switch to turn their libido off, or we could invent a drug that when people intoxicate with it they want to speak about math instead of having sex. Any ideas?
I just want to deliver fast code and good user experience, not worry about "politics" and completely subverted safety nets that are now weaponized against men, not even mentioning presumption of innocence flying out the window long ago.
Also, reporting rate is probably different for males vs females.
In my case it didn’t bother me at all, but I just find it funny how little they have to worry about their actions being seen as too far.
men victims have almost no statistics, because they are not collected
the absense of evidence is not the evidence of absence, this guy tried reporting it and the complaint was tossed in a dusty chamber like a chicago rape kit
https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/josi....
I've certainly been groped and also kissed when in the middle of a crowd.
I hate the level of politicisation over this, it's a shitty thing to do no matter who does it.
Similar too, "white people are shot by cops". Similar to "white people are discriminated against in colleges".
The point is true it is shitty no matter. Though, now the conversation is shifted if a person were to focus on root causes of either problem. Overall, false equivalence.
Sorry, I see your point, I know that this is used to derail conversations, you're right, but "false equivalence" kinda implies that one thing is worse than the other. It is, systematically, but it isn't, personally. If you were raped, it doesn't help you that the power dynamic is and was different in our society between genders and your chance was lower, you are still as scarred for life.
Maybe say this explicitly also, when talking about "false equivalence". It may be kinda hurtful to hear people say more or less "oh yeah, both shitty, but one thing is the real problem in society, let's not derail" without this very important distinction.
Because you cannot assume that everyone or even the majority makes that distinction. Everyone agrees that people getting shot is bad on the personal level for the victim, because then they are dead. But many people think a e.g. boy getting raped (regardless of the perpetrators gender) is less of a problem on the personal level for the victim.
It is not. It really is not. And it hurts, because even people you trust suddenly say shit like "for boys it's not that serious, they don't keep this baggage for the rest of their life", "they work it out fast". But it's just not true.
I know that you probably didn't mean it that way, I just wanna tell you that that's the way it may be read. Because many people actually say this and mean it in the "on the personal level, for the victim, it's not as bad" way and thus it may be very difficult not to default to the "worse" interpretation, after being burned by assuming the "better" interpretation once before.
Sorry for the nitpicking ^^'
Eg: "cyclist kills pedestrian" The town hall and citizenry get up in arms to protect pedestrians, letters to the editors are flying about the menace of push bikes, links are shared and retweeted thousands of times. Laws are passed to enforce bicycle registration, speed limits on trails are imposed and metered, enforcement task forces are created, and proud press releases from the mayor to address the citizens concerns for "getting tough on bikes - we will protect the pedestrians!"
Meanwhile, a pedestrian is struck and killed by a motor vehicle every 85 minutes in the USA. A pedestrian being struck and killed by a bicycle is just rare. While the families of either victim grieve just as much as the other, the measures to protect the pedestrians are virtue signaling and overall a way to avoid dealing with the real problem (like, actually making people drive under 35mph so crashes are survivable for pedestrians, etc..)
The false equivalence is not the impact of the problem, but the prevalence of the problem.
AFAIK, most yearly sexual harrassment training at workplaces is mandated in most states. That training makes it clear any gender can instigate harrassment. I'm surprised that this seems like anything new.
If a person wants to deal with sexual harassment, you kinda need to make an impact on the 90% causes of the problem. Instead, this kind of "man bites dog" story does results in debates of nitpicking. Nobody said this isn't horrible for anyone to experience, men or woman. But, creating a false equivalence that this is an equal problem for everyone ignores what are going to be otherwise uncomfortable truths.
It's one of those problems where one side doesn't need to win, just make sure that the other side does not (eg, troll, buy time, change the subject, what-aboutism, attack the messenger, etc..)
The data we have is that sexual assault and harrasment from woman is rare. That does not mean it does not happen, but it is rare. Some commentators stated that men being harassed is under reported, well it is overall under-reported.
In sum, sexual harrasment is a big problem no matter who experiences it. Though, the focus here creates a real risk of a "man bites dog" type of story.
It was not a willful mis-reading. I do not think you are a hypocrite, and my comment was not meant to create a "straw retort". I honestly believe you want to erradicate rape. I tried my best to make this as clear as possible, if I wasn't able to convey it well enough that is my fault and I'm sorry. English is not my first language, this is not meant as a justification.
I just wanted to tell you that "false equivalence" in this context can be used in two ways by different people. You used it in the way you restate in this comment. I totally agree with you.
Some people use it in a different way, though. Some people will tell you (in your face, in real life) that sexual assault against boys is not as bad impact wise (*regardless* of the gender of the perpetrator, in the example I'm thinking of it was even a male perpetrator), because they will not be impacted in the long-term and the body parts that are "used" are not as intimate for boys. That's a really shit take, IMO, even more shit if it's close friends that think like that. Stuff like that makes it a bit hard to always assume that "the impact is the same" is really implicitly included. :/
Again, I never assumed (with my brain) you were one of those people and now I know for sure. But those opinions started exactly the same way. They just did not then state that "the impact is bad and / or equal in both cases", but continued that "the impact is not as bad in one case, the impact is not comparable". It's a... false equivalence, impact wise.
I misread it in the latter way initially for a short while (especially because of the comparison to "whites are discriminated against in college"), and I hope you believe me when I tell you that it was not a willful mis-reading. Sometimes the heart reads before the brain, you know? Sorry. :)
That was more or less all I wanted to tell you. That some people may misread statements like "Overall, false equivalence." because they experienced very bad takes on this topic that started similarly in the past, and it may be a good idea to e.g. explictly state "Overall, while the individual impact is equal, women are more often victims of sexual assault.". Because then it is immediately clear what you mean, and "the impact is equal" is not only said implicitly. :)
But if you don't want to, that's totally okay, too, of course! It's only a small suggestion.
Again, I agree with your point. Sorry for the inconvenience, I shouldn't have written that comment in the first place. I'm just a bit too thin-skinned with this subject. Sorry. I hope you have a nice week.
The OP question was: "why is this political"
My response should have been a lot more concise. In sum: "This is a 'man bites dog story' that can be used to create a false equivalence for the prevalence of harassment between men & women, which can then be used in an attack-the-messenger style argument of "you don't actually care about sexual harassment, you just want to attack men'"
The amount of nuance here is pretty astounding, so those that want a status quo really want us to be having this conversation.
> Sorry. I hope you have a nice week.
No need to apologize, and the comment was not without its merits! It's a nuanced issue and discussion! My same wishes for you!
And that's exactly correct in this case. The answer is not "ignore or dismiss people who ask about why we don't focus on women doing X", it's "we should investigate women doing X too, because X is wrong no matter who does it".
How often do you expect to hear about it when all the complaints are officially dismissed and the victim is told to shut up?
Sure, but because of the way male victims are treated, you hear even less about them than about female victims.
Why do people put themselves in these situations at work? I'm nervous having even 1 drink with work colleagues in todays day and age, let alone getting plastered 3 times with the same people after an incident.
There are some positions that require you to follow set of unspoken rules just to belong. It’s both proof of inclusion and signaling.
Depending on place there might be different factors. It can be as simple as attendance, but it might also be about attire, jewelry, watches, presence during cultural events, who knows who etc. etc.
American Psycho’s business card scene is a nice if overdrawn example. Seemingly unimportant object is fetishized. In reality those behaviors are usually much more subtle and can take form of: don’t attend when invited, you won’t be invited ever again.
Sadly for many other fields (especially sales/marketing) or for management positions, social events are essentially mandatory. Sure you can skip one every once in a while, but if you start skipping too many your career prospects in the company will be impacted.
*obviously this is company/industry dependent.
I always expected capitalism to eat itself, but not like this... not like this.
This is one side of a two-sided story.
> In response to Olohan’s request during the call for specifics as to why Google believed he was not inclusive, Google’s Employee Investigations team explained that he had shown favoritism towards high performers, which it considered “non-inclusive,” and commented on employees’ walking pace and hustle, which it considered “ableist.”
"From each according to his ability to each according to his need" is not capitalism.
"Capitalism" most certainly doesn't value equality or diversity.
The factors included:
- How attractive was he vs. the woman?
- I noticed he has 7 kids, and went to Providence College. So I'm guessing a devout Roman Catholic, which would mean he (publicly, at least) has a world view that values marital fidelity.
- In his LinkedIn profile [0], he claims that his family started basically a charity ice-cream shop. And the start date is 5 months before the first alleged sexual harassment. I guessed that a family with a distressed marriage would probably be unable to pull that off.
- On the other hand, IIUC, it seems like he's in marketing, which would mean he's got experience managing his companies' brand as well as his personal brand. So that raised my guard a little.
It's always horrifying to make the wrong call on this, so it's just best avoided until evidence on either side solidifies. We also want to create an environment safe for victims to speak up, even if that means false positives every now and then.
I just posted my initial thought process because I found it interesting.
Attraction is personal. Someone can, for example, be biased for and against certain ways people look, and so, their selection don't match the supposed attractiveness. And also, attraction is not just looks. A beautiful person can reek of body odor, for example.
Being religious can't just imply morality, it can imply hypocrisy too. People sometimes lead a very different personal life, compared to their public life, and religion works well for that.
Similar thing applies to the charity ice-cream shop. People take on all kinds of projects in a distressed situation. For one thing, it can be an excellent way to not care about the original problems. It's a thing for example that troubled couples try for children, in order to better their relationship.
The only thing that's worthy of consideration is the marketing angle. But even then, there are a lot of shitty marketers in the world. And many people who can build a certain image, and yet they don't work in marketing.
Only those will lots of vested RSU will downvote lol. Gotta get that money at any cost
Women can become extremely vindictive after getting rejected. A-type females with narcissistic tendencies who usually climb the corporate ladder extremely well are known for that.
Asian girls absolutely love European guys, and his sexual market value appears to be higher than hers (judging from the pictures).
If it all turns out to be true, I hope she gets prison time.