HR is never there for the employee. They exist to protect the Company. They give lip service to protecting and nurturing the employees and our people are our most precious asset BS. The only time HR will go after any of the big boys is when they are on the outs with the board. Example: Mark Hurd when he was forced out at HP.
> One believes in these things only until they become managers themselves. And every one aspires to be one in this industry.
Oh god no, not even close to everyone in this industry aspires to be a manager.
Personally, even if I end up becoming a manager I don't think my opinion on unions will change. Ten years ago people told me that my opinion on taxes would change once I made more money too and if anything I support higher taxes even more now.
I think you misunderstood my point in the "answers that are out there for anyone serious to find" - I'm saying it's worth restating your arguments even if you think people "should" know the "obvious" and "proven". Nothing in that position makes it ironic that I also stated my understanding of things (Be that understanding right or wrong).
> If you say data is available to support your argument, you should link to it.
I've chased this rabbit hole before - assuming you are sincere, I'll point to Wikipedia and let you follow their citations, but there's lots out there:
> In the US the average woman's unadjusted annual salary has been cited as 78% to 82% of that of the average man's. However, after adjusting for choices made by male and female workers in college major, occupation, working hours, and parental leave, multiple studies find that pay rates between males and females varied by 5–6.6% or, females earning 94 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts. The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from gender discrimination and a difference in ability and/or willingness to negotiate salaries.
I'll be conservative and take the lowest difference and assume that college major, occupation, working hours, and parental leave are 100% by un-pressured choice: 95 cents to the dollar doesn't sound like a lot, until you ask yourself if a 5% raise is significant, particularly since the amount of money in question takes effect every single year. My anecdotal experience suggests the conservative assumptions for that are not reasonable, but YMMV.
Heck, I’m at 0 HN points anyway: A male/female difference of 5% on basic criteria seems nothing, especially considering that women are nonstop drama at work when all is good, and are a legally explosive cocktail for up to 38 years if I believe the Kavanaugh accusation. I would never work with a woman anymore, plus the company loses 50% efficiency by hiring them, and then needs to hire an HR department and legal counsel. A company with women is a severely badly managed company.
I disagree with about every single conclusion you've drawn there, but I appreciate that you're willing to be clear and honest about your positions and beliefs. I won't upvote you, but I won't downvote either.
Even the wikipedia article says there's no citation given to backup the claims (see first paragraph).
> The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from gender discrimination and a difference in ability and/or willingness to negotiate salaries.
So according to wikipedia, men may have higher ability or be better negotiators? I don't see a gender pay gap here.
How so? The article rants about the 78% claim, without addressing that (a) even correcting for the concerns they state a pay gap exists, and (b) those "choices" men and women make aren't always free choices (witness who takes parental leave in the US vs in more egalitarian countries.
> men may have higher ability or be better negotiators? I don't see a gender pay gap here.
I fail to see how not knowing the source of a gap disproves the gap.
And men having more frequent and successful negotiations is a pretty tested topic itself. When perceived aggression garners one gender respect and another disdain, it's an inevitable result.
Youre being incredibly unfair: That's not at all what I said, and your post I responded to also made no claim along these lines. You're misrepresenting my and your past statements.
What we were talking about is ending forced arbitration (the "process" referred to by the person you responded to) so that the law can be used to protect victims. That doesn't mean protections at work suddenly go away. It also doesn't mean suddenly employers will let sexual harassment run rampant either. It's not a binary either-or choice at all. So why not all protections.
The post I replied to implied that the criminal justice system is the only solution to these problems:
"employees should be able to sue, that's the process,sexual harassment is a crime, they can't sue because Google force them into arbitration,"
Notwithstanding the unbelievable confusion of law in that post is a whole other conversation.
I argued that companies should also have a plan in place to prevent sexual harassment at work by using an analogy to robbery, also a crime, that we use preventative measures to stop despite there being a criminal system punishing robbery.
Your response was claiming I was expressing poor judgment for arguing that companies are responsible for not creating environments rife for sexual harassment.
"Comparing sexual assault to a store robbery in a tone of sarcasm is at best a poor judgement call."
I don't agree. I think it's a reasonable demonstration of the absurdity of the position I'm replying to.
I don't know what else you wrote, but that's what I replied to.
Re-read his post: people should be able to sue in lieu of forced arbitration, they're never advocating for "create an environment for sexual assaults". Nowhere and no one is arguing for creating an environment for sexual assaults in this thread. The reason it seems like an absurdity is because you're setting it up to be one when no one is advocating it, which is the definition of a strawman.
Sorry, but if you're still going to stick on this point then this'll be the last thing I say on the matter.
You are misreading the “violence and intimidation” in that definition as if it were “violence or intimidation”; it actually contradicts rather than supports your claim.
I cited one defintion, here's one for you from Merriam-Webster
"terorrism: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion"
If you go look at press coverage right now, it looks like there's a minimum of dozens of employees at each of many worldwide locations that have walked out. If you're telling me a company doesn't feel that, doesn't feel a hundred or possibly thousands of employees refusing to work even 1 shift, because they are upset about how something was handled, that that isn't 'the systematic use of terror' to coerce Google to change policy then...
You should say what you mean. Your statement can be widened to "Protest is terrorism" and if that's what you really think then you are prioritizing business over human rights. I fundamentally disagree with this logic because if you or I were in a situation we were wronged we would expect others to look out for our rights. Democracy works because people cooperate, and part of cooperation is protest.
It's over the top to invoke 'terrorism' in this context and at this point you're basically trolling. Please stop, and please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents.
Yeah, 100% agreed. Sorry - I was responding specifically to the question of whether HR should be in the loop, and didn't intend to suggest that the civil courts shouldn't also be part of it.
I wouldn't shed a tear if forced arbitration were banned. I can't really see it as not being at least partially an attempt to wiggle out from under the rule of law.
Because it doesn't actually do that.
Only in the u.s. do people believe that suing over anything and everything is an efficient or effective mechanism of justice
"Sue it out" is probably the least effective possible conflict resolution mechanism along almost any axis.
The underlying goal of arbitration is to ensure effective resolution of non-complex situations and reserve the courts for actually complex cases, instead of now, where they are used because people hope they can make a bunch of money.
The only thing I'm aware of is people complain of bias of arbitrators using the proxy of how often business wins relative to people in courts (with no evaluation of whether people should be winning as much as they do in court).
Otherwise I have seen nothing that suggests that arbitration is not in fact very effective and efficient at reducing the cost and time involved.
- it is funded typically by the company, and is very likely to agree with the company
Maybe suing constantly is an american thing, but if that is to be addressed it should be by congress not by individual companies wanting to circumvent civil law.
Most indentured servitude in the US was a voluntary agreement [1] although all such agreements are now illegal by the 13th amendment.
Also, there exist the concept of a so-called "unconscionable contract." I'm not saying this proposition is true, but I'm submitting for evaluation: is the act of submitting to private investigation processes that may be used as evidence against you in civil or criminal courts unconscionable?
One view is that management knows that and did it anyway.
Perhaps they felt it was worth letting it be a bigger event and taking a PR hit if in return what they get is that the employees feel that the company supports them.
Good Machiavellian way to oust competing managers as well. Personally, that would be a horrible thing to do to another person, but then again, we know at least some of these managers kept silent during this whole fiasco; we're not talking about saints here.
> ...why the company should be the primary responsible entity for this...Having a private entity that has a vested interest in the events seem...unwise.
All other issues aside: the company should want to make an environment where good people want to work and can work without "distractions" (using the word very broadly and generically, not dismissing people's important concerns!!!). So it's in their self interest to deal with them well.
This line of argument isn't that different from the GP's analogy to site uptime.
> And every one aspires to be one in this industry.
This is so far from the truth that I don't know how to make sense of your claim. Either you are living in a bubble or in a place which provides no career path to engineers (thus forcing them to want to be managers) or you are interpreting the data you are faced with incorrectly.
There are so many people in this industry who never want to be a manager that this claim of yours is frankly absurd!
I mean I'm not saying give ultimate judicial authority to any accuser. Just that we should be able to respect our peers' opinions as being worth something more than "not at all". Granted, I should have perhaps made that clearer rather than slipping into rhetoric.
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... well, let me quote the Atlantic's Matthew Stewart:
>You see, when educated people with excellent credentials band together to advance their collective interest, it’s all part of serving the public good by ensuring a high quality of service, establishing fair working conditions, and giving merit its due. That’s why we do it through “associations,” and with the assistance of fellow professionals wearing white shoes. When working-class people do it—through unions—it’s a violation of the sacred principles of the free market.
Why do you think the alternative is a conjunction of randomness at every level? Why not
* the people are HR
* trained in sexual harassment prevention and response
* following a transparent policy approved by the board and a union vote (or something like it, for instance an employee rep on the board like they are asking for)
Maybe this isn't the best alternative. I'm just saying, it's not like the choice is between (a) the government works it out and (b) everything is random.
The point of a company investigation is to investigate violations of company policies; law enforcement doesn't get involved in determining if company policies were violated, it's simply not in their purview.
If during an investigation they find criminal behavior they can (and usually should) turn over their evidence to law enforcement and let them do their job, which is investigating violations of criminal law.
Violations of company policies and violations of criminal law have huge differences in burden of proof.
People sometimes confuse the two and say things like "they should have never been punished at work because they weren't convicted in a court of law." But that's not exactly how it works, the burden of proof for work punishment is simply a large magnitude lower than legal punishment.
Most workplace harassment is not criminal. Most violations of company policy aren't criminal.
>That's how we got the Salem witch trials and why mere accusations aren't usually enough.
That's how plenty of hard-working, innocent, Americans got blackballed and had their careers ruined by McCarthyism.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities resulted in many things, but the Hollywood Blacklist alone was something like 150 names of almost entirely innocent people. Those people couldn't get work because someone accused each of them of being communists, often with zero evidence.
221 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadalso: some types of sexual harassment that are not crimes in the US are crimes in India.
And even if this were true, some things are worth taking risks over.
Oh god no, not even close to everyone in this industry aspires to be a manager.
Personally, even if I end up becoming a manager I don't think my opinion on unions will change. Ten years ago people told me that my opinion on taxes would change once I made more money too and if anything I support higher taxes even more now.
>ter·ror·ism /ˈterəˌrizəm/ noun the unlawful use of violence and intimidation
u srs bruh?
I think you misunderstood my point in the "answers that are out there for anyone serious to find" - I'm saying it's worth restating your arguments even if you think people "should" know the "obvious" and "proven". Nothing in that position makes it ironic that I also stated my understanding of things (Be that understanding right or wrong).
> If you say data is available to support your argument, you should link to it.
I've chased this rabbit hole before - assuming you are sincere, I'll point to Wikipedia and let you follow their citations, but there's lots out there:
> In the US the average woman's unadjusted annual salary has been cited as 78% to 82% of that of the average man's. However, after adjusting for choices made by male and female workers in college major, occupation, working hours, and parental leave, multiple studies find that pay rates between males and females varied by 5–6.6% or, females earning 94 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts. The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from gender discrimination and a difference in ability and/or willingness to negotiate salaries.
I'll be conservative and take the lowest difference and assume that college major, occupation, working hours, and parental leave are 100% by un-pressured choice: 95 cents to the dollar doesn't sound like a lot, until you ask yourself if a 5% raise is significant, particularly since the amount of money in question takes effect every single year. My anecdotal experience suggests the conservative assumptions for that are not reasonable, but YMMV.
> The remaining 6% of the gap has been speculated to originate from gender discrimination and a difference in ability and/or willingness to negotiate salaries.
So according to wikipedia, men may have higher ability or be better negotiators? I don't see a gender pay gap here.
Here's a good article on the subject:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karinagness/2016/04/12/dont-buy...
How so? The article rants about the 78% claim, without addressing that (a) even correcting for the concerns they state a pay gap exists, and (b) those "choices" men and women make aren't always free choices (witness who takes parental leave in the US vs in more egalitarian countries.
> men may have higher ability or be better negotiators? I don't see a gender pay gap here.
I fail to see how not knowing the source of a gap disproves the gap.
And men having more frequent and successful negotiations is a pretty tested topic itself. When perceived aggression garners one gender respect and another disdain, it's an inevitable result.
What we were talking about is ending forced arbitration (the "process" referred to by the person you responded to) so that the law can be used to protect victims. That doesn't mean protections at work suddenly go away. It also doesn't mean suddenly employers will let sexual harassment run rampant either. It's not a binary either-or choice at all. So why not all protections.
"employees should be able to sue, that's the process,sexual harassment is a crime, they can't sue because Google force them into arbitration,"
Notwithstanding the unbelievable confusion of law in that post is a whole other conversation.
I argued that companies should also have a plan in place to prevent sexual harassment at work by using an analogy to robbery, also a crime, that we use preventative measures to stop despite there being a criminal system punishing robbery.
Your response was claiming I was expressing poor judgment for arguing that companies are responsible for not creating environments rife for sexual harassment.
"Comparing sexual assault to a store robbery in a tone of sarcasm is at best a poor judgement call."
I don't agree. I think it's a reasonable demonstration of the absurdity of the position I'm replying to.
I don't know what else you wrote, but that's what I replied to.
Sorry, but if you're still going to stick on this point then this'll be the last thing I say on the matter.
"terorrism: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion"
If you go look at press coverage right now, it looks like there's a minimum of dozens of employees at each of many worldwide locations that have walked out. If you're telling me a company doesn't feel that, doesn't feel a hundred or possibly thousands of employees refusing to work even 1 shift, because they are upset about how something was handled, that that isn't 'the systematic use of terror' to coerce Google to change policy then...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I wouldn't shed a tear if forced arbitration were banned. I can't really see it as not being at least partially an attempt to wiggle out from under the rule of law.
"Sue it out" is probably the least effective possible conflict resolution mechanism along almost any axis.
The underlying goal of arbitration is to ensure effective resolution of non-complex situations and reserve the courts for actually complex cases, instead of now, where they are used because people hope they can make a bunch of money.
The only thing I'm aware of is people complain of bias of arbitrators using the proxy of how often business wins relative to people in courts (with no evaluation of whether people should be winning as much as they do in court).
Otherwise I have seen nothing that suggests that arbitration is not in fact very effective and efficient at reducing the cost and time involved.
- it prevents class-action lawsuits
- it is funded typically by the company, and is very likely to agree with the company
Maybe suing constantly is an american thing, but if that is to be addressed it should be by congress not by individual companies wanting to circumvent civil law.
Also, there exist the concept of a so-called "unconscionable contract." I'm not saying this proposition is true, but I'm submitting for evaluation: is the act of submitting to private investigation processes that may be used as evidence against you in civil or criminal courts unconscionable?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude_in_the_...
Perhaps they felt it was worth letting it be a bigger event and taking a PR hit if in return what they get is that the employees feel that the company supports them.
All other issues aside: the company should want to make an environment where good people want to work and can work without "distractions" (using the word very broadly and generically, not dismissing people's important concerns!!!). So it's in their self interest to deal with them well.
This line of argument isn't that different from the GP's analogy to site uptime.
This is so far from the truth that I don't know how to make sense of your claim. Either you are living in a bubble or in a place which provides no career path to engineers (thus forcing them to want to be managers) or you are interpreting the data you are faced with incorrectly.
There are so many people in this industry who never want to be a manager that this claim of yours is frankly absurd!
Particularly when you get many people saying the same thing independently, in a social context rather different to that of Salem in 1693.
>You see, when educated people with excellent credentials band together to advance their collective interest, it’s all part of serving the public good by ensuring a high quality of service, establishing fair working conditions, and giving merit its due. That’s why we do it through “associations,” and with the assistance of fellow professionals wearing white shoes. When working-class people do it—through unions—it’s a violation of the sacred principles of the free market.
* the people are HR
* trained in sexual harassment prevention and response
* following a transparent policy approved by the board and a union vote (or something like it, for instance an employee rep on the board like they are asking for)
Maybe this isn't the best alternative. I'm just saying, it's not like the choice is between (a) the government works it out and (b) everything is random.
If during an investigation they find criminal behavior they can (and usually should) turn over their evidence to law enforcement and let them do their job, which is investigating violations of criminal law.
Violations of company policies and violations of criminal law have huge differences in burden of proof.
People sometimes confuse the two and say things like "they should have never been punished at work because they weren't convicted in a court of law." But that's not exactly how it works, the burden of proof for work punishment is simply a large magnitude lower than legal punishment.
Most workplace harassment is not criminal. Most violations of company policy aren't criminal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_VL4gqrCHc&t=392
But if they did that, they be giving up control over their careers and the right to deal with their problems with their supervisors, one on one. /s
That's how plenty of hard-working, innocent, Americans got blackballed and had their careers ruined by McCarthyism.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities resulted in many things, but the Hollywood Blacklist alone was something like 150 names of almost entirely innocent people. Those people couldn't get work because someone accused each of them of being communists, often with zero evidence.
Wasn't it revealed that most on the list continued to work in Hollywood under pseudonyms?
I mean, certainly denying work was the intent of the list, but...