After Working at Google, I’ll Never Let Myself Love a Job Again
April 8, 2021 2:03 PM Subscribe
Writing in an editorial for the New York Times software engineer and former Google employee Emi Nietfeld recounts how she bought into the sense of community espoused by Google - and how that wound up harming her when she was sexually harassed by her technical lead. (SLNYT)
Google's failures in HR previously on the Blue.
Google's failures in HR previously on the Blue.
Yes. But a great read. I looked her up after finishing and she's apparently working on a memoir "Acceptance, [that] follows [her] journey from foster care and homelessness to Harvard and Silicon Valley."
posted by AwkwardPause at 2:28 PM on April 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by AwkwardPause at 2:28 PM on April 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
"It's a job" is the most healthy attitude to have toward an employer.
posted by JohnFromGR at 2:34 PM on April 8, 2021 [105 favorites]
posted by JohnFromGR at 2:34 PM on April 8, 2021 [105 favorites]
Forcing someone to continue to work closely with their harasser is just so unambiguously fucked. An immediate red flag that the company is not taking a complaint seriously.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 2:35 PM on April 8, 2021 [42 favorites]
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 2:35 PM on April 8, 2021 [42 favorites]
Whenever a boss tells me “we’re family here,” I check my wallet.
posted by anshuman at 2:37 PM on April 8, 2021 [74 favorites]
posted by anshuman at 2:37 PM on April 8, 2021 [74 favorites]
"It's a job" is the most healthy attitude to have toward an employer.
Of course, but for new grads coming into the workforce from an environment that has been as much community as it is education, the hard sell that companies like Google do is easy to fall into. It's why the company taking care of all of one's needs is so dangerous.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:45 PM on April 8, 2021 [17 favorites]
Of course, but for new grads coming into the workforce from an environment that has been as much community as it is education, the hard sell that companies like Google do is easy to fall into. It's why the company taking care of all of one's needs is so dangerous.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:45 PM on April 8, 2021 [17 favorites]
It's easy to sit here from the perspective of a preternaturally disaffected Gen-Xer and think, "oh, you should have known that wasn't what jobs are for," but that doesn't mean I'm not sad for her that she had that experience. Mostly I'm just extremely disappointed in Google, again. "Don't be evil" indeed.
posted by fedward at 2:48 PM on April 8, 2021 [33 favorites]
posted by fedward at 2:48 PM on April 8, 2021 [33 favorites]
This is such a common pattern. A mistreats B. B cannot believe they're being mistreated & chooses to blame themself. Eventually the mistreatment becomes unbearable. B asks for help. Help does not arrive. An investigation takes place. The larger group also cannot believe that mistreatment occured.
Meanwhile people mistreating each other is the oldest story ever told. Why does everyone seem to find it so hard to believe when it's actually happening. It's like its hardwired into our brains to write it off to maintain group cohesion. But it's extremely dangerous for us at the same time.
posted by bleep at 2:49 PM on April 8, 2021 [30 favorites]
Meanwhile people mistreating each other is the oldest story ever told. Why does everyone seem to find it so hard to believe when it's actually happening. It's like its hardwired into our brains to write it off to maintain group cohesion. But it's extremely dangerous for us at the same time.
posted by bleep at 2:49 PM on April 8, 2021 [30 favorites]
Why is tech in general so persistently bad at this? I can think of exceptions, but it seems like the majority of tech has persistent problems. Is it just the proportion of men to women? The privilege/entitlement that seems to come with the opportunities to get a tech education? Or is it the mentality of engineer type brains that is vulnerable to rationalization?
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:03 PM on April 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:03 PM on April 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
I see these same stories across every industry. I see all kinds of tweets that are like "[Insert profession] has a [sexism/racism/ableism/transphobia/ageism] problem!" as if it actually is just one problem that only that one individual's profession is experiencing when you can quit any job and get any other job in any industry and see the same stories play out one after another the same way every time.
posted by bleep at 3:06 PM on April 8, 2021 [29 favorites]
posted by bleep at 3:06 PM on April 8, 2021 [29 favorites]
I actually also don't think "It's just a job" is a super healthy outlook either. For our soft little innocent brains, nothing is "just" anything. Forming close relationships with the people you spend all day every with isn't the problem, it's what we're supposed to do. Violating those relationships is the problem.
posted by bleep at 3:09 PM on April 8, 2021 [76 favorites]
posted by bleep at 3:09 PM on April 8, 2021 [76 favorites]
Finally, I agreed that he could call me “my queen.”
sorry brb violently retching
posted by benzenedream at 3:20 PM on April 8, 2021 [36 favorites]
sorry brb violently retching
posted by benzenedream at 3:20 PM on April 8, 2021 [36 favorites]
When I didn’t get a promotion, some of my stock grants ran out and so I effectively took a big pay cut.
What does this mean? Stock grants are contingent on a particular promotion schedule?
posted by yarrow at 3:23 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
What does this mean? Stock grants are contingent on a particular promotion schedule?
posted by yarrow at 3:23 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
I don't think Google has yet realized the damage to their reputation that's been done by stories like this one, the firings of Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, the resignation of Samy Bengio, and probably more to come as well as some past events I can't rattle off the top of my head. I hope it spurs reform, but if not, a decline.
There's hardly a week goes by that I'm not thankful that I got insight into the SV culture at a fairly young age and managed to figure out that it wasn't the utopia it was often cracked up to be. I've been happily employed in boutique software dev my whole career and wouldn't ever even consider working for a FAANG company. Say what you want about small companies but at least you don't have to get 12 managers' worth of buy-in and an estimate from the finance department to get rid of a creep.
posted by axiom at 3:37 PM on April 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
There's hardly a week goes by that I'm not thankful that I got insight into the SV culture at a fairly young age and managed to figure out that it wasn't the utopia it was often cracked up to be. I've been happily employed in boutique software dev my whole career and wouldn't ever even consider working for a FAANG company. Say what you want about small companies but at least you don't have to get 12 managers' worth of buy-in and an estimate from the finance department to get rid of a creep.
posted by axiom at 3:37 PM on April 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
What does this mean? Stock grants are contingent on a particular promotion schedule?
They're tied to performance reviews more directly, but indirectly to promos as well, as more senior employees tend to get more. I don't know what happened here but it's technically true that employees at a lot of tech companies get stock grants refreshed without getting promoted. But like all amazing work incentives, there's no guarantee you get them. Again, I know nothing about this particular situation, but could this be retaliation? Maybe.
posted by GuyZero at 3:41 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
They're tied to performance reviews more directly, but indirectly to promos as well, as more senior employees tend to get more. I don't know what happened here but it's technically true that employees at a lot of tech companies get stock grants refreshed without getting promoted. But like all amazing work incentives, there's no guarantee you get them. Again, I know nothing about this particular situation, but could this be retaliation? Maybe.
posted by GuyZero at 3:41 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I guessing she exercised all her initial grants and wasn't given any more.
(Aside: does Google NOT have an ESPP? That's a very tidy and guaranteed ROI every six months if you can afford to participate.)
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:44 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
(Aside: does Google NOT have an ESPP? That's a very tidy and guaranteed ROI every six months if you can afford to participate.)
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 3:44 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
When I didn’t get a promotion, some of my stock grants ran out and so I effectively took a big pay cut.
Stock grants are contingent on a particular promotion schedule?
A common pattern, for FAANG & would-be FAANG, is for a significant portion of your compensation to come in the form of stock (grants or options). This will be spread out, usually over the span of 4 years.
You may have ~$100k dangled in front of you (for example). 10% of it is given to you after your first year. 10% is granted after your second year. 80% is granted monthly in years 3 & 4. (exact ratio varies by company)
This is powerful incentive to stick around for years 3 & 4 (and to survive the stack-ranking). There's also often a "clawback" clause where if you leave you have to repay the previous year's bonuses/grants if you don't sign non-disclosure+non-disparagement+non-compete contracts.
You'll get little bonuses here and there potentially, but the big draw is getting a refresh which only comes with a promotion. So if you don't get promoted, your total compensation might get cut in half (or greater, if you're a Senior Dev).
posted by CrystalDave at 3:46 PM on April 8, 2021 [18 favorites]
Stock grants are contingent on a particular promotion schedule?
A common pattern, for FAANG & would-be FAANG, is for a significant portion of your compensation to come in the form of stock (grants or options). This will be spread out, usually over the span of 4 years.
You may have ~$100k dangled in front of you (for example). 10% of it is given to you after your first year. 10% is granted after your second year. 80% is granted monthly in years 3 & 4. (exact ratio varies by company)
This is powerful incentive to stick around for years 3 & 4 (and to survive the stack-ranking). There's also often a "clawback" clause where if you leave you have to repay the previous year's bonuses/grants if you don't sign non-disclosure+non-disparagement+non-compete contracts.
You'll get little bonuses here and there potentially, but the big draw is getting a refresh which only comes with a promotion. So if you don't get promoted, your total compensation might get cut in half (or greater, if you're a Senior Dev).
posted by CrystalDave at 3:46 PM on April 8, 2021 [18 favorites]
> for new grads coming into the workforce from an environment that has been as much community as it is education, the hard sell that companies like Google do is easy to fall into. It's why the company taking care of all of one's needs is so dangerous
The company designs and supplies an environment where it intentionally aims to become an oversized part of employees' lives. All the better to incentivise employees to spend as much time as possible in the office, hopefully putting in more hours of productive work. Socialising with colleagues during easy on-"campus" meals can lead to conversations that help solve problems hampering a project or spur ideas that can grow into new products or features that the company can capture and monetize.
Another potential benefit for the company is that the "energy barrier" for employees to leave for a job with a competitor becomes higher*: if you were to defect and take your services to a competitor, you would lose your work-centred social life, need to figure out new suppliers for services such as "meals", and perhaps also need to revise a chunk of your identity.
Employees with more life experience, more work experience, or stronger bonds with friends and family outside of work are less likely to have their life subsumed by the company and are more likely to put boundaries in place -- either because they have a family to get back to after clocking off each day, or because they appreciate the value of setting boundaries, perhaps due to getting burned before.
> I actually also don't think "It's just a job" is a super healthy outlook either
I agree. Humans are humans and we develop complex social relationships with the people we spend time with. It's what we do. Colleagues can become friends or lovers or rivals. Or abusers.
But in hierarchical for-profit organisations a lot of those human social relationships end up getting overruled by the transactional employer-labour relationships and power imbalances-- what's the bottom line for the company or for each individual in terms of money or power. It reminds me of Graeber's arguments in the book Debt: The First Five Thousand Years about the violence underpinning debt and reduction of social relationships by debt-based relationships.
One way to set boundaries to avoid becoming over-dependent upon the company is to avoid developing strong social ties or relationships with colleagues -- but doing that often takes explicit effort, as it is going against the grain of being human.
* the situation is even less healthy and prone to abuse for people whose visa to work in the country is tied to working for a single employer -- or perhaps working for a single employer that deploys them as contractors to a client corporation such as google. The imbalance of power and structurally one-sided bargaining position means that people working in such situations may have zero alternative options to switch employers in response to sexual harassment or other forms of workplace abuse -- without uprooting their lives and needing to relocate themselves and their families to another country.
posted by are-coral-made at 3:58 PM on April 8, 2021 [15 favorites]
The company designs and supplies an environment where it intentionally aims to become an oversized part of employees' lives. All the better to incentivise employees to spend as much time as possible in the office, hopefully putting in more hours of productive work. Socialising with colleagues during easy on-"campus" meals can lead to conversations that help solve problems hampering a project or spur ideas that can grow into new products or features that the company can capture and monetize.
Another potential benefit for the company is that the "energy barrier" for employees to leave for a job with a competitor becomes higher*: if you were to defect and take your services to a competitor, you would lose your work-centred social life, need to figure out new suppliers for services such as "meals", and perhaps also need to revise a chunk of your identity.
Employees with more life experience, more work experience, or stronger bonds with friends and family outside of work are less likely to have their life subsumed by the company and are more likely to put boundaries in place -- either because they have a family to get back to after clocking off each day, or because they appreciate the value of setting boundaries, perhaps due to getting burned before.
> I actually also don't think "It's just a job" is a super healthy outlook either
I agree. Humans are humans and we develop complex social relationships with the people we spend time with. It's what we do. Colleagues can become friends or lovers or rivals. Or abusers.
But in hierarchical for-profit organisations a lot of those human social relationships end up getting overruled by the transactional employer-labour relationships and power imbalances-- what's the bottom line for the company or for each individual in terms of money or power. It reminds me of Graeber's arguments in the book Debt: The First Five Thousand Years about the violence underpinning debt and reduction of social relationships by debt-based relationships.
One way to set boundaries to avoid becoming over-dependent upon the company is to avoid developing strong social ties or relationships with colleagues -- but doing that often takes explicit effort, as it is going against the grain of being human.
* the situation is even less healthy and prone to abuse for people whose visa to work in the country is tied to working for a single employer -- or perhaps working for a single employer that deploys them as contractors to a client corporation such as google. The imbalance of power and structurally one-sided bargaining position means that people working in such situations may have zero alternative options to switch employers in response to sexual harassment or other forms of workplace abuse -- without uprooting their lives and needing to relocate themselves and their families to another country.
posted by are-coral-made at 3:58 PM on April 8, 2021 [15 favorites]
Why is tech in general so persistently bad at this? I can think of exceptions, but it seems like the majority of tech has persistent problems.
This is only one of many variables, but having been in and around the periphery of tech for 20 years or so, the simple answer is capitalism.
More specifically, it's this idea that scale and growth is king and nothing else matters. Taken to its extreme, this means that a lot of things will be excused or ignored in service of the balance sheet.
I mean, you don't even have to go outside the boundaries of Google to see this obviously in action. Exhibit A: The case of Andy Rubin, which was covered here in the blue 3 years ago. You know, Andy Rubin, the founder of Android who was paid a $90 million dollar settlement to go away and try to keep his sexual harassment of a subordinate quiet.
Rubin's net worth grew from $10 million in 2009 to $350 million in 2017, according to his recent divorce proceedings, so just imagine how much money he made Google itself.
In the tech world, being brash, opinionated, and carrying a IDGAF attitude is often mistaken for a business skill or rare talent, and hence tech companies will go to great lengths to protect those who exhibit this despicable behavior. You would think these self-described smarties would understand that correlation does not = causation, but nah.
posted by jeremias at 4:01 PM on April 8, 2021 [13 favorites]
This is only one of many variables, but having been in and around the periphery of tech for 20 years or so, the simple answer is capitalism.
More specifically, it's this idea that scale and growth is king and nothing else matters. Taken to its extreme, this means that a lot of things will be excused or ignored in service of the balance sheet.
I mean, you don't even have to go outside the boundaries of Google to see this obviously in action. Exhibit A: The case of Andy Rubin, which was covered here in the blue 3 years ago. You know, Andy Rubin, the founder of Android who was paid a $90 million dollar settlement to go away and try to keep his sexual harassment of a subordinate quiet.
Rubin's net worth grew from $10 million in 2009 to $350 million in 2017, according to his recent divorce proceedings, so just imagine how much money he made Google itself.
In the tech world, being brash, opinionated, and carrying a IDGAF attitude is often mistaken for a business skill or rare talent, and hence tech companies will go to great lengths to protect those who exhibit this despicable behavior. You would think these self-described smarties would understand that correlation does not = causation, but nah.
posted by jeremias at 4:01 PM on April 8, 2021 [13 favorites]
This is powerful incentive to stick around for years 3 & 4 (and to survive the stack-ranking).
For some. For others, being locked into an unalterable payment plan for four years means quitting after year and working at one of the other FAANGs long enough that when your manager rehires you in six months, you get to negotiate a fresh contract at a higher base pay. Stock options and grants aren't seen as a great incentive because they're very stable--it's just a block of cash in another form, with no great likelihood of a significant increase in market value making you wealthy, the way startup options used to.
My source is someone who went to work at AWS and was shocked at how openly this tactic was discussed by basically everyone, including the managers who'd be hiring you back.
posted by fatbird at 4:01 PM on April 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
For some. For others, being locked into an unalterable payment plan for four years means quitting after year and working at one of the other FAANGs long enough that when your manager rehires you in six months, you get to negotiate a fresh contract at a higher base pay. Stock options and grants aren't seen as a great incentive because they're very stable--it's just a block of cash in another form, with no great likelihood of a significant increase in market value making you wealthy, the way startup options used to.
My source is someone who went to work at AWS and was shocked at how openly this tactic was discussed by basically everyone, including the managers who'd be hiring you back.
posted by fatbird at 4:01 PM on April 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
> Rubin's net worth grew from $10 million in 2009 to $350 million in 2017, according to his recent divorce proceedings, so just imagine how much money he made Google itself.
> In the year 2020, the digital content platform Google Play generated gross revenues of nearly 40 billion U.S. dollars through mobile apps
I am not sure if $40b / year is gross revenue of app developers, or Google's gross revenue by taking their cut of android app fees. If we're pessimistic and call it the latter, then Google's share of Google Play revenue might be $12b / year. If Google Play runs at 50% gross profit margins that might be $6b / year profit. The value of the play store app market alone to Google would be on the order hundreds of billions of dollars. Ignoring the additional value from data capture that Google obtains from owning the operating system and the software platforms that android users use by default.
posted by are-coral-made at 4:07 PM on April 8, 2021
> In the year 2020, the digital content platform Google Play generated gross revenues of nearly 40 billion U.S. dollars through mobile apps
I am not sure if $40b / year is gross revenue of app developers, or Google's gross revenue by taking their cut of android app fees. If we're pessimistic and call it the latter, then Google's share of Google Play revenue might be $12b / year. If Google Play runs at 50% gross profit margins that might be $6b / year profit. The value of the play store app market alone to Google would be on the order hundreds of billions of dollars. Ignoring the additional value from data capture that Google obtains from owning the operating system and the software platforms that android users use by default.
posted by are-coral-made at 4:07 PM on April 8, 2021
My source is someone who went to work at AWS and was shocked at how openly this tactic was discussed by basically everyone, including the managers who'd be hiring you back.
People leave Google, work elsewhere for multiple years, then come back and they still have bugs assigned, are in the same groups, etc. Companies make plans around this happening.
posted by GuyZero at 4:08 PM on April 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
People leave Google, work elsewhere for multiple years, then come back and they still have bugs assigned, are in the same groups, etc. Companies make plans around this happening.
posted by GuyZero at 4:08 PM on April 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
the big draw is getting a refresh which only comes with a promotion
Thanks - I knew about stock options & that they could take time to vest but I’d thought they were more like a signing bonus, not something that was part of ongoing compensation and might or might not “refresh.” That does seem like a bizarre incentive structure. (I’ve only ever worked for employers that have neither stock nor owners.)
posted by yarrow at 4:10 PM on April 8, 2021
Thanks - I knew about stock options & that they could take time to vest but I’d thought they were more like a signing bonus, not something that was part of ongoing compensation and might or might not “refresh.” That does seem like a bizarre incentive structure. (I’ve only ever worked for employers that have neither stock nor owners.)
posted by yarrow at 4:10 PM on April 8, 2021
I think that it is good advice for employees if companies like this (in any industry) to keep at least some buffer between their self-identity and their workplace. And I think that (to state the bleeding obvious) there are massive systemic issues as well -- tech is one industry that is very bad at this, but it's not the only one, and no industry is actually that good at protecting their employees from harassment in particular. Even union shops, which definitely would be an improvement, can and do fail here.
But ... as someone who manages employees very much like the author, I'm gonna leave some room in addition to "what employees should do to protect themselves" and "the system is horrible" to say that her direct manager is really, really, quite awful.
"After my leave, the manager I loved started treating me as fragile. He tried to analyze me, suggesting that I drank too much caffeine, didn’t sleep enough or needed more cardiovascular exercise. Speaking out irreparably damaged one of my most treasured relationships. Six months after my return, when I broached the subject of promotion, he told me, “People in wood houses shouldn’t light matches.”
That's just ... horrible managing. And being a horrible person. You can operate inside a crappy system and protect your people better than that.
posted by feckless at 4:12 PM on April 8, 2021 [26 favorites]
But ... as someone who manages employees very much like the author, I'm gonna leave some room in addition to "what employees should do to protect themselves" and "the system is horrible" to say that her direct manager is really, really, quite awful.
"After my leave, the manager I loved started treating me as fragile. He tried to analyze me, suggesting that I drank too much caffeine, didn’t sleep enough or needed more cardiovascular exercise. Speaking out irreparably damaged one of my most treasured relationships. Six months after my return, when I broached the subject of promotion, he told me, “People in wood houses shouldn’t light matches.”
That's just ... horrible managing. And being a horrible person. You can operate inside a crappy system and protect your people better than that.
posted by feckless at 4:12 PM on April 8, 2021 [26 favorites]
The work-subsuming-your-life thing is just part and parcel of Silicon Valley, it didn't start with Google. Emily Chang's book, fittingly titled "Brotopia" (p.28), traces it to a long-forgotten high-flying firm from the '90s named Trilogy.
Google's "Don't be evil" slogan is closer to meaningless when you're a public company. "Don't be disappointing the shareholders" is more like it.
Anyone notice where she wound up? It's not like she went to a boutique firm, she went to Facebook. I wonder how Facebook, which offers a similar lifestyle, reputation and esprit de corps feels about her declaration that it's "just a job"? Is there less brogrammer culture when your boss is a robot?
posted by Roy Batty at 4:19 PM on April 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
Google's "Don't be evil" slogan is closer to meaningless when you're a public company. "Don't be disappointing the shareholders" is more like it.
Anyone notice where she wound up? It's not like she went to a boutique firm, she went to Facebook. I wonder how Facebook, which offers a similar lifestyle, reputation and esprit de corps feels about her declaration that it's "just a job"? Is there less brogrammer culture when your boss is a robot?
posted by Roy Batty at 4:19 PM on April 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
Would breaking up this company help? I can't imagine they would have as easy a time getting away with this stuff, if they were broken up into smaller operations. Smaller companies might not be able to get away as easily with retaliating against workers, interfering with labor bargaining for fair pay and rights, and they would not be able to exercise as much undue influence on our political and legal systems (to redirect impactful class action lawsuits into weak arbitration, for instance, or jamming up or moving cases to favorable jurisdictions).
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:22 PM on April 8, 2021
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:22 PM on April 8, 2021
Why is tech in general so persistently bad at this? I can think of exceptions, but it seems like the majority of tech has persistent problems. Is it just the proportion of men to women? The privilege/entitlement that seems to come with the opportunities to get a tech education? Or is it the mentality of engineer type brains that is vulnerable to rationalization?
First off, yes, the gender imbalance plays a role. There's a social network diagram somewhere on the interwebs that illustrates how bad interactions don't seem as prevalent to bystanders -- like, when hiring women is about as rare as hiring creepy dudes, you can't see the problem for what it is unless you're the target of a creepy dude.
Second off, there's a lot of international attitudes being imported, especially in Silicon Valley. We don't just import CS degrees, we also import sexism from place like India, China, UK, EU, etc. Literally a month after joining the US office from a European office an Italian's form of small talk was apparently "Why is it so bad to complement a woman on her body in the US? It's a compliment, don't you think that's being nice? Whats the problem?" And then he proceeded to imply I was gay by politely disagreeing with him.
I don't think there's anything about engineer "brain types" or whatever HR is marketing this quarter driving this. People are likely overfitting of the data regarding the likelihood women are more likely to be in PM or frontend development, but I'm not sure that matches anywhere with 'and therefore I will creep on this person.'
posted by pwnguin at 4:24 PM on April 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
First off, yes, the gender imbalance plays a role. There's a social network diagram somewhere on the interwebs that illustrates how bad interactions don't seem as prevalent to bystanders -- like, when hiring women is about as rare as hiring creepy dudes, you can't see the problem for what it is unless you're the target of a creepy dude.
Second off, there's a lot of international attitudes being imported, especially in Silicon Valley. We don't just import CS degrees, we also import sexism from place like India, China, UK, EU, etc. Literally a month after joining the US office from a European office an Italian's form of small talk was apparently "Why is it so bad to complement a woman on her body in the US? It's a compliment, don't you think that's being nice? Whats the problem?" And then he proceeded to imply I was gay by politely disagreeing with him.
I don't think there's anything about engineer "brain types" or whatever HR is marketing this quarter driving this. People are likely overfitting of the data regarding the likelihood women are more likely to be in PM or frontend development, but I'm not sure that matches anywhere with 'and therefore I will creep on this person.'
posted by pwnguin at 4:24 PM on April 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
Second off, there's a lot of international attitudes being imported, especially in Silicon Valley. We don't just import CS degrees, we also import sexism from place like India, China, UK, EU, etc. Literally a month after joining the US office from a European office an Italian's form of small talk was apparently "Why is it so bad to complement a woman on her body in the US? It's a compliment, don't you think that's being nice? Whats the problem?" And then he proceeded to imply I was gay by politely disagreeing with him.
It's worth remembering that one of the arguments that Brendan Eich put forth to defend his rank bigotry was "developers in other countries hold these bigoted values, and we need to work with them."
It was soon after that when the Mozilla board proffered the metaphorical sword.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:31 PM on April 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
It's worth remembering that one of the arguments that Brendan Eich put forth to defend his rank bigotry was "developers in other countries hold these bigoted values, and we need to work with them."
It was soon after that when the Mozilla board proffered the metaphorical sword.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:31 PM on April 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
Tech is in general persistently bad, but I'm not convinced they are exceptionally bad. My wife's field, medicine, is absolutely rife with poorly behaving doctors, and the consequences they face for their actions are frequently laughable. Are there fields that actually handle this well?
posted by teh_boy at 4:46 PM on April 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by teh_boy at 4:46 PM on April 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
Why is tech in general so persistently bad at this? I can think of exceptions, but it seems like the majority of tech has persistent problems.
Because for the past half-century, we as a society have made excuses for abuses in tech. In a prior thread, someone asked which tech luminaries weren't shitheels, and the list was pretty damn thin. It's only been relatively recently that the shine has come off the tech apple as a whole, and the result has been a collective WTF from society.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:46 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Because for the past half-century, we as a society have made excuses for abuses in tech. In a prior thread, someone asked which tech luminaries weren't shitheels, and the list was pretty damn thin. It's only been relatively recently that the shine has come off the tech apple as a whole, and the result has been a collective WTF from society.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:46 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Why is tech in general so persistently bad at this?
In addition to the other factors discussed, consider: the people that tech companies abuse often have some amount of privilege and power themselves. When you step on people who can fight back, they do, and it makes the news. I think it's probably a lot more prevalent than we know in other sectors, but the victims are less likely to get their stories into the New York Times.
And then with Google you also get that sweet fondant layer of hypocrisy ("Do no evil", indeed), which makes it an even juicier news story.
~
when your manager rehires you in six months, you get to negotiate a fresh contract at a higher base pay ... My source is someone who went to work at AWS and was shocked at how openly this tactic was discussed by basically everyone
I know two people at AWS who did exactly this.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:00 PM on April 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
In addition to the other factors discussed, consider: the people that tech companies abuse often have some amount of privilege and power themselves. When you step on people who can fight back, they do, and it makes the news. I think it's probably a lot more prevalent than we know in other sectors, but the victims are less likely to get their stories into the New York Times.
And then with Google you also get that sweet fondant layer of hypocrisy ("Do no evil", indeed), which makes it an even juicier news story.
~
when your manager rehires you in six months, you get to negotiate a fresh contract at a higher base pay ... My source is someone who went to work at AWS and was shocked at how openly this tactic was discussed by basically everyone
I know two people at AWS who did exactly this.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:00 PM on April 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
Why is tech in general so persistently bad at this?
It's not, "in general". You'll notice that certain companies show up a lot in these stories, and others do not.
You may have ~$100k dangled in front of you (for example). 10% of it is given to you after your first year. 10% is granted after your second year. 80% is granted monthly in years 3 & 4. (exact ratio varies by company)
Only Amazon has a vest schedule that shitty, and well, yeah, exactly. Why else would people work there the entire 4 years?
You'll get little bonuses here and there potentially, but the big draw is getting a refresh which only comes with a promotion.
This (usually) only happens at terrible companies. Anywhere that expects to keep their employees more than a year or two without incentivizing shitty promotion based product churn does a yearly refresh. Otherwise, their total comp is very quickly six figures less per year than a new job. Google does the promotion shit, and again, yeah exactly.
I wonder how Facebook, which offers a similar lifestyle, reputation and esprit de corps feels about her declaration that it's "just a job"?
There is no more "I will stomp babies heads into mush in the parking lot outside the office, as long as the money is right" company on the planet than Facebook. It'd raise flags if her attitude was anything besides "I'm only doing this for the paycheck", so everyone there feels just fine, don't worry.
posted by sideshow at 5:09 PM on April 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
It's not, "in general". You'll notice that certain companies show up a lot in these stories, and others do not.
You may have ~$100k dangled in front of you (for example). 10% of it is given to you after your first year. 10% is granted after your second year. 80% is granted monthly in years 3 & 4. (exact ratio varies by company)
Only Amazon has a vest schedule that shitty, and well, yeah, exactly. Why else would people work there the entire 4 years?
You'll get little bonuses here and there potentially, but the big draw is getting a refresh which only comes with a promotion.
This (usually) only happens at terrible companies. Anywhere that expects to keep their employees more than a year or two without incentivizing shitty promotion based product churn does a yearly refresh. Otherwise, their total comp is very quickly six figures less per year than a new job. Google does the promotion shit, and again, yeah exactly.
I wonder how Facebook, which offers a similar lifestyle, reputation and esprit de corps feels about her declaration that it's "just a job"?
There is no more "I will stomp babies heads into mush in the parking lot outside the office, as long as the money is right" company on the planet than Facebook. It'd raise flags if her attitude was anything besides "I'm only doing this for the paycheck", so everyone there feels just fine, don't worry.
posted by sideshow at 5:09 PM on April 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
A more normal vesting schedule is 4 years, with 25% due the end of the first year, and the remaining vesting quarterly thereafter. A "nice" vesting plan does flat quarterly payouts from the start.
It's amazing that Amazon's is so bad, but it's also totally in character for them.
posted by ryanrs at 5:16 PM on April 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
It's amazing that Amazon's is so bad, but it's also totally in character for them.
posted by ryanrs at 5:16 PM on April 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
Oh no..
posted by firstdaffodils at 5:22 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by firstdaffodils at 5:22 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
The work-subsuming-your-life thing is just part and parcel of Silicon Valley, it didn't start with Google. Emily Chang's book, fittingly titled "Brotopia" (p.28), traces it to a long-forgotten high-flying firm from the '90s named Trilogy.
This. I worked at Intel in the late 70s and early 80s and the recruiters openly admitted getting single people (especially new college grads) into the company was great because it became their life. It was true to an even greater extent when I joined a startup a few years later.
One thing I will say I'm Google's favor, when I worked there in the late 2000s was they never forced that "we are your life now" worldview on anyone the way certain startups did. Of course, they didn't discourage it either.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:23 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
This. I worked at Intel in the late 70s and early 80s and the recruiters openly admitted getting single people (especially new college grads) into the company was great because it became their life. It was true to an even greater extent when I joined a startup a few years later.
One thing I will say I'm Google's favor, when I worked there in the late 2000s was they never forced that "we are your life now" worldview on anyone the way certain startups did. Of course, they didn't discourage it either.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:23 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
I’m going to, as a woman in tech (20 years post college), second qxntpqbbbqxl’s point about relative power of victims in tech, at least ones in technical roles. Even if being mistreated, you’re probably being paid well compared to the median American. So you are more likely to have reasources to fight back. Couple that with tech’s cultural preference for ostensibly “open” discussion of problems and solutions, and I think we just more likely to notice the problem in tech.
posted by R343L at 5:35 PM on April 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by R343L at 5:35 PM on April 8, 2021 [10 favorites]
Forming close relationships with the people you spend all day every with isn't the problem, it's what we're supposed to do.
My approach has always been a strictly monetary / mercenary relationship with the corporation, but allow whatever level of friendship / relationship building is available with my immediate coworkers. My daily take is to get my own work done and assist where needed so we can all go home for dinner at 5pm.
That all requires sane coworkers and management expectations, which I have generally been able to find in the semiconductor industry.
posted by MillMan at 5:39 PM on April 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
My approach has always been a strictly monetary / mercenary relationship with the corporation, but allow whatever level of friendship / relationship building is available with my immediate coworkers. My daily take is to get my own work done and assist where needed so we can all go home for dinner at 5pm.
That all requires sane coworkers and management expectations, which I have generally been able to find in the semiconductor industry.
posted by MillMan at 5:39 PM on April 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
I also worked at Intel in the late 70’s and yes, they were proud of their recruitment of recent college grads, knowing that work could/would become their life. In one specific case it became their death. Extreme high stress job on a failing big project. The manager assigned to saving the sinking ship was sort of upset, but little happened as far as I know to actually deal with the situation. Most of the software engineers I worked with just saw it as a job. I then went to Apple in the 80’s. Again for most it seemed to be just a job, but fun, with stock options, and we were changing the world. A number got rich when the stock went public. I got laid off in 92 as the company teetered on bankruptcy. From everything I’ve heard since Apple is another very exploitive company. Meanwhile Silicon Valley hates unions.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:39 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 5:39 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
That's just ... horrible managing. And being a horrible person.
Is there a formal training track for managers, or do they just expect good programmers to develop the skills to manage others? For all the jokes about "pointy-haired bosses" and managers who don't understand computers, there's a whole lot of stuff that managers are expected/legally obliged/required to do that can only really be learned through active training.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:51 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Is there a formal training track for managers, or do they just expect good programmers to develop the skills to manage others? For all the jokes about "pointy-haired bosses" and managers who don't understand computers, there's a whole lot of stuff that managers are expected/legally obliged/required to do that can only really be learned through active training.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:51 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
My company likes to consider itself a tech company (and we are kinda now and work with a lot of big tech companies but we didn't start out that way. The tech part just took over a lot of the business over time) and I'm technically a manager. I don't think I'm a good one and I had absolutely no training to become a good one. I was just good at one thing and they decided to put some people under me. I kinda hate it and as a general point don't like to see myself as "above" anyone else (which probably doesn't help my management skills in the eyes of the company). But I've had to figure out everything as I go. If I could keep my salary and go back to being just another worker I'd do it in a heartbeat.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:02 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:02 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
I have a customer who is a bigwig at a tech company that does a shit ton of work for Facebook and he tells me the majority of interviewees they've had in the past 2 years have said, "I'll work for you, but I won't work on your FB projects". I was quite delighted to hear this. It's good to know that people are paying attention and have ethics.
posted by dobbs at 6:22 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by dobbs at 6:22 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
Is there a formal training track for managers, or do they just expect good programmers to develop the skills to manage others?
In my experience, the second. Sometimes you get people who have a reasonable ability to manage, and sometimes it’s just based on something else, like nepotism or seniority. Sometimes you have an entire chain of “this guy has the seniority, he gets to manage the team/group/department” people until you hit the C-suite.
(My last job had that, and so did Citigroup.)
posted by mephron at 6:49 PM on April 8, 2021
In my experience, the second. Sometimes you get people who have a reasonable ability to manage, and sometimes it’s just based on something else, like
(My last job had that, and so did Citigroup.)
posted by mephron at 6:49 PM on April 8, 2021
I feel like every time I hear the horrendous serial harassment stories, every dang time it's in a male dominated industry. I can't say I have heard of any where most of the employees/management is female. I've been in female majority jobs my whole life (sometimes the head has been female too) and there's never been sexual harassment drama when it's 80% ladies and 20% chill dudes.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:02 PM on April 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:02 PM on April 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
Yeah on 70's tech companies, back when Atari was Sunnyvale's top tech giant (this map shows the Atari buildings in the area, omitting the literal garbage dump across the street) employees would have coke-fueled hot tub parties at work, so depending on how low you want to set the starting bar things have actually improved a lot.
posted by GuyZero at 7:03 PM on April 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by GuyZero at 7:03 PM on April 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
I don't think Google has yet realized the damage to their reputation that's been done by stories like this one, the firings of Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, the resignation of Samy Bengio, and probably more to come as well as some past events I can't rattle off the top of my head. I hope it spurs reform, but if not, a decline.
I see you haven't been to places like /r/technology or slashdot.org where the consensus is that Gebru and Mitchell are just SJWs who couldn't follow company rules and got their just desserts (also the claim that Bengio didn't specifically mention either Gebru or Mitchell so anyone saying they are connected is full of shit). Either it's a lot of bots pushing a narrative (highly likely) or it's a bunch of people who genuinely are unmoved by the goings-on at Google, and don't think it damages their reputation at all. If anything, it seems like more and more of the right wing are looking for a spot at Google.
Full Disclosure: My sisters ex-husband, a good-old-boy from Louisiana that her marriage counselor took her aside and said "I don't usually do this, but divorce him," because he was convinced that it didn't matter that his wife made more money than him, he was owed that money by her and it was his responsibility to control all of their money, disallowing her control of the money she made at her job. This loser makes a fucking mint at Google and he's one of the biggest capitalist right wing shitheels I know in real life. I swear he's gotta be the guy who does nothing but refreshes the logos for Google Suite.
posted by deadaluspark at 7:16 PM on April 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
I see you haven't been to places like /r/technology or slashdot.org where the consensus is that Gebru and Mitchell are just SJWs who couldn't follow company rules and got their just desserts (also the claim that Bengio didn't specifically mention either Gebru or Mitchell so anyone saying they are connected is full of shit). Either it's a lot of bots pushing a narrative (highly likely) or it's a bunch of people who genuinely are unmoved by the goings-on at Google, and don't think it damages their reputation at all. If anything, it seems like more and more of the right wing are looking for a spot at Google.
Full Disclosure: My sisters ex-husband, a good-old-boy from Louisiana that her marriage counselor took her aside and said "I don't usually do this, but divorce him," because he was convinced that it didn't matter that his wife made more money than him, he was owed that money by her and it was his responsibility to control all of their money, disallowing her control of the money she made at her job. This loser makes a fucking mint at Google and he's one of the biggest capitalist right wing shitheels I know in real life. I swear he's gotta be the guy who does nothing but refreshes the logos for Google Suite.
posted by deadaluspark at 7:16 PM on April 8, 2021 [8 favorites]
I can't say I have heard of any where most of the employees/management is female.
Only one that comes to mind for me is that suitcase company from a year or two ago. Away Luggage? That was a whole shitshow.
posted by dobbs at 7:17 PM on April 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
Only one that comes to mind for me is that suitcase company from a year or two ago. Away Luggage? That was a whole shitshow.
posted by dobbs at 7:17 PM on April 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
Can someone explain "refresh" in terms of a stock grant? My experience is that you get hired, you get a package and it vests on a schedule. Maybe you get more options or whatever over time but they have their own vesting schedule -- is this what is being mentioned?
posted by 4CFCFF at 7:21 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by 4CFCFF at 7:21 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
> Can someone explain "refresh" in terms of a stock grant? ... Maybe you get more options or whatever over time but they have their own vesting schedule -- is this what is being mentioned?
Yes. Every year, some portion of your stock grant vests. If you never get anything more, you can end up earning less money per year than when you started. Well, that's a recipe for turnover, so to compensate, companies "refresh" your stock grant as part of annual reviews. Those additional grants are called refreshers.
That plus stock appreciation leads to growing compensation over time. Additionally, places like Apple and Amazon award more stock when you earn a level promotion (SWE I -> SWE II, etc). And future refreshers tend to be higher based on level. If your annual review comes with no refreshers, well, that may be a sign your boss would like you to quit.
The end result is you can have engineers working for the company, with no people to manage -- just an "individual contributor" -- making a half a million dollars a year writing internal tools to manage QA test run reports.
posted by pwnguin at 7:29 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
Yes. Every year, some portion of your stock grant vests. If you never get anything more, you can end up earning less money per year than when you started. Well, that's a recipe for turnover, so to compensate, companies "refresh" your stock grant as part of annual reviews. Those additional grants are called refreshers.
That plus stock appreciation leads to growing compensation over time. Additionally, places like Apple and Amazon award more stock when you earn a level promotion (SWE I -> SWE II, etc). And future refreshers tend to be higher based on level. If your annual review comes with no refreshers, well, that may be a sign your boss would like you to quit.
The end result is you can have engineers working for the company, with no people to manage -- just an "individual contributor" -- making a half a million dollars a year writing internal tools to manage QA test run reports.
posted by pwnguin at 7:29 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
A good moment to plug Work Won't Love You Back. A deeply-reported examination of why “doing what you love” is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives.
posted by latkes at 7:37 PM on April 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by latkes at 7:37 PM on April 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
"My manager told me H.R. wouldn’t even make him change his desk, let alone work from home or go on leave. "
What the heck? Why is this even HR's call? Shouldn't the manager just say "Okay, I'll move him somewhere else"? Maybe I'm only seeing the bad stuff, but everything I've read about Google's HR is out of a nightmare.
Again:
" I was told that the Google finance office calculated what I was worth to the company."
Gees--Google sounds like it is in some kind of Kafka novel. Maybe I've just been lucky and have managed to avoid these bureaucratically run companies where HR and Finance offices seem to have all the power and managers are just there for--what? for show?
posted by eye of newt at 7:59 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
What the heck? Why is this even HR's call? Shouldn't the manager just say "Okay, I'll move him somewhere else"? Maybe I'm only seeing the bad stuff, but everything I've read about Google's HR is out of a nightmare.
Again:
" I was told that the Google finance office calculated what I was worth to the company."
Gees--Google sounds like it is in some kind of Kafka novel. Maybe I've just been lucky and have managed to avoid these bureaucratically run companies where HR and Finance offices seem to have all the power and managers are just there for--what? for show?
posted by eye of newt at 7:59 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Is there a formal training track for managers, or do they just expect good programmers to develop the skills to manage others?
No amount of training is going to address a person being a sexist abusive shitbag, like the author of this article had to deal with. They're not ignorant of what sexism is, they know it's wrong.
The only thing that works on that is consequences. Google wasn't interested in that, and instead punished the author for speaking out. They're deliberately selecting for people who will accept abuse without complaining.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:00 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
No amount of training is going to address a person being a sexist abusive shitbag, like the author of this article had to deal with. They're not ignorant of what sexism is, they know it's wrong.
The only thing that works on that is consequences. Google wasn't interested in that, and instead punished the author for speaking out. They're deliberately selecting for people who will accept abuse without complaining.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 8:00 PM on April 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
Of course, the fun thing is if she HAD rolled over and fucked that guy, her career still would have been fucked because she becomes "the whore that fucked her way to the top." If someone at work wants to nail you, you are DOOMED, period. Why the hell can't straight men just adult up and...not do this shit?
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:11 PM on April 8, 2021 [31 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:11 PM on April 8, 2021 [31 favorites]
Second off, there's a lot of international attitudes being imported, especially in Silicon Valley. We don't just import CS degrees, we also import sexism from place like India, China,
I'm a Chinese immigrant who works in tech. The people who make executive and administrative decisions, and who set the tone for culture in any corporate setting (ie c-suite and senior management) are largely not people like me. They are white, male, cisheterosexual, and come from privileged backgrounds.
Blaming this oppression on immigrants is not it, chief. We are, on a daily basis, watching white men like Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Kalanick, and their ilk strip away people's dignity, rights, and privacy, men who model themselves on the nihilistic arrogance and narcissism of 90s era Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, or any of those ilk, or their forebears like IBM who were literally colluding with Nazis and encouraging them to build out their processing capacity
and you're here
blaming
fucking
immigrants
The same ones who are here on work visas that can only be sponsored by their employer, who are afraid to advocate for themselves or else they lose the right to live in their own homes, who make up so very little of the people who actually create this sick culture that just about any large corporation has (don't kid yourself that this is just tech) and you're here
blaming
fucking
immigrants
Here I was thinking that this site had itself a racial reckoning and come in finding someone scapegoating immigrants for sexism and racism in tech right before my bedtime.
Christ.
posted by paimapi at 8:52 PM on April 8, 2021 [176 favorites]
I'm a Chinese immigrant who works in tech. The people who make executive and administrative decisions, and who set the tone for culture in any corporate setting (ie c-suite and senior management) are largely not people like me. They are white, male, cisheterosexual, and come from privileged backgrounds.
Blaming this oppression on immigrants is not it, chief. We are, on a daily basis, watching white men like Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Kalanick, and their ilk strip away people's dignity, rights, and privacy, men who model themselves on the nihilistic arrogance and narcissism of 90s era Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, or any of those ilk, or their forebears like IBM who were literally colluding with Nazis and encouraging them to build out their processing capacity
and you're here
blaming
fucking
immigrants
The same ones who are here on work visas that can only be sponsored by their employer, who are afraid to advocate for themselves or else they lose the right to live in their own homes, who make up so very little of the people who actually create this sick culture that just about any large corporation has (don't kid yourself that this is just tech) and you're here
blaming
fucking
immigrants
Here I was thinking that this site had itself a racial reckoning and come in finding someone scapegoating immigrants for sexism and racism in tech right before my bedtime.
Christ.
posted by paimapi at 8:52 PM on April 8, 2021 [176 favorites]
Every single issue mentioned in this brave article would have been improved by Google being unionized:
The sense that your employer is your community and family: a union offers an alternate sense of community, that is also among the people you spend every day with, but with a different center of gravity - your coworkers instead of your boss.
A structure to address gendered harassment: A union could help you negotiate a non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy with teeth. It gives you a community of fellow workers who are there to support you - unlike HR - which, as the author notes - is there to calculate your complaint based only on cost and benefit to the company.
A fair compensation scale that isn't impacted by your gender or by making an HR complaint: In a union shop, raises are usually based on objective measures like seniority. You can see what all your coworkers make and know if you're getting a fair shake. You can fight side-by-side with coworkers for contractually mandated compensation and raises.
A fighting group of coworkers who can push back against an abusive boss: Even in a union shop we lose against bad bosses sometimes, and some unions have a culture of compliance instead of confrontation. But at it's best, a union gives workers a structure to band together against a shithead like this dude.
Without a union, the author was forced to leave. Now she works in isolation, alienated from her coworkers and the product she creates. She's supervised by someone very young, over zoom. Unions are a different path than having to chose isolation. A path we should fight for.
posted by latkes at 8:53 PM on April 8, 2021 [19 favorites]
The sense that your employer is your community and family: a union offers an alternate sense of community, that is also among the people you spend every day with, but with a different center of gravity - your coworkers instead of your boss.
A structure to address gendered harassment: A union could help you negotiate a non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy with teeth. It gives you a community of fellow workers who are there to support you - unlike HR - which, as the author notes - is there to calculate your complaint based only on cost and benefit to the company.
A fair compensation scale that isn't impacted by your gender or by making an HR complaint: In a union shop, raises are usually based on objective measures like seniority. You can see what all your coworkers make and know if you're getting a fair shake. You can fight side-by-side with coworkers for contractually mandated compensation and raises.
A fighting group of coworkers who can push back against an abusive boss: Even in a union shop we lose against bad bosses sometimes, and some unions have a culture of compliance instead of confrontation. But at it's best, a union gives workers a structure to band together against a shithead like this dude.
Without a union, the author was forced to leave. Now she works in isolation, alienated from her coworkers and the product she creates. She's supervised by someone very young, over zoom. Unions are a different path than having to chose isolation. A path we should fight for.
posted by latkes at 8:53 PM on April 8, 2021 [19 favorites]
I think the most valuable single sentence anyone said to me at college was a professor who said, "This place may be a family, but a lot of families are incredibly dysfunctional." It was a Great Books-type small seminar and we'd strayed off the book to talk about a sexual assault on campus that was being BADLY mishandled -- rapist male athlete given zero consequences; when she dared to report it, his teammates basically harassed her off campus and she eventually had to withdraw and transfer. Cops did nothing, school did nothing, guy played and graduated, and some of the male administrators were saying shit like "it's not unusual for good Catholic girls to claim rape afterwards" or "to change their mind in the morning" to excuse it. (My fury still burns red-hot about this just thinking about it.)
But his whole thing was, Don't buy this shit. The college wants you to feel like this is a family so you'll feel loyalty to it, but they don't feel any loyalty to you. They don't need to. They have 10,000 of you. You have one of it, and you love it, so it would hurt to lose it. It doesn't hurt them to lose you. Do not give them that kind of asymmetrical power over you, and whenever they start talking about the "College Family," get suspicious. Love and be loyal to your actual friends and teachers and colleagues or whatever that you have actual human relationships with, but don't let institutions buy your loyalty or your silence by claiming to be a family and then acting like an abusive one.
It was enormously good advice.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:08 PM on April 8, 2021 [51 favorites]
But his whole thing was, Don't buy this shit. The college wants you to feel like this is a family so you'll feel loyalty to it, but they don't feel any loyalty to you. They don't need to. They have 10,000 of you. You have one of it, and you love it, so it would hurt to lose it. It doesn't hurt them to lose you. Do not give them that kind of asymmetrical power over you, and whenever they start talking about the "College Family," get suspicious. Love and be loyal to your actual friends and teachers and colleagues or whatever that you have actual human relationships with, but don't let institutions buy your loyalty or your silence by claiming to be a family and then acting like an abusive one.
It was enormously good advice.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:08 PM on April 8, 2021 [51 favorites]
Or, as Tressie McMillan Cottom said, "the institution cannot love you."
posted by praemunire at 9:17 PM on April 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 9:17 PM on April 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
Good policy never to love a job.
posted by Miko at 9:57 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Miko at 9:57 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Much as I love latkes's description of a union, I am in a large famous one that did FUCKALL for me and straight up promised help and then bailed without a word to me the next day. I only got any help at all because of a friend of a friend. Unions are only as good as the people in them. I...might have my doubts on how well a Google union might play out.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:27 PM on April 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:27 PM on April 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
I see you haven't been to places like /r/technology or slashdot.org where the consensus is that Gebru and Mitchell are just SJWs who couldn't follow company rules and got their just desserts [...]
I haven't looked at slashdot in probably 20 years, and reddit I view with a very jaundiced eye. It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that someone happy with their job in tech has avoided those hives of scum and villainy. I will say that I spend a bit of time each day on twitter, where weirdly the visibility of the "oh no this is real bad google, WTF are you doing" crowd has been higher than one might suspect. OTOH I curate my twitter feed fairly aggressively so maybe not that surprising.
Blaming this oppression on immigrants is not it, chief.
YUP. As if SV would be a utopia of racial and gender harmony if not for all those immigrants. Give me a break.
posted by axiom at 10:28 PM on April 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
I haven't looked at slashdot in probably 20 years, and reddit I view with a very jaundiced eye. It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that someone happy with their job in tech has avoided those hives of scum and villainy. I will say that I spend a bit of time each day on twitter, where weirdly the visibility of the "oh no this is real bad google, WTF are you doing" crowd has been higher than one might suspect. OTOH I curate my twitter feed fairly aggressively so maybe not that surprising.
Blaming this oppression on immigrants is not it, chief.
YUP. As if SV would be a utopia of racial and gender harmony if not for all those immigrants. Give me a break.
posted by axiom at 10:28 PM on April 8, 2021 [7 favorites]
On non-preview: I'll say it again, the solution to a bad union is a better union, not no union at all.
posted by axiom at 10:30 PM on April 8, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by axiom at 10:30 PM on April 8, 2021 [18 favorites]
twitter, where weirdly the visibility of the "oh no this is real bad google, WTF are you doing" crowd has been higher than one might suspect
I had the same pleasantly-surprised reaction with the recent Stallman-back-at-FSF unpleasantness. Looked like 10:1 on the right side of the argument.
posted by supercres at 10:58 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I had the same pleasantly-surprised reaction with the recent Stallman-back-at-FSF unpleasantness. Looked like 10:1 on the right side of the argument.
posted by supercres at 10:58 PM on April 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Yeah, the FSF thing was a no-brainer, so it was heartening to see that like 3-4 of the senior execs resigned and big money folks (fedora for sure, debian was a little equivocal last I saw) were on the right side there.
posted by axiom at 11:57 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by axiom at 11:57 PM on April 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
OTOH, last time that I checked, Stallman is still back with FSF and the hive mind has turned its attention elsewhere. The loss of senior execs will help balance the books in dealing with a downturn in funding. I'm not really seeing how Stallman is being negatively impacted by recent events. His ego is sufficiently teflon coated to focus on the open letter supporting him and to ignore the other open letter.
There really aren't any consequences for tech men and companies, in the long or short run, for bad behavior. Or am I being too cynical? Am I forgetting any cases in the tech industry of lasting consequences?
posted by tumbling at 12:39 AM on April 9, 2021
There really aren't any consequences for tech men and companies, in the long or short run, for bad behavior. Or am I being too cynical? Am I forgetting any cases in the tech industry of lasting consequences?
posted by tumbling at 12:39 AM on April 9, 2021
All the places I've worked in tech want you very much to make the company part of your identity. It's hard for me to find peace in writing software so rich people can get even richer, but I recognize that (via the magic of trickle-up technology) I can improve someone's day by "writing internal tools to manage QA test run reports" (as pwnguin put it), even if marginally.
Long term consequences for shitty behavior would be great, and I'd love some cathartic examples.
All I can find are men using their golden parachutes to start VC funds or new companies. Or both.
posted by Anonymous Function at 12:53 AM on April 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
Long term consequences for shitty behavior would be great, and I'd love some cathartic examples.
All I can find are men using their golden parachutes to start VC funds or new companies. Or both.
posted by Anonymous Function at 12:53 AM on April 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
They have been explained to death in this thread already but in my experience refresh grants are called “retention grants” and are explicitly designed to make sure your best employees are never in a situation where they don’t have a couple years of unvested stock, because otherwise they might more strongly consider leaving - handcuffs of potential gold
posted by thedaniel at 2:41 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by thedaniel at 2:41 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
Blaming immigrants is not ok. Media is also really bad for this and does not depend as much on an international labour pool.
What the two industries share, I think, is:
- “dream,” high status jobs - which means women, especially young women, may not complain as readily because it can’t be that bad compared to the status/interestingness of the job itself
- sunk costs to get to that high status role
- an obsession with the idea of “creative genius meets perfect role.” I hire in childcare now, used to hire in media, and it’s been really interesting to suss out the difference even though a truly great after school program leader has to be equally genius...but the perception is that anyone can do any job. It kind of works both ways - a lot of my best staff have quit other centres because they know they can find the same job elsewhere (like with me). But to keep my great staff I have to keep them happy without the easy cachet of an editorial job or the fact that there are only X publications and X jobs in them.
The
posted by warriorqueen at 3:20 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
What the two industries share, I think, is:
- “dream,” high status jobs - which means women, especially young women, may not complain as readily because it can’t be that bad compared to the status/interestingness of the job itself
- sunk costs to get to that high status role
- an obsession with the idea of “creative genius meets perfect role.” I hire in childcare now, used to hire in media, and it’s been really interesting to suss out the difference even though a truly great after school program leader has to be equally genius...but the perception is that anyone can do any job. It kind of works both ways - a lot of my best staff have quit other centres because they know they can find the same job elsewhere (like with me). But to keep my great staff I have to keep them happy without the easy cachet of an editorial job or the fact that there are only X publications and X jobs in them.
The
posted by warriorqueen at 3:20 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
I'm hoping one of the pandemic silver linings that comes out of all this is that the new default working-from-home standard that seems to be emerging will further demolish the façade of "we're a family" that companies and HR departments push at employees. IMO It's a lot easier to maintain a me-first attitude when you're at home, and one can more easily resist the HR/corporate brainwashing bullshit. You lose perspective when you have to be in the middle of it all day long. You forget to protect yourself. I'm just astonished that I'm sitting here thanking a pandemic that I no longer have to endure in-office techbro culture anymore.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:49 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:49 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
I am a cis het white woman born in the US and I too am staggered by anybody thinking the US has to import sexism. Have you looked at our Congress or our former President? Have you ever spoken to a woman about her experiences in the workplace? We grown this shit ourselves.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:06 AM on April 9, 2021 [31 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 5:06 AM on April 9, 2021 [31 favorites]
Does anyone have a non-paywalled link to the story?
posted by Bella Donna at 5:59 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Bella Donna at 5:59 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
Someone asked earlier, and I read through the thread seeing if anyone picked up on it: Could this have been avoided if Google were broken up into smaller companies? Is allowing so much power in an industry to fall into the hands of a very small number of players a part of the problem of low-to-no accountability, a culture free of consequences that allows behavior like this to exist?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:11 AM on April 9, 2021
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:11 AM on April 9, 2021
paimapi, I am sorry I arrived late to the party. We absolutely do not need to import misogyny, blaming that on immigrants is bullshit. Someone I know used to work pretty high up in Google and eventually departed because my friend was two thing the highest execs were not that keen on, which is to say female and older.
Many years ago, back when Yahoo was a thing but on the earlier side of being a thing, I briefly met one of the founders in his cubicle. There was a sleeping bag poking out from under his desk. If a founder wants to be that guy, fine. But when employees are expected to live at their offices or to tolerate abuse or (fill in the blank), that is also bullshit. Unfortunately it is old, well-established bullshit. Americans in general and working in Silicon Valley, especially, have long been encouraged to make what they do for a living their primary source of identification and the source of life's meaning.
That works really, really well for employers. It is a sucker's game for workers. At least until recently, that shit did not fly in Sweden or in most of Europe, where people develop lives outside of work whether their jobs are fancy or working-class. Either way, they got 6 weeks of vacation and a ton of holidays and expected to leave at a regular time every day to pick up their kids at daycare or preschool. That has been changing, at least in Stockholm, at least over the past few years, and it sucks.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:15 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Many years ago, back when Yahoo was a thing but on the earlier side of being a thing, I briefly met one of the founders in his cubicle. There was a sleeping bag poking out from under his desk. If a founder wants to be that guy, fine. But when employees are expected to live at their offices or to tolerate abuse or (fill in the blank), that is also bullshit. Unfortunately it is old, well-established bullshit. Americans in general and working in Silicon Valley, especially, have long been encouraged to make what they do for a living their primary source of identification and the source of life's meaning.
That works really, really well for employers. It is a sucker's game for workers. At least until recently, that shit did not fly in Sweden or in most of Europe, where people develop lives outside of work whether their jobs are fancy or working-class. Either way, they got 6 weeks of vacation and a ton of holidays and expected to leave at a regular time every day to pick up their kids at daycare or preschool. That has been changing, at least in Stockholm, at least over the past few years, and it sucks.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:15 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Could this have been avoided if Google were broken up into smaller companies?
There's a part of me that thinks this could have been avoided if women carried guns and men were not allowed to. More seriously, I have worked for smaller companies run by and/or staffed with sexist assholes who, in my case, were all men.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:20 AM on April 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
There's a part of me that thinks this could have been avoided if women carried guns and men were not allowed to. More seriously, I have worked for smaller companies run by and/or staffed with sexist assholes who, in my case, were all men.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:20 AM on April 9, 2021 [6 favorites]
Does anyone have a non-paywalled link to the story?
https://archive.vn/ have it
posted by Lanark at 6:45 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
https://archive.vn/ have it
posted by Lanark at 6:45 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
I can't say I have heard of any where most of the employees/management is female.
I work in a library system that is 80-90% female, and supervisor was shuffled around Catholic priest style several times for sexual harassment, before they finally fired him. It happens.
posted by graventy at 7:30 AM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
I work in a library system that is 80-90% female, and supervisor was shuffled around Catholic priest style several times for sexual harassment, before they finally fired him. It happens.
posted by graventy at 7:30 AM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
Bella Donna, my gun nut husband thinks that women should carry and defend themselves with lethal force when assaulted. I said, "Do you have any idea how many men I would have killed?" No, he does not.
posted by corvikate at 7:38 AM on April 9, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by corvikate at 7:38 AM on April 9, 2021 [18 favorites]
This is a cleverly appropriate photo from here.
posted by Roy Batty at 7:43 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Roy Batty at 7:43 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
I feel like the tech industry we have now was created stolen from women as a safe space for men to dominate and make huge amounts of money, locking out women and minorities via their discriminatory behaviour (which starts in school and extends into related disciplines like math, and also into knowledge and support groups), and the myths of the work being difficult/only something geniuses (male) can do. So not only do they get away with treating certain people abhorrently, it's something that has to occur in order to retain the status quo.
posted by Stoof at 7:47 AM on April 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Stoof at 7:47 AM on April 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
This is such a common pattern. A mistreats B. B cannot believe they're being mistreated & chooses to blame themself. Eventually the mistreatment becomes unbearable. B asks for help. Help does not arrive.
It's depressingly common inside and outside tech and basically just... everywhere. Right now a person close to me is dealing with a department head who's just incredibly toxic and horrible, but (until very recently) all of their direct interactions have been civil and pleasant.
But this follows more than a year of increasing work pressure and subtle forms of abuse (think: making people fill out work surveys every day during the pandemic b/c of work from home so they can feel "watched" and are more productive -- survey data never used!) where she was having her work boundaries and autonomy eroded (e.g., no longer able to control scheduling for the clients she sees).
Watching her blame herself for difficulty keeping up and managing workload has been awful. Finally, this week, she was gobsmacked when she realized this person is actually, actively abusive. She wasn't doing anything wrong, she was actually being gaslit and taken advantage of. On purpose! She just couldn't understand it.
This was not a sexual harassment situation, but the larger pattern is identical. People often blame themselves for things where they're being mistreated instead of recognizing abuse. And then they ask for help and it's not forthcoming.
posted by jzb at 8:15 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
It's depressingly common inside and outside tech and basically just... everywhere. Right now a person close to me is dealing with a department head who's just incredibly toxic and horrible, but (until very recently) all of their direct interactions have been civil and pleasant.
But this follows more than a year of increasing work pressure and subtle forms of abuse (think: making people fill out work surveys every day during the pandemic b/c of work from home so they can feel "watched" and are more productive -- survey data never used!) where she was having her work boundaries and autonomy eroded (e.g., no longer able to control scheduling for the clients she sees).
Watching her blame herself for difficulty keeping up and managing workload has been awful. Finally, this week, she was gobsmacked when she realized this person is actually, actively abusive. She wasn't doing anything wrong, she was actually being gaslit and taken advantage of. On purpose! She just couldn't understand it.
This was not a sexual harassment situation, but the larger pattern is identical. People often blame themselves for things where they're being mistreated instead of recognizing abuse. And then they ask for help and it's not forthcoming.
posted by jzb at 8:15 AM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Could this have been avoided if Google were broken up into smaller companies? Is allowing so much power in an industry to fall into the hands of a very small number of players a part of the problem of low-to-no accountability, a culture free of consequences that allows behavior like this to exist?
I think breaking large companies up can be a very good thing in general, but I don't see that it would make much difference in this case. (In fact, smaller companies are often famously dysfunctional in a lot of ways including their HR practices, or lack thereof.)
On the contrary, the fact that Google wouldn't at an absolute minimum switch her harasser to another group or let her switch is ridiculous because that large a company has plenty of options for where to place people.
The one thing about Google's size is that I guess they can afford a lot of payouts in lawsuits. Settlements and legal sentences really need to be calibrated to the actual effect on the offender.
I'm glad she wrote this article among other things because it's not clear whether she publicized, or was allowed to publicize, her harassment among her fellow employees. This way at least everyone at Google knows who her harasser was, even without her writing his name.
posted by trig at 8:19 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think breaking large companies up can be a very good thing in general, but I don't see that it would make much difference in this case. (In fact, smaller companies are often famously dysfunctional in a lot of ways including their HR practices, or lack thereof.)
On the contrary, the fact that Google wouldn't at an absolute minimum switch her harasser to another group or let her switch is ridiculous because that large a company has plenty of options for where to place people.
The one thing about Google's size is that I guess they can afford a lot of payouts in lawsuits. Settlements and legal sentences really need to be calibrated to the actual effect on the offender.
I'm glad she wrote this article among other things because it's not clear whether she publicized, or was allowed to publicize, her harassment among her fellow employees. This way at least everyone at Google knows who her harasser was, even without her writing his name.
posted by trig at 8:19 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
Just want to circle back around now that I'm a bit calmer. I work in a supposedly good, cushy tech job that just had a reckoning with its decades-long inequity and toxic workplace environment where stories of c-suite white men exploding at employees in meetings for not being utterly perfect was both allowed and seemingly encouraged. I've also worked in state govt, other corporations, and small businesses and just want to say that if you think your corporation is better than this then you're way more privileged than you think you are.
Just because the media doesn't cover abuse in other corporate workplace environments doesn't mean it's not there. And just because you don't see it, that doesn't mean that a significant population of your co-workers aren't getting treated like absolute garbage.
Stick your head in the sand to whispered abuses or ignore 'gossip' all you want but the sickness that is US work culture is rooted in the ideals espoused by libertarian capitalism, the patriarchy, ableism, and white supremacy, and never hasn't been. If you aren't working for a multi-ethnic, super diverse worker co-op with actual profit sharing then you have no ground to stand on pretending that abuse and exploitation is somehow exclusive to just tech.
posted by paimapi at 8:54 AM on April 9, 2021 [18 favorites]
Just because the media doesn't cover abuse in other corporate workplace environments doesn't mean it's not there. And just because you don't see it, that doesn't mean that a significant population of your co-workers aren't getting treated like absolute garbage.
Stick your head in the sand to whispered abuses or ignore 'gossip' all you want but the sickness that is US work culture is rooted in the ideals espoused by libertarian capitalism, the patriarchy, ableism, and white supremacy, and never hasn't been. If you aren't working for a multi-ethnic, super diverse worker co-op with actual profit sharing then you have no ground to stand on pretending that abuse and exploitation is somehow exclusive to just tech.
posted by paimapi at 8:54 AM on April 9, 2021 [18 favorites]
Why is tech in general so persistently bad at this? Is it just the proportion of men to women?
Yes. We can put more words and explaination around it, but: yes.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:21 AM on April 9, 2021 [5 favorites]
Yes. We can put more words and explaination around it, but: yes.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:21 AM on April 9, 2021 [5 favorites]
In my 20 years in tech, I've had to provide evidence in three official HR sexual harassment inquiries, including one where the case was determined not to be sexual harassment, and none of the people involved were immediately moved to different teams even though it's a big company and moving groups isn't super difficult.
Just thinking of this case, the act of accusing someone of sexual harassment is not a light undertaking, not something to be done casually, and wouldn't be surprised if a failed case lowered the performance rating for the year of both, impacting their salaries. So this case strikes me that perception of sexual harassment isn't that much better than a full HR supported legal case in terms of outcomes. If I were in HR, I'd certainly recommend that people who file claims immediately move teams, no matter the outcome of the case.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:57 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
Just thinking of this case, the act of accusing someone of sexual harassment is not a light undertaking, not something to be done casually, and wouldn't be surprised if a failed case lowered the performance rating for the year of both, impacting their salaries. So this case strikes me that perception of sexual harassment isn't that much better than a full HR supported legal case in terms of outcomes. If I were in HR, I'd certainly recommend that people who file claims immediately move teams, no matter the outcome of the case.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:57 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
If I were in HR, I'd certainly recommend that people who file claims immediately move teams, no matter the outcome of the case.
Congratulations, you've just made it policy to punish people who come forward with sexual harassment claims. Your argument of "just move teams" is just another variant of the tech bad penny argument that abuse and harassment can be solved by just switching services/forking projects/etc., and it's just as much a non-solution here.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:09 AM on April 9, 2021 [9 favorites]
Congratulations, you've just made it policy to punish people who come forward with sexual harassment claims. Your argument of "just move teams" is just another variant of the tech bad penny argument that abuse and harassment can be solved by just switching services/forking projects/etc., and it's just as much a non-solution here.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:09 AM on April 9, 2021 [9 favorites]
Is there a formal training track for managers, or do they just expect good programmers to develop the skills to manage others?
A company that is setup for extreme success will have two completely different tracks for mangers and individual contributors on the technical side and (almost) never the twain shall meet.
The skill sets are practically orthogonal, and someone who can excel at both is so rare that it's better to structure your org as if it will never happen.
Here at everyone's favorite fruit company, Chris Espinosa (employee #8, he started working in Job's garage because there was no office yet) is still here, and after over four decades is mostly just a dude getting stuff done by himself. He didn't have to go up the management ladder to get success. In fact, you have to get way up in the sky, management-wise, before you reach a level where your money would exceed what you could get as an IC. Having an IC that can lead to extreme success drastically reduces terrible managers, because less people are getting into those roles just to make more money.
Another thing that really helps: Moving from a first line manager back to engineer (if it doesn't work out) is explicitly a lateral move. And not just financially, but in regards to their career, status, etc. So, even if someone thought they wanted to get into management, they can come back without any issues or loss of face. Some of the very strongest engineers I work with are men/women who decided that management wasn't for them at some point in the past here.
posted by sideshow at 11:19 AM on April 9, 2021 [9 favorites]
A company that is setup for extreme success will have two completely different tracks for mangers and individual contributors on the technical side and (almost) never the twain shall meet.
The skill sets are practically orthogonal, and someone who can excel at both is so rare that it's better to structure your org as if it will never happen.
Here at everyone's favorite fruit company, Chris Espinosa (employee #8, he started working in Job's garage because there was no office yet) is still here, and after over four decades is mostly just a dude getting stuff done by himself. He didn't have to go up the management ladder to get success. In fact, you have to get way up in the sky, management-wise, before you reach a level where your money would exceed what you could get as an IC. Having an IC that can lead to extreme success drastically reduces terrible managers, because less people are getting into those roles just to make more money.
Another thing that really helps: Moving from a first line manager back to engineer (if it doesn't work out) is explicitly a lateral move. And not just financially, but in regards to their career, status, etc. So, even if someone thought they wanted to get into management, they can come back without any issues or loss of face. Some of the very strongest engineers I work with are men/women who decided that management wasn't for them at some point in the past here.
posted by sideshow at 11:19 AM on April 9, 2021 [9 favorites]
If your annual review comes with no refreshers, well, that may be a sign your boss would like you to quit.
It's not even just a sign. Unless the company is in extreme financial distress, it could not be more clearer if he/she slipped you a note that said "Please fucking leave".
posted by sideshow at 11:30 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's not even just a sign. Unless the company is in extreme financial distress, it could not be more clearer if he/she slipped you a note that said "Please fucking leave".
posted by sideshow at 11:30 AM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
If I were in HR, I'd certainly recommend that people who file claims immediately move teams, no matter the outcome of the case.
I used to teach elementary school. One of my fellow fifth-grade teachers had a pair of students, one of whom was seriously, seriously bullying the other. It went round and round, through all the processes a school has to deal with that. None of it was working.
Finally, the principal and the teacher made the decision to move the kid who was being bullied into another class. They got the parents of that student (along with me, who was going to take this kid) in the room and let them know of their decision. I'll never forget how he responded. He was a lawyer. He said basically, "you are going to pull my kid out of her homeroom because another kid can't behave. You're going to punish my kid because another kid cannot behave as they are expected. No. No, you will not do this. What you're going to do is, you're going to move the other kid into a different room. You're going to do this or I'm going to sue this school district, and both of you personally." And then he sat back.
Reader, the bully got moved.
posted by nushustu at 11:33 AM on April 9, 2021 [27 favorites]
I used to teach elementary school. One of my fellow fifth-grade teachers had a pair of students, one of whom was seriously, seriously bullying the other. It went round and round, through all the processes a school has to deal with that. None of it was working.
Finally, the principal and the teacher made the decision to move the kid who was being bullied into another class. They got the parents of that student (along with me, who was going to take this kid) in the room and let them know of their decision. I'll never forget how he responded. He was a lawyer. He said basically, "you are going to pull my kid out of her homeroom because another kid can't behave. You're going to punish my kid because another kid cannot behave as they are expected. No. No, you will not do this. What you're going to do is, you're going to move the other kid into a different room. You're going to do this or I'm going to sue this school district, and both of you personally." And then he sat back.
Reader, the bully got moved.
posted by nushustu at 11:33 AM on April 9, 2021 [27 favorites]
Gonna throw in a plug here for The Circle by Dave Eggars. It's a fictional account of a Google-like company that shows just how far its tentacles can reach. Fascinating and horrific piece of dystopian realism.
posted by hydra77 at 12:08 PM on April 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by hydra77 at 12:08 PM on April 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
I can't make the comment I'd like to make because I could be sued. 'Nuff said, probably.
posted by wellred at 12:37 PM on April 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by wellred at 12:37 PM on April 9, 2021 [4 favorites]
You're going to punish my kid because another kid cannot behave as they are expected. No. No, you will not do this. What you're going to do is, you're going to move the other kid into a different room.
Hah, I wish that had EVER happened to me.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:52 PM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Hah, I wish that had EVER happened to me.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:52 PM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
I am pretty sure there are many Silicon Valley Big Tech workers and ex-workers here at MeFi who don't feel safe to tell their stories. I have written several long comments and deleted them on preview.
I get flashbacks to my nightmarish immigration process linked to my continued employment there, to being summoned to a room full of lawyers when I needed help, the obvious in retrospect gaslighting and manipulation. I have this irrational fear of losing everything I have if I speak out.
Personally, I moved far away and joined a young engineering company as a manager. Along with a few others with similar experience we have made it our mission to not be like Silicon Valley Big Tech. It is a constant struggle, and I am sure that the more successful the company becomes the harder it will become, until inevitably $ wins. But in the meantime I feel proud that I have a hand in creating the type of company I wish I had worked at for 10 years, I feel proud of the feedback I get from ICs, I feel extra proud of the ones that leave the company to go build something more impactful and fulfilling than what is available here. I stopped feeling proud of my work at silicon valley big tech by year 2.
posted by Dr. Curare at 1:12 PM on April 9, 2021 [8 favorites]
I get flashbacks to my nightmarish immigration process linked to my continued employment there, to being summoned to a room full of lawyers when I needed help, the obvious in retrospect gaslighting and manipulation. I have this irrational fear of losing everything I have if I speak out.
Personally, I moved far away and joined a young engineering company as a manager. Along with a few others with similar experience we have made it our mission to not be like Silicon Valley Big Tech. It is a constant struggle, and I am sure that the more successful the company becomes the harder it will become, until inevitably $ wins. But in the meantime I feel proud that I have a hand in creating the type of company I wish I had worked at for 10 years, I feel proud of the feedback I get from ICs, I feel extra proud of the ones that leave the company to go build something more impactful and fulfilling than what is available here. I stopped feeling proud of my work at silicon valley big tech by year 2.
posted by Dr. Curare at 1:12 PM on April 9, 2021 [8 favorites]
If I were in HR, I'd certainly recommend that people who file claims immediately move teams, no matter the outcome of the case.
Congratulations, you are a perfect candidate to transition to HR.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:16 PM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
Congratulations, you are a perfect candidate to transition to HR.
posted by DarlingBri at 1:16 PM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
I myself am a line manager at a FAANG company. I have almost nothing to contribute to this conversation. But I would like to point out that when you’re working for a huge corporation with *thousands* of employees, there really is no meaningful “company culture.” Just the division where I work has almost a thousand and makes billions in profits. And I dare say there is no “divisional culture” either. The organization is simply too big.
Teams have a culture. Huge companies don’t.
When I hear nightmare stories about $COMPANY, I don’t ascribe them to the CEO or executive staff. They’re so far removed from the average workers that they might as well be on another planet.
posted by Orthodox Humanoid at 1:33 PM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
Teams have a culture. Huge companies don’t.
When I hear nightmare stories about $COMPANY, I don’t ascribe them to the CEO or executive staff. They’re so far removed from the average workers that they might as well be on another planet.
posted by Orthodox Humanoid at 1:33 PM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]
Teams have a culture. Huge companies don’t.
There's some truth to that - but it's also a huge lie.
If a company chooses, for example, from the top down, to devote itself to regulatory compliance, and invests in a lot of training around compliance, and creates audit teams, and holds managers accountable, and fires everyone who doesn't comply publicly and immediately, it tends to develop a certain culture.
This is not different.
But we think it is, because it is so endemic and so baked in to our culture.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:10 PM on April 9, 2021 [10 favorites]
There's some truth to that - but it's also a huge lie.
If a company chooses, for example, from the top down, to devote itself to regulatory compliance, and invests in a lot of training around compliance, and creates audit teams, and holds managers accountable, and fires everyone who doesn't comply publicly and immediately, it tends to develop a certain culture.
This is not different.
But we think it is, because it is so endemic and so baked in to our culture.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:10 PM on April 9, 2021 [10 favorites]
Teams have a culture. Huge companies don’t.
This is both true and not true.
Google and Amazon both have vaguely around 100K (maybe 70k?) engineers, making them the size of a small town. Towns have a culture! I probably don't have to talk to anyone to see the difference between Mobile, AL and Sunnyvale, CA (which are roughly the same size) and if I talk to a few people I'm sure I can tell a difference. And I'm really sure that you can tell the difference from Heraklion in Greece.
Amazon and Google have different cultures around meetings, reports, working outside of core hours, all sorts of things. I guarantee you there are approximately zero read-the-memo meetings at Google, unlike Amazon.
But it's true that things like respect and a feeling of psychological safety have a very small radius and can vary greatly between teams inside the same company. Work is not your family, but the basic mechanisms and social relationships can very much mirror the family dynamic. Like Charleton Heston said, it's people. They're all made of people.
posted by GuyZero at 3:23 PM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
This is both true and not true.
Google and Amazon both have vaguely around 100K (maybe 70k?) engineers, making them the size of a small town. Towns have a culture! I probably don't have to talk to anyone to see the difference between Mobile, AL and Sunnyvale, CA (which are roughly the same size) and if I talk to a few people I'm sure I can tell a difference. And I'm really sure that you can tell the difference from Heraklion in Greece.
Amazon and Google have different cultures around meetings, reports, working outside of core hours, all sorts of things. I guarantee you there are approximately zero read-the-memo meetings at Google, unlike Amazon.
But it's true that things like respect and a feeling of psychological safety have a very small radius and can vary greatly between teams inside the same company. Work is not your family, but the basic mechanisms and social relationships can very much mirror the family dynamic. Like Charleton Heston said, it's people. They're all made of people.
posted by GuyZero at 3:23 PM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
Here I was thinking that this site had itself a racial reckoning and come in finding someone scapegoating immigrants for sexism and racism in tech right before my bedtime.
What I wrote was foolish, and I will reflect upon how they were received and upon why I felt like posting a comment instead of simply listening.
posted by pwnguin at 12:09 AM on April 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
What I wrote was foolish, and I will reflect upon how they were received and upon why I felt like posting a comment instead of simply listening.
posted by pwnguin at 12:09 AM on April 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
I think even big companies have a corporate culture and it's a big part of what enables or limits harassment.
In the late nineties I worked for a y2k Cobol code remediation tech company full of ex-IBM managers and I absolutely believe from working with them that they had a corporate culture and some of the best middle managers in tech for decades. IBM had created a separate track for technical advancement and I met zero managers from IBM who hadn't trained for the job. Not just MBAs, but actually trained on how to handle leadership roles and dealing with and advocating for their employees.
When we brought in a former Microsoft VP who also brought along a whole passel of his cronies to fill slots in our rapidly growing company I got to experience a huge culture clash that made it abundantly apparent that both companies had a corporate culture and the Microsoft culture was absolute shit. At the time I described it as IBM being results oriented and Microsoft being effort oriented. At great expense and effort the company finally purged all the Microsoft idiots (and they were almost universally either horrible at their jobs, dumb about our mission, or unprofessional in their dealings including the IT director who just ghosted before ghosting was a thing). We also had an ex-Apple HR director who was really focused on hiring diversity, and did nothing to my knowledge that upset anyone even when the company had to wind down from a combination of lack of funding and lack of business.
Later on I got to work for another startup where I got to hear about the chairman of the board (former National Semiconductor exec) sexually propositioning one of my favorite coworkers at lunch after he'd had his three martinis or whatever. As an IT guy I had little to offer but my sense of outrage, but I remember the sick helpless anger of not being able to support her. Thankfully she was sure enough of where she was in life and her value to the company to put him in his place in a way that got an apology at least.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:58 AM on April 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
In the late nineties I worked for a y2k Cobol code remediation tech company full of ex-IBM managers and I absolutely believe from working with them that they had a corporate culture and some of the best middle managers in tech for decades. IBM had created a separate track for technical advancement and I met zero managers from IBM who hadn't trained for the job. Not just MBAs, but actually trained on how to handle leadership roles and dealing with and advocating for their employees.
When we brought in a former Microsoft VP who also brought along a whole passel of his cronies to fill slots in our rapidly growing company I got to experience a huge culture clash that made it abundantly apparent that both companies had a corporate culture and the Microsoft culture was absolute shit. At the time I described it as IBM being results oriented and Microsoft being effort oriented. At great expense and effort the company finally purged all the Microsoft idiots (and they were almost universally either horrible at their jobs, dumb about our mission, or unprofessional in their dealings including the IT director who just ghosted before ghosting was a thing). We also had an ex-Apple HR director who was really focused on hiring diversity, and did nothing to my knowledge that upset anyone even when the company had to wind down from a combination of lack of funding and lack of business.
Later on I got to work for another startup where I got to hear about the chairman of the board (former National Semiconductor exec) sexually propositioning one of my favorite coworkers at lunch after he'd had his three martinis or whatever. As an IT guy I had little to offer but my sense of outrage, but I remember the sick helpless anger of not being able to support her. Thankfully she was sure enough of where she was in life and her value to the company to put him in his place in a way that got an apology at least.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:58 AM on April 11, 2021 [6 favorites]
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posted by zsh2v1 at 2:12 PM on April 8, 2021 [4 favorites]