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At Google, an Employee-Run Email List Tracks Harassment and Bias Complaints (bloomberg.com)

A group of Google employees have begun a message board for employees to submit worker complaints that's then emailed weekly as a digest, according to a report on Bloomberg. The email list -- called "Yes, at Google" -- has been around since October and allows employees to talk openly about work situations in which they felt uncomfortable; most submissions are anonymized. From the article: Google management is aware of the list. "We work really hard to promote and preserve a culture of respect and inclusion," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "Our employees have numerous ways to raise issues -- both negative and positive -- with us, including through grassroots transparency efforts like this one. We take concerns seriously and take appropriate measures to address them." The list is run by a group of workers across different product areas, according to a person familiar with the list, though it's not clear who runs the list and how or whether the submissions are vetted before being distributed. Usually, the people in the complaints are not named, though one submission described an instance when, during a large company meeting in late April, Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt allegedly interrupted Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat when she had a question addressed to her, which the post categorized as a "gender-related" complaint. A person who attended the meeting said Schmidt answered the question to make a joke. Messages sometimes include job titles and other details.

7 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I reported my rape and got fired by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It seems too many people these days see shaming and the system against them at every corner....

    I would guess that MOST of the complaints are of the "Seriously?" type as listed in the article:

    though one submission described an instance when, during a large company meeting in late April, Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt allegedly interrupted Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat when she had a question addressed to her, which the post categorized as a "gender-related" complaint. A person who attended the meeting said Schmidt answered the question to make a joke.

    I mean really....there *are* real instances of harassment out there, but you have so many people seeing and reporting crap that just isn't worth it and not a real problem and it muddies the water for seeing the few *real* incidents that happen out there, are serious and need to be addressed.

    Is this the snowflakes entering the real world, finding out everyone doesn't get a trophy, doesn't have to give a shit about their 'self esteem', only expecting you to get your job done and do what your told and on time.....and seeing and reporting crap that no one in past generations saw as a problem but just the way life is....?

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  2. Re:I reported my rape and got fired by oakgrove · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If being interrupted by the opposite sex is a "gender-related" thing by now then I should top the charts of oppression and my wife has a lot of 'splainin to do.

    --
    The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
  3. "Allegations" by Jfetjunky · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While I know the list is usually anonymous, this kind of thing seems like it could potentially morph into a trial by mod situations. I'm not sure allegations alone are enough for something so serious. I'm not sure any serious HR org would discipline an employee on a single accusation.

  4. Re:I reported my rape and got fired by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hope every one of them is caught and hung at the nearest lamp post. Gimme the rope.

    Be careful what you wish for. Harsh punishments for rape are correlated with very high acquittal rates and a cultural of impunity. Society's "ideal" of rape is a pure innocent blonde virgin minding her own business when some total stranger grabs her and drags her into the bushes. Very few real rapes are anything like that, but the more the actual situation diverges from the "ideal", the less likely the women is to be believed or even take seriously. Very few juries are likely to put a seemingly nice guy in prison for 20 years because of a "he-said-she-said" accusation of date rape.

  5. Re:I reported my rape and got fired by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No amount of shaming men to try to make them more like women is going to change that

    Not true. I first heard of the interruption difference years ago when I read this book. Once I was attuned to it, I noticed it happening in meetings, and I noticed that I did it myself. So I try to interrupt less, and if someone else interrupts a woman during a meeting, I often later ask her to finish her point. So at least in my case, it made a difference.

  6. Re:I reported my rape and got fired by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This. It's not about shaming as some people seem to think, it's about awareness.

    Stop taking it personally. When I see a sign saying "don't drop litter", I don't feel the need to scrawl "not all people!" or "fuck you litter nazi" under it.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  7. Re:not good enough, misogynerds! by vel-ex-tech · · Score: 2

    tl;dr I should have used sarcasm tags. I forget this place is like the big city. I'm more used to the red site now which is like a small town where everybody knows everybody else. And now the part that's too long:

    Well, I did miss the MWMF closing down at first I admit, being (basically) a trans woman (with complications thanks to TERFs) who would point to MWMF as proof that all feminism is trans-exclusionary but not giving enough of a shit to actually join Camp Trans (learned about that from a trans woman I met at tech convention). BarbaraHudson did fill me in after MWMF had to shut down when I used to post here more. Mostly I post to the red site these days where some of my posts are even serious! (Though increasingly as AC when I'm not posting about something that'll immediately give me away.)

    I forget if that was before or after I scrambled the password to my old UID on both sites. Haha, nearly had a change of heart there about feminism (thank you AmiMoJo, BarbaraHudson, and Azuma Hazuki for at least attempting to get through my thick skull), but then some local TERFeminists (I suspect but cannot prove, events were just too weird to be random chance) gave me a smack down that wound up forcing me to drive a 300 mile round trip to see a doctor over something THAT OBAMACARE DID! Argh!!!eleven!1!

    These days I've said essentially "fuck it." I'm not certain that TERFs actually are a minority voice in feminism, and I'm certain they're not a minority in my neck of the woods! I understand that transfeminism is a thing, but... I've just been put through too much shit because of the misogynerd narrative (was interesting because it was before gamers were dead and misogynerd came into usage), because of rape culture, because of you-name-it. You can stitch it together based on my posts on the red site.

    If all feminists were like the three that I named in this post that at least proved to me that not all feminists are TERFs (and then... only one has the fucking status to say that as a feminist, sorry to the other two, and even then I don't know that. On the internet, nobody knows you're a T-900 advanced infiltrator from the post-apocalyptic future!), I would probably be a feminist. Unfortunately, they're not. The misogynerd narrative has gotten so ridiculous, especially the personal shit it's caused me, that I'm going to be lucky if I don't find out in a month's time from now that I'm also transphobic and homophobic in addition to being a misogynist.

    Yep, I'm a certified misogynist according to one TERF I still see on a daily basis solely because of my assigned gender at birth. Because of a fucking letter on a fucking legal document that may or may not even be the current fucking legal document I'd pull out if you asked me to. It's all my fault (hence the collective and several part of my other post) that there are no womyn-born-womyn programmers, that compilers emit error messages, and fucking Garbage In Garbage Out is all my fault.

    Yep, that's right! Garbage In Garbage Out is the fault of all assigned males (including trans women) EVEN THOUGH LOVELACE HERSELF FIRST PUT FORWARD THE NOTION (in her Notes)!!!!!eleven!1! Argh!!eleven!

    They don't even fucking comprehend her Notes, and they have the arrogance to proclaim that command lines and compilers themselves are tools of the patriarchy specifically designed by assigned males to be inaccessible to womyn-born-womyn!! TERFeminists can get fucked. No, they can get raped for all I care. Not just because of the misery they've caused me, not just because of the misery they've caused all trans women, but because they and their fucking misogynerd narrative and their insistence that "coding" is "easy" (did not read the other article on that subject) or would be if not for some grand conspiracy... they are the ones most directly responsible for the lack of women progr