New Book Paints Different Picture of Workplace Behavior At Google and Facebook

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: In Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom), Adam Fisher paints quite a different picture of life at now-workforce behavior preachers Google and Facebook, revealing that the tech giants' formative days were filled with the kind of antics that run afoul of HR protocols. Google was not a normal place, begins an excerpt in Vanity Fair that includes some juicy quotes attributed to Google executive chef Charlie Ayers about Google's founders ("Sergey's the Google playboy. He was known for getting his fingers caught in the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company in the masseuse room. He got around.") And in Sex, Beer, and Coding, Wired runs an excerpt about Facebook's wild early days, which even extended to the artwork gracing its office ("The office was on the second floor, so as you walk in you immediately have to walk up some stairs, and on the big 10-foot-high wall facing you is just this huge buxom woman with enormous breasts wearing this Mad Max-style costume riding a bulldog. It's the most intimidating, totally inappropriate thing. [...] That set a tone for us. A huge-breasted warrior woman riding a bulldog is the first thing you see as you come in the office, so like, get ready for that!" So, what changed? "When Sheryl Sandberg joined the company is when I saw a vast shift in everything in the company," said Ayers about Google. Sandberg later became Facebook's grown-up face.

Comments

If you get all worked up ...

[Qbertino]

... about a Picasso/Graffiti original depicting a busty comic girl and a cartoon dog, then you should probably leave.

To me the binge drinking contests would've been more off-putting.

I bet dollars to donuts that the stuff that brought Google or Facebook ahead wasn't built by the people who would do binge drinking contests at work. This nonsense is usually done by marketing or community management.

The stuff that brings these companies ahead are built by people who come in, solve the problem, collect their salary and then leave again.

Acting like an asshole is usually done by, well, assholes.

Re:If you get all worked up ...

[ArchieBunker]

lol you'd be the first person complaining if there was a mural of two men embracing. Once you start hiring people you can't run a business like a frat house. Nothing new this practice has been going on for decades now.

Maybe its time to admit...

[Jarwulf]

90% of what is now classified as 'sexually inappropriate' behavior is normal evolutionarily derived behavior. And the vast majority of mentally normal people would ultimately be happier living away from the convents decreed by nuns or their modern day equivalents, women's studies professors.

Re:Maybe its time to admit...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Most of what we call "sexually inappropriate behaviour" today has been socially inappropriate for ages. What has changed is that much of the behaviour we used to classify as a faux pas (or even just flirting) is now a capital crime, apparently. It's good that we no longer tolerate grossly inappropriate sexual behaviour, but we seem to have lost all nuance when it comes to milder transgressions, with the danger of trivializing all of it. In the old days, if you read "x% of female students have been sexually assaulted while at college", that was cause for concern. These days you're left to wonder if this includes cases where someone glanced at a woman in the elevator (hint: it does).

Re:Maybe its time to admit...

[alvinrod]

While that is probably more true than some would care to admit, I don't know if work is the place for any of that. I suppose that if you have men and women working together, you're inevitably going to get office romances. Trying to prevent that may be a cure worse than the disease, and I suspect that anyone who can't keep their professional and personal lives sufficiently separate is probably not a great worker anyways. However, people should try to keep things a little more discreet. People can chase down their primal urges on their own time.

I suppose I wouldn't want to outlaw someone running a business that way described in the summary if that's what they want. I'm just not sure that I'd care to work there.

Re:Maybe its time to admit...

[wierd_w]

The issue really is quite simple, but fixing it is not.

The issue:

People (in general) develop an idealized set of conditions in their minds, and work tirelessly to attain that ideal. This is true for the religious prudes (like the afore mentioned nuns), and for the modern crop of humanists (to which the nuns were compared.)

These people have an ideal: Women should never be objectified, EVER. (EEEVAAARR).

This includes "OMG! He looked at me in a way that (I perceive) is lustful!" (Even though he could just be having a totally human reaction to the abnormal proportions of some part of that woman's anatomy. How knows, maybe she has a huge bedonkydonk butt that makes that "champaign" pic look tame, and his reaction is just because it is so out of the ordinary that he just cant help but notice. Could be any number of reasons in fact. Maybe he has nearsightedness, and was trying to read the teeny tiny text on the front of her shirt-- who knows.)

Since the *PERCEPTION* of being objectified is what is taken as the standard, rather than investigating what actually is happening, or going on-- we end up with absurdities like the current blatant double standards, with "painful to listen to" rhetoric espousing how the insistence of actually getting to the bottom of a circumstance is somehow sidelining women and their complaints... or something. (No, it's called *fairness*. Taking an unfounded complaint as gospel and giving the other side no recourse is *UNFAIR*, and investigating the complaint is how you determine if actual objectification happened or not. No, insisting that due diligence be undertaken is not some code-speak for denying women their rights to being treated like human beings, or some other imagined thing. No, this is not invitation for a deluge of cherry picked anecdotes or assertions that the process has been used to subvert or oppress women. It is a statement of simple fact-- If you do not take the effort to get all the data, you are purposefully distorting your image of reality. Investigating a complaint is just assuring that all possible data is collected before making a decision, and is really the only SENSIBLE way to approach a 2 sided argument. The presence of penises or vaginas makes no important distinction. It is just as true of complaints between two men, and between two women, as between a woman and a man, or a man and a woman.)

Fixing the problem requires wresting away the presumption that the *perception* of a slight is equivalent to having been slighted, and the restoration of the requirement that intent to harm or cause upset be demonstrated and proven.

For the people which hold these unrealistic idealized perceptions, this is "GOING BACKWARDS!!" and "PUSHING WOMAN'S RIGHTS BACK A DECADE OR MORE!" and a host of other screaming and raving.

There will be wild accusations that the burden of proving intent is just some evil attempt to shut down poor disenfranchised people in favor of the patriarchy, or some such. That this is the wrong direction to take. etc.

Historically, this modality of thinking (the idealist's hardline stance) is, in general (eg, the notion that a (favored) group can make unsubstantiated claims, and that they must be taken as if they are unquestionably true, no matter what, in the general sense-- not that women must always be believed in specific, which is just a specific example of the general pattern I am mentioning here) what has enabled some of mankind's most horrific atrocities.

For the same reasons we assert that the pope's "Infallibility" is bullshit, or that we assert that there is no "Divine right" for kings, etc--- we cannot accept that a woman's belief that she has been the target of an unwanted advance is the same thing as her having been assaulted. Again-- There can be all kinds of perfectly benign reasons for that "Lecherous, perverted stare!" etc. When you deny that those reasons can and do exist (because the woman is 100% CERTAIN that it could not possibly be that, because damnit, she FEELS victimized, an

Re:Maybe its time to admit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to note, you seem to be asserting that "papal infallibility is bullshit". But to think that suggests that you misunderstand it.

It means that what the pope says, becomes Catholic doctrine. IOW, the pope can't break policy, because what the pope says IS policy.

That the pope is always "correct" (ie sinless) would be called "papal impeccibility". See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeccability

I think it's all bullshit, but in the sense that I don't hold with the doctrine. But the way you're using the infallibility thing is essentially as a straw man, and it weakens your argument.

Re:Maybe its time to admit...

[AmiMoJo]

I'm a humanist (and a feminist) and I'd like to offer a correction.

These people have an ideal: Women should never be objectified, EVER. (EEEVAAARR).

Humanists don't think that. Aside from anything humanism isn't really concerned with that sort of thing anyway, it's a form of existentialism that concerns itself with the agency of human beings and their ability to reason without the need for religious frameworks or morality.

Anyway, I think this misconception, which is usually applied to feminists, comes from some misunderstandings.

For example, enjoying the human body for it's form and sexuality is fine, when you have permission to do so. Permission is given in all sorts of ways, for example if someone decides to wear certain tight or revealing clothing. Perhaps the misunderstanding comes from the fact that that permission doesn't extend to touching, or imply availability or the desire for an approach necessarily. But when that person chooses to offer their body for your enjoyment then go right ahead.

Another misconception might be because sometimes people wear such clothing for reasons other than enjoying their own sexuality, such as athletes who need it to perform. I think most people appreciate that it would be inappropriate for a sports commentator to start commenting on an athlete's looks, even though they might be wearing very little.

A great example of this is tennis. Some tournaments require women to wear a skirt, so they usually just wear the lyrca they normally put on and a minimal skirt over it. Many feminists would prefer they were allowed to wear less, because the skirt is unnecessary and purely there to make them conform to a certain ideal of femininity.

Re:Maybe its time to admit...

[AmiMoJo]

Women often wear clothing as a symbol of femininity/power over OTHER WOMEN-- EG, a woman may "overdress" for work, which sends the "I am ok with having my body's aesthetics enjoyed" message, when that message is not really intended. The intended message is "See bitches, I'm totally hotter than you, and I know it."

Yes, and it's just as toxic as guys using their physicality to intimidate. It's quite a complex problem, and the best thing men can do about it is to not engage with women who try to do that. If it doesn't work they lose their power, both over you and over the women they are trying to send a message to.

Good engineers can still be jerks

[sjbe]

... about a Picasso/Graffiti original depicting a busty comic girl and a cartoon dog, then you should probably leave.

Why? Why should someone have to leave because someone else at the company wants to behave like an unsupervised teenager on a bender? How about just taking down a picture that any sensible adult will see the problem with? Seriously, you don't get why having such a picture posted prominently is unprofessional when it has NOTHING to do with the actual business of the company? Pro tip: If your business isn't art or fashion, then pictures of busty women posted prominently is almost certainly going to be perceived badly by self respecting professional women as well as men with a sense of decency and respect for women. I have a daughter and a wife and they shouldn't have to put up with crap like that at work. A business isn't supposed to operate like a fraternity house.

I bet dollars to donuts that the stuff that brought Google or Facebook ahead wasn't built by the people who would do binge drinking contests at work.

Yes it was. Companies aren't built by engineers alone no matter how much we might wish it to be so nor are engineers above such behavior. 20 seconds on google can find you innumerable examples. Many of these companies were built by young 20-somethings with limited guidance on professional behavior and they behaved like young 20-somethings often do - which is to say like an unsupervised child. There is a reason these company almost always have to bring in an experienced professional to be "the adult in the room".

This nonsense is usually done by marketing or community management.

I'm sure you wish that were actually true. Back here in the real world, engineers party and are often sexist pigs just as often as those in any other profession. Being a talented engineer or any other type of profession is not incompatible with been a juvenile asshat and if you've been around for more than a minute you'll have met quite a few of them.

The stuff that brings these companies ahead are built by people who come in, solve the problem, collect their salary and then leave again.

I think you don't have a lot of experience with real world staffing or you could not possibly believe this. Talk to any HR professional and you'll quickly find out that talent for solving engineering problems has poor correlation with decent behavior. The tone for how a company behaves is set at the top and if the top management is permissive with sketchy behavior then that is what you are going to get. See Uber if you need an example. People can get a lot of quality work done and still find time to be an asshat.

Diversity

[sjbe]

I'd also wager that the people who really built those companies and continue to drive them are a) mostly male, b) mostly white, and c) couldn't give much of a shit about a picture of a big titted chick riding a bulldog (or heavens, they might actually like it).

Probably true. Doesn't mean it is right or that it should be condoned. It also probably means that those companies have some messed up cultural problems that they are still dealing with to this day because being talented does not also mean you aren't an asshat. Ask Harvey Weinstein.

I've found that SJW claims about a company's diversity "needs" rarely have any intersection with recognizing the company's previous success track. If it's success has truly come from hiring 51% women or x% transgender, they'd already be doing it and wouldn't have to keep being told.

You are effectively arguing that people won't be racists or sexists when money is on the table and that is demonstrably not true. Color me unimpressed with your reasoning. Our country has centuries of racial and gender bias which we are still dealing with and which denies opportunities daily to deserving people.

The reason diversity matters is that talented people don't come in a particular gender or skin color. If you are actually hiring the best people, chances are that your company is going to look pretty diverse. But people routinely do not hire the best people - they hire the people they are most comfortable with and who by and large look the most like themselves. When all these people are white, male, and privileged then this tends to become a problem for society as well as for that company.

Re:In other words...

[AmiMoJo]

At first, only the successful hunter was an alpha male.

There were never any alpha males. The whole concept is based on a book about wolves kept in captivity, the findings of which were later retracted by a later book by the same author. Wolves don't behave like that and human beings certainly don't.

The idea of the alpha male hunter is also something of a myth. Hunting is dangerous and physically demanding - it's the sort of thing you get other people to do for you if you can possibly help it. We see this in the animal kingdom a lot, and all through human history.

And James Damore has put himself out there.

Didn't he give the memo only to people he trusted, until it was leaked?

A lot of people are derisive when it comes to defining masculinity by any other means than money and muscle but that is a very limited position to take.

Well, at least we agree on that.