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

Brands built

[AHuxley]

on ads.
Placing ads and ensuring as many users get to see the ads.
Working with ad customers to find out what they need to know about consumers.
Microphones to allow consumers to ask questions....
Not detecting the NSA and GCHQ deep in networks? Who else followed the NSA and GCHQ in?

Re:Brands built

[AmiMoJo]

I understand your sentiment, but Google has done more than probably anyone else except Snowden to stop NSA/GCHQ spying. Their push for universal use of HTTPS, encrypted email transport and encryption by default on Android shouldn't be underestimated.

Re:Brands built

[farble1670]

And at the same time, Google and Facebook have pushed hard to be at the end of that encrypted pipe. Now it's hard to spy as the middleman, so you have to buy your intel from Bob.

Because Google and Facebook value being a police state lacky over making billions of dollars?

These guys make sales through consumers, not the state. It's in their market interest to ensure no one thinks that they are selling data to the government because that'd make consumers go elsewhere for their devices.

Could they be caving to government demands behind the scenes? It's possible, but common sense says they have nothing to gain and everything to lose. As far as government favor, paying off elected officials does the job. Unlocking phones for Poe-dunk sheriff #3421? Not so much.

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.

Re:If you get all worked up ...

[lucasnate1]

I bet that the binge drinkers made a lot of money though, more than the builders.

Re:If you get all worked up ...

[Opportunist]

Depends. Are they cute?

Re:If you get all worked up ...

[lucasnate1]

I like telling misogynist jokes and I also insisted on our gay employees' right to put pride flags on their desk.

Re:If you get all worked up ...

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Once you start hiring people you can't run a business like a frat house.

It's worked for many businesses throughout history. There have also been slavery, child labor, embezzlement, and genocide. Whether these have been effective for a business in the long term, they've existed throughout history. It does not necessarily contribute to the long-term success of the company, or to the lives of most employees. But please, don't assume that simply because there is a business that it will automatically behave well, or in a politically sensitive way.

Re:If you get all worked up ...

[arglebargle_xiv]

It's worked for many businesses throughout history. There have also been slavery, child labor, embezzlement, and genocide. Whether these have been effective for a business in the long term

The UK, US, France, Spain, etc are all still around, so it seems to have worked in the long term to some degree.

Re:If you get all worked up ...

[FilmedInNoir]

Yeah, well, I was expecting Boris Vallejo and got "5 year old with a watercolor set".

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]

Sadly you have fallen into the same trap of perpetuating this myth that many others have. For example, the "x% of female students have been sexually assaulted while at college" claim was actually from a very well written paper (the original Campus Sexual Assault (CSA) survey). It was quite conservative, using a definition of sexual assault that was stricter than most legal ones (and definitely doesn't include "someone glanced at a woman in the elevator"), and actually breaks down the statistics even further into categories like violent and incapacitated assault.

Despite a number of caveats given in the paper, its results have been found by subsequent studies using very robust methodology (e.g. phone interviews with explanations of terms and the definition of sexual assault, limited to the past 6 months to avoid telescoping effects etc.) to be broadly representative.

The really sad thing is that some men are now scared to even interact with women or be in confined spaces with the, due to unfounded fears perpetuated by these myths. I'm sure someone will respond with a bunch of copy/paste links they prepared demonstrating that the threat is real, but a bunch of links isn't really in the same league as a peer reviewed study.

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...

[wierd_w]

There is another disconnect there as well though.

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."

Then, after doing this, they file complaints when people "stop and notice", as the"WRONG" people (EG, male co-workers, and NOT the female ones) are the ones giving the lingering looks.

Since it is impossible to determine what the intent of such dress is (without suddenly developing telepathy), it is impossible to "enjoy" the display. Dangerous even, especially in light of how modern sexual harassment law is defined. (It really *IS* defined by the PERCEPTIONS of the person making the complaint, rather than actual circumstances--- meaning, that the person showed up to work in provocative glitter pasties with matching pumps is not a consideration; She did not want to be looked at like that by THOSE people, and they should be punished for their unwanted, lingering stares, etc.)

As for the former, which preceded this aside--- A humanist is a person who fundamentally believes in the dignity and sanctity of "person-hood", or "humanity." Extremism is perfectly possible within this demographic, just like any other ideology. It was not intended to imply that all secular humanists are extreme secular humanists who get paradoxically combative over their extremist positions. (paradoxical, as the notion of committing violence against another human is incompatible with most forms of secular humanism.) I thought this was sufficiently implied when I brought up the logical relationship between similarly extreme religious philosophy holders, and this kind of humanist. (I apologize if this was not sufficiently lamp-lit.)

Likewise one can be a feminist without being a raging misandrist-- This does not make the raging misandrist stop being de-facto, "A feminist."

The opening salvo about people in general selecting an arbitrary set of ideals is exactly that as well. A general observation about what individual humans do; the specifics of the ideals selected and why they were selected are individual to the person, but this does appear to happen. Each person has a conception of what an ideal meal is like, or an ideal vacation, etc. When a person then seeks a satisfying meal, or plans a luxury vacation, they seek to get as close as possible to these idealized conceptions of what those things should be like, out of the arbitrary preferences of their ideals.

The same is true of the modern humanist extremist-- the social justice warrior. This individual has a specific idealized form of social norm that they seek to always have when interacting with other people. What they fail to consider is that not everyone has the same idealized social interaction parameters that they do, and they react with violence (both physical and intellectual) when these ideals are not satisfied, in much the same way a person who expected a certain kind of food at the fancy restaurant my pitch a fit about it, or that a person may complain mightily to the manager of a fancy hotel for "ruining their vacation."

The problem is that "encounter at the restaurant" and "Luxury vacation" are both very exclusive things that exclude most other people from the fallout of the consequences of their choices being mandated, where "social interaction parameters", by their nature, impacts a whole society.

Very selfishly, they try to demand the whole society conform to their arbitrary parameters, then respond with violent outbursts when they are not satisfied, or when people engage socially in ways that best suit [i]THEM[/i] instead of the social justice warrior.

Re:Maybe its time to admit...

[AmiMoJo]

I acknowledged all that in my comment, pointing out that later studies using more rigorous methodology confirmed the findings. Not some random WaPo journalist, but actual peer reviewed studies.

The BoJ stats used a different, narrower definition of sexual assault and a limited time frame (six months), as I also pointed out. Thus, the numbers are not in any way directly comparable.

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.

Re:Maybe its time to admit...

[TeknoHog]

Just to note, you seem to be asserting that "papal infallibility is bullshit".

It's only bullshit until a bull is issued.

Re:In other words...

[blindseer]

I expect that James Damore will never see a courtroom with his case against Google. He'll get a big fat pay-off out of court, and Google will make some kind of half apology where they say they did not fire anyone over comments over hiring practices and that they'll never do it again. After that I expect Damore to find work in his own company doing whatever it is he likes to do, and make appearances on TV shows and on the speaking circuit for most anyone that asks. Any other outcome will not be near as good for Google.

It was happening before Facebook and Google

[The Optimizer]

In the very 90s I worked for a few different tech or engineering / services companies and at more than one I learned that the early days of the company were full of similar stories.

I think it had more to do with the nature of an early tech startup combined people with a white collar office setting and sometimes long hours that allowed for social mixing, goofing off, encounters the left people saying 'check the sofa for stains', etc. Add in some corporate success in lines of business that weren't 'mature' to the point of being cut and dry and it was easy to blur the lines, especially with younger people who were not married / didn't have families (though that didn't stop some).

Re:In other words...

[Kokuyo]

It heavily depends on what basis you define masculinity, now doesn't it?

At first, only the successful hunter was an alpha male. Then somebody invented religion and suddenly scrawny people could advance to alpha status by being shaman.

Nowadays there are a lot of options. If you can wield influence, you're halfway there. If you have the confidence to do it too, there's little stopping you.

And James Damore has put himself out there. He has argued against the established ways. That takes courage and courage is seen as desirable too.

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.

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:Diversity

[swb]

I'd probably go even further and suggest that the personality types associated with entrepreneurship are iconoclasts and have little respect for rules or conventional behavior.

I'd also argue that such behavior may actually be necessary, social norms and rules are often significantly oriented towards maintaining and persisting a given order. Following the rules doesn't change history as they say.

I don't think this excuses any specific act of sexism, harassment, etc, but it does kind of explain the types of people involved and how it starts.

Re:Diversity

[denzacar]

The reason diversity matters is it provides an attack vector for some.

What are your views on the **highly** non-diverse hiring practices of the various basket ball leagues?

You completely missed the bit in the parent post about "actually hiring the best people"?
Tinfoil will cause such issues with text comprehension once it starts seeping in the bloodstream.
Plus on top of even the regular paranoia, you start seeing "attack vectors" everywhere.
That's why you should always use velostat hats, not tinfoil ones.
Tinfoil is part of a secret SJW plan to make you sterile and easily identifiable due to light reflection from your head.

As for your dreams of not being short, fat and too old and incapable to earn a living by bouncing a ball... well... that's all your mom's fault.

Re:Diversity

[DrSpock11]

"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."

If this statement were true tech companies wouldn't have such huge amount of ethnically Asian employees. And indeed, intentionally limit the amounts of them that they hire.

Of course, Asians are a "minority" whose culture strongly values education and hard work and this results in their success in entering engineering fields. But of course, this reality doesn't jive with the left's fantasy storyline of "systemic oppression" so it's always ignored.

Re:In other words...

[AmiMoJo]

Admitting wrong-doing out of court would be a disaster for Google, as it would open them up to more lawsuits from both people who agree with Damore and people who quit or lost opportunities because of him.

Since the Labour Board has already given its opinion that Damore was legally fired and the authors of his primary sources have disagreed with his conclusions it appears that Google has a strong case. Thing is, even if he was right it might not actually help him win, because the manner in which the memo was circulated certainly did create a problem at Google and they would argue it was his fault, so he would have to counter-argue that somehow it wasn't.

I'm actually quite looking forward to hearing those arguments.

Re:In other words...

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

I expect that James Damore will never see a courtroom with his case against Google. He'll get a big fat pay-off out of court, and Google will make some kind of half apology where they say they did not fire anyone over comments over hiring practices and that they'll never do it again. After that I expect Damore to find work in his own company doing whatever it is he likes to do, and make appearances on TV shows and on the speaking circuit for most anyone that asks. Any other outcome will not be near as good for Google.

I also don't think this will see a courtroom, but for different reasons:

Damore had an at-will employment contract and the US National Labor Relations Board wouldn't take his case (he might have technically withdraw it, but there is enough documentation as to their findings) so I don't believe he has a case, at least not from the angle he's pursuing it.

He has failed to gain enough monetary support, he's seeking $100k but have only received slightly above $50k https://www.fundedjustice.com/... that's not enough to cover his side of the trial (several others have joined his class-action lawsuit and the money is for all of them).

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.

Re:In other words...

[datavirtue]

He did a writeup for a mailing list that was specifically aimed at the subject.

You are a SJW in search of a villian.

Re: In other words...

[datavirtue]

Agreed. The point of drawing such a discussion is to have someone like Damore present his thoughts in a safe environment where the group can discuss it with him. Perhaps after discussing it with people he would change his mind about some of his opinions and grow as a person. The was the whole purpose of the mailing list that got Damore to write what he did. They gained his trust and burned him at the stake for his views so they could punish him for calling Google management dumb Marxists.

Read the memo.