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I only skimmed the article, so sorry if I'm mistaken, but it's weird that under such conditions she remained there from 2008 to 2016. Other than that, if even

by gkya 9y ago

I only skimmed the article, so sorry if I'm mistaken, but it's weird that under such conditions she remained there from 2008 to 2016. Other than that, if even some of these claims are true, then this is not merely sexual misconduct, there's something broken about the company's way of working, and the kind of people it tends to hire. Most of these probably qualify as sexual harassment, but also are very childish, immature kind of behaviours. Work must be serious and professional, it doesn't work otherwise, and more so as the scale of the company grows. Throwing things at coworkers or putting whiskey in their drinks for a prank? What's Google, a kindergarten?

Barrin92 9y ago
>but also are very childish, immature kind of behaviours the tech industry and many other sectors of the 'knowledge economy' actively push for this. By removing rules and management from the workplace in an attempt to muddle people's work and private lifes they are bringing inappropriate behaviour into the workplace. This ranges from general lack of oversight to 'clique building' to even drinking at work, and people who are in a minority have a hard time fitting in in that environment because it often turns into an informal boys club. The same thing can be seen in open source communities where testosterone charged rants on mailing lists seem to be encouraged rather than discouraged.
- nathanaldensr 9y ago
  That's right. Google has built this culture. Now they have to deal with the consequences.
- gkya 9y ago
  The "work is fun" way of working has diminishing returns, working professionally and for less amount of time is the way to go. And sack the adults with an adolescent's brain already. The fun part of the work can only be the actual satisfactory stuff you're doing, not fucking around like 90's music videos (but then again in an organisation with upwards of a hundred thousand people, how much value can an individual produce?). I believe having people of different genders share the same workspace is very important. If a given department has too few or no people from one gender, their space should be merged with one that has some. Add to that a healthy amount of professionalism and formalism, that's a healthy workspace. In places where one gender is dominant or the only one, thing can easily get from a bit too comfy to disgusting (and that holds for women as much as men really).
johnchristopher 9y ago
> but it's weird that under such conditions she remained there from 2008 to 2016. No, it isn't. https://www.google.be/search?q=victims+of+sexual+harassment+don%27t+react https://www.google.be/search?q=victims+of+sexual+harassment+...
- gkya 9y ago
  She might have quit the job without disclosing what has been going on. I don't want to guess what she's been thinking anyways, I was trying to tell in that sentence that if these things really happened, it's weird to me that she chose to just bear with it for 8 years. Especially in the US IT industry where switching jobs every six months does not sound off to noone.
I_Know_Why 9y ago
> Work must be serious and professional I disagree. Certainly, that's the default expectation for corporate office culture... and it works for a lot of people... but I think the best way to approach work is to make not feel like work. Having toys around to play with is one (small) way to make the workday seem like fun. To be clear, I'm not condoning any of the behavior described in OP. At a former employer, we had nerf guns and plush toys we'd throw at each other occasionally. But there are certain unwritten rules to it: 1) don't nerf anyone who doesn't want to be nerfed. 2) probably better to just not nerf someone unless you know them well and have good relations with them. 3) by default, assume that women don't want to be nerfed. That last bullet may seem like it's exclusionary or sth, but it's my experience that women genuinely don't appreciate this particular game. Those who do want to participate in the nerf wars can signal that by nerfing someone. Yeah, and spiking someone's drink is definitely not ok, in the office or anywhere else.
- gkya 9y ago
  I'm sorry but I'm getting a cringe out of this. I seriously can't imagine a workplace where people are throwing things at each other. I could list here my potential thoughts having to work at such a place but I'd probably get banned then. There are people for whom work is trying to not fall down from tens of meters of height, people for whom work is watching people die at your hands when you're trying to bring them back to the only life they have, people for whom work is to collect before sunrise the scraps thousands of idiots litter around all the day, people for whom work is to read thousands upon thousands of pages to make humanity a bit less ignorant cave men; and then here I'm being told whom I should aim with a toy gun in an office. And the same privileged bunch that can't do work when it feels like work can't be bothered to blinking do some work like it's supposed to be regardless of whether or not their work feels like work or not, given the loads of crapware that's pushed around all the day. And then people go on questioning how women are scarsely represented in IT, heck, anybody with some manners should be underrepresented in such a work environment. Flying toys around my head when debugging some funny exception that I don't know what the cause is, of course I'm not debugging, either I'm monkeying around along with the "colleagues", or waiting for the annoyance to stop to start writing my letter of resignation. And WRT drinking in workplace, I have not seen a single bartender drink while working, to this day. I can't imagine blokes that throw toys at each other in an office while sober getting drunk.

by gkya 9y ago

Barrin92 9y ago

>but also are very childish, immature kind of behaviours the tech industry and many other sectors of the 'knowledge economy' actively push for this. By removing rules and management from the workplace in an attempt to muddle people's work and private lifes they are bringing inappropriate behaviour into the workplace. This ranges from general lack of oversight to 'clique building' to even drinking at work, and people who are in a minority have a hard time fitting in in that environment because it often turns into an informal boys club. The same thing can be seen in open source communities where testosterone charged rants on mailing lists seem to be encouraged rather than discouraged.

nathanaldensr 9y ago
That's right. Google has built this culture. Now they have to deal with the consequences.
gkya 9y ago
The "work is fun" way of working has diminishing returns, working professionally and for less amount of time is the way to go. And sack the adults with an adolescent's brain already. The fun part of the work can only be the actual satisfactory stuff you're doing, not fucking around like 90's music videos (but then again in an organisation with upwards of a hundred thousand people, how much value can an individual produce?). I believe having people of different genders share the same workspace is very important. If a given department has too few or no people from one gender, their space should be merged with one that has some. Add to that a healthy amount of professionalism and formalism, that's a healthy workspace. In places where one gender is dominant or the only one, thing can easily get from a bit too comfy to disgusting (and that holds for women as much as men really).

johnchristopher 9y ago

> but it's weird that under such conditions she remained there from 2008 to 2016. No, it isn't. https://www.google.be/search?q=victims+of+sexual+harassment+don%27t+react https://www.google.be/search?q=victims+of+sexual+harassment+...

gkya 9y ago
She might have quit the job without disclosing what has been going on. I don't want to guess what she's been thinking anyways, I was trying to tell in that sentence that if these things really happened, it's weird to me that she chose to just bear with it for 8 years. Especially in the US IT industry where switching jobs every six months does not sound off to noone.

I_Know_Why 9y ago

> Work must be serious and professional I disagree. Certainly, that's the default expectation for corporate office culture... and it works for a lot of people... but I think the best way to approach work is to make not feel like work. Having toys around to play with is one (small) way to make the workday seem like fun. To be clear, I'm not condoning any of the behavior described in OP. At a former employer, we had nerf guns and plush toys we'd throw at each other occasionally. But there are certain unwritten rules to it: 1) don't nerf anyone who doesn't want to be nerfed. 2) probably better to just not nerf someone unless you know them well and have good relations with them. 3) by default, assume that women don't want to be nerfed. That last bullet may seem like it's exclusionary or sth, but it's my experience that women genuinely don't appreciate this particular game. Those who do want to participate in the nerf wars can signal that by nerfing someone. Yeah, and spiking someone's drink is definitely not ok, in the office or anywhere else.

gkya 9y ago
I'm sorry but I'm getting a cringe out of this. I seriously can't imagine a workplace where people are throwing things at each other. I could list here my potential thoughts having to work at such a place but I'd probably get banned then. There are people for whom work is trying to not fall down from tens of meters of height, people for whom work is watching people die at your hands when you're trying to bring them back to the only life they have, people for whom work is to collect before sunrise the scraps thousands of idiots litter around all the day, people for whom work is to read thousands upon thousands of pages to make humanity a bit less ignorant cave men; and then here I'm being told whom I should aim with a toy gun in an office. And the same privileged bunch that can't do work when it feels like work can't be bothered to blinking do some work like it's supposed to be regardless of whether or not their work feels like work or not, given the loads of crapware that's pushed around all the day. And then people go on questioning how women are scarsely represented in IT, heck, anybody with some manners should be underrepresented in such a work environment. Flying toys around my head when debugging some funny exception that I don't know what the cause is, of course I'm not debugging, either I'm monkeying around along with the "colleagues", or waiting for the annoyance to stop to start writing my letter of resignation. And WRT drinking in workplace, I have not seen a single bartender drink while working, to this day. I can't imagine blokes that throw toys at each other in an office while sober getting drunk.