6 ms·

>We had absolutely no work in Russia. Wouldn't the point of such a high level briefing be because they're tying to get work in Russia but don't already have an

>We had absolutely no work in Russia. Wouldn't the point of such a high level briefing be because they're tying to get work in Russia but don't already have any? It's rather common for employees to not know the details of the strategic plans of the executives until the execution starts.

chrisseaton 5y ago
Were these peopled hired for responsibilities including historical briefings? No? So why are they being asked to do them?
- bradlys 5y ago
  End of the day, it's a job. Requirements change. You have to do things you don't want to do that might not even seem related. If you don't want to work under someone who does that stuff then leave. I yelled at a CEO because he asked me to do something that wasn't related to software engineering role. He stopped asking me and anyone else in eng due to that confrontation. But - guess what - he wanted to fired every single day I worked there after that incident. I only remained because I had a lot of people protecting me. So - you have to ask - are you willing to lose your job over it? If so - great - see ya! If not - then take your lumps and get it done.
  - geofft 5y ago
    The CEO has a job, too, and that job is set by the board and/or the company's owners. And the most important job of the CEO is to be a good leader. Was your CEO within his legal rights to ask you to do the job? Sure, assuming it was legal and not forbidden by your contract. Would it have been advisable for you to do it anyway, for the sake of your job? Probably. But that doesn't mean that the CEO was doing his job well by asking. And evidently he knew that, because he didn't actually fire you and the people protecting you. In the case of Google, a public company, it is simultaneously true that individual low-level employees should act strategically and optimize for their own benefit - which might include putting up with misbehaving management to remain employed under them - and that the public has a strong interest in knowing when management, especially senior management, is being bad at their jobs.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      I really don't think there's that much alignment in organizations in the sense you're speaking of. While it's nice to think that these places are acting in best interests of blahblahblah - I think selfish interests hold true more often than not and accountability is basically nigh impossible in our world. We have so many people who have been abusing people in so much worse of ways than "write me a report on Russia" and they have little to no accountability. The public doesn't care about how a company is managed - they care about the share price going up so they make their money.
      - afarrell 5y ago
        > The public doesn’t care how a company is managed - they care about the share price going up so they make their money. Thats like saying you don’t care about the fridge temperature of a restaurant, you care how quickly they get you your chicken Kiev. > I don’t think there is much alignment… Considering the fact that deepmind spends a significant amount on AI safety, a misalignment between their leadership and human values seems pretty concerning.
        beerandt 5y ago
        >a misalignment between their leadership and human values seems pretty concerning I mean this is what it boils down to. Does your self assessment of your value align with your bosses assessment, and if not, then who's wrong? I've been guilty of assigning tasks to employees just to keep their hands off of another area of a project. At that point in time, their best value to me was being busy with something else.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    > o - you have to ask - are you willing to lose your job over it? If so - great - see ya! If not - then take your lumps and get it done. This is ridiculous. Jobs have pretty clear, if arbitrary at times, functions. You wouldn’t ask a chef to brief you on Russian political history, a field of itself that is vastly nuanced just as much as AI itself, nor would you ask a data scientist. It isn’t because job function can’t change it’s because people have careers and an AI researches is not likely to be able to actually brief one on Russian political history without doing a deep dive and learning the field itself.
    - aaron-santos 5y ago
      > without doing a deep dive and learning the field itself. My response would be to ask about the employer's continuing education program. I could see myself taking a Russian studies program and get that report back in 2-3 years if tuition and time was 100% covered by the employer.
      - beerandt 5y ago
        This is the correct approach, if done properly. If it really ends up being a useful task and not pointless, your boss should be willing to expend additional resources in addition to your time. You take it seriously, which requires additional resources if it's outside the scope of your job or knowledge. And they should be happy to provide those resources if the task needs to be done.
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      >This is ridiculous. Jobs have pretty clear, if arbitrary at times, functions. In large organisations, yes. If you work for yourself or for a startup, though, you're typically just doing whatever needs to be done.
  - GoodJokes 5y ago
    Yes, you have described the prisoner’s dilemna. Instead of criticizing the prisoner perhaps try criticizing the those putting people in prison. Telling people to suck it up is insulting and shows that you DON’t care.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  If you want to work to a job description, go join the plumbers union.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    How far does this go? If you boss asks someone to strip for him is that ok? It's a legal job after all. If they didn't want to do that because it's not their job would you say 'go join the plumbers union'?
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
No. Because when you're as large as Google, you don't ask your underlings to write book reports on things that are of strategic business importance. You go through the proper channels and get them to hire qualified people to cut through the bullshit.
- Closi 5y ago
  > you don't ask your underlings to write book reports on things that are of strategic business importance Of course you do, that's exactly how it works. Usually the 'underlings' do the research or collect information, and then the people higher up synthesise that information into a strategic decision.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    No, you don't. Not when you literally have business units IN that country.
    - jay_kyburz 5y ago
      Yeah but, red tape. When you ask a business unit to do it, it becomes a whole big thing. When you ask somebody on your team to do it, it might not be as good, but it gets done.
      - Talanes 5y ago
        Only if you don't actually care what "done" means. Anyone can make an omelette if you're willing to define an omelette as "literally any eggs cooked in a pan." But I'd rather just ask someone who actually knows how to make an omelette.
        etothepii 5y ago
        I think the issue here is about how hard it is to ask for the chef to make you an omelette. If you go to https://food.gle https://food.gle type in onellette and your desk number then great. But first you have to even know that https://food.gle https://food.gle exists as an internal domain which might be something your underling has as much chance of finding out as you do.
mcguire 5y ago
Would you be comfortable writing a report on Russian political history? Remember, you can be fired for doing it badly, too.
- marcinzm 5y ago
  In a good org you wouldn't be fired for doing a mediocre job. In a bad org you'd be fired for saying no. In either case trying is better than not trying.
truetraveller 5y ago
Exactly.
abeppu 5y ago
1. Even if you're considering doing business in Russia, an over-broad request with insufficient context is unlikely to yield a result which is of any value. Russia is huge, and its history goes back to the 9th century. Asking for a report of its history and politics without saying anything about how the report would be used is absurd. "Prepare a report on how Russian government contracts for software services are awarded" is a prompt which might give you something useful. "Summarize more the a millennia of history and politics in a giant country" is not. 2. In the article linked in the comment above, this is given as a single example of a pattern of behavior of asking people to do things unrelated to their jobs. Surely we can understand that even if there were many examples, in this article only one could be mentioned due to space reasons. One might contrive a situation in which any single example, removed from its context, could be arguably a valid request. But if someone who worked with him observed this as a pattern rather than a single incident, doesn't that have to be taken seriously? Esp in combination with the "I crush people" and the assertion that he would humiliate people in front of their colleagues? Between the possibilities of "maybe there was a secret plan to work in Russia" and "maybe he asked for things out of personal interest disregarding people's actual roles" or "maybe he had a dysfunctional need to demonstrate power over others by having them do bullshit 'work'", I think the latter two are seem pretty plausible. > Suleyman would also sometimes ask employees to carry out tasks unrelated to their jobs or DeepMind's work, two former employees said. > "He would ask us to do personal things for him," one of these people said. "He said, 'I need you to write a briefing for me on Russian history and politics.' We knew it was absurd. We knew it was a waste of time. We had absolutely no work in Russia."

chrisseaton 5y ago

Were these peopled hired for responsibilities including historical briefings? No? So why are they being asked to do them?

bradlys 5y ago
End of the day, it's a job. Requirements change. You have to do things you don't want to do that might not even seem related. If you don't want to work under someone who does that stuff then leave. I yelled at a CEO because he asked me to do something that wasn't related to software engineering role. He stopped asking me and anyone else in eng due to that confrontation. But - guess what - he wanted to fired every single day I worked there after that incident. I only remained because I had a lot of people protecting me. So - you have to ask - are you willing to lose your job over it? If so - great - see ya! If not - then take your lumps and get it done.
- geofft 5y ago
  The CEO has a job, too, and that job is set by the board and/or the company's owners. And the most important job of the CEO is to be a good leader. Was your CEO within his legal rights to ask you to do the job? Sure, assuming it was legal and not forbidden by your contract. Would it have been advisable for you to do it anyway, for the sake of your job? Probably. But that doesn't mean that the CEO was doing his job well by asking. And evidently he knew that, because he didn't actually fire you and the people protecting you. In the case of Google, a public company, it is simultaneously true that individual low-level employees should act strategically and optimize for their own benefit - which might include putting up with misbehaving management to remain employed under them - and that the public has a strong interest in knowing when management, especially senior management, is being bad at their jobs.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    I really don't think there's that much alignment in organizations in the sense you're speaking of. While it's nice to think that these places are acting in best interests of blahblahblah - I think selfish interests hold true more often than not and accountability is basically nigh impossible in our world. We have so many people who have been abusing people in so much worse of ways than "write me a report on Russia" and they have little to no accountability. The public doesn't care about how a company is managed - they care about the share price going up so they make their money.
    - afarrell 5y ago
      > The public doesn’t care how a company is managed - they care about the share price going up so they make their money. Thats like saying you don’t care about the fridge temperature of a restaurant, you care how quickly they get you your chicken Kiev. > I don’t think there is much alignment… Considering the fact that deepmind spends a significant amount on AI safety, a misalignment between their leadership and human values seems pretty concerning.
      - beerandt 5y ago
        >a misalignment between their leadership and human values seems pretty concerning I mean this is what it boils down to. Does your self assessment of your value align with your bosses assessment, and if not, then who's wrong? I've been guilty of assigning tasks to employees just to keep their hands off of another area of a project. At that point in time, their best value to me was being busy with something else.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  > o - you have to ask - are you willing to lose your job over it? If so - great - see ya! If not - then take your lumps and get it done. This is ridiculous. Jobs have pretty clear, if arbitrary at times, functions. You wouldn’t ask a chef to brief you on Russian political history, a field of itself that is vastly nuanced just as much as AI itself, nor would you ask a data scientist. It isn’t because job function can’t change it’s because people have careers and an AI researches is not likely to be able to actually brief one on Russian political history without doing a deep dive and learning the field itself.
  - aaron-santos 5y ago
    > without doing a deep dive and learning the field itself. My response would be to ask about the employer's continuing education program. I could see myself taking a Russian studies program and get that report back in 2-3 years if tuition and time was 100% covered by the employer.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      This is the correct approach, if done properly. If it really ends up being a useful task and not pointless, your boss should be willing to expend additional resources in addition to your time. You take it seriously, which requires additional resources if it's outside the scope of your job or knowledge. And they should be happy to provide those resources if the task needs to be done.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >This is ridiculous. Jobs have pretty clear, if arbitrary at times, functions. In large organisations, yes. If you work for yourself or for a startup, though, you're typically just doing whatever needs to be done.
- GoodJokes 5y ago
  Yes, you have described the prisoner’s dilemna. Instead of criticizing the prisoner perhaps try criticizing the those putting people in prison. Telling people to suck it up is insulting and shows that you DON’t care.
Spooky23 5y ago
If you want to work to a job description, go join the plumbers union.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  How far does this go? If you boss asks someone to strip for him is that ok? It's a legal job after all. If they didn't want to do that because it's not their job would you say 'go join the plumbers union'?

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

No. Because when you're as large as Google, you don't ask your underlings to write book reports on things that are of strategic business importance. You go through the proper channels and get them to hire qualified people to cut through the bullshit.

Closi 5y ago
> you don't ask your underlings to write book reports on things that are of strategic business importance Of course you do, that's exactly how it works. Usually the 'underlings' do the research or collect information, and then the people higher up synthesise that information into a strategic decision.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  No, you don't. Not when you literally have business units IN that country.
  - jay_kyburz 5y ago
    Yeah but, red tape. When you ask a business unit to do it, it becomes a whole big thing. When you ask somebody on your team to do it, it might not be as good, but it gets done.
    - Talanes 5y ago
      Only if you don't actually care what "done" means. Anyone can make an omelette if you're willing to define an omelette as "literally any eggs cooked in a pan." But I'd rather just ask someone who actually knows how to make an omelette.
      - etothepii 5y ago
        I think the issue here is about how hard it is to ask for the chef to make you an omelette. If you go to https://food.gle https://food.gle type in onellette and your desk number then great. But first you have to even know that https://food.gle https://food.gle exists as an internal domain which might be something your underling has as much chance of finding out as you do.

mcguire 5y ago

Would you be comfortable writing a report on Russian political history? Remember, you can be fired for doing it badly, too.

marcinzm 5y ago
In a good org you wouldn't be fired for doing a mediocre job. In a bad org you'd be fired for saying no. In either case trying is better than not trying.

truetraveller 5y ago

Exactly.

abeppu 5y ago

1. Even if you're considering doing business in Russia, an over-broad request with insufficient context is unlikely to yield a result which is of any value. Russia is huge, and its history goes back to the 9th century. Asking for a report of its history and politics without saying anything about how the report would be used is absurd. "Prepare a report on how Russian government contracts for software services are awarded" is a prompt which might give you something useful. "Summarize more the a millennia of history and politics in a giant country" is not. 2. In the article linked in the comment above, this is given as a single example of a pattern of behavior of asking people to do things unrelated to their jobs. Surely we can understand that even if there were many examples, in this article only one could be mentioned due to space reasons. One might contrive a situation in which any single example, removed from its context, could be arguably a valid request. But if someone who worked with him observed this as a pattern rather than a single incident, doesn't that have to be taken seriously? Esp in combination with the "I crush people" and the assertion that he would humiliate people in front of their colleagues? Between the possibilities of "maybe there was a secret plan to work in Russia" and "maybe he asked for things out of personal interest disregarding people's actual roles" or "maybe he had a dysfunctional need to demonstrate power over others by having them do bullshit 'work'", I think the latter two are seem pretty plausible. > Suleyman would also sometimes ask employees to carry out tasks unrelated to their jobs or DeepMind's work, two former employees said. > "He would ask us to do personal things for him," one of these people said. "He said, 'I need you to write a briefing for me on Russian history and politics.' We knew it was absurd. We knew it was a waste of time. We had absolutely no work in Russia."