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Not really sure what the big deal is. Did the cult hurt this fellow? Abuse him? Discriminate against him? Mob him? No. The article really just talks about his o

Not really sure what the big deal is. Did the cult hurt this fellow? Abuse him? Discriminate against him? Mob him? No. The article really just talks about his own disapproval of the cult. It wasn't his business what these people got up to, frankly.

cool_dude85 4y ago
What happens when it's time to decide who gets to be a full time Googley Googler and who doesn't? This guy is competing against a bunch of people in a literal cult, what are his odds like? Isn't that harm enough?
- amscanne 4y ago
  Is hiring discrimination alleged to have happened? IIRC, the only decision that is noted in the blog post is the promotion of Dan (who is not in the cult), and the mysterious termination (for which we have no context or details, and the author feels it was orchestrated by the aforementioned Dan). While I'm sure there's lots of be concerned about with respect to the cult, I'm not sure it's Google's business to ask about and evaluate religious affiliations when hiring (I'm fairly certain this would be illegal?). There are plenty of ways that you can get a shop of closely related people that are more innocuous than hiring discrimination; for example, suppose the cult members worked together as a freelance group that Google used, and they decided to offer them jobs in order to bootstrap GDC. This exact situation would happen if Google acquires a company from a place with a relatively homogenous ethnic or religious makeup -- it is unfair to immediately assume that this is a result of a discriminatory hiring practice. (It's also possible that there are questionable decisions, but I think it depends a lot on the specifics.)
  - rendall 4y ago
    I'm not really a fan of religions or cults, but part of my dislike is the fervent disapproving and interfering with people's lives. Which is exactly what this fellow seemed to be doing. The cult members seemed to be minding their own business and being generally pretty useful and nice. I wonder if his behavior could even have put Google at risk of a religious discrimination case.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    >Is hiring discrimination alleged to have happened Yes, the potential nepotism involved with nearly 50% of a 25 person group all belonging to the cult.
    - amscanne 4y ago
      I don't think you read my comment. There are lots of ways that you can end up with a concentration of a particular ethnicity/religion/etc. It is unreasonable to immediately assume that it is a result of nepotism, and the specific facts matter quite a lot. People often work with and start companies with people from their community, and as a result they are often a large part of their professional network. It's only nepotism if those people are favored over others.
      - ineedasername 4y ago
        I don't doubt that unlikely clustering can innocently occur by chance. But you asked if hiring discrimination is alleged to have occured and it was very clearly alleged when the author uses the word nepotism in their original blog post: >Cronyism and nepotism is not uncommon, especially in my line of my work, but it was unusual on this scale You may say the author has jumped too soon to that conclusion but they nonetheless made that allegation. My comment stands. You should also be aware that accusing someone of not reading a comment or article is both rude and against site guidelines. A more productive way of going about this if you think someone misunderstood or indeed overlooked or skipped part of something is to simply quote the relevant portion. That at least gives them the benefit of the doubt. It also goes a long way towards preventing responses that go on the defensive before even considering the merits of an argument.
        amscanne 4y ago
        The author implied that it had occurred, but did not actually allege anything specific. That would require describing how the cult members had been hired. The author seemed to have joined a department with a large cluster from this cult, and immediately assumed that nepotism and cronyism were responsible — he needs to be more specific. To clarify one thing in your comment: innocent clustering isn’t likely occurring “by chance” here — that would be a dubious claim; I’m saying it often happens for innocent, legal reasons. There’s no context or facts for this specific case. Regarding the “didn’t read my comment” bit, your comment did ignore the last half of my comment that describes plausible innocent clustering and talks about the need for specific facts. You can’t allege something based on “potential” because every perfectly normal situation could be construed as the potential result of a crime. If I was at a bar last night, and home today — can you allege that I drove home drunk? You would need more specific facts to make any kind of meaningful allegation (e.g. did I drive to the bar? Did I drink? Did I return home on my own with my car? Those would be the minimal facts required for even a suspicion). Perhaps I could have addressed this with less snark (and I apologize for this), but we’re also not talking about missing some fact buried in an article, we’re talking about 2/5 sentences in a comment.
rl3 4y ago
>Not really sure what the big deal is. Did the cult hurt this fellow? Abuse him? Discriminate against him? Mob him? No. The article really just talks about his own disapproval of the cult. >It wasn't his business what these people got up to, frankly. Quoting the article: "The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse."
- warkdarrior 4y ago
  > Quoting the article: > "The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse." Those seem like issues for prosecutors to pursue, not for Google, unless the abuses were happening in Google offices or were sponsored by them.
  - rl3 4y ago
    >... or were sponsored by them. Quoting again from the article: "The wine was our most consistent feature, and the invoices I’ve seen suggest we were buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth every year, just from Grant Marie."
    - JetAlone 4y ago
      Yep, the credibility of the risk is in the wine suppliership, at the very least.
  - cpncrunch 4y ago
    From what I can see, those allegations were from the 90s, but still nothing seems to have been substantiated. I'm not saying I condone this cult, but I don't see how it was having any effect on his work. It didn't become a problem until he himself complained to another manager. I mean: if you're going to get worked up about cults, why the fuck are we all watching Top Gun? Shouldn't we be protesting or something? Scientology is a lot worse than this lot.
LZ_Khan 4y ago
Did you read the article? They're funneling company funds into the cult. It's literally embezzlement.
- rendall 4y ago
  First, questioning whether someone read the article is against the guidelines. Please don't do that. Secondly, according to the article, "everyone" at Google knew, and he was a contractor. Once he raised his concerns, he did his duty. At that point, it's Google's business, and it's up to them to do something about it. Or not, if they'd rather. Maybe management liked their work and so looked past the "embezzlement", but would have to do something if this guy kept making a stink. Or some other scenario.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    >did his duty Getting fired potentially in retaliation seems reasonable justification for speaking out beyond quietly reporting an incident to your employer. Especially when the group involved is alleged to be intimidating people into silence. Seems like a great reason to instead shout about the issue quite loudly. Not least of which because small corruption may go side by side with larger corruption.
  - glenstein 4y ago
    >First, questioning whether someone read the article is against the guidelines. Please don't do that. This thread is an excellent illustration of what's likely an unintended consequence of that guideline, and of all the places to raise it, this is probably the least constructive and least in conformance with any possible intention of the guideline. If someone doesn't RTFA but contributes really interesting thoughts on, say, AI, or the efficiency of a programming language, such scolding chills valuable discussion. That's understandable. Even responding as a scold to low effort comments is not very readable and the exercise in scolding, however correct, isn't conducive to good discussion. So it's understandable there too. But here, you're using it in response to a constructive comment expressing a legitimate point over something that's crucial to undestanding and engaging with the article. I can't fathom what purpose you think that rule has if you think this is the right place to invoke it.
awsrocks 4y ago
dubswithus 4y ago
> Members have described him grooming and sexually assaulting male followers, including minors, > At a certain point, he said he had thought about both quitting and complaining up the ladder, but ultimately decided against either. He thought complaining could lead not only to the loss of his job, but the destruction of our whole department. The loss of all our jobs. GDS, in his mind, wasn’t on steady ground. A revelation like this would be its end. > He instructed me to keep quiet. He told me not to tell anyone and to tell anyone I had already informed to do the same. He reminded me again that if I complained about this, I could lose my job. Strangely, he threw in that “Peter is a powerful guy.” It was unsettling to say the least. Dan was selfishly worried about his job. Great evil happens when people stay silent.
ineedasername 4y ago
Seriously? Sex trafficking & abuse especially of underage people isn't a "live and let live" thing. Neither are co-workers assigning hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor contracts to themselves or their organization. If you think the author was too far removed from sex trafficking allegations to make an issue of it then this one is still very much appropriate to raise a red flag over.
- glenstein 4y ago
  And, to your point, it's especially appropriate to raise a red flag over a possible retaliatory firing based on him raising concerns.
  - rendall 4y ago
    I wonder if his continuous reporting rose to the level of harassment, and Google needed to shed him to avoid discrimination allegations.
    - glenstein 4y ago
      Possible. But when people say "what's the harm", well, it's spelled out in the linked Medium post. Meanwhile "I wonder if XYZ" has the disadvantage of not being substantiated by anything. After reviewing the NYT article, there's much that independently vet's the claims put forward by Kevin Lloyd, the author of this Medium piece. Most notable in support of Kevin Lloyd's portrayal is the fact the director of GDS has already been successfully sued by someone else for similar treatment.
    - ineedasername 4y ago
      It's pretty clear from the linked article that there was no continuous reporting. In fact he never reported if officially, not once. He had multiple discussions about it with a friend that was outside of his reporting chain and was fired more than a year after his last stated contact with any another employee over the matter. Each comment of yours seeking to dismiss the issue stretches the bounds of reason even further, each one more tenuous than the last. This time you are even going so far as to turn the situation around and claim that-- counter to any evidence-- he is himself the villain with others the victim of his harassment. What began as somewhat reasonable questions about the issue by you has, as myself & others have addressed your points, grown into the ridiculous.

cool_dude85 4y ago

What happens when it's time to decide who gets to be a full time Googley Googler and who doesn't? This guy is competing against a bunch of people in a literal cult, what are his odds like? Isn't that harm enough?

amscanne 4y ago
Is hiring discrimination alleged to have happened? IIRC, the only decision that is noted in the blog post is the promotion of Dan (who is not in the cult), and the mysterious termination (for which we have no context or details, and the author feels it was orchestrated by the aforementioned Dan). While I'm sure there's lots of be concerned about with respect to the cult, I'm not sure it's Google's business to ask about and evaluate religious affiliations when hiring (I'm fairly certain this would be illegal?). There are plenty of ways that you can get a shop of closely related people that are more innocuous than hiring discrimination; for example, suppose the cult members worked together as a freelance group that Google used, and they decided to offer them jobs in order to bootstrap GDC. This exact situation would happen if Google acquires a company from a place with a relatively homogenous ethnic or religious makeup -- it is unfair to immediately assume that this is a result of a discriminatory hiring practice. (It's also possible that there are questionable decisions, but I think it depends a lot on the specifics.)
- rendall 4y ago
  I'm not really a fan of religions or cults, but part of my dislike is the fervent disapproving and interfering with people's lives. Which is exactly what this fellow seemed to be doing. The cult members seemed to be minding their own business and being generally pretty useful and nice. I wonder if his behavior could even have put Google at risk of a religious discrimination case.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  >Is hiring discrimination alleged to have happened Yes, the potential nepotism involved with nearly 50% of a 25 person group all belonging to the cult.
  - amscanne 4y ago
    I don't think you read my comment. There are lots of ways that you can end up with a concentration of a particular ethnicity/religion/etc. It is unreasonable to immediately assume that it is a result of nepotism, and the specific facts matter quite a lot. People often work with and start companies with people from their community, and as a result they are often a large part of their professional network. It's only nepotism if those people are favored over others.
    - ineedasername 4y ago
      I don't doubt that unlikely clustering can innocently occur by chance. But you asked if hiring discrimination is alleged to have occured and it was very clearly alleged when the author uses the word nepotism in their original blog post: >Cronyism and nepotism is not uncommon, especially in my line of my work, but it was unusual on this scale You may say the author has jumped too soon to that conclusion but they nonetheless made that allegation. My comment stands. You should also be aware that accusing someone of not reading a comment or article is both rude and against site guidelines. A more productive way of going about this if you think someone misunderstood or indeed overlooked or skipped part of something is to simply quote the relevant portion. That at least gives them the benefit of the doubt. It also goes a long way towards preventing responses that go on the defensive before even considering the merits of an argument.
      - amscanne 4y ago
        The author implied that it had occurred, but did not actually allege anything specific. That would require describing how the cult members had been hired. The author seemed to have joined a department with a large cluster from this cult, and immediately assumed that nepotism and cronyism were responsible — he needs to be more specific. To clarify one thing in your comment: innocent clustering isn’t likely occurring “by chance” here — that would be a dubious claim; I’m saying it often happens for innocent, legal reasons. There’s no context or facts for this specific case. Regarding the “didn’t read my comment” bit, your comment did ignore the last half of my comment that describes plausible innocent clustering and talks about the need for specific facts. You can’t allege something based on “potential” because every perfectly normal situation could be construed as the potential result of a crime. If I was at a bar last night, and home today — can you allege that I drove home drunk? You would need more specific facts to make any kind of meaningful allegation (e.g. did I drive to the bar? Did I drink? Did I return home on my own with my car? Those would be the minimal facts required for even a suspicion). Perhaps I could have addressed this with less snark (and I apologize for this), but we’re also not talking about missing some fact buried in an article, we’re talking about 2/5 sentences in a comment.

rl3 4y ago

>Not really sure what the big deal is. Did the cult hurt this fellow? Abuse him? Discriminate against him? Mob him? No. The article really just talks about his own disapproval of the cult. >It wasn't his business what these people got up to, frankly. Quoting the article: "The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse."

warkdarrior 4y ago
> Quoting the article: > "The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse." Those seem like issues for prosecutors to pursue, not for Google, unless the abuses were happening in Google offices or were sponsored by them.
- rl3 4y ago
  >... or were sponsored by them. Quoting again from the article: "The wine was our most consistent feature, and the invoices I’ve seen suggest we were buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth every year, just from Grant Marie."
  - JetAlone 4y ago
    Yep, the credibility of the risk is in the wine suppliership, at the very least.
- cpncrunch 4y ago
  From what I can see, those allegations were from the 90s, but still nothing seems to have been substantiated. I'm not saying I condone this cult, but I don't see how it was having any effect on his work. It didn't become a problem until he himself complained to another manager. I mean: if you're going to get worked up about cults, why the fuck are we all watching Top Gun? Shouldn't we be protesting or something? Scientology is a lot worse than this lot.

LZ_Khan 4y ago

Did you read the article? They're funneling company funds into the cult. It's literally embezzlement.

rendall 4y ago
First, questioning whether someone read the article is against the guidelines. Please don't do that. Secondly, according to the article, "everyone" at Google knew, and he was a contractor. Once he raised his concerns, he did his duty. At that point, it's Google's business, and it's up to them to do something about it. Or not, if they'd rather. Maybe management liked their work and so looked past the "embezzlement", but would have to do something if this guy kept making a stink. Or some other scenario.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  >did his duty Getting fired potentially in retaliation seems reasonable justification for speaking out beyond quietly reporting an incident to your employer. Especially when the group involved is alleged to be intimidating people into silence. Seems like a great reason to instead shout about the issue quite loudly. Not least of which because small corruption may go side by side with larger corruption.
- glenstein 4y ago
  >First, questioning whether someone read the article is against the guidelines. Please don't do that. This thread is an excellent illustration of what's likely an unintended consequence of that guideline, and of all the places to raise it, this is probably the least constructive and least in conformance with any possible intention of the guideline. If someone doesn't RTFA but contributes really interesting thoughts on, say, AI, or the efficiency of a programming language, such scolding chills valuable discussion. That's understandable. Even responding as a scold to low effort comments is not very readable and the exercise in scolding, however correct, isn't conducive to good discussion. So it's understandable there too. But here, you're using it in response to a constructive comment expressing a legitimate point over something that's crucial to undestanding and engaging with the article. I can't fathom what purpose you think that rule has if you think this is the right place to invoke it.

awsrocks 4y ago

dubswithus 4y ago

> Members have described him grooming and sexually assaulting male followers, including minors, > At a certain point, he said he had thought about both quitting and complaining up the ladder, but ultimately decided against either. He thought complaining could lead not only to the loss of his job, but the destruction of our whole department. The loss of all our jobs. GDS, in his mind, wasn’t on steady ground. A revelation like this would be its end. > He instructed me to keep quiet. He told me not to tell anyone and to tell anyone I had already informed to do the same. He reminded me again that if I complained about this, I could lose my job. Strangely, he threw in that “Peter is a powerful guy.” It was unsettling to say the least. Dan was selfishly worried about his job. Great evil happens when people stay silent.

ineedasername 4y ago

Seriously? Sex trafficking & abuse especially of underage people isn't a "live and let live" thing. Neither are co-workers assigning hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor contracts to themselves or their organization. If you think the author was too far removed from sex trafficking allegations to make an issue of it then this one is still very much appropriate to raise a red flag over.

glenstein 4y ago
And, to your point, it's especially appropriate to raise a red flag over a possible retaliatory firing based on him raising concerns.
- rendall 4y ago
  I wonder if his continuous reporting rose to the level of harassment, and Google needed to shed him to avoid discrimination allegations.
  - glenstein 4y ago
    Possible. But when people say "what's the harm", well, it's spelled out in the linked Medium post. Meanwhile "I wonder if XYZ" has the disadvantage of not being substantiated by anything. After reviewing the NYT article, there's much that independently vet's the claims put forward by Kevin Lloyd, the author of this Medium piece. Most notable in support of Kevin Lloyd's portrayal is the fact the director of GDS has already been successfully sued by someone else for similar treatment.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    It's pretty clear from the linked article that there was no continuous reporting. In fact he never reported if officially, not once. He had multiple discussions about it with a friend that was outside of his reporting chain and was fired more than a year after his last stated contact with any another employee over the matter. Each comment of yours seeking to dismiss the issue stretches the bounds of reason even further, each one more tenuous than the last. This time you are even going so far as to turn the situation around and claim that-- counter to any evidence-- he is himself the villain with others the victim of his harassment. What began as somewhat reasonable questions about the issue by you has, as myself & others have addressed your points, grown into the ridiculous.