11 ms·

So, if the author was fired for the reasons they believe, that's pretty bad behavior. But if he had not been fired, what was management supposed to have done ab

• ineedasername 4y ago
  At minimum Google could have investigated the odd clustering of employees that indicated some sort of nepotistic hiring practice. Of course they might be doing exactly that, but it's not the sort of thing they can really comment on. Edit: also the self-dealing on hundreds of thousands of dollars in wine.
  • newbie2020 4y ago
    That is what DEI boards are for. Stamping out these natural clusters that form via social networks
    • troon-lover 4y ago
    • raxxorraxor 4y ago
      DEI has its own cult leaders that set definitions many people would not agree with but tend to become mandatory dogma. Example is sexism, racism and topics relating to gender. It is just as ideological, maybe it has another algebraic sign but the animosity is easy to see. Problem with DEI is that it has official support contrary to this cult, which shouldn't have leadership positions as well of course.
  • paxys 4y ago
    Well if you expand that to a more generic "employees shouldn't be involved in hiring people who they know and associate with outside of work" then they'd have to fire half the company.
    • kodah 4y ago
      I work at a large tech firm and do interviewing and referrals almost routinely. I have regularly excused myself from the opportunity to sit on panels or provide feedback. I can provide all the input I want, but the people making the decision need to not be me or feel pressured by me. That's not a deep ethical challenge in the slightest.
      • M2Ys4U 4y ago
        This is Google we're talking about... ethics isn't exactly their strong suit.
    • ineedasername 4y ago
      Systemic nepotism is not reason to avoid investigating a specific incidents where it is especially prevalent. There's also a difference between hiring someone you know vs. only hiring a person because you know them. Besides which it is possible to have hiring practices that make this abuse more difficult: where I work friends & family of a candidate are obligated to identify such prior relationships during the hiring process so that another person can review any decision to hire that candidate. Maybe things are that bad at Google, but that would be precisely the reason for casting more light on the issue in order to change things.
    • glenstein 4y ago
      I don't understand why Google would have to answer for a more expansive charge, rather than the one that's actually leveled. Of course if you expand any principle to an unreasonable extreme it becomes unreasonable but I don't see how this observation has anything to do with anything.
    • 789itsfine 4y ago
      There is an argument to be made wrt the deleterious effects of modern recruitment's overreliance on informal personal networks.
  • nitwit005 4y ago
    The problem in this case would be they seem to be hiring almost exclusively from a rather obscure religious group. That means they're illegally discriminating against members other religions.
    • woodruffw 4y ago
      Cults are not “obscure religious groups.” It varies widely by state (and in federal jurisprudence), but most states have a “free association”-style test: if members aren’t free to come and go, it’s a cult and not a religion. Google would not be exposed to any significant liability here. Particularly not when the cult has a well-documented history of sexual abuse.
      • throwoutway 4y ago
        On the contrary, google employees would be breaking the law by hiring primarily because of religious preference and thus discriminating against competent candidates of other religious (or non) preference
        • woodruffw 4y ago
          Cults are not religions. The body of decisions is remarkably explicit about this, when you consider how difficult the question “what is a religion” actually is. Edit: I forgot to provide references. Here’s a summary[1] of a 1988 California Supreme Court ruling in which the court determined that cult conduct does not fall under religious protections, even if the cult’s members might genuinely believe the cult’s doctrines. In other words, an internal decision by Google to terminate cult members because of their history of sex abuse or self dealing is unlikely expose them to civil litigation risk. [1]: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-10-18-mn-4552-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-10-18-mn-4552-s...
          • volume 4y ago
            To me, there's a venn diagram. some cults are religions. Some are just cults and not religions. It sounds like you're coming from a legal perspective. Is that really the end-all-be-all representation of reality?
  • jonas21 4y ago
    There was also an odd clustering among early Google employees who all came from a place called "Stanford." It may be difficult to distinguish between these two hiring patterns without asking the sorts of questions that are illegal for employers to ask.
    • dubswithus 4y ago
      I don’t understand your point. The cult we are discussing here is accused of engaging in grooming and pedophilia. That’s comparable to a bunch of people that went to Stanford?
      • madrox 4y ago
        I think the point was that you can't really go after nepotistic hiring practices alone without also throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Nepotism happens all the time, and it's usually benign, like Stanford grads hiring Stanford grads. We want to work with our friends, people we've worked with before, and people with similar backgrounds as ours. This comment thread is about what policy, if any, can these people really be investigated or fired for. If association with an organization whose leadership engages in grooming and pedophilia, while distasteful, is a firing offense, then should we be firing all catholics? There seems to be no way to articulate a policy here that a lot of well-meaning people wouldn't run afoul of, and you can't selectively implement policy without then running afoul of discriminatory business practices.
        • Dylan16807 4y ago
          > I think the point was that you can't really go after nepotistic hiring practices alone without also throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The comment just said "investigate"! This is getting very strawmanny.
          • madrox 4y ago
            I tend to agree, but I think that's because people want to see these cult members fired and are working backward from there to find grounds. That's an easy lawsuit at best and illegal at worst.
  • dubswithus 4y ago
    No, at a minimum they should have fired all these people for funding a pedophile with their salaries. Absolutely disgusting. > I found support groups where ex-members talk about their time in the group, including discussions of sexual abuse and grooming. > Members have described him grooming and sexually assaulting male followers, including minors
    • 24rf24r2f 4y ago
    • ineedasername 4y ago
      I don't think Google could do that when there hasn't been a criminal case. I don't particularly like this situation but I also think it would be problematic to fire employees that were not part of the specific rumored incidents. I'll grant that destructive cults are different than established religions, but firing these workers specifically over the sexual allegations wouldn't be much different than firing an employee who happened to be a deacon in a their local church in a Catholic diocese where the Cardinal abused children.
      • dubswithus 4y ago
        Google can fire them and let the lawyers deal with it. Maybe they lose but at least they tried. Fined billions of dollars? Worth it.
    • mandevil 4y ago
      So, does that mean that funding the Roman Catholic Church is a fire-able offense? What about the Southern Baptist Convention? Or Penn State University (at least while Jerry Sandusky was working there)? Or Michigan State (at least while Nassar was there)? Or the BBC (whilst Jimmy Savile was there)? I'm definitely not trying to defend Fellowship of Friends here, just pointing out that a zero tolerance policy for supporting pedophiles pretty quickly falls apart because the successful abusers- those who can consistently abuse lots of people, like Burton, are almost always in a position of power in some organization or another. That's what gives them access and cover to do it to so many victims after all.
• dubswithus 4y ago
  The leader of the cult is accused of grooming minors. That means Google is funding the next Jeffrey Esptein. > Are you supposed to then ask everyone in the department about their religious affiliations, or whether they've given money to a fringe religious organization? That also seems like a really unhealthy road for a company to go down. I’d suggest a question like this: 1) Are you affiliated with an organization that molests children?
  • artifact_44 4y ago
  • mandevil 4y ago
    I am an Eagle Scout, and proud of that fact. That means that I am affiliated with- and proud of my experience with- an organization that molests children[1]. To my knowledge it never happened in my troop, but it definitely happened, a lot, in the nationwide organization. I was baptized a Roman Catholic, but left the church long before the Spotlight investigations came out, though that was hardly the first time that the organizations complicity with sexual abuse got attention. The largest Protestant denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist Convention, just released a massive report about how they hid and enabled sexual abuse of minors (and grown-ups) for decades[2]. What about the entire Canadian government turning a blind eye to sexual abuse of First Nations children for over a century at the Indian Residential Schools that they paid for[3]? If you answer that question honestly, I would hazard a guess most people have affiliations with an organization that turned a blind eye to abusive behavior, because that is, unfortunately, incredibly common. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_sex_abuse_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_sex_abus... [2]: https://www.vox.com/culture/23131530/southern-baptist-convention-sexual-abuse-scandal-guidepost https://www.vox.com/culture/23131530/southern-baptist-conven... [3]: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-so-many-sexual-predators-at-indian-residential-schools-escaped-punishment https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-so-many-sexual-pred...
    • dubswithus 4y ago
      Were you giving money to BSA at a time when you knew they were covering up the abuse? Many Catholics stopped attending church when they found out what had happened. Because what should Google do now that they know? They can do a great amount of good. Most people are in a position to do something. I don’t see it any different for Google.
• turdit 4y ago
  “What were the cult members doing in their work in the department that was clearly wrong?” reminds me of when rand paul asked about an oil spill, “when did they ever say they weren’t going to pay for it?” what did OJ do in his work at the NFL that was wrong? he didn’t murder anyone while he was at work, so i don’t see the problem.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• kazinator 4y ago
  For one thing, if the reason someone was hired is because they're from Oregon House, that likely means they weren't hired because of their profile as a good candidate for Google. That's a fundamental conflict of interest in nepotistic hiring. Google should definitely care about that, even apart from the links between the nepotistic group and criminal activity.
• tjmc 4y ago
  Maybe the culture is different in tech. In my game - engineering within the construction industry, failure to disclose a conflict of interest in any kind of procurement over a few $100 is cause for instant dismissal and potentially criminal prosecution if there are kickbacks involved. So the wine procurement is open and shut corruption in my view. If I was betting on the outcome here, I suspect "Dan" from the article was actually correct in his prediction. Google will just shut the whole unit down. They're already being sued over it and their reputation is being tarnished in the New York Times. It's a no brainer in terms of risk management.
  • buildbot 4y ago
    At least at Microsoft this would also get you fired pretty fast, according to the infamous standards of business conduct.
    • achow 4y ago
      At most of the big corp. Somewhere in my employment letter it says, you are representing company outside of workplace and work hours as well (that is in personal life too). I can be fired if I bring disrepute to company anytime - ex. involved in a weekend nightclub drunken brawl.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • rexpop 4y ago
        As far as I am concerned, your employer takes it too far. What I do on my own time is none of my employer's business, as it were. If I am involved in a weekend nightclub drunken brawl, and no other company, customer, or vendor personnel are involved, and no subsequent legal or social fallout interferes with my working hours, than it's absolutely inappropriate for management to acknowledge these activities. The very concept of "bringing disrepute" is a slippery slope, and shamefully medieval. Edit: I'll clarify. The problematic issue is the ambiguous, subjective threshold at which activities become "disreputable." Ambiguous, subjective standards like that should not be grounds for dismissal. They are too easily abused via "selective enforcement". Of course, in many firms, employment is entirely "at will," and subject to employers' most capricious whims. This is not a good thing; the subjugation of one's employment to another's whim is an oppressive imbalance of power.
• trhway 4y ago
  >the cult itself is a shady organization with some bad people my impression is that all those cults/churches - like for example LDS, scientology, masons, etc. - have favoring of business dealings with fellow members, be it hiring, promotion, supply and service contracts, etc. among the basic tenets of the cult/church. The amount of nepotism in that group described in article is really nauseating. We had a senior engineer who was a spouse of an exec, and it was already making tremendous obstacles to the work - the managers and the director were tip-toeing around that engineer, it was borderline disgusting. Anyway didn't help - the director and thus the managers under him as well as several top engineers - the whole top of the house of cards of our department :) - were promptly gone the moment the director had disagreement with that engineer. In another team a young hothead guy got in disagreement with another spouse of another exec, and was immediately gone as a result. I can't really imagine how screwed the environment would be in the situation like that Google GDS - probably very suffocating and bordering on mental abuse for anybody who isn't a member of that cult.
• rsynnott 4y ago
  The alleged wine-buying is clearly corrupt if true, and in most large organizations it would result in, at least, disciplinary action. Also, if as alleged, 12 people out of 25 were from some random small town, _any_ random small town, that probably means something is going very wrong in hiring. The alleged cult is arguably kind of irrelevant; it's the alleged corruption that should raise eyebrows.
• tomrod 4y ago
  The wine orders were special favors to friends. That typically is not acceptable vendor management.