4 ms·

I have watched HR videos while employed at every tech company I have worked at that would insist that retaliation is forbidden and it's ok to report wrongdoing.

I have watched HR videos while employed at every tech company I have worked at that would insist that retaliation is forbidden and it's ok to report wrongdoing. Let's say, for example, I wanted to report something along the lines of: <person_with_specific attribute> becoming a manager, then every one on the team slowly being replaced with <person_with_specific attribute> at <large_well_known_tech_company>. I'm not convinced this is possible without retaliation. I would love to see a survey with one question asked at all tech companies with more then 100 employees. "Promotions are based on merit, answer from 0 to 10."

_8j50 3y ago
It's so bad, sometimes you face pre-emptive retaliation if you have a habit of speaking up lol. HR says that to avoid lawsuits. If you bring retaliation and bullying to HR, you will be fired but not right away so it won't look like retaliation but maybe after significant time has passed. The best place you can be in corporate america is unseen by middle management and have a good immediate boss who values you.
- PradeetPatel 3y ago
  It still baffles me to think that some still believe that HR is on their side. Human resource is there to safeguard the company from regulatory, compliance, and legal challenges.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Some people are inexperienced and/or naturally trusting. HR always talks sweet and acts like they're the good guys here to help you. They wouldn't do this unless some people were going to fall for it.
  - dr_kiszonka 3y ago
    Is it in tech or in other industries too? (I am not that experienced, and have had relatively positive experiences with HR, besides occasional incompetence.)
    - CapstanRoller 3y ago
      As a worker, ask yourself some questions: was HR hired to represent you, or to represent the corporation? Is HR part of your personal legal counsel team? Who signs HR's paychecks?
  - _8j50 3y ago
    Yes, but what surprises me is that HR is not that smart usually like you are saying, they don't think out what is in the best interest of the company but rather usually just side with a middle manager's opinion, at least with big companies. With smaller companies, execs are more in touch with line managers and employees, they still look after the company period but at least it is not a wasteful kelptocracy.
Loughla 3y ago
Is attribute illegal or harassing or just something you don't like? Because those are very important distinctions for formal complaints.
- tester756 3y ago
  I bet he meant ppl coming from specific country :) I've heard about it already
  - ed-209 3y ago
    What company?
    - pb7 3y ago
      Apple.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    I've seen it and heard of it numerous times with India and China. But not Korea, Japan, Pakistan, or other countries. I find this inexplicable.
    - filoleg 3y ago
      Here is a simple explanation: how many people there are from India or China immigrating to the US on H1B vs from those other countries you listed? I would be more surprised if it was anything but “India and China” in your observations, just due to raw volumes.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        I listed those three countries for two reasons: First, because they are adjacent to the first two I listed. Secondly, because workers from those countries are numerous enough in the companies I have worked that they could plausibly form ethnic enclave teams if they were inclined to. In contrast, I have only worked with a small handful of Australians.. they are too few and far between to plausibly form all-Australian teams. I have worked with far more Japanese, Korean and Pakistani coworkers; these nationalities have been heavily represented in the workplaces I have experience with yet I've never seen nor heard of a team where they were conspicuously over-represented. Another thing: In my entire career I've never been on a team of only white people (of any nationality), nor to the best of my recollection have I ever seen a team larger than 4 or 5 that only had white people. Guestimating some rough numbers... if a company is 50% white and 15% Chinese and there are no ethnic biases present, what are the odds I would see numerous large all-Chinese teams but never a large all-white team? This sort of circumstance arising without bias seems deeply implausible.
hardware2win 3y ago
>I would love to see a survey with one question asked at all tech companies with more then 100 employees. "Promotions are based on merit, answer from 0 to 10." I work in company which had huge freezings and promotions almost fully paused during last 1.5 year. The only promoted ppl that I worked close enough to evaluate them were really, really good.
DinoDad13 3y ago
And what wrongdoing do you think is happening in this scenario?
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  In-group preferences. Granted, there are non-discriminatory explanations: say your manager just happens to know a lot of potential referrals that are of the same identity group. This is totally plausible, most people do indeed tend to have more social connections with people sharing identity characteristics. It's hard to know for sure if favoritism is happening. The way to tell would be to send effectively identical resumes differing only in the identity characteristics of the applicant and observing if there are disparities. Of course, most companies aren't interested in doing this: why would a company want to incriminate itself?
  - SenAnder 3y ago
    It should be noted that even if there is a non-discriminatory explanation, it is still illegal under the disparate impact legal theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      Not exactly, as per your link: > ...an unjustified adverse impact on members of a protected class... Requiring doctors to have an MD is going to have a disparate impact on all sorts of factors, including protected classes. Likewise, an anonymized leetcode question isn't going to pass candidates uniformly across identities. But there's a pretty strong case that the use of such measures is justified. Prioritizing candidates with a referral might be argued to be a disparate impact without justification, and that's somewhere there might be a stronger case but it's not so clear cut.
jstarfish 3y ago
> I'm not convinced this is possible without retaliation. This is true! Unfortunately nobody who investigates this stuff has any sense of discretion, so the subject gets tipped off during the questioning itself. This isn't even limited to HR/corporate anything, I've had this happen with fucking CPS of all things. They didn't even try to be indirect and outright questioned the alleged perpetrator using the exact verbiage from my supposedly-anonymous report-- events of which only I was a witness to. My working relationship with the subject was great from there. Right now I'm mulling over what to do with a report from HR personnel about one of their own, involving a [female] employee reporting their known-autistic, high-achieving [female] boss for actual espionage. Our workplace harassment policy says to report everything, even if it's hearsay. As with social media abuse claims, there is no consequence for false reporting or claims made in bad faith, so now I'm spinning wheels on this. I can't tell if it's a disgruntled employee, or the named exec trying to stage a persecution complex. Whether or not she actually did it, based on the specificity of the claims, if I question the subject, she'll know who reported her. If she did do what's alleged, I can't prove it and she certainly wouldn't admit it, so the only possible outcome my intervention facilitates is opening the door for retaliation either way. I don't want to be the arbiter of HR's internal workplace politics, but who am I going to report false/bad-faith claims to? HR? (Legal won't hear anything without evidence.) These decisions aren't easy. The workplace "rules" are so incoherent they're easily exploited. I'm taking the workplace harassment training right now; reportable offenses apparently include gossip about someone's hairstyle. Apparently nobody has ever played the game of crybullying before... If it's not worth risking your entire career for, it's not worth reporting. Unethical business practices? Grow up. Fraud? There's probably a hotline for that. Sexual assault? Call the police. If you don't want retaliation from the company, don't fucking involve the company.

_8j50 3y ago

It's so bad, sometimes you face pre-emptive retaliation if you have a habit of speaking up lol. HR says that to avoid lawsuits. If you bring retaliation and bullying to HR, you will be fired but not right away so it won't look like retaliation but maybe after significant time has passed. The best place you can be in corporate america is unseen by middle management and have a good immediate boss who values you.

PradeetPatel 3y ago
It still baffles me to think that some still believe that HR is on their side. Human resource is there to safeguard the company from regulatory, compliance, and legal challenges.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Some people are inexperienced and/or naturally trusting. HR always talks sweet and acts like they're the good guys here to help you. They wouldn't do this unless some people were going to fall for it.
- dr_kiszonka 3y ago
  Is it in tech or in other industries too? (I am not that experienced, and have had relatively positive experiences with HR, besides occasional incompetence.)
  - CapstanRoller 3y ago
    As a worker, ask yourself some questions: was HR hired to represent you, or to represent the corporation? Is HR part of your personal legal counsel team? Who signs HR's paychecks?
- _8j50 3y ago
  Yes, but what surprises me is that HR is not that smart usually like you are saying, they don't think out what is in the best interest of the company but rather usually just side with a middle manager's opinion, at least with big companies. With smaller companies, execs are more in touch with line managers and employees, they still look after the company period but at least it is not a wasteful kelptocracy.

Loughla 3y ago

Is attribute illegal or harassing or just something you don't like? Because those are very important distinctions for formal complaints.

tester756 3y ago
I bet he meant ppl coming from specific country :) I've heard about it already
- ed-209 3y ago
  What company?
  - pb7 3y ago
    Apple.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  I've seen it and heard of it numerous times with India and China. But not Korea, Japan, Pakistan, or other countries. I find this inexplicable.
  - filoleg 3y ago
    Here is a simple explanation: how many people there are from India or China immigrating to the US on H1B vs from those other countries you listed? I would be more surprised if it was anything but “India and China” in your observations, just due to raw volumes.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      I listed those three countries for two reasons: First, because they are adjacent to the first two I listed. Secondly, because workers from those countries are numerous enough in the companies I have worked that they could plausibly form ethnic enclave teams if they were inclined to. In contrast, I have only worked with a small handful of Australians.. they are too few and far between to plausibly form all-Australian teams. I have worked with far more Japanese, Korean and Pakistani coworkers; these nationalities have been heavily represented in the workplaces I have experience with yet I've never seen nor heard of a team where they were conspicuously over-represented. Another thing: In my entire career I've never been on a team of only white people (of any nationality), nor to the best of my recollection have I ever seen a team larger than 4 or 5 that only had white people. Guestimating some rough numbers... if a company is 50% white and 15% Chinese and there are no ethnic biases present, what are the odds I would see numerous large all-Chinese teams but never a large all-white team? This sort of circumstance arising without bias seems deeply implausible.

hardware2win 3y ago

>I would love to see a survey with one question asked at all tech companies with more then 100 employees. "Promotions are based on merit, answer from 0 to 10." I work in company which had huge freezings and promotions almost fully paused during last 1.5 year. The only promoted ppl that I worked close enough to evaluate them were really, really good.

DinoDad13 3y ago

And what wrongdoing do you think is happening in this scenario?

tsunamifury 3y ago
[flagged]
Manuel_D 3y ago
In-group preferences. Granted, there are non-discriminatory explanations: say your manager just happens to know a lot of potential referrals that are of the same identity group. This is totally plausible, most people do indeed tend to have more social connections with people sharing identity characteristics. It's hard to know for sure if favoritism is happening. The way to tell would be to send effectively identical resumes differing only in the identity characteristics of the applicant and observing if there are disparities. Of course, most companies aren't interested in doing this: why would a company want to incriminate itself?
- SenAnder 3y ago
  It should be noted that even if there is a non-discriminatory explanation, it is still illegal under the disparate impact legal theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Not exactly, as per your link: > ...an unjustified adverse impact on members of a protected class... Requiring doctors to have an MD is going to have a disparate impact on all sorts of factors, including protected classes. Likewise, an anonymized leetcode question isn't going to pass candidates uniformly across identities. But there's a pretty strong case that the use of such measures is justified. Prioritizing candidates with a referral might be argued to be a disparate impact without justification, and that's somewhere there might be a stronger case but it's not so clear cut.

jstarfish 3y ago

> I'm not convinced this is possible without retaliation. This is true! Unfortunately nobody who investigates this stuff has any sense of discretion, so the subject gets tipped off during the questioning itself. This isn't even limited to HR/corporate anything, I've had this happen with fucking CPS of all things. They didn't even try to be indirect and outright questioned the alleged perpetrator using the exact verbiage from my supposedly-anonymous report-- events of which only I was a witness to. My working relationship with the subject was great from there. Right now I'm mulling over what to do with a report from HR personnel about one of their own, involving a [female] employee reporting their known-autistic, high-achieving [female] boss for actual espionage. Our workplace harassment policy says to report everything, even if it's hearsay. As with social media abuse claims, there is no consequence for false reporting or claims made in bad faith, so now I'm spinning wheels on this. I can't tell if it's a disgruntled employee, or the named exec trying to stage a persecution complex. Whether or not she actually did it, based on the specificity of the claims, if I question the subject, she'll know who reported her. If she did do what's alleged, I can't prove it and she certainly wouldn't admit it, so the only possible outcome my intervention facilitates is opening the door for retaliation either way. I don't want to be the arbiter of HR's internal workplace politics, but who am I going to report false/bad-faith claims to? HR? (Legal won't hear anything without evidence.) These decisions aren't easy. The workplace "rules" are so incoherent they're easily exploited. I'm taking the workplace harassment training right now; reportable offenses apparently include gossip about someone's hairstyle. Apparently nobody has ever played the game of crybullying before... If it's not worth risking your entire career for, it's not worth reporting. Unethical business practices? Grow up. Fraud? There's probably a hotline for that. Sexual assault? Call the police. If you don't want retaliation from the company, don't fucking involve the company.