Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday August 11 2017, @02:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the hurry-up-and-stop dept.

Google is struggling to discuss the recent diversity memo controversy internally:

Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, canceled a scheduled all-hands staff meeting—moments before it was scheduled to begin—meant to address concerns over a controversial essay published by former employee James Damore.

In an email to staff, Pichai explained that questions from employees had been leaked and that, in some cases, specific employees' identities were revealed, exposing them to harassment and threats. Instead of today's large-scale meeting, which was to be livestreamed to Google's 60,000 employees worldwide, smaller groups will meet sometime in the future.

"We had hoped to have a frank open discussion today as we always do to bring us together and move forward. But our Dory questions appeared externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being named personally," Pichai said in the email.

Also at CNET.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Sulla on Friday August 11 2017, @03:18PM (8 children)

    by Sulla (5173) on Friday August 11 2017, @03:18PM (#552345) Journal

    There is a difference in how articles are discussed across the various web platforms and soylent does bring something unique (i suppose the other green-site clones do as well) to the table. Here we have a fairly intelligent community of people with vastly different views that are much more likely than the general population to post citations for their views. I might post about this on /pol/, but how I might do it there would be vastly different than I do on soylent. I could post about it on some mainstream news site with discussion at the bottom, but that is nothing but standard waving.

    If people aren't interested in an article they could just not read it or respond to it. An article like this being posted will not cause a real article that is tech related to not be posted.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=2, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Friday August 11 2017, @05:51PM (7 children)

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Friday August 11 2017, @05:51PM (#552458) Journal

    And where else would you suggest people discuss things?

    ArsTechnica, The Register, Slashdot, Reddit, HackerNews, Tweakers.
    For example.

    If people aren't interested in an article they could just not read it or respond to it. An article like this being posted will not cause a real article that is tech related to not be posted.

    True. What this article will do, is gather comments. Like mine, right now.
    Part of my objection is indeed based on an assumption that people will not provide an infinite amount of comments.
    I should have made that explicit, let me try to do so now:

    <Assumption>
    Site visitors only comment sparingly. There are no hard bounds, and particular stories may engage them more, but....
    if they have commented "a lot" (whatever that may mean for an individual site visitor), then they will be reluctant to comment more.
    This assumed effect is even stronger for commenting on new/other stories.
    </Assumption>

    It's a big assumption and I don't have anything to back it up except anecdotal evidence (me).
    *IF* other people indeed act like this, then a story like this, which gains a lot of comments that can easily be found elsewhere on the net, has a negative effect on the number of comments other stories will receive.
    If this assumption is false, then I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment of your quote: that there is no downside to posting a story like this.
    I suspect there is, though, based on generalising from a way-too-small population (containing: me).

    • (Score: 2) by Tangaroa on Friday August 11 2017, @09:07PM (1 child)

      by Tangaroa (682) on Friday August 11 2017, @09:07PM (#552585) Homepage

      ArsTechnica, The Register, Slashdot, Reddit, HackerNews, Tweakers.

      Hacker News is censored. They banned me for saying that Ed Snowden had not released evidence of the NSA listening in on the content of everyone's phone calls when he hadn't according to every news article about him. The news said the NSA was saving metadata, not the complete conversations, but HN had a pro-Snowden party line to push and could not have it interrupted by appeals to accuracy.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:25AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:25AM (#552770) Journal
        And I got banned from Ars Technica for going skeptical on a front page global warming story. There's something to be said for sites that don't ban you for having the wrong opinion.
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:21PM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:21PM (#552920) Journal
      I thought about it and I just don't see the problem, unless comment volume gets high enough that the comments are unreadable. For me, that would probably start coming around 500, but obviously it would be much less for other without my particular tolerances for walls of text.

      The key problem for me is that you're calling for the reduction in engaging stories. I think that alone makes this idea a non-starter. It's not a good idea to make the site less interesting. Second, engaging stories pull in more readers. While a reader might, with the advent of more engaging stories, comment less on the less engaging stories, there are more people overall to comment. I think that will result in more comments overall on stories for good or bad.

      I think this particular story has a lot of merit because it details not just an important business's tribulations, but a potential sea change in the social dynamics of the high tech industry. Way back in the mid 2000s after Google had IPOed, it could do no wrong. On the Green Site, every little bit of information was blown way out of proportion with posters peering at the tea leaves and seeing their favorite science fiction fantasy. Somewhere along the years, the bloom fell off the rose and Google just became another big tech company though still with some interesting ideas.

      This new stuff is crazy with apparently a fair number of mid-level managers taking it upon themselves to police their employees, some apparently doing little else, and maintaining blacklists of employees they wouldn't take on. The key problem with all this is that these managers are generating a considerable amount of liability for Google. And where's HR in all this? Handling bigotry behavior in employees is one of their key reasons for being. Regular managers shouldn't be touching that at all.

      What I think brings this from a company problem to an industry problem is that a manager has allegedly bragged [hotair.com] about circulating these blacklists outside of the company.

      I remember engineering manager Adam Fletcher bragging about how (a) he’ll never work with people like me (which he refers to as “hostile voices”), and (b) how people like me were being blacklisted *outside of Google* (I assume because he and others like him were using gossip to coordinate industry-wide blacklists). Note that Adam’s position is widely-shared instead of reprimanded by management. Paul Cowan…also got away with posting comments in support of that.

      Among other things, blacklisting and hiring collusion between employers are both federal-level illegal (I think they're civil not criminal though) and Google has already been caught before, along with Apple and some other high tech firms, engaging in hiring collusion (though that time it was "no poach" agreements to avoid bidding for each others' top talent). So that's an indication that something is deeply wrong that a manager would brag about such an activity when the company was already under scrutiny and eventually fined significant money for the activity.

      But if the allegation is true, it means that there's a network out there spanning multiple businesses, not just some out of control Google bureaucrats.

      • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday August 12 2017, @10:15PM

        by FakeBeldin (3360) on Saturday August 12 2017, @10:15PM (#552994) Journal

        1. Thanks for your insightful comment (no mod points currently)
        2. Thanks for proving me wrong with the on-topic part of your comment, that I hadn't read elsewhere :)

    • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 15 2017, @12:58PM (2 children)

      by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday August 15 2017, @12:58PM (#554238) Journal

      <Assumption>
      Site visitors only comment sparingly. There are no hard bounds, and particular stories may engage them more, but....
      if they have commented "a lot" (whatever that may mean for an individual site visitor), then they will be reluctant to comment more.
      This assumed effect is even stronger for commenting on new/other stories.
      </Assumption>

      Eh, in my case 95% of the comments that I type get deleted instead of being posted, but the ones that actually do get posted seem to come in spurts. I'll post a lot one week, then nothing at all the week after. So I think the act of posting something makes me more likely to actually post the next one. Inertial engagement ;)

      • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Tuesday August 15 2017, @08:03PM (1 child)

        by FakeBeldin (3360) on Tuesday August 15 2017, @08:03PM (#554405) Journal

        Also on other stories? For me it tends to focus for one story, but I get all my inertia to posting back once I switch stories.

        • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 16 2017, @12:13PM

          by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @12:13PM (#554670) Journal

          Yeah, the inertia can last up to a week or so for me. Although I might just be more likely to comment on similar topics...haven't thought about it that much! :)