SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Google's HR head to step down amid tension among employees:
[Eileen] Naughton, who has held various roles at the company since 2006, has led the company's human resources department as the vice president of people operations since 2016. The news was previously reported by Fortune.
Employee headcount has doubled since 2016, when Naughton took the helm, as it's added more than 70,000 employees. The company has faced considerable tension with employees over the last several years, including a November 2018 employee walk-out after employees learned the company had paid departing Android chief $90 million in 2014, despite credible claims of sexual misconduct, as well as protests over the company's plans to work with the Defense Department on artificial intelligence technology and a plan -- since abandoned -- to create a censored version of its search engine for China. In November 2019, the company fired four employees who allegedly shared internal information.
[...] Naughton's departure comes in the midst of a slow-rolling executive shakeup over the last several months. In December, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down from their roles as the CEO and President of Google's holding company, Alphabet. Sundar Pichai, who had already been Google's CEO for several years, took the helm. The company's long-time chief legal officer David Drummond retired at the end of January.
[...] A Google spokesperson confirmed Naughton will be taking another role within the company, but declined to provide any details on what that would be. She'll work with Pichai and Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat to find another leader to fill her role.
"Over the past 13 years, Eileen has made major contributions to the company in numerous areas, from media partnerships, to leading our sales and operations in the UK and Ireland, to leading our People Operations team through a period of significant growth -- during which over 70,000 people started their careers at Google," Pichai said in a statement the company sent to CNBC. "We're grateful to Eileen for all she's done and look forward to her next chapter at Google."
Google HR chief Eileen Naughton to step down amid employee tensions:
Eileen Naughton is stepping down as Google human resources chief.
Google's head of human resources, Eileen Naughton, said on Monday she will depart that role, as tensions continue to rise between company management and workers who have protested the search giant's workplace culture.
[...] The shift comes as Google faces the greatest challenges to its culture in its 21-year history. During her tenure as head of HR, activists within the search giant have protested several decisions by leadership, including the signing of an artificial intelligence contract with the Pentagon and Google's work in China. Most notably, 20,000 employees walked out of their offices in November 2018 to protest leadership's handling of sexual assault allegations.
[...] Naughton, though, said her decision to step down isn't related to any of those cultural clashes.
"My husband and I have decided -- after six years on the road, first in London and now San Francisco -- to return home to New York to be closer to our family," Naughton said in a statement. "I'm at the very beginning of the process and wanted to let everyone know upfront, as I'll be working with [Google CEO] Sundar [Pichai] and [Google CFO] Ruth [Porat] to find a great leader for the People Operations team."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:25AM (6 children)
The fascist tries to explain how fascism is more efficient. For the fascists.
Fuck off toady
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:40AM (5 children)
I thought Google employees were all about "bashing the fash."
Funny thing is that I'm speaking from a perspective that would have benefitted Google who I don't like. Some of you may wonder how a right-winger would reconcile the whole China thing with Google. Well, right-wingers tend to be more mercenary in their work than left-wingers. Besides that right-wingers can relate more strongly to nationalism, which China is strongly, the reality is that the military industrial complex also has plenty of business in China. Non-ITAR items from China have both consumer and military uses, and China is allowed some ITAR technology on a case-by-case basis.
Right-wingers within Google wouldn't care what Google does for China as long as they believe their cutting-edge stuff isn't going to be weaponized against Americans and who knows whether or not that would have been the case*. The real hustle is that Google employees were being indoctrinated into the "Don't be Evil" propaganda and the ones who lacked first principles, the ones who actually believed it, should be feeling pretty stupid. There is no such fucking thing as a corporation that isn't evil. The leadership of Google were stupid enough to allow this "internal dialogue" and even among groupthinky leftists rallying around a common enemy -- Trump -- it all came back to bite them in the ass.
* There is some to this that we don't know, though. When Eric Schmidt and later Larry and Sergei stepped down, it raised a lot of suspicion.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 12 2020, @08:33AM (4 children)
As far as China goes: no one ever said that the future of humanity has anything to do with democracy. While China's policies may not be very nice to the individual, they have done an amazing job of pulling China up from poverty to a respectable economic status in just a few decades. Which is, actually, a huge benefit to millions of their citizens, and likely better than any democratic system could have achieved.
Mind, I'm a fan of individual rights. But there's no point in blinding oneself to what China has achieved.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:26AM (3 children)
Only if you ignore that Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea did it faster because they were more democratic over that recent past. My view is that China has already become massively more free and this is likely to continue, no matter how little China speaks of democracy when discussing their future.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:42AM (2 children)
That is a good point, of course. China has discovered that providing individuals with incentives to succeed is important. However, that is not "democracy", that is more like "capitalism".
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 12 2020, @10:11AM (1 child)
Yet.
While Japan was forced to have a democracy after the Second World War, Taiwan and South Korea were not. Yet they ended up with one now. I think the same forces will continue to make China more free than it is now.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday February 12 2020, @05:21PM
It's almost like, when you are exposed to a culture that has certain freedoms, while your culture doesn't, that you're more likely to want to also have those freedoms. The internet, at least it's good for something.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"