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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 11 2020, @11:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the HR-aka-"people-operations" dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:10AM (8 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:10AM (#957018) Homepage

    " ...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.

    Google workers have also displayed unrest over the firings of four Google employees who were dismissed in November. The former employees accused Google of sacking them for 'engaging in protected labor organizing' and filed charges of unfair labor practices against the company. "

    It's almost as if they would have gotten away with it if they hired a few more right-wingers and didn't aggressively court young naive Marxists and other radicals to be 99% of their workforce. You can't be "the man" like Google and think your "fuck the man" workers won't turn against you. It's almost like political diversity or, better yet, a strong apolitical stance would do a lot better to prevent this kind of infighting in a sufficiently large behemoth of a corporation.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:25AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:25AM (#957021)

      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)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:40AM (#957025) Homepage

        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)

          by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @08:33AM (#957134) Homepage Journal

          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)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:26AM (#957140) Journal

            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.

            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)

              by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:42AM (#957147) Homepage Journal

              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)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 12 2020, @10:11AM (#957152) Journal

                However, that is not "democracy", that is more like "capitalism".

                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

                  by Freeman (732) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @05:21PM (#957267) Journal

                  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"
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @01:08AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @01:08AM (#957035)

      Yea they really didn't think through that one. Build your workforce on a particular demographic that has opposing world views to your corporate goals and have a HR culture that pander to whims of that set. That last bit is the killer.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:12AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:12AM (#957019) Journal

    Palantir Wins New Pentagon Deal With $111 Million From the Army [soylentnews.org]

    After Google abandoned a Pentagon effort known as Project Maven, Palantir stepped in to help develop video recognition software as part of the project, a move reported earlier by Business Insider.

    They should have been more decisive on accepting/rejecting DoD work. They could also have spun off a company to do the dirty work (most of it, as they are still the ad king) or bought an interest in other companies (maybe they have already done so).

    China is a lost cause. China is not letting Google come back in a meaningful way, and Baidu et al. are probably going to pull ahead in AI development out of surveillance necessity.

    A wave of bad press and internal dissent could have been avoided. Oh well, they are still a behemoth.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Hartree on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:56AM (8 children)

    by Hartree (195) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @12:56AM (#957033)

    PHB A: "All those people we hired when that was our motto are causing trouble now that we're evil."

    PHB B: "We obviously need to address the root cause."

    PHB A: "Stop being evil?"

    PHB B: "Don't be silly! We should fire the head of HR who unwisely hired non-evil people when that was our motto."

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by arslan on Wednesday February 12 2020, @01:14AM (7 children)

      by arslan (3462) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @01:14AM (#957036)

      You joke, but the head of HR should be part of the top level leadership team and should have understood the moment they pivot to "start being evil" _internally_ (rightly or wrongly) that they should ensure their HR strategy going forward should help and not hinder that strategy.

      It is absolutely the head of HR's job to ensure they maintain a proper HR strategy that aligns the workforce with the corporate goals. Any global HR lead that doesn't even understand that and think it is just about creating feel good environment for the workforce isn't really worth the paycheck.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday February 12 2020, @01:34AM (5 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 12 2020, @01:34AM (#957039) Journal

        You joke, but the head of HR should be part of the top level leadership team and should have understood the moment they pivot to "start being evil" _internally_ (rightly or wrongly) that they should ensure their HR strategy going forward should help and not hinder that strategy.

        Righto, because a "top leadership team" has God-like abilities and can never choose a nonsensical, impossible to implement strategy.
        And the employees are things that can be reprogrammed on the spot, give or take some hours of effort.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday February 12 2020, @02:17AM (4 children)

          by arslan (3462) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @02:17AM (#957048)

          Nobody said about instant change - but the leaders in each are should be making complementary adjustments to their overall functional area's strategy. I'm not at Google and wasn't commenting whether this particular instance the HR head was at fault, was more a generalized comment. I've seen enough HR chief that completely misses the point in aligning their workforce strategy to that of the overall corporate one though.

          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday February 12 2020, @02:38AM

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 12 2020, @02:38AM (#957056) Journal

            I'm not at Google and wasn't commenting whether this particular instance the HR head was at fault, was more a generalized comment.

            You weren't too explicit on this one, I couldn't rule out the intention to suggest that's exactly what happened in the TFA context.

            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:28AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:28AM (#957141) Journal

            and should have understood the moment they pivot to "start being evil" _internally_ /quote? "Should have understood the moment they pivot" sounds like instant change to me.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:29AM (1 child)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:29AM (#957142) Journal
            Try this again:

            and should have understood the moment they pivot to "start being evil" _internally_

            "Should have understood the moment they pivot" sounds like instant change to me.

            • (Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday February 12 2020, @11:04PM

              by arslan (3462) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @11:04PM (#957454)

              Umm I think you need to re-read the chain of comments, the "instant change" that I was responding to was this claim by someone else:

              And the employees are things that can be reprogrammed on the spot

              and you decide to latch on that to refute me by quoting this from me:

              Should have understood the moment they pivot

              where the "they" here refers to the management not the employees. Sure management can change their minds but nowhere did I say employees can be reprogrammed on the spot, I said the leaders need to re-adjust their strategy, i.e. if you're a HR chief you need to adjust your workforce strategy - if you don't and the opposing trajectory continues and it blows up later, you deserve to be fired.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @06:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12 2020, @06:00PM (#957295)

        The HR department is not there to protect employees, nor is it there to be the moral conscience of the company. HR is there for one reason: to protect the company from lawsuits. It is an offshoot of the legal team.

        The "exit interview" they give isn't so they can get last-minute thoughts about the company and figure out how to improve -- it is so they know if there is a thread of a lawsuit. That non-compete clause they force you to sign certainly isn't there to protect you either. The file of complaints they keep isn't something they show to management to improve the company -- it is there to prove they followed all applicable laws regarding your complaint. Every single thing they do is there because they are either legally mandated to do it, or because it saves them from lawsuits.

        HR is the most evil department in a company. If they see no legal liability, they won't give you the time of day.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Wednesday February 12 2020, @02:44AM (1 child)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Wednesday February 12 2020, @02:44AM (#957059)

    She has enough vested options to never work another day in her life. She can either A) [buy a sheep ranch in Idaho : buy a house in the Bay area], or B) "Hmmm, don't be evil. Our worker bees are unhappy over shit I don't care about. Wat du?"

    Keep in mind HR is not there for the employees. HR's #1 job is to keep the company's nose clean, and keep them out of lawsuits. If you're piddling desires happen to match up with that then, yeah, HR is on your side.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13 2020, @05:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13 2020, @05:28PM (#957770)

      Keep in mind HR is not there for the employees. HR's #1 job is to keep the company's nose clean, and keep them out of lawsuits.

      tldr; Keep in HR stands for Human Resources. Go figure.

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