Tolerance of genius is indulgent in the eyes of employees.
The Translation Bureau is a compilation team that focuses on technology, business, workplace, life and other fields, focusing on foreign new technologies, new ideas, and new trends.
Editor’s note: Google used to be the most innovative company. From search engines to Gmail, maps, Chrome, Docs, Photo, translation, to unmanned vehicles, Project Loon and other moon landing programs, Google can always use one. Innovations attract everyone’s attention. But in the last three years, the situation has changed. Since the strike against the ban, the Google employees have continually challenged the company’s decisions, and other employees have challenged those challenges, causing the company to struggle to cope with the endless hamsters in recent years. It seems to have been extinguished by employees one by one. What happened to Google in the past few years? Or at a deeper level, what kind of trend is the US technology giant facing? “Connected” magazine used a long article to reveal the secret to us. The original author is ASHA TIKU, titled: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech. This article was compiled by 36kr and published in sections. This is the sixth part.
Google: The Three Years of the Happiest Technology Company (1)
Google: The Three Years of the Happiest Technology Company (2)
Google: The Three Years of the Happiest Technology Company (3)
Google: The Three Years of the Happiest Technology Company (4)
Google: The Three Years of the Happiest Technology Company (5)
Six, “tolerance” culture
In early June 2018, Pichai finally announced the AI principles that Google promised to its employees. It lists four types of artificial intelligence applications that Google will not do, including weapons, information collection and utilization technologies for the purpose of “monitoring in violation of internationally accepted norms”, and “the purpose of transgressing widely accepted international law and human rights principles.” technology.
On October 25, 2018, a report in The New York Times unveiled the dark side of Google: tolerance for geniuses different from ordinary people. According to reports, in 2013, a woman working for Google accused Android co-founder Andy Rubin of sexually harassing her in a hotel room. The report said that after Google conducted the investigation, it believed that this statement was credible, but the way to deal with it was to give Rubin $90 million, which made him happily leave Google.
This story doesn’t stop at Rubin. Another executive, Amit Singhal, former head of Google Search, still gave him millions of dollars in separation subsidies after being accused by a female employee of being in a salty pig. The third protagonist is Richard DeVaul, who allegedly told a female job seeker that he was a multi-disciplinary lover in the interview and invited the other person to meet him on Fireman’s Day, and then wanted to help the other person to massage. Google refused to grant the job seeker a job. DeVaul is still the head of Company X at Google (an ambitious research project).
The Times’ survey also noted that Google has a “tolerance culture” throughout the world, including senior executives such as Brin, Schmidt, and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond. Some women claimed that they were later driven out of the company.
Google employees detonated the company’s internal social network and once again focused on the embarrassing facts of Silicon Valley women’s status. But this discussion is not easy to get out of control, perhaps because some of the most important communication takes place on an anonymous mailing list called Expectant New Moms. In part, since every executive left the post, things will be posted here, so the 4,000 members of this mailing list know the story of Rubin and Singhal. But made up $90 million for Rubin to make everyone unexpected. The fact that the misconduct of the leader has become an open secret has made the situation worse. Why do they have to give so many years of youth to make these men crazy?
2:05 pm, then Claire Stapleton, then YouTube product marketing manager, sent a message to this anonymous group: “All thisIt’s really disgusting. We have to get rid of this patriarchal system.
On that day, Alphabet was ready to share some mixed earnings. The company’s third-quarter net profit was $9.19 billion, thanks in part to Trump’s tax cuts for big companies, but its revenue targets were not realized. Now, executives have to rush to control their employees before the earnings meeting. A few hours after the article in The Times was published, Pichai sent a memo to assure employees that Google had changed its approach. He wrote that in the past two years, 48 people have been dismissed for sexual harassment, 13 of whom are senior managers or higher, who have not received a separation allowance. But employees are skeptical about this. If Google is so hard to create a safe environment, why is DeVaul still in the company? (A Google spokesperson said that the human resources department “has thoroughly investigated the allegations and taken appropriate corrective actions.”)
In the evening, when things about Rubin, Singhal, and DeVaul were exposed, the page of the CEO who was still CEO at the TGIF apologized. In a prepared statement, he said: “I have to make a lot of decisions that affect everyone every day. Some of them are not easy. Just like everyone knows, I think some of them are definitely after me. I should change one. “Decision.” Page’s defense is actually a pretext, but his tone is very serious. And Brin also talked about a clumsy joke about confidentiality, which sounded like blaming the leakers, and the same questions were repeatedly raised and the executives answered no new ideas, everyone was tired. As usual, the agenda quickly returned to the business level and began to demonstrate new Google Photo features.
For Stapleton, this meeting was too disappointing. In 2007, her first job at Google was to help organize TGIF, including writing conversation points for Page and Brin. Now they can’t even answer major questions. At 7:58 pm, Stapleton sent a message to the mailing list advising women to turn their anger into collective action, such as a strike, a strike, or an open letter. “Google’s female employees (and allies) are now angry, and I’m wondering how we can take advantage of this sentiment and force the other to make real changes.”
These women analyzed the performance of the TGIF conference while constantly exchanging information. When they knew that everyone’s situation was almost the same as the HR harassment, the group was blasted. There was still a hot discussion until 1 am.
The next morning, Stapleton created a Google Group. “Welcome to Google female strikes the original point / no female day (name / brand tbd). “Just like the 21-month strike against the travel ban, the news spread quickly. Then there was a team of eight organizers, including Meredith Whittaker, who started planning logistics, finalizing demand, and The information to be delivered was fine-tuned. Stapleton set up a Google form to ask employees why they were going to strike. Soon they received 350 replies and talked about their harassment, discrimination, revenge and unfair pay. Span>
From these responses and other internal posts, the organizers have extracted five main requirements. They want to cancel the practice of compulsory arbitration, which forces employees to submit their own voices to Google’s arbitrators instead of court arbitration. They also demand equal pay and policies to ensure greater transparency in dealing with sexual harassment. After deleting the personal details, they included those survey responses into these five requirements for easy reading.
After the program was exposed, Google invited Stapleton to meet with three female executives: the company’s CFO Ruth Porat; YouTube CEO Wojcicki; and the human head Eileen Naughton. The invitation was sent through the head of the employee resource organization, Reputation at Google, who told Stapleton that it was a rare opportunity. But other strike organizers disagreed. Organizers believe that Google is only slowing their momentum. Stapleton pushed the invitation away. She said: “It is a bit weird to reject these female elites.”
On Tuesday night two days before the strike began, Pichai issued a memo: “One thing I know very well is that our apology on TGIF has not been forgiven, we have not done enough.” He recognized The protest and told employees that they will get the support they need.
The plan is for all employees of the office to leave their seats at 11:10 am on November 1, 2018. When the first photo came from Asia, the situation clearly showed that the action was mobilized not only by the left-wingers of Mountain View. In Singapore, where labor laws prohibit workers from marching, employees all stand in the office hall and listen carefully to the speaker. In New York City, employees flocked to the nearby park from the office of Google’s Eighth Avenue. Whittaker and Stapleton stood in chairs and called the crowd. Their horns are no match for the west side to tell the noise of the road, but the “Time is coming!” shouting is still loud.
When the Mountain View assembly arrived, 4,000 Google employees flocked to the yard outside the main coffee shop, and they again raised the slogan and shouted slogans.There is a slogan designed by volunteers from Google Creative Labs, written in a fresh wick with a happy resignation of $90 million, which is not required for sexual harassment. Just a few yards away from the location of Pichai and Brin during the strike against Muming in 2017, the employees shared their stories again. A female YouTube employee described being drugged by a colleague at a company event and then being told by the Human Resources department that she still had to stay in the same team. This time, no executive went to the front of the microphone. No one shouted their names.
The staff of the local TV station can only report on the side of the park, but the news helicopter from the sky can clearly see the “No OK, Google” written by chalk on the sidewalk (OK, Google is the wake-up word of Google assistant) )” and “The time is up.” At that time, organizers such as Stapleton and Whittaker had returned to New York and requisitioned a booth at a Mexican site in the meat storage area. They ordered margaritas, French fries, and guacamole, updated their social media accounts, and then shunned outside to avoid media interviews. Although the busy preparations made them sleepy, these women have achieved success. A few days ago, they thought that even a few hundred people participated in even a big victory. But when they counted the total, they found that 20,000 employees stood up.
But to some extent, Google’s efforts to offset the effects of strikes have worked. Catharsis and friendship seem to overshadow any hostility to management. Even some supporters believe that strikes are more of an action than a requirement. On November 8, 2018, one week after the end of the protest, Pichai sent a memo to his staff (also posted on Google’s blog), announcing that Google would no longer require arbitration for allegations of sexual harassment. However, class actions are still prohibited. This change has kept Google in line with the policy adjustments that Microsoft and even Uber have made over the past year.
On November 1, 2018, as many as 20,000 Google employees left their jobs and protested against the way the tech giant handled the leaders’ sexual misconduct.
Translator: boxi