It’s said that people don’t leave companies, they leave bosses, but now and then it’s the top bosses, the ones who control the culture, who create the circumstances that incite an exodus, as opposed to an immediate manager.
That’s what’s going on at Google, according to James Whittaker, who left Microsoft for Google and then left Google to return there.
The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.
Googlers have left because of harassment, retaliation, various governments’ contracts/projects, treatment of contractors, and other ethical considerations.
Google’s bosses are also some of the biggest hypocrites in tech. Worse even than Zuckerberg at saying one thing while doing the opposite covertly — especially something that negatively affects the entire planet, not just people’s privacy.
Despite making noises about becoming more environmentally friendly, Google has been quietly funding organizations which say climate change isn’t real [emphasis mine].
Fortunately, all the clandestine stuff keeps surfacing and people are coming to the realization that Google is anything but benevolent.
Does that mean the employee can expect a positive outcome if they have the courage to report their boss, another executive or a customer for harassment?
Then there are the companies looking for passionate workers.
Lisa Cohen, an associate professor of organizational behavior at McGill University’s Desautels School of Management shared that passion is a common attribute that companies she’s spoken with want, but they struggle to explain why.
“They haven’t defined the term,” she said. “They don’t know why it matters and probably what they’re looking for—and they’ll put this in not particularly nice terms—is somebody who’s going to work like crazy for long hours, right?”
Hiring for intangibles is smart, but it should be for traits that actually matter, as opposed to smoke and glitter.
Next Monday’s Oldie is about what to look for when choosing a place to work, with a special caution for unicorns.
Today I thought we’d take a quick look at a “great place to work” myth.
Google topped the best places to work lists for years, but no more.
According to the 2019 Glassdoor survey Google is in 8th place based on 9186 reviews.
Last year 20,000 people walked out in protest over the handling of sexual harassment accusations and Google promised to do better.
But almost a year after the historic walkout, a dozen current and former Google employees told Recode that many employees are still justifiably afraid to report workplace issues because they fear retaliation. They say the company continues to conceal rather than confront issues ranging from sexual harassment to security concerns, especially when the problems involve high-ranking managers or high-stakes projects. …dozens more employees say that when they filed complaints with Google’s human resources department, they were retaliated against by being demoted, pushed out, or placed on less desirable projects.
… Google’s top-down culture that suppresses meaningful employee pushback — even in areas the company says it’s trying to improve on, like diversity.
To really find out about a company you need to do the same depth of due diligence on it that the company does on you.
That requires more than reading employee reviews; it means searching traditional media as well as proven new media.
I used the following quote in a post about ego taking over startup founders.
Star CEOs grow dangerous when they see their success as destiny, their place at the head of the pack as the only path possible, rendering all of their choices justified.— Zachary First, managing director of The Drucker Institute (A 2013 Fortune article, link dead))
Obviously, it’s not only founders, but, just five years later, would you expect it to apply to so-called progressive managers?
The (unfortunately) best (worst?) example comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The most egregious recent example of this troubling type appears to exist in Morris Dees, 82, co-founder and the powerful former head of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama. He was removed from that post in March, following allegations of workplace misconduct. Specifically, the leader of the SPLC, known for its doggedness identifying and winning court cases against vile hate groups, was accused of racism and multiple counts of sexual harassment.
Dees’ fall shocked everyone,except the people who had worked closely with him, according to a recent New Yorker essay by journalist Bob Moser, who worked at the SPLC for a few years in the early 2000s. The organization known as a “beacon of justice” as he writes, was in fact what another one of its former writers called a “virtual buffet of injustices.” Employees worked within a two-tiered system: People of color were hired for support roles, while the higher-paid leaders, lawyers, writers, and fundraisers were “almost exclusively white.”
None of us like our heroes to have feet of clay, but it is easy to start seeing through an “I’m doing good in my world, therefore I am good and can do no wrong.”
In other words, if I’m fighting them, I’m not acting like them and shouldn’t be compared to them.
Years ago someone my crowd thought of as a good friend stole my credit card and jewelry and another guy’s car, etc. When he was caught he told the judge that, since he had done good for us, his stealing was no big deal.
I had something else planned for today, but two things, took precedence.
First, I had coffee with some guys and they started in about how overblown the whole “he touched me” thing had gotten. There were five of them, two said it had been blown up by the media, two thought the women had a point and the fifth said it was all feminist crap from a bunch of man-haters.
I accidentally spilled my coffee on him (it really was an accident; I choked on the sip I was taking when he said that and spilled it), which broke up the party.
So I came home, looked at some news articles and found one that was so relevant I had to share it with you.
For the project, titled “The Dress for Respect,” researchers built a dress embedded with sensor technology that tracked touch and pressure. The information was then relayed to a visual system so that researchers could essentially track harassment in real time. (…) In just under four hours, the women are touched a combined 157 times.
And while Facebook is clearly the poster child for data misuse, Google, Amazon and Microsoft aren’t exactly on the side of the angels.
Politicians on both sides are weighing in, but, considering the money involved in US-approved corruption, AKA, lobbying, that effort is unlikely to move forward anytime soon.
“Increasingly — and especially given the political environment — a key part of this consideration for workers has become the moral and ethical implications of the choices made by their employers, ranging from the treatment of employees or customers to the ethical implications of the projects on which they work. This is especially true given the central role of ‘big tech’ in new fears about information, rights, and privacy and the growing feeling that a lack of oversight in this sector has been harmful.” –Prasanna Tambe, Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions
“Before it was this glorious, magical thing to work there,” said Jazz Singh, 18, also studying computer science. (…) As Facebook has been rocked by scandal after scandal, some young engineers are souring on the company.
“Employees are wising up to the fact that you can have a mission statement on your website, but when you’re looking at how the company creates new products or makes decisions, the correlation between the two is not so tightly aligned,” said David Chie, the head of Palo Alto Staffing, a tech job placement service in Silicon Valley. “Everyone’s having this conversation.”
“They do a lot more due diligence,” said Heather Johnston, Bay Area district president for the tech job staffing agency Robert Half. “Before, candidates were like: ‘Oh, I don’t want to do team interviews. I want a one-and-done.’” Now, she added, job candidates “want to meet the team.”
“They’re not just going to blindly take a company because of the name anymore.”
More than 20,000 employees and contractors walked out of Google’s offices around the world Thursday, Nov. 1, organizers said. The group is protesting sexual harassment, misconduct, lack of transparency, and a non-inclusive workplace culture.
So.
Perhaps “we, the people” will have more force in the corporate world than it does elsewhere.
Leaders in all industries need to stand up and say that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. Future emerging leaders in companies need to know that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated and a spotlight will be shined when it does.
I was going to comment, mentioning what happens when a power is toppled, but LaVonne Reimer (fourth comment) beat me to it.
She cited the story of Mike Cagney, who was fired from online lending company Social Finance last September after an investigation by the board of over accusations of sexual misconduct and lying.
Powerful men getting fired for harassment and/or sexual misconduct is all too common these days, but that wasn’t Reimer’s or my point.
Yet just months after Mr. Cagney departed SoFi, two venture capitalists who had been on the company’s board and knew many details of his actions invested $17 million in his new start-up, called Figure. Since then, Mr. Cagney has raised another $41 million from others for the lending start-up, which will open soon.
Suster’s idea that “Leaders in all industries need to stand up and say that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.” means nothing as long as there are no real consequences.
Obviously, losing their jobs did not equate to losing their power.
And it’s the power that matters, not the job — because there is always another job.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here.
I said Tuesday that I wasn’t holding my breath in hopes of change when it comes to harassment in the workplace.
I blamed two main reasons, one societal and the other legal, but KG sent me an article yesterday that diminish the likelihood even more.
The articles cite an annual survey done by First Round on various topics, such as hiring, compensation, funding, etc. Last year they added diversity and inclusion and this year they added questions about harassment.
The companies are venture-backed and from all over — the Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles and other parts of the US.
Every year, we survey as many venture-backed startup founders as possible to figure out what it’s like to run a technology company right now. This year, we got more responses than ever before — 869 — giving us an even more precise pulse on what entrepreneurs think, feel, fear, and value.
These founders are the bosses of tomorrow’s tech sector, which doesn’t bode well.
As you can see they aren’t kids who are likely to change their attitudes when they “mature.”
55% have been in business for three to five years. Nearly 60% have an all male board and slightly more than half say their team is “mostly male.”
Actions speak louder than words and most don’t have any formal policies regarding diversity and inclusion or harassment.
Maybe I’m missing something, but there’s nothing about the majority of these new “leaders” that changes my mind regarding the likelihood of real change.
I watched a movie tonight called, “The Circle”, staring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. (A quick thank you to Amazon and Apple for finally allowing me to stream Amazon Prime to my Apple TV!).
If you have not seen the film it is about a tech company in the Bay Area. The company is basically a combination of Google, Amazon, Oracle, and any other major tech company wrapped up into one.
I won’t explain the whole plot, but one overriding theme is that the company knows everything about you.
Your health, likes, friend and family groups, credit history and so on. The company believes that with this knowledge they can help humans live their best selves.
That total transparency will lead an individual to the right path. Secrets are what breaks down society so they must be abolished.
Obviously this is a movie that has some truth in our reality, but is an extreme version of it.
However, it made me think about the current climate of sexual victims coming forward.
In almost all the cases that have been proven the events happened behind closed doors and in secret. The assaulter hid their actions behind a veil and it was only when the victim came forward that some justice was served.
I continue to be bemused that after the victim comes forward the assaulter will release a statement saying this was a mistake and they have learned from it, it shouldn’t define them and so on.
How could transparency have prevented all of this?
I am sure in some cases the acts would have never occurred. The offender would have thought it too risky or perhaps would not have considered it at all since there were no hidden places.
This is more a thought lesson, but I could see how some increased transparency would prevent this type of action.
We have all been victimized at some point. It could be as simple as a playground bully or something much worse. Humanity is not always kind.
However, I also love my privacy and want to live my life outside the view of others from time to time. How do we balance it all?
I’m not sure I have that answer yet, but will continue searching.
Valeria Chuba is an intimacy coach (clinical sexologist) and has found three main responses by her male clients to the recent bevy of harassment complaints.
Defensiveness
Disbelief at the enormity and pervasiveness of sexual violence and misconduct
Difficulty with empathizing
No surprises, but her commentary is interesting and useful.
… men who want to enact the “Pence rule” (avoiding socializing alone with any woman who is not one’s wife) do so at a potentially enormous cost to their female colleagues, their organizations, and themselves. In fact, the notion that some men are confused as to how to “mentor young women without harassing them” is a troubling comment on masculinity.
Easy, because it takes little effort from them, while further screwing (pun intended) women and “keeping them in their place” — which is below and away from men.
There’s a better way to monitor your words and actions.
Best, it’s a simple yardstick with which to measure them.
Ask yourself if you would say the words, use the tone, or perform the action on your mother, sister or any female relative.
Measure other men’s comments/tones/actions the same way.
Think about how you would feel if they were speaking to your mother/sister/grandma/etc. If it was your mom/etc. would you let it go or would you call them on it?
That simple mental test is an excellent guide for men who are worried about whether they or someone else is crossing the line.
That said, men also need to understand that women may still make the wrong assumption and take it the wrong way based on her previous experience with other men.
Not because it’s a bad yardstick, but because trust takes time — especially when dealing with systemic social problems.
So keep using the yardstick; share it with your team; embed it in your culture, be an active part of the (eventual) change.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
