Re:Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo
by geofft on Thursday August 10, 2017 @08:30AM
(#14978932)
Let's be clear, I'm not advocating for the rejection of promising junior candidates with the intellectual curiosity to learn how to do things. I think more companies need to hire such people, and I've strongly advocated for hiring them at my jobs (with mixed results).
But that doesn't imply that an organization or manager's job is to teach everyone everything. There exist non-junior roles, and very often there are people who are mishires for a senior role but great hires for a junior one, or mishires for a certain company but great hires for another one, etc. Sometimes what you're looking for is a senior engineer, and saying "This person isn't senior, they're not right for this role" isn't a failing of management or of the organization.
Damore was a senior engineer (L5) at Google, which is definitely not a junior role (it's the first level where they don't expect you to be getting promoted within 1-2 years, IIRC).
(Let's also be clear, everything I've said about dealing with mishires promptly also applies to mishires in management or mis-promotions into management. There are a lot of people in management who have no business there, and should get either a promotion to a highly-ranked IC role or a generous severance so they can find one elsewhere, before they do more harm to their team.)
But that doesn't imply that an organization or manager's job is to teach everyone everything. There exist non-junior roles, and very often there are people who are mishires for a senior role but great hires for a junior one, or mishires for a certain company but great hires for another one, etc. Sometimes what you're looking for is a senior engineer, and saying "This person isn't senior, they're not right for this role" isn't a failing of management or of the organization.
Damore was a senior engineer (L5) at Google, which is definitely not a junior role (it's the first level where they don't expect you to be getting promoted within 1-2 years, IIRC).
(Let's also be clear, everything I've said about dealing with mishires promptly also applies to mishires in management or mis-promotions into management. There are a lot of people in management who have no business there, and should get either a promotion to a highly-ranked IC role or a generous severance so they can find one elsewhere, before they do more harm to their team.)