2. In the article linked in the comment above, this is given as a single example of a pattern of behavior of asking people to do things unrelated to their jobs. Surely we can understand that even if there were many examples, in this article only one could be mentioned due to space reasons. One might contrive a situation in which any single example, removed from its context, could be arguably a valid request. But if someone who worked with him observed this as a pattern rather than a single incident, doesn't that have to be taken seriously? Esp in combination with the "I crush people" and the assertion that he would humiliate people in front of their colleagues? Between the possibilities of "maybe there was a secret plan to work in Russia" and "maybe he asked for things out of personal interest disregarding people's actual roles" or "maybe he had a dysfunctional need to demonstrate power over others by having them do bullshit 'work'", I think the latter two are seem pretty plausible.
> Suleyman would also sometimes ask employees to carry out tasks unrelated to their jobs or DeepMind's work, two former employees said.
> "He would ask us to do personal things for him," one of these people said. "He said, 'I need you to write a briefing for me on Russian history and politics.' We knew it was absurd. We knew it was a waste of time. We had absolutely no work in Russia."
Because when you're as large as Google, you don't ask your underlings to write book reports on things that are of strategic business importance. You go through the proper channels and get them to hire qualified people to cut through the bullshit.
Of course you do, that's exactly how it works.
Usually the 'underlings' do the research or collect information, and then the people higher up synthesise that information into a strategic decision.
If you want to serve a really high-quality meal and are willing to wait a few days or weeks to get the omelette then you would probably wait for a chef from the omelette department, or hire in an external consulting chef. Note that a single omelette will take a long time to get this way, as you will probably also have to get authorisation to hire/spend money/use another teams resources.
If you needed food now, and if eggs in a pan now are better than omelettes in a few weeks, you would probably just find someone from your team to do it and you would have an omelette within the hour. It won't be as good, but it's better than waiting if you are hungry.
If you weren't cooking an omelette, and were writing a report trying to assess if the omelette team should be rolled into the frittata, you probably wouldn't ask the omelette team to write this report. Sure, they might have the most knowledge of how the team works and their capabilities, but asking the omelette team to write this report might have a pro-omelette bias because there is a conflict-of-interest in terms of job preservation.
No?
So why are they being asked to do them?
I yelled at a CEO because he asked me to do something that wasn't related to software engineering role. He stopped asking me and anyone else in eng due to that confrontation. But - guess what - he wanted to fired every single day I worked there after that incident. I only remained because I had a lot of people protecting me.
So - you have to ask - are you willing to lose your job over it? If so - great - see ya! If not - then take your lumps and get it done.
This is ridiculous. Jobs have pretty clear, if arbitrary at times, functions. You wouldn’t ask a chef to brief you on Russian political history, a field of itself that is vastly nuanced just as much as AI itself, nor would you ask a data scientist. It isn’t because job function can’t change it’s because people have careers and an AI researches is not likely to be able to actually brief one on Russian political history without doing a deep dive and learning the field itself.
In large organisations, yes. If you work for yourself or for a startup, though, you're typically just doing whatever needs to be done.
My response would be to ask about the employer's continuing education program. I could see myself taking a Russian studies program and get that report back in 2-3 years if tuition and time was 100% covered by the employer.
If it really ends up being a useful task and not pointless, your boss should be willing to expend additional resources in addition to your time. You take it seriously, which requires additional resources if it's outside the scope of your job or knowledge.
And they should be happy to provide those resources if the task needs to be done.
Was your CEO within his legal rights to ask you to do the job? Sure, assuming it was legal and not forbidden by your contract. Would it have been advisable for you to do it anyway, for the sake of your job? Probably. But that doesn't mean that the CEO was doing his job well by asking. And evidently he knew that, because he didn't actually fire you and the people protecting you.
In the case of Google, a public company, it is simultaneously true that individual low-level employees should act strategically and optimize for their own benefit - which might include putting up with misbehaving management to remain employed under them - and that the public has a strong interest in knowing when management, especially senior management, is being bad at their jobs.
We have so many people who have been abusing people in so much worse of ways than "write me a report on Russia" and they have little to no accountability.
The public doesn't care about how a company is managed - they care about the share price going up so they make their money.
Thats like saying you don’t care about the fridge temperature of a restaurant, you care how quickly they get you your chicken Kiev.
> I don’t think there is much alignment…
Considering the fact that deepmind spends a significant amount on AI safety, a misalignment between their leadership and human values seems pretty concerning.
I mean this is what it boils down to. Does your self assessment of your value align with your bosses assessment, and if not, then who's wrong?
I've been guilty of assigning tasks to employees just to keep their hands off of another area of a project.
At that point in time, their best value to me was being busy with something else.
Wouldn't the point of such a high level briefing be because they're tying to get work in Russia but don't already have any? It's rather common for employees to not know the details of the strategic plans of the executives until the execution starts.