Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

Alphabet-owned Verily Suspended Employee Bonuses To Fund Diversity Initiatives (theverge.com) 115

Verily Life Sciences, the Alphabet-owned healthcare company, is suspending employee spot bonuses. From a report: The money will be funneled instead to fund diversity and inclusion initiatives. The move frustrated workers, many of whom have been working grueling hours on the company's COVID-19 testing projects. In a letter to management obtained by Business Insider, employees said the decision implied these initiatives are not a priority. They wrote: "The use of spot bonuses to subsidize social justice programs such as Healthy@Work for HBCUs [Historically Black colleges and universities], clinical trial recruitment of underrepresented populations, and an internal Product Inclusion group implies that these efforts are charity causes not worthy of their own investment." Employees asked that spot bonuses be reinstated and called for the creation of a board of executives and employees to measure progress toward diversity goals. Alphabet, Verily's parent company, made $46.07 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019. Because of Alphabet's strong financial position, diversity and inclusion shouldn't be hard to invest in, the employees wrote.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Alphabet-owned Verily Suspended Employee Bonuses To Fund Diversity Initiatives

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @11:46AM (#60250804)

    More white people pandering to black people and making it all about white people again. So instead of these jerks showing up with their own money, they'll make the "contribution" for their employees.

    Dirtbags.

    • referring to all the parent companies money in every bloody article is annoying. Yeah we get it Alphabet has a lot of money. That doesn't mean they'll spend all of it helping all the little bets they are making all over the place have a 200k a year director of diversity with a staff and endless brainwashing sessions to make sure everyone complies.

      You can do meaningful things without robbing your employees sure. But you also shouldn't need to rob Google to pay for crap at Verily (which I'd never heard of). T

      • Re:yes and (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @01:58PM (#60251298) Homepage

        Punishing top-performing workers is an effective way to encourage diversity: they all quit making room for less well performing workers. It worked for Control Data Corp! Oh, wait, they went out of business.

    • It should have been the individual employee's decision. Want to support HBC's? Go for it. Did you need the cash because your household income fell during the pandemic? That works as well. Want to use to pay off debt or go on a vacation? Cool! Simply taking the expected funds and redirecting them without a say is virtue signaling at it's best. I'm sure there are many afraid to speak up over being labeled a bigot.
  • Making an Excuse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @12:06PM (#60250878) Homepage Journal

    The correct headline is, "Alphabet-owned Verily Makes Excuse for Suspending Employee Bonuses."

    They decided to connect two unrelated things to have an excuse for suspending the bonuses. If it weren't this, it would have been the economy. My company stopped the 401K match and annual pay raises, but at least didn't blame it on some initiative the company is undertaking.

    • by ebrandsberg ( 75344 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @12:42PM (#60251008)

      This. The Quaker Oats company made a big deal about the Aunt Jemima change, but in the past few years, they have been dealing with lawsuits from the family claiming unpaid royalties on the likeness. I suspect they are just using this to get "good" publicity out of a brand change to get out from beneath any future liability. Why waste a good crisis, right?

      • by rlwinm ( 6158720 )
        I never associated Aunt Jemima pancake syrup with anything racist. Diabetes: yes, racist: no.

        On that note: Please put Wilford Brimley on the bottle! DIE-AH-BEATIS Syrup.
        • Re:Making an Excuse (Score:5, Interesting)

          by scubamage ( 727538 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @01:20PM (#60251142)
          I think it's a complicated one, more complicated than most people realize. People have legit concerns about the iconography, and I can understand that. However, Nancy Green, the first "Aunt Jemima" broke a ton of glass ceilings, and made a lot of forward progress for civil rights. She was an activist, a business woman, and the first female person of color to serve as a spokes-model. It seems trite, but that was a big deal. At least two of the families of subsequent models have stated that they disagree with the removal, because of similar legacies and that they feel it "robs them of their history again." Which I can also understand.
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Indeed. Even if internally the executives decided to trade one for the other, they should've kept that reasoning silent and simply announce bonuses are being cancelled due to difficult economic times, period.

      I hope those executives don't get a bonus. They should get a penalty for being bone-headed.

    • by flink ( 18449 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @01:14PM (#60251094)

      It's deliberate. It sows resentment for the people asking for the diversity program. It teaches the lesson to the employees: "be careful what you ask for, don't agitate for change, or you might lose one of the bones we are currently throwing you." Pitting labor against each other along racial lines has been a tactic to weaken the labor movement since the beginning.

    • Is it an excuse? Turn on the TV. Look at a website. Look outside, on the street. What do you see: people that demand more action for inclusivity. It's so important that it's even more important than social distancing! Now Google is listening to everyone's demands, and reprioritizing as demanded.

      If you disagree, maybe you should have spoken out when you had a chance.

  • double disrespect (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Moblaster ( 521614 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @12:14PM (#60250902)

    So they dissed their own employees who had been working like ...uh... slaves to get their employer's high priority work done (for free, as a result of this decision) during their personal time.

    And then they donate the money to help right the wrongs caused by the legacy of... uh... slavery?

    Is it me or does that whole dynamic feel a bit ironic, even a wee bit sociopathic?

    • So they dissed their own employees who had been working like ...uh... slaves to get their employer's high priority work done (for free, as a result of this decision) during their personal time.

      And then they donate the money to help right the wrongs caused by the legacy of... uh... slavery?

      Is it me or does that whole dynamic feel a bit ironic, even a wee bit sociopathic?

      It is total bullshit - as in this company is lying. I bet your sex organs that those asshole executives just want to give themselves a bigger bonus and are using a politically charged excuse.

      If any of those employees have half a brain, they would be getting their resumes up to date.

    • by Shaeun ( 1867894 )
      Well, it seems pretty normal these days. After all, the suits refuse to buy masks for hospital workers. The public buys the masks and donates them, then pays full price for services.
      I'd love to be horrified. But i've become immune...
    • by dwpro ( 520418 )
      Seems to me they're just making the activists in the company (assuming the activists were some of those in the running for bonuses) put their money where their mouth is. If they want the company to be hyper-progressive they'd best be willing to take a dose of it for themselves. Shame that the collateral damage is the quiet worker that does the job well and doesn't squawk about their political views at work one way or the other.
  • by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @12:26PM (#60250946)

    If there is any group of workers who should be getting bonuses right now, it's the people in healthcare. Verity could pass the hat internally for the cause of "diversity and inclusion," whatever that actually means, so that workers could make up their own minds about what charities to support. But one surefire hallmark of SJW contamination is that people are not allowed to make up their own minds about a cause - the Self-Anointed Ones make up their minds for them.

    They wouldn't want anyone deciding to donate to some small black-owned business that had been burned out, or any such off-the-message activity.

    • I think it's cool to support diversity and help women and minorities get into computer science.

      What really bothers me is how many emotional, unscientific, and downright illogical arguments are used in that effort. It's true that a lot of political arguments are illogical, but programmers need to have at least a little understanding of logic. We can do better.
  • Alphabet CANNOT afford to hire anyone but the best at their job regardless of skin color. Their business won't remain competitive and it DEFINITELY won't when the existing best, most experienced people lose their bonuses and quit.
  • How is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @12:45PM (#60251014) Homepage Journal

    How is this news — this has been happening for decades. Every professor of "Women Studies", every professor of "African-American Studies", every lecturer on "Diversity and Inclusion" are paid for bullshit — at the expense of everything else. Every class, that students are obligated to take with them, is at the expense of the same kids learning something actually useful. That'd be true even if these educators were genuinely nice people — which is not always [dailymail.co.uk] true [fox61.com] either.

    Likewise, every HR worker, charged with "improving diversity" at a business, is paid at the expense of other employees there — and to the detriment of the firm's actual business.

    The cost to society is — and has been for many years — very large, but these snowflakes are only triggered now, when they learn it comes out of their pockets directly. Well, whatever it takes to make you understand the cause-and-effect chain, folks...

    Because of Alphabet's strong financial position, diversity and inclusion shouldn't be hard to invest in, the employees wrote.

    It should not be invested in, because it is bullshit to begin with. Rent-seeking demagogues justifying their own existence with religion-worthy logical marvels like "denial of racism is evidence of racism" [nytimes.com] should be mocked out of town regardless of how they are paid.

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Likewise, every HR worker, charged with "improving diversity" at a business, is paid at the expense of other employees there — and to the detriment of the firm's actual business.

      That doesn't make sense. Increased diversity benefits a company's bottom line. Company's invest in diversity because it makes them more profitable. This is the invisible hand of the free market changing companies in ways that money tells them, even if you don't agree. Those HR diversity employees are making the company measurably more profitable.

      cite: "Companies that have more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenue due to innovation"
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/a... [forbes.com]

      cite: "The effect of shared ethn

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        cite: "Companies that have more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenue due to innovation"

        Wonderful, but corellation is not causation, remember?

        Now cite evidence, that their success is due to deliberately seeking diversity — rather than simply trying to hire the best, whatever sex or race...

        • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

          cite: "Companies that have more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenue due to innovation"

          Wonderful, but corellation is not causation, remember?

          You're right. The alternative you're implicitly proposing is that there exists a common cause, some facet of business which leads both to them being more profitable and to them employing a more diverse workforce. I don't know what word to use for your conjectured common cause. Let's call it "being enlightened" for want of a better term. So, your argument is that greater diversity in hiring is caused by being more enlightened, and getting higher revenue is caused by being more enlightened.

          That said, as a hir

          • by mi ( 197448 )

            I know that the kind of diversity levels correlated with higher company profitability NEVER happen without consistent encouragement of diversity from HR

            Are you, perhaps, paid for advocating "diversity and inclusion"?

            If evidence for this existed (beyond my anecdotes) where do you think you'd find it?

            A study going over a number of companies, which stagnated until they hired diversity consultants (or employees) to do the encouraging you're talking about. Controlling for other factors — like the economy g

            • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

              Are you, perhaps, paid for advocating "diversity and inclusion"?

              No - I'm just paid to invent write software and manage a software team.

              Presumably they did account for all those factors — you wouldn't have cited them otherwise, would you have?

              I'm not sure if you're being snarky or serious. Of course I didn't. The original post had made the extraordinary claim that HR investment in diversity is a drain on companies. It's extraordinary because (1) it suggests that vast numbers of companies make these investments in ignorance of the impact on their bottom line, (2) it only makes sense in conjunction with some other hypothesis about the correlation between diversity and profitabi

  • ....that's the sound of ideology getting t-boned by reality
  • by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @12:58PM (#60251050) Journal

    Didn't they DEMAND that Google (let's stop shilly-shallying with the corporate-name squaredance?) expand diversity and a whole bunch address a bunch of other 'woke' concerns?

    Did they think someone else was going to pay for it, particularly the mighty google? Did they think Page and Brin accumulated $60 BILLION in net worth each by being generous?

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @02:07PM (#60251330)

      Didn't they DEMAND that Google

      Indeed they did. Google. Not them. Being one of the worlds most wealthy and most profitable companies while suspending employees bonuses is just a dick move that you'd normally only attribute to rich arseholes like Larry Ellison.

    • by rho ( 6063 )

      Page and Brin accumulated $60B by making a really good search engine.

      I wish Alphabet would do that. That Google thing people seem to like isn't very good and keeps getting worse.

  • The decision maker(s) should be fired and fast, and an apology issued. The company's reputation has taken a serious hit.

  • by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @01:41PM (#60251238)

    Alphabet is wedded to the Democrat party, with a huge revolving door between the White House and the Obama administration for employees and staffers going back-and-forth and Eric Schmidt actually going to meetings with President Obama more often than some of his cabinet members (look it up, it's documented in the White House logs). This relationship will force alphabet to engage in boldly racist (making decisions about individual humans by looking at their skin color instead of considering them as individuals) actions, and this should surprise nobody. A little history is in order here:

    First, the Democrats owned all the black slaves, because: skin color

    When stripped of their slaves, they kept people poor as sharecroppers on the former plantations and intimidated them with their Klansmen, while imposing gun control to keep them from arming for self defense, because: skin color

    When some of their former slaves managed to become self-sufficient, they were still kept separate by Democrat-created "Jim Crow" laws, which told them where to sit, eat, drink, live, go to school, etc because: skin color

    When President Eisenhower broke that dam of segregation with the National Guard and Democrats realized the whole system was collapsing, they came up with a new plan, which took over a decade to shift to --- give enough freebies to their former slaves to make them feel good but not enough to escape, and make some of it contingent on fathers not being married and living at home with their families to destroy their families because : skin color. (there's a President Johnson quote on this and how long he'd have the former slaves eating out of the hands of the Democrats, which people should study)

    After the previous plans unexpectedly made the Democrat party actually dependent upon the votes of the very people they drove to dependency, the plan changed again to pandering to the descendants of their former slaves by promising them political positions and guaranteed positions in government and business, because: skin color

    For the ENTIRE history of the Democrat party, they have judged people based upon skin color, and they will NEVER stop. There was a day when Democrats celebrated the founders of the KKK at their national presidential convention, now they allocate seats at their convention using skin color as a criteria so they can look "diverse" on TV. At the end of the civil war, the Democrat party should have been treated like the National Socialist German Workers Party was at the end of WWII - that party should have been disbanded its leaders punished, and its average members told they could create or join other parties but could never return to that evil ideology.

    The superficial skin color fixation makes no more sense than hair color or eye color fixation, whether you are using it to oppress people or to reward people or to punish people or to compensate people. It's just fundamentally wrong to judge people on a genetic characteristic over which they as individuals have no control or responsibility.

    It should be a reminder to people that decades ago, Donald Trump earned the wrath of Florida's wealthy Democrats when he, then just a business guy, opened a new club down there and allowed blacks to be members. He got so much flak for it that he ended up shoving the classic film "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" at them as a poke-in-the-eye to the racist rich Democrats who pretend to be inclusive.

    NOTE: the one form of "diversity" and "inclusion" the left will never tolerate is the one that matters most: diversity of opinions thoughts and beliefs.

  • "We saw that we'd been given a law to live by, a moral law, they called it, which punished those who observed it -- for observing it. The more you tried to live up to it, the more you suffered; the more you cheated it, the bigger reward you got. Your honesty was like a tool left at the mercy of the next man's dishonesty. The honest ones paid, the dishonest collected. The honest lost, the dishonest won. How long could men stay good under this sort of a law of goodness? . . . What was it we were supposed to w

  • I was working for HP in Corvallis Oregon in 1998 when then CEO Lew Platt dictated that 50% of all engineering hires would be women

    Unfortunately only 2% of engineers on the market in Oregon were women.

    It didn't work very well and neither will these kinds of initatives.

    Even if this were an honest effort to change things, giving money to black universities isn't going to help much when blacks (and whites) in underfunded urban schools aren't equipped for university when they graduate from high school.
  • by enriquevagu ( 1026480 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @02:24PM (#60251394)

    ... with someone else's money.

  • Seems like a terrific passive aggressive way to instill feelings of resentment.
    Looking at the comments here, it is already working.

  • The headline is (intentionally?) misleading and sensationalist. It's Spot Bonus which are ad-hoc monetary rewards of typically small amounts given to nominated employees as a token. Huge difference with annual bonus. Still, that doesn't make this any less of a dick move.
  • This is genius. They took bonuses and used them for BLM and will get a tax benefit from it, and THEY CANT COMPLAIN! If I was a business owner, id do this too.
  • Taking into account many of these people, are the ones relentlessly advertising their wokeness in search for quick validation on social networks, it's great to see it their demagogy finally has an impact on their personal lives.
  • Let's see:
    1. Why are they working so many hours? If they were "good and productive", they wouldn't need to... unless it's all moronic managers who have no idea what they do, and go along with the insane schedules received from On High (in the company).[1][2]

    2. What profit was made by the company? Why wasn't some of *that* invested in the diversity programs.

    3. STFU if at least 12% of the people you work with aren't Black.

    1. Why, yes, I worked for Ameritech in the mid-nineties, worked insane hours (swore I'd

  • Again the majority is punished because a crybaby minority has an axe to grind.

    • by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Let's see, about 1.5B Chinese, about 1.3B Indians, at least a billion Africans... right, that makes *you* the whining minority, social injustice snowflake.

      • Yeah, in China and India and Africa....nobody gives a sh*t....Alphabet is traded on the US Stock market...not China, India, or the whole continent of Africa....to take people's bonuses is bullsh*t, and you can go f*ck yourself.

  • The best way to stop discrimination is to - STOP DISCRIMINATION.
    All this "diversity" crap does is promote people that don't deserve it. If they deserved it they would be in those positions.

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none. -- Doug Larson

Working...