How far does this go? If you boss asks someone to strip for him is that ok? It's a legal job after all. If they didn't want to do that because it's not their job would you say 'go join the plumbers union'?
End of the day, it's a job. Requirements change. You have to do things you don't want to do that might not even seem related. If you don't want to work under someone who does that stuff then leave.
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.
> o - 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.
> without doing a deep dive and learning the field itself.
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.
The CEO has a job, too, and that job is set by the board and/or the company's owners. And the most important job of the CEO is to be a good leader.
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.
I really don't think there's that much alignment in organizations in the sense you're speaking of. While it's nice to think that these places are acting in best interests of blahblahblah - I think selfish interests hold true more often than not and accountability is basically nigh impossible in our world.
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.
> The public doesn’t care 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.
No?
So why are they being asked to do them?