Roundup: Phish, employee handbooks, adverse actions in discrimination cases, reporting race and gender, inclusion, accommodating neurodivergence

No policy at all is far more defensible than a hard rule with no exceptions that nobody enforces and is trotted out after the fact. The biggest place this comes up is with leave issues. After all, what if one of your employees needs to go on a quest to find the Helping Friendly Book?

In this case, the Supreme Court is trying to figure whether the employment decision to make the lateral transfer caused something bad to happen to the person who was transferred. What this framing ignores is that discrimination is bad in and of itself.

Discrimination always causes harm. The practical issue is always about power and whether the decision maker used it fairly. But that's not always the legal framing—even in discrimination law.

Initially, California allowed you to state "unknown." But that makes the data less useful. So, California now requires people to state a specific race and gender even though it may make all the information less accurate. It's the problem with putting people into data—they never really fit.

Listening before responding, considering other views, being open to questions from people with different life experiences are all essential to inclusion and healthy relationships. And so are disagreements.

In employment, neurodivergent people can often do things that neurotypical people can't. The tech industry is full of weird and quirky people who are neurodivergent. So are the arts. And sometimes, neurodivergent people also need accommodations.