8 ms·

Reading the letter, what surprised me was how political it was, framing everything as a "left vs right" cultural fight. I think if it was up to me I'd probably

Reading the letter, what surprised me was how political it was, framing everything as a "left vs right" cultural fight. I think if it was up to me I'd probably fire anybody on either side of that debate who started circulating shit like this. As soon as you're on that level, nothing good is going to come of it and you're just going to make a lot of people angry, which is very bad for the business in a lot of different ways. The workplace is no place for politics like this. If you are going to strictly stick to narrow issues that are relevant to the job, then maybe, but as soon as you're writing a 10 page manifesto with phrases like "the Left's affinity for those it sees as weak" or "some on the Right deny science" or "the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics" you are way out of line. It doesn't matter if you are correct or not, politicising your workplace in that way shows a stunning lack of judgement.

fiblye 9y ago
I agree that work and politics should be separate, but Google has already built itself a reputation for its strong political leanings. Every few weeks they have some sponsored video on YouTube promoting their political leanings and their involvement in the US gov isn't exactly a secret. Google is pretty much a Political Think Tank++ at this point.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
steiger 9y ago
"The workplace is no place for politics like this." That's ironic. Because the politics that he criticizes are without a doubt left wing policies that ARE applied in Google, from top-down. I'm not saying they are bad policies, but they are political in nature.
fenomas 9y ago
I agree hugely with your first paragraph. Debates like this are fraught with toxicity anyway, but once factionalism ("the left claims that.." and so on) gets mixed in any hope of constructive debate goes out the window. The argument ceases to be about ideas, and becomes a my-team-vs-your-team conflict. (Worse, this then attracts the worst kind of attention from the internet as culture warriors join the fray, regardless of whether they're interested in what the debate was ostensibly about.) Whether this takes the screed into firing territory I have no opinion on, but I definitely think that the guy's left/right posturing served to preclude any productive debate that he might have inspired.
alpsgolden 9y ago
The workplace is no place for politics like this. I agree, but I'm pretty sure political posts were already tolerated at Google. If employees are allowed to post to internal message boards that women are underrepresented because interviewers are sexist or suffer from unconcious bias and should adopt policy Y, then employees should also be allowed to post an argument that women are under-represented for some other reason X and argue against policy Y. And even if the workplace does have a no politics rule, the proper response should be a reprimand and asking him to delete his post, not a firing.
- mehwoot 9y ago
  I'm not saying people shouldn't discuss company policies. I'm saying they shouldn't turn those policy discussions into a national/cultural political argument. If you say "interviewers are being sexist and so we should adopt policy Y", I think that would be acceptable. If you said "there is systemic bias against women so you should vote for Hillary Clinton", to me that would not be acceptable. Once you turn something into left/right liberal/conservative etc you are harming rational discussion and making a lot of trouble in a lot of different ways. And I think this is the solution that the person who wrote the letter is ironically ruining. You can't have sane level headed discussions about these issues when its framed as left/right. You can if you take every issue on its merits individually. If you want people to be free to voice conservative opinions, then don't turn every issue into a 10 page manifesto dissecting the failures of marxism. Just discuss the policy. No idea if this reasoning is shared by Google though. It's just my view.
  - alpsgolden 9y ago
    I'm not saying people shouldn't discuss company policies. I'm saying they shouldn't turn those policy discussions into a national/cultural political argument. I suspect that this memo wasn't any more political than much that gets shared in the message boards at Google. This issue was already politicized and the main gist of the politics stuff was, "Both sides bring insights and biases to the table, so we should do a better job making it comfortable for conservatives to speak up." By the standards of what I see going on the political discourse this was pretty tame stuff. The responses to the piece were 100X worse -- https://files.gab.ai/image/5986e3f03d1f1.jpeg https://files.gab.ai/image/5986e3f03d1f1.jpeg
peterwwillis 9y ago
You would fire anyone who voiced any political view? Regardless of being correct? What kind of managerial strategy is that?
- mehwoot 9y ago
  The sort of strategy that enforces existing, useful social norms in my country. Nobody in any company I have ever worked at has done anything like this. If anybody ever said "the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics" as part of a justification for changing a company policy I would immediately a) tell them they are out of line and b) report them if they continued. It's rude and counter productive in so many ways.
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    Social norms are more local than national. There are many parts of the US where people would nod their head when they read that, and puzzle at why you got upset. Not everyone who works in Mountain View is actually from Mountain View. Much of this seems to be about people in positions of power being personally offended at the views of someone with whom they disagree. The proof is in your saying this was "rude" - who was that statement being rude to, Marxist intellectuals? Are there a lot of Communists at Google? I don't think this reaction has anything to do with keeping some kind of social decorum, or keeping a company running smoothly. In this case the effect is a real-life ideological echo chamber, where the people in power fire anyone whose views they don't like, and fear of reprisal from voicing alternate views creates a groupthink mentality. Several people have brought up the idea that because the manifesto author has shown his bias, that means there is no way he could work with someone of a different gender. But this is illogical; tons of people have the same bias! Just because they didn't write a manifesto doesn't mean they don't think some of the arguments might be valid. So really, what difference is there in keeping this guy around, whose bias they know and can clearly identify if it ever affects his work relations? Is it worse than the secret biases held by everyone else? -- Obviously, as a man, I am not going to be subject to the kind of discrimination a woman would be, so if someone's views annoy me and I dismiss them, that's much different than when discrimination against a woman affects her livelihood and state of mind. In this regard we have to consider women as a particularly vulnerable population (in this industry, anyway) and act to protect them from the disproportionate negative effects of bias in the industry. On top of that, the lack of women in the industry makes it very difficult to have a fair discussion of the issues. We should be trying to help men understand why women need special treatment, in order to help the industry grow out of its biases. But you can't help the industry get better if you fire anyone who questions the process. It's the white-collar equivalent of shooting anyone who doesn't tow the party line. This prevents establishing a dialogue, enforcing culture through fear. And a culture built on fear is never a good thing. It'll end up setting back the whole endeavor.
camus2 9y ago
> what surprised me was how political it was > The workplace is no place for politics like this. You could argue that affirmative action, because that's what it is about, is essentially a political stance ,and business are totally free to engage into these recruitment practices, but it absolutely follows a specific ideological thus political framework. IMHO When you introduces political activism in your work place you will transform your work environment into a political battleground. period.
- boyce 9y ago
  You could argue that but that in itself doesn't give the argument credibility.
  - generic_user 9y ago
    I think the hundreds of blog and social media posts by hardcore leftists co-workers calling for him to be fired and worse because they do not believe has the right to speak his opinions because the disagree with his opinions is ample proof that google is political turf. And purging political enemies and claiming turf is part of the culture at this point.
icelancer 9y ago
>The workplace is no place for politics like this. Actually, it is, in California. Political affiliation is a protected class. You have to make a different argument if you want him fired.
- SaltySolomon 9y ago
  Him being toxic for the workplace culture and nobody wants to work with him isn't enough?
  - icelancer 9y ago
    Sure, it could be. I think firing him was the right move. But if the parent commenter makes the argument he did in court, he's going to be violating labor law in a big way.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    There's no way they could plausibly determine this in the time they have had. And, there's no way there aren't people at google who don't agree with him. Which is why they had to act. The key to large organization management is control: they are doing this quickly before anything else happens. His presence both legitimises his point of view, and acts as a rallying point. If others are sufficiently emboldened, they may also act out. If they start organizing together, this has the potential of rapidly turn into a long standing issue for google.
    - vyhd 9y ago
      > There's no way they could plausibly determine this in the time they have had. Is that so? Do the complaints of numerous other employees not demonstrate some level of toxicity? Edit -- thanks for helping me earn my karma today. It's delicious the way y'all are so eager to downvote me instead of engaging. It's almost like you think I have an ulterior motive being masked by a veneer of good-faith engagement or something. I wonder where I might have gotten that idea from...
      - 9y ago
cm2187 9y ago
I sort of agree. I am personally in favour of a sterile workplace. No political talk, no baby talk, leave all that stuff at home or for your friends and focus on the task at hand. But that's not what he got sacked for. From what I understand the guy claims he was sacked for "perpetuating gender stereotype". If that's the case, he wasn't sacked for discussing politics, he was sacked for expressing the wrong political opinion.
- redditmigrant 9y ago
  His opinion was, "exclude these other people" because they are not likely to be good at it just because of they were when they were born. So I have no sympathy for him, he got excluded for being exclusionary. and I hope he further gets excluded from any good jobs. Then he will realize the consequence of trying to exclude other people from a job.
  - ZoF 9y ago
    Did you read the article at all?
bowlofpetunias 9y ago
Saying "the workplace is no place for politics" is basically saying the workplace is no place to be human. All workplaces are political. The politics of founder/owners/executives are in every fiber of he workplace. Denying it is highly disingenuous. Moreover, said denial is one of the root causes why we are having these issues. The tech industry likes to project an image of being "liberal", when in fact the culture is highly conservative. Until recently, people like the author felt perfectly at home in most tech companies, including Google, because its politics quietly aligned with their politics. And now that he's making it explicit he is suddenly the one politicising the workplace? To be clear, I vehemently disagree with the author. But until about ten years ago, most of the industry quietly agreed with these views, which is why we have these problems in the first place. It was political then and it is political now. It took political resistance to put diversity on the corporate agenda in the first place. The workplace culture is and will always be a primary political arena. Especially with a company like Google, that is actively involved in politics and shaping our society in general. What people who claim that the workplace is no place for politics are basically saying is that the workplace is no place for politics they disagree with. (Ironically, the position that the workplace is no place for politics is a traditionally conservative position. Worker bees should keep their ideology at home, whereas corporations are free to politically indoctrinate workers through euphemisms like "culture" and "values".) I applaud the author for standing up for his political believes as much as I applaud Google for firing him.
- bjourne 9y ago
  What people mean by "the workplace is no place for politics" is that the workplace is no place for employees to express their political views. E.g see this Quora question: https://www.quora.com/How-not-to-get-fired-while-organizing-a-union-at-work https://www.quora.com/How-not-to-get-fired-while-organizing-... The first answer is depressingly: "First, learn all you can about union organizing and learn to keep your mouth shut. Accept the fact that eventually they will know who you are." You can also use Google and find about a million examples of people who have been fired for trying to unionize workplaces. We have already accepted that de facto some speech is suppressed in the work place. That's why I think this story is a little hypocritical. Lots of people are arguing for this persons right to express his opinion that men are more suited than women to work in tech, but no one is defending workers rights to advocate for improved labor conditions. Fwiw, I definitely don't think Google should be allowed to fire him. But I feel a little ambivalent about defending him, since "his side" wouldn't defend my rights to voice my opinion.
Cakez0r 9y ago
I hate that the diversity issue has been tightly coupled with left-wing politics. Now you can't take a stance on the diversity issue without aligning yourself with left/right wingers by proxy.
rsj_hn 9y ago
Sure, if the world was different. There is a price to pay for companies that want to keep their employees living in the office. When you want them to go to company parties, the company gym, eat at the company cafeteria, and in the case of Facebook provide company housing, and generally spend a lot of time in the office, then at some point the company is going to discover that their employees have a diverse set of political beliefs as well as beliefs about gender/race/etc, and they will want to express these beliefs over lunch, and at the gym, and at parties, and in social media. They will also want to express those opinions to their friends, which happen to be colleagues. Now you have the big political debates that used to take place in bars and other recreational areas happening in the workplace. That's the cost of the all encompassing office. Another ingredient in this toxic mix is that a lot of younger people blur the lines between social and professional, and this has been happening for a long time now. As soon as a critical mass lets their work life bleed into their personal life, this is going to end badly and lead to more oppressive workplace structures, as the company isn't going to suddenly democratize decision making. That's why management needs to be very circumspect about the scope of policies they mandate for their workers. This tearing down of barriers is happening everywhere -- people do personal activities on their corporate laptops, they use their corporate phones for personal calls, they do personal projects on company time and company projects on personal time. They use their social media accounts to talk about company projects, etc. The only viable option is for the company to retreat from these spheres and to focus on doing your job. They should not ask for social media accounts in the hiring process, nor should they focus so much on "culture". But that's inconsistent with also making the job a lifestyle and keeping the employees working long hours. If you are going to have people spend 50 and 60 hours working closely with each other, then things like political disagreements turn into HR concerns, and are addressed with the same intelligence and care for worker rights as you would expect from a typical HR department.
- lmm 9y ago
  Or the company could get better at HR, or hire people who are politically aligned with each other. Maybe not an option for Google-scale, but it seems possible for smaller companies.
  - 9y ago
jazzyk 9y ago
>The workplace is no place for politics like this Sadly, with the onsluaght of statism in the US, that's no longer the case. Eric Schmidt (and a whole team from Google) played a crucial role in Team Hillary’s election tech. https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-team-hillarys-election-tech/ https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-... Given this context, the firing of the guy only confirms his point about Google not tolerating dissenting opinions.

fiblye 9y ago

I agree that work and politics should be separate, but Google has already built itself a reputation for its strong political leanings. Every few weeks they have some sponsored video on YouTube promoting their political leanings and their involvement in the US gov isn't exactly a secret. Google is pretty much a Political Think Tank++ at this point.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

steiger 9y ago

"The workplace is no place for politics like this." That's ironic. Because the politics that he criticizes are without a doubt left wing policies that ARE applied in Google, from top-down. I'm not saying they are bad policies, but they are political in nature.

fenomas 9y ago

I agree hugely with your first paragraph. Debates like this are fraught with toxicity anyway, but once factionalism ("the left claims that.." and so on) gets mixed in any hope of constructive debate goes out the window. The argument ceases to be about ideas, and becomes a my-team-vs-your-team conflict. (Worse, this then attracts the worst kind of attention from the internet as culture warriors join the fray, regardless of whether they're interested in what the debate was ostensibly about.) Whether this takes the screed into firing territory I have no opinion on, but I definitely think that the guy's left/right posturing served to preclude any productive debate that he might have inspired.

alpsgolden 9y ago

The workplace is no place for politics like this. I agree, but I'm pretty sure political posts were already tolerated at Google. If employees are allowed to post to internal message boards that women are underrepresented because interviewers are sexist or suffer from unconcious bias and should adopt policy Y, then employees should also be allowed to post an argument that women are under-represented for some other reason X and argue against policy Y. And even if the workplace does have a no politics rule, the proper response should be a reprimand and asking him to delete his post, not a firing.

mehwoot 9y ago
I'm not saying people shouldn't discuss company policies. I'm saying they shouldn't turn those policy discussions into a national/cultural political argument. If you say "interviewers are being sexist and so we should adopt policy Y", I think that would be acceptable. If you said "there is systemic bias against women so you should vote for Hillary Clinton", to me that would not be acceptable. Once you turn something into left/right liberal/conservative etc you are harming rational discussion and making a lot of trouble in a lot of different ways. And I think this is the solution that the person who wrote the letter is ironically ruining. You can't have sane level headed discussions about these issues when its framed as left/right. You can if you take every issue on its merits individually. If you want people to be free to voice conservative opinions, then don't turn every issue into a 10 page manifesto dissecting the failures of marxism. Just discuss the policy. No idea if this reasoning is shared by Google though. It's just my view.
- alpsgolden 9y ago
  I'm not saying people shouldn't discuss company policies. I'm saying they shouldn't turn those policy discussions into a national/cultural political argument. I suspect that this memo wasn't any more political than much that gets shared in the message boards at Google. This issue was already politicized and the main gist of the politics stuff was, "Both sides bring insights and biases to the table, so we should do a better job making it comfortable for conservatives to speak up." By the standards of what I see going on the political discourse this was pretty tame stuff. The responses to the piece were 100X worse -- https://files.gab.ai/image/5986e3f03d1f1.jpeg https://files.gab.ai/image/5986e3f03d1f1.jpeg

peterwwillis 9y ago

You would fire anyone who voiced any political view? Regardless of being correct? What kind of managerial strategy is that?

mehwoot 9y ago
The sort of strategy that enforces existing, useful social norms in my country. Nobody in any company I have ever worked at has done anything like this. If anybody ever said "the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics" as part of a justification for changing a company policy I would immediately a) tell them they are out of line and b) report them if they continued. It's rude and counter productive in so many ways.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  Social norms are more local than national. There are many parts of the US where people would nod their head when they read that, and puzzle at why you got upset. Not everyone who works in Mountain View is actually from Mountain View. Much of this seems to be about people in positions of power being personally offended at the views of someone with whom they disagree. The proof is in your saying this was "rude" - who was that statement being rude to, Marxist intellectuals? Are there a lot of Communists at Google? I don't think this reaction has anything to do with keeping some kind of social decorum, or keeping a company running smoothly. In this case the effect is a real-life ideological echo chamber, where the people in power fire anyone whose views they don't like, and fear of reprisal from voicing alternate views creates a groupthink mentality. Several people have brought up the idea that because the manifesto author has shown his bias, that means there is no way he could work with someone of a different gender. But this is illogical; tons of people have the same bias! Just because they didn't write a manifesto doesn't mean they don't think some of the arguments might be valid. So really, what difference is there in keeping this guy around, whose bias they know and can clearly identify if it ever affects his work relations? Is it worse than the secret biases held by everyone else? -- Obviously, as a man, I am not going to be subject to the kind of discrimination a woman would be, so if someone's views annoy me and I dismiss them, that's much different than when discrimination against a woman affects her livelihood and state of mind. In this regard we have to consider women as a particularly vulnerable population (in this industry, anyway) and act to protect them from the disproportionate negative effects of bias in the industry. On top of that, the lack of women in the industry makes it very difficult to have a fair discussion of the issues. We should be trying to help men understand why women need special treatment, in order to help the industry grow out of its biases. But you can't help the industry get better if you fire anyone who questions the process. It's the white-collar equivalent of shooting anyone who doesn't tow the party line. This prevents establishing a dialogue, enforcing culture through fear. And a culture built on fear is never a good thing. It'll end up setting back the whole endeavor.

camus2 9y ago

> what surprised me was how political it was > The workplace is no place for politics like this. You could argue that affirmative action, because that's what it is about, is essentially a political stance ,and business are totally free to engage into these recruitment practices, but it absolutely follows a specific ideological thus political framework. IMHO When you introduces political activism in your work place you will transform your work environment into a political battleground. period.

boyce 9y ago
You could argue that but that in itself doesn't give the argument credibility.
- generic_user 9y ago
  I think the hundreds of blog and social media posts by hardcore leftists co-workers calling for him to be fired and worse because they do not believe has the right to speak his opinions because the disagree with his opinions is ample proof that google is political turf. And purging political enemies and claiming turf is part of the culture at this point.

icelancer 9y ago

>The workplace is no place for politics like this. Actually, it is, in California. Political affiliation is a protected class. You have to make a different argument if you want him fired.

SaltySolomon 9y ago
Him being toxic for the workplace culture and nobody wants to work with him isn't enough?
- icelancer 9y ago
  Sure, it could be. I think firing him was the right move. But if the parent commenter makes the argument he did in court, he's going to be violating labor law in a big way.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  There's no way they could plausibly determine this in the time they have had. And, there's no way there aren't people at google who don't agree with him. Which is why they had to act. The key to large organization management is control: they are doing this quickly before anything else happens. His presence both legitimises his point of view, and acts as a rallying point. If others are sufficiently emboldened, they may also act out. If they start organizing together, this has the potential of rapidly turn into a long standing issue for google.
  - vyhd 9y ago
    > There's no way they could plausibly determine this in the time they have had. Is that so? Do the complaints of numerous other employees not demonstrate some level of toxicity? Edit -- thanks for helping me earn my karma today. It's delicious the way y'all are so eager to downvote me instead of engaging. It's almost like you think I have an ulterior motive being masked by a veneer of good-faith engagement or something. I wonder where I might have gotten that idea from...
    - 9y ago

cm2187 9y ago

I sort of agree. I am personally in favour of a sterile workplace. No political talk, no baby talk, leave all that stuff at home or for your friends and focus on the task at hand. But that's not what he got sacked for. From what I understand the guy claims he was sacked for "perpetuating gender stereotype". If that's the case, he wasn't sacked for discussing politics, he was sacked for expressing the wrong political opinion.

redditmigrant 9y ago
His opinion was, "exclude these other people" because they are not likely to be good at it just because of they were when they were born. So I have no sympathy for him, he got excluded for being exclusionary. and I hope he further gets excluded from any good jobs. Then he will realize the consequence of trying to exclude other people from a job.
- ZoF 9y ago
  Did you read the article at all?

bowlofpetunias 9y ago

Saying "the workplace is no place for politics" is basically saying the workplace is no place to be human. All workplaces are political. The politics of founder/owners/executives are in every fiber of he workplace. Denying it is highly disingenuous. Moreover, said denial is one of the root causes why we are having these issues. The tech industry likes to project an image of being "liberal", when in fact the culture is highly conservative. Until recently, people like the author felt perfectly at home in most tech companies, including Google, because its politics quietly aligned with their politics. And now that he's making it explicit he is suddenly the one politicising the workplace? To be clear, I vehemently disagree with the author. But until about ten years ago, most of the industry quietly agreed with these views, which is why we have these problems in the first place. It was political then and it is political now. It took political resistance to put diversity on the corporate agenda in the first place. The workplace culture is and will always be a primary political arena. Especially with a company like Google, that is actively involved in politics and shaping our society in general. What people who claim that the workplace is no place for politics are basically saying is that the workplace is no place for politics they disagree with. (Ironically, the position that the workplace is no place for politics is a traditionally conservative position. Worker bees should keep their ideology at home, whereas corporations are free to politically indoctrinate workers through euphemisms like "culture" and "values".) I applaud the author for standing up for his political believes as much as I applaud Google for firing him.

bjourne 9y ago
What people mean by "the workplace is no place for politics" is that the workplace is no place for employees to express their political views. E.g see this Quora question: https://www.quora.com/How-not-to-get-fired-while-organizing-a-union-at-work https://www.quora.com/How-not-to-get-fired-while-organizing-... The first answer is depressingly: "First, learn all you can about union organizing and learn to keep your mouth shut. Accept the fact that eventually they will know who you are." You can also use Google and find about a million examples of people who have been fired for trying to unionize workplaces. We have already accepted that de facto some speech is suppressed in the work place. That's why I think this story is a little hypocritical. Lots of people are arguing for this persons right to express his opinion that men are more suited than women to work in tech, but no one is defending workers rights to advocate for improved labor conditions. Fwiw, I definitely don't think Google should be allowed to fire him. But I feel a little ambivalent about defending him, since "his side" wouldn't defend my rights to voice my opinion.

Cakez0r 9y ago

I hate that the diversity issue has been tightly coupled with left-wing politics. Now you can't take a stance on the diversity issue without aligning yourself with left/right wingers by proxy.

rsj_hn 9y ago

Sure, if the world was different. There is a price to pay for companies that want to keep their employees living in the office. When you want them to go to company parties, the company gym, eat at the company cafeteria, and in the case of Facebook provide company housing, and generally spend a lot of time in the office, then at some point the company is going to discover that their employees have a diverse set of political beliefs as well as beliefs about gender/race/etc, and they will want to express these beliefs over lunch, and at the gym, and at parties, and in social media. They will also want to express those opinions to their friends, which happen to be colleagues. Now you have the big political debates that used to take place in bars and other recreational areas happening in the workplace. That's the cost of the all encompassing office. Another ingredient in this toxic mix is that a lot of younger people blur the lines between social and professional, and this has been happening for a long time now. As soon as a critical mass lets their work life bleed into their personal life, this is going to end badly and lead to more oppressive workplace structures, as the company isn't going to suddenly democratize decision making. That's why management needs to be very circumspect about the scope of policies they mandate for their workers. This tearing down of barriers is happening everywhere -- people do personal activities on their corporate laptops, they use their corporate phones for personal calls, they do personal projects on company time and company projects on personal time. They use their social media accounts to talk about company projects, etc. The only viable option is for the company to retreat from these spheres and to focus on doing your job. They should not ask for social media accounts in the hiring process, nor should they focus so much on "culture". But that's inconsistent with also making the job a lifestyle and keeping the employees working long hours. If you are going to have people spend 50 and 60 hours working closely with each other, then things like political disagreements turn into HR concerns, and are addressed with the same intelligence and care for worker rights as you would expect from a typical HR department.

lmm 9y ago
Or the company could get better at HR, or hire people who are politically aligned with each other. Maybe not an option for Google-scale, but it seems possible for smaller companies.
- 9y ago

jazzyk 9y ago

>The workplace is no place for politics like this Sadly, with the onsluaght of statism in the US, that's no longer the case. Eric Schmidt (and a whole team from Google) played a crucial role in Team Hillary’s election tech. https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-team-hillarys-election-tech/ https://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-... Given this context, the firing of the guy only confirms his point about Google not tolerating dissenting opinions.