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I'm sorry, if you spend your time at work writing manifestos that ignite culture wars instead of working - you should be fired. Wanna write a manifesto? Create
by vasilipupkin 9y ago
I'm sorry, if you spend your time at work writing manifestos that ignite culture wars instead of working - you should be fired. Wanna write a manifesto? Create a blog post. I would be fired if I wrote a manifesto like this at my job - without any publicity
- FTA 9y agoNot that I agree with the statement, but it could easily be the case he wrote it on his own time and shared it at work on their internal Google+. Unless you have a source for your accusation, in which case I stand corrected.
- DiNovi 9y agoEven if you wrote it on your own time, sharing it with internally with your coworkers is toxic.
- jabv 9y agoSerious: do you see that your response is exactly what the memo was about? He's claiming that the pre-judgment that the topic is toxic is harmful. To argue against him by re-asserting that which he questions will not be persuasive.
- DiNovi 9y agoAre you saying my argument - that sharing a 10 page personal essay, or whatever to all your coworkers is toxic - is invalid, because in it, he asks not to be prejudged? That's ludicrous. You don't do things that make potentially thousands of your coworkers uncomfortable internally just because you want to make a point. Human Resources is a thing for a reason. Put it on medium and be done with it.
- jabv 9y agoI think you may have raised a good point - was this the appropriate forum/channel/whatever to offer his observations, questions, and criticisms? He suggests that Google has a culture of sharing pretty openly and of offering criticism and even commentary on important issues. It would be good to have additional evidence of this to evaluate whether his statement was indeed matched to the appropriate environment. (I am not and have not been a Google employee, so IDK for sure. I know that at my company, there are indeed particular fora in which this sort of thing could be raised. I can imagine at some companies this would not be possible, so you raise a great question. Thanks!)
- jamesrcole 9y agoIt was a memo about a matter that's internal to Google, so I don't think publicly publishing it would have been appropriate. And doing so would have surely created an even larger furore.
- traverseda 9y agoHe shared it on the forum specifically for talking about diversity and gender politics?
- anapaix 9y agoSundar Pichai tweeted in support of allowing transgenders in the military, on work time. Would you say that, too, is "toxic"? it's politics on work time, right?
- vasilipupkin 9y agoSundar Pichai is the CEO. He decides how to run the company. If you are a 28 year old software engineer, you should focus on software engineering. By all means, grow to be a C level executive and change the culture. But google is a private company and those who own it and run it are perfectly entitled to want to not have junior software engineers stir up culture wars inside the company If investors who own google don't like the culture Sundar is supporting inside their company - they can fire him and if they do, it's their business.
- flukus 9y agoSo you were fine with Brendan Eich being against gay marriage because he was CEO? Because he's CEO do you think everyone at mozilla should have been prevented from supporting gay marriage?
- vasilipupkin 9y agoJeez. No. But when Brendan Eich was CEO, it would have been totally fine for him to fire people who distribute internal memos arguing for gay marriage. See the difference ? You can be for or against whatever you want, work is for work though
- jshevek 9y agoWhy is it toxic?
- rtx 9y agoHe wrote it on a plane ride to China.
- marcoperaza 9y agoI'm not commenting on this specific case, but if you've spent any amount of time in NameABigCorp lately, you've surely realized that various points of left-wing politics are pursued as official points of dogma. So it's not as if politics are being kept out of work in the first place. I'm all for keeping politics out of the workplace, except for verbal conversations between colleagues. But that's just not the case right now.
- vasilipupkin 9y agoNsmeABigCorp is owned by investors, yes? Those investors hired management to run it a certain way, yes? Don't like it? Start your own and run it the way you want
- marcoperaza 9y agoWhen the corporation in question controls a major part of the spaces that have replaced the institution of the public square, so central to the functioning of a republic, their political actions deserve scrutiny. If they claim to be open to diverse opinions, yet behave in a manner that suggests otherwise, then citizens need to start paying attention.
- vasilipupkin 9y agoI agree, I'm merely pointing out that suftware engineers who aren't focused enough on their immediate duties and instead stir up culture wars by writing manifestos would be fired by most companies not just google
- marcoperaza 9y agoDo you think an employee at a tech company would be fired for sending out a 10-page memo about why trans people should be allowed in the military? How about a 10-page memo about why they shouldn't? Both are obviously incredibly unprofessional, but only one would probably face life-changing punishment in reality. Ideally you set the tone that both are unacceptable, that the only political discussion acceptable beyond interpersonal conversation is the politics of the company's self-interest. Both starting an internal political battle, as as well tweeting externally about an already-started one, should get you fired. But that's only fair if you set that tone and expectation.
- jamesrcole 9y agoDid they write it on work time? I don't know, myself.
- jshevek 9y agoWhy do you assume he did it at work? Maybe you are unfamiliar with Google's culture. Employees are encouraged to engage in conversations about the culture and values of the company, using mediums like this. Google is not rigid about "work time", preferring that you are productive.