7 ms·

Google Sets Rules to Curtail Employee Debate

75 points by dcgudeman 8y ago

lwhsiao 8y ago
To use the facebook trick if you're getting paywalled: https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/google-sets-rules-to-curtail-employee-debates-1530115201 https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/google-sets-rules-to-curtai...
- seanperkins 8y ago
  I didn't know about this trick. Thanks!
- vokep 8y ago
  didn't work for me :/ edit: clearing cookies does the trick!
ilikehurdles 8y ago
The fact that they even have to contend with this kind of toxic environment makes me pretty glad to be at a smaller company where there's really not much room for that behavior.
- qubax 8y ago
  It's a pretty recent phenomenon. Having worked in a couple of fortune 100 companies, there was rarely any discussion of controversial topics. We talked about our families, sports, movies, the weather, etc when we talked. We rarely discussed politics. Maybe a remark here or there, but never a full out discussion, argument, etc. I don't know what political party my co-workers belonged to, if any. Never asked, nor was asked, about voting. But I've noticed we've been getting more emails/notices from HR about supporting causes, tax deductible charities ( many of which could be seen as controversial depending on one's views on a lot of matters ), etc. And there is a very small minority of highly vocal and politically active group. But most of us just want to work and go home as quickly as possible. Maybe it's because we have too many people employed who have nothing to do. They sit in front of their computer all day reading the toxic news all day and get radicalized. Idle hands mixed with overconsumption of news can make for a toxic mindset. Not sure why companies have gotten so politicized. I think a bit of it is the types of people working in HR. The ubiquitous toxic news, especially on social media. You would think shareholders, the board and the CEO would want people to be as apolitical as possible since that makes the most sense to run a profitable company composed of a diverse group of people.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
joe_hills 8y ago
It seems volunteer moderation may not scale well at a company this size. When I consider that the logs of these intranet conversations are a legal liability, and moderation actions may cause legal challenges as well, it strikes me that perhaps google should hire professional moderators that report up through their legal division. I imagine a lot of employees might balk at this, but having developers losing sleep over how to respond to intranet drama may be considered undesirable as well.
- Zyst 8y ago
  Doesn't moot still work at Google? If someone can setup a scale volunteer basis moderation system, that's probably the guy you want.
- jasonszhao 8y ago
  "The company plans to leave much of that interpretation up to its volunteer army of intranet moderators, who have day jobs at Google but in their spare time oversee discussion groups..." It sounds like these employees are not also paid for their extra time spent on moderating.
jeffreyrogers 8y ago
Employees at most companies (including other large multinationals) deal with this by only discussing political opinions among close colleagues or not at all, but it seems this way or working is not common at SV tech firms.
- ryanobjc 8y ago
  Google isn’t really that much different. It’s not a hotbed of political discussions and arguments. There are focused discussions on politically relevant topics: such as immigration. It’s a given at google that immigration is a net benefit to the country. If you disagree then well, your option isn’t going to be well received. There is another option that diversity is good (based on both research and the fact that google is trying to build for everyone so we need representation to do so). I find that all companies have some basic facts and truths, axioms if you will. Arguing against them means you need to leave the company. You won’t be successful. For example, would you try to advance the argument that the web isn’t important and web search is pointless? Of course not. This goes for every company on the planet. Smaller ones have less axioms, the simplest being “boss is always right”.
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    Opinions on immigration and diversity aren't really relevant to Google's corporate mission as a whole. They are relevant to some degree to some of its hiring and HR policies. I have not worked anywhere where immigration policies were brought up at a company wide level. Diversity does come up elsewhere, but mainly so management can pay lip-service to the idea that they care about diversity. By the way, I'm not placing all (or even the majority) of the blame on the people bringing up immigration or diversity, though I would argue they aren't appropriate topics in most workplaces. If you hold a controversial opinion on those issues (and others) and it's not relevant to your job, maybe you should keep your opinions private at work.
    - ryanobjc 8y ago
      Well your first statement is just your opinion! A core mission of google is to foster innovation, at the big and small levels. The company considers itself driven by innovation. So how do you grow the next billion users, which is a business goal, has implications in who you hire etc. Also, a lot of googlers are immigrants, very smart people who have moved to the us. Basic human consideration about their fate is a dilemma. To blithely say it’s “just” a hr problem, well that sort of seems to me like it’s actually a non problem at all.
repolfx 8y ago
They could have solved the problem months ago by firing the people engaged in that sort of behaviour. The leaked screenshots that came out around the time they canned Damore were full of bad behaviour, but it appears none of those people were fired. Instead they were allowed to continue calling their coworkers nazis and fascists. Almost without question this policy will be used to silence people objecting to their "diversity" programmes, not the people actually attacking their coworkers.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  I don't think the solution is to fire these people (or Damore), it's just to say, "you can have whatever views you want outside of work, but unless it's relevant to your job, leave you opinions at home." That's how most of the corporate world operates.
  - menacingly 8y ago
    Yeah, we don't have to throw out every lesson handed to us from previous generations and brutally relearn them. Some topics you don't casually toss around with thousands of virtual strangers. Hell, _most_ topics. Commit your work, close your laptop, and go exist in any number of spaces where your politics are welcome discussion.
  - repolfx 8y ago
    That would also have worked, except in Damore's case they did actually solicit feedback (his memo was written after some training event where they said employees could/should comment). That said there's a difference between "I am talking about opinions and views that are irrelevant or inappropriate for the workplace", which is a mistake that is perhaps easy to make and can be trained out of people, vs "I am literally calling my coworkers nazis and demanding they be fired for expressing their views", which is not exactly a mistake and I see no real reason to tolerate such behaviour in any company.
ryanobjc 8y ago
This is a reaction to the rise of the trolls. Trolling your coworkers and engaging in bad faith argumenting has no place at work. It represents a profound disrespect of your colleagues, it is counterproductive, and is distracting. It’s not unreasonable to put these restrictions on - which btw are content neutral - workplace tools/discussions. It’s not an attempt to quell dissent but to focus it in a useful manner. I believe, that damore was arguing in bad faith, attempting to trigger and troll, and do so in “polite” language, which doesn’t excuse him at all. You can’t write a meandering argument that isn’t well founded, filled with incorrect suppositions, and bury that all your female coworkers are not as qualified and expect that to end well.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- plattegrond 8y ago
  No he wasn't arguing in bad faith. He's just a nerdy guy who took the claims about wanting honest feedback at face value and told people what he thought instead of reading between the lines and realizing he was in a high school clique environment. If you can't even see that, the one with bad faith is you.
greggarious 8y ago
Does anyone have a non-paywalled article on this topic? Opening in a private window does not allow me to read.
- gnicholas 8y ago
  Install the Read Across the Aisle browser plugin. I’m the creator, it’s free and doesn’t track you, and allows you a renewable 7-day pass to the WSJ, thanks to a partnership we have with them. http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com
- titzer 8y ago
  Search for the title in a search engine and it usually works.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  http://archive.is/0ht0I http://archive.is/0ht0I
JeremyBanks 8y ago
Years too late. Employees have grown to feel entitled to abuse each other. It's disgraceful.
sageabilly 8y ago
".....oversee discussion groups about anything from animal rights to sexual expression." Why are there even discussions about this on a work forum? Why in the world would anyone want to talk about this stuff with the people they work with? Is it a side effect of the company being so large it's impossible to know everyone? I go out of my way to not discuss anything that comes within a whiff of a controversial topic with the people I work with. I go to work to pull a paycheck and because I enjoy the work that I do, I do not go to work to make friends or to hang out with people. If I end up making friends with some of the people I work with, great, however, we hang out as friends outside of work and we don't discuss things as friends via any work channels. Is making your co-workers your friend group a new thing? Is it a side effect of working so many hours you don't have time to hang out with anyone else?
- DannyBee 8y ago
  There is this trend in HR to try to get people to "bring their whole selves to work". Of course, most people are political, social, etc animals.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    This is also the consequence of corporations encouraging cultures that blur the lines of work-life balance. People will bring life into work. Reap what you sow.
  - emddudley 8y ago
    > try to get people to "bring their whole selves to work". Ugh, that's messed up. In grade school I was forced to spend significant amounts of time interacting with classmates who I detested. They brought their "whole selves" and it was torture. I assume most people had this experience? As an adult I appreciate being able to choose who I associate with in my free time. Since I'm forced to interact with certain people at work, at least give me the mercy of bland "professional" personas!
  - ljw1001 8y ago
    The far greater long term trend is to require a diminished, corporate-approved life form to show up every day. I suspect most people on this forum are too young to know any different way.
throw2016 8y ago
This is a cultural shift. First gen corporate workplaces 60-80's were much more top down, arbitrary and controlled. Second gen was already loosening up on individual freedom but there was a strict border between the private and the work persona. Now it seems this border is breaking down and there is one persona. Delicious to find most commenters here on the wrong side of a generational divide. Soon you will be dismissed as grey beards with out of date ideas.
- lgleason 8y ago
  pretty ageist comment there....
  - throw2016 8y ago
    Given the routine use of 'grey beards' on most tech threads here to dismiss others while pushing their favoured technologies so much so the term may as well have been invented here it is rank hypocrisy to protest.
jfasi 8y ago
In my personal estimation as someone who actually has actually read these new rules and is currently working under them, these policy changes represent little substantive change from the previous policy. I won't be quoting the text directly because I don't think it's public, but most of what was changed represents a codification of practices that were already floating around as best-practices. They also added concrete examples of what constitutes harassment, all of which strike me as things that any reasonable person would actually consider harassment. Nowhere do I see anything that might be construed as "curtailing employee debate." All of which is to say how surprised and thrown off I am by this article: it and previous ones [1] try to portray Google as a place that's roiled by political fighting where the leaders are struggling to keep control over a irresponsible and politically radical workforce. Under this narrative these new policies are just the newest, desperate attempt to restore order to the snowflake cagematch that is Google. The reality, at least as far as I and practically everyone I've spoken to is concerned, is the exact opposite: people share their views openly, a wide range of opinions are respectfully shared, most people have the right to get into and stay out of political discussions, and the institution does the best it can to set the boundaries of what is appropriate at work while permitting a otherwise anything-goes approach. If this reality is anywhere close to being accurate, the picture this article paints is simply nonsensical. [1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-vs-google-how-nonstop-political-arguments-rule-its-workplace-1525190574 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-vs-google-how-nonstop-po...
- ryanobjc 8y ago
  i agree with everything written here. The culture articles on the wsj are bizzare. I think they can be chalked up to good old journalism selective sources (happy employees aren’t running to tell all), combined with a “where there’s smoke there’s fire” belief. And that’s me being as charitable as possible. The internal experience just doesn’t match what they’re writing.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    What if the unhappy employees are honestly relating their experience? What if you can openly share your opinions, so long as it's in a rather narrow range of acceptable opinions? What if some of those "unacceptable" opinions happen to be held by scientific researchers who maintain a moderate position that both nature and nurture is involved in gender differences? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 How would that differ from the anti-evolution groupthink I'd expect to find at certain megachurches?
patrickg_zill 8y ago
I know that my view is far from the mainstream, but does anyone else get the feeling that Google's effectiveness per-employee is lower? I know that by the numbers, their per person revenue is off the charts, but what if they just have a few awesomely automated money spigots and like half of the employees are not really as wonderful as we've been told? I mean, the Google images AI that classified black people as gorillas hasn't actually been fixed yet, for example: they just removed the ability of the AI to classify any images as "gorilla"... As one example. If people are complaining about the busy message boards and there are a lot of different boards that are used, how much work is really getting done?

75 points by dcgudeman 8y ago

To use the facebook trick if you're getting paywalled: https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/google-sets-rules-to-curtail-employee-debates-1530115201 https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/google-sets-rules-to-curtai...

seanperkins 8y ago
I didn't know about this trick. Thanks!
vokep 8y ago
didn't work for me :/ edit: clearing cookies does the trick!

ilikehurdles 8y ago

The fact that they even have to contend with this kind of toxic environment makes me pretty glad to be at a smaller company where there's really not much room for that behavior.

qubax 8y ago
It's a pretty recent phenomenon. Having worked in a couple of fortune 100 companies, there was rarely any discussion of controversial topics. We talked about our families, sports, movies, the weather, etc when we talked. We rarely discussed politics. Maybe a remark here or there, but never a full out discussion, argument, etc. I don't know what political party my co-workers belonged to, if any. Never asked, nor was asked, about voting. But I've noticed we've been getting more emails/notices from HR about supporting causes, tax deductible charities ( many of which could be seen as controversial depending on one's views on a lot of matters ), etc. And there is a very small minority of highly vocal and politically active group. But most of us just want to work and go home as quickly as possible. Maybe it's because we have too many people employed who have nothing to do. They sit in front of their computer all day reading the toxic news all day and get radicalized. Idle hands mixed with overconsumption of news can make for a toxic mindset. Not sure why companies have gotten so politicized. I think a bit of it is the types of people working in HR. The ubiquitous toxic news, especially on social media. You would think shareholders, the board and the CEO would want people to be as apolitical as possible since that makes the most sense to run a profitable company composed of a diverse group of people.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

joe_hills 8y ago

It seems volunteer moderation may not scale well at a company this size. When I consider that the logs of these intranet conversations are a legal liability, and moderation actions may cause legal challenges as well, it strikes me that perhaps google should hire professional moderators that report up through their legal division. I imagine a lot of employees might balk at this, but having developers losing sleep over how to respond to intranet drama may be considered undesirable as well.

Zyst 8y ago
Doesn't moot still work at Google? If someone can setup a scale volunteer basis moderation system, that's probably the guy you want.
jasonszhao 8y ago
"The company plans to leave much of that interpretation up to its volunteer army of intranet moderators, who have day jobs at Google but in their spare time oversee discussion groups..." It sounds like these employees are not also paid for their extra time spent on moderating.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago

Employees at most companies (including other large multinationals) deal with this by only discussing political opinions among close colleagues or not at all, but it seems this way or working is not common at SV tech firms.

ryanobjc 8y ago
Google isn’t really that much different. It’s not a hotbed of political discussions and arguments. There are focused discussions on politically relevant topics: such as immigration. It’s a given at google that immigration is a net benefit to the country. If you disagree then well, your option isn’t going to be well received. There is another option that diversity is good (based on both research and the fact that google is trying to build for everyone so we need representation to do so). I find that all companies have some basic facts and truths, axioms if you will. Arguing against them means you need to leave the company. You won’t be successful. For example, would you try to advance the argument that the web isn’t important and web search is pointless? Of course not. This goes for every company on the planet. Smaller ones have less axioms, the simplest being “boss is always right”.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  Opinions on immigration and diversity aren't really relevant to Google's corporate mission as a whole. They are relevant to some degree to some of its hiring and HR policies. I have not worked anywhere where immigration policies were brought up at a company wide level. Diversity does come up elsewhere, but mainly so management can pay lip-service to the idea that they care about diversity. By the way, I'm not placing all (or even the majority) of the blame on the people bringing up immigration or diversity, though I would argue they aren't appropriate topics in most workplaces. If you hold a controversial opinion on those issues (and others) and it's not relevant to your job, maybe you should keep your opinions private at work.
  - ryanobjc 8y ago
    Well your first statement is just your opinion! A core mission of google is to foster innovation, at the big and small levels. The company considers itself driven by innovation. So how do you grow the next billion users, which is a business goal, has implications in who you hire etc. Also, a lot of googlers are immigrants, very smart people who have moved to the us. Basic human consideration about their fate is a dilemma. To blithely say it’s “just” a hr problem, well that sort of seems to me like it’s actually a non problem at all.

repolfx 8y ago

They could have solved the problem months ago by firing the people engaged in that sort of behaviour. The leaked screenshots that came out around the time they canned Damore were full of bad behaviour, but it appears none of those people were fired. Instead they were allowed to continue calling their coworkers nazis and fascists. Almost without question this policy will be used to silence people objecting to their "diversity" programmes, not the people actually attacking their coworkers.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago
I don't think the solution is to fire these people (or Damore), it's just to say, "you can have whatever views you want outside of work, but unless it's relevant to your job, leave you opinions at home." That's how most of the corporate world operates.
- menacingly 8y ago
  Yeah, we don't have to throw out every lesson handed to us from previous generations and brutally relearn them. Some topics you don't casually toss around with thousands of virtual strangers. Hell, _most_ topics. Commit your work, close your laptop, and go exist in any number of spaces where your politics are welcome discussion.
- repolfx 8y ago
  That would also have worked, except in Damore's case they did actually solicit feedback (his memo was written after some training event where they said employees could/should comment). That said there's a difference between "I am talking about opinions and views that are irrelevant or inappropriate for the workplace", which is a mistake that is perhaps easy to make and can be trained out of people, vs "I am literally calling my coworkers nazis and demanding they be fired for expressing their views", which is not exactly a mistake and I see no real reason to tolerate such behaviour in any company.

ryanobjc 8y ago

This is a reaction to the rise of the trolls. Trolling your coworkers and engaging in bad faith argumenting has no place at work. It represents a profound disrespect of your colleagues, it is counterproductive, and is distracting. It’s not unreasonable to put these restrictions on - which btw are content neutral - workplace tools/discussions. It’s not an attempt to quell dissent but to focus it in a useful manner. I believe, that damore was arguing in bad faith, attempting to trigger and troll, and do so in “polite” language, which doesn’t excuse him at all. You can’t write a meandering argument that isn’t well founded, filled with incorrect suppositions, and bury that all your female coworkers are not as qualified and expect that to end well.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
plattegrond 8y ago
No he wasn't arguing in bad faith. He's just a nerdy guy who took the claims about wanting honest feedback at face value and told people what he thought instead of reading between the lines and realizing he was in a high school clique environment. If you can't even see that, the one with bad faith is you.

greggarious 8y ago

Does anyone have a non-paywalled article on this topic? Opening in a private window does not allow me to read.

gnicholas 8y ago
Install the Read Across the Aisle browser plugin. I’m the creator, it’s free and doesn’t track you, and allows you a renewable 7-day pass to the WSJ, thanks to a partnership we have with them. http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com
titzer 8y ago
Search for the title in a search engine and it usually works.
tomhoward 8y ago
http://archive.is/0ht0I http://archive.is/0ht0I

JeremyBanks 8y ago

Years too late. Employees have grown to feel entitled to abuse each other. It's disgraceful.

sageabilly 8y ago

".....oversee discussion groups about anything from animal rights to sexual expression." Why are there even discussions about this on a work forum? Why in the world would anyone want to talk about this stuff with the people they work with? Is it a side effect of the company being so large it's impossible to know everyone? I go out of my way to not discuss anything that comes within a whiff of a controversial topic with the people I work with. I go to work to pull a paycheck and because I enjoy the work that I do, I do not go to work to make friends or to hang out with people. If I end up making friends with some of the people I work with, great, however, we hang out as friends outside of work and we don't discuss things as friends via any work channels. Is making your co-workers your friend group a new thing? Is it a side effect of working so many hours you don't have time to hang out with anyone else?

DannyBee 8y ago
There is this trend in HR to try to get people to "bring their whole selves to work". Of course, most people are political, social, etc animals.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  This is also the consequence of corporations encouraging cultures that blur the lines of work-life balance. People will bring life into work. Reap what you sow.
- emddudley 8y ago
  > try to get people to "bring their whole selves to work". Ugh, that's messed up. In grade school I was forced to spend significant amounts of time interacting with classmates who I detested. They brought their "whole selves" and it was torture. I assume most people had this experience? As an adult I appreciate being able to choose who I associate with in my free time. Since I'm forced to interact with certain people at work, at least give me the mercy of bland "professional" personas!
- ljw1001 8y ago
  The far greater long term trend is to require a diminished, corporate-approved life form to show up every day. I suspect most people on this forum are too young to know any different way.

throw2016 8y ago

This is a cultural shift. First gen corporate workplaces 60-80's were much more top down, arbitrary and controlled. Second gen was already loosening up on individual freedom but there was a strict border between the private and the work persona. Now it seems this border is breaking down and there is one persona. Delicious to find most commenters here on the wrong side of a generational divide. Soon you will be dismissed as grey beards with out of date ideas.

lgleason 8y ago
pretty ageist comment there....
- throw2016 8y ago
  Given the routine use of 'grey beards' on most tech threads here to dismiss others while pushing their favoured technologies so much so the term may as well have been invented here it is rank hypocrisy to protest.

jfasi 8y ago

In my personal estimation as someone who actually has actually read these new rules and is currently working under them, these policy changes represent little substantive change from the previous policy. I won't be quoting the text directly because I don't think it's public, but most of what was changed represents a codification of practices that were already floating around as best-practices. They also added concrete examples of what constitutes harassment, all of which strike me as things that any reasonable person would actually consider harassment. Nowhere do I see anything that might be construed as "curtailing employee debate." All of which is to say how surprised and thrown off I am by this article: it and previous ones [1] try to portray Google as a place that's roiled by political fighting where the leaders are struggling to keep control over a irresponsible and politically radical workforce. Under this narrative these new policies are just the newest, desperate attempt to restore order to the snowflake cagematch that is Google. The reality, at least as far as I and practically everyone I've spoken to is concerned, is the exact opposite: people share their views openly, a wide range of opinions are respectfully shared, most people have the right to get into and stay out of political discussions, and the institution does the best it can to set the boundaries of what is appropriate at work while permitting a otherwise anything-goes approach. If this reality is anywhere close to being accurate, the picture this article paints is simply nonsensical. [1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-vs-google-how-nonstop-political-arguments-rule-its-workplace-1525190574 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-vs-google-how-nonstop-po...

ryanobjc 8y ago
i agree with everything written here. The culture articles on the wsj are bizzare. I think they can be chalked up to good old journalism selective sources (happy employees aren’t running to tell all), combined with a “where there’s smoke there’s fire” belief. And that’s me being as charitable as possible. The internal experience just doesn’t match what they’re writing.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  What if the unhappy employees are honestly relating their experience? What if you can openly share your opinions, so long as it's in a rather narrow range of acceptable opinions? What if some of those "unacceptable" opinions happen to be held by scientific researchers who maintain a moderate position that both nature and nurture is involved in gender differences? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8 How would that differ from the anti-evolution groupthink I'd expect to find at certain megachurches?

patrickg_zill 8y ago

I know that my view is far from the mainstream, but does anyone else get the feeling that Google's effectiveness per-employee is lower? I know that by the numbers, their per person revenue is off the charts, but what if they just have a few awesomely automated money spigots and like half of the employees are not really as wonderful as we've been told? I mean, the Google images AI that classified black people as gorillas hasn't actually been fixed yet, for example: they just removed the ability of the AI to classify any images as "gorilla"... As one example. If people are complaining about the busy message boards and there are a lot of different boards that are used, how much work is really getting done?