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Whether or not people at Google have different opinions is largely irrelevant, unless they’re going to engage in coordinated labor action like they did with the
by knuththetruth 8y ago
Whether or not people at Google have different opinions is largely irrelevant, unless they’re going to engage in coordinated labor action like they did with the drone program.
Google, despite all its townhalls and Q&As, is not a democracy. It’s a corporation governed by an authoritarian command hierarchy who have seemingly chosen to get in bed with another authoritarian regime called the Chinese government.
- BrandonMarc 8y ago> unless they’re going to engage in coordinated labor action like they did with the drone program. What was this?
- svachalek 8y agoI believe this is in reference to employees quitting over the company's participation in the development of artificially intelligent weapons.
- knuththetruth 8y agoThat was a big part of it, but there were also several other coordinated, internal campaigns. Here’s a good account by one of the Googlers involved: https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/google-project-maven-military-tech-workers https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/google-project-maven-military...
- skybrian 8y agoThere is a large middle ground between democracy and purely top-down command. I was actually talking about disagreement among executives. In an environment where people respect each others' opinions and areas of expertise, you don't need coordinated labor action for that to influence top-level decision-making. The fact that this all has been kept secret (even from the rest of the organization) and that it leaked are both evidence for internal political divisions. Internal politics does matter, sometimes. I wonder what happens now that more Googlers know about it?