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The cost of firing the dev was whatever he could claim in a wrongful termination suit. Which is, what, millions of dollars? The benefit of firing him is that yo

by pimmen 8y ago

The cost of firing the dev was whatever he could claim in a wrongful termination suit. Which is, what, millions of dollars? The benefit of firing him is that you appease the devs of the future who demand that their company take a stand on divisive issues. The opportunity cost of not getting in on the Chinese market by being complicit in human rights abuses is in the billions, and possibly some direct costs if you generate badwill (so, let's add the cost of keeping up a farce for the employees just to be thorough, which is probably in the millions). As long as you keep everyone in the dark about what you're doing you can reap the benefits.

creaghpatr 8y ago
Opp cost could be even higher. If a Chinese company builds the next great (censored) search engine, they could turn around and launch an uncensored version in the US, challenging Google's monopoly on de-listing 'hate speech' in search. Would be ironic, but only as ironic as Google launching a search engine in China.
- brandmeyer 8y ago
  > they could turn around and launch an uncensored version in the US It is far more likely for such a competitor to turn around and launch a censored version in the US, just changing the censorship criteria. Can you imagine the impact of a partnership between the Murdoch empire and a search engine with ideological censorship built-in?
- plasticchris 8y ago
  It's poor justification for evil that someone else might do it.
repolfx 8y ago
The cost of firing Damore was much, much higher than that. It sent a message to the entire world that Google is staffed by extremists who systematically cannot be trusted to provide unbiased services or search results for anything involving women or feminism. It caught the attention of conservative politicians. It killed dead the idea that Google is run by logical, data driven people (as Damore's memo was basically a big pile of data and studies), and judging from what my friends who still work there think, it created huge cynicism in the developer workforce too. It very much did not "appease the devs" unless you are naive enough to believe that Damore is some outlier in disliking diversity programmes in tech firms.

by pimmen 8y ago

creaghpatr 8y ago

Opp cost could be even higher. If a Chinese company builds the next great (censored) search engine, they could turn around and launch an uncensored version in the US, challenging Google's monopoly on de-listing 'hate speech' in search. Would be ironic, but only as ironic as Google launching a search engine in China.

brandmeyer 8y ago
> they could turn around and launch an uncensored version in the US It is far more likely for such a competitor to turn around and launch a censored version in the US, just changing the censorship criteria. Can you imagine the impact of a partnership between the Murdoch empire and a search engine with ideological censorship built-in?
plasticchris 8y ago
It's poor justification for evil that someone else might do it.

repolfx 8y ago

The cost of firing Damore was much, much higher than that. It sent a message to the entire world that Google is staffed by extremists who systematically cannot be trusted to provide unbiased services or search results for anything involving women or feminism. It caught the attention of conservative politicians. It killed dead the idea that Google is run by logical, data driven people (as Damore's memo was basically a big pile of data and studies), and judging from what my friends who still work there think, it created huge cynicism in the developer workforce too. It very much did not "appease the devs" unless you are naive enough to believe that Damore is some outlier in disliking diversity programmes in tech firms.