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I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term

I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term. By placing values above profits, it increases it's goodwill with customers thus increasing it's moat and it's retention, as well as it's employee retention. This strategy made sense in the early days. Not anymore. As Google's position becomes increasingly strengthend (with all the market share it can capture in search already realized ~ and it slightly decreasing anyway due to it's slightly tarnished brand), it doesn't need to maintain this illusion of values over profits anymore.

fouc 8y ago
Huh, that's an excellent point. When a company is so big and entrenched it doesn't need to seem like the nice guy anymore. Perhaps similarly to anti-monopoly laws we should also have size caps on companies.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  > we should also have size caps on companies As a thought experiment, I've often wondered the best way to maintain the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow. It's not clear it's simply growth, or whether it's profits. I wonder if a non-charity oriented non-profit would maintain a better corporate culture.
  - Consultant32452 8y ago
    Dunbar's Number, I believe, gives some insight. Basically, humans can only maintain about 150 relationships. As organizations grow personal relationships are replaced with rules and structures as a matter of necessity.
    - fouc 8y ago
      Agreed. I suppose sociopaths can get away with more when there's so many people that the relationship/connections between everyone are weaker on average.
      - Consultant32452 8y ago
        I used to think the same way, but then I came to a different understanding of sociopathy as an evolutionary adaptation. Those sociopaths are important and useful. The video below has a little deeper explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Ftipn4fyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Ftipn4fyI
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    > the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow. It's more like regression to the mean; it gets harder to be different as you grow. Good companies get worse, bad companies better (just look at Uber's internal culture).
- briandear 8y ago
  I would agree with that if we could also have a size cap on government.
nostrademons 8y ago
The "values over profits" approach was always more of a recruitment tool than a PR tool. It did give a nice PR boost, but realistically Google's been the best choice of search engine since it came out in 1998. They don't need additional customer goodwill for people to keep using them, they just need to continue to give good results for esoteric queries. Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google. And "Don't Be Evil" was a great way to persuade them to come work for Google rather than Yelp or Facebook or some hedge fund, and keep them there rather than have them go off and found their own startups that potentially could compete with Google. Because so much of their product moat depends upon technical excellence, keeping the best engineers within the company is critical for them. I'll predict that if they don't reverse course on this, we'll see a mini-exodus of Googlers who either end up founding their own startups or start working on political-tech projects. Ultimately I think that may be good for the world, but it's not really in Google's long-term interests, although perhaps at this point their moat is entrenched enough and they're big enough that it doesn't really matter.
- tanilama 8y ago
  > Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google. Growth probably, but very few actually pays better than Google considering all the perks and work life balance you would get from working for Google. And since the startup boom is almost over, it is even more so like that now...
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    Almost all wealth in Silicon Valley comes from equity price appreciation. Google stock has appreciated 7x since 2009, but Facebook has appreciated 38x in the same time period, Yelp 13x, Netflix about 35x, Apple about 6-7x. I think the boom in web & mobile startups is basically over at this point, but there's a new boom in cryptocurrency & AI startups that's just beginning, along with a social movement (multiple social movements, actually) that's just beginning and will likely need communication technology to organize.
naasking 8y ago
> I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term. Come on. A lot of people create startups to do something interesting that they're passionate about. Customers and profit merely serve these ends, not the other way around.
cjmoran 8y ago
What are some potential solutions here? Some form of intervention by the US government? I think many of us will agree that the sort of behavior these employees are speaking out against is at least unethical, and it also seems this "profits-over-values" behavior is a common one for large tech companies to gradually start engaging in. To your point, corporations in all sectors always do what makes the most economic sense, even if it means building internet censorship tech, dumping hazardous chemicals into the water supply, etc. As a society which (hopefully) would like to have some sort of moral compass, how do we prevent large companies from seeking profit even at the expense of our freedoms/health/planet? It seems to me that if the punishment for unethical behavior is economically "less" than the costs or potential losses associated with acting in a good, ethical way, companies will continue to do what we're seeing them do now. My intuition is that capitalism (in its current Western incarnation) can't function without some strict controls to protect what our societies value most. Or do we simply value profit over everything else? If so, that's kind of depressing, but I get the sense that most people don't think this way.
- people_not_bots 8y ago
  The tech sector has always been ripe for co-operatives and profit sharing. Politically speaking libertarian attitudes were the popular norm in most tech culture but now small co-opts could become the next phase for many small tech companies. That could be a first small step.
- bizentin 8y ago
  The US government? I find it hard to believe they would intervene with china unless they plan on using it as leverage in order to gain economic standing. However, seeing as google is already censoring content via prioritizing search results with favored websites before relevant websites and since the government is always happy to find new outlets to get personal information from its own and foreign citizens. I don't see this as being stoppable unless you make your own company and start competing with Google.
tjoff 8y ago
Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term. This might sound weird but some people (and companies) don't subscribe to the notion that money is the only thing that matters.
- amelius 8y ago
  Shareholders do.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    Doesn't matter. Shareholders must do their research. If they don't subscribe to the values then they can either not buy or suit themselves.
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      That is not how that works. A company -- with a few special exceptions and special charters -- ONLY goal is to increase value for this shareholders. A single shareholder with a non majority holding can sue if the company knowingly does something that causes the values of his shares to decrease -- even if the rest of the shareholders are okay with the loss because they agree with the sentiment. There is some grey area along strategy short game vs long game, but a company's charter is to increase the value of its shareholders -- THE ONLY THING that literally matters for a publicly traded company* * Some companies can be setup with a different charter that does not prioritize profit, but google and most of the publicly traded companies on the market today are not those. And it would be very hard to convert to such a company.
      - pazimzadeh 8y ago
        How does a shareholder prove that it's not just a short term loss in value, and that the decision won't actually benefit the company in the long run?
  - Sharlin 8y ago
    Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't expect that all (or even most) shareholders think that only money matters.
whack 8y ago
There's something you've overlooked: companies are ultimately run by humans. Humans who make decisions at all levels of the hierarchy, in order to further their own personal priorities, even if it dramatically conflicts with the shareholders' goals of maximizing profits. In some cases, the personal priorities can be personal advancement. We see this all the time when managers hire/promote their friends, sexually harass their subordinates, and make decisions on the basis of politics as opposed to technical/business merit. And in other cases, the personal priorities can be moral values. Values such as promoting free speech, fighting censorship, protecting consumer rights, and avoiding layoffs. The idea that every single decision taken by a company is perfectly optimized to maximize long term profits, is baseless. There simply does not exist any mechanism to monitor and enforce such a requirement. The shareholders have only one lever to pull: accept the current leadership team, imperfections and all. Or fire them and risk destroying the company in the resulting churn. This gives both the executives and employees tremendous leeway to prioritize values over profits, as long as they are good enough to not get fired.
- Retric 8y ago
  Shareholders can do more than just fire the management team, they can set meaningful objectives and tie management compensation to reaching them.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Yeah, and then the CEO decides he'd rather make $124M that year and feel good about himself in not kowtowing to totalitarian governments vs doing so and making $125M that year. The entire point of this comment thread is that individual people are not motivated solely by money. They care about many other things too, like their values. Hell, this entire post exists because some Google employees care more about their values than about making as much money as possible.
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care... Or simply have no stake in it, Or have a stake in a competing company. I can assure you if google employees revolt on a number of projects and that drops the stock price in half over the course of 3 weeks PEOPLE WILL CARE... Even the ones that today you say don't care.
orblivion 8y ago
I think it's always a combination of factors. Unless you subscribe to the theory that every CEO is 100% sociopath. There's the consideration of true values. Then there's the consideration of lost opportunities from following those values. Then there's the cold consideration of the money gained from PR boost due to following the values. Then there's the "game theory" consideration of altogether dying in the marketplace if your competition don't act on those values. I think the best thing for all of us to do on the outside is to create a culture where every company benefits from the PR boost. Google executives are one concentrated interest, separate from Microsoft, etc. The employees, I reckon, are not as financially motivated (i.e. don't stand to lose _as_ much individually) and can afford to advocate their values. It seems to me (I'll phrase it conservatively, since I'm just throwing out ideas here) that Google employees should make friends with Microsoft employees to make sure they raise the same noise on their end as well. Make it okay for each company to gain (monetarily or otherwise) from good PR, and make it less profitable for all of their competitors to sell out.

fouc 8y ago

Huh, that's an excellent point. When a company is so big and entrenched it doesn't need to seem like the nice guy anymore. Perhaps similarly to anti-monopoly laws we should also have size caps on companies.

vorpalhex 8y ago
> we should also have size caps on companies As a thought experiment, I've often wondered the best way to maintain the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow. It's not clear it's simply growth, or whether it's profits. I wonder if a non-charity oriented non-profit would maintain a better corporate culture.
- Consultant32452 8y ago
  Dunbar's Number, I believe, gives some insight. Basically, humans can only maintain about 150 relationships. As organizations grow personal relationships are replaced with rules and structures as a matter of necessity.
  - fouc 8y ago
    Agreed. I suppose sociopaths can get away with more when there's so many people that the relationship/connections between everyone are weaker on average.
    - Consultant32452 8y ago
      I used to think the same way, but then I came to a different understanding of sociopathy as an evolutionary adaptation. Those sociopaths are important and useful. The video below has a little deeper explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Ftipn4fyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Ftipn4fyI
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > the positive corporate culture that small companies tend to lose as they grow. It's more like regression to the mean; it gets harder to be different as you grow. Good companies get worse, bad companies better (just look at Uber's internal culture).
briandear 8y ago
I would agree with that if we could also have a size cap on government.

nostrademons 8y ago

The "values over profits" approach was always more of a recruitment tool than a PR tool. It did give a nice PR boost, but realistically Google's been the best choice of search engine since it came out in 1998. They don't need additional customer goodwill for people to keep using them, they just need to continue to give good results for esoteric queries. Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google. And "Don't Be Evil" was a great way to persuade them to come work for Google rather than Yelp or Facebook or some hedge fund, and keep them there rather than have them go off and found their own startups that potentially could compete with Google. Because so much of their product moat depends upon technical excellence, keeping the best engineers within the company is critical for them. I'll predict that if they don't reverse course on this, we'll see a mini-exodus of Googlers who either end up founding their own startups or start working on political-tech projects. Ultimately I think that may be good for the world, but it's not really in Google's long-term interests, although perhaps at this point their moat is entrenched enough and they're big enough that it doesn't really matter.

tanilama 8y ago
> Since 2005, though, good engineers have had lots of options for where to work, many of which pay better or have more growth potential than Google. Growth probably, but very few actually pays better than Google considering all the perks and work life balance you would get from working for Google. And since the startup boom is almost over, it is even more so like that now...
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Almost all wealth in Silicon Valley comes from equity price appreciation. Google stock has appreciated 7x since 2009, but Facebook has appreciated 38x in the same time period, Yelp 13x, Netflix about 35x, Apple about 6-7x. I think the boom in web & mobile startups is basically over at this point, but there's a new boom in cryptocurrency & AI startups that's just beginning, along with a social movement (multiple social movements, actually) that's just beginning and will likely need communication technology to organize.

naasking 8y ago

> I think, what these employees don't realize is: Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term. Come on. A lot of people create startups to do something interesting that they're passionate about. Customers and profit merely serve these ends, not the other way around.

cjmoran 8y ago

What are some potential solutions here? Some form of intervention by the US government? I think many of us will agree that the sort of behavior these employees are speaking out against is at least unethical, and it also seems this "profits-over-values" behavior is a common one for large tech companies to gradually start engaging in. To your point, corporations in all sectors always do what makes the most economic sense, even if it means building internet censorship tech, dumping hazardous chemicals into the water supply, etc. As a society which (hopefully) would like to have some sort of moral compass, how do we prevent large companies from seeking profit even at the expense of our freedoms/health/planet? It seems to me that if the punishment for unethical behavior is economically "less" than the costs or potential losses associated with acting in a good, ethical way, companies will continue to do what we're seeing them do now. My intuition is that capitalism (in its current Western incarnation) can't function without some strict controls to protect what our societies value most. Or do we simply value profit over everything else? If so, that's kind of depressing, but I get the sense that most people don't think this way.

people_not_bots 8y ago
The tech sector has always been ripe for co-operatives and profit sharing. Politically speaking libertarian attitudes were the popular norm in most tech culture but now small co-opts could become the next phase for many small tech companies. That could be a first small step.
bizentin 8y ago
The US government? I find it hard to believe they would intervene with china unless they plan on using it as leverage in order to gain economic standing. However, seeing as google is already censoring content via prioritizing search results with favored websites before relevant websites and since the government is always happy to find new outlets to get personal information from its own and foreign citizens. I don't see this as being stoppable unless you make your own company and start competing with Google.

tjoff 8y ago

Even when a company places values over profits, it is still in an attempt to maximize profits over the long term. This might sound weird but some people (and companies) don't subscribe to the notion that money is the only thing that matters.

amelius 8y ago
Shareholders do.
- tjoff 8y ago
  Doesn't matter. Shareholders must do their research. If they don't subscribe to the values then they can either not buy or suit themselves.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    That is not how that works. A company -- with a few special exceptions and special charters -- ONLY goal is to increase value for this shareholders. A single shareholder with a non majority holding can sue if the company knowingly does something that causes the values of his shares to decrease -- even if the rest of the shareholders are okay with the loss because they agree with the sentiment. There is some grey area along strategy short game vs long game, but a company's charter is to increase the value of its shareholders -- THE ONLY THING that literally matters for a publicly traded company* * Some companies can be setup with a different charter that does not prioritize profit, but google and most of the publicly traded companies on the market today are not those. And it would be very hard to convert to such a company.
    - pazimzadeh 8y ago
      How does a shareholder prove that it's not just a short term loss in value, and that the decision won't actually benefit the company in the long run?
- Sharlin 8y ago
  Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't expect that all (or even most) shareholders think that only money matters.

whack 8y ago

There's something you've overlooked: companies are ultimately run by humans. Humans who make decisions at all levels of the hierarchy, in order to further their own personal priorities, even if it dramatically conflicts with the shareholders' goals of maximizing profits. In some cases, the personal priorities can be personal advancement. We see this all the time when managers hire/promote their friends, sexually harass their subordinates, and make decisions on the basis of politics as opposed to technical/business merit. And in other cases, the personal priorities can be moral values. Values such as promoting free speech, fighting censorship, protecting consumer rights, and avoiding layoffs. The idea that every single decision taken by a company is perfectly optimized to maximize long term profits, is baseless. There simply does not exist any mechanism to monitor and enforce such a requirement. The shareholders have only one lever to pull: accept the current leadership team, imperfections and all. Or fire them and risk destroying the company in the resulting churn. This gives both the executives and employees tremendous leeway to prioritize values over profits, as long as they are good enough to not get fired.

Retric 8y ago
Shareholders can do more than just fire the management team, they can set meaningful objectives and tie management compensation to reaching them.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Yeah, and then the CEO decides he'd rather make $124M that year and feel good about himself in not kowtowing to totalitarian governments vs doing so and making $125M that year. The entire point of this comment thread is that individual people are not motivated solely by money. They care about many other things too, like their values. Hell, this entire post exists because some Google employees care more about their values than about making as much money as possible.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    The only people not motivated solely by money are those who used the very tactics that are in question to amass enough not to care... Or simply have no stake in it, Or have a stake in a competing company. I can assure you if google employees revolt on a number of projects and that drops the stock price in half over the course of 3 weeks PEOPLE WILL CARE... Even the ones that today you say don't care.

orblivion 8y ago

I think it's always a combination of factors. Unless you subscribe to the theory that every CEO is 100% sociopath. There's the consideration of true values. Then there's the consideration of lost opportunities from following those values. Then there's the cold consideration of the money gained from PR boost due to following the values. Then there's the "game theory" consideration of altogether dying in the marketplace if your competition don't act on those values. I think the best thing for all of us to do on the outside is to create a culture where every company benefits from the PR boost. Google executives are one concentrated interest, separate from Microsoft, etc. The employees, I reckon, are not as financially motivated (i.e. don't stand to lose _as_ much individually) and can afford to advocate their values. It seems to me (I'll phrase it conservatively, since I'm just throwing out ideas here) that Google employees should make friends with Microsoft employees to make sure they raise the same noise on their end as well. Make it okay for each company to gain (monetarily or otherwise) from good PR, and make it less profitable for all of their competitors to sell out.