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It's interesting, because if The Intercept is to be believed, Beaumont has basically gone rogue, carving out his own little empire, aggressively preventing othe
by Lazare 8y ago
It's interesting, because if The Intercept is to be believed, Beaumont has basically gone rogue, carving out his own little empire, aggressively preventing other internal teams from figuring out what he's doing, and engaging in behaviour that violates internal Google rules and policies, as well as which opening Google to significant reputational risk.
I mean, I'll be the first to admit I have made mistakes in my career, but I can't recall ever making a mistake that got my boss called in to testify before Congress, or that got my company prptested by Amnesty International, or that got hundreds of my colleagues to sign a letter of protest! Managing to do all of those at once is...well, honestly it's sort of impressive, but is raises questions.
If The Intercept is just completely wrong, I'd expect to see a categorical denial; after all it would make Google look a lot better if they can convincingly demonstrate that all of this didn't actually happen. If The Intercept is right, I'd expect to see Beaumont fired; that's what happens when people violate internal rules and cause significant damage to their employer as a result.
Since we've seen neither...I guess the logical assumption is that The Intercept was right about what Beaumont was doing, but he...wasn't rogue? That official Google policy was to subvert official Google policy, and hide things from the internal teams charged with stopping that exact thing? Like...is the CEO really having meetings with the privacy team and telling them to be extra vigilant not to let product teams misuse personal data, and then later that afternoon meeting with Beaumont and telling him to be extra careful not to let the privacy team find out that he's misusing personal data to develop a product?
What a bizarre situation.
- julienreszka 8y agoGoogle is large enough to not be a monolith culture have you considered this
- pimmen 8y agoThen I would expect them to fire Beaumont to at least keep some control over the culture. You can't tell the shareholders "we're too big to know what the hell we're doing, we might be throwing billions of dollars on a project with absolutely no commercial value because it's some executive's pet project all the while the C-level management, the board and the shareholders would be none the wiser. We're a sure thing, by the way, invest in us!" That's what you're saying as a CEO when you're letting rogue executives do projects that bypasses company guidelines, deceives other managers and costs boat loads in resources and PR without any sort of consequences. Or, you're totally fine with what he did because it's a silent approval if you're a manager and you let unethical behavior go unpunished. Nobody told Mr. Pichai being in charge was going to be easy.
- Lazare 8y agoI agree completely, but I'm not sure I see how this is a cultural issue, or related to some differences in culture within different parts of Google. If it turns out that the trading desk at a bank has been violating internal rules and conspiring to hide their trading activity from the risk management committee, we don't say "oh, this is a cultural issue; the commodities desk just has a different culture than the risk management committee", we normally say "you're fired, security will escort you from the building now". Clearly this is a different situation! But in what way?
- sonnyblarney 8y agoWorking off the main campus, on a very sensitive project that the CEO himself likely shielded from other internal parties ... is not that bizarre really. I don't see how he's 'gone rogue' either, rather, this is more like a c-level sanctioned kind of skunkworks.
- pimmen 8y agoIn a world where the share holder care that should trigger an investigation. I don't want to own shares in a company where management randomly does shitty things completely against the guidelines they've codified. But, we live in a world where I guess the share holders nod their heads at inappropriate times when growth is on the line.
- binarysolo 8y ago+1, this is a lot more common than people expect... though the "best practice" I've seen from megacorps doing morally gray things is to form a front/shell company that takes all the heat. Surprised Google didn't take this route.