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This is just all so weird. If google is such a bad company, then quit working for them. It's not really a protest, it's a tactic to wrestle control over the c

• ahelwer 7y ago
  Why does this exact same objection come up again and again? Why do we have to leave our companies instead of trying to make positive change from within? Why is the only prescribed solution to take flight to new lands, like locusts, staying ahead of the flood? What do we do when there are no more companies to which to flee, and the effects of that which we are fleeing is harming society?
  • ska 7y ago
    It's a another version of the argument "If you don't like our country behaving the way I think it should behave, you should leave the country". Absolutely sometimes the best thing for an individual to do is take their marbles and go home. But equally, sometimes the best thing to do is put your shoulder to pushing the wheels in [what you perceive as] a better direction. Companies (and countries) after all are not stand-alone entities; they are an expression of their constituent parts. Some of this is history/momentum, but a lot of it is just people. [edit] of course I think the bar for "when should I leave my company" is an awful lot lower than "when should I leave my country".
    • alistairSH 7y ago
      I'm not sure I agree. At least not completely. A person is within their rights to try and change the company from within before leaving. But, that will likely come with personal costs (right or wrong). If those costs get to be too high, the correct action might be to leave. At a company, the impact of leaving could be much higher than the impact of moving to a different country on politics... Google very much relies on "smart people" to earn money. If enough leave in protest, Google will eventually suffer. It would take a LOT of people leaving the US for there to be any noticeable impact.
      • throwaway2048 7y ago
        Google will suffer a lot more if it continually takes big PR hits over crap like this.
        • lotsofpulp 7y ago
          I don’t see people stop using Gmail, Maps, and Search over little PR problems only a small minority care about.
          • throwaway2048 7y ago
            I don't see them doing so over a small amount of "smart people quitting" either.
          • cloakandswagger 7y ago
            Because those products are unrelated to AI. Big players will not (and are not) touching GCP's AI solutions for this exact reason: it's only a matter of time before the virtue signalers are no longer content with policing the decisions of their own company and start targeting customer workloads.
        • strictnein 7y ago
          No one outside of the HN crowd and a couple of bubbles on twitter has heard a single thing about this, or cares in the slightest. There was no PR hit.
          • throwaway2048 7y ago
            We are talking about the realm of "Google being a place people want to work" Demonstrating that management takes petty actions like this is far more convincing than people silently quitting.
            • DuskStar 7y ago
              I'd be more willing to work for Google if they had a history of not caving in to lynch mobs and punishing the leaders, instead of the other way around.
    • int_19h 7y ago
      The analogy doesn't work too well, because employees of a company are distinct from its owners and decision makers. An employee in a private company is more akin to a civil service bureaucrat in a government, hired to perform some function. And we generally expect civil servants to be apolitical - they still get to vote etc, of course, but in their capacity as citizens, not government workers. Mind you, I don't think that means that employees (or public workers, for that matter) should just shut up. But the argument for "should just leave" is stronger in this case than it is for citizens.
      • ska 7y ago
        Hence the bar being much lower. It's not an exact parallel, but it works pretty well. No company is it's executives alone, no country is its government alone.
    • anarchop 7y ago
      The analogy fails as one can’t simply “start” their own country, as one can start their own company. Further, a corporation isn’t a democratic institution which openly invites discord. There is a word for when one does this however: insubordination. Here’s an analogy that does work: The owner of a home has the right to determine who abodes in it, and by extension what actions they can engage in. You’re essentially arguing that the opposite, i.e. that private property doesn’t exist. Political institutions exist to provide a forum for discourse. Private property exists so that the individual can be free of the tyranny of the other by not being forced to make a bargain with whomever decides they want in. Having said all this, I agree with the spirit of your argument. However, going public and or legal makes you an enemy of the organisation and will more than likely result in having to leave the organisation sooner or later.
    • kerng 7y ago
      A lot of it depends if someone likes/respecte the company or not I think. If I don't care about my employer and their vision, I'd just leave. If you care about the company and customers you might want to stay and try to help achieve change.
  • sturgill 7y ago
    My very short opinion on this: politics is the process of working within a system; protesting is the process of removing oneself _from_ the system. The story of the Civil Rights protests would have been very different had African Americans continued to ride the bus. There’s a place for both, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of overlap. If you want to protest your boss, that’s fine. But I’d encourage you to have your resume up-to-date. Very few people take an activist role in a company and stay employed. But heated discussions and debate are a natural part of any board meeting.
    • scott_s 7y ago
      > The story of the Civil Rights protests would have been very different had African Americans continued to ride the bus. I don't know what you're trying to say here. Most of the most famous actions during the civil rights movement were African Americans doing things that were only illegal because of racist laws supported by cultural white supremacy (lunch-counter sit-ins; pubic buses; sometimes merely existing in certain areas at certain times). Metaphorically, they did "continue to ride the bus", if that means they continued to engage in the same actions involved in the protests, because those actions were eventually made legal. For those interested in learning more about the movement, I recommend "The Children" by David Halberstam. He makes clear just how dangerous being a civil rights protestor was.
      • sturgill 7y ago
        As another comment points out, I was referring to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I live in Alabama and that is a lesson we teach our kids (there’s a wonderful book introducing these very harsh themes at a level even young kids can understand: “I Am Rosa Parks”). Those involved were willing to take incredible personal risks in forms of protest until their voices were represented in politics.
      • sturgill 7y ago
        Here’s a pretty solid write up. The emergence of MLK on the national scene even had its origin in this boycott. There isn’t a figurative interpretation here: the black community in Montgomery refused to ride the bus until it was desegregated. They kept this up for over a year until the Supreme Court forced the city to integrate its busing. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/montgomery-bus-boycott https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/montgomery-bus-...
  • doctorpangloss 7y ago
    > What do we do when there are no more companies to which to flee A more interesting conversation for sure. There are lots of ways to make software besides companies. Lots of great software that got made before there was a corporate entity supporting it, even indirectly. Some great software written entirely in opposition to a corporate entity. Don't obsess too narrowly on "GPL" or "open source" or whatever. A lot of software is artisanal, all the way from making websites to make firmwares for space devices, bought and sold on the digital equivalent of a fleamarket and not by the concentration of some corporate entity. Some software is bought/sold at auction, like government contracts. No one is objecting to corporations generally. There's a reaction against (1) the conformity of it all and (2) the pedigree of the people who work there. How do supposedly smart people, with their liberal arts and STEM educations, represent a shareholder group that is most likely going to treat the ordinary person unjustly? For example, it's possible to research AI at universities. No one is going to pressure you into making target-acquisition image recognition or person-of-interest mass-surveillance tech at a university. But these are exactly the sorts of things Google was selling in its Maven contract. They want to sell fucking weapons dude. We have this intuitive idea that a lot of people are okay with selling the weapons basically because the pay is really fucking good. The controversy is that the Northrup Grumman employees are the "other," and Google engineers were like soft kids from Ivy League schools who are friendly and nice and watch lots of animal videos and crack good jokes. It just turns out they want money too sometimes, a lot of it. The line has finally been crossed where people have to either quit or shut up.
    • zrobotics 7y ago
      >> For example, it's possible to research AI at universities. No one is going to pressure you into making target-acquisition image recognition or person-of-interest mass-surveillance tech at a university You might want to look into the vast amount of military tech that was developed at research universities, often indirectly driven via availability of grants. Academia isn't really a safe haven here.
    • pmiller2 7y ago
      > There are lots of ways to make software besides companies. I know you’re interpreting “what happens when there are no more companies to flee to” with respect to software engineers, but I have to ask: how would you make software if there were no companies making computers?
  • r00fus 7y ago
    It's the same line as when people complain about the direction of politics and get a "well then move to a different country" response. At least in politics you can vote. As a worker, you have very little control in direction of a large employer.
    • TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
      I believe the idea is that employees should be seen but not heard. Democracy is all well and good, as long as it knows its proper place in the corporate hierarchy.
  • AntiTechTechie 7y ago
    > What do we do when there are no more companies to which to flee, and the effects of that which we are fleeing is harming society? Start your own company...or destroy those that are trying to destroy you
  • bogomipz 7y ago
    I certainly agree with the notion of trying to affect change from within but how viable is that at a company like Google? In looking at just the recent past for example we see sexual harassment mishandling, work on censorship-enabled search, Pentagon contracts, double Dutch tax avoidance schemes etc. At some point don't you conclude that the distance between your own value system and that of the corporation you work is just too great?
  • thanatropism 7y ago
    Voice versus exit: this is pretty much an open question, but it's central to really-really discussing political change. At the very least you need to be aware that those are options and not be surprised when someone argues that exit >> voice.
  • xj9 7y ago
    if you want a say in the policies of your workplace, a traditional corporation isn't the kind of company you should be working for. you explicitly don't have a say unless the structure of the organization gives you that power, which is explicitly the case for cooperative corporations only. if you want real change, start a cooperative.
  • tomohawk 7y ago
    A public protest is not advocating change from within. Companies like Google encouraged a continuation of a college like atmosphere, but it is not college. It's a job. If you're not there to work and add value to the company, the what are you doing? In college it may be ok to demonstrate against the EVIL THING, but work is not college. In college you're paying to be there. At work, you're getting paid to add value.
• lazyasciiart 7y ago
  This comment seems to fall very far outside the principle of charity that HN requires from users.
  • RichardCA 7y ago
    The general tone of moderation is to discourage a posture of shallow cynicism. In practice this is difficult to enforce because some level of reasonable discussion will always fall in the grey area and you don't want to appear heavy-handed.
    • lazyasciiart 7y ago
      The entire content of that comment is a shallow dismissal of the events as a 'stunt' by people assumed to be acting in bad faith. It is an exact example of what is said to be discouraged.
• serioussecurity 7y ago
  The history of labor is in this form of protest. Googlers are more comfortable than many others. The further down the chain you go the more precarious the workers and dependent on their pay checks, and the easier time management has retaliating. This stuff is legally protected because before we had legal protections, conflicts devolved into straight out armed struggle, with employers hiring mercenaries (notably the pinkertons) to break up employee resistance with guns.
• JeremyBanks 7y ago
  So your suggestion, if you see an injustice, is to leave, so that the situation is handled by people who don't recognize the injustice? That'll help!
  • 0x54D5 7y ago
    What exactly is the injustice? AI being used for military applications? Most of these AI algorithms are open source and available on Github for anyone to use. The military is still gonna have their big bad robot with a gun that can immediately identify enemy combatants as soon as it enters a room. The genie is out of the bag.
    • JeremyBanks 7y ago
      I wasn't addressing the morality of the underlying issue, but rather the virtue of this type of protest in principle. > If google is such a bad company, then quit working for them. Still, your comment is mistaken. The Google Walkout wasn't directly about AI or Google's other business offerings, it was mainly about sexual harassment and working conditions; the organizers were very clear about this: https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/google-walkout-organizers-explain-demands.html https://www.thecut.com/2018/11/google-walkout-organizers-exp... One of the main sparks was the discovery that Andy Rubin has been paid hundreds of millions and protected by management while he was being fired for sexual harassment. These are subjects where the law generally protects employees from retaliation.
    • xvector 7y ago
      > Most of these AI algorithms are open source and available on Github for anyone to use. This is like saying "because we can create nuclear bombs, we might as well should because it pays well!" No, with the power to engineer something comes the responsibility to make sure you are not creating something terrible. This is Ethics 101. Even if the philosophical/ethical argument is not something you care for - how many more countless, concrete examples throughout history does one need to understand this fact?
• andrei_says_ 7y ago
  Way to go framing people standing for what they believe in as a “stunt”. Apart from a frequent talking point aiming to discredit activists this POV also reveals a lack of understanding for any action which is either a strategy to enrich oneself or a hypocritical attempt to look good.
• mkhalil 7y ago
  > "If google is such a bad company, then quit working for them." Why not try to change what is Bad? I could see this working for a small local coffee shop, but for something as big as Google where many employees could be replaced, and how it effects the lives of billions of people on the planet (and elsewhere), you not working there wouldn't bring any real net positive change. If I hate Comcast and ATT and chose to ignore them for being Bad, I really wouldn't have broadband options. My municipality would be a good contender to start their own ISP, but are banned from doing so thanks to Comcast passing laws in my state (most states in US now), and the "system" for allowing them to pass said laws. I am not going to just quit internet because I hate them, but I have and continue to try to hold them accountable and have them do better. So as long as monolithic monopolies exist with the support of the many institutions set in place today, ignoring bad does no good.
  • effie 7y ago
    > you not working there wouldn't bring any real net positive change. You do not know that. Perhaps them not working there deprives the corporation of their ideas and skills, and frees the person's time and energy for a work helping the positive change.
• tamrix 7y ago
  Sometimes it's better to be in the ship to steer it.