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Google Staffers Share Stories of ‘Systemic’ Retaliation

212 points by mastazi 8y ago

geodel 8y ago
Google workers again showing that they do not plan to understand how google really makes money because their salaries depend on not understanding it.
- ergothus 8y ago
  ...or they are trying to convince Google to find a different means of making money.
  - cloakandswagger 8y ago
    And will destroy the company in the process. They already sunk a large military contract and are setting their sights on AI in general. If Google accedes to all the various pet issues of individuals working there then they won't have a business anymore. This is the risk of appeasement. Google (and every company for that matter) should try a new stance: If you fundamentally disagree with the areas and methods that our leadership has chosen for our business, then find a new place to work. Working for a company while using it as a staging ground for a coup against it is unacceptable.
    - urbanjunkie 8y ago
      Actually it's not unacceptable. But hey, you're unimportant, and your views really don't matter.
    - adamsea 8y ago
      IMHO AI ethics are a legitimate area of discussion, as should be any moral ethical issue w/regards to a business practice. And it sounds like Google is doing basically what you are saying.
    - ergothus 8y ago
      I've always felt that it's good to let people know if you have a problem BEFORE ditching them. If they don't change, then I can leave with a clean conscience. Sometimes they decide to change, sometimes they don't. When they don't, sometimes they change after I leave, sometimes they don't. This is the normal back-and-forth between parties that won't always agree. I don't really see a reason to be upset at communication and get angry about "appeasement".
    - infinity0 8y ago
      Perhaps they already tried to find a different company with better policies, but wasn't able to? There's a few of them around, but not that many of them. Are you the sort of person that tells people not to complain about the politics in your home country or to "move to China/North Korea if you don't like it here"? That would seem consistent with what you're saying.
      - jjeaff 8y ago
        Seems a bit different. Google is not a democracy made up of the employees.
        infinity0 8y ago
        Right, Google, China and North Korea, none of them are democracies. If you fundamentally disagree with their values, find a new place to live? Hey, at least it's possible to move to a democratic country, but a democratic corporation? Not that many of them around.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      Would you agree with your own argument when it comes to say, illegal activities? Or how about if we were talking about Facebook instead of Google? Should people have zero insight into issues which could cost a company money or PR? Or should everyone expect to toe the line and simply follow the suits lockstep into hell?
      - cloakandswagger 8y ago
        I think there's a clear difference between breaking the law and a personal moral objection to doing business with your country's military.
        fwip 8y ago
        Is there? The US military violates international law when it commits war crimes.
    - crispyambulance 8y ago
      > Google (and every company for that matter) should try a new stance... The "stance" you describe is not a new stance at all. It is a very old one-- as old as working-for-the-man itself. Perhaps it was pipe dream to actually believe the "don't be evil" pledge? Whatever the case, the outrage of the dissents does seem cloyingly naive and I find it difficult to feel sorry for them. Maybe it's time for people to learn that "mega-corps" aren't exactly the best place for idealists after all. It might be a good thing for google to shed some talent to the wind and see what comes of it. Who knows, it might lower housing cost and seed many more start-ups and small businesses with new people.
      - repolfx 8y ago
        New stance for Google. As for "don't be evil" that became useless a long time ago, it was just an invitation for everyone to describe their pet hate as "evil" even when that was clearly over the top. When I worked there I routinely saw trivial things like reskins of Gmail be described as evil (because we're ignoring feedback from users who didn't like it!). The word became debased to the point that it was worthless to even have such a slogan. All the current issues are morally debatable at best, and simply not evil at worst. Even if you consider the US military hopelessly bloated, for example, is their view that the USA shouldn't have an army to defend itself at all? If not, why not, and how is it consistent with wanting Google to not be involved in such matters?
        crispyambulance 8y ago
        I come to a similar conclusion as you but from an opposite side. It really is morally indefensible that Google provide technology for military drone warfare (for example). If someone working at Google finds that ghoulish, it is their responsibility to speak up about it and leave (or be fired) if that's what it comes down to. Lucky for them, they probably have plenty of job prospects and don't "need" Google. Similarly for the military, they're perfectly capable of funding and staffing their own research centers on novel ways to incinerate human beings. Does a surveillance capitalism platform really need to do that for them?
    - ben509 8y ago
      Honestly, though, speaking as someone who had to use things made by military contractors, having people who object to the military working on them seems like a recipe for disaster. But that's a pretty small slice of Google's business. > Working for a company while using it as a staging ground for a coup against it is unacceptable. So what does unacceptable mean? Historically, coups like this happen to organizations all the time, to the point where conservatives consider it a fact of life.[1][2] It may be unacceptable now, but they'll just keep at it until their view becomes orthodoxy; it's more or less the point of liberalism. I'm also skeptical that the people in senior positions are that far from them ideologically; they simply have legal obligations to shareholders. Another notion of acceptability is whether a coup sinks the company in the meantime. But it's a risk either way, unless the complaints are entirely without merit, and that seems unlikely. Let's say Googlers who dispute this did quietly leave over these issues as you suggest. Google's incentives are structured perversely, the "user as product" business model is just ethically dysfunctional. Losing people who act as a check on bad behavior can thus compound these problems over time. If people then decide they've had enough (buoyed by a string of complaints from ex-Googlers) and go to Congress, that can also effectively sink the company. [1]: https://www.isegoria.net/2008/07/robert-conquests-three-laws-of-politics/ https://www.isegoria.net/2008/07/robert-conquests-three-laws... [2]: https://opc.org/OS/html/V5/1a.html https://opc.org/OS/html/V5/1a.html
      - ergothus 8y ago
        > legal obligations to shareholders. I've heard this isn't nearly as true as current conventional wisdom would lead one to believe. (to your point, those in power may feel they MUST do certain things even if they don't have to). If so, push back is one of the ways to correct any deviation and move towards a balance.
        ben509 8y ago
        Yeah, I abbreviated that point as I felt I was rambling and it's outside my expertise, but it's definitely more complicated than "we must make these profit numbers go up or go to jail."
    - Aunche 8y ago
      To be fair, Google was the one that came up with "Don't be evil" in the first place. I'm sure that attracted a bunch of talented bright-eyed engineers with a black and white sense of morality. This helped them in the past, but they now have to live with the consequences of their narrative.
    - joejerryronnie 8y ago
      Sure these activists can go work for a non-profit which supports their moral stances but who will pay for that $1.5 million dollar mortgage and new tesla in the driveway? I’m sorry but I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who spouts righteous indignation on the evils of big tech but has no problem cashing that fat big tech paycheck.
    - zorpner 8y ago
      Working for a company while using it as a staging ground for a coup against it is unacceptable. You seem to have an internal inconsistency in your argument -- assuming that it has the potential to destroy the company, if one fundamentally disagrees with the areas and methods that the leadership has chosen, by far the most effective means of preventing those actions would seem to be using it as a staging ground for a coup.
  - throwaway94713 8y ago
    That is bit like saying people are inherently good.. Just a thought, but perhaps this is just another power play where employee wellness is used as vehicle. The best way forward in enabling unionization and get better benefits is to create more division between employer and employee. If you look more closely that is already happening. In the coming months there will be a lot of rehashing the stories (and even a dedicated movie) where Google employees are deprived of a bigger and better paycheck.
    - ergothus 8y ago
      > That is bit like saying people are inherently good.. Not my intention - I was offering an alternative to the "If you don't like it you should just leave, because appeasement is death for a company"(paraphrase) I was replying to. (Though I do think people as a whole tend towards communal improvement, albeit with lots of short term self-focused protections) > The best way forward [for union/benefits] ... is to create more division between employer and employee OTOH, I wouldn't agree with this statement either. More division is something that CAN happen (and appears to HAVE happened here), but it's a bad idea for both employee and employer to SEEK that out. On the gripping hand, people regularly find a way to perform below my lowest expectations, so I may be pollyannaing all of this.
      - throwaway94713 8y ago
        > More division is something that CAN happen (and appears to HAVE happened here), but it's a bad idea for both employee and employer to SEEK that out. That is just basic politics, strength in numbers. If you want align people with different ideological ideals/background or engage non participants, you use a common ground. What better way than to tell people they are being treated/payed unfairly. Not saying it is the best way or that they are intentionally doing this, but it works.
- themagician 8y ago
  The problem with that is that only a very small portion of employees actually work on the parts of Google that make money. Everything else is an experiment or hedge.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    I think it's not even a hedge or experiment. Everything else they do is smoke and mirrors to keep themselves out of the anti-trust cross hairs. If all they do is search, they have no competitors and are a defacto Monopoly. But as it stands, they can pretend they have many competitors by being in lots of different tiny businesses. Alphabet helps the narrative as well. Oh, Google is a monopoly? Well that's just one of the many businesses we own. Never mind that we lose money on everything else and sell fewer smartphones in a year that apple sells in less than a week.
    - londons_explore 8y ago
      Monopolies don't work like that. You can be a monopoly in one industry even if you're small in another. Google was found to be a monopoly in 'licensable mobile operating systems' recently by the eu
      - jjeaff 8y ago
        EU has completely different rules for monopolies. And the US is based in the US which accounts for around half it's revenue and probably an even higher percentage of its profit. They are most vulnerable in regards to US law.
- komali2 8y ago
  They make money through ads, yea? All this other stuff is just exploration I thought.
- ma2rten 8y ago
  What are you talking about?
whoevercares 8y ago
That’s what happens When Google hired Wall Street executives to manage their actual business: all sort of politics and purging. Reducing cost by most primitive capitalism means(just look at the quality downturn of google cafeteria)
- johannes1234321 8y ago
  Or maybe that's just reality of growth - the larger the organization the harder it is to keep a specific culture as founders can't align culture with all managers anymore, but have to let people go their way.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    They aren't describing a specific culture, though, they're describing Google's general culture, the everyday experience.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
    Larry and Sergey were having affairs with subordinates since the early days, and even as recently as 2014. So maybe the culture was never really that squeaky clean in the first place. I never heard about them retaliating against anyone, or any complaints being filed against them. But . . . would you hear about that? I don't know. I wish I could say that I don't know anyone who this has happened to. But that wouldn't be true. I know of at least one person who has experienced retaliation at Google. She left the company for a while, but ultimately came back.
- rhizome 8y ago
  just look at the quality downturn of google cafeteria This is the most brutal takedown of working at GOOG I've seen in yonks. A legit reason to choose to work somewhere else, all else being equal.
  - bryanlarsen 8y ago
    You're probably joking, but the disappearance of fringe benefits like free food or drinks is a very early warning sign that you should polish your resume. Somebody is running a cost cutting exercise for some reason good or bad. In a modern tech company the only way to cut significant costs is to cut employees, so you might be next...
0815test 8y ago
This is old news. Wasn't there a prominent case of a Google developer alleging that they were fired in retaliation for protected activity relating to political beliefs as well as work conditions? I'm happy that this kind of stuff is being taken more seriously this time around, but let's acknowledge priority and credit, where credit is due.
- diddid 8y ago
  that was my first thought as well
manishsharan 8y ago
Unionize ! Unions are not just about pay. They are also an effective shield against retaliation by management.
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  Indeed. I never tire of the hypocrisy in how these allegedly "progressive" and "left-leaning" tech companies resist unionization.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Are they allegedly progressive and left leaning? I thought libertarianism was the unofficial state religion of the SV elite.
    - lr4444lr 8y ago
      The top brass are probably as you say. The rank and file, at least as I read, are quite sympathetic to causes and issues we'd generally say are politically supportive of union formation. Why haven't we seen any serious effort from within? Maybe it's not so bad over there. Maybe these "retaliation" stories are few and far between, and we're only hear the employee's side of the story.
      - bradlys 8y ago
        SV in itself is this: I support things as long as it benefits me or doesn't change my life. e.g. Let the immigrants in! (But don't build any housing because then they could afford it here) Global warming is real and we should do something! (Ok - let's mandate solar panels on all /newly/ built homes) etc. People here are very much self interested.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        I always assumed it’s because the workers are pretty well off and have a lot to lose. Tech workers are mostly treated and paid well, so even if one believes unions are great, there isn’t much to push them to create one for themselves.
juanbyrge 8y ago
I don't know the specifics here but I wonder if this is a correlation/causation issue. If a bunch of people walked out, and afterwards some of them feel mistreated for whatever reason, it seems easy to assume it's retaliation. It could very well be some completely separate issue (reorg, change in priorities, etc..). Google management is really in a bind here.
- elliekelly 8y ago
  How often does a reorganization or "change in priorities" cause management to force healthy and capable employees to take sick leave? Particularly at a company with an unlimited sick leave policy. It seems to me they're trying to "encourage" these people to leave rather than fire them because that would look like retaliation. Google management isn't in bind, they're using the same playbook that has gotten them into trouble time and again.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    About half the ex Google employees I've spoken to recently talk about projects starting and getting cancelled frequently and often with little warning. It would be suspicious if these events were limited to the people that protested, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Not to mention, while raising complaints about sexual assault would be protected, criticizing Google's decisions to do military contracts and open in China are not. If the company doesn't like what you're saying, and it's not specifically in one of those protected categories, then the company can fire you.
    - elliekelly 8y ago
      You're absolutely correct that a company can fire you for expressing an opinion but I think there's an important distinction that's often missed in the discussion because these are white collar employees. If an employee had simply made a public statement critical of government contracts they could be fired for cause and it would be a non-issue (from a legal perspective, at least). But where Google runs into retaliation trouble isn't with what the employees have said but with how they're saying it: in a group. Employees have an affirmative _right_ under the NLRA to join together and engage in "concerted activity" to advocate for their interests and to do so without interference or coercion from their employer. It doesn't matter whether the employees are critical of sexual harassment or the food in the cafeteria, if two or more of them are making the statement jointly then the matter is far more complicated because the employees have additional rights.
erentz 8y ago
I'm sure Google has never been perfect, but it used to sound like a great place to work free from much of the bullshit that goes on in other companies. I envied those that got to work there for that reason. I'm sure it's still a long way from turning into an Amazon or Microsoft, but I hope it takes some active measures to avoid sliding down that slope.
- JeremyBanks 8y ago
  Is Microsoft still a bad place to work? My impression was that they've gotten their act together over the past decade, and they're near the top of my list for the next time I look for a job. Their strategy and execution seem a lot better from the outside, but I don't personally know any employees to verify what it's like to work there. (I can personally attest to Google being a demoralizing catastrophe of mismanagement, and many of the colleagues I most respected while I was there have left in frustration or in protest.)
  - erentz 8y ago
    It definitely improved over the past few years. But a lot of the people who made it to the top under the old system of bullying and undercutting your peers are still in positions managing people, so you can still see a lot of capriciousness, bullying, politicians hiring politicians, retaliation, so on. Stack ranking is meant to be long gone but you still see managers handing out zero ratings to teammates that clearly don’t deserve it.
    - danbolt 8y ago
      A few millennial classmates of mine (graduated ‘15 or so) say similar things about the company culture. The previous systems in place and the existing old guard have affected their experience working there too.
  - mav3rick 8y ago
    It's too big to paint all experiences with one brush.
- 8y ago
dawhizkid 8y ago
Google's SJW vibes are a major turn off. I'm glad that Amazon and Microsoft didn't cave in to anyone complaining that they bid for US military contracts. Meanwhile, Google caves and refuses to work for the U.S. military and yet secretly tried building censored search for China?
- Angostura 8y ago
  I'm always intrigued by this critique - are you really, actually against the concept of social justice? If so, why?
  - dawhizkid 8y ago
    No, I'm not. But there is a real difference between actual social justice and "social justice warriors" that can't engage in objective debate/truth seeking about issues they claim to be so knowledgable about.
    - drugme 8y ago
      No, I'm not. The way you paint Google's (nominal) pro-justice stance as inherently negative suggests otherwise.
    - komali2 8y ago
      What, specifically, about the protests are Google have made you believe the participants can't engage in objective debate or truth about issues? What, specifically, have led you to believe the Google engineers assigned to weaponized AI projects are not knowledgeable in the subject?
      - lokidokiro 8y ago
        Damore getting fired after employees completely mischaracterized his position by saying he thinks women are inherently inferior to men is one example. Googlers don't participate in debate. They lie about their enemies and demand leadership censor them.
  - deleted 8y ago
powera 8y ago
There's a key difference being over-looked here. Rank-and-file employees have strong legal protections against retaliation for unionization efforts. Employees in management roles do not. I think it's perfectly reasonable for Google to attempt to transition union organizers out of a management role. Of course, "management" is a term that is extremely vague inside Google; at least historically "Tech Leads" would not have been considered managers, so there could be an extremely low proportion of the company in a managerial role.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > I think it's perfectly reasonable for Google to attempt to transition union organizers out of a management role I wouldn't have thought managers would be welcome in a union in the first place? Doesn't a union represent workers against management?
  - duxup 8y ago
    In established US unions often anyone in a management role is not allowed in the union. Having said that unionizing activities are widely protected so ... talking about a union and such is allowed broadly so it would come down to what the actual established union rules would be.
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    That's why you have a separate unions for Managers and Professionals. My Branch in the UK at one point had a CTO of Motorola as a member.
cubaia 8y ago
It's troubling that individuals developing AI applications at Google don't have a voice to raise ethical flags or whistleblow.
- cubaia 8y ago
  Well, forget about AI ethics. I actually personally know someone who was retaliated at Google for raising a basic OSHA violation..
  - jrockway 8y ago
    > I actually personally know someone who was retaliated at Google for raising a basic OSHA violation.. People are still complaining about not enough bathroom stalls? That issue has gone on for so long that I feel like the original person that decided that was an OSHA violation might be wrong. OSHA has had plenty of time to step in and assess penalties, their lack of action is suspicious.
- fourstar 8y ago
  Ha! You ever heard of the phrase vote with your wallet? The same applies here. Don’t. Work. There.
pacala 8y ago
Sounds like the same workers that cheered when one of their colleagues was fired in retaliation for offering a counterpoint to identity politics based HR policies. You reap what you sow.
- pjc50 8y ago
  There is a difference between undermining your colleagues and acting in solidarity with them.
  - luckylion 8y ago
    Yeah, and when somebody suggested something they didn't like, they got him fired. The Sorcerer's Apprentice was written about 200 years ago and is as current as ever.
- diminoten 8y ago
  It's not politics, it's human decency, and he violated human decency.
  - commandlinefan 8y ago
    That's not even a little bit true.
    - diminoten 8y ago
      Framing this as a truth/not truth conversation is only going to cause a flame war...
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    By doing what? Pulling the curtain open on psychological findings? Your idea of human decency is to keep science secret if it has politically inconvenient conclusions? He was trying to support Google's goal or hiring more women. What riled people up was that he proposed doing it by making the company more attractive to them instead of forcing women into a system designed by and for men. Also, politics is human decency. It's a way of imposing our morals onto everyone else. Some people (protesting Googlers) think killing people in wars is against human decency. It is, and it's also political.
malvosenior 8y ago
I know this isn't a popular opinion here, but the reality is that Google has created a hotbed for activism, espoused very political opinions internally, hired Twitter activists, played with identity politics, fired people for right of center political discussion... Now they are having their dirty laundry aired in the media (the same media that is aligned with the social activists they've been courting). This was the inevitable outcome of playing these games and they have absolutely reaped what they've sown. Hopefully this will be a lesson other companies can learn from and we'll start to see a return to "business" instead of "activism+business+social media outrage".
idlewords 8y ago
It's shocking to me that Googlers are using internal/workplace email to organize. These discussions should be moved to a place that is outside Google's reach—have them on Signal, Slack, ProtonMail, whatever. This in is the 0.1% of cases where it's really ill-advised to be using Google tools for organizing.
- rmbryan 8y ago
  Can anyone think of a reason the organizers would have decided to use workplace email for this?
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    One obvious reason is, it's easiest. I hardly know anyone's private contact info, but of course you can always look up colleagues' work emails in the corporate directory. And a large part of organizing is bringing people into the fold, so you'd still need to be organizing at work somehow, even if all you're doing is asking for external communications methods to continue the conversation. There's a much higher drop rate that way though.
  - idlewords 8y ago
    My understanding is it's not just email, but internal message boards. Absolutely fine for gaining an audience, but the discussion should immediately move elsewhere.
  - silversconfused 8y ago
    It's honest. It's transparent. It's trusting. And it's protected by the law and could easily accounted for during discovery for a lawsuit (not a lawyer, do not play one on tv either).
    - idlewords 8y ago
      Being transparent and trusting towards your employer is fine as long as your efforts are ineffective. Once they start to have an impact, it helps not to be totally reliant on your opponent for your ability to hurt them. Legal protections are not very helpful in a context where the other party has unlimited legal resources and time is not on your side.
username223 8y ago
> the company’s lawyers urged the U.S. government to give companies more leeway to reign in rebellious employees from organizing over workplace email. I'm all for tech workers organizing (or dare I say "unionizing"), but it seems like a no-brainer to use non-work email. There are plenty of other free options, including Gmail. If Google retaliated against an employee for something they sent from a personal Gmail account, they would be in a whole lot more trouble.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  It's likely you're missing why they're using work email: It's a way to broadcast and promote the concerns to people who aren't already part of their organized action. From what I've read, there's an incredibly large number of not-work-related email lists internally at Google, they have somewhat of their own private little Internet world there. So "organizing" with their work email wasn't about "the organizers talking to each other", it was about getting people to join the Walkout.
  - username223 8y ago
    You're right, I was forgetting about how Google is its own internet world. The meat-space protections for labor organizers could reasonably apply to email lists, and sending a message to some internal list is easier than putting up flyers in the cafeterias. Still, internal not-work-related mailing lists seem like a bad idea for all involved. For an example that cut the other way, see jwz's "Bad Attitude" list at Netscape, which got subpoenaed by Microsoft: http://www.wired.com/1998/09/microsoft-subpoenas-bad-attitude/ http://www.wired.com/1998/09/microsoft-subpoenas-bad-attitud...
lfcc 8y ago
Perhaps I'm still too naive and innocent, but I don't think this represents the overall reality of the company. A lot of people participated in the protests mentioned and only two statements of retaliations were given (edit: or at least leaked to the media), with "more than a dozen" shared during the meeting in question. Given the sheer size of the company, if there was "systemic" retaliation I'd expect these to be in the order of a few hundreds, or many dozens at the least. In addition, we're only seeing this from the perspective of those who feel they were retaliated against because of those protests, with absolutely no additional context or perspective of the managers/execs/peers (which I think we will never obtain for rather obvious reasons). Personally, I have found Google to have a really open culture of communication. You're generally free to give your opinion. I'd be much more afraid of retaliation from peers due to something I said being considered offensive by some of them, than by an executive or my manager due to speaking out against the way the company does things (which happens all the time and by large amounts of employees). Of course that's just one experience and I may have been lucky with my own team. disclaimer: I recently joined Google but I'm only aware of these incidents from media publications such as this and everything above is just my personal opinion on the incident. Edit: Added that "more than a dozen" other stories were shared in the meeting according to the article, as I had originally missed that.
- bsamuels 8y ago
  > and during the meeting they shared more than a dozen other stories of internal retribution that they had collected over the past week So more than two accounts of retaliation
  - lfcc 8y ago
    I missed that. I'll correct my original post. Thanks!
- hobs 8y ago
  For each reporter - how many people do you think did not report? Do you honestly think ALL people reported? If its not dozens unreported per one report (or more) I'd eat my hat. In my history of corporations, almost all bad behavior goes unreported because those in power are doing the bad thing. It seems like Google is not different in this respect.
mruts 8y ago
I’m not sure this is a problem. Of course a company is going to retaliate against employees that are protesting instead of working. What did the protestors honestly expect? That they would get promoted? If I ran a company, and my employees were protesting decisions that I thought were in the best interest of shareholders, I would first listen to them. If after listening I still believed the course of action was correct I would have no other choice but to punish/fire them. It’s not the protestors’ job or responsibility to go around the company again and again instead of proper channels. At some point, your morality and the morality of corporations and capitalism will always conflict. Is Google going into China a decision I like. No, it’s not. Would I maybe be upset if I was a developer on a censored search engine? Of course. But is it the right thing to do for the shareholders? Yes! Of course. China is a huge market and represents massive potential for Google. They have a moral responsibility to maximize profits for their investors and that should always be the primary mandate for companies (unless they are a B corp, like Etsy). This will naturally conflict with personal morality, as it should, but cognitive dissonance is always a given. The only question is whether you recognize and accept or deny it’s constant presence in everything.
- britch 8y ago
  You say that corporations have a "moral responsibility to maximize profits for their investors." Why? Why does profit have to be only motivator? I understand it's a norm. I understand it's expected. Can you give me a reason beyond that? It's not like Google is doing poorly and has to go to China to survive. Why contribute to the Chinese government's oppression of dissidents and minorities if you don't have to?
  - luckylion 8y ago
    > Why? Why does profit have to be only motivator? It doesn't have to be, it's what the investors want. The investors decide what gets to be optimized for, because they won't invest otherwise. It's not always profit, it might also be growth. And yes, there are cases where it's something else all together, but for the most part it's measurable and something that involves making your investors richer. > Why contribute to the Chinese government's oppression of dissidents and minorities if you don't have to? If you build the tech and the platform, you are in control, and you can stop at any point, you can nudge and you can pull. If you're not doing it, somebody else will and you won't have any influence to make it better/less bad. That has a long tradition, even in non-profit companies like banking coops. People want to play the lottery, so you offer them a lottery. But by buying tickets to your lottery, they are putting 50% of the ticket price into their savings accounts. 50% aren't 100%, but they sure are better than 0%. If perfect, good and neutral aren't available options, less bad looks good to me - even if it means that you will have to get your hands dirty and get your karma into trouble.
skybrian 8y ago
It sounds like the issue is people in some sort of management or leadership role who are also leading protests in the same area (AI ethics)? This isn't exactly a conflict of interest, but it sounds like a conflict of something?
samantha_thomas 8y ago
I'm not surprised that staffers were treated in such ways. That's very good to hear that they have been able to stand up for themselves.

212 points by mastazi 8y ago

Google workers again showing that they do not plan to understand how google really makes money because their salaries depend on not understanding it.

ergothus 8y ago
...or they are trying to convince Google to find a different means of making money.
- cloakandswagger 8y ago
  And will destroy the company in the process. They already sunk a large military contract and are setting their sights on AI in general. If Google accedes to all the various pet issues of individuals working there then they won't have a business anymore. This is the risk of appeasement. Google (and every company for that matter) should try a new stance: If you fundamentally disagree with the areas and methods that our leadership has chosen for our business, then find a new place to work. Working for a company while using it as a staging ground for a coup against it is unacceptable.
  - urbanjunkie 8y ago
    Actually it's not unacceptable. But hey, you're unimportant, and your views really don't matter.
  - adamsea 8y ago
    IMHO AI ethics are a legitimate area of discussion, as should be any moral ethical issue w/regards to a business practice. And it sounds like Google is doing basically what you are saying.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    I've always felt that it's good to let people know if you have a problem BEFORE ditching them. If they don't change, then I can leave with a clean conscience. Sometimes they decide to change, sometimes they don't. When they don't, sometimes they change after I leave, sometimes they don't. This is the normal back-and-forth between parties that won't always agree. I don't really see a reason to be upset at communication and get angry about "appeasement".
  - infinity0 8y ago
    Perhaps they already tried to find a different company with better policies, but wasn't able to? There's a few of them around, but not that many of them. Are you the sort of person that tells people not to complain about the politics in your home country or to "move to China/North Korea if you don't like it here"? That would seem consistent with what you're saying.
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      Seems a bit different. Google is not a democracy made up of the employees.
      - infinity0 8y ago
        Right, Google, China and North Korea, none of them are democracies. If you fundamentally disagree with their values, find a new place to live? Hey, at least it's possible to move to a democratic country, but a democratic corporation? Not that many of them around.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Would you agree with your own argument when it comes to say, illegal activities? Or how about if we were talking about Facebook instead of Google? Should people have zero insight into issues which could cost a company money or PR? Or should everyone expect to toe the line and simply follow the suits lockstep into hell?
    - cloakandswagger 8y ago
      I think there's a clear difference between breaking the law and a personal moral objection to doing business with your country's military.
      - fwip 8y ago
        Is there? The US military violates international law when it commits war crimes.
  - crispyambulance 8y ago
    > Google (and every company for that matter) should try a new stance... The "stance" you describe is not a new stance at all. It is a very old one-- as old as working-for-the-man itself. Perhaps it was pipe dream to actually believe the "don't be evil" pledge? Whatever the case, the outrage of the dissents does seem cloyingly naive and I find it difficult to feel sorry for them. Maybe it's time for people to learn that "mega-corps" aren't exactly the best place for idealists after all. It might be a good thing for google to shed some talent to the wind and see what comes of it. Who knows, it might lower housing cost and seed many more start-ups and small businesses with new people.
    - repolfx 8y ago
      New stance for Google. As for "don't be evil" that became useless a long time ago, it was just an invitation for everyone to describe their pet hate as "evil" even when that was clearly over the top. When I worked there I routinely saw trivial things like reskins of Gmail be described as evil (because we're ignoring feedback from users who didn't like it!). The word became debased to the point that it was worthless to even have such a slogan. All the current issues are morally debatable at best, and simply not evil at worst. Even if you consider the US military hopelessly bloated, for example, is their view that the USA shouldn't have an army to defend itself at all? If not, why not, and how is it consistent with wanting Google to not be involved in such matters?
      - crispyambulance 8y ago
        I come to a similar conclusion as you but from an opposite side. It really is morally indefensible that Google provide technology for military drone warfare (for example). If someone working at Google finds that ghoulish, it is their responsibility to speak up about it and leave (or be fired) if that's what it comes down to. Lucky for them, they probably have plenty of job prospects and don't "need" Google. Similarly for the military, they're perfectly capable of funding and staffing their own research centers on novel ways to incinerate human beings. Does a surveillance capitalism platform really need to do that for them?
  - ben509 8y ago
    Honestly, though, speaking as someone who had to use things made by military contractors, having people who object to the military working on them seems like a recipe for disaster. But that's a pretty small slice of Google's business. > Working for a company while using it as a staging ground for a coup against it is unacceptable. So what does unacceptable mean? Historically, coups like this happen to organizations all the time, to the point where conservatives consider it a fact of life.[1][2] It may be unacceptable now, but they'll just keep at it until their view becomes orthodoxy; it's more or less the point of liberalism. I'm also skeptical that the people in senior positions are that far from them ideologically; they simply have legal obligations to shareholders. Another notion of acceptability is whether a coup sinks the company in the meantime. But it's a risk either way, unless the complaints are entirely without merit, and that seems unlikely. Let's say Googlers who dispute this did quietly leave over these issues as you suggest. Google's incentives are structured perversely, the "user as product" business model is just ethically dysfunctional. Losing people who act as a check on bad behavior can thus compound these problems over time. If people then decide they've had enough (buoyed by a string of complaints from ex-Googlers) and go to Congress, that can also effectively sink the company. [1]: https://www.isegoria.net/2008/07/robert-conquests-three-laws-of-politics/ https://www.isegoria.net/2008/07/robert-conquests-three-laws... [2]: https://opc.org/OS/html/V5/1a.html https://opc.org/OS/html/V5/1a.html
    - ergothus 8y ago
      > legal obligations to shareholders. I've heard this isn't nearly as true as current conventional wisdom would lead one to believe. (to your point, those in power may feel they MUST do certain things even if they don't have to). If so, push back is one of the ways to correct any deviation and move towards a balance.
      - ben509 8y ago
        Yeah, I abbreviated that point as I felt I was rambling and it's outside my expertise, but it's definitely more complicated than "we must make these profit numbers go up or go to jail."
  - Aunche 8y ago
    To be fair, Google was the one that came up with "Don't be evil" in the first place. I'm sure that attracted a bunch of talented bright-eyed engineers with a black and white sense of morality. This helped them in the past, but they now have to live with the consequences of their narrative.
  - joejerryronnie 8y ago
    Sure these activists can go work for a non-profit which supports their moral stances but who will pay for that $1.5 million dollar mortgage and new tesla in the driveway? I’m sorry but I have a hard time taking anyone seriously who spouts righteous indignation on the evils of big tech but has no problem cashing that fat big tech paycheck.
  - zorpner 8y ago
    Working for a company while using it as a staging ground for a coup against it is unacceptable. You seem to have an internal inconsistency in your argument -- assuming that it has the potential to destroy the company, if one fundamentally disagrees with the areas and methods that the leadership has chosen, by far the most effective means of preventing those actions would seem to be using it as a staging ground for a coup.
- throwaway94713 8y ago
  That is bit like saying people are inherently good.. Just a thought, but perhaps this is just another power play where employee wellness is used as vehicle. The best way forward in enabling unionization and get better benefits is to create more division between employer and employee. If you look more closely that is already happening. In the coming months there will be a lot of rehashing the stories (and even a dedicated movie) where Google employees are deprived of a bigger and better paycheck.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    > That is bit like saying people are inherently good.. Not my intention - I was offering an alternative to the "If you don't like it you should just leave, because appeasement is death for a company"(paraphrase) I was replying to. (Though I do think people as a whole tend towards communal improvement, albeit with lots of short term self-focused protections) > The best way forward [for union/benefits] ... is to create more division between employer and employee OTOH, I wouldn't agree with this statement either. More division is something that CAN happen (and appears to HAVE happened here), but it's a bad idea for both employee and employer to SEEK that out. On the gripping hand, people regularly find a way to perform below my lowest expectations, so I may be pollyannaing all of this.
    - throwaway94713 8y ago
      > More division is something that CAN happen (and appears to HAVE happened here), but it's a bad idea for both employee and employer to SEEK that out. That is just basic politics, strength in numbers. If you want align people with different ideological ideals/background or engage non participants, you use a common ground. What better way than to tell people they are being treated/payed unfairly. Not saying it is the best way or that they are intentionally doing this, but it works.
themagician 8y ago
The problem with that is that only a very small portion of employees actually work on the parts of Google that make money. Everything else is an experiment or hedge.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  I think it's not even a hedge or experiment. Everything else they do is smoke and mirrors to keep themselves out of the anti-trust cross hairs. If all they do is search, they have no competitors and are a defacto Monopoly. But as it stands, they can pretend they have many competitors by being in lots of different tiny businesses. Alphabet helps the narrative as well. Oh, Google is a monopoly? Well that's just one of the many businesses we own. Never mind that we lose money on everything else and sell fewer smartphones in a year that apple sells in less than a week.
  - londons_explore 8y ago
    Monopolies don't work like that. You can be a monopoly in one industry even if you're small in another. Google was found to be a monopoly in 'licensable mobile operating systems' recently by the eu
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      EU has completely different rules for monopolies. And the US is based in the US which accounts for around half it's revenue and probably an even higher percentage of its profit. They are most vulnerable in regards to US law.
komali2 8y ago
They make money through ads, yea? All this other stuff is just exploration I thought.
ma2rten 8y ago
What are you talking about?

whoevercares 8y ago

That’s what happens When Google hired Wall Street executives to manage their actual business: all sort of politics and purging. Reducing cost by most primitive capitalism means(just look at the quality downturn of google cafeteria)

johannes1234321 8y ago
Or maybe that's just reality of growth - the larger the organization the harder it is to keep a specific culture as founders can't align culture with all managers anymore, but have to let people go their way.
- rhizome 8y ago
  They aren't describing a specific culture, though, they're describing Google's general culture, the everyday experience.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  Larry and Sergey were having affairs with subordinates since the early days, and even as recently as 2014. So maybe the culture was never really that squeaky clean in the first place. I never heard about them retaliating against anyone, or any complaints being filed against them. But . . . would you hear about that? I don't know. I wish I could say that I don't know anyone who this has happened to. But that wouldn't be true. I know of at least one person who has experienced retaliation at Google. She left the company for a while, but ultimately came back.
rhizome 8y ago
just look at the quality downturn of google cafeteria This is the most brutal takedown of working at GOOG I've seen in yonks. A legit reason to choose to work somewhere else, all else being equal.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  You're probably joking, but the disappearance of fringe benefits like free food or drinks is a very early warning sign that you should polish your resume. Somebody is running a cost cutting exercise for some reason good or bad. In a modern tech company the only way to cut significant costs is to cut employees, so you might be next...

0815test 8y ago

This is old news. Wasn't there a prominent case of a Google developer alleging that they were fired in retaliation for protected activity relating to political beliefs as well as work conditions? I'm happy that this kind of stuff is being taken more seriously this time around, but let's acknowledge priority and credit, where credit is due.

diddid 8y ago
that was my first thought as well

manishsharan 8y ago

Unionize ! Unions are not just about pay. They are also an effective shield against retaliation by management.

lr4444lr 8y ago
Indeed. I never tire of the hypocrisy in how these allegedly "progressive" and "left-leaning" tech companies resist unionization.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Are they allegedly progressive and left leaning? I thought libertarianism was the unofficial state religion of the SV elite.
  - lr4444lr 8y ago
    The top brass are probably as you say. The rank and file, at least as I read, are quite sympathetic to causes and issues we'd generally say are politically supportive of union formation. Why haven't we seen any serious effort from within? Maybe it's not so bad over there. Maybe these "retaliation" stories are few and far between, and we're only hear the employee's side of the story.
    - bradlys 8y ago
      SV in itself is this: I support things as long as it benefits me or doesn't change my life. e.g. Let the immigrants in! (But don't build any housing because then they could afford it here) Global warming is real and we should do something! (Ok - let's mandate solar panels on all /newly/ built homes) etc. People here are very much self interested.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      I always assumed it’s because the workers are pretty well off and have a lot to lose. Tech workers are mostly treated and paid well, so even if one believes unions are great, there isn’t much to push them to create one for themselves.

juanbyrge 8y ago

I don't know the specifics here but I wonder if this is a correlation/causation issue. If a bunch of people walked out, and afterwards some of them feel mistreated for whatever reason, it seems easy to assume it's retaliation. It could very well be some completely separate issue (reorg, change in priorities, etc..). Google management is really in a bind here.

elliekelly 8y ago
How often does a reorganization or "change in priorities" cause management to force healthy and capable employees to take sick leave? Particularly at a company with an unlimited sick leave policy. It seems to me they're trying to "encourage" these people to leave rather than fire them because that would look like retaliation. Google management isn't in bind, they're using the same playbook that has gotten them into trouble time and again.
- manfredo 8y ago
  About half the ex Google employees I've spoken to recently talk about projects starting and getting cancelled frequently and often with little warning. It would be suspicious if these events were limited to the people that protested, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Not to mention, while raising complaints about sexual assault would be protected, criticizing Google's decisions to do military contracts and open in China are not. If the company doesn't like what you're saying, and it's not specifically in one of those protected categories, then the company can fire you.
  - elliekelly 8y ago
    You're absolutely correct that a company can fire you for expressing an opinion but I think there's an important distinction that's often missed in the discussion because these are white collar employees. If an employee had simply made a public statement critical of government contracts they could be fired for cause and it would be a non-issue (from a legal perspective, at least). But where Google runs into retaliation trouble isn't with what the employees have said but with how they're saying it: in a group. Employees have an affirmative _right_ under the NLRA to join together and engage in "concerted activity" to advocate for their interests and to do so without interference or coercion from their employer. It doesn't matter whether the employees are critical of sexual harassment or the food in the cafeteria, if two or more of them are making the statement jointly then the matter is far more complicated because the employees have additional rights.

erentz 8y ago

I'm sure Google has never been perfect, but it used to sound like a great place to work free from much of the bullshit that goes on in other companies. I envied those that got to work there for that reason. I'm sure it's still a long way from turning into an Amazon or Microsoft, but I hope it takes some active measures to avoid sliding down that slope.

JeremyBanks 8y ago
Is Microsoft still a bad place to work? My impression was that they've gotten their act together over the past decade, and they're near the top of my list for the next time I look for a job. Their strategy and execution seem a lot better from the outside, but I don't personally know any employees to verify what it's like to work there. (I can personally attest to Google being a demoralizing catastrophe of mismanagement, and many of the colleagues I most respected while I was there have left in frustration or in protest.)
- erentz 8y ago
  It definitely improved over the past few years. But a lot of the people who made it to the top under the old system of bullying and undercutting your peers are still in positions managing people, so you can still see a lot of capriciousness, bullying, politicians hiring politicians, retaliation, so on. Stack ranking is meant to be long gone but you still see managers handing out zero ratings to teammates that clearly don’t deserve it.
  - danbolt 8y ago
    A few millennial classmates of mine (graduated ‘15 or so) say similar things about the company culture. The previous systems in place and the existing old guard have affected their experience working there too.
- mav3rick 8y ago
  It's too big to paint all experiences with one brush.
8y ago

dawhizkid 8y ago

Google's SJW vibes are a major turn off. I'm glad that Amazon and Microsoft didn't cave in to anyone complaining that they bid for US military contracts. Meanwhile, Google caves and refuses to work for the U.S. military and yet secretly tried building censored search for China?

Angostura 8y ago
I'm always intrigued by this critique - are you really, actually against the concept of social justice? If so, why?
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  No, I'm not. But there is a real difference between actual social justice and "social justice warriors" that can't engage in objective debate/truth seeking about issues they claim to be so knowledgable about.
  - drugme 8y ago
    No, I'm not. The way you paint Google's (nominal) pro-justice stance as inherently negative suggests otherwise.
  - komali2 8y ago
    What, specifically, about the protests are Google have made you believe the participants can't engage in objective debate or truth about issues? What, specifically, have led you to believe the Google engineers assigned to weaponized AI projects are not knowledgeable in the subject?
    - lokidokiro 8y ago
      Damore getting fired after employees completely mischaracterized his position by saying he thinks women are inherently inferior to men is one example. Googlers don't participate in debate. They lie about their enemies and demand leadership censor them.
- deleted 8y ago

powera 8y ago

There's a key difference being over-looked here. Rank-and-file employees have strong legal protections against retaliation for unionization efforts. Employees in management roles do not. I think it's perfectly reasonable for Google to attempt to transition union organizers out of a management role. Of course, "management" is a term that is extremely vague inside Google; at least historically "Tech Leads" would not have been considered managers, so there could be an extremely low proportion of the company in a managerial role.

chrisseaton 8y ago
> I think it's perfectly reasonable for Google to attempt to transition union organizers out of a management role I wouldn't have thought managers would be welcome in a union in the first place? Doesn't a union represent workers against management?
- duxup 8y ago
  In established US unions often anyone in a management role is not allowed in the union. Having said that unionizing activities are widely protected so ... talking about a union and such is allowed broadly so it would come down to what the actual established union rules would be.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  That's why you have a separate unions for Managers and Professionals. My Branch in the UK at one point had a CTO of Motorola as a member.

cubaia 8y ago

It's troubling that individuals developing AI applications at Google don't have a voice to raise ethical flags or whistleblow.

cubaia 8y ago
Well, forget about AI ethics. I actually personally know someone who was retaliated at Google for raising a basic OSHA violation..
- jrockway 8y ago
  > I actually personally know someone who was retaliated at Google for raising a basic OSHA violation.. People are still complaining about not enough bathroom stalls? That issue has gone on for so long that I feel like the original person that decided that was an OSHA violation might be wrong. OSHA has had plenty of time to step in and assess penalties, their lack of action is suspicious.
fourstar 8y ago
Ha! You ever heard of the phrase vote with your wallet? The same applies here. Don’t. Work. There.

pacala 8y ago

Sounds like the same workers that cheered when one of their colleagues was fired in retaliation for offering a counterpoint to identity politics based HR policies. You reap what you sow.

pjc50 8y ago
There is a difference between undermining your colleagues and acting in solidarity with them.
- luckylion 8y ago
  Yeah, and when somebody suggested something they didn't like, they got him fired. The Sorcerer's Apprentice was written about 200 years ago and is as current as ever.
diminoten 8y ago
It's not politics, it's human decency, and he violated human decency.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  That's not even a little bit true.
  - diminoten 8y ago
    Framing this as a truth/not truth conversation is only going to cause a flame war...
- lopmotr 8y ago
  By doing what? Pulling the curtain open on psychological findings? Your idea of human decency is to keep science secret if it has politically inconvenient conclusions? He was trying to support Google's goal or hiring more women. What riled people up was that he proposed doing it by making the company more attractive to them instead of forcing women into a system designed by and for men. Also, politics is human decency. It's a way of imposing our morals onto everyone else. Some people (protesting Googlers) think killing people in wars is against human decency. It is, and it's also political.

malvosenior 8y ago

I know this isn't a popular opinion here, but the reality is that Google has created a hotbed for activism, espoused very political opinions internally, hired Twitter activists, played with identity politics, fired people for right of center political discussion... Now they are having their dirty laundry aired in the media (the same media that is aligned with the social activists they've been courting). This was the inevitable outcome of playing these games and they have absolutely reaped what they've sown. Hopefully this will be a lesson other companies can learn from and we'll start to see a return to "business" instead of "activism+business+social media outrage".

idlewords 8y ago

It's shocking to me that Googlers are using internal/workplace email to organize. These discussions should be moved to a place that is outside Google's reach—have them on Signal, Slack, ProtonMail, whatever. This in is the 0.1% of cases where it's really ill-advised to be using Google tools for organizing.

rmbryan 8y ago
Can anyone think of a reason the organizers would have decided to use workplace email for this?
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  One obvious reason is, it's easiest. I hardly know anyone's private contact info, but of course you can always look up colleagues' work emails in the corporate directory. And a large part of organizing is bringing people into the fold, so you'd still need to be organizing at work somehow, even if all you're doing is asking for external communications methods to continue the conversation. There's a much higher drop rate that way though.
- idlewords 8y ago
  My understanding is it's not just email, but internal message boards. Absolutely fine for gaining an audience, but the discussion should immediately move elsewhere.
- silversconfused 8y ago
  It's honest. It's transparent. It's trusting. And it's protected by the law and could easily accounted for during discovery for a lawsuit (not a lawyer, do not play one on tv either).
  - idlewords 8y ago
    Being transparent and trusting towards your employer is fine as long as your efforts are ineffective. Once they start to have an impact, it helps not to be totally reliant on your opponent for your ability to hurt them. Legal protections are not very helpful in a context where the other party has unlimited legal resources and time is not on your side.

username223 8y ago

> the company’s lawyers urged the U.S. government to give companies more leeway to reign in rebellious employees from organizing over workplace email. I'm all for tech workers organizing (or dare I say "unionizing"), but it seems like a no-brainer to use non-work email. There are plenty of other free options, including Gmail. If Google retaliated against an employee for something they sent from a personal Gmail account, they would be in a whole lot more trouble.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
It's likely you're missing why they're using work email: It's a way to broadcast and promote the concerns to people who aren't already part of their organized action. From what I've read, there's an incredibly large number of not-work-related email lists internally at Google, they have somewhat of their own private little Internet world there. So "organizing" with their work email wasn't about "the organizers talking to each other", it was about getting people to join the Walkout.
- username223 8y ago
  You're right, I was forgetting about how Google is its own internet world. The meat-space protections for labor organizers could reasonably apply to email lists, and sending a message to some internal list is easier than putting up flyers in the cafeterias. Still, internal not-work-related mailing lists seem like a bad idea for all involved. For an example that cut the other way, see jwz's "Bad Attitude" list at Netscape, which got subpoenaed by Microsoft: http://www.wired.com/1998/09/microsoft-subpoenas-bad-attitude/ http://www.wired.com/1998/09/microsoft-subpoenas-bad-attitud...

lfcc 8y ago

Perhaps I'm still too naive and innocent, but I don't think this represents the overall reality of the company. A lot of people participated in the protests mentioned and only two statements of retaliations were given (edit: or at least leaked to the media), with "more than a dozen" shared during the meeting in question. Given the sheer size of the company, if there was "systemic" retaliation I'd expect these to be in the order of a few hundreds, or many dozens at the least. In addition, we're only seeing this from the perspective of those who feel they were retaliated against because of those protests, with absolutely no additional context or perspective of the managers/execs/peers (which I think we will never obtain for rather obvious reasons). Personally, I have found Google to have a really open culture of communication. You're generally free to give your opinion. I'd be much more afraid of retaliation from peers due to something I said being considered offensive by some of them, than by an executive or my manager due to speaking out against the way the company does things (which happens all the time and by large amounts of employees). Of course that's just one experience and I may have been lucky with my own team. disclaimer: I recently joined Google but I'm only aware of these incidents from media publications such as this and everything above is just my personal opinion on the incident. Edit: Added that "more than a dozen" other stories were shared in the meeting according to the article, as I had originally missed that.

bsamuels 8y ago
> and during the meeting they shared more than a dozen other stories of internal retribution that they had collected over the past week So more than two accounts of retaliation
- lfcc 8y ago
  I missed that. I'll correct my original post. Thanks!
hobs 8y ago
For each reporter - how many people do you think did not report? Do you honestly think ALL people reported? If its not dozens unreported per one report (or more) I'd eat my hat. In my history of corporations, almost all bad behavior goes unreported because those in power are doing the bad thing. It seems like Google is not different in this respect.

mruts 8y ago

I’m not sure this is a problem. Of course a company is going to retaliate against employees that are protesting instead of working. What did the protestors honestly expect? That they would get promoted? If I ran a company, and my employees were protesting decisions that I thought were in the best interest of shareholders, I would first listen to them. If after listening I still believed the course of action was correct I would have no other choice but to punish/fire them. It’s not the protestors’ job or responsibility to go around the company again and again instead of proper channels. At some point, your morality and the morality of corporations and capitalism will always conflict. Is Google going into China a decision I like. No, it’s not. Would I maybe be upset if I was a developer on a censored search engine? Of course. But is it the right thing to do for the shareholders? Yes! Of course. China is a huge market and represents massive potential for Google. They have a moral responsibility to maximize profits for their investors and that should always be the primary mandate for companies (unless they are a B corp, like Etsy). This will naturally conflict with personal morality, as it should, but cognitive dissonance is always a given. The only question is whether you recognize and accept or deny it’s constant presence in everything.

britch 8y ago
You say that corporations have a "moral responsibility to maximize profits for their investors." Why? Why does profit have to be only motivator? I understand it's a norm. I understand it's expected. Can you give me a reason beyond that? It's not like Google is doing poorly and has to go to China to survive. Why contribute to the Chinese government's oppression of dissidents and minorities if you don't have to?
- luckylion 8y ago
  > Why? Why does profit have to be only motivator? It doesn't have to be, it's what the investors want. The investors decide what gets to be optimized for, because they won't invest otherwise. It's not always profit, it might also be growth. And yes, there are cases where it's something else all together, but for the most part it's measurable and something that involves making your investors richer. > Why contribute to the Chinese government's oppression of dissidents and minorities if you don't have to? If you build the tech and the platform, you are in control, and you can stop at any point, you can nudge and you can pull. If you're not doing it, somebody else will and you won't have any influence to make it better/less bad. That has a long tradition, even in non-profit companies like banking coops. People want to play the lottery, so you offer them a lottery. But by buying tickets to your lottery, they are putting 50% of the ticket price into their savings accounts. 50% aren't 100%, but they sure are better than 0%. If perfect, good and neutral aren't available options, less bad looks good to me - even if it means that you will have to get your hands dirty and get your karma into trouble.

skybrian 8y ago

It sounds like the issue is people in some sort of management or leadership role who are also leading protests in the same area (AI ethics)? This isn't exactly a conflict of interest, but it sounds like a conflict of something?

samantha_thomas 8y ago

I'm not surprised that staffers were treated in such ways. That's very good to hear that they have been able to stand up for themselves.