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Google's Civil War
- ddebernardy 7y agohttps://outline.com/ggbLy5 https://outline.com/ggbLy5 to get past the obnoxious mandatory cookie.
- dillonmckay 7y agopast, as a preposition.
- lisper 7y ago"Past" is a preposition, e.g. "First past the post"
- dillonmckay 7y agoParent used ‘passed’, then updated to ‘past’.
- thrower123 7y agoAlso gets rid of the awful autoplay video above the fold that starts blaring out immediately. Thanks!
- lisper 7y agoSimply disabling Javascript works too.
- skookumchuck 7y agoThis is why I use a separate system to play music, not my computer.
- atomical 7y agoBoth Apple and Google support Saudi Arabia by refusing to remove the Absher app from the app store. Could any current employees shed light on if there is any internal disagreement on this?
- Razengan 7y agoThere's also an official Chinese propaganda app on the App Store that you cannot even rate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19601091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19601091
- kyrra 7y agoI have no real understanding of the situation. But I believe the app is just a webview on top of various Saudi websites. It doesn't even do push notifications, they come instead through text messaging.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoDo you want a central authority dictating what code you can run on your computer?
- atomical 7y agoIs an employer allowed to use code to discriminate against female employees? No, that's outrageous. Apple and Google should take the high road.
- fyoving 7y agoI don't understand how someone can proudly be a nuisance to those who sign their paychecks nor how can an employer tolerate any of it, at the very least this situation is unfair to the majority of employees who are just "going to work". Not sure what's behind Google's inaction here, they really shouldn't be worried about the trouble makers defecting to somewhere else that most likely won't tolerate their bullshit.
- dralley 7y agoSo what you're saying is, employees shouldn't complain about (censorship, bosses tolerating sexual harassment, etc.), they should either put up with it or leave quietly (possibly to their own financial detriment)? I can't say I agree with you. What you're suggesting is basically the Wall Street model where bad and unethical institutional behavior gets a suboptimal amount of pushback.
- herohamp 7y agoThey should but they then also face the consequences
- dralley 7y agoAnd many do. Are you suggesting otherwise? But I don't think they "should" do so if they're calling out legitimately poor behavior that has been unaddressed by any other avenue. That wording is quite strange to me. Would you say that Rosa Parks "should" have faced the consequences of stirring things up as she did? Accepting that it is possible is a necessary part of civil disobedience, but the imposition of those consequences by higher powers is not.
- jpdb 7y agoEmployees who can't voice their dissatisfaction for the status quo without fear of repercussion can't truly voice their dissatisfaction. There's an EXTREME amount of power imbalance between employer and employee; if employees have to fear retaliation for voicing their concerns it has a chilling effect. I'm okay with consequences, but voicing your concerns in public isn't grounds for consequences.
- rgoulter 7y agoThe Google organizers have taken to calling themselves the “entitled vocal majority,” after one employee publicly referred to them as the “entitled vocal minority.” I feel like this is a small example of where my views of these employees disagrees with the author's. (I'm fine with employees having strong opinions on ethical issues, but this kindof puff quote doesn't lend them respect). I dunno if the author thinks they're being impartial. Can't complain if they know (and the reader knows) where their preference lies.
- pjc50 7y agoThere's a long history of naming yourself after the negative term your enemies use for you in order to neutralise it. Also "entitled vocal minority" works nicely as a parody of "moral majority".
- mcguire 7y agoThe Bolsheviks were actually a minority.
- paleotrope 7y agoThat statement by itself requires knowledge that bolshevik means something like "majority" in russian.
- wbl 7y agoNo they were the majority in 1917. Earlier they had been the minority, but post Kornilov they were a majority at the time of the storming of the winter palace.
- bijant 7y agoThe Bolsheviks were a majority within the RSDLP in 1903. The extent of their support in 1917 within the wider population is highly debatable but their thought-leadership led to sufficient mindshare to (belatedly) ship the October revolution and scale their product to numerous global markets from the Americas to China within the 20th century. Adoption is currently stagnating while the product is being refactored. The Bolsheviks, was a faction founded by Vladimir Lenin that split from the Menshevik faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) at its Second Party Congress in 1903. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsheviks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsheviks
- idlewords 7y agoI'd be curious to hear rank-and-file Googlers' views on how this dynamic is playing out within the company. It's in both journalists' and organizers' interests to play it up, so the reality can be hard to discern.
- Eridrus 7y agoLike every issue, there are those who are obsessed with it, for whom it takes over their lives, and then there is a large swath of people who either agree or not, but do so without much intensity. Since the intensity of most people's beliefs is low and the specific issues are not part of day to day work, it's not really a thing that comes up except when new news breaks and people talk about it at lunch for a day. When you take a look at how many people, in an industry where it's trivial to get another job, quit over any of these issues, it's in the single digits.
- inlined 7y agoThe set may be larger than reported. E.g. I didn’t sign the Maven petition because I was up for promotion and work in Cloud.
- idlewords 7y agoI think this is the key question. Is there a "dark matter" of concerned Google employees who would potentially mobilize if pushed too far, or is this just a vocal fringe element in a company with a 100,000 strong work force?
- Eridrus 7y agoI mean this is kind of my point, you weren't willing to take the small step of signing a petition because you thought it could endanger your promotion. Most people are the same way, they have beliefs, but they don't believe them intensely enough to risk the downsides of doing something about it.
- UncleMeat 7y agoIt has come up precisely twice in my immediate working group in the last few years (the Damore thing and the first walkout). It has affected by work literally not at all. Some people care deeply about this stuff. I agree with a fair amount of it. But from my perspective calling it a civil war is frankly ludicrous.
- deogeo 7y ago> Things got even uglier when Damore sympathizers leaked comments made on the message boards by Fong-Jones, a trans woman, and other Google diversity advocates to right-wing news sites. [this fortune.com article] This got me curious, so I tried searching for these leaked comments, while avoiding far-right news sites. This is what I found: > Diversity advocates at Google – including the Mountain View tech giant's highest-ranking inclusion officer – are being targeted by a small group of colleagues in an internal culture war, according to a new report. [...] screenshots from Google internal discussion boards have been leaked and posted on far-right websites including Breitbart and the blog Vox Popoli, which espouses white supremacy. [1] > 15 current Google employees accuse coworkers of inciting outsiders to harass rank-and-file employees who are minority advocates, including queer and transgender employees. Since August, screenshots from Google’s internal discussion forums, including personal information, have been displayed on sites including Breitbart and Vox Popoli, a blog run by alt-right author Theodore Beale, who goes by the name Vox Day. [2] > Their personal information and comments expressed in internal company forums have been leaked to the public and published on far-right websites, leading to mistreatment by online vigilantes. [..] "We need to see concrete and meaningful action," Fong-Jones said. [..] Chuck Johnson, who was kicked off Twitter in 2015 after tweeting about wanting to "take out" civil rights activist DeRay McKesson [3] > Their tactics allegedly include “weaponiz[ing] human resources” by goading diverse members of Google’s team into making inflammatory statements, and reporting those statements as violations of the company’s rules around civility. [..] Pro-diversity employees say that their messages on internal Google forums have also been photographed and shared outside the company, leading to their publication on far-right platforms [4] A lot of condemnation of the leaks, but I was shocked to find no trace of the leaked comments themselves - though the people whose comments were leaked are interviewed and given the chance to present their side. The contrast is greatest in [3], where the only comment quoted is the two-word "take out" of the presumably far-right Chuck Johnson. So we have, broadly speaking, two sides making controversial comments. The comments of one side aren't published (except by far-right news sites), only their explanations given to the media. The other side does have their incriminating comments published (or parts of them), but doesn't get much of a chance to defend or explain themselves after that. I'm just glad this one-sided reporting is on the side of truth and the good guys. [1] https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2018/01/30/googles-civil-war-diversity-advocates-threatened-and-harassed-by-co-workers-new-report-says/ https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2018/01/30/googles... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/the-dirty-war-over-diversity-inside-google/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-dirty-war-over-diversity-ins... [3] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/01/26/google-diversity-culture-war/1071107001/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/01/26/google-diversi... [4] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/google-has-become-ground-zero-for-the-culture-wars https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/google-has-become-gr...
- lemony_fresh 7y agoThis is the consequence of the postmodern neo-marxist ideology that has permeated the education system in recent years that scholars such as Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt and Camille Paglia have been warning about. Jordan Peterson specifically has been warning that those indoctrinated in such philosophies, mainly through humanities studies, have made their way into corporate bureaucracies via HR departments.
- nickserv 7y agoIf anything there's not enough employees owning the means of production, as this story shows.
- PorterDuff 7y agoI guess that's possible although I have no interaction with kids in their 20s and early 30s at those companies. I can't remember any political interests when I was that age aside from the odd scattering of typical programmer libertarianism, a natural side effect of living in a bubble. What I find amusing is all the fuss at these companies, perhaps about real problems perhaps not, while those same employees are all busily laying brickwork for a kind of permanent surveillance state. Given the leviathan they are building, you'd think they'd just bug the cafeteria and everyones cubicle in order to catch evil doers.
- eropple 7y agoPeople can care about more than one thing at a time, yes?
- MagicPropmaker 7y agoThis was my first thought. While most employees of Google are just normal people who just want to get their work done, there's a vocal minority to whom it's their life. And they are infantatilized by Google. They take the bus to work, get their Free Lunch, get their nap time or yoga time. And they like to cause trouble. Most of these protests stem from a case where one employee harassed another and the company handled it. The harasser was persuaded to resign, but since there was no criminal or civil determination in a court, they didn't withhold from him promised compensation for work done, per a prior agreement. This makes business sense--the money was already allocated, and withholding it could lead to a messy distracting lawsuit. This vocal minority was angry he got money, and imagined in some way it was as if they themselves were subject to his bad behavior. And while this case involved "sexual harassment", it in no way affected other employees. The fact that one "harasser" seemingly got away with it with a pile of money has no bearing on how other employees are treated. Similarly Damore (while I believe his memo was idiotic) -- his speech in no way could cause harm to any employee. He was summarily fired which is an extreme action to take, considering the person who leaked an internal google message board was never punished. He's now gone. People should put a period on it and move on with their work lives, or find another job.
- pjc50 7y ago> And in an attempt to quell the increase in uncivil interactions on its internal platforms, its new “community guidelines” ban slurs and references to sex acts in any work document Rather surprised that people were getting away with that in the first place. Edit: just realised that, like codes of conduct, the key difference is that now the rule also applies to the people at the top.
- itronitron 7y agoalso, how about banning slurs and references to sex acts in any work communication?
- darkpuma 7y agoIf I twist my ankle and exclaim "fuck!", would that be in violation? It's not a dumb question, there are some people who are genuinely offended by that sort of language. Would the rules back them up, or me? In theory I'm in favor of these sort of rules, but I hope they leave some wiggle room for common sense, preferably erroring on the side of tolerance.
- microcolonel 7y ago> If I twist my ankle and exclaim "fuck!", would that in violation? The answer depends, of course, on the opinion the moral busybodies have of you, whether that's based on your job performance or your immutable characteristics. I've seen some pretty arbitrary outcomes from policies like this, it generally has the effect of making the IMs and intranet forums less useful, since people can't feel at ease no matter how well-intentioned they are.
- selectodude 7y agoI think you can exclaim "fuck!", but maybe keep the "fucks" out of internal documentation and written communication.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- onetimemanytime 7y agoA day late a a dollar short. Google's biggest crime was what they did to the web. After using them to promote Google they turned the tables and essentially started them of clicks, unless they bought ads. Google search is ads, unless you keep scrolling and scrolling.
- whatshisface 7y ago>The company says it is trying to manage its ballooning diversity of perspectives and projects Hopefully they haven't been axing perspectives the way they've been axing projects!
- lawrenceyan 7y ago> at Microsoft, employees say they don’t want to build technology for warfare Does anyone know what exactly Microsoft is doing with the military? Is this like better image recognition for drone strikes / targeting humans or more like providing operating systems for military administration? Because those could both be technically construed as “building technology for warfare” with only the first choice being the actually bad type of work.
- rudolfwinestock 7y agoBill Gates & Paul Allen originally founded Microsoft in Albuquerqe, New Mexico, in order to be reasonably close to Los Alamos because they wanted to get military contracts.
- wcarss 7y agoThis may not be a disagreement -- but I was under the impression they moved to Albuquerque to work at/with MITS[1], the manufacturer of the Altair, and Microsoft's first customer. 1 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Instrumentation_and_Telemetry_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Instrumentation_and_Tele...
- revvx 7y agoThe answer here confirms what you said: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=500807 http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=500807
- rudolfwinestock 7y agoI stand corrected.
- dfilppi 7y agoUsually you replace them.
- inlined 7y agoThis was a fine recap; I’m surprised more hasn’t leaked to the press. Google’s culture is shifting for the worse, but I won’t give specifics because that would require leaking.
- inlined 7y agoI would define Google’s troubles or decline in three parts: 1. Outrage over previous sexual misconduct 2. Outrage over Google seeking amoral revenue streams 3. Declination of perks The first one is just the chickens coming to roost. The second two I’ve always felt we’re due to a transition in CFOs.
- repolfx 7y agoAlleged misconduct. That's what Googlers seem to have lost sight of. Take Andy Rubin. One of Google's most valuable executives, he built up Android from nothing. He has a consensual relationship with a woman, but it starts to cool off and fade away. Around this time she accuses him of "pressuring" her into a sexual act, but the whole thing happened behind closed doors and there's no way to know what really happened. Has he done anything wrong? Who knows? Google can't actually adjudicate this dispute, and Rubin claims innocence. In the ultra-feminist environment Google has accepted internally a woman can't ever be disbelieved so Rubin must be punished. But the situation is deeply unjust and everyone knows it. Rubin did great things for Google, and Google is now rewarding him by stabbing him in the back. So an arrangement is made: everyone stays quiet and the pain of the injustice and betrayal is soothed with a big payment. Years later Googlers find out about this situation and instead of being outraged that a successful executive was fired on the basis of nothing more than heresay by someone he was in a relationship with, are outraged that he wasn't treated even more harshly. What message does this send to the future Rubins of the world? It says: don't team up with Google.
- chuckout5783 7y agoThrowaway account: the "civil war" is from a bunch of self-aggrandizing assholes. Yes there have been some big stunts (e.g. the walk out), but on the whole this counts for nothing for the rank and file employees that I know and work with. About as far as most people o work with go in terms of "civil war" is changing their profile picture to say "no to retaliation" which is so vapid and pathetic it's not even worth doing.
- googthrow2019 7y agoAgreed. Management needs to fire these people. If they sue, great: Google's ensuing victory will create a precedent that workplace protections do not extend to unbounded activism that employees falsely claim is whistleblowing.