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Google Protest Leader Leaves
- sudoaza 7y agomy my there's been 3 oped against google in Bloomberg just this last two days... A little too obvious pals...
- JeremyBanks 7y agoEvery thread critical of tech now has cynical anti-media comments upvoted near the top, completely ignoring the substance of the article. Is that how afraid we have become of legitimate criticism?
- pessimizer 7y agoNot even cynical, conspiratorial. Something's going around between a certain type of tech worker where all coverage of tech issues is framed as a conspiracy of old media against new media (as if new media doesn't own massive pieces of old media.) I think it's to deal with the cognitive dissonance of working on things that are thought of by the majority of the public as bad, but without actually having to confront the specifics.
- sudoaza 7y agoI couldn't care less about google, but Bloomberg has a past of bullshit stories (like the china chip thing) and 3 articles in just 2 days rings the bell
- ulfw 7y agoThat’s because the link submitted was from Bloomberg. You think this wasn’t reported elsewhere? e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20695964/google-protest-leader-meredith-whittaker-leaves-company https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20695964/google-protest-l...
- ulfw 7y agoGooglers haven’t realised yet that they have different leadership now. The open culture of discussing and opposing things that Google does is slowly degrading.
- cobookman 7y agoRealize Meredith and her crew are a minority of employees. We are talking < 10% of employees shared all her views. Majority of googlers wanted maven. They wanted search in China. Biggest change to culture is people getting tired of SJW outrage. And a focus back on our users and business
- ulfw 7y agoThe majority wanted Project Maven and search in China?
- icxa 7y agoRephrased slightly differently: The majority want opportunities that will advance their careers, increase their stock values, and keep the company doing well (which usually means bigger bonuses)
- coliveira 7y agoRephrasing even more: there is a number of rats that are capable of doing anything to advance their careers and to make more money. When a few people appear that value their conscience more than money, these rats will fight them.
- dang 7y agoWould you mind reviewing the site guidelines? They ask you not to take HN threads further into flamewar and not to call ante-upping names like "rats". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 7y ago
- whatshisface 7y agoGoogle works like crazy to hire all of the smartest and the best people, but do they really need them? Billions and billions in shareholder value could be extracted by hiring a bunch of mid-tier Java programmers and having them farm Ad Words for the next decade, until the first competition shows up.
- ulfw 7y agoMany great people are hired not necessarily to move Google forward, but so that they don’t move a Google-competitor forward.
- dmurdoch 7y agoThis makes me think about something. I don't work at a FAANG company, nor have I ever been to SV, nor do I know anyone who works at one of the many enormous tech companies around SV. In the TV show Silicon Valley they have characters who sit around unassigned doing nothing at the Google-like company in the show. Does this actually happen? Are there people hired at these companies who just don't have a project? Its entirely feasible that Google could afford to do this just to create a dearth of engineers in the area.
- colonelpopcorn 7y agoI seem to remember reading an article on "rest and vest" employees. Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14943146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14943146
- ulfw 7y agoWhat happens is that some people work on projects that never see the light of day because they’re not fully thought through or fully staffed or really as important enough. But they can still spend years working on them. The show is (by design) over the top. But there is a piece of truth in it. That’s why it’s funny for everyone who has been at these companies because everyone can see real-life resemblances. Before someone downvotes me: I am implying that SOME people are like this. By no means the majority or god-forbid everyone. Resting till vesting is a real thing though.
- FakeComments 7y agoGood. People like her have created a toxic work environment fostering an ideological monoculture, which led her employer to being investigated federally for discrimination and political interference. People like that should be fired.
- mtgx 7y agoGoogle is going to shoot itself in the foot over the long term with the type of decisions it has been making lately both against its users and against its employees. I imagine that since the protests started they've already begun filtering out the people with a higher level of ethics in their interviews - but the new class of people they hire are not going to give them the same results in the long-term, especially if they are no the type of employees to question the addition or removal of a feature, etc, but just do as they are told. Google's current leaders are slowly but surely killing Google's spirit.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- neilv 7y agoI've figured for a long time that the hazing interview process is partly to select for people who'll play along with whatever the company does.
- gtfratteus 7y agoAs a googler, I say good. People like her have made going to work exhausting. Leave your politics at home and let me do my job in peace.
- dmix 7y agoI was amazed there was even a Resist@Google group within Google. I’m okay with people protesting the companies actions but Google seemed to be internally supporting protests on company time and property. Which has pitted employees against each other across political lines. I don’t see why Google cant just keep it apolitical in the work environment while being open to critiques externally and not caring what their employees do politically in their spare time.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoI thought this story had already been reported a month ago. But no, I was wrong, that was the other organizer of the Google Protests, Claire Stapleton: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/google-walkout-organizer-claire-stapleton-resigns https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/google-wa... So to clarify, both of the female Google employees who lead/organized the protests have now left because they say they faced retaliation. That looks very bad for Google.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoWhittaker did not (as far as this article describes) say why she left.
- knd775 7y agohttps://www.wired.com/story/google-walkout-organizers-say-theyre-facing-retaliation/ https://www.wired.com/story/google-walkout-organizers-say-th... >In a message posted to many internal Google mailing lists Monday, Meredith Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after the company disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told that her role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was told that, in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at New York University.
- dmix 7y agoWhat retaliation have they faced from Google exactly?
- jakelazaroff 7y agoFrom this article: > In an email to colleagues, Whittaker said her Google manager told her to "abandon [her] work on AI ethics" and blocked a request to transfer internally. From the aforelinked Guardian article: > In the letters, Stapleton said that two months after the walkout, she was demoted and “told to go on medical leave” despite not being sick. The demotion was reversed after she hired a lawyer, she said.
- SolaceQuantum 7y agoDo we have any real information regarding if this is as a result of retaliation? The article provides evidence that at least one of the organizers claim they're being retaliated against; do we know how widespread this may be?
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoI don't know, this seems like a pretty weak article. Sometimes people just change jobs and there's nothing nefarious about it. If Whittaker had been fired for her activism, or even just felt forced out, wouldn't she herself be talking about it? She wasn't afraid to tell the media about Google mistreating her in the past.
- kodz4 7y agoInteresting to see as polarization increases, as it will given the environment, whether a company can break into two along political lines. Has that happened before in history? I wouldn't mind a seperate conservative google and a liberal google. Let the quality of the product offered decide which is better.
- geofft 7y agoHasn't that question already been answered by the fact that the epicenter of tech is in liberal Silicon Valley? If conservatives could compete, they would have done so already. There are exceptions of course, but statistically, leftists are better at tech.
- tvanantwerp 7y agoCorrelation != causation. Could be that, because cities become tech hubs, and because cities tend to lean left, that anyone who wants to work in tech will move to a city and be influenced by the left-leaning culture. I've known people who were farther right, went into tech, moved to cities, and are now farther left.
- damnyou 7y agoOr maybe the intellectual capacity required to do well in tech also makes it more likely one would recognize instances of social injustice. It's just pattern matching after all.
- geofft 7y agoSure, but the effect is the same. A "right-wing Google" won't succeed because left-wing policies are more beneficial to the growth of cities, which are beneficial to the success of organizations like Google. It is actually sort of surprising to me that cities are tech hubs - you should be able to deliver fantastic products while working remotely and never meeting anyone in person. (And the free software/open source movement is an existence proof of that.) So there must be something else about cities that makes them better at not just the success of tech companies but the success of groups of tech companies.
- geggam 7y agoResistance is futile.(sic) The borg will win. #humor
- dorusr 7y ago"Whitaker is part of a group of six women (...)" Finally, women that complain about actual problems. "sexual harrassment (...) conservatives (...)" Ugh. I don't know the details of it all. But it seems nowadays all critique always has to be about conservatives and or sexual harrassment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- duxup 7y agoIt's always hard to gauge this stuff. The early moment seemed to have support but it seemed to sort of fizzle later on... but the media attention remained making it really hard to get a feel for the real scope of these issues / how many google folks shared their views. I've worked long enough to encounter management who would retaliate, and employees that once they find a cause are willing / do everything they can to die on it. I don't know if ANY of what happened at google is one or the other or both or none.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago>Whittaker also publicly denounced some Google decisions, including the appointment of Kay Coles James, a conservative think tank leader, to an AI ethics board. Google soon nixed the board. I wonder how much that contributed. No matter the personal political leanings of the employees, most companies try to stay on the good side of both sides of the political aisle. When the president of Heritage Foundation (which is about as close to establishment conservatism as possible) was opposed so vehemently, it really created a rift with conservatives and now there are Republican Senators who now are calling for Google to get reigned in. The business leadership can’t be too happy about that.
- damnyou 7y agoThe fundamental problem of tech companies is that they need to keep two groups of people happy: whoever is in power, which is the bigoted right at the moment, and employees, who are generally not bigoted so on the American political spectrum are overwhelmingly left-wing. This is an impossible task. My opinion is that Google should support its employees and deliberately position itself against the right. No matter how much ground you concede to them, they're going to act in bad faith anyway, so why listen to them at all?
- ApolloFortyNine 7y ago>which is the bigoted right at the moment Ah yes, let's generalize ~50% of the country as bigots. That surely will lead to quality discussion.
- damnyou 7y agoThe leaders certainly all are. Not saying anything about ordinary people. Why would you think I'm optimizing for quality of discussion? I'm optimizing for the material conditions of oppressed people, not some silly debate conducted on an online forum. It's more important to state the obvious truth than to soften it.
- 0815test 7y ago
- charliesharding 7y agoI don't really understand why it's surprising to anyone that they would face "internal retaliation" after exposing their employer as evil and boycott worthy to the entire world. By publicizing it to the degree that they did and attaching their name to it, they were putting their interests over the company. If my company started doing business practices that I didn't approve of, I would try my hardest to change the direction from the inside out or I would leave and then criticize. I don't understand the desire to stay with a company and accept paychecks while simultaneously publicly denouncing and leading protests against them.
- Jasper_ 7y agoIt sounds like she did step 1 (try to change from the inside, first privately, then through employee protest), and now she's doing step 2 in your program. What would you do differently?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- charliesharding 7y agoI wouldn't have led highly publicized protests against a company that I was accepting paychecks from
- darkwater 7y agoSo if the company were you are working at, treats you badly, you would resign over going on strike to force a change and then stay at the company, for example?
- malvosenior 7y agoI would (and have). Trying to change the company hurts you and helps the company (that was treating you bad). Just leave. Save your energy, don't put any information public that will make you look like a bad employee and find a better job. The best revenge is living well.
- choonway 7y agoWrong fit. You should always recognize who is your paymaster. She would be better off as an independent activist, a face for other disgruntled employees who have to remain anonymous because they have responsibilities to family etc.
- fyoving 7y agoOne less person on the payroll to generate negative news and internal strife is surely a positive development.
- entropea 7y agoPositive for Google & Shareholders, but not for the rest of the 7.7 billion people on Earth.
- simion314 7y agoImagine someone at Boeing would have generated some negative news about the MAX... I would think that smart people would admire people that speak against bad things like sexual harassment(which is illegal AFAIK) but I seems that we have people here that would prefer not see the dark sports of their favorite company. I was reading the Amazon protest thread and it seems that the capitalists/free market guys would be fine with sexual harassment too because free markets would fix it and you have the choice to resign, too bad some communist made it illegal /s
- renjimen 7y agoA positive development for investors, sure. A negative development for anyone with a working moral compass.
- dang 7y agoWe've banned this account for serially posting corporate propaganda for Google, which you've been doing on HN for years. Since banning dozens of your accounts hasn't convinced you to stop, I'm going to post about this increasingly loudly until you do stop. You should think about the many Google employees on HN, who overwhelmingly use this site in good faith. They represent Google the right way, by participating honestly in threads and commenting about what they know. They will cringe when they hear what you are doing—which if you keep doing it, they will. The agenda you've been propagating is a way to hurt Google, not help it. We ask HN users every day not to accuse others of astroturfing or shillage, but the other side of the contract is that when we find real evidence of it, we crack down. Edit: I should add, for those who are worried about bias, that we have nothing against Google and are only interested in protecting HN against abuse. People do that for other companies too, not just Google, and we're just as against it in those cases.
- draw_down 7y agoIt’s interesting to compare this dustup to the “fired for truth” guy, I’ll say that. That guy seemed to have a lot more defenders, external to the company at least. I guess “free speech” or “discrimination” wasn’t the issue after all.
- thinkingemote 7y agoIts a shame this submission might be flag killed as there continues to be important issues to discuss. The main thing it seems to me is that if a worker is unhappy with their company and is so unhappy their protest (and organise a walk out) their employer its even more clear they are unhappy working there. The unhappiness or alienation will increase. I might have got it wrong though .... did these protestors say they were happy working there and just unhappy with other things or people? It seems like it's a wider issue that's common across all work places. What should be the best way for people happy working with their colleagues or team but concerned about other things with the organisation to continue their good working environment and share their views? Maybe it's just a HR thing.
- 50656E6973 7y ago>What should be the best way for people happy working with their colleagues or team but concerned about other things with the organisation to continue their good working environment and share their views? Maybe it's just a HR thing. It's a corporate thing. Profits over ethics, laws, and people. That simple principle cannot be changed from the inside.
- gcc_programmer 7y agoI am so glad I don't work in the left-wing dominated FAANG companies... To any sane, moderate person out there: leave those places, and join Fin-Tech or Finance: the pay is a bit lower, but you don't have to deal with PC culture... Until they ruin it as well...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dannykwells 7y agoIt stories like these that make me wonder, is it better to take an adversarial/external approach to change (like Meredith) or to work slowly inside an org and change it from the inside? Of course the external/adversarial approach can generate huge changes quickly by relatively junior folks, but always comes at a huge cost and is not sustainable (see: most of the people who did these protests have left). So you get one shot, and worse, it sends a message to others that this behavior isn't tolerated. So in the long run, could even lead to worse outcomes overall. On the other hand, the idea that you can change the system before it changes you...well we all know how that usually works out.
- hangonhn 7y agoChange from inside has a very poor track record. People who say that are usually rationalizing their involvement. Even non-violent protests are adversarial. The history of the world seems to suggest that is the one tried and known method for change is adversarial confrontation. If you look at it from a game theory/economics point of view, there is little incentive for people to change unless you change the landscape and the factors that compel their behavior. Change from inside really doesn't have that because organizations/organisms/nature are resistant to change -- if it is working why risk it? Very few organizations have the ability to disrupt itself.
- luckylion 7y ago> Change from inside has a very poor track record. Has it? Or is it just less visible because it happens over a decade or two? Germany's left wing and their March Through The Institutions comes to mind as a very successful change from inside.
- _zachs 7y agoCool! Does she want a medal or something? I'm not sure why people feel like they should be rewarded by their own company for publicly going against them. Talk about entitlement.
- imtyler 7y agoIn addition to being somewhat condescending, your language seems to imply that an employee is never justified in questioning their company. For instance, you've said "why people feel" instead of "why this person felt." Additionally, you're broadly referring to "companies" and not just "Google." Whether or not protesting was the correct course of action in this particular case, I'm not sure. But please don't broadly imply that all whistle-blowers are entitled reward-seekers.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't post personal attacks to HN or call names in arguments. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ehvatum 7y ago“Whittaker also publicly denounced some Google decisions, including the appointment of Kay Coles James, a conservative think tank leader, to an AI ethics board. Google soon nixed the board.” Many people hold strong beliefs that conflict with the strong beliefs of others and engage in open debate rather than walk-outs. I can only assume Whittaker realized that her views would not prevail, but felt that she was nonetheless in the right, and therefore resorted to alternative means of pressing her point.
- renjimen 7y agoOr maybe she just didn't want to work for a company with questionable morals anymore.
- leftyted 7y agoThere are two narratives: 1. These people are rabble-rousers who will never be happy and are disrupting the work environment at Google. 2. These people are highlighting legitimate problems within the company and are trying to enact positive change. Take your pick. But be aware of both narratives. And be aware that neither of them is unreasonable.
- nvrspyx 7y ago1. is a bit presumptuous though if you’re going to jump to the conclusion that they’ll never be happy and that this would be a continuous issue after the enacted change that they were protesting for. It’s a rather baseless assumption if the only thing to go off of was an organized protest with well-defined ethical motivations. Unless there’s evidence of rabble rousing intention, it seems that 1. is unreasonable. With that said, I have not followed this closely. For all I know, that evidence does exist and/or Google leadership has chosen not make said evidence publicly available.
- leftyted 7y agoPeople who tend toward 1. would say that Google has bent over backwards to accomodate protesters and has acceded to their demands multiple times, e.g. canceling their project in China and dropping their contract with the US military. Seems reasonable to me.
- nvrspyx 7y agoThat’s a very good point. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I haven’t followed the situation (or other Google situations like the ones you mentioned) closely. However, I feel a just-as-reasonable explanation is that Google did those things to save face because if they truly felt those were the right things to do, there would be no retaliation and there would be an implicit agreement that the intention was morally motivated and not intended rabble-rousery. On the other hand if the situations you mentioned are unrelated to the Women’s March, which it seems they are, then I really don’t see them as being relevant to whether or not the people in question were rabble rousers. Protestors are not a constant set of people and each protest and the organizers of said protest have to be looked at individually, at least in terms of determining whether 1. or 2. is most reasonable. Otherwise, it’s a broad generalization of “protestors”, which would inadvertently make 2. the more reasonable narrative as well because 1. would be moot to the specifics of the particular situation.
- chupa-chups 7y agoAlmost same content but w/o free article limit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20695964/google-protest-leader-meredith-whittaker-leaves-company https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20695964/google-protest-l...
- hirundo 7y agoRowboat politics. If one of the rowers decides that she doesn't like the direction the coxswain is steering and starts to row in the other direction, it tends to annoy the other rowers. This is true whether she is right or not. If she can't change the coxswain's mind it's better for both her and the rest of the crew for her to find another rowboat.
- enraged_camel 7y agoYour analogy fails right away with a simple example: if the renegade rower realizes that the team is rowing towards a waterfall, then it is indeed not in the team’s best interest to push him or her out.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- LordFast 7y agoPioneers are seldom welcomed with open arms and often made into pariahs. Not picking a side here, just stating a fact. The fact is also such that most pioneers would not end up having chosen a better direction than status quo. The harder some people try and toe the line, the harder some other people will try to rebel, and then the system starts trending more towards extremes.
- soup10 7y agoNo matter how good intentioned if you stir up shit for your employer they are going to want you gone.
- rimliu 7y agoChange your organization or change your organization.
- shay_ker 7y agoI'm surprised no one has linked Meredith Whittaker's statement on this: https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/onward-another-googlewalkout-goodbye-b733fa134a7d https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/onward-another-googlewalko...
- hnthrow 7y agoshe's a fraud. https://googlersagainstdeceit.blogspot.com/ https://googlersagainstdeceit.blogspot.com/
- googtrash123234 7y agoThrow-away account. Personal opinion, and I don't want any shit from it. These people do not represent the majority of googlers' views or experiences IMO. I am sure there are genuine grievances, but they're representing a tiny-but-vocal minority group that is bringing the company into disrepute over what I think are relatively run of the mill problems that happen everywhere. For want of a better term, they strike me as "trouble makers". Re-orgs happen all the time in Google - it is quite common for people to arrive at work and discover that their job has been re-orged out of existence and they've got to find a new role for themselves within 60-90 days, or basically get sacked. If you were a manager with spare headcount and literally 100s of qualified applicants (internal and external) for that headcount on your team, would you take on someone who is a known agitator and does a lot of "off piste" work, is divisive, and generally ruffles feathers instead of getting their work done? Or pick one of the other brilliant & experienced people without a history of stirring up shit for social media outrage points?
- franimalia 7y agoCute timing wrt Whittaker’s departure, considering Peter Thiel’s diatribe against Google just yesterday regarding Google’s involvement in proceedings with China. [1] Meanwhile, Facebook assumes widespread immunity in ethical ontology within Thiel’s (goofy) narrative, all being quite selectively convenient given Thiel sits on FB’s board. Both stories were initially broken by Bloomberg, which is also charmingly harmonic, temporally. Thiel likely pushed to collate onto Whittaker’s thunder is my (mere) immediate speculation. Disclaimer: Worked as an engineer at Bloomberg 8+ years (now in academic scientific research), I doubt Bloomberg consciously coordinated the stories but anything’s possible, I suppose. (as mentioned, more likely the stories coordinated themselves in alignment to Bloomberg publication - if anything). 1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20447055 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20447055
- pontifier 7y agoThis may be a bit off topic, but I registered the domain GoogleProtest.com several years ago when I had a problem with them. Does anyone have a suggestion of how I can donate it to whoever needs it?