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I work for Google, can confirm many of the points you've made. While I haven't experienced any toxicity at Google, your analysis of the internal communication c

I work for Google, can confirm many of the points you've made. While I haven't experienced any toxicity at Google, your analysis of the internal communication culture raises really good points. On one side, the internal social justice campaigns are incredibly pervasive due to large usage of internal message boards. On the other side, Google is one of the few companies that allows this level of internal airing of dirty laundry. I've heard stories of similar incidences at Microsoft which were swiftly shut down. The problem is that when you encourage internal dialogue and communication at a huge company like this, you'll never have people with different opinions pitching in. You'll mostly get people with the most 'acceptable' opinions, the others being silent as they value their jobs. It's a huge risk to be singled out as someone who thinks Damore was right or that Maven should've been continued. As a result, you'll get a constant stream of one-sided social justice campaigns which inevitably leak to the press. Encouraging internal dialogue and communication but not understanding its limits at scale is one of the biggest mistakes Google has made. Google was built on principles of open company-wide communication and sharing of information, and while it clearly doesn't work as intended anymore, there's too much inertia to change the course.

buboard 7y ago
Isn't that forum huge legal liability for the company if employees start suing each other?
stcredzero 7y ago
As a result, you'll get a constant stream of one-sided social justice campaigns which inevitably leak to the press. Encouraging internal dialogue and communication but not understanding its limits at scale is one of the biggest mistakes Google has made. It's not just scale in numbers of people. It's also scale in terms of the potential value which can be captured by viral campaigns and media attention. When a "scene" is out of the way and non-mainstream, there can be a high degree of trust. However, when the "scene" gets hot, and there's some serious money and power to be gained, the sociopaths and other bad actors start coming out of the woodwork. https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
ben7799 7y ago
Should have added, I worked one place we got acquired by a giant company that most here would say is really f*cking evil (TM) and even there I never detected any of the toxic stuff these Google stories talk about. That place was actually Evil enough I quit within a year to go back to another small company but it was nothing like what you read about Google. A different axis of evil.
- grape_eater 7y ago
  I should've been more explicit - I haven't experienced any toxicity at Google. However, due to its internal communication culture Google is far more prone to blowups of well-publicized scandals than other companies of similar size. I'll edit my post to make it clearer.
  - ben7799 7y ago
    For sure.. it sounds like Google has more of a problem with everything becoming public as opposed to a higher % of people behaving badly. Stuff like being able to call a Town Hall Meeting to criticize the decisions of upper management seems unique to Google though. Imagine that happening at some place like Oracle!
  - aiyodev 7y ago
    I’m curious how you reconcile the admission that you work at a place with bigoted witch hunts with the claim that you’ve never experienced any toxicity. What is your position on the war with Eastasia?
    - stevenhuang 7y ago
      Google is a huge company, so why's that so hard to believe? In fact I'm curious how you'd so easily write off the whole company and everyone who works there from few pieces of bad press.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  I think it's possible to work inside a giant war machine that causes all sorts of suffering, while on the inside, it's all brightly lit, comfy, people are polite and even compassionate to each other, both at and outside of work. We can be very reflected and open to criticism even, though only within a specific framework of abstractions and euphemisms, which aren't inherent to the people working there, but rather inherent to the the culture, or the profession, etc. Maybe like the cells in the body of a criminal and those in the body of the saint aren't really different, per se, and it's more about the state between them. I don't know how to put this well, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a word for how something can behave very differently if you rearrange its parts, or excite them in a different order, etc.
ssivark 7y ago
> Encouraging [internal] dialogue and communication but not understanding its limits at scale is one of the biggest mistakes [Google] has made. [Google] was built on principles of open company-wide communication and sharing of information, and while it clearly doesn't work as intended anymore, there's too much inertia to change the course. Couldn’t the same basically be said of Google/Facebook/Twitter’s public communication platforms too? :-)

buboard 7y ago

Isn't that forum huge legal liability for the company if employees start suing each other?

stcredzero 7y ago

As a result, you'll get a constant stream of one-sided social justice campaigns which inevitably leak to the press. Encouraging internal dialogue and communication but not understanding its limits at scale is one of the biggest mistakes Google has made. It's not just scale in numbers of people. It's also scale in terms of the potential value which can be captured by viral campaigns and media attention. When a "scene" is out of the way and non-mainstream, there can be a high degree of trust. However, when the "scene" gets hot, and there's some serious money and power to be gained, the sociopaths and other bad actors start coming out of the woodwork. https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

ben7799 7y ago

Should have added, I worked one place we got acquired by a giant company that most here would say is really f*cking evil (TM) and even there I never detected any of the toxic stuff these Google stories talk about. That place was actually Evil enough I quit within a year to go back to another small company but it was nothing like what you read about Google. A different axis of evil.

grape_eater 7y ago
I should've been more explicit - I haven't experienced any toxicity at Google. However, due to its internal communication culture Google is far more prone to blowups of well-publicized scandals than other companies of similar size. I'll edit my post to make it clearer.
- ben7799 7y ago
  For sure.. it sounds like Google has more of a problem with everything becoming public as opposed to a higher % of people behaving badly. Stuff like being able to call a Town Hall Meeting to criticize the decisions of upper management seems unique to Google though. Imagine that happening at some place like Oracle!
- aiyodev 7y ago
  I’m curious how you reconcile the admission that you work at a place with bigoted witch hunts with the claim that you’ve never experienced any toxicity. What is your position on the war with Eastasia?
  - stevenhuang 7y ago
    Google is a huge company, so why's that so hard to believe? In fact I'm curious how you'd so easily write off the whole company and everyone who works there from few pieces of bad press.
PavlovsCat 7y ago
I think it's possible to work inside a giant war machine that causes all sorts of suffering, while on the inside, it's all brightly lit, comfy, people are polite and even compassionate to each other, both at and outside of work. We can be very reflected and open to criticism even, though only within a specific framework of abstractions and euphemisms, which aren't inherent to the people working there, but rather inherent to the the culture, or the profession, etc. Maybe like the cells in the body of a criminal and those in the body of the saint aren't really different, per se, and it's more about the state between them. I don't know how to put this well, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a word for how something can behave very differently if you rearrange its parts, or excite them in a different order, etc.

ssivark 7y ago

> Encouraging [internal] dialogue and communication but not understanding its limits at scale is one of the biggest mistakes [Google] has made. [Google] was built on principles of open company-wide communication and sharing of information, and while it clearly doesn't work as intended anymore, there's too much inertia to change the course. Couldn’t the same basically be said of Google/Facebook/Twitter’s public communication platforms too? :-)