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My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work (people in their
by high_derivative 7y ago
My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work (people in their 20s), or on putting in their 8 hours and going home to their families (people >30 mostly, of course they also want to do good work, just have additional new priorities in a young family).
Then there is a vocal minority who leverage that no individual's performance really affects the money printing machine. They blatantly view the company and its resources as a means to further their political goals.
They come across as incredibly entitled and tone-deaf against the actual working class or people actually suffering from oppression (say, women being incarcerated in Iran for decades for taking off their veils, or protesters in HK). No matter how petty and entitled the request, anything denied is interpreted as some larger act of "violence" against them.
What I didn't/don't understand is why management allowed that to happen. Either they actually believe in the political goals themselves, are afraid of the conflict, or believe it just does not matter for the company.
I think what management fails to understand often is that giving in to a demand is not viewed with gratitude but merely as accepting what's naturally right and good. In other words, giving in to demands 1..n does not give you credit when demand n+1 is posed. The ultimate conflict is just delayed.
- joelx 7y agoI agree completely with this. Keep in mind that true evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while still alive. Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.
- cj 7y agoDid you just compare Google's advertising business to assassination, murder, and war crime?
- CoolGuySteve 7y agoYes and no, some of the projects mentioned in the article, like Project Dragonfly, involved developing the kind of censorship tools necessary to prop up dictators like the ones you mentioned. That’s not whining imo, that’s standing up to exactly the breed of ‘True Evil’ you define here. We have seen this before in tech: Nazi Germany was probably IBM’s second largest customer at the time. There is a moral imperative to not let something like that happen again. We should all be disturbed that the executive team at Google felt that Project Dragonfly was appropriate.
- andonisus 7y agoMy opinion is that someone is going to be providing that service, so it might as well be me (better the devil you know than the devil you don't).
- komali2 7y agoExactly the reasoning used by arms dealers.
- andonisus 7y agoThe world is not absolute. It would be nice to be able to take an absolutist, moral stance against things I disagree with. But as I get older, I realize that one must be able to compromise and see in shades of grey.
- komali2 7y agoCompromise is important, and one doesn't need to go the way of the Sith, but giving in on your morals is pretty much what leads to problems in this world.
- andonisus 7y agoI agree! But also being able to compromise so that you still can wield influence is important. For example, if an American company (such as Google) does not fill the need for this service for China, that leaves the door open for other countries to fill this void -- countries which America might not want to be furnishing this service.
- molteanu 7y ago...or invading and destroying countries and countless communities across the globe with a smile on your face. I agree with you completely!
- tropicalia 7y agotrue evil is... This is a straw man argument. The critique made of Google is not that has come to embody "true evil". But that it has (by degrees) slouched towards moral ambivalence, and acquiescence of (yes) evil. Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare. I think you are perfectly aware that Google is engaged in a lot more than simply the business of serving banner ads.
- GoodJokes 7y agoGoogle enables the US military industrial complex. The US military is pretty evil relative to your above examples. Also, internet ads are way more evil than you think. You know why the news and Facebook suck no. Ads! Profit driven news on the back of a internet ad industry dominated by google. Get a clue.
- lowdose 7y agoTrue evil would be if the Kremlin were to warn about the threat posed by Belgium or France to Russian security and the need to contain this threat and even declaring a national emergency. Like the USA did in their backyard, "that little region over here" aka South America. Crimea was a very logical step after NATO kept violating the promise made to never move an inch geographical beyond Berlin.
- wruza 7y agoTrue evil is also believing all crap that yellow press and country-level echo chambers produce and then to bring it at someone’s table. While I completely disagree with a commentor who calls “not interested in politics” an euphemism, as if they were disgusting and uneducated, your set of scary factoids likely falls right into this category.
- chepaslaaa 7y agotrue evil is threatening countries who wont sell oil strictly for USD with nuclear warfare
- umanwizard 7y agoThis matches my experience 100%.
- king_panic 7y agoReminds me of Nassim Taleb's minority rule. https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
- terminalhealth 7y agoForcing women to wear veils is not oppression in the same way scolding a child is not oppression. Both have a measurably positive effect on social functioning (e.g. consider how weak modesty norms in the West are beginning to make Western culture rather uncomfortable to live in at times). Genital mutilation, on the other hand, is oppression because it is unnecessary; it does not improve the living conditions of anyone at all, but one could perhaps admit religious freedom in this regard as long it does not impinge on the rights of other people. Forcing people to align themselves with a system is not oppression because a system needs aligned people to exist at all. Though if you force them to unnecessary extent, then it becomes oppressive and what is happening in HK is probably oppressive unless my news sources are heavily biased.
- jey 7y ago> scolding a child is not oppression This is not as self-evident as you imply.
- terminalhealth 7y agoHitting a child is probably counter-productive. Scolding it all the time is definitely counter-productive. Scolding it in extreme situations is quite effective in my experience; this is what I was referring to.
- gadders 7y ago>> Forcing women to wear veils is not oppression in the same way scolding a child is not oppression Women can be compared with children now?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dang 7y agoThis kind of flamebait is not ok on HN. We ban users who post like this, as well as the comment which you've since deleted. Please don't add any more of this kind of thing to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- blub 7y agoThat majority of people can afford to focus on work or put in their 8 hours and go back to their families thanks to a "vocal minority" which was able to convince others in the past to fight for new rights and for what's right. Obviously some people think there's more to life than cashing a large paycheck and writing code. "Not interested in politics" is an euphemism for clueless and easy to manipulate by those that are.
- BeetleB 7y ago>That majority of people can afford to focus on work or put in their 8 hours and go back to their families thanks to a "vocal minority" which was able to convince others in the past to fight for new rights and for what's right. That it is due to a vocal minority doesn't mean it is due to this vocal minority. Not all vocal minorities are equal, and nor should all vocal minorities be treated alike. Freedom of speech is a great thing. That doesn't mean everyone exercising their freedom to speak results in a positive.
- mAEStro-paNDa 7y ago>That it is due to a vocal minority doesn't mean it is due to this vocal minority. Not all vocal minorities are equal, and nor should all vocal minorities be treated alike. This is obvious and should go without saying. The parent comment gave an example of a positive consequence of an instance of this so-called "vocal minority", since the grandparent comment left no room for any positive angle on this. I'm seriously confused how this translates into treating all "vocal-minorities" equally or that they all result in a positive.
- BeetleB 7y ago>since the grandparent comment left no room for any positive angle on this. I do not see this. Grandparent said "a vocal minority", which I interpret as a specific vocal minority. Like when someone says "there is a vocal person in my team who is obnoxious" - it does not imply that all vocal people in all teams are obnoxious. My point was the example given by the person I responded to is kind of irrelevant. Yes, vocal minorities have done great things for many, many people. The GP to my comment was not talking about those, and listing positive vocal minorities that exist or have existed is irrelevant.
- scarmig 7y agoMy BigTechCo experience has mostly been people working a 9-5 shift, and politics doesn't play into it at all. There is a general desire to avoid conflict and not be an asshole, and maybe do some occasional good with spare cycles. The vocal minority you refer to doesn't influence my day to day or month to month. You get people posting manifestos, and people whining about XYZ, but you only butt heads with them if you actively seek them out and want to get offended. The idea that there are some kind of political commissars reprimanding me for "whitelisting" features for certain customers, or giving out demerits for using gendered pronouns in promo packets, is a paranoid fantasy.
- bubble_talk 7y ago>>My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work In other words, you could end up having absolutely no conflicts about scenarios like these: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... Or maybe even end up patting yourself in the back at the end of the quarter for outperforming KPI (e.g. ISP marketshare increase) and get a nice bonus while you are at it. The problem with your reasoning is that your actions at FAAMNG does not happen in a vacuum.
- jvagner 7y agoAt a certain size, corporate roadmaps and people management are inevitably political. Google modifying their search criteria to participate in China's market.. is political. Google's HR department working towards demographic goals.. is political (I'm not judging its political-ness, but it ended up being political, didn't it?). Each of the major FAAMG companies has a political/dominance issue of some kind, one that comes to mind more immediately than all the political issues associated with those companies. Taking a swag at it: * Facebook: privacy - exploitation (personal data exploitation) * Amazon: automation * Apple: privacy - enforced (withholding from gov't) * Microsoft: [I'm not even sure, they're flying low.. perhaps monopolization, or government backdoors?] * Google: politicization/curation I would suggest that Google's the clearest "ideation" company here, where censorship/curation is the most core part of their business model (Facebook is social media, Google is a borg-like machine collection all of the Internet and then putting algorithms around access to it), and most prone to politicization crossing the internal/external cultural barrier. [edit:spelling]
- Maximus9000 7y agoMicrosoft is the oldest of them all. Microsoft had its own "teenage years" problems... maybe it has less problems these days because it's more mature?
- humanrebar 7y agoThe article mentioned participating with China in state surveillance and censorship.
- jvagner 7y agoYes, but, they're not taking as much public heat for that as other companies, I would say.
- humanrebar 7y agoTrue, if we're talking about PR problems and not just moral and ethical issues, Microsoft seems to be faring relatively well at the moment.
- goatinaboat 7y agoIndeed, reading this I have to wonder how some of the characters have time to do the jobs they were presumably hired for.
- irinai13 7y agoI so agree with you. You seem cool and smart.
- jlebar 7y ago> My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics ...or perhaps they're not interested in talking about politics with you.
- RestlessMind 7y agoMy experience also aligns with this. Probably, Google's open culture was okay in the early days of internet and the company. Now that political activism has spread across all the SV companies, I sincerely wish that leadership across entire tech industry squashes the noisy vocal minority. If someone is really passionate about their political cause, they should pursue it in their personal time using their personal resources.