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One point: the memo mentions some person saying "these protests aren't going to solve anything" and goes on to say how they're just blocking people from getting

by cletus 7y ago

One point: the memo mentions some person saying "these protests aren't going to solve anything" and goes on to say how they're just blocking people from getting home. I think it's inaccurate to attribute this to racism or lack of diversity. It's something far simpler. This person and many like them are just completely self-centered. You'll probably fine the disruption just affected their commute home. Nothing more, nothing less. Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending it. In my time at Google I lost count of the number of times that, say, some engineer 3 years out of college couldn't afford a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto for them, their partner and their dog and how they were underpaid and this was unfair and a problem (and I'm not exaggerating as much as you might think) while not thinking twice about the 2.5 hour commute of the workers who prepare the free food and drive the buses to and from SF. It's actually infuriating how much people can buy into these things as being "problems" while being completely oblivious to what's actually a problem right under their noses.

bluntfang 7y ago
>This person and many like them are just completely self-centered. I would agree if this were a unique experience, but this is a mentality held by a large section of the population. It is systemic.
- pjmorris 7y ago
  Is there a society in the world where self-centeredness is not common? What do you mean by systemic?
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  It is systemic, and the promotion of identity activism at the expense of economic activism has done a lot to cause it. Realistically, "corporate diversity" usually means "we have diverse kinds of privileged middle class people in our offices." E.g. a female CEO is considered a necessary diversity win, but generally no one cares if the food servers and cleaners - most of whom usually happen to be female too - are treated with respect and decency. Does Google - or any other FANG - actively and practically support anti-poverty activism and awareness to anything like the same extent they support a relatively safe form of activism like LGBT pride?
- kiliantics 7y ago
  Yes, you don't see people with this attitude towards the HK protest. There is a completely different standard when it comes to issues of race in the US.
tastygreenapple 7y ago
> I lost count of the number of times that, say, some engineer 3 years out of college couldn't afford a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto for them, their partner and their dog and how they were underpaid and this was unfair and a problem Is it not a problem that someone with one of the best jobs in the world can't afford a decent house near work? It might be related to why the contingent workers have 2.5 hour commutes.
- xapata 7y ago
  > decent house He described something more than decent.
- jciochon 7y ago
  Since when do 2 people and a dog need a 5 bedroom house? And does that really only qualify as “decent”? Especially 3 years out of school... In any case OP was just trying to point out the entitlement that gets instilled, and how it can be particularly blinding when you’re wrapped up in your own decadent lifestyle. It’s a very common trait among people in the valley, in my experience.
  - tastygreenapple 7y ago
    Someone 3 years into their career at P&G can buy a mansion in Cincinnati, an IC5 at google probably can't even buy a 2 bedroom in Palo Alto without a few hundred thousand as a down payment. 2 people and a dog don't need a 5 bedroom house, but if one of those people has one of the best jobs in America and they can't even buy a house for their partner and dog in a safe neighborhood near their work, it's a sign that they live in a messed up housing market. I get OP's point about entitlement, but I think the root issue here is the bay area's hostility to new housing.
- magduf 7y ago
  No one needs a 5-bedroom house. In most of the rest of the world, that's something that only very wealthy people can afford. And if you don't like the housing options in the Bay Area, don't move there. It's very simple. The only reason housing is so bad in the Bay Area is because people keep moving there and complaining about it, but still putting up with it.
dlivingston 7y ago
I would like to add my (unwanted) two-cents: I'm of the (soft) opinion that protests often cause more harm than good - or, will have a neutral effect - to a cause, particularly when there is anything 'uncouth' to a protest such as violence or obstruction of traffic. As much as I hate to say it, I struggle to think of what the Women's March or Occupy Wall Street tangibly accomplished. Can someone provide studies or articles demonstrating the effectiveness of large protests in changing the populace's views?
- rahidz 7y ago
  Occupy Wall Street directly brought the idea of there being a "1%" into everyday political and social usage, which has significantly altered the way we discuss class in this country.
- dudul 7y ago
  The Tea party, Gandhi and his friends, Protests during Vietnam war, the storming of the Bastille. Now, in "recent" History I tend to agree with you. My personal opinion is that protests are not violent enough to cause real change. Edit: I would appreciate feedback from downvoters. I think the few examples I provided are valid to illustrate "protests that caused real change", but if I'm wrong I'm happy to learn.
  - hnbroseph 7y ago
    wasn't the us involved with the vietnam conflict for the better part of 20 years? i was actually under the impression that the vietnam protests, while at times quite noticeable, weren't all that impactful in-and-of themselves. i think that, insofar as one might be inclined to point at "successful" protests, it's often really an issue of achieving a consensus amongst a plurality of those in power. perhaps protests can work toward that (i'm not sure); but if so, they could also work against it. i sadly doubt the protests in hong kong, despite their scope and intensity, will change much at all when the powers-that-be neither care, nor (seemingly) can ever be made to care.
    - dudul 7y ago
refurb 7y ago
Or maybe they don't agree that it's a problem worth protesting in the first place. It's interesting that you immediately draw the conclusion that there is something "wrong" with the person or that they are "broken". Having a different opinion than you never seemed to enter the realm of possibility - unless, of course, you conclude having different opinions is being "broken".
lacker 7y ago
I lost count of the number of times that, say, some engineer 3 years out of college couldn't afford a 5 bedroom house That engineer can probably afford a 5 bedroom house on their salary if they moved to a different city like Pittsburgh or Austin. So it isn't some abstract issue, it's just a concrete question of whether they would like to stay where they are, or move to a city where they could afford a 5 bedroom house.
mlyle 7y ago
Protest clearly is useful and virtuous. But protest that is crafted to cause disruption to the populace at large (blocking traffic) needs to be used very carefully. It can create backlash against and undermine your cause. Further, the precedent that any group with a grievance can undermine common goods like transportation infrastructure is a dangerous one-- irrespective of the validity and the severity of the grievances..
- tsss 7y ago
  > clearly Please prove it then. I must be a little slow because it is not clear to me at all.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    You don't view the Selma to Montgomery marches, the Orange Revolution, the Vietnam protests, the UK miners' strike, the spontaneous assembly of Germans demanding the Berlin Wall be opened, etc, as having significantly spurred social change? Just because not every protest is virtuous or successful doesn't mean that protest doesn't have value.
    - tsss 7y ago
      It's not clear that protests were actually the driving force in causing those changes, particularly in the case of the Vietnam protests. The Berlin wall was doomed to fail from the beginning. It was only a matter of time combined with the lucky mistake of a government official. At the end of the day a modern protest accomplishes nothing. Let's not pretend that government officials don't know what the populace wants. They chose to ignore it for their own benefit and a protest won't change that. The only thing a protest does is give confidence to other powerful people who want to overthrow the current leaders, again for their own benefit. All the big "revolutions" have simply exchanged one abuser for another. The french revolution exchanged the monarchy for Napoleon's dictatorship. Russia went from a monarchy to a communist dictatorship and then to an authoritarian capitalist state. And in the case of east Germany it was the western capitalists who swooped in and bought out the entire country for western-dictated dumping prices, leaving the eastern populace disenfranchised and economically barely better off than before (and sometimes worse, now giving rise to a new nationalist party). If you actually want to change anything you need to hit the powers that be where it hurts. They couldn't give a shit how many people are unhappy and protesting but what they do care about is money. The strike is the most effective and only effective tool the populace has, short of extreme violence which will just lead to another despot taking power.

by cletus 7y ago

bluntfang 7y ago

>This person and many like them are just completely self-centered. I would agree if this were a unique experience, but this is a mentality held by a large section of the population. It is systemic.

pjmorris 7y ago
Is there a society in the world where self-centeredness is not common? What do you mean by systemic?
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
It is systemic, and the promotion of identity activism at the expense of economic activism has done a lot to cause it. Realistically, "corporate diversity" usually means "we have diverse kinds of privileged middle class people in our offices." E.g. a female CEO is considered a necessary diversity win, but generally no one cares if the food servers and cleaners - most of whom usually happen to be female too - are treated with respect and decency. Does Google - or any other FANG - actively and practically support anti-poverty activism and awareness to anything like the same extent they support a relatively safe form of activism like LGBT pride?
kiliantics 7y ago
Yes, you don't see people with this attitude towards the HK protest. There is a completely different standard when it comes to issues of race in the US.

tastygreenapple 7y ago

> I lost count of the number of times that, say, some engineer 3 years out of college couldn't afford a 5 bedroom house in Palo Alto for them, their partner and their dog and how they were underpaid and this was unfair and a problem Is it not a problem that someone with one of the best jobs in the world can't afford a decent house near work? It might be related to why the contingent workers have 2.5 hour commutes.

xapata 7y ago
> decent house He described something more than decent.
jciochon 7y ago
Since when do 2 people and a dog need a 5 bedroom house? And does that really only qualify as “decent”? Especially 3 years out of school... In any case OP was just trying to point out the entitlement that gets instilled, and how it can be particularly blinding when you’re wrapped up in your own decadent lifestyle. It’s a very common trait among people in the valley, in my experience.
- tastygreenapple 7y ago
  Someone 3 years into their career at P&G can buy a mansion in Cincinnati, an IC5 at google probably can't even buy a 2 bedroom in Palo Alto without a few hundred thousand as a down payment. 2 people and a dog don't need a 5 bedroom house, but if one of those people has one of the best jobs in America and they can't even buy a house for their partner and dog in a safe neighborhood near their work, it's a sign that they live in a messed up housing market. I get OP's point about entitlement, but I think the root issue here is the bay area's hostility to new housing.
magduf 7y ago
No one needs a 5-bedroom house. In most of the rest of the world, that's something that only very wealthy people can afford. And if you don't like the housing options in the Bay Area, don't move there. It's very simple. The only reason housing is so bad in the Bay Area is because people keep moving there and complaining about it, but still putting up with it.

dlivingston 7y ago

I would like to add my (unwanted) two-cents: I'm of the (soft) opinion that protests often cause more harm than good - or, will have a neutral effect - to a cause, particularly when there is anything 'uncouth' to a protest such as violence or obstruction of traffic. As much as I hate to say it, I struggle to think of what the Women's March or Occupy Wall Street tangibly accomplished. Can someone provide studies or articles demonstrating the effectiveness of large protests in changing the populace's views?

rahidz 7y ago
Occupy Wall Street directly brought the idea of there being a "1%" into everyday political and social usage, which has significantly altered the way we discuss class in this country.
dudul 7y ago
The Tea party, Gandhi and his friends, Protests during Vietnam war, the storming of the Bastille. Now, in "recent" History I tend to agree with you. My personal opinion is that protests are not violent enough to cause real change. Edit: I would appreciate feedback from downvoters. I think the few examples I provided are valid to illustrate "protests that caused real change", but if I'm wrong I'm happy to learn.
- hnbroseph 7y ago
  wasn't the us involved with the vietnam conflict for the better part of 20 years? i was actually under the impression that the vietnam protests, while at times quite noticeable, weren't all that impactful in-and-of themselves. i think that, insofar as one might be inclined to point at "successful" protests, it's often really an issue of achieving a consensus amongst a plurality of those in power. perhaps protests can work toward that (i'm not sure); but if so, they could also work against it. i sadly doubt the protests in hong kong, despite their scope and intensity, will change much at all when the powers-that-be neither care, nor (seemingly) can ever be made to care.
  - dudul 7y ago

refurb 7y ago

Or maybe they don't agree that it's a problem worth protesting in the first place. It's interesting that you immediately draw the conclusion that there is something "wrong" with the person or that they are "broken". Having a different opinion than you never seemed to enter the realm of possibility - unless, of course, you conclude having different opinions is being "broken".

lacker 7y ago

I lost count of the number of times that, say, some engineer 3 years out of college couldn't afford a 5 bedroom house That engineer can probably afford a 5 bedroom house on their salary if they moved to a different city like Pittsburgh or Austin. So it isn't some abstract issue, it's just a concrete question of whether they would like to stay where they are, or move to a city where they could afford a 5 bedroom house.

mlyle 7y ago

Protest clearly is useful and virtuous. But protest that is crafted to cause disruption to the populace at large (blocking traffic) needs to be used very carefully. It can create backlash against and undermine your cause. Further, the precedent that any group with a grievance can undermine common goods like transportation infrastructure is a dangerous one-- irrespective of the validity and the severity of the grievances..

tsss 7y ago
> clearly Please prove it then. I must be a little slow because it is not clear to me at all.
- mlyle 7y ago
  You don't view the Selma to Montgomery marches, the Orange Revolution, the Vietnam protests, the UK miners' strike, the spontaneous assembly of Germans demanding the Berlin Wall be opened, etc, as having significantly spurred social change? Just because not every protest is virtuous or successful doesn't mean that protest doesn't have value.
  - tsss 7y ago
    It's not clear that protests were actually the driving force in causing those changes, particularly in the case of the Vietnam protests. The Berlin wall was doomed to fail from the beginning. It was only a matter of time combined with the lucky mistake of a government official. At the end of the day a modern protest accomplishes nothing. Let's not pretend that government officials don't know what the populace wants. They chose to ignore it for their own benefit and a protest won't change that. The only thing a protest does is give confidence to other powerful people who want to overthrow the current leaders, again for their own benefit. All the big "revolutions" have simply exchanged one abuser for another. The french revolution exchanged the monarchy for Napoleon's dictatorship. Russia went from a monarchy to a communist dictatorship and then to an authoritarian capitalist state. And in the case of east Germany it was the western capitalists who swooped in and bought out the entire country for western-dictated dumping prices, leaving the eastern populace disenfranchised and economically barely better off than before (and sometimes worse, now giving rise to a new nationalist party). If you actually want to change anything you need to hit the powers that be where it hurts. They couldn't give a shit how many people are unhappy and protesting but what they do care about is money. The strike is the most effective and only effective tool the populace has, short of extreme violence which will just lead to another despot taking power.