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Of course it's always been understood as poor form to personally attack another employee, there was never any need for a rule saying so. In the same way, a "cul
by anarchodev 7y ago
Of course it's always been understood as poor form to personally attack another employee, there was never any need for a rule saying so. In the same way, a "culture of openness" is always embraced with the implicit caveat that being "open" about criticism of decisions made by executives is also unacceptable and will be met with retaliation. That doesn't go both ways -- executives can be openly critical of you by name and on whatever terms they wish. Our generation didn't invent office politics, after all.
So this new rule is so broad as to be meaningless, it's sort of like making a new "no complaining" rule (which isn't as uncommon as you'd think). It demonstrates that the "chafe" was never about the rule. When we see workers purposefully making these criticisms anyway, as with this new hire or someone like James Damore, it means they've probably already understood that google won't act unless it represents a serious threat to their productivity. This is the company's first initial attempt to squash that sort of effort.
- burgerandfries 7y agoIf an executive at Google posted memes and personally attacked a rank and file employee, they'd be met with the same pushback. The notion that this was only a problem because it was directed at an executive (or high level employee in general) is quite ridiculous. Personal attacks are not acceptable, full stop, regardless of who they're directed at.
- teh-oldz0rz 7y agoNo one cares, burgersandfries. Take your oh-so-new user id and pump 10+ comments into a less political thread.
- anarchodev 7y agoExecutives get away with more crass offenses all the time but even if they didn’t, you’re ignoring a key power imbalance that defines this struggle. What purpose would it serve for an executive to post in this message board? They have plenty of recourse already if a bad hiring decision has been made. I think we’re also conflating “personal” attacks with criticisms that just happen to be about one person in particular. The meme in the article is criticizing google for exposing their relationships to key actors in child imprisonment policies in the US (connection was exposed by hiring one of them). By this standard there’s no criticism you could make of the company unless it didn’t apply to anyone, which doesn’t sound very meaningful. The same criticism could be levied (with the same picture/meme text) if they decide to hire Mike Pence next year, will that also be considered an unacceptable personal attack?
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoIt ought to be, yes. People shouldn't bully their coworkers over political disagreements, even if they're large or important political disagreements.
- anarchodev 7y agoMaybe a better exploratory question would be: what would have been an acceptable way to phrase that criticism, if you feel the substance was acceptable sans its obvious application to the most recent hiring decision?
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoWhich criticism are we discussing here? The article describes a Matrix meme which Google allowed to stay up, and previous articles I've read suggest that Google regularly allows questions on hot-button issues when they don't call for specific personnel decisions.
- wutbrodo 7y ago> In the same way, a "culture of openness" is always embraced with the implicit caveat that being "open" about criticism of decisions made by executives is also unacceptable and will be met with retaliation. Very much not the case at Google historically. The level of criticism against execs was vicious, to the point that a lot of it was IMO in bad faith.