10 ms·

Someone should do a story about all us Googlers who are sick of the politics. You won’t see protests, open letters and stories in the media about it, because mo

Someone should do a story about all us Googlers who are sick of the politics. You won’t see protests, open letters and stories in the media about it, because most of us are afraid of the outrage and call-out culture negatively impacting our careers. However, it’s a common topic among like-minded people in informal conversations.

jasonlotito 7y ago
> Someone should do a story about all us Googlers who are sick of the politics. So you are sick of politics... > it’s a common topic among like-minded people in informal conversations. but it's a common topic. I think the real reason you are sick of politics is because you don't agree with the politics being discussed, not politics. The reason you don't talk about politics isn't being you are sick of it, but because "most of us are afraid of the outrage and call-out culture negatively impacting our careers." Even in a throwaway account, you can't be honest with yourself. Are you really sick of politics, or are you just sick of other people's politics? What are you really trying to say. Your comment goes back and forth and it not clear. It's a throwaway account, so maybe you can actually say what you mean?
mmmeff 7y ago
Please, interview a few folks and write a piece and mail it to a bunch of publications. Something might stick somewhere.
Reedx 7y ago
I suspect we'll see companies starting to avoid hiring people who've made politics their religion. I'd be surprised if Google isn't already trying to take steps in that direction.
- faizshah 7y ago
  I suspect when companies start doing that you’ll see more people in our industry avoiding these unethical companies. It’s a fact that young people are demanding more ethical workplaces, even finance is adapting to the new labour market.
  - georgeburdell 7y ago
    Argument from authority. Given student loans and rent increases in the past decade, I imagine “young people” care most about paying their bills. The ones protesting are the privileged few
    - mercurysmessage 7y ago
      > I imagine “young people” care most about paying their bills That's politics too
    - Iv 7y ago
      Students loans are a pretty American thing. Not all engineers come from US. Many of us can afford to have opinions.
    - faizshah 7y ago
      Citing a logical fallacy doesn’t make a statement false. There’s numerous sources supporting this(note that these are 3 different surveys from 3 different sources from 3 different years all showing the same result): ”Nearly nine out of ten, or 86 percent, of millennials (those between the ages of 22 and 37) would consider taking a pay cut to work at a company whose mission and values align with their own, according to LinkedIn’s latest Workplace Culture report. By comparison, only 9 percent of baby boomers (those between the ages of 54 and 72) would.“ https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/nearly-9-out-of-10-millennials-would-consider-a-pay-cut-to-get-this.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/nearly-9-out-of-10-millennia... “At least those are the results of a new survey out from insurer MetLife, which found that nine out of 10 people would choose a company with similar values over a job that pays more. And they are willing to take a pretty big pay cut to make sure those values align with their own. The average pay cut employees were willing to take was 21%. The findings were not limited to high-wage earners: People who made less than $50,000 a year also said they still were willing to part with at least some of their salaries for the right company.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/11/29/money-no-longer-biggest-incentive-selecting-job/901899001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/11/29/money-no-lon... ”Almost half the workforce (42%) now want to work for an organisation that has a positive impact on the world, according to research carried out by consultancy Global Tolerance. The survey of more than 2,000 people in the UK found 44% thought meaningful work that helped others was more important than a high salary and 36% would work harder if their company benefitted society. The change, it would appear, is being driven by the so-called millennials. Of those born between 1981 and 1996, 62% want to work for a company that makes a positive impact, half prefer purposeful work to a high salary, and 53% would work harder if they were making a difference to others.“ https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/may/05/millennials-employment-employers-values-ethics-jobs https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/may/05...
- normalnorm 7y ago
  Then these companies must be stopped by democratic processes, least we lose democracy itself.
  - softwarefounder 7y ago
    Even zeal is no good without knowledge, and he who hurries his footsteps misses the mark.
- Braggadocious 7y ago
  Not just google but there's a significant market across silicon valley for employees who don't have so many ethical dilemmas, if any. For instance,there are employers partnering with specific coding bootcamps that develop a complete personality/IQ overview on each of their students before they graduate which can be used later by employers. It also helps bootcamps predict which of their potential graduates will be more likely to remain employed and kick out students who are likely to have problems obtaining or holding jobs BEFORE they graduate and affect their job placement statistics.
  - romwell 7y ago
    > For instance,there are employers partnering with specific coding bootcamps that develop a complete personality/IQ overview on each of their students before they graduate which can be used later by employers. It also helps bootcamps predict which of their potential graduates will be more likely to remain employed and kick out students who are likely to have problems obtaining or holding jobs BEFORE they graduate and affect their job placement statistics. This is such progress, and absolutely a direction we all should move in, and not at all creepy, scary, and disgusting AF.
    - Teever 7y ago
      I hope that they use spiders that trawl social media sites for political posts by prospective candidates to weed out the ones with erroneous and excessive political points of view. I bet that they could look to China for ideas in this endeavor.
ben_jones 7y ago
What percentage of google employees do you estimate fall into the category you mention? From the outside it ALL feels like noise except for the seemingly few ~dozen who actually left their roles over the years for their convictions.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  95% really don't care and want to work.
MaupitiBlue 7y ago
No doubt Google’s situation is serving as a warning to other employers - don’t hire highly politically ideological job candidates - especially those on the left. They seem to be much more interested in their pet causes than being a good colleague or employee, and have no reservations about being a headache for management.
- ElonMuskrat 7y ago
  Entertaining your supposition, how would one even filter out such candidates?
  - mmmeff 7y ago
    First, I'd start by building a product ecosystem that becomes an inescapable cornerstone for all communication and information retrieval in the modern technological age. Second, I'd work to track users' every move around my various products in the name of "advertisement" to make my investors happy and rich. Lastly, I'd start bowing to external governmental pressure and abusing all of the vast swathes of data I've gathered to become a mass surveillance arm of every superpower. Now let's just do a quick "Background" check on every candidate's name, email address, social media and github usernames. Oh look, they post on Twitter about politics an average of 30 times a day and our ML models mark them as 82% likely to increase workplace dissent. Immediate disqualification.
    - sitkack 7y ago
      Sounds like a LinkedIn premium feature. Should we apply to YC?
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    I'm sure Palantir or the current incarnation of Cambridge Analytica can whip-up an "employee background check" service that can sniff out inchoate SJW-ism from "edgy" tumblr posts from 2002 or liking American Idiot on MySpace.
  - Thriptic 7y ago
chrshawkes 7y ago
I removed the previous comment and I'm deciding to boycott HackerNews. The culture is too far left for me and I refuse to support it.
- Jonnax 7y ago
  This thread has plenty of unironic use of "SJW", complaints about any left wing activism being about stroking their own ego and how politics should be left out of the office. The posts about Stallman had plenty of defenders as well. How is the culture here too far left?
- austincheney 7y ago
  Personally, I try to avoid echo chambers by avoiding areas where echo chambers are prevalent and staying quiet in areas I cannot avoid. The trolling of group stupidity isn't worth the hassle.
- ahelwer 7y ago
  Have you considered those cities are polluted because that is where all the stuff that gives us such high quality life is manufactured? Recycling & not littering will do dick all to stop climate change. Peacefully living & having families as though nothing is happening is no longer an option.
- cerved 7y ago
  Considering the US has one of the largest greenhouse gas emissions per capita, a lot. You have a lot of power.
- icebraining 7y ago
  > If one considers the most polluted cities and areas in the world, they are mostly not in the USA. So how much power do we actually have? I don't want to be disrespectful, but frankly this question - in the context of protesting helping oil companies - just shows how much there is to be done. You live in the country that is the second biggest carbon polluter in the world (and generate much of the demand that fuels the first). And you think there's nothing you can do...?
mikelyons 7y ago
There's an interesting lecture from a pretty well known teacher: He expounds in this lecture about wanting to avoid politics in his work and in his daily life but then explains the realization that not only is it foolhardy to think that you can separate any part of your life from politics but that it is every single persons duty to overcome their self-bias, their selfish desire to not engage, and to make their life a positive contribution to the direction of human political evolution, regardless of what they egoistically want for themselves. It comes down to political apathy being rooted in selfishness, which is the very devilish drive that leads to the need for politics in the first place. Now people are going to project a negative meaning onto selfishness in this context, especially if they perceive this as calling them selfish (ie. if they don't want to engage in politics). I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with being selfish, it's just not workable, there's no integrity in it. Integrity meaning workability, like the integrity of spokes in a wheel. I'm not saying this is some moralistic character trait that makes someone bad for lack of it, just that it doesn't work when politics is ignored. It is interwoven into every aspect of our lives. Humanity is political.
- SllX 7y ago
  Politics exists because we are selfish. Recognition of the fact that we are selfish and that the political civil order need not necessarily be a part of every facet of everyday life is how we ended up with such ideas like “Separation of Church and State”. Otherwise we would be picking state religions, giving tax advantages to the favored religion, and maybe even burning heretics at the stake depending on the current political mood. Probably Jewish people would have gotten killed or exiled for one reason or another from the United States as well. Somehow on matters of theology, while debates and biases still exist, even atheists can live life surrounded by Catholics without fear of persecution. On the time scale of history, that’s a pretty neat feat. Whatever politics exist in various churches, are by and large outside the scope of the national government. The reason our politics is so vicious these days is because we have such a large Federal State that is substantially more than a mere national government. A government which was founded more or less to ensure the common defense, provide for bankruptcy courts and keep the the United States a free trade area back before they even had the term for it. The more functions you want to graft onto the State, Federal or your home State, the more you are inviting the political preferences of your neighbors and fellow citizens into your own life, and the more you have at stake come the next elections because the next President can always undo the entire regulatory legacy of the previous one. This is why laws originate in Congress where it takes a law to undo a law. If your rights only exist by Executive fiat that the next administration can undo with the stroke of a pen, then you don’t really have them.
dev360 7y ago
Stop hiring SJWs. Entirely possible.
- dilyevsky 7y ago
  Leadership is afraid of them. When I was there I had the same skip as some prominent “activist”. I’ve seen other people let go for poor performance pretty quickly but somehow this nutbag was spending all of his time on internal g+ and company-wide mailing lists where he bragged about how many people he reported to hr monthly among other things. All while doing fuck all for his actual work. Lasted 3 years before finally getting canned then sued
  - Angostura 7y ago
    > Lasted 3 years before getting canned then sued. Doesn't sound as leadership were scared of them then. Dismissal processes for things that aren't gross misconduct frequently take a while as they go through various warning stages.
    - dilyevsky 7y ago
      There were plenty of things that could be considered “gross misconduct” that I won’t go into. And as I said - same part of the org had people gone much quicker when just not performing.
- hackmiester 7y ago
  What's your argument against social justice?
  - tbrownaw 7y ago
    It smells a bit too much like "cosmic justice", which tends to be antithetical to actual justice. Here's something that looks like a decent overview: https://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html https://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html
lghh 7y ago
> sick of the politics That's a political stance. Anyone who says that is saying "the current state of things is okay and not worth mentioning".
- georgeburdell 7y ago
  False dilemma. I automatically change the radio station away from NPR when impeachment stuff is on because there is no point in listening to details of the inevitable (and I get mad)
  - lghh 7y ago
    I mean participating in politics, not consuming politics. You have no say over impeachment since, if it happens, it'll likely happen before any coming elections.
ian0 7y ago
I don't think it would be a particularly newsworthy story. "Group of people afraid of speaking up against the other groups of people currently speaking up, for fear of impact to their career".
- hjklhitour 7y ago
  But the way the media will title it would be "Nazis afraid of speaking up against activists for fear of impact on their career. Good"
slenk 7y ago
What about AMP, or what Google is doing with Chrome. They are effectively damaging the internet forever by trying to control it all. Maybe the protests should be redirected...
- netsharc 7y ago
  This is such a fucking ridiculous argument (IMO)... "Shut up about the planet, how about this dumb tech!?".
  - slenk 7y ago
    I am not trying to put down the necessity of saving the planet. I am saying a bunch of protesters at Google won't ever make them change about big oil and that they should focus on some achievable goals
    - netsharc 7y ago
      And how can you be so certain about that? Who knows what rich investor would read this article and reconsider the greennees of his investments and then tell his secretary to call... whoever is Google's CEO.
normalnorm 7y ago
Being "sick of politics" is a political position, in fact a pretty conventional and traditional one. It means that you are content with the status quo and would rather people didn't rock the boat. In other words, you want to be comfortable. People who protest and write letters raise issues. Some of the issues being raised have to do with our very survival (climate change), with facilitating war and with total surveillance. Maybe you believe these worries to be exaggerated, and this is your right, but then you must be willing to argue. You can't just shut people down by saying you are "sick of politics", that is not how free societies work.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  This line of argument is utterly insane. As a reductio ad absurdum: Inasmuch as the intent of war is effecting political change (as Clausewitz put it, "the continuation of politics by other means"), your argument applies just as well. By your logic, antiwar activists would be nothing more than status quo fans who want to be comfortable. This would obviously be ludicrous: it's possible to object to the means of war without comment on whether its claimed aims are worthwhile. Being "sick of politics" in this case easily describes many people I know, people who have been far more serious about the issues you raise for far longer than many of the loudest advocates today are. The aversion isn't to change per se, but to methods that have become fashionable that are seen as both counterproductive to their aims and detrimental to civic society.
  - normalnorm 7y ago
    > This line of argument is utterly insane. That is just name calling, and doesn't really improve the quality of the discussion. > Inasmuch as the intent of war is effecting political change (as Clausewitz put it, "the continuation of politics by other means"), your argument applies just as well. By your logic, antiwar activists would be nothing more than status quo fans who want to be comfortable. This would obviously be ludicrous: it's possible to object to the means of war without comment on whether its claimed aims are worthwhile. Antiwar activists are, by definition, actively participating in politics. The same is true of people who promote war. So, no. Nothing that you write holds "by my logic". If you are "sick of politics", then you are in favor of maintaining the status quo, whatever it is. There is really no way around it. > Being "sick of politics" in this case easily describes many people I know, people who have been far more serious about the issues you raise for far longer than most of the loudest advocates today are. How do you know any of that? Sorry, but I won't just take your word for it. And, in any case, it is besides the point. I was not even arguing in favor of the activists, I was instead claiming that wanting people to stop doing politics is politics. > The aversion isn't to change per se, but to methods that have become fashionable that are seen as both counterproductive to their aims and detrimental to civic society. Again, how do you know that? Are you a mind reader?
WhompingWindows 7y ago
Encourage one of those people to write the story, maybe with a pseudonym or anonymously.
s3r3nity 7y ago
I have a similar reaction when I see that there are ~1000 Googlers who submitted a letter protesting X. That's literally 1% of their workforce. I'm sure you can cherry pick 1% of any workforce, especially a company the size of Google, that agree with anything you might want to look for - regardless of neurodiversity or your belief in how liberal/conservative Google is as a whole. Just reeks of folks looking for a story.
minikites 7y ago
>most of us are afraid of the outrage and call-out culture negatively impacting our careers What about the people afraid for their personal safety and civil rights? I bet they'd love to ignore "politics".
- username90 7y ago
  Politics is for the privileged, people who aren't doesn't have time or energy to try to change the world. This is why the most politically active are home owners, business owners, lawyers, doctors etc, who mostly petition for laws to cement their positions.
  - minikites 7y ago
    >people who aren't doesn't have time or energy to try to change the world They do, they just get framed by the media as "rioters".
babycake 7y ago
It's the other way around. Google, and a lot of other big name companies, have their hands deep in policy-making. You should be just as sick that these companies are pulling these strings all the time in politics as you are with your coworkers at Google. At least your coworkers are on your side and fighting for the good cause, unlike your employer.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > You should be just as sick that these companies are pulling One can be sick of people turning the office into a political battle-field and simultaneously have no problems with outward corporate lobbying. These are different problems.
jahaja 7y ago
People seem to confuse the workplace with the army, where insubordination is both unacceptable and undesirable. This is kind of army mentality is ofc the normal state of affairs where the workers have neither demand leverage nor an union. To wish to suppress workers opinion when that leverage luckily exists seems just evil to me.
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  > where the workers have neither demand leverage nor an union It barely has anything to do with Google's work condition however, employees are demanding to have a say in who Google management choses to work with or not, that's a very different concern than negotiating severance, or worktime. Maybe that's how americans think about union in USA, that's definitely not what worker unions are about in Europe for instance.
  - jahaja 7y ago
    What? The german WV autoworkers union has just demanded that they refuse to build a factory in Turkey until their aggression stops.
    - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
      German workers have a right to participate in how management decisions are made. It's a form of codetermination. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
Iv 7y ago
Well, that's what you get when you attract idealist people by pretending your motto is "Don't be evil". They keep the company accountable for their promise.
samirillian 7y ago
whenever i read some ghoulish comment like this i think of elliot smith's lyric: "god knows why my country don't give a fuck." call it what you like, writing ai for murder robots is wrong,
nodesocket 7y ago
Google is at fault for this constant outrage from employees over contracts, government work, and selective biases. It percolates down all the way from the top there. It's not good business, the inmates are running the asylum at Google.
zarkov99 7y ago
I do hope there are some sane people still left and that you grow some balls. Google is too important, too influential for society to afford its takeover by fanatics.

jasonlotito 7y ago

> Someone should do a story about all us Googlers who are sick of the politics. So you are sick of politics... > it’s a common topic among like-minded people in informal conversations. but it's a common topic. I think the real reason you are sick of politics is because you don't agree with the politics being discussed, not politics. The reason you don't talk about politics isn't being you are sick of it, but because "most of us are afraid of the outrage and call-out culture negatively impacting our careers." Even in a throwaway account, you can't be honest with yourself. Are you really sick of politics, or are you just sick of other people's politics? What are you really trying to say. Your comment goes back and forth and it not clear. It's a throwaway account, so maybe you can actually say what you mean?

mmmeff 7y ago

Please, interview a few folks and write a piece and mail it to a bunch of publications. Something might stick somewhere.

Reedx 7y ago

I suspect we'll see companies starting to avoid hiring people who've made politics their religion. I'd be surprised if Google isn't already trying to take steps in that direction.

faizshah 7y ago
I suspect when companies start doing that you’ll see more people in our industry avoiding these unethical companies. It’s a fact that young people are demanding more ethical workplaces, even finance is adapting to the new labour market.
- georgeburdell 7y ago
  Argument from authority. Given student loans and rent increases in the past decade, I imagine “young people” care most about paying their bills. The ones protesting are the privileged few
  - mercurysmessage 7y ago
    > I imagine “young people” care most about paying their bills That's politics too
  - Iv 7y ago
    Students loans are a pretty American thing. Not all engineers come from US. Many of us can afford to have opinions.
  - faizshah 7y ago
    Citing a logical fallacy doesn’t make a statement false. There’s numerous sources supporting this(note that these are 3 different surveys from 3 different sources from 3 different years all showing the same result): ”Nearly nine out of ten, or 86 percent, of millennials (those between the ages of 22 and 37) would consider taking a pay cut to work at a company whose mission and values align with their own, according to LinkedIn’s latest Workplace Culture report. By comparison, only 9 percent of baby boomers (those between the ages of 54 and 72) would.“ https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/nearly-9-out-of-10-millennials-would-consider-a-pay-cut-to-get-this.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/nearly-9-out-of-10-millennia... “At least those are the results of a new survey out from insurer MetLife, which found that nine out of 10 people would choose a company with similar values over a job that pays more. And they are willing to take a pretty big pay cut to make sure those values align with their own. The average pay cut employees were willing to take was 21%. The findings were not limited to high-wage earners: People who made less than $50,000 a year also said they still were willing to part with at least some of their salaries for the right company.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/11/29/money-no-longer-biggest-incentive-selecting-job/901899001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/11/29/money-no-lon... ”Almost half the workforce (42%) now want to work for an organisation that has a positive impact on the world, according to research carried out by consultancy Global Tolerance. The survey of more than 2,000 people in the UK found 44% thought meaningful work that helped others was more important than a high salary and 36% would work harder if their company benefitted society. The change, it would appear, is being driven by the so-called millennials. Of those born between 1981 and 1996, 62% want to work for a company that makes a positive impact, half prefer purposeful work to a high salary, and 53% would work harder if they were making a difference to others.“ https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/may/05/millennials-employment-employers-values-ethics-jobs https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/may/05...
normalnorm 7y ago
Then these companies must be stopped by democratic processes, least we lose democracy itself.
- softwarefounder 7y ago
  Even zeal is no good without knowledge, and he who hurries his footsteps misses the mark.
Braggadocious 7y ago
Not just google but there's a significant market across silicon valley for employees who don't have so many ethical dilemmas, if any. For instance,there are employers partnering with specific coding bootcamps that develop a complete personality/IQ overview on each of their students before they graduate which can be used later by employers. It also helps bootcamps predict which of their potential graduates will be more likely to remain employed and kick out students who are likely to have problems obtaining or holding jobs BEFORE they graduate and affect their job placement statistics.
- romwell 7y ago
  > For instance,there are employers partnering with specific coding bootcamps that develop a complete personality/IQ overview on each of their students before they graduate which can be used later by employers. It also helps bootcamps predict which of their potential graduates will be more likely to remain employed and kick out students who are likely to have problems obtaining or holding jobs BEFORE they graduate and affect their job placement statistics. This is such progress, and absolutely a direction we all should move in, and not at all creepy, scary, and disgusting AF.
  - Teever 7y ago
    I hope that they use spiders that trawl social media sites for political posts by prospective candidates to weed out the ones with erroneous and excessive political points of view. I bet that they could look to China for ideas in this endeavor.

ben_jones 7y ago

What percentage of google employees do you estimate fall into the category you mention? From the outside it ALL feels like noise except for the seemingly few ~dozen who actually left their roles over the years for their convictions.

mav3rick 7y ago
95% really don't care and want to work.

MaupitiBlue 7y ago

No doubt Google’s situation is serving as a warning to other employers - don’t hire highly politically ideological job candidates - especially those on the left. They seem to be much more interested in their pet causes than being a good colleague or employee, and have no reservations about being a headache for management.

ElonMuskrat 7y ago
Entertaining your supposition, how would one even filter out such candidates?
- mmmeff 7y ago
  First, I'd start by building a product ecosystem that becomes an inescapable cornerstone for all communication and information retrieval in the modern technological age. Second, I'd work to track users' every move around my various products in the name of "advertisement" to make my investors happy and rich. Lastly, I'd start bowing to external governmental pressure and abusing all of the vast swathes of data I've gathered to become a mass surveillance arm of every superpower. Now let's just do a quick "Background" check on every candidate's name, email address, social media and github usernames. Oh look, they post on Twitter about politics an average of 30 times a day and our ML models mark them as 82% likely to increase workplace dissent. Immediate disqualification.
  - sitkack 7y ago
    Sounds like a LinkedIn premium feature. Should we apply to YC?
- sangnoir 7y ago
  I'm sure Palantir or the current incarnation of Cambridge Analytica can whip-up an "employee background check" service that can sniff out inchoate SJW-ism from "edgy" tumblr posts from 2002 or liking American Idiot on MySpace.
- Thriptic 7y ago

chrshawkes 7y ago

I removed the previous comment and I'm deciding to boycott HackerNews. The culture is too far left for me and I refuse to support it.

Jonnax 7y ago
This thread has plenty of unironic use of "SJW", complaints about any left wing activism being about stroking their own ego and how politics should be left out of the office. The posts about Stallman had plenty of defenders as well. How is the culture here too far left?
austincheney 7y ago
Personally, I try to avoid echo chambers by avoiding areas where echo chambers are prevalent and staying quiet in areas I cannot avoid. The trolling of group stupidity isn't worth the hassle.
ahelwer 7y ago
Have you considered those cities are polluted because that is where all the stuff that gives us such high quality life is manufactured? Recycling & not littering will do dick all to stop climate change. Peacefully living & having families as though nothing is happening is no longer an option.
cerved 7y ago
Considering the US has one of the largest greenhouse gas emissions per capita, a lot. You have a lot of power.
icebraining 7y ago
> If one considers the most polluted cities and areas in the world, they are mostly not in the USA. So how much power do we actually have? I don't want to be disrespectful, but frankly this question - in the context of protesting helping oil companies - just shows how much there is to be done. You live in the country that is the second biggest carbon polluter in the world (and generate much of the demand that fuels the first). And you think there's nothing you can do...?

mikelyons 7y ago

There's an interesting lecture from a pretty well known teacher: He expounds in this lecture about wanting to avoid politics in his work and in his daily life but then explains the realization that not only is it foolhardy to think that you can separate any part of your life from politics but that it is every single persons duty to overcome their self-bias, their selfish desire to not engage, and to make their life a positive contribution to the direction of human political evolution, regardless of what they egoistically want for themselves. It comes down to political apathy being rooted in selfishness, which is the very devilish drive that leads to the need for politics in the first place. Now people are going to project a negative meaning onto selfishness in this context, especially if they perceive this as calling them selfish (ie. if they don't want to engage in politics). I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with being selfish, it's just not workable, there's no integrity in it. Integrity meaning workability, like the integrity of spokes in a wheel. I'm not saying this is some moralistic character trait that makes someone bad for lack of it, just that it doesn't work when politics is ignored. It is interwoven into every aspect of our lives. Humanity is political.

SllX 7y ago
Politics exists because we are selfish. Recognition of the fact that we are selfish and that the political civil order need not necessarily be a part of every facet of everyday life is how we ended up with such ideas like “Separation of Church and State”. Otherwise we would be picking state religions, giving tax advantages to the favored religion, and maybe even burning heretics at the stake depending on the current political mood. Probably Jewish people would have gotten killed or exiled for one reason or another from the United States as well. Somehow on matters of theology, while debates and biases still exist, even atheists can live life surrounded by Catholics without fear of persecution. On the time scale of history, that’s a pretty neat feat. Whatever politics exist in various churches, are by and large outside the scope of the national government. The reason our politics is so vicious these days is because we have such a large Federal State that is substantially more than a mere national government. A government which was founded more or less to ensure the common defense, provide for bankruptcy courts and keep the the United States a free trade area back before they even had the term for it. The more functions you want to graft onto the State, Federal or your home State, the more you are inviting the political preferences of your neighbors and fellow citizens into your own life, and the more you have at stake come the next elections because the next President can always undo the entire regulatory legacy of the previous one. This is why laws originate in Congress where it takes a law to undo a law. If your rights only exist by Executive fiat that the next administration can undo with the stroke of a pen, then you don’t really have them.

dev360 7y ago

Stop hiring SJWs. Entirely possible.

dilyevsky 7y ago
Leadership is afraid of them. When I was there I had the same skip as some prominent “activist”. I’ve seen other people let go for poor performance pretty quickly but somehow this nutbag was spending all of his time on internal g+ and company-wide mailing lists where he bragged about how many people he reported to hr monthly among other things. All while doing fuck all for his actual work. Lasted 3 years before finally getting canned then sued
- Angostura 7y ago
  > Lasted 3 years before getting canned then sued. Doesn't sound as leadership were scared of them then. Dismissal processes for things that aren't gross misconduct frequently take a while as they go through various warning stages.
  - dilyevsky 7y ago
    There were plenty of things that could be considered “gross misconduct” that I won’t go into. And as I said - same part of the org had people gone much quicker when just not performing.
hackmiester 7y ago
What's your argument against social justice?
- tbrownaw 7y ago
  It smells a bit too much like "cosmic justice", which tends to be antithetical to actual justice. Here's something that looks like a decent overview: https://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html https://www.tsowell.com/spquestc.html

lghh 7y ago

> sick of the politics That's a political stance. Anyone who says that is saying "the current state of things is okay and not worth mentioning".

georgeburdell 7y ago
False dilemma. I automatically change the radio station away from NPR when impeachment stuff is on because there is no point in listening to details of the inevitable (and I get mad)
- lghh 7y ago
  I mean participating in politics, not consuming politics. You have no say over impeachment since, if it happens, it'll likely happen before any coming elections.

ian0 7y ago

I don't think it would be a particularly newsworthy story. "Group of people afraid of speaking up against the other groups of people currently speaking up, for fear of impact to their career".

hjklhitour 7y ago
But the way the media will title it would be "Nazis afraid of speaking up against activists for fear of impact on their career. Good"

slenk 7y ago

What about AMP, or what Google is doing with Chrome. They are effectively damaging the internet forever by trying to control it all. Maybe the protests should be redirected...

netsharc 7y ago
This is such a fucking ridiculous argument (IMO)... "Shut up about the planet, how about this dumb tech!?".
- slenk 7y ago
  I am not trying to put down the necessity of saving the planet. I am saying a bunch of protesters at Google won't ever make them change about big oil and that they should focus on some achievable goals
  - netsharc 7y ago
    And how can you be so certain about that? Who knows what rich investor would read this article and reconsider the greennees of his investments and then tell his secretary to call... whoever is Google's CEO.

normalnorm 7y ago

Being "sick of politics" is a political position, in fact a pretty conventional and traditional one. It means that you are content with the status quo and would rather people didn't rock the boat. In other words, you want to be comfortable. People who protest and write letters raise issues. Some of the issues being raised have to do with our very survival (climate change), with facilitating war and with total surveillance. Maybe you believe these worries to be exaggerated, and this is your right, but then you must be willing to argue. You can't just shut people down by saying you are "sick of politics", that is not how free societies work.

wutbrodo 7y ago
This line of argument is utterly insane. As a reductio ad absurdum: Inasmuch as the intent of war is effecting political change (as Clausewitz put it, "the continuation of politics by other means"), your argument applies just as well. By your logic, antiwar activists would be nothing more than status quo fans who want to be comfortable. This would obviously be ludicrous: it's possible to object to the means of war without comment on whether its claimed aims are worthwhile. Being "sick of politics" in this case easily describes many people I know, people who have been far more serious about the issues you raise for far longer than many of the loudest advocates today are. The aversion isn't to change per se, but to methods that have become fashionable that are seen as both counterproductive to their aims and detrimental to civic society.
- normalnorm 7y ago
  > This line of argument is utterly insane. That is just name calling, and doesn't really improve the quality of the discussion. > Inasmuch as the intent of war is effecting political change (as Clausewitz put it, "the continuation of politics by other means"), your argument applies just as well. By your logic, antiwar activists would be nothing more than status quo fans who want to be comfortable. This would obviously be ludicrous: it's possible to object to the means of war without comment on whether its claimed aims are worthwhile. Antiwar activists are, by definition, actively participating in politics. The same is true of people who promote war. So, no. Nothing that you write holds "by my logic". If you are "sick of politics", then you are in favor of maintaining the status quo, whatever it is. There is really no way around it. > Being "sick of politics" in this case easily describes many people I know, people who have been far more serious about the issues you raise for far longer than most of the loudest advocates today are. How do you know any of that? Sorry, but I won't just take your word for it. And, in any case, it is besides the point. I was not even arguing in favor of the activists, I was instead claiming that wanting people to stop doing politics is politics. > The aversion isn't to change per se, but to methods that have become fashionable that are seen as both counterproductive to their aims and detrimental to civic society. Again, how do you know that? Are you a mind reader?

WhompingWindows 7y ago

Encourage one of those people to write the story, maybe with a pseudonym or anonymously.

s3r3nity 7y ago

I have a similar reaction when I see that there are ~1000 Googlers who submitted a letter protesting X. That's literally 1% of their workforce. I'm sure you can cherry pick 1% of any workforce, especially a company the size of Google, that agree with anything you might want to look for - regardless of neurodiversity or your belief in how liberal/conservative Google is as a whole. Just reeks of folks looking for a story.

minikites 7y ago

>most of us are afraid of the outrage and call-out culture negatively impacting our careers What about the people afraid for their personal safety and civil rights? I bet they'd love to ignore "politics".

username90 7y ago
Politics is for the privileged, people who aren't doesn't have time or energy to try to change the world. This is why the most politically active are home owners, business owners, lawyers, doctors etc, who mostly petition for laws to cement their positions.
- minikites 7y ago
  >people who aren't doesn't have time or energy to try to change the world They do, they just get framed by the media as "rioters".

babycake 7y ago

It's the other way around. Google, and a lot of other big name companies, have their hands deep in policy-making. You should be just as sick that these companies are pulling these strings all the time in politics as you are with your coworkers at Google. At least your coworkers are on your side and fighting for the good cause, unlike your employer.

mieseratte 7y ago
> You should be just as sick that these companies are pulling One can be sick of people turning the office into a political battle-field and simultaneously have no problems with outward corporate lobbying. These are different problems.

jahaja 7y ago

People seem to confuse the workplace with the army, where insubordination is both unacceptable and undesirable. This is kind of army mentality is ofc the normal state of affairs where the workers have neither demand leverage nor an union. To wish to suppress workers opinion when that leverage luckily exists seems just evil to me.

throw_m239339 7y ago
> where the workers have neither demand leverage nor an union It barely has anything to do with Google's work condition however, employees are demanding to have a say in who Google management choses to work with or not, that's a very different concern than negotiating severance, or worktime. Maybe that's how americans think about union in USA, that's definitely not what worker unions are about in Europe for instance.
- jahaja 7y ago
  What? The german WV autoworkers union has just demanded that they refuse to build a factory in Turkey until their aggression stops.
  - PopeDotNinja 7y ago
    German workers have a right to participate in how management decisions are made. It's a form of codetermination. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

Iv 7y ago

Well, that's what you get when you attract idealist people by pretending your motto is "Don't be evil". They keep the company accountable for their promise.

samirillian 7y ago

whenever i read some ghoulish comment like this i think of elliot smith's lyric: "god knows why my country don't give a fuck." call it what you like, writing ai for murder robots is wrong,

nodesocket 7y ago

Google is at fault for this constant outrage from employees over contracts, government work, and selective biases. It percolates down all the way from the top there. It's not good business, the inmates are running the asylum at Google.

zarkov99 7y ago

I do hope there are some sane people still left and that you grow some balls. Google is too important, too influential for society to afford its takeover by fanatics.