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What we are seeing are the consequences of "Employee Capture". Google captured the hearts and minds of its employees for workplace productivity. Its side effe

What we are seeing are the consequences of "Employee Capture". Google captured the hearts and minds of its employees for workplace productivity. Its side effects are varied. The real world only sees highlights. Googled created a bubble from which its employees can socialize without ever needing to do so with the outside world. Why talk politics with the outside world? Stay with us, where it is safe, people are intelligent, and share your values (we swear). This is a root problem at the company. It is coming at a great cost. James Damore shared his views with his social group. These other activists do the same. This is what people do among their own. Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with. Google has a major lawsuit on its hands, regardless of whatever arbitration agreement it makes new-hires sign. Google is causing harm by capturing employees hearts and minds. Your colleagues are not an authentic social network who you can organise with and pursue activism. You aren't hired to do that. While you are naive for thinking you could, it's not entirely your fault. Google brainwashed you.

soup10 7y ago
Every big firm brainwashes their employees to make a unified tribe and align interests with their business. It's fucked up but not against the law.
- mlrtime 7y ago
  It's called company culture
cptskippy 7y ago
> Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with. I've never worked for Google so I have no basis for comparison but it's very common across white collar jobs for employees social circles to very closely if not entirely overlap with work. Unless you participated in extracurricular activities that weren't school sponsored, you probably never learned to make friends outside of school. Work, like school, is how you develop your social circle. The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work.
- JohnBooty 7y ago
  The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work. Well, it can go either way. Depends on your situation. For me, teleworking has been a help to my social life. Now that I'm a teleworker, I've got about 10 extra hours of time each week that I don't have to spend commuting. So that actually has benefits for my social life, since I never really hung out with my coworkers anyway! Of course, I'm a best-case scenario. I have a wife. I have pets. I've lived in this area my whole life and have friends here. I don't need workplace friends. If you don't have those things then you might depend on your workplace for your social connections a little bit more. To be honest I think workplace friends can really suck anyway. I have made great friends at various jobs, but these days I sort of like to keep "work" and "friends" separate. Having workplace friends can be healthy, but depending on your workplace for friends seems extremely unhealthy. I mean, what happens when you're no longer with the company? It's like you've left a cult and now all your connections have been severed.
  - notzuck 7y ago
    Same - I do mostly remote work now and occasional client visits. I now take my kids to school every morning and have a good relationship with the school and other parents. I go into town for breakfast and have started to meet all of the local business owners. I have made closer connections to my neighbours and the local surf club. When I was in my early 20's, my social life was all about where I worked but now that I'm an adult, I've started to build a solid social network within my town and its various groups. I would hate to socialise with people purely from my office now.
  - FpUser 7y ago
    Same here. While I did make some friends through work generally work is far from being The Source. Last time I had to go to work full time for someone else was 20 years ago so obviously my social life is totally unrelated to work as far as I am concerned.
- dghughes 7y ago
  > Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with. That's something I experienced. I was laid off after 15 years and really I was laid off from my friends too. The company even monitored social media accounts which at the time seemed bizarre but now it's common. I was told by someone still working there HR declared unfriending a fellow employee was considered bullying. I'm trying my best not to put all my eggs in one basket. I'm trying to make friends outside of work. Everyone knows you shouldn't date a coworker but really we should also not base our entire social life around coworkers either. But as mentioned above you are in that bubble. Apple even went so far as to encircle everyone with their new building.
DagAgren 7y ago
> Your colleagues are not an authentic social network who you can organise with and pursue activism. This is absolutely, 100% false. This is exactly what you SHOULD do, and this is what unions are for. Always organise with coworkers. Otherwise you are giving employers more power over you than you should.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Forming an union is one thing, having only your colleagues as friends is another entirely different
- leftyted 7y ago
  My empoyer doesn't have a lot of power over me. I'm a programmer not a coal miner. I don't want to be in a union. I don't want to join some club. I don't want to pay dues. I don't want to read newsletters or listen to speeches or be involved at all in the grubby, underhanded manuevering for power that would come with a union. And I'm tired of people condescendingly telling me that I'm wrong for feeling this way. I'm not wrong. Power corrupts and labor is no more pure than mangement. If labor gets the upper hand it will abuse its position. The solution is a balance of power between labor and management. In my case, I feel I have plenty of power. In the case of Google employees, I feel they have plenty of power. Broadly speaking, programmers (in the US) have plenty of power. If you want to do good, volunteer at a soup kitchen. Of course that would be hard and would involve looking at things you'd rather not see.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - deleted 7y ago
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  - ddevault 7y ago
    What if your punch in, put on the blinders, work 8 hours, punch out, go home; emotionally-deatched approach has you building tools to enable censorship in China? Or what if you end up working on [insert your personal morally objectionable issue of choice]? Your employer doesn't have power over you, but you have power over them. Organization is about choosing not to exercise that power by leaving for greener pastures and letting the company rinse and repeat with the next cycle of college graduates, but by staying and choosing to influence the direction of the company in a positive way. You can choose to do your 8 hours every day and devote a full one-third of your life - the only life you get - to someone else's work that you don't have a stake in. But that just seems like the stupid, easy way out.
mcv 7y ago
> "Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with." Surely this is an exaggeration? I mean, being friends with co-workers is great, but surely people at google also have friends outside Google, right? Right?
- sjg007 7y ago
  Probably friends from college or other workplaces.
aedron 7y ago
With 20 years experience under my belt, it is my firm belief that the workplace is not a place to discuss politics, religion, or other highly personal and divisive issues. Obviously, this extends even more to the workplace itself bringing these topics up. I'm not aggressive or even obvious about this disposition, I just gently steer clear of violating it. I feel the same should apply to companies, fine if you want to make a stand on some political issue, but don't make a show of it, because it implies that all your employees should agree with your position. People in the world have different opinions on things, we need to be able to work with eachother on shared interests without making every place and occasion a battleground. If not in the workplace, then where? On a somewhat related note, I don't consider my colleagues my friends, or, God forbid, the workplace a 'family'. My relationship to my employer is a professional one, trying to disguise this by intermingling personal feelings can only end in tears, when one day you discover that it was such all along, only you deluded yourself (or let yourself be led) into thinking differently.
- 2sk21 7y ago
  Completely agree - the workplace is not a family and (mostly) not a group of friends.
  - ccsnags 7y ago
    Even back in my military days, there was a clear difference between people I had to work with and my military family. Living in close proximity forces people to set boundaries and respect others. Plus, if a political discussion got physical or out of control, remedial training for all parties involved.
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  > With 20 years experience under my belt, it is my firm belief that the workplace is not a place to discuss politics, religion, or other highly personal and divisive issues. I, too, old this belief, but it's kind of hard when the "new culture" is overwhelmed with a sense of entitlement to "be heard". Everyone thinks their individual opinions should be able to be shared whenever they feel the need to be validated, and that everyone must hear their opinion in that moment, regardless of how controversial it may be. And if you try to stifle their attempt or even mildly disagree, then you are the bad person. Couth and tactfulness have given way to entitlement and postmodernism in the modern work culture.
libeclipse 7y ago
Some employees literally doxed their colleagues. This has nothing to do with a "bubble" and more to do with being a terrible human being.
- el_cujo 7y ago
  >One of them had searched for and shared confidential documents outside the scope of their job, while the other tracked the individual calendars of staff working in the community platforms, human resources, and communications teams, she said. I don't really like Google very much, but I'm with them on this one, these people sound nuts.
uwydr 7y ago
>Google has a major lawsuit on its hands, regardless of whatever arbitration agreement it makes new-hires sign. Google is causing harm by capturing employees hearts and minds. What's next, suing a woman because she breaks your heart?
- say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
  Like.. a divorce?
buboard 7y ago
Might this be the bigger problem of "bowling alone"? There s fewer and fewer places where small groups or people meet, and 1-to-1 socialization is not the same.
- ohithereyou 7y ago
  >"bowling alone" I don't understand why this phrase itself has such a negative connotation. I bowl alone frequently (three times a week after work), often as a form of personal practice, so I can concentrate on getting better. Doing so has never meant that it was difficult to join a league or find people to socialize with - often by being at the alley I was able to get updates about leagues and clubs starting and I would run into and chat with people (individuals and groups) at the bar or in the lounge. It was a great way to get outside of my CS/STEM bubble in college.
  - stenl 7y ago
    For those who didn't get the reference, "Bowling alone" refers to an influential 1995 essay and a book by Robert Putnam about the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone.
- lapnitnelav 7y ago
  I think it goes deeper than that. Can't tell you how many times I've seen people boil down their identity to "I'm a Googler / Xoogler / ..." They go out in the pub around the corner after work with their company badge on display, they leverage having worked at Google in later jobs as if it has blessed them with infinite wisdom and knowledge. It's quite cringe worthy to see people fall into that trap. And yes, it's not every single one of them but not exactly a fringe group either.
  - username90 7y ago
    Making sure people know that you are an ex Googler is like a busty woman wearing low cut tops, it isn't classy but it works.
PunchTornado 7y ago
> earlier this month, more than 1,000 employees called on the company to cancel deals with oil and gas companies. what's wrong with these employees? Keep your political opinions to yourself. So they propose that my company lose money because of your activism. Don't agree! What if some employees asked that Google cancel any deals with climate change NGOs? How would these employees feel about it?
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  How would you feel if instead of Google it was Facebook, and instead of oil and gas they were raising privacy concerns?
- madengr 7y ago
  They probably don’t realize the chair their dumb ass is sitting on is derived from a petrochemical.
- celticninja 7y ago
  What's wrong with asking? The company doesn't have to agree, but there is no harm in asking.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    They aren't really asking, are they? Asking is a question at TGIF. What these people were doing is trying to create a bloc of activists that comes with the implied or explicit threat of coordinated employee action or pressure, as they've engaged in previously. They're pushing the boundaries to see how much control over management they really have.
    - throwanem 7y ago
      Good! The idea that management should by right have all the power in its relationship with workers is very convenient for management, but I don't see why that obligates anyone else to take it seriously.
    - celticninja 7y ago
Hitton 7y ago
Funny thing is, that although Google boasts about its racial and gender diversity, there is preciously little ideological diversity. And once people stray, they must be purged.
- matwood 7y ago
  For all the talk of inclusiveness today, there is actually very little empathy for groups not of your own (people really should watch This Is Water daily as a reminder). If a person doesn't believe exactly what you believe they must be a <insert hyperbolic label>. This destroys any real conversation around those topics, and I think ends up pushing normal people toward the fringes.
  - JohnBooty 7y ago
    When people say this, I feel they're often thinking about the decreased tolerance for toxic views. Like that ex-Googler who got fired for repeatedly claiming that women were inferior engineers. There's been a decreased tolerance for... well, intolerance.
    - thinkingemote 7y ago
      The Googler got fired for using unhelpful stereotypes. He didn't repeatedly claim women were inferior engineers (but I understand why people will believe it). Nor was it in my opinion intolerant but it was championed by those who are (there's a difference). It was some other unhelpful stereotype based on gender differences. The key take away is that generalising based on group Identity should not be done.
      - DagAgren 7y ago
        Yeah, none of that is the case. The first thing he did after being fired was run to the far-right propaganda outlets. That was very telling of what he actually believed.
        7y ago
samirillian 7y ago
> Your colleagues are not an authentic social network who you can organise with and pursue activism. You aren't hired to do that. While you are naive for thinking you could, it's not entirely your fault. Google brainwashed you. Well, this is exactly the question at stake. And it's not Google that makes some of us believe that it is indeed possible to not be estranged from our labor, but the history of human cooperation related to sharing our labor and other resources. We dream of sharing labor and governance of said labor. To say Google did not hire their employees to do that is resorting to one level of rules (legal or operational). But these employees are implicitly contesting a deeper level of rules (constitutional). The question of _who we are_ is deeper than any contracts or protocols that Google explicitly defines.
flatb 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch... >Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait) Imagine thinking that you can literally publish and circulate several revisions of an internal company memo telling 50% of your coworkers that they should be paid less because they're genetically inferior to you in regards to the job and then when people tell you that you're kind of a dick and they want nothing to do with you, getting outraged and making a grandstand about being unfairly and terribly oppressed, while bemoaning of course that people nowadays are "too sensitive". Sadly, you can find many examples of this amazing exercise in woke coherence right here on HN. #Edit, since I've been accused of "being ignorant" and not having read the memo by people who clearly haven't read the thing themselves. In a section titled "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech", wholly dedicated to justifying, among other phenomena, gender pay gap for reasons other than sexist bias, in James Damore's own words: > Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. >Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs. >Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. I've not cherry-picked these quotes. There are no omissions, they're whole, untouched paragraphs.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- akavi 7y ago
  I'm not sure I see any part of that quote even suggesting "50% of your coworkers... should be paid less because they're genetically inferior to you". And regardless of the correctness of firing him, him getting fired is a little stronger than "people tell[ing him] that [he's] kind of a dick".
SamuelAdams 7y ago
This is right out of the playbook. See this article for some very candid advice about how companies retain great employees. [1]: https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html
icotyl 7y ago
> the only people who the company encouraged socializing with. This is not my experience at all. Work-life balance there was way ahead of other tech companies I’ve worked for. Most people show up, work reasonable hours, and go home. Evenings and weekends are yours. In my experience, Bay Area startups are way more guilty of trying to exploit young people with a sense of that the startup is your family. Eat, work, play, and socialize with your team, 24/7. Some people enjoy that, and sometimes these same startups go belly up, and your social network is lost. I have no idea where your rhetoric comes from, though.

soup10 7y ago

Every big firm brainwashes their employees to make a unified tribe and align interests with their business. It's fucked up but not against the law.

mlrtime 7y ago
It's called company culture

cptskippy 7y ago

> Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with. I've never worked for Google so I have no basis for comparison but it's very common across white collar jobs for employees social circles to very closely if not entirely overlap with work. Unless you participated in extracurricular activities that weren't school sponsored, you probably never learned to make friends outside of school. Work, like school, is how you develop your social circle. The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work.

JohnBooty 7y ago
The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work. Well, it can go either way. Depends on your situation. For me, teleworking has been a help to my social life. Now that I'm a teleworker, I've got about 10 extra hours of time each week that I don't have to spend commuting. So that actually has benefits for my social life, since I never really hung out with my coworkers anyway! Of course, I'm a best-case scenario. I have a wife. I have pets. I've lived in this area my whole life and have friends here. I don't need workplace friends. If you don't have those things then you might depend on your workplace for your social connections a little bit more. To be honest I think workplace friends can really suck anyway. I have made great friends at various jobs, but these days I sort of like to keep "work" and "friends" separate. Having workplace friends can be healthy, but depending on your workplace for friends seems extremely unhealthy. I mean, what happens when you're no longer with the company? It's like you've left a cult and now all your connections have been severed.
- notzuck 7y ago
  Same - I do mostly remote work now and occasional client visits. I now take my kids to school every morning and have a good relationship with the school and other parents. I go into town for breakfast and have started to meet all of the local business owners. I have made closer connections to my neighbours and the local surf club. When I was in my early 20's, my social life was all about where I worked but now that I'm an adult, I've started to build a solid social network within my town and its various groups. I would hate to socialise with people purely from my office now.
- FpUser 7y ago
  Same here. While I did make some friends through work generally work is far from being The Source. Last time I had to go to work full time for someone else was 20 years ago so obviously my social life is totally unrelated to work as far as I am concerned.
dghughes 7y ago
> Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with. That's something I experienced. I was laid off after 15 years and really I was laid off from my friends too. The company even monitored social media accounts which at the time seemed bizarre but now it's common. I was told by someone still working there HR declared unfriending a fellow employee was considered bullying. I'm trying my best not to put all my eggs in one basket. I'm trying to make friends outside of work. Everyone knows you shouldn't date a coworker but really we should also not base our entire social life around coworkers either. But as mentioned above you are in that bubble. Apple even went so far as to encircle everyone with their new building.

DagAgren 7y ago

> Your colleagues are not an authentic social network who you can organise with and pursue activism. This is absolutely, 100% false. This is exactly what you SHOULD do, and this is what unions are for. Always organise with coworkers. Otherwise you are giving employers more power over you than you should.

raverbashing 7y ago
Forming an union is one thing, having only your colleagues as friends is another entirely different
leftyted 7y ago
My empoyer doesn't have a lot of power over me. I'm a programmer not a coal miner. I don't want to be in a union. I don't want to join some club. I don't want to pay dues. I don't want to read newsletters or listen to speeches or be involved at all in the grubby, underhanded manuevering for power that would come with a union. And I'm tired of people condescendingly telling me that I'm wrong for feeling this way. I'm not wrong. Power corrupts and labor is no more pure than mangement. If labor gets the upper hand it will abuse its position. The solution is a balance of power between labor and management. In my case, I feel I have plenty of power. In the case of Google employees, I feel they have plenty of power. Broadly speaking, programmers (in the US) have plenty of power. If you want to do good, volunteer at a soup kitchen. Of course that would be hard and would involve looking at things you'd rather not see.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ddevault 7y ago
  What if your punch in, put on the blinders, work 8 hours, punch out, go home; emotionally-deatched approach has you building tools to enable censorship in China? Or what if you end up working on [insert your personal morally objectionable issue of choice]? Your employer doesn't have power over you, but you have power over them. Organization is about choosing not to exercise that power by leaving for greener pastures and letting the company rinse and repeat with the next cycle of college graduates, but by staying and choosing to influence the direction of the company in a positive way. You can choose to do your 8 hours every day and devote a full one-third of your life - the only life you get - to someone else's work that you don't have a stake in. But that just seems like the stupid, easy way out.

mcv 7y ago

> "Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with." Surely this is an exaggeration? I mean, being friends with co-workers is great, but surely people at google also have friends outside Google, right? Right?

sjg007 7y ago
Probably friends from college or other workplaces.

aedron 7y ago

With 20 years experience under my belt, it is my firm belief that the workplace is not a place to discuss politics, religion, or other highly personal and divisive issues. Obviously, this extends even more to the workplace itself bringing these topics up. I'm not aggressive or even obvious about this disposition, I just gently steer clear of violating it. I feel the same should apply to companies, fine if you want to make a stand on some political issue, but don't make a show of it, because it implies that all your employees should agree with your position. People in the world have different opinions on things, we need to be able to work with eachother on shared interests without making every place and occasion a battleground. If not in the workplace, then where? On a somewhat related note, I don't consider my colleagues my friends, or, God forbid, the workplace a 'family'. My relationship to my employer is a professional one, trying to disguise this by intermingling personal feelings can only end in tears, when one day you discover that it was such all along, only you deluded yourself (or let yourself be led) into thinking differently.

2sk21 7y ago
Completely agree - the workplace is not a family and (mostly) not a group of friends.
- ccsnags 7y ago
  Even back in my military days, there was a clear difference between people I had to work with and my military family. Living in close proximity forces people to set boundaries and respect others. Plus, if a political discussion got physical or out of control, remedial training for all parties involved.
stronglikedan 7y ago
> With 20 years experience under my belt, it is my firm belief that the workplace is not a place to discuss politics, religion, or other highly personal and divisive issues. I, too, old this belief, but it's kind of hard when the "new culture" is overwhelmed with a sense of entitlement to "be heard". Everyone thinks their individual opinions should be able to be shared whenever they feel the need to be validated, and that everyone must hear their opinion in that moment, regardless of how controversial it may be. And if you try to stifle their attempt or even mildly disagree, then you are the bad person. Couth and tactfulness have given way to entitlement and postmodernism in the modern work culture.

libeclipse 7y ago

Some employees literally doxed their colleagues. This has nothing to do with a "bubble" and more to do with being a terrible human being.

el_cujo 7y ago
>One of them had searched for and shared confidential documents outside the scope of their job, while the other tracked the individual calendars of staff working in the community platforms, human resources, and communications teams, she said. I don't really like Google very much, but I'm with them on this one, these people sound nuts.

uwydr 7y ago

>Google has a major lawsuit on its hands, regardless of whatever arbitration agreement it makes new-hires sign. Google is causing harm by capturing employees hearts and minds. What's next, suing a woman because she breaks your heart?

say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
Like.. a divorce?

buboard 7y ago

Might this be the bigger problem of "bowling alone"? There s fewer and fewer places where small groups or people meet, and 1-to-1 socialization is not the same.

ohithereyou 7y ago
>"bowling alone" I don't understand why this phrase itself has such a negative connotation. I bowl alone frequently (three times a week after work), often as a form of personal practice, so I can concentrate on getting better. Doing so has never meant that it was difficult to join a league or find people to socialize with - often by being at the alley I was able to get updates about leagues and clubs starting and I would run into and chat with people (individuals and groups) at the bar or in the lounge. It was a great way to get outside of my CS/STEM bubble in college.
- stenl 7y ago
  For those who didn't get the reference, "Bowling alone" refers to an influential 1995 essay and a book by Robert Putnam about the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone.
lapnitnelav 7y ago
I think it goes deeper than that. Can't tell you how many times I've seen people boil down their identity to "I'm a Googler / Xoogler / ..." They go out in the pub around the corner after work with their company badge on display, they leverage having worked at Google in later jobs as if it has blessed them with infinite wisdom and knowledge. It's quite cringe worthy to see people fall into that trap. And yes, it's not every single one of them but not exactly a fringe group either.
- username90 7y ago
  Making sure people know that you are an ex Googler is like a busty woman wearing low cut tops, it isn't classy but it works.

PunchTornado 7y ago

> earlier this month, more than 1,000 employees called on the company to cancel deals with oil and gas companies. what's wrong with these employees? Keep your political opinions to yourself. So they propose that my company lose money because of your activism. Don't agree! What if some employees asked that Google cancel any deals with climate change NGOs? How would these employees feel about it?

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
How would you feel if instead of Google it was Facebook, and instead of oil and gas they were raising privacy concerns?
madengr 7y ago
They probably don’t realize the chair their dumb ass is sitting on is derived from a petrochemical.
celticninja 7y ago
What's wrong with asking? The company doesn't have to agree, but there is no harm in asking.
- repolfx 7y ago
  They aren't really asking, are they? Asking is a question at TGIF. What these people were doing is trying to create a bloc of activists that comes with the implied or explicit threat of coordinated employee action or pressure, as they've engaged in previously. They're pushing the boundaries to see how much control over management they really have.
  - throwanem 7y ago
    Good! The idea that management should by right have all the power in its relationship with workers is very convenient for management, but I don't see why that obligates anyone else to take it seriously.
  - celticninja 7y ago

Hitton 7y ago

Funny thing is, that although Google boasts about its racial and gender diversity, there is preciously little ideological diversity. And once people stray, they must be purged.

matwood 7y ago
For all the talk of inclusiveness today, there is actually very little empathy for groups not of your own (people really should watch This Is Water daily as a reminder). If a person doesn't believe exactly what you believe they must be a <insert hyperbolic label>. This destroys any real conversation around those topics, and I think ends up pushing normal people toward the fringes.
- JohnBooty 7y ago
  When people say this, I feel they're often thinking about the decreased tolerance for toxic views. Like that ex-Googler who got fired for repeatedly claiming that women were inferior engineers. There's been a decreased tolerance for... well, intolerance.
  - thinkingemote 7y ago
    The Googler got fired for using unhelpful stereotypes. He didn't repeatedly claim women were inferior engineers (but I understand why people will believe it). Nor was it in my opinion intolerant but it was championed by those who are (there's a difference). It was some other unhelpful stereotype based on gender differences. The key take away is that generalising based on group Identity should not be done.
    - DagAgren 7y ago
      Yeah, none of that is the case. The first thing he did after being fired was run to the far-right propaganda outlets. That was very telling of what he actually believed.
      - 7y ago

samirillian 7y ago

> Your colleagues are not an authentic social network who you can organise with and pursue activism. You aren't hired to do that. While you are naive for thinking you could, it's not entirely your fault. Google brainwashed you. Well, this is exactly the question at stake. And it's not Google that makes some of us believe that it is indeed possible to not be estranged from our labor, but the history of human cooperation related to sharing our labor and other resources. We dream of sharing labor and governance of said labor. To say Google did not hire their employees to do that is resorting to one level of rules (legal or operational). But these employees are implicitly contesting a deeper level of rules (constitutional). The question of _who we are_ is deeper than any contracts or protocols that Google explicitly defines.

flatb 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_Ideological_Echo_Ch... >Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait) Imagine thinking that you can literally publish and circulate several revisions of an internal company memo telling 50% of your coworkers that they should be paid less because they're genetically inferior to you in regards to the job and then when people tell you that you're kind of a dick and they want nothing to do with you, getting outraged and making a grandstand about being unfairly and terribly oppressed, while bemoaning of course that people nowadays are "too sensitive". Sadly, you can find many examples of this amazing exercise in woke coherence right here on HN. #Edit, since I've been accused of "being ignorant" and not having read the memo by people who clearly haven't read the thing themselves. In a section titled "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech", wholly dedicated to justifying, among other phenomena, gender pay gap for reasons other than sexist bias, in James Damore's own words: > Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. >Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs. >Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. I've not cherry-picked these quotes. There are no omissions, they're whole, untouched paragraphs.

deleted 7y ago
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akavi 7y ago
I'm not sure I see any part of that quote even suggesting "50% of your coworkers... should be paid less because they're genetically inferior to you". And regardless of the correctness of firing him, him getting fired is a little stronger than "people tell[ing him] that [he's] kind of a dick".

SamuelAdams 7y ago

This is right out of the playbook. See this article for some very candid advice about how companies retain great employees. [1]: https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html

icotyl 7y ago

> the only people who the company encouraged socializing with. This is not my experience at all. Work-life balance there was way ahead of other tech companies I’ve worked for. Most people show up, work reasonable hours, and go home. Evenings and weekends are yours. In my experience, Bay Area startups are way more guilty of trying to exploit young people with a sense of that the startup is your family. Eat, work, play, and socialize with your team, 24/7. Some people enjoy that, and sometimes these same startups go belly up, and your social network is lost. I have no idea where your rhetoric comes from, though.