4 ms·

Nothing to see here. While most employees are chill, I would imagine Google has a disproportionation of hyper ideologists who are intolerant to different opinio

Nothing to see here. While most employees are chill, I would imagine Google has a disproportionation of hyper ideologists who are intolerant to different opinions and self-righteous to bring everything down to achieve personal validation. The trust is reduced, but it is both way, between employer and employees. Without that, any conversation is meaningless.

nemo44x 7y ago
If you're an engineer at Google, you've probably had a great technical education, you feel empowered because if Google would hire you, you can assume most anyone else would too; you probably feel smart because of this and in many ways you probably are a pretty smart person. You're very well paid and compensated and you know it. There are a lot of things here that not only give someone confidence but also conviction. As you rise up the social hierarchy, and a Google engineer is very high on the social hierarchy, you begin to question your beliefs less and less and have more conviction that you are right - you must be enlightened. Because if you're so awesome as to be an in-demand engineer (at Google!), clearly your opinions are more informed and enlightened than people below you on the social hierarchy. This conviction is going to grant you confidence to not only openly proclaim positions on topics most people find private, but use this newfound social power to leverage dominance over those subordinate to your leadership position in society. How could you be wrong? Just look at how awesome you are - your expensive house, nice car, rare foods, and luxury recreation activities validate this. Lift your hammer of justice (it's a heavy burden you carry with the privilege's you were born to have) and smash any who your in-group find problematic. After all, it's only collateral damage if some honest, humble, and hard working people are destroyed in your wrath to feed your new, insatiable appetite for further social conquest.
- busterarm 7y ago
  If you think that's bad, think of what they're like when they eventually move on to other engineering organizations as leadership...
- zarkov99 7y ago
  That can't be the whole story. Google is not the only provider of high status jobs for nerds. Why aren't Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook also rife with this sort of activism?
  - catalogia 7y ago
    It also doesn't account for the behavior of similarly privileged non-nerds. Swap out "technical education" in that comment with any other form of specialized training that leads to high salaries. How does the specialization of computer science educations compare to the specialization of neurosurgery educations? The notion that engineers are shitty people because they weren't made to take enough liberal arts classes falls flat for me. Learning about ethics doesn't make people more ethical[0][1]. And I'd say the number one problem with this industry, and the root of its increasingly poor reputation among the general public, is a lack ethics. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529374 [1]https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/01/07/168650666/new-year-s-resolutions-need-more-than-good-intentions https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/01/07/168650666/new-y...
    - username90 7y ago
      > And I'd say the number one problem with this industry, and the root of its increasingly poor reputation among the general public, is a lack ethics. Correction: The number one problem with every industry is lack of ethics. The root of its increasingly poor reputation is that the richest companies in the world will always face extra scrutiny. Few people cared for them 10 years ago when they were small fries and conventional companies topped the charts, but today when the majority of the 10 most valuable companies are tech companies the world will naturally start focusing on them more so than any other industry.
  - nemo44x 7y ago
    Perhaps “don’t be evil” was ill advised? “Evil” is rather subjective in many ways and invites a culture that maybe doesn’t scale. Maybe google was a tad myopic to the realities of what it takes to be a high growth public company with a single revenue generating product of any significance which they didn’t really create in the first place.
- corporateslave5 7y ago
  This is a perfect description of my old best friend. We always disagreed politically, but after he worked at google for a few years, he became completely intolerant to any opinion I had. Was utterly confusing to me
  - dmix 7y ago
    I blame Twitter. It’s radicalized a whole generation of people. People are extremely tribal as it is. Of course only a subset of people are prone to this extremist and highly emotional/vindictive group think. But we’re seeing what this means on a large scale as the hysterical 1% of the population in each region bands together nationally and starts recruiting other with a unified FUD campaign. People see a tweet with 50k retweet’s and assumes it’s a popular, established, and credible opinion. I still have hope for the vast majority of people but I think society and our culture needs to become more resilient and less overly receptive to the loudest voices in the room. The bad is far too low to what is called “controversial” today. Society simply yet hasn’t adapted to national scale outrage machines IMO. We’re starting to see people start questioning what the right way to handle them and manage the never ending radical activism campaigns.
- derangedHorse 7y ago
  I hope those Google employees who think like that only apply their self-confidence to things relevant to their work. I think most people grow out of the phase where they think that they excel at everything just because they know how to program. To be fair, a lot of people who don’t find a career success also have strong opinions and ideologies. People can always have their opinions to themselves if nothing else.

nemo44x 7y ago

If you're an engineer at Google, you've probably had a great technical education, you feel empowered because if Google would hire you, you can assume most anyone else would too; you probably feel smart because of this and in many ways you probably are a pretty smart person. You're very well paid and compensated and you know it. There are a lot of things here that not only give someone confidence but also conviction. As you rise up the social hierarchy, and a Google engineer is very high on the social hierarchy, you begin to question your beliefs less and less and have more conviction that you are right - you must be enlightened. Because if you're so awesome as to be an in-demand engineer (at Google!), clearly your opinions are more informed and enlightened than people below you on the social hierarchy. This conviction is going to grant you confidence to not only openly proclaim positions on topics most people find private, but use this newfound social power to leverage dominance over those subordinate to your leadership position in society. How could you be wrong? Just look at how awesome you are - your expensive house, nice car, rare foods, and luxury recreation activities validate this. Lift your hammer of justice (it's a heavy burden you carry with the privilege's you were born to have) and smash any who your in-group find problematic. After all, it's only collateral damage if some honest, humble, and hard working people are destroyed in your wrath to feed your new, insatiable appetite for further social conquest.

busterarm 7y ago
If you think that's bad, think of what they're like when they eventually move on to other engineering organizations as leadership...
zarkov99 7y ago
That can't be the whole story. Google is not the only provider of high status jobs for nerds. Why aren't Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook also rife with this sort of activism?
- catalogia 7y ago
  It also doesn't account for the behavior of similarly privileged non-nerds. Swap out "technical education" in that comment with any other form of specialized training that leads to high salaries. How does the specialization of computer science educations compare to the specialization of neurosurgery educations? The notion that engineers are shitty people because they weren't made to take enough liberal arts classes falls flat for me. Learning about ethics doesn't make people more ethical[0][1]. And I'd say the number one problem with this industry, and the root of its increasingly poor reputation among the general public, is a lack ethics. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529374 [1]https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/01/07/168650666/new-year-s-resolutions-need-more-than-good-intentions https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/01/07/168650666/new-y...
  - username90 7y ago
    > And I'd say the number one problem with this industry, and the root of its increasingly poor reputation among the general public, is a lack ethics. Correction: The number one problem with every industry is lack of ethics. The root of its increasingly poor reputation is that the richest companies in the world will always face extra scrutiny. Few people cared for them 10 years ago when they were small fries and conventional companies topped the charts, but today when the majority of the 10 most valuable companies are tech companies the world will naturally start focusing on them more so than any other industry.
- nemo44x 7y ago
  Perhaps “don’t be evil” was ill advised? “Evil” is rather subjective in many ways and invites a culture that maybe doesn’t scale. Maybe google was a tad myopic to the realities of what it takes to be a high growth public company with a single revenue generating product of any significance which they didn’t really create in the first place.
corporateslave5 7y ago
This is a perfect description of my old best friend. We always disagreed politically, but after he worked at google for a few years, he became completely intolerant to any opinion I had. Was utterly confusing to me
- dmix 7y ago
  I blame Twitter. It’s radicalized a whole generation of people. People are extremely tribal as it is. Of course only a subset of people are prone to this extremist and highly emotional/vindictive group think. But we’re seeing what this means on a large scale as the hysterical 1% of the population in each region bands together nationally and starts recruiting other with a unified FUD campaign. People see a tweet with 50k retweet’s and assumes it’s a popular, established, and credible opinion. I still have hope for the vast majority of people but I think society and our culture needs to become more resilient and less overly receptive to the loudest voices in the room. The bad is far too low to what is called “controversial” today. Society simply yet hasn’t adapted to national scale outrage machines IMO. We’re starting to see people start questioning what the right way to handle them and manage the never ending radical activism campaigns.
derangedHorse 7y ago
I hope those Google employees who think like that only apply their self-confidence to things relevant to their work. I think most people grow out of the phase where they think that they excel at everything just because they know how to program. To be fair, a lot of people who don’t find a career success also have strong opinions and ideologies. People can always have their opinions to themselves if nothing else.