5 ms·

This is historically revisionist. Google was a money-making behemoth with its tentacles in many areas of innovation before it became the politicized entity we k

This is historically revisionist. Google was a money-making behemoth with its tentacles in many areas of innovation before it became the politicized entity we know it to be today. Google only really became politicized a couple of years ago when certain media publications started making demands for diversity numbers within the organization and publicly shaming them for not meeting some imaginary bar in the area. Github was the premier hosted SCM solution long before it literally pulled its meritocracy rug from under it [0] and has been living off first-mover advantage since, succeeding in spite of the activists it now employs, not because of. I personally _would be_ very surprised to see an identity politics focused company beat either, not merely because of their [Google, Github] current status but because those in question haven't shown themselves to be capable of building much at all. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocracy-rug-2014-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocr...

shadowgovt 7y ago
Google sheets had the gay pride flag Easter egg for almost a decade. Company has been political for awhile.
- nostromo 7y ago
  That's no more political than it is to celebrate Cinco de Mayo or Saint Patrick's Day with a custom logo or easter egg.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    A lot has changed in the US in a decade. Case in point: a person could make the above claim with a straight face now. ;) Obergefell v. Hodges was only four years ago. American conservatives are still trying to reverse gay marriage.
    - buzzkillington 7y ago
      Not in SF.
      - geofft 7y ago
        Same SF where Mozilla's employees revolted against a CEO who donated to support Prop 8? None of that was political, then? (And hiring mostly in SF isn't itself a political choice?)
shadowgovt 7y ago
rms is extremely political, and has made significant contributions In the operating system and application space. The entirety of the free software movement is a political movement, stemming from a philosophy that people should have freedom to change the software on devices they physically own. I assume you're not considering him one of "those in question?"
jeromegv 7y ago
You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media wanted. Implying that politics came in only because they tried to bring diversity in the workplace. We are talking of the company that was advocating do not evil. This was political from day 1, remember their stand on China?
- kortilla 7y ago
  > You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media wanted. Implying that politics came in only because they tried to bring diversity in the workplace. Yes, when they stopped caring about engineering skills and starting caring about diversity checkboxes, their overall engineering capabilities declined. Google has done relatively little of note over the last 5 years given their size, and part of it is that they have an incompetence cancer and engineering teams cannot trust other teams (or even coworkers in larger teams). Do you realize how harmful it is to an organization when you can’t tell if a coworker you are depending on is competent or if they were hired because of their genes? > This was political from day 1, remember their stand on China? Which stand? Because they flip-flop all of the time.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    It doesn't take more than a handful of interactions to determine if a coworker is competent. The reason they were hired is irrelevant; software engineering at Google is very fast-paced, and it tends to interpret incompetence as damage and route around it.
  - googlerx 7y ago
    I'm an engineer at google and this bit about hiring someone because of their genes is false. All candidates must past the same hiring bar, no one gets extra points for "diversity". So no, I never wonder why a coworker was hired.
    - username90 7y ago
joshuamorton 7y ago
> This is historically revisionist. Google was a money-making behemoth with its tentacles in many areas of innovation before it became the politicized entity we know it to be today. This is also historically revisionist. Google's been super political since forever, it just wasn't in the news for it.
- thu2111 7y ago
  Really? Googler 2006-2014. I can't say I remember much politics during that time. The closest it got was Eric Schmidt having close relationships with Washington. That and the China thing but even there, Google was in China with a censored search engine up until they went and hacked the firm. I don't remember much discussion of the fact that we had a Chinese version of the search engine. What are you thinking of? I look at it like this. My friends who still work there complain about stupid idpol all the time now. I never heard complaints like that when I was there.

shadowgovt 7y ago

Google sheets had the gay pride flag Easter egg for almost a decade. Company has been political for awhile.

nostromo 7y ago
That's no more political than it is to celebrate Cinco de Mayo or Saint Patrick's Day with a custom logo or easter egg.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  A lot has changed in the US in a decade. Case in point: a person could make the above claim with a straight face now. ;) Obergefell v. Hodges was only four years ago. American conservatives are still trying to reverse gay marriage.
  - buzzkillington 7y ago
    Not in SF.
    - geofft 7y ago
      Same SF where Mozilla's employees revolted against a CEO who donated to support Prop 8? None of that was political, then? (And hiring mostly in SF isn't itself a political choice?)

shadowgovt 7y ago

rms is extremely political, and has made significant contributions In the operating system and application space. The entirety of the free software movement is a political movement, stemming from a philosophy that people should have freedom to change the software on devices they physically own. I assume you're not considering him one of "those in question?"

jeromegv 7y ago

You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media wanted. Implying that politics came in only because they tried to bring diversity in the workplace. We are talking of the company that was advocating do not evil. This was political from day 1, remember their stand on China?

kortilla 7y ago
> You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media wanted. Implying that politics came in only because they tried to bring diversity in the workplace. Yes, when they stopped caring about engineering skills and starting caring about diversity checkboxes, their overall engineering capabilities declined. Google has done relatively little of note over the last 5 years given their size, and part of it is that they have an incompetence cancer and engineering teams cannot trust other teams (or even coworkers in larger teams). Do you realize how harmful it is to an organization when you can’t tell if a coworker you are depending on is competent or if they were hired because of their genes? > This was political from day 1, remember their stand on China? Which stand? Because they flip-flop all of the time.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  It doesn't take more than a handful of interactions to determine if a coworker is competent. The reason they were hired is irrelevant; software engineering at Google is very fast-paced, and it tends to interpret incompetence as damage and route around it.
- googlerx 7y ago
  I'm an engineer at google and this bit about hiring someone because of their genes is false. All candidates must past the same hiring bar, no one gets extra points for "diversity". So no, I never wonder why a coworker was hired.
  - username90 7y ago

joshuamorton 7y ago

> This is historically revisionist. Google was a money-making behemoth with its tentacles in many areas of innovation before it became the politicized entity we know it to be today. This is also historically revisionist. Google's been super political since forever, it just wasn't in the news for it.

thu2111 7y ago
Really? Googler 2006-2014. I can't say I remember much politics during that time. The closest it got was Eric Schmidt having close relationships with Washington. That and the China thing but even there, Google was in China with a censored search engine up until they went and hacked the firm. I don't remember much discussion of the fact that we had a Chinese version of the search engine. What are you thinking of? I look at it like this. My friends who still work there complain about stupid idpol all the time now. I never heard complaints like that when I was there.