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Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you sq
by ddevault 6y ago
Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them. For shame.
- strictnein 6y agoThey look at their bank accounts.
- ddevault 6y agoThat doesn't justify their behavior - it condemns it.
- nialv7 6y agoYeah, but it's a good reason for a lot of them to keep working at the company and turn a deaf ear towards what it's been doing.
- reaperducer 6y agoit's a good reason for a lot of them to keep working at the company and turn a deaf ear towards what it's been doing. It's a reason. It's not a good reason.
- nialv7 6y ago"good" not in a moral sense. Or you could say a strong reason.
- Frost1x 6y agoIn our society it does. They're being incentivized (highly) to do said work. I'm not saying I agree with the incentive structure but money is one of the core incentives in the US since it translates to other necessities and wants in life. Those working at dubious businesses are being highly incentivized to do so and at the same time, normalizing said behaviors. Here's the kicker as well, as the clench on labor grows tighter with the middle class being squeezed more and more, people seem oblivious that even if you're getting paid relatively well (6 figures) and have options to jump ship, that may not always be the case when labor keeps caving (sometimes without option) into business incentive structures for compensation. If there are plenty of people on the labor market capable of competing with you yet willing to do work you won't for money, you too will be displaced. Ultimately, the people dangling carrots in front of us win and we (those who rely on labor for income) lose.
- ravenstine 6y agoIt might be easy to say this, but I believe I would quit if I was asked to implement something like that. But perhaps I'd be different if I were paid $300k a year. (I sure hope not, though)
- ddevault 6y agoIf you were being paid $300K/year, it costs your employer (as a rule of thumb) 1.5x, or about $450K/year. The only reason they could spend $450K/year on you is if they expected to make at least that much money with you, compared to what they would make without you. Even if you aren't directly working on this stuff, you are providing them with capital that is being spent on it.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoArguably they don't have to make that money off you directly. They just need you to not be elsewhere making that money for someone else, or disrupting a market that they are entrenched in. IMHO much of the FAANG hiring / head count / acquisition process could be analyzed in this light.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoIt’s good that you would refuse to do the work. Sadly they can easily find someone who badly needs the money, doesn’t understand the problems the feature creates, or doesn’t care about doing the right thing. If all the workers organized it would make a bigger difference, but the company actively discourages worker organization.
- mendelmaleh 6y agoNo one will ever ask you to implement something "like that". It probably was an ordinary blacklist that probably started to "protect children" form porn and such, then it went on to "protect teenagers" from radicalization, and now it will protect adults from anti-communist/chinese comments. We've made the bed.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoLaughing all the way to the bank... It justifies the behavior to people who think for themselves and not for some intangible global internet community. i'm not trolling.
- ddevault 6y agoWith all that blood on their hands, they'd better be careful in handling the check or else the bank won't be able to read the routing number.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pb7 6y agoImagine thinking anything Google does comes close to resembling having blood on its hands. It really seems to me that the first world doesn't have enough real problems on its hands.
- joshuamorton 6y agoOther than the hn-liberitarian anything that resembles censorship in any form is bad circlejerk, I don't actually see what the fuss is about here. Assume I believe that moderation is a reasonable action. Why is this unreasonable moderation, who is harmed? Put another way, assume that I have some line on the sand drawn on when I would leave. Assume also that I believe that what I'm doing at Google has net-positive impact. Why should I move my line in the sand back to <whatever this is>?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dleslie 6y agoI have a bunch of friends at Google; it's a mix of "not my department," "the pay is good," and a few "true believers."
- catalogia 6y agoDon't say that he's hypocritical Rather say that he's apolitical "Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?" "That's not my department!" says Werner von Braun
- zirror 6y agoTom Lehrer is a national treasure.
- Diederich 6y agoFor those who aren't aware and/or won't look this reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro As the other comenter noted, Tom Lehrer is indeed a national treasure, and his satire is top shelf. From the light-hearted "The Elements": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM (watch for the surprise at the end) To the gallows comedy of "We Will All Go Together When We Go": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs NB: I appreciate the irony linking to YouTube content in a 'WTF Google/YouTube' thread.
- dekhn 6y agoTom Lehrer was my math professor in College. He was delightfully amusing and I learned a lot (in particular, the birthday paradox, years before I understand why they matter in hash tables and other probability problems).
- manigandham 6y agoMoney. Being part of a massive company with lots of compartmentalization. A majority left-leaning political affiliation which tends to be softer on China and against nationalism/borders.
- geofft 6y agoNot a Google or YouTube employee, but, practically, what would change? In the most likely case, a bunch of Googlers who believe it's important to be apolitical at work would take over the product and implement much stronger censorship to get promo. In the unlikely event all of them (and every applicant drooling for a FAANG job) had a change of heart too, Tencent would gladly step into the vacuum.
- ddevault 6y agoGoogle employees have proven themselves capable of collective action: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/technology/google-walkout-sexual-harassment.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/technology/google-walkout... Do it again.
- geofft 6y agoI'm not sure how that addresses the points I raised - what was the outcome of that walkout? (Besides some retaliation against organizers.)
- ddevault 6y agoUnfortunately little - because the workers didn't stick to it. One walkout writes a headline, but a strike causes change.
- geofft 6y agoA strike causes change when management can't hire enough workers to replace the strikers. My entire point is that they can. You can probably successfully strike against paying Andy Rubin hundreds of millions of dollars for creeping on employees - while there are a handful of folks who want that same life for themselves, there aren't that many. I'm claiming you can't strike over censoring some words on YouTube because there's no shortage of qualified-enough people who don't currently work for Google who would be glad to take your job. (And you still haven't addressed my point about, suppose they strike successfully and Google decides it won't help the CCP at all and the CCP bans Google and has Tencent step in - what then? Did you save the world?)
- virvar 6y agoHow do you buy hardware? I’m genuinely asking because where I live it’s impossible to buy stuff that wasn’t made in China. It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech.
- ddevault 6y agoI try to avoid buying Chinese products, but unfortunately I end up doing so more often than I'd like. But ultimately, my lifetime contribution to the Chinese regime of a few thousand dollars worth of consumer products pales in comparison to the lifetime contribution of millions of dollars of capital that each Google employee is raising for the company to spend on directly supporting the regime with censorship and surveillance tools.
- ekianjo 6y ago> I’m genuinely asking because where I live it’s impossible to buy stuff that wasn’t made in China. So wait, now buying something that was made in China means condoning the CCP? That's a pretty big jump in logic.
- teknologist 6y agoThe CCP’s claim to legitimacy is based on continued economic growth in the PRC. Buying made in China products supports this economic growth, and also the cheap, often exploitative, labor that went into producing them. Besides, you should probably support the local manufacturing industry wherever you’re living.
- throwaway511543 6y agoAnd democracy's legitamacy is derived from monkeys voting in a system rigged against them, after listening to false promises of growth. While still supporting cheap, often exploitative labor. I mean, from your description, I'd rather want a system that actually shows continued growth, rather than hollowed promises of growth. Let's be honest here, democracy's real growth had been going to war with nations and extracting/exploiting resources from them. Hence why the past 50 years, there has been no real growth in democratic countries because they are not able to as easily extract from the rest of the world.
- MangoCoffee 6y agomoney
- gridlockd 6y agoOf all the reasons, that's not the hill I'd die on.
- koheripbal 6y agoGoogle is a pretty huge company. What if they're working on something unrelated - maybe even something that benefits the world?
- strictnein 6y agoGoogle is an advertising and tracking company. Full stop.
- reaperducer 6y agoA real-world example would be companies that make parts for nuclear bombs, but also make parts for thermostats. If there were no other thermostat companies, you might have an argument. But there are plenty of other thermostat companies, and plenty of other tech companies than Google.
- TrackerFF 6y agoI guess the same as consultants working for McKinsey, or bankers working for Goldman "Not my department / group / office" "Just a few bad apples" I mean yes, those are valid points - and I'd imagine most junior workers being there just for the future (career) opportunities. No junior engineer at google is going to have any say in strategic and political decisions like censorship.
- apazzolini 6y agoI wish that people who use the "a few bad apples" quote as a defense (especially when it comes to the police) would realize the full quote is "a few bad apples spoil the barrel."
- rixed 6y agoOther companies have been doing the same for many years?
- reaperducer 6y agoSo because one company does bad things, it's OK for other companies to do bad things?
- warranty 6y agoWe don’t care. We get top of the line money for tapping on computers all day.. big mansions.. cars .. lifetime of financial security and free food & booze so lol who cares.
- shadowgovt 6y ago"To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." "The world's" doesn't mean "The part of the world we like most." "Universally" doesn't mean "Nobody in China gets to use our system until the Chinese government adopts Western notions of information control." Google would operate in North Korea if it could, because as a point of philosophy, it's believed that access to more informtion, even curtailed by the government, is better than access to only information controlled by the government.
- davesque 6y agoAre you speaking as a Google employee or just from personal opinion? Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else? Wouldn't more "mutually consistent" information be a better goal? Flat earth stuff is fun but you must limit yourself to a very small plausible universe in order to really buy into it.
- shadowgovt 6y ago> Are you speaking as a Google employee or just from personal opinion? The distinction is irrelevant; were I speaking as a Google employee I would still be speaking from personal opinion, not on behalf of my employer. > Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else? It's not though; it's "all" the world's information (within constraints; Google also isn't vending a search index to make pedophilic imagery easy to find). But the flat-Earth hypothetical doesn't apply because that's only a subset. In fact, it doesn't apply in a way that's demonstrative, I think, of the game Google plays with authoritarian states. Google banks on the notion nature cannot be fooled. Sure, individual phrases or sets of facts (like Tienman Square history) can be knocked out of returned datasets. But the missing data leaves holes; it becomes apparent where the cuts are in the data. This is why North Korea cuts the whole internet; they know it can't be contained. China's ruling party is more subtle; they'll block unpopular signal it if a sense of "decency," as it were, but they know their people aren't stupid. In any sense of "stupid."
- ajconway 6y agoHow do you justify being a citizen of your country? (not sure what country that is, but most of them have done bad things in the past). It's possible to be a part of a large organization and not agree with its every action.
- GordonS 6y agoIt's not really the same though - I can choose to work for an organisation, whereas I don't get to choose where I am born.
- save_ferris 6y agoThis is a very poor comparison since nobody chooses their original country of citizenship and it usually takes lots of money or familial connection to obtain citizenship elsewhere.
- augustt 6y agoPeople are plopped into existence as a citizen of a country. Not quite the same as choosing to work somewhere. https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
- giardini 6y agoYou're still here?!8-))
- ddevault 6y agoI have much less mobility as a US citizen to move to another country than I have as a software engineer. Almost any Google employee could have an offer somewhere else within 3 weeks of starting their search.
- scep12 6y agoYou couldn't move to Canada easily?
- 6y ago
- _iyig 6y agoMany Google employees are young people from mainland China. Lots of them have a very favorable view of the Chinese Communist Party. I know this because worked there, talked with fellow employees about this, and closely followed the internal discussion when Project Dragonfly leaked to the press. I doubt many Googlers from the mainland see anything terribly wrong with this censorship, just as many had no objection to Project Dragonfly. Can you imagine China's reaction if thousands of Americans worked at Tencent in Beijing, and had access to users' chat logs and browsing histories? Besides raw intelligence-gathering, this data could be used to blackmail and coerce Chinese citizens. Wouldn't it be seen as a threat to China's national security?
- skybrian 6y agoI don't work there anymore, but this is a confused argument born of zealotry. Taking Google's money to work on open source is totally fine. More money spent on good things might even mean less spent on bad things. For example, nothing good would come from the Go team quitting over unrelated political stuff.
- pacala 6y agoFWIW, open source is not an absolute good. It is undercutting the ability of your peers to make a living. It is making software a commodity, such that capital rich hardware owners can make a killing. See AWS. Commoditize your complement. https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement
- dleslie 6y agoThis is what the AGLP3 is for.
- SquareWheel 6y agoIt may not be common, but it is possible to make money on open-source software. Redhat would be the largest example. Automattic's WordPress is another. If software can be profitable whether it's open or closed-source, then isn't open-source inherently better?
- Apes 6y agoI'm not sure RedHat is a good example any more, since they were aquired by IBM.
- cosmojg 6y agoThey continue to operate fairly independently, and there business is still fully open source. IBM executives have also paid lip service to their model, suggesting they might move towards it. (Of course, lip service is lip service, and action is action. Two different things.)
- 6y ago
- smalltalks 6y ago> Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Not a Google Employee , but in 99% of the case it's money + experience/situation. This is similar to what others tech company are doing ( Reddit , Adobe etc.. ) in terms of arbitrage when they decide to enter Chinese Market , Partner with Chinese VC or with ideas that challenge their values. Regardless of where you'll go in tech you'll end up in Amoral corporations like Google/Amazon/Microsoft which are driven solely by Money and Growth , regardless of the consequences. ( Remember Gillette and Child Labour ? Nestlé ? ) Also , the last people who tried to Unionize at Google , which could have enable them to do something about it , got laid off instantly[0] , same pattern happened in all others tech companies... [0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/25/20983053/google-fires-four-employees-memo-rebecca-rivers-laurence-berland-union-busting-accusation-walkout https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/25/20983053/google-fires-fo...
- bzb3 6y agoIt doesn't have to be "cognitive dissonance". They simply might not share your political views.
- yashap 6y agoI’m not a Google employee, but really all companies of large enough size care only about the bottom line. Large companies don’t have morals, they just try to make money at all costs, full stop. Google is a bit more hypocritical in that they pretend to be about more than this, but lots of companies are similarly hypocritical, especially tech companies. It’s really only small businesses that have any sort of humanity (sometimes). Google pay better than most, and if you’re on the right team I assume you get to work on very interesting/challenging projects. They’re just as heartless/selfish as any other bigco, but I don’t know that they’re worse.
- ddevault 6y agoThe answer to this is collective action.
- ktta 6y agoIsn't that the answer to most problems in the world? Getting that in place in the real problem, isn't it?
- khawkins 6y agoThe fundamental problem is that there is collective action on both sides of the issue. There are plenty of people organizing for the removal of "hate speech", and there are plenty of people organizing for free speech. It's not exactly clear which side is economical since you're not going to make both sides happy. Tech giants have picked the winners and I'm pretty convinced they've picked sides based on their personal convictions. They're removing hate speech because they think they're on the right side of history, not because they think it will make them the most money.
- tiborsaas 6y agoIf all the ethical employees leave Google as you suggest, then who do you think will fill their place? Let's not assume they will suffer to find people willing to work for them. Will that make things better or worse?
- 6y ago
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoIf every HN submission were spammed with "communist bandits," do you think at some point the mods would just write a script to block such comments? It doesn't seem absurd to me to think that they might. It wouldn't bother me in the least if they did. That type of comment is even less edifying than "first" or "top" or "did anyone else come here from 9gag." I work for Google. It does some things I don't like but this does not prima facie appear to be one of them.
- linuxftw 6y agoThey want to have political influence and believe they are serving society's best interests. They believe dissenting voices must be silenced.
- dingo_bat 6y agoThere's a certain quote by Mr Krabs that comes to mind.
- tidepod12 6y agoDrew, ever since sourcehut got a little positive attention you seem to have adopted this mindset of "I started my own company and don't have to work for the man anymore, why doesn't everyone else just do the same?" You need to realize that this is an extremely narrow minded view to have. Not everyone can start their own business. What would you have done if sourcehut hadn't gained enough popularity to be successful? You would probably be working for [CORP ABC] who surely would be doing something you disliked, too. That would not make you a "bootlicker". In fact, I'd like to ask this question of you: your website is undoubtedly being used by people to build software that you disagree with, perhaps even censorship. How do you justify still hosting your site instead of shutting it down? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them. Is it because you need the money from your site? So do Google employees (probably). Is it because you still enjoy the work of building your site? So do Google employees (probably)? Is it because on the aggregate you think that your site still provides benefit to society, despite it possibly being used for things you disagree with? So do Google employees (probably). There are plenty of reasons why people still work for Google, and you probably would relate to them too if you stopped being so combative towards anyone who works for [big corp].
- ddevault 6y agoI am not relating the reader to my experience with SourceHut - I haven't told anyone to quit and start their own company rather than work for Google - but remininding them that the market for their talents is strong and that we have the luxury of choosing who we work for. I have held and spoken of these convictions since long before SourceHut. Read my blog archives or my old HN comments since pre-SourceHut and you'll find much of the same. Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project.
- tidepod12 6y ago> I haven't told anyone to quit and start their own company rather than work for Google Your past comments and submissions to HN say otherwise. You have been very outspoken and proud about the fact that you haven't taken money from "the man" (my words, not yours), and that others should do the same [0][1]. Whether it be a VC or Google, your messaging is clear. >Who is using SourceHut to build software I disagree with on ethical terms? I am not aware of such a project. You're dodging the question. Have you done an audit on every single project hosted on SourceHut to see if you disagree with them? Would such an action even be something you agree with? What if someone was hosting such a repository (I'll go create one right now), would you remove it? But that is censorship, is it not? Do you even have the technical capability to do such an audit? If not, that means people could easily use your site for nefarious things, so how do you justify keeping it running? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080655 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23073740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23073740
- cdata 6y agoIt has been harder and harder every year, and frankly I'm really disheartened and demoralized these days. Articles like this one don't really surprise me anymore. It's not my department, but I feel complicit none-the-less. But when I look out at the tech industry landscape, it is clear that I can do more good from within, because I have more freedom and influence on the work, and I believe that the work is net positive for the technology ecosystem. Businesses large and small seem to have their heads on backwards here in Silicon Valley. Their founders are all highly profit-motivated, and don't truly seek to make the world a better place. Those that wear a facade of idealism give me no reason to believe they are any better than Google. If I left Google, where would I go where I can work without shame? I even have a hard time imagining starting my own business without falling prey to the same broken mechanics that brought us to where we are today. At least at Google, I can say with confidence that there is ongoing work by people I trust - who in turn are given a lot of autonomy by the company - to make the world a better place with technology.
- ksrm 6y agoWhat is an example of some good that you have done from within Google?
- myspider 6y ago- Not a google employee - Am an employee of a large company whose practices would probably also not stand up to public scrutiny First question is has this been verified beyond "someone said so"? Perhaps it has - but any search I do ultimately leads back to the same comment. Second, google is hardly the only company to occasionally kowtow the the PRC. I don't think any large company wants to a face-off with them. Are there more ethical employers? Probably, but they're probably small and not everyone wants to work at a small company pace. Also, if the company got larger and push came to shove, I suspect they'd do what they needed to do to stay on China's good side. It's a better option than going under. Really a lot of employers are ethically shaky. - Is it better to work for the DoD? Some people say no. - Is it better to work for a Big Bank? Some people say no. - Is it better to work for Big Pharm? Some people say no. - Is it better to work for a place that frankly abuses their warehouse workers? I think we've had that discussion. I'm not sure where that leaves anyone who likes gainful employment, particularly outside the Silicon Valley startup culture. That doesn't necessarily translate to 'throw up our hands' but it does meant a more nuanced approach to where we work, how we feel about our employer, and how we measure that against all the other places we do business with that also have their dark sides.
- ddevault 6y agoThis is a pretty narrow view of the available jobs for software engineers. I have personally never worked for any of the industries/criteria you listed. I just pulled up the latest "who's hiring": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042618 Of the first 12 posts, one is the FBI, one is questionable (using proxies to circumvent rate limits, anti-scraping tech, etc), and the other 10 seem anywhere from boring to laudable. Most tech jobs do not require you to make broad ethical compromises to work there.
- mesozoic 6y agoThe companies doing evil things all pay the best.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoBe careful, HN put a severe post limit on my account for asking this question in threads about Google misdeeds. The best answer to your question I received from a Google employee, is that the pay is good and the work is interesting.