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Not 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

by geofft 6y ago

Not 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 ago
Google 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 ago
  I'm not sure how that addresses the points I raised - what was the outcome of that walkout? (Besides some retaliation against organizers.)
  - ddevault 6y ago
    Unfortunately little - because the workers didn't stick to it. One walkout writes a headline, but a strike causes change.
    - geofft 6y ago
      A 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?)
      - ddevault 6y ago
        >A strike causes change when management can't hire enough workers to replace the strikers. My entire point is that they can. [citation needed] I don't believe that if a majority of Google's software engineers went on strike that Google would be able to hire and train new employees without any of the striker's domain-specific or institutional knowledge without enormous expense.
mc32 6y ago
They can organize against project maven but apparently this issue isn’t attractive enough for them.
- geofft 6y ago
  Er, they did organize against Dragonfly, so management did it in secret...

by geofft 6y ago

ddevault 6y ago

Google 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 ago
I'm not sure how that addresses the points I raised - what was the outcome of that walkout? (Besides some retaliation against organizers.)
- ddevault 6y ago
  Unfortunately little - because the workers didn't stick to it. One walkout writes a headline, but a strike causes change.
  - geofft 6y ago
    A 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?)
    - ddevault 6y ago
      >A strike causes change when management can't hire enough workers to replace the strikers. My entire point is that they can. [citation needed] I don't believe that if a majority of Google's software engineers went on strike that Google would be able to hire and train new employees without any of the striker's domain-specific or institutional knowledge without enormous expense.

mc32 6y ago

They can organize against project maven but apparently this issue isn’t attractive enough for them.

geofft 6y ago
Er, they did organize against Dragonfly, so management did it in secret...