49 ms·

Google employees are free to speak up, except on antitrust

461 points by bigpumpkin 6y ago

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
It would be noteworthy if a company didn't restrict their employees from publicly talking about legal and regulatory matters. What they're doing here is standard practice. Average employees aren't in a position to speak accurately about antitrust matters anyway. If they misspeak, it will certainly be used against the company regardless of the actual merit.
- harry8 6y ago
  >It would be noteworthy if a company didn't restrict their employees from publicly talking... No it would NOT. It is absolutely noteworthy if they do such a nefarious, un-american thing. Banning speaking on behalf of their employer. Sure. Go nuts. Banning speaking as a private citizen because you have an opinion you wish to express in public as a private citizen representing the opinions of yourself?!? FFS! Are you actually serious about that??? You can't push back against that hard enough. Surely? Freedom, opposition to totalitarianism. The right to speak your mind. Even if Google doesn't like your opinion and your opinion is objective wrong, to hell with them. Freedom.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    The distinction here is that Google employees are not legally banned from speaking as a private citizen about the company they work for. They just won't be employees of Google for much longer after Google finds out. I don't like that any more than you do. Corporations have far too much power in the US, and way more control over the lives of ordinary citizens than they should. But, there's nothing against the rules here. And, that's the way big corporations like it. Note that Google employees are still free to donate money or otherwise assist organizations calling for Google to be broken up. While Google may not like this, it's highly unlikely they'll ever find out about it.
    - Nullabillity 6y ago
      > The distinction here is that Google employees are not legally banned from speaking as a private citizen about the company they work for. They just won't be employees of Google for much longer after Google finds out. A distinction without a difference, the intended effect is still the same: discouraging people from speaking out. > I don't like that any more than you do. Corporations have far too much power in the US, and way more control over the lives of ordinary citizens than they should. But, there's nothing against the rules here. Then surely the focus should be on changing the rules and pushing back what little we can, not making excuses about how it is technically not illegal.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        Speaking out about legal violations is not only allowed, it's protected by whistleblowing laws. It's an adversarial process, but legally protected. What Google frowns upon, and will terminate an employee legally for, is speculation outside of that legally-protected space. So going to the SEC with evidence Google is acting bad? Legally protected. Circulating in an email "hey, is thing X that team Y is doing monopolistic?" No, and you'll get canned for having that discussion in an unprivileged environment without legal counsel present.
      - pmiller2 6y ago
        Look, I'm not making an excuse. I'm telling you how it is. The problem here is that big corporations have captured the political process in this country. Your representatives in Washington probably don't represent you; they're responsive to the people who fund their campaigns, and, unless you're a billionaire or something, that's not you.
    - chii 6y ago
      > While Google may not like this, it's highly unlikely they'll ever find out about it. if you donated or is affiliated with _any_ political cause, and google fired you for that reason, then they've committed illegal discrimination against you. However, this political affiliation/activism needs to be conducted outside working hours, lest it be associated with google's official public stance or incur liabilities. You actions as an employee could be misrepresented as the position of google, and they are well within their rights to restrict how you represent yourself during office hours, and they should also be allowed to prevent you from mis-representing yourself too (i.e., you cannot use your position as an employee to act as an agent of political activism or affiliation unless authorized by the owners of google).
  - WoahNoun 6y ago
    I, for one, think employers should have the right to fire neo-nazis/neo-confederates/white supremacists, but you do you.
    - dkdk8283 6y ago
      Except James Damore wasn’t one but got labeled so anyway. It’s not okay to selectively allow or prohibit speech. Everyone should be able to say anything. It’s just words.
      - WoahNoun 6y ago
        He used company resources and an internal forum so that doesn't fit under OP's description of being "a private citizen representing the opinions of yourself." And he was fired for creating a hostile work environment for his colleagues. Not for his private views.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - wokwokwok 6y ago
        You can say anything you like. What you're actually asking for is that people can say anything they like without repercussions of any kind. That's a different thing. ...and, legally, it's been a thing (see 'libel laws') that freedom of speech does not guarantee for a long time. /shrug
        harry8 6y ago
        So you cannot say anything you like. Or by that reasoning you could say anything you liked in the Soviet Union when Stalin was the big cheese but of course there were repercussions. Once upon a time we were taught there was a /fundamental/ difference between freedom, justice and Stalin's Soviet reigime that we were (and still are) dead against. The difference, which is a significant one right now, is not fundamental. It is just a difference of degree of those repercussions. Interesting isn't it?
  - yongjik 6y ago
    > ... such a nefarious, un-american thing ... Well, TBH, "banning employees from using certain everyday terms because they have specific legal usages and the company can be sued for $$$ if the words were taken out of context" is one of the most American things I can think of.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      Manager at a multi-national corporation. This definitely isn’t unique to the US. If anything, it’s more ubiquitous in regions with higher degrees of regulation. The whole thing has been taken out of context here. It’s basically just “here’s how you avoid saying anything that can be taken out of context and used against us”.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - astrea 6y ago
    I think the part of that sentence you conveniently left out of the quote is the most critical. One would be wise to not talk about matters of which they know nothing about, especially if it harms their employer. I think this SV tendency to speak and rally against their employers at every turn is cutting off your nose to spite your face and comes from a place of extreme privilege.
    - justinclift 6y ago
      > One would be wise to not talk about matters of which they know nothing about, especially if it harms their employer. Hmmm... After Google interviewed a candidate for an executive job last year, that person sent a follow-up email to Sundar Pichai ... the candidate asked about the antitrust implications of a potential merger. That's an absolutely valid question for a executive candidate to be asking their potential employer, considering concerns over recent years. However: An antitrust question to Mr. Pichai was seen as inappropriate, raising questions about the candidate’s judgment. Not being able to ask material questions about the very environment they're being asked to perform in, is frankly bizarre. Hopefully the candidate chose a better place.
      - sujinge9 6y ago
        I feel like the judgment is asking about antitrust in an email. Leaving a paper trail on this either way is definitely poor executive judgement.
        shard972 6y ago
        I think a big part of divide here is between people who agree with you and disagree. Some would hope in a good society that executives were interested in such things as accountability, transparency, ethics and the like. But the laws are what they are and following those values will not only prevent your progress as an Exec but potentially end your career, when again, many would hope the opposite to be true.
        Closi 6y ago
        > I feel like the judgment is asking about antitrust in an email. Leaving a paper trail on this either way is definitely poor executive judgement. Poor executive judgement in an organization that has something to hide.
  - esoterica 6y ago
    If you are freedom absolutist then you have to agree that Google has a freedom of association right to fire you if they don't like the things you are saying. It's funny how the people who adamantly oppose any restrictions on "freedom" don't realize "freedom" cuts both ways - if you have the unlimited freedom to do what you want then other people also have the unlimited freedom to punish you if they don't like what you are doing.
    - MinusGix 6y ago
      While I don't entirely agree with the poster above, I think there can be a notable difference in freedoms that your post ignores. People and corporations are two separate groups, and you may want more freedoms for either or even both. Like, I'm for individual freedoms, but companies have the potential for more abuse than a single person not liking you does, and so they should be far harsher regulated (and they are, though some may want more/less) in how they behave towards individuals.
  - codecutter 6y ago
    Freedom.. absolutely.!! An employee is free to find another employer.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    They're free to make those statements. And Google is free to fire them for doing so. 'Tis quite American sounding, to me.
  - kenferry 6y ago
    If I, as an employee of google, say a bunch of stuff about google antitrust, it doesn't matter how often I say I'm speaking "not in my capacity as an employee of google." It will be reported as "google employee says <>". It _will_ be taken as a statement that is believed by "google employees".
  - delfinom 6y ago
    Worked at numerous small companies. General stance by lawyers is if you write down a legal issue without consulting them first, they will have you fired six ways to Sunday. It is a big de.
Traster 6y ago
Once again, it seems the issue is less about Google (or any company) restricting you having a personal opinion about issues that affect the bottom line at work, but instead is about the disingenuous pretense that they don't restrict you. Don't be evil. Unless it affects our bottom line. Think Different. Unless you're a monopoly, then think the same as every other monopoly has. Move fast and break things. Their things, not our things. Cut the shit "Make us money" is the corporate manifesto.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  This just means that companies are predictable. Google is at least thinking long term and takes on huge projects, unlike most non-tech companies. I love that they finally launched Waymo even if the scale is small right now. Tesla wants to make money just like Enron, but their strategies are quite different.
- aunty_helen 6y ago
  Don't forget the startups: We'll do the right thing, unless times are tough
  - Shish2k 6y ago
    I worked for a startup that did the right thing even when times were tough… alas, that’s not good for business, and so the company no longer exists :(
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      Ding. The first software startup I worked for absolutely did not have all of its software licenses arranged properly. Seats were passed around, and unlicensed cracked software was used to create public facing product. Officially? None of this was recorded. Unofficially, the stance was quite clear: worrying about licensing is something companies that have more to lose than two sticks and a rock can afford to do.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Obviously make us money is their motto. The only reason public companies exist is to make money. They can still have marketing campaigns.
cm2187 6y ago
...and diversity programs
- vkou 6y ago
  Do you think it's acceptable for someone to circulate a manifesto that argues that conservatives are unlikely to make good engineers, because they are more authoritarian, and authoritarians are less creative, and are less likely to challenge the status quo? And propose some policy changes that the company should take in its outreach to, and hiring of conservatives? Even if it comes with citations to out-of-context, misunderstood, or under-reproduced political psychology studies (In addition to a complete misunderstanding of the criteria on which your own job is evaluated on)? I'll tell you what would happen if someone did that - the right wing media would have a field day with blasting both the author of such a manifesto, and the company that employs them. I understand that this is an uncomfortable topic for a lot of people, because it exposes a rather obvious double standard.
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    Conservatives would trivially argue against such nonsense with facts and reality.
    - vkou 6y ago
      No, they wouldn't. Instead of wasting their energy on having to justify their existence, they'd rightly complain to HR that the manifesto author is creating a hostile, prejudiced work environment for them. And their media would back them up on this, while calling for the head of the author. You shouldn't have to fight to justify your right to work, when someone uses generalizations and statistics to call it into question. Do you disagree with this premise? If so, what if the facts happened to fall against your assumption? How are you so sure that facts and reality are on your side in this question? Are you an expert on the subject? What if the experts disagree with you? Do you then endorse the circulation of such a manifesto, because it's fact-backed?
      - 6y ago
InitialLastName 6y ago
FWIW, my employer probably also wouldn't like me commenting on imminent legal issues that risked affecting their bottom line, but they don't mind me talking about much else politically speaking. This is a twist on the famous Upton Sinclair quote. Google has everything to gain by extending their "live at work" strategy to political conversations, until those political conversations affect them.
cletus 6y ago
It's commonplace for employment contracts to restrict your ability to represent the company to the press. Depending on the seniority and visibility of your position this may extend towards so-called "ethics clauses" where you will be in breach of your contract if you disparage the company or otherwise associate the company they don't want to be associated with. Just look at Amy Cooper [1]. But it goes further than that. It's generally a good idea not to do anything that might lead to a heading like: "Employee of X says [bad thing about X]" When I worked at Google, I made it a point never to comment publicly on any issue or thread where I could possibly be quoted. That's just commonsense and (IMHO) completely reasonable for your employer. I'd suggest that if anyone chafes against such restrictions that they should probably seek other employment. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/woman-fired-by-franklin-templeton-after-backlash-from-racist-park-confrontation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/woman-fired-by-franklin-temp...
commandlinefan 6y ago
Based on past incidents, I'd venture that Google employees are free to speak up only as long as they speak up with the "right" opinions on a vast range of topics. "You can say whatever you want, as long as it's this".
- rogerkirkness 6y ago
  Overton window.
  - jancsika 6y ago
    Not only that, but also-- regulatory capture. If Google's competitors didn't have a Justice Department that blatantly serves their own interests of investigating Google, then Google would have no incentive to keep their employees from discussing anti-trust law. Government cronyism is why corporations can't simply let us have nice things.
- jakevoytko 6y ago
  This is true, but Google also had very specific guidance around this topic when I worked there (10-5 years ago). We received specific training about this. The core message was approximately, "You don't understand the legal trouble that you're going to get yourself into by talking about markets, competitors, competition, etc. Innocent words or phrases may have very specific legal definitions or implications that may be surprising to you. Speculating about these things will bring you trouble, the amount of which which will also surprise you. At Google, we don't talk about ourselves in relationship to our competitors, we only talk about ourselves in relationship to our customers"
  - adt2bt 6y ago
    As someone who just recently joined Google and took a training on this, I can confirm this is still pretty much the gist of the messaging.
  - brandmeyer 6y ago
    To clarify: this covers both internal and external communication. This kind of training is not unique to Google, either. I got very similarly themed training at Eaton (a manufacturing conglomerate). In both cases, I was left with the impression that the employer had been burned in the past due to otherwise-irrelevant employee communication in some lawsuit.
m0zg 6y ago
> Google employees are free to speak up Try to show up for work in a MAGA hat, and see if you're still employed by lunch. Google employees are, at best, free to support the dogma approved by Google.
- dpratt 6y ago
  I can’t say definitively why you’re being downvoted, but it might be consistent with the very point you’re trying to make.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    It'll get flagged, too, thereby reinforcing the point even more.
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    >I can’t say definitively why you’re being downvoted I'll hazard a guess: This site is full of former and current Google lackeys.
- oska 6y ago
  I'd shun anyone who shows up to work wearing some political campaign message, regardless of their political affiliation.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    Haven't you heard? Silence is violence now. Not explicitly supporting certain candidates and causes can get you into trouble also.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    I’d bet it would have the same effect simply having a photo of them wearing such attire (outside of work, in an appropriate setting) published on social media. Google is, from what I gather, extremely polarized: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/google-content-moderation-internal-message-boards-memegen.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/google-content-moderation-in... (Not to mention the whole James Damore thing.)
dheera 6y ago
> Ultimately, if the Justice Department or other regulators asked for those documents, Google would have the option of declaring them secret communication. What if they just banned English from all company documents and let people use a smattering of all other languages the employees know? With some documents in Chinese, some in Swahili, some in Spanish, and the most confidential documents in obscure tribal languages, it would be fun to watch the Justice department try to piece things together. For employee productivity they could just hand out AR goggles that translate everything in sight automatically to a language the employee knows -- they're Google, after all. Or simply invent a company-specific language that uses the same words as English but with some words switched up, e.g. Customer -> Clown, Stock market -> Circus, Earnings -> Feast, etc.
- stale2002 6y ago
  Courts don't look kindly on obviously bad faith legal hacks. Using such hacks would likely be interpreted as evidence that the documents should be interpreted more maliciously than normal. The legal system is not computer code. Instead it is interpreted by judges and people. Judges who will simply rule against you/fine you/send you to jail if you act in obviously bad faith.
  - AaronFriel 6y ago
    I'm not sure if it's accurate that they would "simply..." but I think the consistent thing I've heard from my lawyer friends is that judges do not like to be deceived or misrepresented to or have their time wasted. You should not try to be "clever" with them, even if you think you've been clever with the law. This approach combines all three of those things, it involves deceiving a judge or jury with language games, misrepresenting that these words or languages have hidden meanings, and wasting their time in deciphering what was really communicated. This would be akin to everyone at Google typing in qwerty but using a keyboard setting that interprets the keypresses as dvorak, and also having an extension that substitutes characters viewed from fellow employees back to qwerty. How the message is stored or exchanged doesn't change the material fact that one employee intended to write "competitor" and another employee read "competitor" and in depositions both would admit to those facts.
burtonator 6y ago
Anti-trust is a hack.. We need proper taxation. Large corporations like Google have TONS of advantages that small companies have so it's easier for big companies to get bigger. Part of this is taxes... if we just taxed them properly they wouldn't grow large and wouldn't need to be broken up.
- duncan_bayne 6y ago
  That is the most refreshingly honest description of progressive taxation I've seen in a while. In other words: progressive taxation destroys wealth creation.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > In other words: progressive taxation destroys wealth creation. No, progressive taxation destroys wealth concentration. I understand that when the pockets that wealth is concentrated in are your own, it might feel like destruction in a "who-moved-my-cheese" sense, but the fact is, no wealth is destroyed.
    - duncan_bayne 6y ago
      That is pirate morality, codified.
      - webmaven 6y ago
        The morality or ethics of progressive taxation are a separate matter. What I was addressing is whether wealth is destroyed by redistribution in the form of a progressive tax code (which was being characterized as wealth destruction). Arguably, at taxation extremes, wealth creation does suffer: too high and you remove some of the incentive to earn more (if there were a 100% tax rate above a certain bracket, for example), too low and government can't afford to enforce property rights and your incentives are to invest in protecting what you have (or can grab). But in the very broad middle, the data shows that progressive taxation does not reduce the incentive to create wealth, and in fact the creation of wealth by most measures ends up being higher overall.
dessant 6y ago
Have you ever seen a current Google employee clearly denounce Google's privacy practices? It seems they are very loud and keen to organize when it comes to issues that closely affect them, but the mass surveillance of the general population usually takes a back seat.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  I believe it's a combination of two things: 1) Googlers have some internal insight into how the privacy practices mechanically work; that insight engenders trust. 2) Googlers who don't find a level of trust very quickly get turned off to what the company's mission is and take their high-paying skillset elsewhere. I mean, "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Gathering the information is implied right there in the mission statement. People who aren't comfortable with the ramifications of gathering and using lots of information seek employment elsewhere.
  - randmeerkat 6y ago
    Or the person could work to change the mission. Look at what Satya Nadella did for Microsoft. If an employee doesn’t believe in a company’s direction they are totally within their right to try to effect change to shift the direction of the company.
- gerash 6y ago
  I know researchers who worked at Microsoft and moved to Google and ,at least during their time there, they said accessing even aggregated user data for research purposes meant jumping through a lot more hoops at Google but the outside image is often the opposite for some reason
shadowgovt 6y ago
Byline: "A company operating in the shadow of government regulators has some very particular rules about what workers can say about it." I don't know where the reporter gets the sense that they're "very particular." It's pretty common sense: "You are not a lawyer; don't speculate on points of law in discoverable media."
- slaymaker1907 6y ago
  It is quite weird how specific they are about not figuring out market share. That definitely does not seem like common sense.
  - topspin 6y ago
    Google is an active target of multiple investigations around the world involving their share of market. The concerns ongoing litigation.
  - skissane 6y ago
    Years ago, I worked for a public sector organisation that had both staff and contractors. In IT, we had to create accounts for them all. For the staff, HR had a central database with all their details, so we just sucked that database into our identity management system. For contractors, there was no central database of who the contractors actually were, that knowledge was distributed across all the departments that employed contractors. Finance knew how much money was being spent and who the contracting agencies were, but didn't keep records of who the individual contractors were. I said: "Can't we just get HR to put the contractors in their database too? We can have a different person type or something to make the staff-vs-contractor distinction clear" I was told: "HR will never agree to that. The unions keep on asking for statistics on how many contractors are employed and how many hours they work. HR can truthfully answer 'we don't know'. If HR puts the contractors in their database, then they will know, and then they might have to tell the unions."
    - jldugger 6y ago
      If union reps had half a brain they'd realize that means they get to make up any number they want and HR can't contradict them.
dontbeabill 6y ago
A little over a year ago, while working at Google I needed to work from home for personal reasons. HR told me “we have done extensive studies and it doesn’t work so take a personal leave”. Okay. In another issue I suggested to my manager we stop using “blacklist” and “whitelist”. He said no one else had a problem with those names and of this was a personal issue take it up with HR Google will never change unless forced to. I quit soon after.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  It sucks that happened to you. Especially since different arms of the company have actually adopted that blacklist and whitelist should be deprecated ( https://9to5google.com/2020/06/12/google-android-chrome-blacklist-blocklist-more-inclusive/ https://9to5google.com/2020/06/12/google-android-chrome-blac...). Google's a big beast, and it's not as homogeneous as people from the outside looking in sometimes assume. Hell, I'm pretty sure nobody really knows everything that's going on in it.
  - rossjudson 6y ago
    Google is a city, not a village.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  The "blacklist/whitelist" issue is still circulating and appears to be getting some traction. I just had a manager on my team bring up migrating away from them and our management chain was generally supportive. I thought it was slightly ridiculous until I saw the suggested alternatives of "allowlist" and "denylist". These really are better terms: they're completely self-describing and match the verbs that you'd usually be using when referencing a denylist. Only downside is they don't have the same number of letters (and so don't line up if you put them one after another in code), but that can be worked around.
anonunivgrad 6y ago
>Google employees are not shy about speaking up. In the last few years, they have openly confronted the company about building a censored search engine in China, the handling of sexual harassment claims and its work with the Pentagon on artificial intelligence technology for weapons. I'd love to see what would happen to a Google employee who tries to argue that sexual harassment laws and policies are stifling normal social interactions, empowering the vicious and overly sensitive to destroy anyone who upsets their particular sensibilities, and creating an overall climate of fear and conformity.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  As a non-lawyer, such an employee is probably stepping into relatively dangerous territory committing to discoverable media open speculation that the law under which the company operates is bad. It's not the company that might hold them accountable; it's the government, if the government's looking for evidence that either individual employees break law regarding hostile work environment or there's a pattern that can be established that the company either encourages or turns a blind eye to creation of hostile work environment. That sort of speculation is for a law salon or (anonymously) Reddit, not an internal mailing list.
  - anonunivgrad 6y ago
    Criticizing sexual harassment law is not sexual harassment, not even a "hostile work environment" violation. On the other hand, employees criticizing the company for not sufficiently punishing sexual harassment is exactly the kind of evidence you're talking about.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      employees criticizing the company for not sufficiently punishing sexual harassment are protected by whistleblower law. Employees trying to build an Orwellian counter-story that punishing sexual harassment as the law requires creates a hostile work environment are treading on thin ice. Very easy to misinterpret that; I wouldn't commit it to discoverable media.
tqi 6y ago
To me this is the key paragraph: > ...employees are told to assume that every document and email will end up in the hands of regulators, so they should refrain from using certain words or phrases. “We are not out to ‘crush,’ ‘kill,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘block,’ or do anything else that might be perceived as evil or unfair,” according to a slide used in the training, which The New York Times reviewed. In my experience, these policies exist largely to avoid negative PR hits.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if these kind of policies also change culture and behavior for the better. Or maybe another phrasing makes it clearer: If your boss has a slide deck on crushing the competition that could cause some impressionable folks to bend the rules just a little.
- 542354234235 6y ago
  > hands of regulators I'm pretty sure it is to avoid legal problems. Being deposed on what you might have said in a meeting 8 years ago is a lot different than being deposed about the complete chat history of what you said 8 years ago.
yongjik 6y ago
It's unfortunate that the headline sounds like pure clickbait, because the story contains examples of Google's behavior being more suspicious than the headline suggests. But, as far as the title is concerned, it seems common sense to prevent employees from talking about potentially very expensive legal issues, when every internal emails and chat logs can be potentially quote-mined by adversaries in future lawsuits. (Disclaimer: worked at Google before.)
- dannyw 6y ago
  Quote mining isn’t a possibility, it’s an inevitability. Now here’s something: if corporations like Google are worried about quote mining, what does this mean for your personal search history, and how you may face in a secret court for some “national security” charge in 2027?
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    You can enable activity history auto-delete on this page: https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols?pli=1&authuser=0 https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols?pli=1&authuse...
  - yongjik 6y ago
    I don't think the threat model is comparable. Quote-mining is a problem for Google because it's an effective strategy between multinational companies wielding a hundred lawyers. On the other hand, if the government decides I'm a terrorist, they will "take care of" me, and they don't need some stinking search log to justify their action.
jonas21 6y ago
I'm sure lawyers at Google have studied the Microsoft antitrust case, where one of the big lessons was that anything you write in an email will be used against you by the Justice Department [1] -- so this is not at all surprising. In fact, I'm a bit shocked there's no mention of the Microsoft case in the article. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/02/business/antitrust-case-is-highlighting-role-of-e-mail.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/02/business/antitrust-case-i...
- throwdbaaway 6y ago
  And ironically, Google would probably cite Microsoft as a legit competitor in this antitrust case.
whack 6y ago
I'm no Google apologist, but there's nothing nefarious about this. Why on earth would any company encourage its employees to speculate and talk freely, when doing so would get them into legal/PR trouble. It's the equivalent of a lawyer telling his client to go drinking and have a fun night out with the district attorney. Rule #1: Never talk to the police without your lawyer being present Rule #2: Don't create a paper trail that is going to make you look bad when it gets subpoenaed I personally think that Google needs to be broken up into 10 different companies. And I would love to live in a world where companies face antitrust enforcement because of concrete actions. Unfortunately, we live in a world where a carelessly worded email is going to cause you more legal troubles than actual anti-competitive behavior.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  i mean this is kind of elementary. You wouldn't go work for a church if you wanted to preach atheism. Its against the immediate interest of the company which you re supposed to be working for, so by definition you are a deadweight employee
- Vaslo 6y ago
  Completely agree here, and I hate Google. A business is not a democracy. I have worked for a company acquired by a Private Equity that was universally hated by managers and employees alike. They didn’t even want to hear problems internally in quiet. It still wasn’t appropriate to trash them or talk to the media while you were an employee. If you don’t like it and you complain to HR or your manager and they don’t or can’t address the problem, you should work somewhere else. If enough people leave, change will happen. Before that, don’t expect much.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > I have worked for a company acquired by a Private Equity that was universally hated by managers and employees alike. They didn’t even want to hear problems internally in quiet. It still wasn’t appropriate to trash them or talk to the media while you were an employee. > If you don’t like it and you complain to HR or your manager and they don’t or can’t address the problem, you should work somewhere else. If enough people leave, change will happen. Before that, don’t expect much. I'm curious, how did the PE situation you described work out? Did enough people leave to make change happen?
tytso 6y ago
I don't see what the point of the article might be (except as click bait to get ad views, of course). I had exactly the same training when I worked at IBM, every year. "Never talk about dominating the market", yadda yadda yadda. It's sound legal advice that I would expect all corporate employees would get. VMWare won't want their employees to talk about how they dominate the VM indusrty; EMC wouldn't want their engineers talking about their enterprise storasge arrays "crushing the competition", and so on. And at all companies, the standard line is, "never send in e-mail anything that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times, or might cause you to be deposed as a witness in a courtroom." And it's not just about anti-trust; you also never want to talk in any kind of discoverable medium how an engineering short-cut in the development of your product (say, like a 737) is going to cause people to get killed. All of this is not unique to Google, but applies to any company with half-way competent lawyers and a half-way competent HR department.
- elefanten 6y ago
  It's absolutely (clickbait) to get ad views -- that's the whole company's business. It's also a political stance that aligns with said company's political disposition and (more importantly) chosen market segmentation. Finally, this company (desperately wants to believe that it) stands to increase its profitability if it strikes back against the forces that have lowered that profitability.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  > And it's not just about anti-trust; you also never want to talk in any kind of discoverable medium how an engineering short-cut in the development of your product (say, like a 737) is going to cause people to get killed. I would. If I spoke up about something dangerous to management, and they ignore the problem in a way that allowed someone to die because of it, I abso-fucking-lutely do not want to be their scapegoat. Leaving a paper trail is an important security measure here (and good ethics).
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ziml77 6y ago
This is normal and expected. Where I work we have rules about what we can say in written communication. Hyperbole and jokes will not be interpreted that way if an audit or subpoena finds it. A court might decide that we didn't mean exactly what we said, but we don't even want to deal with a court case in the first place. Not only because it directly consumes money to put up a defense but also because it can restrict our ability to make money and could tarnish our name. We also have rules against talking to press. We can send them to a department that will handle that communication, but in general they won't get anything from us because it's easy to put a negative spin on anything we say.
owkman 6y ago
Googler here. This is pure and simple click-bait. We are asked not to speculate on legal matters precisely so that it doesn't get misrepresented in the media or in lawsuits. I've worked at other companies with the same policy because why would you shoot yourself in the foot? Since the NYT is denied the option of misrepresenting employee comments, it has settled for an alternate spin. What a great deal they have. Its a win-win.
- rjkennedy98 6y ago
  > I've worked at other companies with the same policy because why would you shoot yourself in the foot? If you are even slightly historically aware, US labor history is one of the most violent and adversarial in world history. We've had plenty of strikes in this country where the company literally murdered employees. Google itself has been convicted of suppressing engineering wages. I honestly am so baffled that all these liberal "woke" people suddenly come to the defense of a company (who along with small oligarchy of peers) now own 90 percent of the internet. They think its fine that the company suppress internal and external free speech, especially on the most important items to them. I find the whole thing just utterly baffling.
  - esoterica 6y ago
    There is literally no competently run company that will let an employee say things in public or recorded chat logs that could potentially cost them billions of dollars in lawsuits if found in discovery. This policy is neither unreasonable nor specific to Google at all. Does it also offend you that banks don't allow their employees to speculate about committing securities fraud? If you get paid in company stock it's entirely in your interest to agree to let your company take measures to not get sued for billions of dollars, especially if those measures have ~0 actual negative impact on you. So why would employees push back against a banal rule regarding antitrust speculation?
    - rjkennedy98 6y ago
      Part of it is that Google does a very good job making it FEEL like employees are making a lot of money, plus they have all these perks, which are mostly gimmicks. The reality is that Google, Facebook, and Apple make at least 2x what they spend on software engineers. Good software engineers are enormously valuable. They are making products used by billions of people. Yet, most of them are unable to afford a house! This is the most lucrative sector of the economy (like Banking was before, and Chemicals was before that), and the best grads go there. Adjusted they are still making less than bankers did in the 80s. We know that Apple, Google, and the big monopolistic companies conspired to keep wages down. That kind of thing would never happen in a fair economy. I believe that if these companies were broken up - you would see wages go up rather than down, which may hurt Google stock, but would benefit the whole development community.
lxe 6y ago
Yup that's just literally every company... speculating about how "we will crush our competition and dominate the market" can lead to legal trouble more so than talking about other contentious topics.
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AcerbicZero 6y ago
Does the NY times use a shitty AI bot to write these taglines? I find it hard to believe someone who worked as a journalist and wasn't in a coma for the last decade would suggest that google employees are "free to speak up". Generally speaking (and regardless of personal position on the topic) any company which has a dedicated "diversity" commissar isn't a place you can speak freely.
gflarity 6y ago
I don't think that's the only exception.
jariel 6y ago
So that everyone is clear there's a very big difference between Google saying: 1) Use the right language concerning things like 'market dominance'. 2) Not wanting Googlers to have public opinions which are against the companies opinions 3) Suppressing voices over very material causes for concern i.e. whistle blowing. The more nuanced issue is #1. If Google legit doesn't believe they are a monopoly player, then they have to make sure that everyone acts and behaves in that manner, and uses the right language. If personnel go around talking about 'dominating the market' that could be effectively 'used against them' irrespective of the material nature of ostensible market domination. A lot of this kind of stuff is vague, political, words have power etc. and things can be taken way out of context. It's not wrong for Google to want staff to use the right words to describe market situations correctly. Of course this means something different if in fact, objectively speaking they're trying to get people to actually misrepresent reality.
gweinberg 6y ago
There's at least one other topic that Google employees won't talk about... anymore.
- one2know 6y ago
  Is it Sergey Brin being a Harvey Weinstein at early google as outlined in 2018's "Valley of Genius" by Adam Fisher?
rkapsoro 6y ago
Or on sex differences or ideological echo chambers.
summerlight 6y ago
This is a pretty standard practice in big tech companies especially after the Microsoft v. U.S. case. When a seemingly naive internal memo can make the company broken up, then why would you allow your employee to write it down from the first moment?
jungletime 6y ago
Is this even legal? Can a company prevent employees from talking about the company breaking the law. I don't see how this could be enforceable. Assuming they are indeed found to have broken the law.
redm 6y ago
Rule #3: Don’t skimp on the attorney. Get the best you can, regardless of cost.
JustCuteBullSht 6y ago
There's no such thing as free speech under at-will employment. All the ya-hoos complaining about "cancel culture" seem oddly disinterested in materially improving the situation....
rkagerer 6y ago
https://archive.is/cSma0 https://archive.is/cSma0
jariel 6y ago
Folks need to grasp the distinction between the company requiring employees to be careful about using specific terms like 'market dominance' vs. speaking up. Using terms like 'market dominance' may have legal implications, they surely will have populist implications as anti-trust issues are as much political as anything else. So instructing staff to 'not speak about Google's market position' is very reasonable, because words have power and implications beyond what most employees probably believe when they're using them. This is somewhat different from asking people to 'not have opinions' and a totally different league from trying to suppress whistle-blowers etc..
gerash 6y ago
The title seems like a click bait. Generally you don't want employees to talk about active legal cases. All companies will learn this the hard way when during the discovery the other team of lawyers bring casual internal conversation between employees as evidence into the court.
longtimegoogler 6y ago
The article is a nice piece of spin. It seems they started with a narrative and fit the facts to it. I've taken the trainings referred to in the article and I never once thought they were designed to dissuade discussions about antitrust issues. A more banal interpretation is that Google wants to create a culture that emphasizes creating good products not at the expense of competitors. I've never felt inhibited about having conversations with employees about these issues. The fact is that most of the employees I've discussed these issues with don't think Google is violating antitrust regulations. My personal opinion is that a certain segment believe that Google should just be broken up because their data collection practices whether or not there are any real antitrust violations and just see this as a tool to accomplish that end.
known 6y ago
TRUTH is suppressed in the name of trust/loyalty/discipline/patriotism/sedition/job/national security/intellectual property etc https://yts.mx/movies/citizenfour-2014 https://yts.mx/movies/citizenfour-2014
panny 6y ago
>Google employees are free to speak up, except on antitrust And unionizing. Don't forget unionizing. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/technology/google-fires-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/technology/google-fires-w... I'm sure there's a few more things you can't talk about at Google too. But the NY Times should at least do a better job of remembering their own stories.
hajderr 6y ago
The Google Caliphate
02020202 6y ago
"Google employees are free to speak up" ... I think James Damore would disagree.

461 points by bigpumpkin 6y ago

It would be noteworthy if a company didn't restrict their employees from publicly talking about legal and regulatory matters. What they're doing here is standard practice. Average employees aren't in a position to speak accurately about antitrust matters anyway. If they misspeak, it will certainly be used against the company regardless of the actual merit.

harry8 6y ago
>It would be noteworthy if a company didn't restrict their employees from publicly talking... No it would NOT. It is absolutely noteworthy if they do such a nefarious, un-american thing. Banning speaking on behalf of their employer. Sure. Go nuts. Banning speaking as a private citizen because you have an opinion you wish to express in public as a private citizen representing the opinions of yourself?!? FFS! Are you actually serious about that??? You can't push back against that hard enough. Surely? Freedom, opposition to totalitarianism. The right to speak your mind. Even if Google doesn't like your opinion and your opinion is objective wrong, to hell with them. Freedom.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  The distinction here is that Google employees are not legally banned from speaking as a private citizen about the company they work for. They just won't be employees of Google for much longer after Google finds out. I don't like that any more than you do. Corporations have far too much power in the US, and way more control over the lives of ordinary citizens than they should. But, there's nothing against the rules here. And, that's the way big corporations like it. Note that Google employees are still free to donate money or otherwise assist organizations calling for Google to be broken up. While Google may not like this, it's highly unlikely they'll ever find out about it.
  - Nullabillity 6y ago
    > The distinction here is that Google employees are not legally banned from speaking as a private citizen about the company they work for. They just won't be employees of Google for much longer after Google finds out. A distinction without a difference, the intended effect is still the same: discouraging people from speaking out. > I don't like that any more than you do. Corporations have far too much power in the US, and way more control over the lives of ordinary citizens than they should. But, there's nothing against the rules here. Then surely the focus should be on changing the rules and pushing back what little we can, not making excuses about how it is technically not illegal.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      Speaking out about legal violations is not only allowed, it's protected by whistleblowing laws. It's an adversarial process, but legally protected. What Google frowns upon, and will terminate an employee legally for, is speculation outside of that legally-protected space. So going to the SEC with evidence Google is acting bad? Legally protected. Circulating in an email "hey, is thing X that team Y is doing monopolistic?" No, and you'll get canned for having that discussion in an unprivileged environment without legal counsel present.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      Look, I'm not making an excuse. I'm telling you how it is. The problem here is that big corporations have captured the political process in this country. Your representatives in Washington probably don't represent you; they're responsive to the people who fund their campaigns, and, unless you're a billionaire or something, that's not you.
  - chii 6y ago
    > While Google may not like this, it's highly unlikely they'll ever find out about it. if you donated or is affiliated with _any_ political cause, and google fired you for that reason, then they've committed illegal discrimination against you. However, this political affiliation/activism needs to be conducted outside working hours, lest it be associated with google's official public stance or incur liabilities. You actions as an employee could be misrepresented as the position of google, and they are well within their rights to restrict how you represent yourself during office hours, and they should also be allowed to prevent you from mis-representing yourself too (i.e., you cannot use your position as an employee to act as an agent of political activism or affiliation unless authorized by the owners of google).
- WoahNoun 6y ago
  I, for one, think employers should have the right to fire neo-nazis/neo-confederates/white supremacists, but you do you.
  - dkdk8283 6y ago
    Except James Damore wasn’t one but got labeled so anyway. It’s not okay to selectively allow or prohibit speech. Everyone should be able to say anything. It’s just words.
    - WoahNoun 6y ago
      He used company resources and an internal forum so that doesn't fit under OP's description of being "a private citizen representing the opinions of yourself." And he was fired for creating a hostile work environment for his colleagues. Not for his private views.
      - deleted 6y ago
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    - wokwokwok 6y ago
      You can say anything you like. What you're actually asking for is that people can say anything they like without repercussions of any kind. That's a different thing. ...and, legally, it's been a thing (see 'libel laws') that freedom of speech does not guarantee for a long time. /shrug
      - harry8 6y ago
        So you cannot say anything you like. Or by that reasoning you could say anything you liked in the Soviet Union when Stalin was the big cheese but of course there were repercussions. Once upon a time we were taught there was a /fundamental/ difference between freedom, justice and Stalin's Soviet reigime that we were (and still are) dead against. The difference, which is a significant one right now, is not fundamental. It is just a difference of degree of those repercussions. Interesting isn't it?
- yongjik 6y ago
  > ... such a nefarious, un-american thing ... Well, TBH, "banning employees from using certain everyday terms because they have specific legal usages and the company can be sued for $$$ if the words were taken out of context" is one of the most American things I can think of.
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  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    Manager at a multi-national corporation. This definitely isn’t unique to the US. If anything, it’s more ubiquitous in regions with higher degrees of regulation. The whole thing has been taken out of context here. It’s basically just “here’s how you avoid saying anything that can be taken out of context and used against us”.
- deleted 6y ago
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- astrea 6y ago
  I think the part of that sentence you conveniently left out of the quote is the most critical. One would be wise to not talk about matters of which they know nothing about, especially if it harms their employer. I think this SV tendency to speak and rally against their employers at every turn is cutting off your nose to spite your face and comes from a place of extreme privilege.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    > One would be wise to not talk about matters of which they know nothing about, especially if it harms their employer. Hmmm... After Google interviewed a candidate for an executive job last year, that person sent a follow-up email to Sundar Pichai ... the candidate asked about the antitrust implications of a potential merger. That's an absolutely valid question for a executive candidate to be asking their potential employer, considering concerns over recent years. However: An antitrust question to Mr. Pichai was seen as inappropriate, raising questions about the candidate’s judgment. Not being able to ask material questions about the very environment they're being asked to perform in, is frankly bizarre. Hopefully the candidate chose a better place.
    - sujinge9 6y ago
      I feel like the judgment is asking about antitrust in an email. Leaving a paper trail on this either way is definitely poor executive judgement.
      - shard972 6y ago
        I think a big part of divide here is between people who agree with you and disagree. Some would hope in a good society that executives were interested in such things as accountability, transparency, ethics and the like. But the laws are what they are and following those values will not only prevent your progress as an Exec but potentially end your career, when again, many would hope the opposite to be true.
      - Closi 6y ago
        > I feel like the judgment is asking about antitrust in an email. Leaving a paper trail on this either way is definitely poor executive judgement. Poor executive judgement in an organization that has something to hide.
- esoterica 6y ago
  If you are freedom absolutist then you have to agree that Google has a freedom of association right to fire you if they don't like the things you are saying. It's funny how the people who adamantly oppose any restrictions on "freedom" don't realize "freedom" cuts both ways - if you have the unlimited freedom to do what you want then other people also have the unlimited freedom to punish you if they don't like what you are doing.
  - MinusGix 6y ago
    While I don't entirely agree with the poster above, I think there can be a notable difference in freedoms that your post ignores. People and corporations are two separate groups, and you may want more freedoms for either or even both. Like, I'm for individual freedoms, but companies have the potential for more abuse than a single person not liking you does, and so they should be far harsher regulated (and they are, though some may want more/less) in how they behave towards individuals.
- codecutter 6y ago
  Freedom.. absolutely.!! An employee is free to find another employer.
- dleslie 6y ago
  They're free to make those statements. And Google is free to fire them for doing so. 'Tis quite American sounding, to me.
- kenferry 6y ago
  If I, as an employee of google, say a bunch of stuff about google antitrust, it doesn't matter how often I say I'm speaking "not in my capacity as an employee of google." It will be reported as "google employee says <>". It _will_ be taken as a statement that is believed by "google employees".
- delfinom 6y ago
  Worked at numerous small companies. General stance by lawyers is if you write down a legal issue without consulting them first, they will have you fired six ways to Sunday. It is a big de.

Traster 6y ago

Once again, it seems the issue is less about Google (or any company) restricting you having a personal opinion about issues that affect the bottom line at work, but instead is about the disingenuous pretense that they don't restrict you. Don't be evil. Unless it affects our bottom line. Think Different. Unless you're a monopoly, then think the same as every other monopoly has. Move fast and break things. Their things, not our things. Cut the shit "Make us money" is the corporate manifesto.

xiphias2 6y ago
This just means that companies are predictable. Google is at least thinking long term and takes on huge projects, unlike most non-tech companies. I love that they finally launched Waymo even if the scale is small right now. Tesla wants to make money just like Enron, but their strategies are quite different.
aunty_helen 6y ago
Don't forget the startups: We'll do the right thing, unless times are tough
- Shish2k 6y ago
  I worked for a startup that did the right thing even when times were tough… alas, that’s not good for business, and so the company no longer exists :(
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    Ding. The first software startup I worked for absolutely did not have all of its software licenses arranged properly. Seats were passed around, and unlicensed cracked software was used to create public facing product. Officially? None of this was recorded. Unofficially, the stance was quite clear: worrying about licensing is something companies that have more to lose than two sticks and a rock can afford to do.
colinmhayes 6y ago
Obviously make us money is their motto. The only reason public companies exist is to make money. They can still have marketing campaigns.

cm2187 6y ago

...and diversity programs

vkou 6y ago
Do you think it's acceptable for someone to circulate a manifesto that argues that conservatives are unlikely to make good engineers, because they are more authoritarian, and authoritarians are less creative, and are less likely to challenge the status quo? And propose some policy changes that the company should take in its outreach to, and hiring of conservatives? Even if it comes with citations to out-of-context, misunderstood, or under-reproduced political psychology studies (In addition to a complete misunderstanding of the criteria on which your own job is evaluated on)? I'll tell you what would happen if someone did that - the right wing media would have a field day with blasting both the author of such a manifesto, and the company that employs them. I understand that this is an uncomfortable topic for a lot of people, because it exposes a rather obvious double standard.
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  Conservatives would trivially argue against such nonsense with facts and reality.
  - vkou 6y ago
    No, they wouldn't. Instead of wasting their energy on having to justify their existence, they'd rightly complain to HR that the manifesto author is creating a hostile, prejudiced work environment for them. And their media would back them up on this, while calling for the head of the author. You shouldn't have to fight to justify your right to work, when someone uses generalizations and statistics to call it into question. Do you disagree with this premise? If so, what if the facts happened to fall against your assumption? How are you so sure that facts and reality are on your side in this question? Are you an expert on the subject? What if the experts disagree with you? Do you then endorse the circulation of such a manifesto, because it's fact-backed?
    - 6y ago

InitialLastName 6y ago

FWIW, my employer probably also wouldn't like me commenting on imminent legal issues that risked affecting their bottom line, but they don't mind me talking about much else politically speaking. This is a twist on the famous Upton Sinclair quote. Google has everything to gain by extending their "live at work" strategy to political conversations, until those political conversations affect them.

cletus 6y ago

It's commonplace for employment contracts to restrict your ability to represent the company to the press. Depending on the seniority and visibility of your position this may extend towards so-called "ethics clauses" where you will be in breach of your contract if you disparage the company or otherwise associate the company they don't want to be associated with. Just look at Amy Cooper [1]. But it goes further than that. It's generally a good idea not to do anything that might lead to a heading like: "Employee of X says [bad thing about X]" When I worked at Google, I made it a point never to comment publicly on any issue or thread where I could possibly be quoted. That's just commonsense and (IMHO) completely reasonable for your employer. I'd suggest that if anyone chafes against such restrictions that they should probably seek other employment. [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/woman-fired-by-franklin-templeton-after-backlash-from-racist-park-confrontation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/26/woman-fired-by-franklin-temp...

commandlinefan 6y ago

Based on past incidents, I'd venture that Google employees are free to speak up only as long as they speak up with the "right" opinions on a vast range of topics. "You can say whatever you want, as long as it's this".

rogerkirkness 6y ago
Overton window.
- jancsika 6y ago
  Not only that, but also-- regulatory capture. If Google's competitors didn't have a Justice Department that blatantly serves their own interests of investigating Google, then Google would have no incentive to keep their employees from discussing anti-trust law. Government cronyism is why corporations can't simply let us have nice things.
jakevoytko 6y ago
This is true, but Google also had very specific guidance around this topic when I worked there (10-5 years ago). We received specific training about this. The core message was approximately, "You don't understand the legal trouble that you're going to get yourself into by talking about markets, competitors, competition, etc. Innocent words or phrases may have very specific legal definitions or implications that may be surprising to you. Speculating about these things will bring you trouble, the amount of which which will also surprise you. At Google, we don't talk about ourselves in relationship to our competitors, we only talk about ourselves in relationship to our customers"
- adt2bt 6y ago
  As someone who just recently joined Google and took a training on this, I can confirm this is still pretty much the gist of the messaging.
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  To clarify: this covers both internal and external communication. This kind of training is not unique to Google, either. I got very similarly themed training at Eaton (a manufacturing conglomerate). In both cases, I was left with the impression that the employer had been burned in the past due to otherwise-irrelevant employee communication in some lawsuit.

m0zg 6y ago

> Google employees are free to speak up Try to show up for work in a MAGA hat, and see if you're still employed by lunch. Google employees are, at best, free to support the dogma approved by Google.

dpratt 6y ago
I can’t say definitively why you’re being downvoted, but it might be consistent with the very point you’re trying to make.
- m0zg 6y ago
  It'll get flagged, too, thereby reinforcing the point even more.
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  >I can’t say definitively why you’re being downvoted I'll hazard a guess: This site is full of former and current Google lackeys.
oska 6y ago
I'd shun anyone who shows up to work wearing some political campaign message, regardless of their political affiliation.
- m0zg 6y ago
  Haven't you heard? Silence is violence now. Not explicitly supporting certain candidates and causes can get you into trouble also.
- teddyh 6y ago
  I’d bet it would have the same effect simply having a photo of them wearing such attire (outside of work, in an appropriate setting) published on social media. Google is, from what I gather, extremely polarized: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-google-leaderships-dismayed-reaction-to-trump-election/ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/google-content-moderation-internal-message-boards-memegen.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/google-content-moderation-in... (Not to mention the whole James Damore thing.)

dheera 6y ago

> Ultimately, if the Justice Department or other regulators asked for those documents, Google would have the option of declaring them secret communication. What if they just banned English from all company documents and let people use a smattering of all other languages the employees know? With some documents in Chinese, some in Swahili, some in Spanish, and the most confidential documents in obscure tribal languages, it would be fun to watch the Justice department try to piece things together. For employee productivity they could just hand out AR goggles that translate everything in sight automatically to a language the employee knows -- they're Google, after all. Or simply invent a company-specific language that uses the same words as English but with some words switched up, e.g. Customer -> Clown, Stock market -> Circus, Earnings -> Feast, etc.

stale2002 6y ago
Courts don't look kindly on obviously bad faith legal hacks. Using such hacks would likely be interpreted as evidence that the documents should be interpreted more maliciously than normal. The legal system is not computer code. Instead it is interpreted by judges and people. Judges who will simply rule against you/fine you/send you to jail if you act in obviously bad faith.
- AaronFriel 6y ago
  I'm not sure if it's accurate that they would "simply..." but I think the consistent thing I've heard from my lawyer friends is that judges do not like to be deceived or misrepresented to or have their time wasted. You should not try to be "clever" with them, even if you think you've been clever with the law. This approach combines all three of those things, it involves deceiving a judge or jury with language games, misrepresenting that these words or languages have hidden meanings, and wasting their time in deciphering what was really communicated. This would be akin to everyone at Google typing in qwerty but using a keyboard setting that interprets the keypresses as dvorak, and also having an extension that substitutes characters viewed from fellow employees back to qwerty. How the message is stored or exchanged doesn't change the material fact that one employee intended to write "competitor" and another employee read "competitor" and in depositions both would admit to those facts.

burtonator 6y ago

Anti-trust is a hack.. We need proper taxation. Large corporations like Google have TONS of advantages that small companies have so it's easier for big companies to get bigger. Part of this is taxes... if we just taxed them properly they wouldn't grow large and wouldn't need to be broken up.

duncan_bayne 6y ago
That is the most refreshingly honest description of progressive taxation I've seen in a while. In other words: progressive taxation destroys wealth creation.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > In other words: progressive taxation destroys wealth creation. No, progressive taxation destroys wealth concentration. I understand that when the pockets that wealth is concentrated in are your own, it might feel like destruction in a "who-moved-my-cheese" sense, but the fact is, no wealth is destroyed.
  - duncan_bayne 6y ago
    That is pirate morality, codified.
    - webmaven 6y ago
      The morality or ethics of progressive taxation are a separate matter. What I was addressing is whether wealth is destroyed by redistribution in the form of a progressive tax code (which was being characterized as wealth destruction). Arguably, at taxation extremes, wealth creation does suffer: too high and you remove some of the incentive to earn more (if there were a 100% tax rate above a certain bracket, for example), too low and government can't afford to enforce property rights and your incentives are to invest in protecting what you have (or can grab). But in the very broad middle, the data shows that progressive taxation does not reduce the incentive to create wealth, and in fact the creation of wealth by most measures ends up being higher overall.

dessant 6y ago

Have you ever seen a current Google employee clearly denounce Google's privacy practices? It seems they are very loud and keen to organize when it comes to issues that closely affect them, but the mass surveillance of the general population usually takes a back seat.

shadowgovt 6y ago
I believe it's a combination of two things: 1) Googlers have some internal insight into how the privacy practices mechanically work; that insight engenders trust. 2) Googlers who don't find a level of trust very quickly get turned off to what the company's mission is and take their high-paying skillset elsewhere. I mean, "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Gathering the information is implied right there in the mission statement. People who aren't comfortable with the ramifications of gathering and using lots of information seek employment elsewhere.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  Or the person could work to change the mission. Look at what Satya Nadella did for Microsoft. If an employee doesn’t believe in a company’s direction they are totally within their right to try to effect change to shift the direction of the company.
gerash 6y ago
I know researchers who worked at Microsoft and moved to Google and ,at least during their time there, they said accessing even aggregated user data for research purposes meant jumping through a lot more hoops at Google but the outside image is often the opposite for some reason

shadowgovt 6y ago

Byline: "A company operating in the shadow of government regulators has some very particular rules about what workers can say about it." I don't know where the reporter gets the sense that they're "very particular." It's pretty common sense: "You are not a lawyer; don't speculate on points of law in discoverable media."

slaymaker1907 6y ago
It is quite weird how specific they are about not figuring out market share. That definitely does not seem like common sense.
- topspin 6y ago
  Google is an active target of multiple investigations around the world involving their share of market. The concerns ongoing litigation.
- skissane 6y ago
  Years ago, I worked for a public sector organisation that had both staff and contractors. In IT, we had to create accounts for them all. For the staff, HR had a central database with all their details, so we just sucked that database into our identity management system. For contractors, there was no central database of who the contractors actually were, that knowledge was distributed across all the departments that employed contractors. Finance knew how much money was being spent and who the contracting agencies were, but didn't keep records of who the individual contractors were. I said: "Can't we just get HR to put the contractors in their database too? We can have a different person type or something to make the staff-vs-contractor distinction clear" I was told: "HR will never agree to that. The unions keep on asking for statistics on how many contractors are employed and how many hours they work. HR can truthfully answer 'we don't know'. If HR puts the contractors in their database, then they will know, and then they might have to tell the unions."
  - jldugger 6y ago
    If union reps had half a brain they'd realize that means they get to make up any number they want and HR can't contradict them.

dontbeabill 6y ago

A little over a year ago, while working at Google I needed to work from home for personal reasons. HR told me “we have done extensive studies and it doesn’t work so take a personal leave”. Okay. In another issue I suggested to my manager we stop using “blacklist” and “whitelist”. He said no one else had a problem with those names and of this was a personal issue take it up with HR Google will never change unless forced to. I quit soon after.

shadowgovt 6y ago
It sucks that happened to you. Especially since different arms of the company have actually adopted that blacklist and whitelist should be deprecated ( https://9to5google.com/2020/06/12/google-android-chrome-blacklist-blocklist-more-inclusive/ https://9to5google.com/2020/06/12/google-android-chrome-blac...). Google's a big beast, and it's not as homogeneous as people from the outside looking in sometimes assume. Hell, I'm pretty sure nobody really knows everything that's going on in it.
- rossjudson 6y ago
  Google is a city, not a village.
nostrademons 6y ago
The "blacklist/whitelist" issue is still circulating and appears to be getting some traction. I just had a manager on my team bring up migrating away from them and our management chain was generally supportive. I thought it was slightly ridiculous until I saw the suggested alternatives of "allowlist" and "denylist". These really are better terms: they're completely self-describing and match the verbs that you'd usually be using when referencing a denylist. Only downside is they don't have the same number of letters (and so don't line up if you put them one after another in code), but that can be worked around.

anonunivgrad 6y ago

>Google employees are not shy about speaking up. In the last few years, they have openly confronted the company about building a censored search engine in China, the handling of sexual harassment claims and its work with the Pentagon on artificial intelligence technology for weapons. I'd love to see what would happen to a Google employee who tries to argue that sexual harassment laws and policies are stifling normal social interactions, empowering the vicious and overly sensitive to destroy anyone who upsets their particular sensibilities, and creating an overall climate of fear and conformity.

shadowgovt 6y ago
As a non-lawyer, such an employee is probably stepping into relatively dangerous territory committing to discoverable media open speculation that the law under which the company operates is bad. It's not the company that might hold them accountable; it's the government, if the government's looking for evidence that either individual employees break law regarding hostile work environment or there's a pattern that can be established that the company either encourages or turns a blind eye to creation of hostile work environment. That sort of speculation is for a law salon or (anonymously) Reddit, not an internal mailing list.
- anonunivgrad 6y ago
  Criticizing sexual harassment law is not sexual harassment, not even a "hostile work environment" violation. On the other hand, employees criticizing the company for not sufficiently punishing sexual harassment is exactly the kind of evidence you're talking about.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    employees criticizing the company for not sufficiently punishing sexual harassment are protected by whistleblower law. Employees trying to build an Orwellian counter-story that punishing sexual harassment as the law requires creates a hostile work environment are treading on thin ice. Very easy to misinterpret that; I wouldn't commit it to discoverable media.

tqi 6y ago

To me this is the key paragraph: > ...employees are told to assume that every document and email will end up in the hands of regulators, so they should refrain from using certain words or phrases. “We are not out to ‘crush,’ ‘kill,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘block,’ or do anything else that might be perceived as evil or unfair,” according to a slide used in the training, which The New York Times reviewed. In my experience, these policies exist largely to avoid negative PR hits.

im3w1l 6y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if these kind of policies also change culture and behavior for the better. Or maybe another phrasing makes it clearer: If your boss has a slide deck on crushing the competition that could cause some impressionable folks to bend the rules just a little.
542354234235 6y ago
> hands of regulators I'm pretty sure it is to avoid legal problems. Being deposed on what you might have said in a meeting 8 years ago is a lot different than being deposed about the complete chat history of what you said 8 years ago.

yongjik 6y ago

It's unfortunate that the headline sounds like pure clickbait, because the story contains examples of Google's behavior being more suspicious than the headline suggests. But, as far as the title is concerned, it seems common sense to prevent employees from talking about potentially very expensive legal issues, when every internal emails and chat logs can be potentially quote-mined by adversaries in future lawsuits. (Disclaimer: worked at Google before.)

dannyw 6y ago
Quote mining isn’t a possibility, it’s an inevitability. Now here’s something: if corporations like Google are worried about quote mining, what does this mean for your personal search history, and how you may face in a secret court for some “national security” charge in 2027?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  You can enable activity history auto-delete on this page: https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols?pli=1&authuser=0 https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols?pli=1&authuse...
- yongjik 6y ago
  I don't think the threat model is comparable. Quote-mining is a problem for Google because it's an effective strategy between multinational companies wielding a hundred lawyers. On the other hand, if the government decides I'm a terrorist, they will "take care of" me, and they don't need some stinking search log to justify their action.

jonas21 6y ago

I'm sure lawyers at Google have studied the Microsoft antitrust case, where one of the big lessons was that anything you write in an email will be used against you by the Justice Department [1] -- so this is not at all surprising. In fact, I'm a bit shocked there's no mention of the Microsoft case in the article. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/02/business/antitrust-case-is-highlighting-role-of-e-mail.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/02/business/antitrust-case-i...

throwdbaaway 6y ago
And ironically, Google would probably cite Microsoft as a legit competitor in this antitrust case.

whack 6y ago

I'm no Google apologist, but there's nothing nefarious about this. Why on earth would any company encourage its employees to speculate and talk freely, when doing so would get them into legal/PR trouble. It's the equivalent of a lawyer telling his client to go drinking and have a fun night out with the district attorney. Rule #1: Never talk to the police without your lawyer being present Rule #2: Don't create a paper trail that is going to make you look bad when it gets subpoenaed I personally think that Google needs to be broken up into 10 different companies. And I would love to live in a world where companies face antitrust enforcement because of concrete actions. Unfortunately, we live in a world where a carelessly worded email is going to cause you more legal troubles than actual anti-competitive behavior.

cblconfederate 6y ago
i mean this is kind of elementary. You wouldn't go work for a church if you wanted to preach atheism. Its against the immediate interest of the company which you re supposed to be working for, so by definition you are a deadweight employee
Vaslo 6y ago
Completely agree here, and I hate Google. A business is not a democracy. I have worked for a company acquired by a Private Equity that was universally hated by managers and employees alike. They didn’t even want to hear problems internally in quiet. It still wasn’t appropriate to trash them or talk to the media while you were an employee. If you don’t like it and you complain to HR or your manager and they don’t or can’t address the problem, you should work somewhere else. If enough people leave, change will happen. Before that, don’t expect much.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > I have worked for a company acquired by a Private Equity that was universally hated by managers and employees alike. They didn’t even want to hear problems internally in quiet. It still wasn’t appropriate to trash them or talk to the media while you were an employee. > If you don’t like it and you complain to HR or your manager and they don’t or can’t address the problem, you should work somewhere else. If enough people leave, change will happen. Before that, don’t expect much. I'm curious, how did the PE situation you described work out? Did enough people leave to make change happen?

tytso 6y ago

I don't see what the point of the article might be (except as click bait to get ad views, of course). I had exactly the same training when I worked at IBM, every year. "Never talk about dominating the market", yadda yadda yadda. It's sound legal advice that I would expect all corporate employees would get. VMWare won't want their employees to talk about how they dominate the VM indusrty; EMC wouldn't want their engineers talking about their enterprise storasge arrays "crushing the competition", and so on. And at all companies, the standard line is, "never send in e-mail anything that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times, or might cause you to be deposed as a witness in a courtroom." And it's not just about anti-trust; you also never want to talk in any kind of discoverable medium how an engineering short-cut in the development of your product (say, like a 737) is going to cause people to get killed. All of this is not unique to Google, but applies to any company with half-way competent lawyers and a half-way competent HR department.

elefanten 6y ago
It's absolutely (clickbait) to get ad views -- that's the whole company's business. It's also a political stance that aligns with said company's political disposition and (more importantly) chosen market segmentation. Finally, this company (desperately wants to believe that it) stands to increase its profitability if it strikes back against the forces that have lowered that profitability.
mywittyname 6y ago
> And it's not just about anti-trust; you also never want to talk in any kind of discoverable medium how an engineering short-cut in the development of your product (say, like a 737) is going to cause people to get killed. I would. If I spoke up about something dangerous to management, and they ignore the problem in a way that allowed someone to die because of it, I abso-fucking-lutely do not want to be their scapegoat. Leaving a paper trail is an important security measure here (and good ethics).
- deleted 6y ago
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ziml77 6y ago

This is normal and expected. Where I work we have rules about what we can say in written communication. Hyperbole and jokes will not be interpreted that way if an audit or subpoena finds it. A court might decide that we didn't mean exactly what we said, but we don't even want to deal with a court case in the first place. Not only because it directly consumes money to put up a defense but also because it can restrict our ability to make money and could tarnish our name. We also have rules against talking to press. We can send them to a department that will handle that communication, but in general they won't get anything from us because it's easy to put a negative spin on anything we say.

owkman 6y ago

Googler here. This is pure and simple click-bait. We are asked not to speculate on legal matters precisely so that it doesn't get misrepresented in the media or in lawsuits. I've worked at other companies with the same policy because why would you shoot yourself in the foot? Since the NYT is denied the option of misrepresenting employee comments, it has settled for an alternate spin. What a great deal they have. Its a win-win.

rjkennedy98 6y ago
> I've worked at other companies with the same policy because why would you shoot yourself in the foot? If you are even slightly historically aware, US labor history is one of the most violent and adversarial in world history. We've had plenty of strikes in this country where the company literally murdered employees. Google itself has been convicted of suppressing engineering wages. I honestly am so baffled that all these liberal "woke" people suddenly come to the defense of a company (who along with small oligarchy of peers) now own 90 percent of the internet. They think its fine that the company suppress internal and external free speech, especially on the most important items to them. I find the whole thing just utterly baffling.
- esoterica 6y ago
  There is literally no competently run company that will let an employee say things in public or recorded chat logs that could potentially cost them billions of dollars in lawsuits if found in discovery. This policy is neither unreasonable nor specific to Google at all. Does it also offend you that banks don't allow their employees to speculate about committing securities fraud? If you get paid in company stock it's entirely in your interest to agree to let your company take measures to not get sued for billions of dollars, especially if those measures have ~0 actual negative impact on you. So why would employees push back against a banal rule regarding antitrust speculation?
  - rjkennedy98 6y ago
    Part of it is that Google does a very good job making it FEEL like employees are making a lot of money, plus they have all these perks, which are mostly gimmicks. The reality is that Google, Facebook, and Apple make at least 2x what they spend on software engineers. Good software engineers are enormously valuable. They are making products used by billions of people. Yet, most of them are unable to afford a house! This is the most lucrative sector of the economy (like Banking was before, and Chemicals was before that), and the best grads go there. Adjusted they are still making less than bankers did in the 80s. We know that Apple, Google, and the big monopolistic companies conspired to keep wages down. That kind of thing would never happen in a fair economy. I believe that if these companies were broken up - you would see wages go up rather than down, which may hurt Google stock, but would benefit the whole development community.

lxe 6y ago

Yup that's just literally every company... speculating about how "we will crush our competition and dominate the market" can lead to legal trouble more so than talking about other contentious topics.

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AcerbicZero 6y ago

Does the NY times use a shitty AI bot to write these taglines? I find it hard to believe someone who worked as a journalist and wasn't in a coma for the last decade would suggest that google employees are "free to speak up". Generally speaking (and regardless of personal position on the topic) any company which has a dedicated "diversity" commissar isn't a place you can speak freely.

gflarity 6y ago

I don't think that's the only exception.

jariel 6y ago

So that everyone is clear there's a very big difference between Google saying: 1) Use the right language concerning things like 'market dominance'. 2) Not wanting Googlers to have public opinions which are against the companies opinions 3) Suppressing voices over very material causes for concern i.e. whistle blowing. The more nuanced issue is #1. If Google legit doesn't believe they are a monopoly player, then they have to make sure that everyone acts and behaves in that manner, and uses the right language. If personnel go around talking about 'dominating the market' that could be effectively 'used against them' irrespective of the material nature of ostensible market domination. A lot of this kind of stuff is vague, political, words have power etc. and things can be taken way out of context. It's not wrong for Google to want staff to use the right words to describe market situations correctly. Of course this means something different if in fact, objectively speaking they're trying to get people to actually misrepresent reality.

gweinberg 6y ago

There's at least one other topic that Google employees won't talk about... anymore.

one2know 6y ago
Is it Sergey Brin being a Harvey Weinstein at early google as outlined in 2018's "Valley of Genius" by Adam Fisher?

rkapsoro 6y ago

Or on sex differences or ideological echo chambers.

summerlight 6y ago

This is a pretty standard practice in big tech companies especially after the Microsoft v. U.S. case. When a seemingly naive internal memo can make the company broken up, then why would you allow your employee to write it down from the first moment?

jungletime 6y ago

Is this even legal? Can a company prevent employees from talking about the company breaking the law. I don't see how this could be enforceable. Assuming they are indeed found to have broken the law.

redm 6y ago

Rule #3: Don’t skimp on the attorney. Get the best you can, regardless of cost.

JustCuteBullSht 6y ago

There's no such thing as free speech under at-will employment. All the ya-hoos complaining about "cancel culture" seem oddly disinterested in materially improving the situation....

rkagerer 6y ago

https://archive.is/cSma0 https://archive.is/cSma0

jariel 6y ago

Folks need to grasp the distinction between the company requiring employees to be careful about using specific terms like 'market dominance' vs. speaking up. Using terms like 'market dominance' may have legal implications, they surely will have populist implications as anti-trust issues are as much political as anything else. So instructing staff to 'not speak about Google's market position' is very reasonable, because words have power and implications beyond what most employees probably believe when they're using them. This is somewhat different from asking people to 'not have opinions' and a totally different league from trying to suppress whistle-blowers etc..

gerash 6y ago

The title seems like a click bait. Generally you don't want employees to talk about active legal cases. All companies will learn this the hard way when during the discovery the other team of lawyers bring casual internal conversation between employees as evidence into the court.

longtimegoogler 6y ago

The article is a nice piece of spin. It seems they started with a narrative and fit the facts to it. I've taken the trainings referred to in the article and I never once thought they were designed to dissuade discussions about antitrust issues. A more banal interpretation is that Google wants to create a culture that emphasizes creating good products not at the expense of competitors. I've never felt inhibited about having conversations with employees about these issues. The fact is that most of the employees I've discussed these issues with don't think Google is violating antitrust regulations. My personal opinion is that a certain segment believe that Google should just be broken up because their data collection practices whether or not there are any real antitrust violations and just see this as a tool to accomplish that end.

known 6y ago

TRUTH is suppressed in the name of trust/loyalty/discipline/patriotism/sedition/job/national security/intellectual property etc https://yts.mx/movies/citizenfour-2014 https://yts.mx/movies/citizenfour-2014

panny 6y ago

>Google employees are free to speak up, except on antitrust And unionizing. Don't forget unionizing. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/technology/google-fires-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/technology/google-fires-w... I'm sure there's a few more things you can't talk about at Google too. But the NY Times should at least do a better job of remembering their own stories.

hajderr 6y ago

The Google Caliphate

02020202 6y ago

"Google employees are free to speak up" ... I think James Damore would disagree.