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>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 do

• vore 6y ago
  I mean, given Google operates both a PAC (https://ballotpedia.org/Google_NetPAC https://ballotpedia.org/Google_NetPAC) and spends millions on lobbying (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/09/google-is-techs-top-spender-on-lobbying-but-facebook-amazon-also-up.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/09/google-is-techs-top-spender-...), it would be pretty two-faced to claim a neutral environment for workers but also with their executives actively engaging in unequivocal political activism.
  • SaltyBackendGuy 6y ago
    It hurts my soul every time I reminded that companies have no cap on how much they can 'donate' to politicians. Imagine a world where there was no money in politics.
    • some_account99 6y ago
      you know guanxi functions without money...
      • toomanyrichies 6y ago
        For those unfamiliar with the term "guanxi"- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi You can think of it as tantamount to one's network, and the amount of influence within that network. Basically, "it's not what you know, it's who you know". Source- lived in Shanghai for 5+ years.
        • unityByFreedom 6y ago
          It's pretty rich to claim the who-you-know culture in China is not influenced by money. Bribery is how you get everything from good grades, to good employment, promotions, get out of jail etc.
          • some_account99 6y ago
            the who-you-know culture serves a totally different function than monetary bribes. bribes are very fungible.
            • unityByFreedom 6y ago
              Can you expand on that? Bribes do get you position or grades, so I do not see the distinction.
              • some_account99 6y ago
                if you really need someone to give you a breakdown + application of the idea of fungibility to bribes to see the distinction, here you go: when you bribe a teacher for a better grade, you aren't utilizing a relationship to induce a change in outcome, you are utilizing money, money that holds value independent of who is providing the bribe. edit:i am making the assumption that parent read at least the wiki blurb of what the parent is replying to.
                • unityByFreedom 6y ago
                  Money helps you get to know people, particularly in China for things like getting grades and jobs. If, after you give them money, they then "know" you, money was still part of the equation.
                  • some_account99 6y ago
                    you are intellectually lazy and you need to read the wikipedia article before you go about jaqing (just asking questions) on the internet. informal networks of reciprocity is not the same as bribes where the realisation of value is in the exchange compare to informal networks of reciprocity where continued participation in the network brings value. i cannot believe you are this moronic that you cannot even appreciate this distinction. i can only hope you are trolling and trying to hide the nature of these networks because it gives credence to arguments that are very sinophobic.
    • lopmotr 6y ago
      Donating to politicians only has an effect to the extent that some voters insist on voting for the most well-funded politicians. They are the real problem because they are the ones actually deciding who gets into government. You should vote against all high donation-receiving politicians to help cancel out those soul-hurting votes. Unfortunately, most of the people who complain about this stuff don't actually care enough to vote against it, and they become part of the problem themselves.
      • randmeerkat 6y ago
        It doesn’t matter how you vote. Money in politics will win every time. Blaming the voters is victim blaming. This is just late stage capitalism at its finest. https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...
      • adrianN 6y ago
        In the US you have the choice between two candidates. Both of them take every dollar that they can get. Do you propose people should just stop voting?
        • zaarn 6y ago
          The solution for the US would be the first radically reform it's election and voting systems.
          • adrianN 6y ago
            The people should just vote for a candidate from a party that doesn't benefit from the current system... wait
        • lopmotr 6y ago
          There are other candidates but they don't spend enough for people to know they exist. Vote for one of them. It doesn't matter which because they won't win but they don't have to. They just have to "steal" enough votes from one of the major party candidates to cause them to lose. Next time round, they'll have to adjust their policy to be against political donations in order to win back those activist voters.
    • WalterBright 6y ago
      Money gets your word out. If people don't like your word, though, they won't vote for you. See Bloomberg, Hilary (outspent Trump 2:1). Many other examples of well-funded politicians failing.
      • nitrogen 6y ago
        Necessary but not sufficient?
      • webmaven 6y ago
        > Money gets your word out. If people don't like your word, though, they won't vote for you. Note that money also buys a lot of analysis, message testing, etc. to figure out which version of your word people like best. > See Bloomberg, Hilary (outspent Trump 2:1). Many other examples of well-funded politicians failing. Sure, having deeper pockets doesn't guarantee you'll win (particularly if you're a dark horse), but it is the way to bet.
        • WalterBright 6y ago
          > to figure out which version of your word people like best. It sounds like you're arguing that democracy is better if the politicians don't know what the people want?
          • bostik 6y ago
            I argue that democracy would be better if politicians cared about what people want. Not the top-of-their-head soundbite wants, but the actual needs driving those individual desires. Ironically enough I believe that the current democracy we live in is effectively quite close to the original democracy, as it manifested in the city-state of Athens and wider ancient Greece. Only 3% of the total population had a vote: namely those with family titles or enough wealth.[ß] These days we'd call it plutocracy or oligarchy. ß: It doesn't really matter what the general population does with their votes when less than 3% get to choose what options are on the ballot in the first place.
    • ballenf 6y ago
      Pertinent to this article, if there were antitrust regulations with teeth, you wouldn't have monopolies and their associated profit levels. This would both limit spending and limit the incentive for spending since they wouldn't have an incentive to create barriers to entry for competition through regulation.
    • ArnoVW 6y ago
      This exemplarises so well american exceptionalism. We don't have to use our imagination. This sort of experiment is being run in multiple countries around the globe.
      • nr2x 6y ago
        Agree, but also nice to imagine a world where the most economically and militarily powerful country wasn’t run by corporate bribery.
    • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      I don't know about other PACs, but the one that my firm organizes is funded entirely from employee donations; no corporate money at all. It has stated policy goals that are basically about creating an environment that's good for the firm's business and then gives a 50:50 split between the two major parties for federal campaigns. I just can't get too excited about this being a bad thing.
      • late2part 6y ago
        It's okay because you bribe the two major parties equally?
        • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
          It's OK because it's my money, and donating to a PAC like this is just a straightforward way to donate to candidates who support a business environment that's good for my employer.
          • deleted 6y ago
            [deleted]
    • macspoofing 6y ago
      To be clear, there are limits for direct political donations. What was decided, correctly, in the Citizens United vs. FEC case was the right for political activism from non-campaign affiliated entities (like corporates, nonprofits, labor unions, etc.). The context for that decision was FEC's attempt to censor a film from a conservative group made in response to FEC's refusal of classify Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 as political 'expenditure' (a film which had a clearly stated goal of getting Bush out of office). The FEC set a bullshit 'bona fide commercial film maker' as a standard for their decision, and when Citizen's United restablished itself as a film maker, their next film (an anti-Hillary documentary) was also found to be in violation. In no universe was FEC's policy fair and objective. From wikipedia, here's a crazy argument the government tried to make: "During the original oral argument, Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart (representing the FEC) argued that under Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the government would have the power to ban books if those books contained even one sentence expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate and were published or distributed by a corporation or labor union. In response to this line of questioning, Stewart further argued that under Austin the government could ban the digital distribution of political books over the Amazon Kindle or prevent a union from hiring an author to write a political book." Isn't that an insane conjecture? This exchange by itself probably lost the FEC the case. >Imagine a world where there was no money in politics. Such a world never existed, does not exist, and will never exist. Politics are a center of power. You can ban money all you want, but all you'll accomplish is create a 'black market'. I posit that you do not want to live in such a world.
      • Nitramp 6y ago
        > Such a world never existed, does not exist, and will never exist. Politics are a center of power. You can ban money all you want, but all you'll accomplish is create a 'black market'. I posit that you do not want to live in such a world. The same is true of many areas of society. Medical doctors, company executives, the police, etc. all have power and there's good money involved. Still we have laws against fraud, insider trading, bribery, abuse of power, and so forth. While there are transgressions, by and large things seem to work, and when we find new kinds of transgressions, the reaction is not to throw our hands up and say "it'll always be like this!" but to fix the laws. Which is to say: I don't get the defeatism about regulation here. Laws work. Making actions illegal and threatening a hefty prison term is an effective way of reducing their occurrence. Now it may be hard to get such laws passed, but that's another story.
  • skybrian 6y ago
    Technically, the PAC is independent. This isn't something workers have to deal with during business hours. I'm not sure why anyone donates to it, though. Why not support your own causes?
    • whimsicalism 6y ago
      This is a very common practice and employees donate because presumably if Google gets it's way politically, that means more money in your pocket.
  • gerash 6y ago
    Don't blame the lobbying, blame the fact that lobbying is legal. All industries learn over time that it's an arms race and without spending the money they'll be in a vulnerable position. The real fix is to elect those who would regulate or get rid of money in politics and punish those to take these lobby money. That's what people should focus on not how much the tech industry needs to spend on buying politicians like most other industries have done before.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• skj 6y ago
  A ban on politics is not neutral. Talking about politics provides no liability to Google.
  • CobrastanJorji 6y ago
    I'm not sure whichever poor PR department workers that got assigned the fallout of the Damore memo would agree with you.
  • patmorgan23 6y ago
    Hostile work environment
  • ineedasername 6y ago
    If it's the politics of antitrust attention in Google's direction, then it can provide liability to Google. An employee saying in an email "Wow, they didn't want to sell to us so we crushed them. Antitrust folks won't like it but it's what they get for not selling to us." That, or other language about "crushing" competition isn't going to play well when an antitrust investigation reveals it.
  • macspoofing 6y ago
    >A ban on politics is not neutral. Yes it is. Just because you set up a false choice of "you're with me or against me" doesn't mean the rest of us have to play your game. Yes there is such a thing as leaving politics out of the workplace. >Talking about politics provides no liability to Google. I don't know about that. Nevertheless, it also creates a toxic environment, because there are a lot of contentious cultural and political issues that elicit emotional reactions and the vast majority of people will have a a wide variety of nuanced opinions on those, so all you're doing is introducing strife and toxicity with no benefit to the business.
• mewse 6y ago
  > Workplaces are a neutral environment Oh, that’s good to know. So the workplaces are going to stop contributing to political parties and lobbyists, then? I can expect that any day now? That’s good to know, thanks! Or did you perhaps mean that it’s only the workers that ought to be “neutral” and silent in their politics? Yes, that seems more likely to be what you meant.
  • colechristensen 6y ago
    Less relevant now so much WFH is going around, but I just don't want to be a captive audience to my most politically enthusiastic coworkers. I wouldn't want my employees to have to suffer each other or to have to consider political compatibility on teams. There would be reasons to have political opinions when those were relevant to the work being done or the company's actions, but it's not to much to ask people to keep their irrelevant-to-work politics out of the workplace.
  • mancerayder 6y ago
    Workers have to work with other workers. If workers have to deal with overhearing other workers preaching about Trump or against Trump, against or for one race or another, maybe a gender argument, maybe whether God exists or abortion is naughty - that's a shit environment. We get paid to code or sell or manage, not to hear opinions being spewed across the room. So it is different, despite your snarky comment. A company lobbying doesn't affect your 40, 50 hr work week.
    • vore 6y ago
      If my coworkers were harboring opinions being against certain races (i.e. racism) that they simply didn't say out loud, I would certainly feel deeply uncomfortable being in their presence, and that absolutely affects my work week. Telling people to just not talk about it doesn't really make that any better: in fact, it probably makes it worse.
      • DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
        Just for clarification of your point: In the scenario you describe, how would you be aware of their racism if they didn't discuss it at work?
• heimatau 6y ago
  Limiting free speech is never a good idea. Not for any reason. Google is picking a decent and fair path by allowing anything except anti-trust. Honestly, go to Google where you can be authentic and human about things.
  • DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    > Honestly, go to Google where you can be authentic and human about things. With respect, I think James Damore (may have) found that he couldn't be authentic at Google.
    • patmorgan23 6y ago
      And the thing is every thing James said was correct. And he advocated for policies that would help everyone and eliminate the disparate impact on minorities by doing things like flex time or letting people move to part time for a little bit after a major life event (like having a child).
      • shadowgovt 6y ago
        So many scholars, lawyers, and employment commissions disagree with the assertion that everything Damore said was correct that I don't think it's even worth covering this ground again.
    • shadowgovt 6y ago
      James bumped up against the fact that regardless of what Google wants in terms of a free exchange of ideas internally, it's an American company and retaining staff under American employment law and the law of the state of California, among other states. Once it became clear that what he said could be interpreted as creating a hostile work environment, the company's hands were basically tied on having to let him go. The alternative would have been much worse for the bottom line. And the subsequent lawsuits and dismissals have made it basically clear that he had no legal leg to stand on.
  • jmpman 6y ago
• thethethethe 6y ago
  > Workplaces are a neutral environment. You want activism, do it outside of work. Workplaces like Google are inherently political because they manage vast amounts of data and their actions have implications on millions—even billions of people. Ignoring this is just complacency. Why should you only do activism outside of work? If we actually want to change institutions for the better, it helps quite a bit if the people running the institutions are also trying to change thing too. If you don’t want to get involved for whatever reason, that’s fine but I think it’s unfair to say no one should Disclaimer: I work for GOOG opinions are my own
  • lopmotr 6y ago
    Why should the political opinions of the employees be preferred over those of everyone else? They're a very unrepresentative sample of people that the company's actions affect. There's a reason we have democracy, not programmerocracy. Political changes aren't objectively "for the better". If that was true, they wouldn't be political decisions, but business decisions. The whole reason they're political is that we can't determine if they're good or bad scientifically so we resort to distributed opinion instead.
    • thethethethe 6y ago
      > Why should the political opinions of the employees be preferred over those of everyone else? The people who are complicit to violence perpetrated by the company they work for are inherently making the same decision as those who are activists. Either way you end up with a programmerocracy, so why not try to reduce harm on others then? Maybe what you advocate for isn’t perfect, but if you can’t avoid politics in your workplace, why don’t you fight for what you believe in? > Political changes aren't objectively "for the better". If that was true, they wouldn't be political decisions, but business decisions. Very few things are objective. Some would argue that nothing is objective. This is not a reason not to act. > we resort to distributed opinion instead This is not true. I think it is safe to say that political decisions in our global society are overwhelming made by a very small group of highly elite individuals.
  • shadowgovt 6y ago
• jlebar 6y ago
  > Workplaces are a neutral environment. You want activism, do it outside of work. Equal pay regardless of gender is a political question. In the name of "leaving politics out of work", should we disallow women and nonbinary folks from advocating at work for equal pay? Equal opportunity for people of color is a political question. In the name of "leaving politics out of work", should we disallow people of color from advocating at work for equal opportunity? Accommodation for disability is a political question. Paid time off for pregnancy is a political question. What rights we grant to older employees is a political question. Whether LGBTQ folks can be fired for being out is a political question. The system as I've seen it works pretty great for youngish cishet white men like me. From my perspective, things at my workplace seem quite "neutral". But when I get to know people who are at all different, I find that the workplace is not at all neutral towards them.
  • MinusGix 6y ago
    I would consider those political questions to be directly related to the current workspace, and so allowed to talk about. Most of the time what people refer to is activism (our company should support X, because I think X is the correct political action) when talking about neutral environments, at least from what anecdotal observations of the many times this argument has come up on HN. As well, I wouldn't consider long arguments during work about opinions on {current political topic} to be relevant or even useful. (If you really desire such, then outside work time is prevalent, though you have to be careful of pressuring coworkers into such activities if they don't want to discuss politics at all with work).
    • jlebar 6y ago
      OK, and where should we draw the line? If LGBTQ benefits are an acceptable topic, is it acceptable to talk about same-sex marriage? Is it acceptable to advocate for pro-LGBTQ policies more broadly? If not, why not? It's all part of the same thing, no? If H-1B visas are an acceptable topic, is it acceptable to advocate that our company should support the removal of a politician who is anti-immigrant? Again, it's all part of the same thing, no? When I start thinking about it, a lot of these workplace issues are connected to broader issues...
• omgwtfbyobbq 6y ago
  Restricting discussion about religion could be a Title VII violation, and restricting discussion about politics could run afoul of voter suppression laws.
• shadowgovt 6y ago
  To the extent they can, Google assumes its employees are mature adults and can discuss just about anything. The rare exceptions usually result from collision with legal constraints on that policy, such as conversations that can get the company in legal trouble. Because whether or not Google as a company wants everything open for debate, US employment law makes it fairly clear that there are some things you're not allowed to say---for financial securities reasons, hostile workplace reasons, and lawsuit vulnerability reasons.
  • macspoofing 6y ago
    >Google assumes its employees are mature adults and can discuss just about anything. By that reasoning, why have any policies at all - after all 'mature adults' should know how to handle themselves. The reality is that even (and especially) with mature adults, it's perfectly reasonable to set policies and rules on conduct. Making it clear to not engage in emotionally-charged 'debates' about contentious topics is perfectly inline with good corporate governance. Your coworker next desk over may have wildly different views on abortion, politics, religion, but none of that should matter in getting the job done you're paid for. Ideally you shouldn't even know, or care what their personal views are on societal issues.
    • shadowgovt 6y ago
      In that context, Google is in an unusual position as arbiters of what people consider to be truth. Having political discussions about things such as whether the utility of trans people being able to communicate broadcast-wise to all people interested in trans issues versus the utility of school systems regulating what students that have been entrusted to their care can see unsupervised is part of the job, when you work in YouTube and are designing the system for flagging content as objectionable or non-monetizable. On top of that, Google believes there's a point of philosophy that good ideas can come from anywhere, so they encourage engineers passionate about a topic to use proper channels to weigh in on sensitive subjects. User of proper channels is key, which is why there are trainings.
      • 6y ago
• JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Workplaces are a neutral environment Political neutrality is a cultural attribute diametrically opposed to "change the world" narratives and "eat your meals at the office" work-life balances. A lot of company cultures are politically neutral. Google isn't. That said, a company controlling what their employees say in public about matters of strategic commercial importance doesn't strike me as politically pointed. It's a business acting like a business.
• littlestymaar 6y ago
  > Workplaces are a neutral environment. Political neutrality doesn't exist. “Do not discuss politics” is a defense of the status quo.
  • macspoofing 6y ago
    >Political neutrality doesn't exist. “Do not discuss politics” is a defense of the status quo Yes there is such a thing as 'political neutrality'. Every time you contract a plumber, you engage in 'political neutrality', because neither your nor the plumber interrogate yourselves on your political affiliations. You want your plumbing fixed for a fair price, and the plumber wants to get paid for a job well done and get back home in time for dinner. Just because you set up a false choice of "you're either with me or against me", doesn't mean the rest of us will play your little game.
    • littlestymaar 6y ago
      In your example, nobody hapened to talk about politics. There is no neutrality, just the absence of discussion. But if the plumber tells you that his boss is a capitalist pig, you can either report him to his boss, or not. Neither is neutral.
• Puts 6y ago
  This is both a scary and weird comment. Everything we do is politics in some form. Even the decision on what toilet paper to use is political and can have both social and environmental impacts.
  • macspoofing 6y ago
    >Everything we do is politics in some form. No. When you go to MacDonald's to get a Happy Meal, what politics do you engage in? When you contract a plumber, do you interrogate him on his political affiliation? Don't twist language.
    • 542354234235 6y ago
      You are misunderstanding what is being meant by political. > When you go to MacDonald's to get a Happy Meal, what politics do you engage in? You’re McDonalds experience is the direct result of political decisions, from the smoothness of your drive due to decisions on infrastructure maintenance, to the amount of traffic due to the political decisions decades earlier about city planning and public transit, to the cost of the meal due to trade agreements, labor laws, wage laws, corporate tax code, etc. to your risk of getting sick due to safety regulations, to the materials used in the happy meal box and toy due to environmental laws, recycled material subsidies (or lack of them), to child safety laws, to tort law and the likelihood and success rate of civil suits. > When you contract a plumber, do you interrogate him on his political affiliation? No, but the cost and availability of plumbers is a result of politics. From laws and regulations on trades jobs, to labor laws and the likelihood of the plumber being in a union, to government investment into tradecrafts jobs training programs, to the laws governing required certifications (if any) and the associated cost of obtaining those, what the laws are governing landlord/tenant responsibilities if you rent or are a landlord, and on and on. The way your life plays out day to day, and in totality, is fundamentally shaped at every level by “politics”, the laws written, and the way in which they are enforced (or not).
      • macspoofing 6y ago
        You can torture language all you want to fit your ideology, but just be clear that is what you're doing. If you argue everything is political, then nothing is political. It is now a meaningless term that conveys no information because hey, that candy bar I just ate? Political! That dog walk I did? Political! How about we commonly understood concepts to convey ideas? How does that sound to you?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Mvandenbergh 6y ago
  Sure but why would they care? They're not going to get into massive existential trouble because employees have strong views on political issues except that on anti-trust, a paper trail of internal people saying "we are too powerful and should be broken up" will cause them a huge issue.