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> Workplaces are a neutral environment. You want activism, do it outside of work. Workplaces like Google are inherently political because they manage vast amou

> 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
Also, for basically it's entire existence Google has been a political organization. It had a firm stance on gay marriage long before Obergefell v. Hodges set it as the law of the land. The search engine wouldn't have had a special rainbow stripe at the top for certain search terms if the company wasn't deeply political on the subject.

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

Also, for basically it's entire existence Google has been a political organization. It had a firm stance on gay marriage long before Obergefell v. Hodges set it as the law of the land. The search engine wouldn't have had a special rainbow stripe at the top for certain search terms if the company wasn't deeply political on the subject.