3 ms·

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 no

by 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.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  It could also have been inappropriate if the “executive “ position being applied for was significantly beneath the CEO. The article does not say why it was in appropriate.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
It’s frustrating to see it suggested that highly intelligent members of the civic community (Google employees for example) “know nothing about” antitrust policy or law. Regular citizens definitely do know lots about that and represent a voice we need to hear. We should not at all be silent and leave that solely to attorneys or Congress - that’s what gets us into the problem where the laws are selectively enforced in exchange for political favoritism and regulatory capture.
- tytso 6y ago
  It's fine (and a good thing) for everyone to have a deep understanding about how the rules work and to have opinions about how the rules _should_ work. This is true whether you are talking about the current state of anti-trust laws and how they are interpreted by the courts, or the current state of patent laws and how they are interpreted by the PTO and the courts. It's complicated, though, and there are a lot of side effects when you make changes to what is in effect a very complex system. What might work well for one industry might not work well for other industries, and "I know justice and morality when I see it" works about as well as "I know obscenity when I see it". The real problem though is that most people don't have this deep understanding, and what's worse, don't realize that they are really clueless. This is especially true with software engineers, who think they can understand everything. (About the only more arrogrant people are physicists at certain national labs who are sure they can design cluster file systems, since after all, it all resolves down to F=ma, and they know physics. :-) The problem is that law and regulations make the x86 instruction architecture look regular, orthogonal, and logical. And having software engineers trying to draw legal conclusions --- applying the facts to the rules as they current stand --- is about as scary having lawyers designing a storage stack. (There are of course exceptions; I know of some lawyers who started out in computer science, and then went to law school, and there are also some computer programmers who have learned enough about law to understand how little they actually know, but at least know when to call in the specialists.) But sure, we should know lots about public policy issues, and dive down deep enough so that each of us can understand the tradeoffs --- and in general, there are always tradeoffs to pretty much any public policy preference. Trying to make assertions without paying any attention to nuance will get you something like a certain US politician currently up for re-election. (And to be fair, the reason why the law has so many exceptions and irregularities is due to trying to work around the downsides of the obvious simple rules.)

by astrea 6y ago

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.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
It could also have been inappropriate if the “executive “ position being applied for was significantly beneath the CEO. The article does not say why it was in appropriate.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

It’s frustrating to see it suggested that highly intelligent members of the civic community (Google employees for example) “know nothing about” antitrust policy or law. Regular citizens definitely do know lots about that and represent a voice we need to hear. We should not at all be silent and leave that solely to attorneys or Congress - that’s what gets us into the problem where the laws are selectively enforced in exchange for political favoritism and regulatory capture.

tytso 6y ago
It's fine (and a good thing) for everyone to have a deep understanding about how the rules work and to have opinions about how the rules _should_ work. This is true whether you are talking about the current state of anti-trust laws and how they are interpreted by the courts, or the current state of patent laws and how they are interpreted by the PTO and the courts. It's complicated, though, and there are a lot of side effects when you make changes to what is in effect a very complex system. What might work well for one industry might not work well for other industries, and "I know justice and morality when I see it" works about as well as "I know obscenity when I see it". The real problem though is that most people don't have this deep understanding, and what's worse, don't realize that they are really clueless. This is especially true with software engineers, who think they can understand everything. (About the only more arrogrant people are physicists at certain national labs who are sure they can design cluster file systems, since after all, it all resolves down to F=ma, and they know physics. :-) The problem is that law and regulations make the x86 instruction architecture look regular, orthogonal, and logical. And having software engineers trying to draw legal conclusions --- applying the facts to the rules as they current stand --- is about as scary having lawyers designing a storage stack. (There are of course exceptions; I know of some lawyers who started out in computer science, and then went to law school, and there are also some computer programmers who have learned enough about law to understand how little they actually know, but at least know when to call in the specialists.) But sure, we should know lots about public policy issues, and dive down deep enough so that each of us can understand the tradeoffs --- and in general, there are always tradeoffs to pretty much any public policy preference. Trying to make assertions without paying any attention to nuance will get you something like a certain US politician currently up for re-election. (And to be fair, the reason why the law has so many exceptions and irregularities is due to trying to work around the downsides of the obvious simple rules.)