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Don't believe the headline. Google has a problem with activist employees pushing radical political agendas, often in ways explicitly prohibited by company polic

Don't believe the headline. Google has a problem with activist employees pushing radical political agendas, often in ways explicitly prohibited by company policy -- for example, leaking internal documents to sympathetic press and harassing individuals on public forums like memegen because of their privately held political views. These activists present their activities as "union organizing","transparency and ethics", "whistleblowing, and other sweet-sounding and broadly-liked labels, but in reality, what they're doing is not any of these things. What these activists are actually doing is trying to turn the company into a vehicle for advancing their fringe vision for a Utopian society. And if you know your history, you should run away screaming from anyone trying to engineer a Utopia. Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs. Companies should be mission focused. Coinbase got it right where Google got it wrong, and now Google's activist chickens are coming come to roost.

sabertoothed 6y ago
I strongly disagree with this view. Companies should do what is right and ethical (beyond just what is legal). And who else than the managers and employees working for the company can determine this? It requires exactly those employees pushing for what is right to move the overall company into the right direction. It was even their job as ethics in AI researchers.
- quotemstr 6y ago
  Who decides what is "right" and "ethical"? Should the company ban, say, oil and gas companies from GCP because a few people get angry on industryinfo? Who put those angry people in charge? Of course employees should be able to voice concerns about projects and policies and suggest an alternate strategy. But if leadership rejects that alternative strategy, that needs to be the end of it. If leadership disagrees with you, you can't just start leaking stuff to the press, doxxing people, and organizing protest events. A company is not Twitter and any healthy company should fire employees who are confused about the difference.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Currently, companies decide what is "right" and "ethical" using a standard - shareholder return - that has been proven time and time again to have unethical consequences. Not infrequently the consequences are literally disastrous and/or fatal. (See also Boeing, Lehman, Enron. HP at its worst, and many many more.) What exactly gives corporations the moral authority to act like this? Is it simply that large accumulations of money somehow render other moral concerns irrelevant, as if by magic?
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    > Should the company ban, say, oil and gas companies from GCP because a few people get angry on industryinfo I mean, maybe. They'd ban them if the few people were the owners and the SVPs. If they company did, they'd be within their rights to. The only problem would be all the money they'd leave on the table. Usually (1), that's been the backstop against corporations operating with their private ethics on their sleeve; corps that make a habit of leaving money on the table tend to get left behind by the market. If Google started banning GCP use for ethical reasons, some other company would step up to fill the gap; no doubt. (1) Usually. Chik-fil-A supports conversion therapy for LGBTQ people and Hobby Lobby's owners have used their assets for "art acquisition" that was illegal.
shadowgovt 6y ago
> public forums like memegen You mean internal-public, I assume. Memegen isn't public AFAIK. > ... because of their privately-held political views It's hard to get called out for privately-held political views. Things you do in public, though, have consequences. > Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs Is that a constraint we should extend to owners of companies also? Or is flexing muscle to advance personal ideological beliefs something only reserved for Fortune 500 owners? Google was outspokenly gay-friendly before that became a mainstream opinion in the US, to give a concrete example.
- quotemstr 6y ago
  Activists inside Google have no business riling up hate mob against follow employees, even when the targets of the mob have expressed non-activist-approved opinions in public. A company should not tolerate one group of employees imposing "consequences" on fellow employees for legal things that occur outside work. Google's treatment of Kay Coles James for example disgraced the company.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    Agree to disagree. KCJ was a bad pull for the AI Advisory Board and shouldn't have been offered a position in the first place. Google strives to be an LGBTQ-friendly workplace and consulting with the Heritage Foundation on more or less any topic is somewhat antithetical to that goal. https://www.glaad.org/blog/heritage-foundation-intensely-anti-lgbtq-white-house-pipeline https://www.glaad.org/blog/heritage-foundation-intensely-ant...
    - quotemstr 6y ago
      This is exactly the mentality that I find exhausting: it's this with us or against us attitude, this idea that the company shouldn't engage at all with people who have views contrary to those of the activists, this ridiculous demand for purity --- it creates a claustrophobic and hostile ideology-suffused atmosphere. It's not healthy. Google is one of the most LGBT-friendly companies on Earth. It's not going to lose this spirit because it has someone from a milquetoast place like Heritage on some non-binding AI advisory board. The Kay Cole's James outrage mob was an ideological flex, not a genuine concern for the wellbeing of LGBT employees in the company. The Kay Cole's James affair is a perfect example of the activist dynamic at Google: the activists claim to be protesting vulnerable people, but what they're actually doing is trying to sideline, delegitimize, and silence their political opponents.
hezag 6y ago
> Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs. Are you saying that this extreme "personal ideological belief" you just stated is applicable to every single company on the planet?

sabertoothed 6y ago

I strongly disagree with this view. Companies should do what is right and ethical (beyond just what is legal). And who else than the managers and employees working for the company can determine this? It requires exactly those employees pushing for what is right to move the overall company into the right direction. It was even their job as ethics in AI researchers.

quotemstr 6y ago
Who decides what is "right" and "ethical"? Should the company ban, say, oil and gas companies from GCP because a few people get angry on industryinfo? Who put those angry people in charge? Of course employees should be able to voice concerns about projects and policies and suggest an alternate strategy. But if leadership rejects that alternative strategy, that needs to be the end of it. If leadership disagrees with you, you can't just start leaking stuff to the press, doxxing people, and organizing protest events. A company is not Twitter and any healthy company should fire employees who are confused about the difference.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Currently, companies decide what is "right" and "ethical" using a standard - shareholder return - that has been proven time and time again to have unethical consequences. Not infrequently the consequences are literally disastrous and/or fatal. (See also Boeing, Lehman, Enron. HP at its worst, and many many more.) What exactly gives corporations the moral authority to act like this? Is it simply that large accumulations of money somehow render other moral concerns irrelevant, as if by magic?
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  > Should the company ban, say, oil and gas companies from GCP because a few people get angry on industryinfo I mean, maybe. They'd ban them if the few people were the owners and the SVPs. If they company did, they'd be within their rights to. The only problem would be all the money they'd leave on the table. Usually (1), that's been the backstop against corporations operating with their private ethics on their sleeve; corps that make a habit of leaving money on the table tend to get left behind by the market. If Google started banning GCP use for ethical reasons, some other company would step up to fill the gap; no doubt. (1) Usually. Chik-fil-A supports conversion therapy for LGBTQ people and Hobby Lobby's owners have used their assets for "art acquisition" that was illegal.

shadowgovt 6y ago

> public forums like memegen You mean internal-public, I assume. Memegen isn't public AFAIK. > ... because of their privately-held political views It's hard to get called out for privately-held political views. Things you do in public, though, have consequences. > Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs Is that a constraint we should extend to owners of companies also? Or is flexing muscle to advance personal ideological beliefs something only reserved for Fortune 500 owners? Google was outspokenly gay-friendly before that became a mainstream opinion in the US, to give a concrete example.

quotemstr 6y ago
Activists inside Google have no business riling up hate mob against follow employees, even when the targets of the mob have expressed non-activist-approved opinions in public. A company should not tolerate one group of employees imposing "consequences" on fellow employees for legal things that occur outside work. Google's treatment of Kay Coles James for example disgraced the company.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  Agree to disagree. KCJ was a bad pull for the AI Advisory Board and shouldn't have been offered a position in the first place. Google strives to be an LGBTQ-friendly workplace and consulting with the Heritage Foundation on more or less any topic is somewhat antithetical to that goal. https://www.glaad.org/blog/heritage-foundation-intensely-anti-lgbtq-white-house-pipeline https://www.glaad.org/blog/heritage-foundation-intensely-ant...
  - quotemstr 6y ago
    This is exactly the mentality that I find exhausting: it's this with us or against us attitude, this idea that the company shouldn't engage at all with people who have views contrary to those of the activists, this ridiculous demand for purity --- it creates a claustrophobic and hostile ideology-suffused atmosphere. It's not healthy. Google is one of the most LGBT-friendly companies on Earth. It's not going to lose this spirit because it has someone from a milquetoast place like Heritage on some non-binding AI advisory board. The Kay Cole's James outrage mob was an ideological flex, not a genuine concern for the wellbeing of LGBT employees in the company. The Kay Cole's James affair is a perfect example of the activist dynamic at Google: the activists claim to be protesting vulnerable people, but what they're actually doing is trying to sideline, delegitimize, and silence their political opponents.

hezag 6y ago

> Neither Google nor any other company should tolerate employees using the power of the company to advance their personal ideological beliefs. Are you saying that this extreme "personal ideological belief" you just stated is applicable to every single company on the planet?