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Do google employees actually do work or just rallies, protests and walkouts. Seriously, google staff are walking out / protesting / rallying behind stuff every

Do google employees actually do work or just rallies, protests and walkouts. Seriously, google staff are walking out / protesting / rallying behind stuff every week. How can you afford to pay 120,000 folks who seem to be focused on being outraged, striking and walking out all the time. I participated in a walkout ONCE when I was much younger, over an issue that was pretty clean cut (this was before me too, things had to go WAY WAY over the line - we'd call it a crime now - to get a walkout going). It was still a bit cheesy, but ... Do I have this right - a google employee doing public attacks against other google staff / how to apologize etc? And googlers want this kind of culture, where having a discussion get's you social media blasted? It just seems these cultures are getting very unhealthy. Why do this all working for google? Google must just have boatloads of cash to be able to afford this all. Do customers for GCP ever worry that some staff will protest what they are doing and take some kind of direct action?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The largest employee protests are driven by legitimate engagement, but there's a small core of Google employees who don't do work. One guy Tim Chevalier actually sued Google (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-damore-memo-tim-chevalier-lawsuit-liberal-conservative-backlash https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-dam...), claiming that Google broke the law by telling him to do more work and less social activism.
throwawaysea 6y ago
It’s pretty much the same at all tech companies now - Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, etc. This is both because the companies are primarily located in far left cities but also because they are powerful institutions that committed extremist activists seek to take over and weaponize for their own causes. For many, the way these employee activists operate is in fact very unhealthy and distracting. But with leaders often letting these disruptive activities and ignoring the fact that these activists aren’t actually doing work on paid company time, it feels to the majority that they have no psychological safety to speak up. And so they remain silent while a vocal aggressive minority takes over.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

The largest employee protests are driven by legitimate engagement, but there's a small core of Google employees who don't do work. One guy Tim Chevalier actually sued Google (https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-damore-memo-tim-chevalier-lawsuit-liberal-conservative-backlash https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/21/17038430/google-james-dam...), claiming that Google broke the law by telling him to do more work and less social activism.

throwawaysea 6y ago

It’s pretty much the same at all tech companies now - Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, etc. This is both because the companies are primarily located in far left cities but also because they are powerful institutions that committed extremist activists seek to take over and weaponize for their own causes. For many, the way these employee activists operate is in fact very unhealthy and distracting. But with leaders often letting these disruptive activities and ignoring the fact that these activists aren’t actually doing work on paid company time, it feels to the majority that they have no psychological safety to speak up. And so they remain silent while a vocal aggressive minority takes over.