6 ms·

Google's “court jester” quits, releases 14 years of previously-internal comics

92 points by raldi 5y ago

raldi 5y ago
Some favorites being discussed on Twitter, e.g., https://twitter.com/RonAmadeo/status/1412909940474265602 https://twitter.com/RonAmadeo/status/1412909940474265602
- anitil 5y ago
  Gah I'm still sour about it! I know it's been, what, 5 years? But I'm still annoyed.
- disfadbish 5y ago
  Cost isn't what killed Reader. Reader was sacrificed on the altar of Google+ by Vic Gundotra.
dekhn 5y ago
When all your conscientious dissenters quit, it's time to find a new job.
- a3n 5y ago
  In the 80s Ted Kosky, a math instructor at South Seattle Community College, suggested to me that if ethical people refused to work for defense companies, then those companies would only be staffed by unethical people. Come at that thought from any direction you like.
  - yeaman1231 5y ago
    The subtext being that defense companies are inherently unethical? Tell that to the Bosniacs, Iraqis who lost everything due to ISIS and were pushed back with coalition air cover help, Kuwait's existence today... etc (and this is coming from an Iraqi) The HackerNews "Defense Company Bad" trope doesn't hold up to reality as much as HN likes to believe. Life's not as black and white as you might think
    - Rebelgecko 5y ago
      As they alluded to, there's a few ways to interpret the statement. Another corollary would be to say that ethical people have a moral obligation to work for defense companies, so that someone less ethical doesn't get the job.
      - a3n 5y ago
        That was essentially Kosky's point. I was taking his class, he was a big peacenik (involved with Give Peace a Dance at the time), and I talked to him about working for defense companies, Boeing being the gorilla in the room in Seattle. And so he said that thing, which sticks with me still. I saw a headline saying that we should treat Google as a "public good." You could at least think of all corporations as public goods. And so there's an argument to be made that society and its individuals have the right and responsibility to ensure their health and fitness for purpose. Someone has to work at the waste treatment plant.
      - yeaman1231 5y ago
        M bad, the only takes I could think of when reading the comment where the ones I usually hear in the echo chamber im in. edit: elaborating on the point
    - nickik 5y ago
      Defense companies also spend millions in lobbying both directly and threw a whole network of think tanks and people. People with very strong association with those very defense companies both inside and outside of government were very strong driver in lying the US into war in Iraq in the first place and made ISIS possible in the first place. They have a significant part in lobbying for war, for weapons export, for more spending on military spending and so on. Defense companies also strongly coordinate with Israel and the Israel lobby to make sure continuous money flows to Israel and Israel can be a first class buyer of US weapons. They have strong ties to government and make absurd amount of money on many of these projects despite routinely going over budget by absolutely insane amounts. Yes, companies that build weapons to some extend need to exist but the defense contractors are not ethical in the least and I would not work for them. Maybe in the civilian part of the company, possibly but even that would require a lot of thinking.
  - taurath 5y ago
    Otherwise ethical people tend not to think ethically when their paycheck depends on it. Sit and listen to how excited people are for the next privacy destroying product for a year and you might have a good chance of thinking it’s for the greater good.
    - zeven7 5y ago
      not everybody values privacy as the highest good
  - rixed 5y ago
    Maybe there are not so much ethical or unethical persons, as there are ethical or unethical positions?
  - lallysingh 5y ago
    And other the ethical people bias progress towards ethical industries. As unethical people won't care whether their employer is ethical, the ethical companies have a larger labor pool to draw from. Perhaps even stronger if the ethical folks are in-demand enough to have choices in where they work.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    It looks to me like the same argument for trying to change groups from within: you need to be part of the machine to raise to a position where you can make it move the way you want. There is surely a lot of possible shades of that, but clearly there are domains where it's not a viable approach. We've seen for instance that changing the police culture from within seems like a dead end. Arguably I wouldn't be sure defense is more open to change. Sometimes external pressure has a better chance to bring change, and working from the outside to have an impact on that could be as effective depending on the field.
    - ganafagol 5y ago
      One needs to keep that approach in mind when judging people who are within a system that one as an outsider critizises. There may be people in there who try to change it for the better. A historical example is the French Revolution. Many people who tried to reform from within still got their heads chopped off. In fact, everybody but the most radical did, and even those ended up paranoid about one another. Other examples are former socialist eastern countries. Just because somebody was state employed with decision making authority does not mean they were pro-dictatorship. Many realized that to improve things they'd need to work within the system instead of openly opposing and ending up in jail.
  - streblo 5y ago
    Let me know when you figure out who is ethical and who is not
Jyaif 5y ago
"at some point I have to draw the line in the sand somewhere" Is the line measured in how many millions of dollars he earned?
- moralestapia 5y ago
  i.e. "I got a better offer at Twitter"
  - packetslave 5y ago
    He was there for 14 years, it's not like he jumped ship at the first offer that came along.
    - rejectedandsad 5y ago
      Right, the dude is probably making multiple millions. Twitter probably increased that with the added benefit of permanent WFH.
verdverm 5y ago
https://goomics.net/ https://goomics.net/
zactato 5y ago
These comics are relatively shallow criticisms of the company as powerful as Google. "moral bellweather" seems like an overly generous description of this guy based on these comics. They're basically just Dilbert with some Google specific terminology.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- vgeek 5y ago
  They're still interesting to see as one perspective of their culture. Some are benign, others kind of lean towards propaganda almost.
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  Yeah, all I’m getting from these is an inflated sense of importance.
- ganafagol 5y ago
  Nit: it's "bellwether". Nothing to do with the weather.
  - zactato 5y ago
    hah, you are correct. I actually copy and pasted that from the article.
fishtoaster 5y ago
Reading through the whole set, it's interesting seeing the gradual shift from "mostly positive, with gentle-ribbing" comics to "biting, anti-google" comics. Definitely paints a portrait of someone becoming increasingly disillusioned.
- Traster 5y ago
  I think there’s a very difficult line to draw between the author souring in Google and Google itself souring. There’s one parallel in particular that I thought was interesting - the org structure one from early on where MS orgs are all pointing guns at each other, then there’s a recent one where Amazon points the guns in whilst Google points the gun out to customers. I would say that’s fairly accurate. But it’s now not throwing stones at the competition. It’s reflection that Google is no better.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - native_samples 5y ago
    It actually feels more like maybe Cornet just radicalized faster than the rest of the company. His reasons for quitting are that Google works with US ICE, that the AI 'ethics' researchers were fired and that Google makes a censored search engine for China. But those first two are both totally reasonable things for the company to have done. Gebru and her friend were both way out of line, and I don't recall anyone freaking out about having particular government agencies as customers when I worked there. Google Earth Pro for the longest time counted the CIA as a key customer, maybe it still does, so it's not like there wasn't grounds for objection.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
additional active discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778774

92 points by raldi 5y ago

Some favorites being discussed on Twitter, e.g., https://twitter.com/RonAmadeo/status/1412909940474265602 https://twitter.com/RonAmadeo/status/1412909940474265602

anitil 5y ago
Gah I'm still sour about it! I know it's been, what, 5 years? But I'm still annoyed.
disfadbish 5y ago
Cost isn't what killed Reader. Reader was sacrificed on the altar of Google+ by Vic Gundotra.

dekhn 5y ago

When all your conscientious dissenters quit, it's time to find a new job.

a3n 5y ago
In the 80s Ted Kosky, a math instructor at South Seattle Community College, suggested to me that if ethical people refused to work for defense companies, then those companies would only be staffed by unethical people. Come at that thought from any direction you like.
- yeaman1231 5y ago
  The subtext being that defense companies are inherently unethical? Tell that to the Bosniacs, Iraqis who lost everything due to ISIS and were pushed back with coalition air cover help, Kuwait's existence today... etc (and this is coming from an Iraqi) The HackerNews "Defense Company Bad" trope doesn't hold up to reality as much as HN likes to believe. Life's not as black and white as you might think
  - Rebelgecko 5y ago
    As they alluded to, there's a few ways to interpret the statement. Another corollary would be to say that ethical people have a moral obligation to work for defense companies, so that someone less ethical doesn't get the job.
    - a3n 5y ago
      That was essentially Kosky's point. I was taking his class, he was a big peacenik (involved with Give Peace a Dance at the time), and I talked to him about working for defense companies, Boeing being the gorilla in the room in Seattle. And so he said that thing, which sticks with me still. I saw a headline saying that we should treat Google as a "public good." You could at least think of all corporations as public goods. And so there's an argument to be made that society and its individuals have the right and responsibility to ensure their health and fitness for purpose. Someone has to work at the waste treatment plant.
    - yeaman1231 5y ago
      M bad, the only takes I could think of when reading the comment where the ones I usually hear in the echo chamber im in. edit: elaborating on the point
  - nickik 5y ago
    Defense companies also spend millions in lobbying both directly and threw a whole network of think tanks and people. People with very strong association with those very defense companies both inside and outside of government were very strong driver in lying the US into war in Iraq in the first place and made ISIS possible in the first place. They have a significant part in lobbying for war, for weapons export, for more spending on military spending and so on. Defense companies also strongly coordinate with Israel and the Israel lobby to make sure continuous money flows to Israel and Israel can be a first class buyer of US weapons. They have strong ties to government and make absurd amount of money on many of these projects despite routinely going over budget by absolutely insane amounts. Yes, companies that build weapons to some extend need to exist but the defense contractors are not ethical in the least and I would not work for them. Maybe in the civilian part of the company, possibly but even that would require a lot of thinking.
- taurath 5y ago
  Otherwise ethical people tend not to think ethically when their paycheck depends on it. Sit and listen to how excited people are for the next privacy destroying product for a year and you might have a good chance of thinking it’s for the greater good.
  - zeven7 5y ago
    not everybody values privacy as the highest good
- rixed 5y ago
  Maybe there are not so much ethical or unethical persons, as there are ethical or unethical positions?
- lallysingh 5y ago
  And other the ethical people bias progress towards ethical industries. As unethical people won't care whether their employer is ethical, the ethical companies have a larger labor pool to draw from. Perhaps even stronger if the ethical folks are in-demand enough to have choices in where they work.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  It looks to me like the same argument for trying to change groups from within: you need to be part of the machine to raise to a position where you can make it move the way you want. There is surely a lot of possible shades of that, but clearly there are domains where it's not a viable approach. We've seen for instance that changing the police culture from within seems like a dead end. Arguably I wouldn't be sure defense is more open to change. Sometimes external pressure has a better chance to bring change, and working from the outside to have an impact on that could be as effective depending on the field.
  - ganafagol 5y ago
    One needs to keep that approach in mind when judging people who are within a system that one as an outsider critizises. There may be people in there who try to change it for the better. A historical example is the French Revolution. Many people who tried to reform from within still got their heads chopped off. In fact, everybody but the most radical did, and even those ended up paranoid about one another. Other examples are former socialist eastern countries. Just because somebody was state employed with decision making authority does not mean they were pro-dictatorship. Many realized that to improve things they'd need to work within the system instead of openly opposing and ending up in jail.
- streblo 5y ago
  Let me know when you figure out who is ethical and who is not

Jyaif 5y ago

"at some point I have to draw the line in the sand somewhere" Is the line measured in how many millions of dollars he earned?

moralestapia 5y ago
i.e. "I got a better offer at Twitter"
- packetslave 5y ago
  He was there for 14 years, it's not like he jumped ship at the first offer that came along.
  - rejectedandsad 5y ago
    Right, the dude is probably making multiple millions. Twitter probably increased that with the added benefit of permanent WFH.

verdverm 5y ago

https://goomics.net/ https://goomics.net/

zactato 5y ago

These comics are relatively shallow criticisms of the company as powerful as Google. "moral bellweather" seems like an overly generous description of this guy based on these comics. They're basically just Dilbert with some Google specific terminology.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vgeek 5y ago
They're still interesting to see as one perspective of their culture. Some are benign, others kind of lean towards propaganda almost.
rejectedandsad 5y ago
Yeah, all I’m getting from these is an inflated sense of importance.
ganafagol 5y ago
Nit: it's "bellwether". Nothing to do with the weather.
- zactato 5y ago
  hah, you are correct. I actually copy and pasted that from the article.

fishtoaster 5y ago

Reading through the whole set, it's interesting seeing the gradual shift from "mostly positive, with gentle-ribbing" comics to "biting, anti-google" comics. Definitely paints a portrait of someone becoming increasingly disillusioned.

Traster 5y ago
I think there’s a very difficult line to draw between the author souring in Google and Google itself souring. There’s one parallel in particular that I thought was interesting - the org structure one from early on where MS orgs are all pointing guns at each other, then there’s a recent one where Amazon points the guns in whilst Google points the gun out to customers. I would say that’s fairly accurate. But it’s now not throwing stones at the competition. It’s reflection that Google is no better.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- native_samples 5y ago
  It actually feels more like maybe Cornet just radicalized faster than the rest of the company. His reasons for quitting are that Google works with US ICE, that the AI 'ethics' researchers were fired and that Google makes a censored search engine for China. But those first two are both totally reasonable things for the company to have done. Gebru and her friend were both way out of line, and I don't recall anyone freaking out about having particular government agencies as customers when I worked there. Google Earth Pro for the longest time counted the CIA as a key customer, maybe it still does, so it's not like there wasn't grounds for objection.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

additional active discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27778774