4 ms·

(Opinions are my own) An alternate way of looking at it: When you work at a place you can help influence the culture to move it in the right direction. When y

(Opinions are my own) An alternate way of looking at it: When you work at a place you can help influence the culture to move it in the right direction. When you aren't working there you can't.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Many people at Google have held this opinion over the past decade are now former Googlers because they've realized you can't fix it. They've realized this is an excuse people in the cult use to justify to themselves and their conscience still being there, when all evidence points to it being impossible to course correct Google from within as an engineer.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  The company has made the transition from small to large and pretends (culturally) to not have noticed. It still bills itself as small and individual-driven, but that's propaganda. It'll still welcome an individual or small team working their ass off to make the next Gmail, but it doesn't care about that individual's opinion on whether it's acceptable to materially support Border Patrol and would much prefer they get on with those table-stakes improvements to the BigQuery search engine properly handling Hispanic names.
TheRealSteel 5y ago
An employee cannot realistically hope to change the morality of a publicly traded corporation.
dasil003 5y ago
If you are good, the best thing you can do is go leave and go work for a company doing things a better way. If you are not good the best thing you can do is stay and incrementally dilute their talent pool. If you actually want to have more impact than that as an IC you could try your hand at internal activism, but I'd say you have a dramatically higher chance of damaging your career than creating any real change at a company that scale.
- pydry 5y ago
  Internal activism has demonstrably achieved a noticeable amount in steering the company to act a bit more morally. As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe). Interestingly every time this topic crops up there's a chorus of "just quit if you feel that way about it" as if the exact opposite was true although in reality I think everybody kind of knows it's really not. From a non American perspective it's really strange watching this play out. Like looking at a culture that cant see the color blue or something.
  - dasil003 5y ago
    > As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe). The idea is that you leave and go work on something else that makes the world better versus contributing to the borg.
    - pydry 5y ago
      Still a good chance it'll come to nothing and your efforts to help reform the borg if you stayed (even by a tiny amount) would have been more effective in making the world a better place. It's definitely a trade off thats quite personal. Unlike other personal trade offs people seem quite comfortable making this one on your behalf.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe). The thesis being, AIUI, that then they weren't good enough. Because if they had been, the competitor they started after leaving would have buried their original employer.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  > If you are good, the best thing you can do is go leave and go work for a company doing things a better way Assuming that the new company will displace the old one. However at a large monopoly like google/facebook/amazon, if you want to change the world, you need to first change the company. The vague thing about "damaging my career" is a bit nebulous. I was bought out, so most of my remuneration is in stocks. There is almost no incentive for me to "build out my career" year. So I have no issue with calling out obvious bullshit/stuff that goes against publicly stated principles.

(Opinions are my own) An alternate way of looking at it: When you work at a place you can help influence the culture to move it in the right direction. When you aren't working there you can't.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

Many people at Google have held this opinion over the past decade are now former Googlers because they've realized you can't fix it. They've realized this is an excuse people in the cult use to justify to themselves and their conscience still being there, when all evidence points to it being impossible to course correct Google from within as an engineer.

shadowgovt 5y ago
The company has made the transition from small to large and pretends (culturally) to not have noticed. It still bills itself as small and individual-driven, but that's propaganda. It'll still welcome an individual or small team working their ass off to make the next Gmail, but it doesn't care about that individual's opinion on whether it's acceptable to materially support Border Patrol and would much prefer they get on with those table-stakes improvements to the BigQuery search engine properly handling Hispanic names.

TheRealSteel 5y ago

An employee cannot realistically hope to change the morality of a publicly traded corporation.

dasil003 5y ago

If you are good, the best thing you can do is go leave and go work for a company doing things a better way. If you are not good the best thing you can do is stay and incrementally dilute their talent pool. If you actually want to have more impact than that as an IC you could try your hand at internal activism, but I'd say you have a dramatically higher chance of damaging your career than creating any real change at a company that scale.

pydry 5y ago
Internal activism has demonstrably achieved a noticeable amount in steering the company to act a bit more morally. As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe). Interestingly every time this topic crops up there's a chorus of "just quit if you feel that way about it" as if the exact opposite was true although in reality I think everybody kind of knows it's really not. From a non American perspective it's really strange watching this play out. Like looking at a culture that cant see the color blue or something.
- dasil003 5y ago
  > As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe). The idea is that you leave and go work on something else that makes the world better versus contributing to the borg.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Still a good chance it'll come to nothing and your efforts to help reform the borg if you stayed (even by a tiny amount) would have been more effective in making the world a better place. It's definitely a trade off thats quite personal. Unlike other personal trade offs people seem quite comfortable making this one on your behalf.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > As far as I can tell all of the people quitting have achieved precisely fuck all. Not a single example to the contrary I can think of. Not at a big tech company (at a startup maybe). The thesis being, AIUI, that then they weren't good enough. Because if they had been, the competitor they started after leaving would have buried their original employer.
KaiserPro 5y ago
> If you are good, the best thing you can do is go leave and go work for a company doing things a better way Assuming that the new company will displace the old one. However at a large monopoly like google/facebook/amazon, if you want to change the world, you need to first change the company. The vague thing about "damaging my career" is a bit nebulous. I was bought out, so most of my remuneration is in stocks. There is almost no incentive for me to "build out my career" year. So I have no issue with calling out obvious bullshit/stuff that goes against publicly stated principles.