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Maybe Google (and other companies in general) should take better care of checking for cultural fit before ending up with those "timebombs". There are plenty of

Maybe Google (and other companies in general) should take better care of checking for cultural fit before ending up with those "timebombs". There are plenty of Google level engineers out there who'd be proud to work for the military, consider strong border protection a good thing for themselves and their country and don't view everything from the gender angle.

akomtu 5y ago
For a reason unknown to me, Google (and other big tech firms), has to pick a political camp and strictly follow their agenda, key points of which you've just enumerated. I don't really know what would happen if Google said "we support strong borders and military from now on", perhaps an antitrust suit?
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  "Strong borders" aka "preserve the needlessly byzantine immigration process". Untold suffering has been imbued upon those lacking the fortune to bypass it and we are all poorer as a result.
  - corty 5y ago
    You can have strong borders without a byzantine process. For example: Just stamp any entry application with "nope". Predictable, fair, strong, easy, cheap.
    - knownjorbist 5y ago
      Of course, that'd be moving in the wrong direction entirely. It should be easy to immigrate.
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    > needlessly byzantine immigration process Maybe better technology could improve it?
Cipater 5y ago
You want Google and the like to run ideological tests when hiring? Seriously? If their tests selected for a differing ideology from the points you state, would you be happy?
- fleddr 5y ago
  You're not getting it, they already do. He's saying that there may be centrists or conservative people with Google level engineering skills that have no issue with things like ICE or military contracts. I'd imagine such characters would not be popular inside the company, and best shut up. Hence, you could argue the culture already pre-selects for progressive ideology. The "women in tech" memo is a perfect example of it. Sure enough, it was clumsy and likely full of inaccuracies. But the core thesis is hardly harmful or controversial. It was saying that women have less "tendency" to be interested in hardcore tech, therefore aggressively enforcing quotas on this representation is something you could at the very least debate. The memo doesn't even classify as specifically right-wing. It's just a counter point against how to achieve diversity and how far to take that goal, and which method to use. The consequence is that he's fired on the spot. So that proves the point. Centrists and conservatives, or anybody challenging the most progressive views can work at Google yet best shut up. Ideological selection is already in place.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dudul 5y ago
  Isn't it already the case at many companies? I thought that was what the magical umbrella term "culture fit" was for. At my 2 previous jobs, I was explicitly asked during interview what my position was on "diversity" and "equity". To this day, I still don't know what that had to do with me writing code.
shadowgovt 5y ago
That's the tension Google is facing internally right now. Having traded on "Don't Be Evil" for over a decade, Google has already established a culture. It's not the employees that are a bad culture fit; the employees are the culture. It's these projects. This problem will resolve itself over time though. If Google continues to lean into these projects, it will self-select for people who have no ethical qualms with them. But for over a decade, such selection was unnecessary.
notacoward 5y ago
This is not a cultural-fit issue. Over 14 years, both the company culture and the employee's attitudes change quite a lot. Even an absolutely perfect fit at time of hire is likely not to be that way for long. It would be amazing if this didn't happen, especially with the kind of growth Google has had during that period. I'd go even further and say that the FAANGs plan for this "time bomb" effect. They hire mostly impressionable kids, and the rate at which they hire is based on an expectation of short tenures (even by the historical standards of this young industry). Their famously high compensation levels are not just about attracting talent but also about keeping that tenure from being even shorter. They know that people's misgivings and frustrations will add up over time. They know that the "price of their souls" in Cornet's graph will keep increasing. Everything from their onboarding processes to their review/promotion processes to their engineering standards are designed to reduce and/or make up for this kind of attrition. Hiring people with a particular kind of politics doesn't make any sense at all for them, whether that kind is enlightened or yours. The only kind of culture they select for is around non-political issues such as technical approaches and work/collaboration styles.

akomtu 5y ago

For a reason unknown to me, Google (and other big tech firms), has to pick a political camp and strictly follow their agenda, key points of which you've just enumerated. I don't really know what would happen if Google said "we support strong borders and military from now on", perhaps an antitrust suit?

knownjorbist 5y ago
"Strong borders" aka "preserve the needlessly byzantine immigration process". Untold suffering has been imbued upon those lacking the fortune to bypass it and we are all poorer as a result.
- corty 5y ago
  You can have strong borders without a byzantine process. For example: Just stamp any entry application with "nope". Predictable, fair, strong, easy, cheap.
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    Of course, that'd be moving in the wrong direction entirely. It should be easy to immigrate.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > needlessly byzantine immigration process Maybe better technology could improve it?

Cipater 5y ago

You want Google and the like to run ideological tests when hiring? Seriously? If their tests selected for a differing ideology from the points you state, would you be happy?

fleddr 5y ago
You're not getting it, they already do. He's saying that there may be centrists or conservative people with Google level engineering skills that have no issue with things like ICE or military contracts. I'd imagine such characters would not be popular inside the company, and best shut up. Hence, you could argue the culture already pre-selects for progressive ideology. The "women in tech" memo is a perfect example of it. Sure enough, it was clumsy and likely full of inaccuracies. But the core thesis is hardly harmful or controversial. It was saying that women have less "tendency" to be interested in hardcore tech, therefore aggressively enforcing quotas on this representation is something you could at the very least debate. The memo doesn't even classify as specifically right-wing. It's just a counter point against how to achieve diversity and how far to take that goal, and which method to use. The consequence is that he's fired on the spot. So that proves the point. Centrists and conservatives, or anybody challenging the most progressive views can work at Google yet best shut up. Ideological selection is already in place.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dudul 5y ago
Isn't it already the case at many companies? I thought that was what the magical umbrella term "culture fit" was for. At my 2 previous jobs, I was explicitly asked during interview what my position was on "diversity" and "equity". To this day, I still don't know what that had to do with me writing code.

shadowgovt 5y ago

That's the tension Google is facing internally right now. Having traded on "Don't Be Evil" for over a decade, Google has already established a culture. It's not the employees that are a bad culture fit; the employees are the culture. It's these projects. This problem will resolve itself over time though. If Google continues to lean into these projects, it will self-select for people who have no ethical qualms with them. But for over a decade, such selection was unnecessary.

notacoward 5y ago

This is not a cultural-fit issue. Over 14 years, both the company culture and the employee's attitudes change quite a lot. Even an absolutely perfect fit at time of hire is likely not to be that way for long. It would be amazing if this didn't happen, especially with the kind of growth Google has had during that period. I'd go even further and say that the FAANGs plan for this "time bomb" effect. They hire mostly impressionable kids, and the rate at which they hire is based on an expectation of short tenures (even by the historical standards of this young industry). Their famously high compensation levels are not just about attracting talent but also about keeping that tenure from being even shorter. They know that people's misgivings and frustrations will add up over time. They know that the "price of their souls" in Cornet's graph will keep increasing. Everything from their onboarding processes to their review/promotion processes to their engineering standards are designed to reduce and/or make up for this kind of attrition. Hiring people with a particular kind of politics doesn't make any sense at all for them, whether that kind is enlightened or yours. The only kind of culture they select for is around non-political issues such as technical approaches and work/collaboration styles.