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Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism

• websites2023 5y ago
  Awadallah will land on his feet, but what signal does this send to other holders of hateful ideologies? To me, the signal is: “You can’t change. Not really. If you ever held a heterodox view, ever expressed that view in any medium at any time in you life, or were caught in our surveillance capitalist nightmare systems doing so, you’re dead to us.” How does that inspire anyone to change their view?
  • VikingCoder 5y ago
    I think we're going to get to the point where people only share their views on sensitive manners in anonymous / pseudo-anonymous forums, so they can't be linked to you. That's not necessarily terrible.
    • thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
      >> anonymous / pseudo-anonymous forums, so they can't be linked to you Such places increasingly do not exist. With few exceptions, practically all electronic communication can be traced. Microphones are almost everywhere and voice recognition is very advanced. "Privacy" increasing means that someone is paid well enough to not need to monetize your communications, but that they will still have the data ready to hand over if law enforcement comes knocking with a warrant or subpoena.
    • vorpalhex 5y ago
      If your goal is to redeem people instead of punish them, it's terrible. We want people to give up hate and rejoin society.
    • andrewzah 5y ago
      I think it is terrible for society in the long term. We can post anonymously for now, but that may become much more difficult in the future. We need to encourage a society that takes words into context, and assumes good faith instead of imagining the worst possible interpretation of everything. Similarly, we need to encourage people changing their views. Casting out anyone who said something bad, ever, independent of any character growth or changes of opinion as one becomes more knowledgeable, is going to lead to people continuing to hold horrible views... just in private. Right now there is zero incentive to publicly apologize about anything or change one's opinion because people don't care about that, they just want punitive actions taken regardless of any changes afterwards. That doesn't really help address the underlying issues of racism, -isms, etc, at all....
      • VikingCoder 5y ago
        Great, so, you post that you used to hate all Vikings... And you're my manager. And now I sue the company because I didn't get a raise, back in the time before the post. You can't pretend there are no consequences to stating you have feelings that can impact other people. Even if what you're claiming is that you're reformed. "I'm a recovering alcoholic," says the doctor. "Great!" say all of the lawyers with malpractice lawsuits against the doctor. You just can't avoid those consequences. People will always hold horrible views. That's not going to change. Of course there's an incentive to change your opinion - growth. If you need to PERFORM that you've grown, then I think that's pretty dangerous attention seeking. If you want to make a livelihood out of being a leader, where your transformation is part of your credentials, then yes, that's a risk, which you have to calculate. > That doesn't really help address the underlying issues of racism, -isms, etc, at all.... I'm not really convinced talking does address those. Especially not on social media. I think people have to get to know each other on a personal basis. It's funny to me how we all run so hot and cold on social media. Right now, y'all are defending social media, in the context of performing that you're reformed on some topic. Also, so much of this is tied up in the context of employee / employer relationships. Like, if you don't work for a company, you're probably way more free to express your views, to a point. Like for instance, Bill Cosby wants to do a stand-up tour. Should he be "cancelled"? If you feel strongly no, then, well, I guess you can support venues that want to host him. Some companies are going to shun people like this VP. Maybe you want to support companies that don't. Or what about the Google Creep [1]? How much should he have to apologize, or take sensitivity training, etc, before you'd hire him at a company where he'd be in touch with sensitive user information? We're all going to have different answers to that. We can't come up with one rule. So, maybe you want to support companies that give people like him a second chance. I don't feel that need. There's lots of other parameters that are way more important to me, in evaluating companies I want to do business with, than their being responsible for managing the healing and forgiving process for people who made public mistakes that put the companies they worked for in potentially hot legal water. [1] : https://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats https://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-te...
    • weezin 5y ago
      It is an issue if those forums are echo chambers blinding people to the outside world or opposing viewpoints.
    • jonfw 5y ago
      Opinions without identities are meaningless. We are increasingly living in a society where the only opinions we can attach to a human are from our families or talking heads on TV and social media.
  • stale2002 5y ago
    > “You can’t change. Not really. Well, you can though. Let me tell you a different thing that it signals. It signals, that if you hold a harmful ideology, that not only should you change to it, but that you should be ashamed enough that you will never admit that you even held these ideas in the past. It is not that hard, for most people (emphasis on most. If you run for senate, or something, it is a different story), to simply lie and say that they never held these opinions in the past. Incentivizing people who believe these things, to vehemently deny they every held them, doesn't sound too bad of an outcome to me.
  • ryan93 5y ago
    You can literally can change, you dont have to write a linkedin post about it.
  • sjg007 5y ago
    American has the fallen hero rebirth meme. It doesn't mean you get to stay where you were though and it requires a bunch of hard work and positive PR to get out of. Has Mel Gibson recovered?
• josh_today 5y ago
  This is the type of change we need to celebrate in people not further scrutinize! As a Jew I would love to create dialogue with a person who realized the past hate was unjust, to hear why the hate existed and more importantly to understand what opened their eyes. It is that process that will help eliminate hate across the board. Today as a society we approach discrimination through censorship and cancel culture which unfortunately will not solve deep rooted hate.
  • JohnHaugeland 5y ago
    Read what he said and then say this again with a straight face
    • brodouevencode 5y ago
      Here's the link to the LinkedIn post in question: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-one-amr-awadallah/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-one-amr-awadallah/ What about it concerns you?
      • philipswood 5y ago
        There a bit in there to offend anyone and everyone. While making every effort to balance every point of his stance he adds extremes that's likely to offend someone on either side of his position. He does this for sex, politics and religion. All in all it comes across as quite tone deaf. I don't want people not to have authentic unwashed opinions or not to have the right to air them, but posting this publicly seems a bit Ill advised for someone whose job description requires a high degree of political awareness and imagine it's a bit of a PR nightmare.
    • refenestrator 5y ago
      Consider that he grew up in the Arab world on one side of a conflict. What if he were Palestinian? Are all of them unwelcome at Google if they had an unmoderated thought in their lives?
    • andrewzah 5y ago
• csours 5y ago
  I understand that this is embarrassing to Google any way they handle it, but surely this is the worst thing to do? To me, this is the work, the hard part of inclusion. Understanding that people are not always perfect and sometimes very flawed.
  • arkitaip 5y ago
    This is the easy solution, just fire the guy and go back to being a Happy Corporate Family. But then again, he seems to be lacking in leadership skills if he keeps getting "misunderstood" regarding his manifesto. Protip: your VPs should never write any kind of manifesto involving jews in any shape or form. Stick to banal business management tropes like anyone else.
    • hn8788 5y ago
      I don't think him claiming he's keeps getting misunderstood is necessarily an indictment of him. Sometimes the misunderstanding comes from readers having a particular mindset, so they see everything through the lense of their preconceptions, which might not match up with what the author was thinking.
      • arkitaip 5y ago
        He is an VP, great communication skills is key to his success, that also includes understanding his audience. Like in, maybe I can write about diversity and inclusion without referencing my horrible antisemitism because holy shit that would be bonkers to bring up in a corporate context.
        • csours 5y ago
          Agreed. I would think that as a VP he would understand this and have access to resources that would help him with phrasing etc. However, since that particular horse has left the barn.
• xrd 5y ago
  As awkward is his note was, this is a public admission that he had bigoted views and grew and is still trying to grow out of them. I wish I was a fly on the wall at Google to understand why that's not acceptable. Growing and learning is necessary and the only hope.
  • commiecs 5y ago
    You, xrd, are a fucking loser.
  • arkitaip 5y ago
    Here's what I think happened: The Powers That Be took a short look at this drama and decided that no, this is not the hill to die on. They never are. Being perceived as tolerating antisemitism because VP Weirdo keeps getting "misunderstood" over a "manifesto"? That's not even a hill anymore, it's a grave someone dug for themselves.
    • youareelitist 5y ago
      I suppose it's best to die of the hill that is a soulless corporation instead?
  • underseacables 5y ago
    Maybe Google is taking the view that anything even remotely controversial which could cause someone to look negatively upon the company, is a cancer that must be removed immediately.
    • Zhenya 5y ago
      Except Kamau Bobb, who was simply removed from Doing diversity activities at Google but still employed here.
  • UncleMeat 5y ago
    The post is not the only relevant data point here.
• partiallypro 5y ago
  I don't understand this new culture of not allowing people to have redemption. The past isn't the present or future. People change, that is what is so problematic with "cancel culture," and digging up old tweets, etc.
  • howaboutnope 5y ago
    > There's just something unsustainable about an environment that demands constant atonement but actively disdains the very idea of forgiveness. -- Elisabeth Bruenig
  • commiecs 5y ago
    You must be one of the blue check-mark piece of shit liberals from San Francisco that aid/abet cancel culture. GO FUCK YOURSELF!
  • spicyramen 5y ago
    If you do it at personal level not representing a company is fine. But this dude thinks mixing politics and work is a good idea...being a VP. Clearly he lacks emotional intelligence or common sense.
    • partiallypro 5y ago
      Mixing politics and work is the new American corporate mantra (as long as its a certain strain of politics)
• 1024core 5y ago
  I think there is more to the story than just his manifesto coming out. I feel like there was tension even before this incident, and this is the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. We should be encouraging such introspection and admittance of past failures. It gives people the opportunity to change. If we don't reward people for changing, they will never change!
• mfer 5y ago
  If we look at things in terms of positive and negative reinforcement this has some interesting consequences. So, he admitted to antisemitism in the past and shared how he has grown or is growing past it. This kind of admission by him has the ability to challenge other and positively reinforce others who are in a similar situation to him. That _positive_ reinforcement for change away from antisemitism. He was pushed out which is a form of _negative_ reinforcement. That will teach him and others not to speak out with stories of how they have changed which will limit others from positively reinforcing future change like this. The way this influences people going forward is worth noting.
  • foolinaround 5y ago
    damned if you do, damned if you don't!!
  • missedthecue 5y ago
    Don't ask, don't tell: racism edition
    • UncleMeat 5y ago
      Except being racist is bad and being gay isn't.
      • mhuffman 5y ago
        This is just our current social construction. There was a time right-here in the US when those were reversed. And there are societies right now where those are reversed.
        • pschuegr 5y ago
          And those societies are wrong.
        • UncleMeat 5y ago
          So? That doesn't change the fact that being gay is okay and being racist is bad. The obvious connotation of the post was that "don't ask, don't tell for racism" is bad in the same way that it was bad for homosexuality in the military - but there is obviously no comparison between being gay and being a racist.
• darthrupert 5y ago
  This confirms what many (like Sam Harris) have suspected a long time: political correctness for large companies is about PR, not about doing what's right or improving people.
  • brodouevencode 5y ago
    #6 here: https://twitter.com/ZubyMusic/status/1412012537986568193 https://twitter.com/ZubyMusic/status/1412012537986568193
• dogorman 5y ago
  "When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard." -Sun Tzu You should allow your opposition to at least believe they have an alternative to digging in and fighting you to the bitter end. Even if you have no intention of allowing them to escape or surrender, you should let them believe it's still possible.
  • mbg721 5y ago
    When you surround an anthill, you can just stomp on it, though. Corporate political correctness is built on the perceived certainty of being so far on the winning side of history that any other point of view isn't worth considering.
    • dogorman 5y ago
      Progress in the long run may seem inevitable, but certainty of victory can be dangerous in the short to medium term. Whig history ignores the possibility of setbacks. Progressive democracies have fallen to authoritarian dictatorships in the past, and there will likely be more examples in the future. Hubris is not your friend.
      • inglor_cz 5y ago
        Just a few days ago, there was a submission on HN about an Ancient Greek city where one side was so totally sure about its victory that it committed unspeakable crimes on the losing side - only to get whacked once a foreign military force allied with the losers arrived and the still surviving ones suddenly had a chance of revenge.
    • effingwewt 5y ago
      I think I'm confused here. I don't mean to be pedantic, but stomping an anthill wouldn't be 'winning' you would be pressed into your own retreat pretty quickly. I believe the quote holds true, leave an out they will retreat or at least try. Cutoff all egress and it's a fight to the death. Or was that what you were saying and I misunderstood? Or was I just wrong on all accounts?
• linuxftw 5y ago
  Let this be a lesson to all of you. First, don't write manifestos online of any sort, one day your words might be held against you. Second, don't admit guilt to anything, ever. All these 'unconscious bias' and 'majority guilt' are about soliciting admissions from you. "As a person of X, I realized I was discriminating against people of Y." That's guilt. That's fire-able. Don't emulate behavior just because it's fashionable. You might get the impression that society is run like a college campus now, but it isn't. All this activism isn't for you, it's for political control.
• wyldfire 5y ago
  > In an awkward attempt to decry hate amid the Israel-Palestinian conflict, he listed all the Jews he knew who he said were good people. Employees said his public admission, which omitted major historic Jewish events, made it difficult for public-facing developer advocates who are tasked with being the face and bridge for Google developers internally and externally. It is weird to create a list of "good" Jews. But it seems to me like it may be a genuine attempt at positivity. Most of what talking heads cry about Cancel Culture is just "consequences for having bad attitude/behavior". But this case seems like things going overboard.
  • esens 5y ago
    The issue is in Egypt and other Arab nations they never meet any Jewish people at all. They just see the stereotypes, etc. When you never meet people you can view them as complete evil because you buy the propaganda. This leads to the contact hypothesis as a means of reducing prejudice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_hypothesis
• at_a_remove 5y ago
  Now, as ever, the advice to never apologize to this particular crowd holds true. Google is just one more bunch reinforcing this point.
  • commiecs 5y ago
    I, Adolf Hitler, apologize for gassing millions of Jews. Please save me, Jesus Christ.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  We definitely don’t have the full story in situations like this. Google can’t and won’t provide their side of the story because it’s internal company HR business. Meanwhile, the employee can and will use LinkedIn to shape the narrative in a way that is beneficial to their reputation. Is the LinkedIn post renouncing their anti-semitism a spontaneous act that triggered the firing? Or were they internally in trouble with HR and the LinkedIn post renouncing antisemitism was a last-minute attempt to get ahead of an issue that could damage their career? We can’t know, but I suggest being careful whenever someone expertly and publicly spins themselves as the victim in a situation like this. Either way, a company’s hands are virtually tied when someone publicly makes declarations like this: > “I hated the Jewish people, all the Jewish people”! And that same person is responsible for matters of customer relations and/or managing internal employees. Whether or not he genuinely renounced his beliefs, making a statement like that adds suspicion on top of past and even future actions by this person. When (not if) he has to make a difficult decision or take an unpopular action involving Jewish customers or employees, they will always wonder how much his public declaration of past hatred for Jewish people was a factor.
  • brodouevencode 5y ago
    You may not be wrong (to your point, no one knows), but is such a cynical approach beneficial?
    • nnnnnnhfcc 5y ago
      It's cynical to support the firing of an executive that admits to the worst sort of extreme racism publicly as a misguided attempt to build his own brand? Lol
      • arcanon 5y ago
        Sometimes I think the only reason platitudes like “bring your whole self to work” exist is just to weed out ppl who are dumb enough to fall for it. Never break the act if you wanna stay on top it seems.
      • 5y ago
• Simulacra 5y ago
  My takeaway from this if you've ever done or said something bad in the past, bury it. Don't ever bring it up again. Don't confess to it, don't talk about how you've changed, just bury it. Your past is an empty black hole, because otherwise it seems, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. This guy should be applauded for recognizing his own hatred, and how he's changed and left that hate behind. Instead, he loses his job. Is forgiveness and growing from our mistakes completely dead now?
  • ramesh31 5y ago
    >Is forgiveness and growing from our mistakes completely dead now? Yes. And you nailed it; there can be no explanation of anything anymore. Nuance is irrelevant. Best to keep all conversation strictly professional, maybe talk about sports teams or the weather but that's it. Your personal thoughts must now be either kept completely internal or published anonymously if you wish to take part in our progressive society.
• asah 5y ago
  Like many large organizations, Google condone controversial material expressions of individualism, without approval by PR/legal/HR (which are granted only when it benefits the organization, and typically with carefully sanitized scripts). At Google, this has been true for 15+ years and is not new. If you look at the top brass at any large org, they all subjugate their individualism to focus on reinforcing carefully crafted PR/legal sound bites.
  • asah 5y ago
    Typo: doesn't condone
• esens 5y ago
  This is a fact of life for Israelis and surrounding Arab countries. I am unsure why we pretend that these negative sentiments about each other do not exist -- they are incredibly widespread in these populations. Unfortunately in the countries around Israel with whom they have had wars, there is significant anti-Semitism: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3136059.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3136059.stm And in Israel there is significant anti-Arab sentiment, which rose significantly as a result of Palestinian terrorist attacks in the early 2000s: https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-shows-large-swaths-of-israeli-youth-hate-arabs-back-revoking-citizenship/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-shows-large-swaths-of-isr...
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • lma21 5y ago
    isn't anti-semitic and anti-arab the same term? historically/technically speaking
    • adsche 5y ago
      No, and it never was. The term 'anti-semitic' always meant prejudiced against jews. This is not changed by the different meaning of 'semitic' in e.g. 'semitic languages'.
      • lma21 5y ago
        Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for the info!
• commiecs 5y ago
  All devrels hate Jews. Just go look at twitter. They all are anti-semetic as fuck. It is way past time we, as an industry get rid of the scourge of the MARKETING people like devrel/dev evangelists. They don't code. They are just racists pieces of shit with a loud megaphone. At the same time, Jack Dorsey, known pedophile, should hang. Sadly, half of the people on this site also hate Jews just as much as they hate the Cubans for wanting freedom. There is a great bridge in San Francisco you can jump off of - go for it you commie fucks.
• tmsh 5y ago
  I fully expected to read his post and dismiss it with the idea that as a leader your first job is to make your employees comfortable and feel safe and respected. But it’s a genuine, good post. There are so many better ways for Google to have handled this than to just fire like they’ve done with AI researchers before. The relevant comic is: https://goomics.net/327/ https://goomics.net/327/
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• IncRnd 5y ago
  Link to the actual manifesto: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-one-amr-awadallah/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-one-amr-awadallah/ This makes it a little clearer why Google parted ways with him.
• mewse-hn 5y ago
  - It takes real programmer brain to publicly post a 10k word solution for world peace littered with pop culture references - If you are an executive for any company, maybe don't publicly share your opinion of the israeli/palestinian conflict, using your real name, and try to buy twitter ads pointing to it
  • raxxorrax 5y ago
    The rule is true, although the reason why I would agree with your recommendation is mostly a flaw I see in the audience, not necessarily with the sender.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• CivBase 5y ago
  I complemented Google for how they handled a similar situation in the comments of a HN article from a few weeks ago[0]. In that case, they reassigned their head of diversity in light of his former antisemitic statements which had been recently uncovered. Just like their "VP of developer relations for Google Cloud" Amr Awadallah, their "head of diversity" Kamau Bobb had publicly renounced their old ways but, given the nature of their position, it didn't make sense to keep them there. The difference is in that case Google reassigned Bobb to a position which would not be compromised by their past. In this case, they outright fired Awadallah. That raises some red flags. As many other commenters have pointed out, we don't know the whole story and probably never will. This line from the article might shed a little more light on the situation, though: > Within the manifesto, Awadallah describes how he was "cautious" of VMware co-founder Mendel Rosenblum based on his last name If Awadallah had a history of antisemitism while at the company that had been recently uncovered, it could make sense for him to be terminated. And if that were the case, I doubt Google could speak publicly about it. I want to promote a society which doesn't hold people forever accountable for past mistakes and allows them to change and improve. But I also don't want to promote a society where misdeeds go entirely unpunished just because the perpetrator apologized in a social media post. It's hard to strike a balance and I'm hesitant to comment any more about this story without more information. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27381425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27381425
  • underseacables 5y ago
    It’s possible they saw firing their head of diversity (which I think they should have) as politically messy. Easier to fire some people of color than others. In the situation you pointed out, Google may have feared BLM more than they fear the Arab world. It really feels like there’s an algorithm at work here, not rational sense.
• Illniyar 5y ago
  I read the majority of the linkedin post. While it starts off benign enough with renouncing antisemetism and wierdly anti-zionism it soon goes into a tirade. After the first few parts it's mostly about the Israel-Palastinian conflict (mostly denouncing Israel's actions), with a lot of denouncing Trump a long the way. For a company trying for the last few months to get rid of politics in the office, I can definitely see how this would be a firing offense from a top executive.
• ramesh31 5y ago
  Antisemitism is a lot like pedophilia; if you find yourself even mentioning its' existence, you're immediately suspect yourself. Best to never let the words even come out of your mouth regardless of context. Deny, suppress, gaslight, and ignore anything that even remotely touches the subject. No one ever got brownie points for profoundly exclaiming their lack of hatred for jewish people. (And you see I'll be downvoted here for even mentioning it. Q.E.D.)
  • thirdreich 5y ago
    Exactly! Just like some of the post war germans approached their past with holocaust denial. It's not ok to even think these thoughts in a positive welcoming culture.
• nailer 5y ago
  Meanwhile here’s how Google handles present-day racism against Jewish people: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdbHft64/ https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdbHft64/
• spicyramen 5y ago
  I think there is a basic rule at work: Don't mix politics and work. There are type of personal positions political, religious and sexual that are always controversial and is better to keep it to yourself. As a VP of DevRel he definitely should be focusing in work related topics as afaik Google isnt #1 Cloud there. In today's world we have been including sexual preferences as a norm for people to share at the workspace which has also triggered people and in my opinion we should keep it personal. In this case Awr is a VP who manages multiple people of Jewish origin. Looks like absolutely he has nothing better to do that decided that it was a good idea to write a blog post and record a video. This topic is not going to bring people together he really has very low emotional intelligence whatever his intention was. Good riddance