5 ms·

There is a lot of talk about Google as the role model of what not to do. Their employee base became a center of activism that bullied the management around. Not

There is a lot of talk about Google as the role model of what not to do. Their employee base became a center of activism that bullied the management around. Not much came of it at the time because the company continued to generate tons of cash. But now everyone is seeing how mismanaged Google has been and likely distracted. It’s not the devs fault but rather bringing in too many people that believe the workplace is a political place.

makeitdouble 4y ago
> too many people that believe the workplace is a political place. I heard a kid ask what politics was all about. It's an interesting question for anyone to stop and think about. Everyone will come up with their own conclusions, but I personally would ask what in a workplace is _not_ political ? From hiring practices, environmental impact, customer/community management (minorities, disabled people, freedom of speech etc.), social mission, where the funds come from, where the lobbying money goes...your argument could be that employee should ignore everything a company does except what they are explicitly ordered to care about, but that doesn't look like what we socially expect from employees and people will be personally affected by how their company behaves as a whole. I'm not arguing for extreme activism everywhere you work, but saying the workplace is free of politics goes way too far on the other extreme.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wyclif 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - jnwatson 4y ago
    There's nothing I see at Google that I didn't see at every other corporate job. They spend perhaps an extra 60 seconds about it at large meetings.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    And what makes you so confident “high-value” engineers share your politics?
- solarmist 4y ago
  Obviously “politics” is anything different than the status quo. But you are right. Everything is politics when it comes down to it, the only difference is whether something is considered a norm or not.
- gabesullice 4y ago
  > From hiring practices … [to] where the lobbying money goes.… What in a workplace is _not_ political? These are all great examples of "not your job" precisely because the people responsible for these concerns are the owners, and by extension the board, and by even further extension the "officers" appointed to concern themselves with these issues. To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate. No matter how good their intentions, they're not going to be effective because they're not charged with those duties and so they rarely have the tools and authority to implement the changes they might be advocating. That lack of agency leads to frustration and discontent, and it distracts those looking to you for direction. What is _not_ political as a tech lead? Making sure tickets are scoped well. Identifying poorly tested parts of the codebase. Anticipating future requirements and designing systems that will accomodate them. Setting expectations and ensuring that your team meets them, such as good commentary, an appropriate level of testing, or the quality of code reviews given amongst your team. Of course, you need to be a good leader to accomplish those things, and there's a political aspect to good leadership, but those duties don't have much to do with, say, the environmental impact of the company. To be clear, I'm not saying any of the causes you brought up aren't important, but I do feel like a lot of people have taken up those causes in venues where they're personally unlikely to be very effective (and content).
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    > To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate. It's trickier than that I think. Imagine for instance as a tech lead you realize the resumes of some specific minority all get shutdown by HR before interviewing. As a tech lead you make a polite inquiry, and they tell you nothing's wrong, they have their reasons they can't tell you, and you should mind your business. You could argue any move from there could be out of your mandate...but as a tech lead you're told to bring the most technical value possible to your team. And hiring the best people fits into these optics. So you'd talk with some colleages about how you think it makes your team worse you couldn't hire that specific person you pushed as a candidate. The discussion extends to hiring criteria in general. More people come to you to share ideas. And now you have a group chat about hiring ethics that makes the management uncomfortable.
- seventhtiger 4y ago
  Everything is also math, or physics, or chemistry, or biology, or computation, or philosophy, or economics, or psychology. It's not profound to put on blue-tinted glasses and marvel at how blue everything is. The only thing it tells me is the POV you chose for yourself. "Everything is politics" is usually used as a wedge against uninterested people. Either you join my cause, or you're responsible for all current evil. It's certainly not an enlightened neutral observation. It's a call for culture war.
julianeon 4y ago
Google's wounds were self-inflicted and totally public: introduce a product, let in linger for 2 years, kill it, over and over again, dozens of cycles of this. No political explanation needed, just very obvious senior level mismanagement.
singron 4y ago
Ex-Googler here. I'm kind of surprised Google leadership lets themselves get bullied so hard. E.g. when Diane Greene lied several times about the nature of Google Cloud's involvement with the Air Force, a ton of employees complained, but it's not like they quit the next day. The retention numbers were always very smooth curves seemingly unaffected by the drama of the day. If you went around and talked about the latest thing, 80% of employees had no idea what you were talking about. It's kind of cynical, but if Google management doesn't want activism, they should ignore their employees, wait for the activists to burn themselves out and quit, and then be happy with all the paycheck collecting cogs that remain.
- tsss 4y ago
  It's because they don't "get bullied". They _want_ this kind of stupid identity activism and encourage it from the top with their DEI propaganda officers. Any "activism" and identity outrage is an opportunity to make it look like they're doing something "progressive" without actually doing anything meaningful (i.e. expensive) and precludes any material change that would actually help people and threaten the upper classes' power or wealth. The instant that "activists" aren't useful to them anymore, they get axed immediately. Just look at Microsoft's AI ethics team. An entire team dedicated only to whitewashing their corporate image.
  - singron 4y ago
    I don't think this is true. Why would they spend millions of dollars making elaborate surveillance and censorship tools for a Chinese version of Google search if they wanted everyone to accidentally find out about it later and throw a hissy fit? Why would they try to make deals with the Air Force, DoD, and ICE if they want their employees to sour them? Why create an underclass of contractors if they want their employees to advocate for them? There have been so many political conflicts between employees and management and they mostly end up in the nytimes. DEI is kind of a different beast. Largely, the employees and management are aligned. There isn't a political war going on. The AI ethics teams and DEI teams are often powerless appendages that make it seem like they are doing something, but they aren't activists. They are just doing their job.
fergie 4y ago
A lot of people were talking 5-10 years ago about what would happen to Google when the original devs cashed out and mediocre company suits took over. We are living through that reality now. For the first time in 25 years Google actually looks vulnerable- the opportunity to win in internet search is up for grabs now in a way that it hasn't been since the '90s. And when the new search giant steps onto the scene, you can bet that they will be paying top dollar for their devs.

makeitdouble 4y ago

> too many people that believe the workplace is a political place. I heard a kid ask what politics was all about. It's an interesting question for anyone to stop and think about. Everyone will come up with their own conclusions, but I personally would ask what in a workplace is _not_ political ? From hiring practices, environmental impact, customer/community management (minorities, disabled people, freedom of speech etc.), social mission, where the funds come from, where the lobbying money goes...your argument could be that employee should ignore everything a company does except what they are explicitly ordered to care about, but that doesn't look like what we socially expect from employees and people will be personally affected by how their company behaves as a whole. I'm not arguing for extreme activism everywhere you work, but saying the workplace is free of politics goes way too far on the other extreme.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wyclif 4y ago
[flagged]
- jnwatson 4y ago
  There's nothing I see at Google that I didn't see at every other corporate job. They spend perhaps an extra 60 seconds about it at large meetings.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  And what makes you so confident “high-value” engineers share your politics?
solarmist 4y ago
Obviously “politics” is anything different than the status quo. But you are right. Everything is politics when it comes down to it, the only difference is whether something is considered a norm or not.
gabesullice 4y ago
> From hiring practices … [to] where the lobbying money goes.… What in a workplace is _not_ political? These are all great examples of "not your job" precisely because the people responsible for these concerns are the owners, and by extension the board, and by even further extension the "officers" appointed to concern themselves with these issues. To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate. No matter how good their intentions, they're not going to be effective because they're not charged with those duties and so they rarely have the tools and authority to implement the changes they might be advocating. That lack of agency leads to frustration and discontent, and it distracts those looking to you for direction. What is _not_ political as a tech lead? Making sure tickets are scoped well. Identifying poorly tested parts of the codebase. Anticipating future requirements and designing systems that will accomodate them. Setting expectations and ensuring that your team meets them, such as good commentary, an appropriate level of testing, or the quality of code reviews given amongst your team. Of course, you need to be a good leader to accomplish those things, and there's a political aspect to good leadership, but those duties don't have much to do with, say, the environmental impact of the company. To be clear, I'm not saying any of the causes you brought up aren't important, but I do feel like a lot of people have taken up those causes in venues where they're personally unlikely to be very effective (and content).
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > To take just one role as an example, it's certainly within a tech lead's purview to write a memo if she observes something that can be improved, but much beyond that and I think the tech lead would be straying from their mandate. It's trickier than that I think. Imagine for instance as a tech lead you realize the resumes of some specific minority all get shutdown by HR before interviewing. As a tech lead you make a polite inquiry, and they tell you nothing's wrong, they have their reasons they can't tell you, and you should mind your business. You could argue any move from there could be out of your mandate...but as a tech lead you're told to bring the most technical value possible to your team. And hiring the best people fits into these optics. So you'd talk with some colleages about how you think it makes your team worse you couldn't hire that specific person you pushed as a candidate. The discussion extends to hiring criteria in general. More people come to you to share ideas. And now you have a group chat about hiring ethics that makes the management uncomfortable.
seventhtiger 4y ago
Everything is also math, or physics, or chemistry, or biology, or computation, or philosophy, or economics, or psychology. It's not profound to put on blue-tinted glasses and marvel at how blue everything is. The only thing it tells me is the POV you chose for yourself. "Everything is politics" is usually used as a wedge against uninterested people. Either you join my cause, or you're responsible for all current evil. It's certainly not an enlightened neutral observation. It's a call for culture war.

julianeon 4y ago

Google's wounds were self-inflicted and totally public: introduce a product, let in linger for 2 years, kill it, over and over again, dozens of cycles of this. No political explanation needed, just very obvious senior level mismanagement.

singron 4y ago

Ex-Googler here. I'm kind of surprised Google leadership lets themselves get bullied so hard. E.g. when Diane Greene lied several times about the nature of Google Cloud's involvement with the Air Force, a ton of employees complained, but it's not like they quit the next day. The retention numbers were always very smooth curves seemingly unaffected by the drama of the day. If you went around and talked about the latest thing, 80% of employees had no idea what you were talking about. It's kind of cynical, but if Google management doesn't want activism, they should ignore their employees, wait for the activists to burn themselves out and quit, and then be happy with all the paycheck collecting cogs that remain.

tsss 4y ago
It's because they don't "get bullied". They _want_ this kind of stupid identity activism and encourage it from the top with their DEI propaganda officers. Any "activism" and identity outrage is an opportunity to make it look like they're doing something "progressive" without actually doing anything meaningful (i.e. expensive) and precludes any material change that would actually help people and threaten the upper classes' power or wealth. The instant that "activists" aren't useful to them anymore, they get axed immediately. Just look at Microsoft's AI ethics team. An entire team dedicated only to whitewashing their corporate image.
- singron 4y ago
  I don't think this is true. Why would they spend millions of dollars making elaborate surveillance and censorship tools for a Chinese version of Google search if they wanted everyone to accidentally find out about it later and throw a hissy fit? Why would they try to make deals with the Air Force, DoD, and ICE if they want their employees to sour them? Why create an underclass of contractors if they want their employees to advocate for them? There have been so many political conflicts between employees and management and they mostly end up in the nytimes. DEI is kind of a different beast. Largely, the employees and management are aligned. There isn't a political war going on. The AI ethics teams and DEI teams are often powerless appendages that make it seem like they are doing something, but they aren't activists. They are just doing their job.

fergie 4y ago

A lot of people were talking 5-10 years ago about what would happen to Google when the original devs cashed out and mediocre company suits took over. We are living through that reality now. For the first time in 25 years Google actually looks vulnerable- the opportunity to win in internet search is up for grabs now in a way that it hasn't been since the '90s. And when the new search giant steps onto the scene, you can bet that they will be paying top dollar for their devs.