Both Apple and Google support Saudi Arabia by refusing to remove the Absher app from the app store. Could any current employees shed light on if there is any internal disagreement on this?
I have no real understanding of the situation. But I believe the app is just a webview on top of various Saudi websites. It doesn't even do push notifications, they come instead through text messaging.
I don't understand how someone can proudly be a nuisance to those who sign their paychecks nor how can an employer tolerate any of it, at the very least this situation is unfair to the majority of employees who are just "going to work".
Not sure what's behind Google's inaction here, they really shouldn't be worried about the trouble makers defecting to somewhere else that most likely won't tolerate their bullshit.
So what you're saying is, employees shouldn't complain about (censorship, bosses tolerating sexual harassment, etc.), they should either put up with it or leave quietly (possibly to their own financial detriment)?
I can't say I agree with you. What you're suggesting is basically the Wall Street model where bad and unethical institutional behavior gets a suboptimal amount of pushback.
But I don't think they "should" do so if they're calling out legitimately poor behavior that has been unaddressed by any other avenue. That wording is quite strange to me. Would you say that Rosa Parks "should" have faced the consequences of stirring things up as she did? Accepting that it is possible is a necessary part of civil disobedience, but the imposition of those consequences by higher powers is not.
Employees who can't voice their dissatisfaction for the status quo without fear of repercussion can't truly voice their dissatisfaction.
There's an EXTREME amount of power imbalance between employer and employee; if employees have to fear retaliation for voicing their concerns it has a chilling effect.
I'm okay with consequences, but voicing your concerns in public isn't grounds for consequences.
> Employees who can't voice their dissatisfaction for the status quo without fear of repercussion can't truly voice their dissatisfaction.
Employees are signing up for a world where they don't wear significant risk in exchange for subordinating their decision making to a company.
Companies are fundamentally an organised group of people working to a common goal. I can understand very well if individual employees want to assert their individuality. However, at any moment, they have only and exactly 3 choices:
1) Cooperate enthusiastically.
2) Cooperate with complaint
3) Quit
Nobody is going to get sacked for quietly and politely voicing a concern. However, once employees start organising to influence management on business decisions they really need to pony up the capital and become shareholders. Deciding what management does is the privilege of shareholders, not employees.
> However, once employees start organising to influence management on business decisions they really need to pony up the capital and become shareholders. Deciding what management does is the privilege of shareholders, not employees.
Isn't this precisely describing why unions were originally generated, so that employees can also leverage power equal to the shareholders, and therefore have a say in their own working conditions?
There is a big difference between that and what is being discussed in this article though. Unions are dealing with pay and conditions - important, but ultimately just aggregating topics that employers and employees were going to negotiate around anyway.
This article is talking about:
* Amazon workers are demanding more action from the company on battling climate change
* Microsoft, employees say they don’t want to build technology for warfare
* Salesforce, a group has lobbied management to end its work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency
* Google, [employees] want a say in and control over the products they build
Those are issues going way beyond what an employee can reasonably expect to influence. Being employed by a tech company is an achievement, but the end of the day tech workers aren't that special. They don't formally get to decide how the world works.
They absolutely can't take to social media to complain about these issues and expect to hold a job with the company they are complaining about. This type of activity isn't acceptable; they can't draw a wage and overrule strategic directions from people with capital at stake. The options are work or walk.
You make a bunch of statements about what can and cannot be done, and back up none of them. What can be done is what you have power to do, and collectively, workers have power greater than capital. What should be done is what is moral, since the people with capital are institutionally unable to. It's really that simple.
They clearly can at least temporarily, you can currently observe them doing so. Their employers now can decide if they want to call their "bluff" or not, and deal with the consequences of either choice.
This is an extremely...one-sided...view of things. Consider a more healthy one: capital and labor should be partners, and labor gets to have a say in the direction of the company, too.
It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. A company that can't do that should have its charter revoked. And its labor force is part of that society.
> It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society.
I'm assuming you're talking about the US.
We are not subjects of our government, or of some other sovereign, whether that be society or anything else. Our society is founded on individual pursuit of happiness, not collectivism.
Put another way, corporations exist for whatever reason their creators decide. So long as they operate within the law and are able to sustain themselves, societal good is a side effect and a concern of the State, not the corporation itself.
I live in the US, and sit on the the board of a governmental organization, a nonprofit corporation and an LLC.
It is incredibly obvious from this perspective that the regulations the state chooses to apply greatly constrain what it is possible for your organization to do. And this goes beyond the day to day all the way up to the mission of the org.
The state definitely has a large influence on weather organizations exists, their form and the reasons for which and methods they operate.
"Corporations exist for whatever reason their creators decide" - the state is the creator of a corporation! They don't just spring out of nowhere. Corporate entities, LLCs, etc. exist literally because the government in whose territory they operate grant them a charter that allows them to enter contracts and make agreements independent of the personal liability of the owners. That government can revoke that charter (and it has happened in American history--it's not a theoretical thing, it is real and an extant power (one that goes unused, but extant nonetheless).
We, as the actual owners of that government that grants this special exception, can--and should--expect better than the barest bare minimum out of such fictional persons if they want to keep their fictional personhood. This is a transaction: "we grant you the right to operate a fictional person and you don't act like shitheads in our society."
We don't do this, largely because of the weird little melty fears that led to you going off about collectivism when it doesn't apply here except insofar that labor participation can encourage, though does not guarantee, better behavior. But we can, and we should, keep this tool at the ready because corporate entities will be good citizens only so long as you keep the proverbial fist of an angry god ready to strike; sociopaths (and your standard corporation is a sociopath by definition) only, only, respect consequences and so those consequences must be severe and always at the ready.
A careful reader might note that I said nothing about such companies operating as unlimited-liability partnerships. Because yes, fair is fair, and people (who, unlike fictive entities, have rights and freedoms even if the results of those rights and freedoms suck) have the right to do as they please so long as they aren't harming other people. But they wouldn't take that option and we all know why.
Plenty of far more socialist policies than the status quo work perfectly well. The whole anti socialism ideology is bullshit pedaled by the powerful to enforce the status quo.
It is not "socialist" to expect a specially-treated organization to not act shitty if it wants to keep that special legal treatment. It just...isn't.
Not that you're right about your sweeping statement either, but it doesn't even begin to apply here except insofar as labor participation in direction can--not will, but can--discourage that shitty behavior.
The concept is socialist. You are trying a rhetoric trick by equating that to a socialist economy... That's bad faith.
The truth is that employees do not dictate the direction of the company in those countries. They have virtually no power and the system is used as a discussion platform on working conditions, pay, etc.
This is not quite the same as having employees decide what the company should produce and to whom it should sell it.
They both require one third of the board to be employee representatives. It might even be half for larger German companies. How does getting to vote on decisions and appointments equate to having virtually no power?
German work's councils, for all their imperfections and flaws, have often been looked at enviously by other Western countries - including US and UK. It is those which deal with conditions, pay and what have you.
Policies are not "socialist" or "capitalist"; they're...policies. You pick what works. Judging from the pretty consistent success of labor participation on boards in other companies, it certainly seems to help make a good chunk of money, too.
That such organization tends to also have societal value--weird that thinking about societal value gets conflated with "socialism", I guess every man is an island--is a really nice side effect, though.
Would you please not take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar? First you posted flamebait above ("red guards of the left") and now head straight into the most generic and therefore most boring possible direction ("socialism does not work"). Maybe it doesn't, but all these discussions are the same, and tedious repetition is not what HN is for, so please don't do this here.
I felt important to repeat that socialism does not work since we keep reading people advocating it.
That is not generic, that's quite the crux to the issue here.
I maintain the term "red guard" because that's exactly how they behave. See the reactions to me daring to contradict.
I am very surprised that a moderator would take side and use a rather rude and condescending tone in replying to a commenter that hasn't do anything beyond voicing a legitimate point.
I'm sorry that my comment sounded rude and condescending. I try to avoid that, but haven't yet mastered the art.
Generic ideological arguments are simply off topic on HN. If you like, you can think of that as an arbitrary moderation decision. I think of it as following from the site principle of curiosity. Either way, please don't post any more of those.
Labor can and should form a cooperative. There are many in US. This hypothetical cooperative can put all the policies in place which they want but do not get from Google.
> It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. A company that can't do that should have its charter revoked.
This sounds like BS to me. I see all the companies doing serious harm to humanity, environment, ecology are running just fine. Do you have examples of charter getting revoked?
If your company is going to super power the surveillance state and plunge the world into tyranny like we've never seen before why would you make things easy for them?
Retaliating against whistle blowers is a great way to generate bad PR for yourself. You may disagree that this is whistle blowing. You may view these employees as entitled troublemakers. I expect the googlers doing this view themselves as making personal sacrifices for the greater good. In any case, I doubt Google wants to lose talent to competitors because they are viewed as a hotbed of right-to-workers ideology in Silicon Valley.
Ah yes, because dumping a bunch of people who will tell the "I was screwed over by google" story to all their friends into an economy where hiring is driven by personal recommendations can't possibly have any ongoing consequences?
Do you really believe that these people are enhancing Google's image in the eyes of the general public? You have no idea how many potential employees Google is losing due to the company having acquired a reputation as an extreme ideological environment.
>Any bad PR resulting from firing these types would be a one time thing instead of this ongoing situation.
Imagine if you could murder troublesome people because that PR hit would be a one-time thing and better than this ongoing situation. There's a reason reputation is a thing.
Google didn't hesitate to fire Damore. Whether you agree with him or not, he was definitely blowing the whistle on what he saw as a problem of political extremism being baked into Google's culture. The move was pretty much universally celebrated in the press (although I suspect it had a much more negative impact among people who are independent thinkers).
Yeah and the main reason Google can't and shouldn't fire people like in the article for generating bad PR is because they are engaging in legally protected behavior, which Damore demonstrably was not.
There are plenty of other reasons why firing someone might be a bad idea from an ethical and PR standpoint (like if you solicit political opinions from your employees and fire those that you don't agree with). I also don't think it's clear that these employees have engaged in protected behavior. If they're using company resources to organize activism, that's not protected. If they're leaking info to the press, that's also not protected.
These people are not whistleblowers. They are instead hard-left political activists falsely claiming whistleblower protection as cover for activity that harms the company.
For years now, these people have been bullying the company into advancing hard-left political positions instead of serving the company's founding mission. They have created a climate of fear for anyone who disagrees with their extreme political positions, and they have almost certainly violated their employment contracts by leaking confidential information to the press. Their friends in HR protect them.
They appear to engage in activism full-time on the company's payroll according to documents they themselves have posted.
They talk constantly about "Google's values", which they twist into claims that the company has already decided to support their political positions. They demand that Google give up billions of dollars in business by abandoning product lines and refusing to serve huge portions of the population. For example, one of them demanded that one business disable a key component that drives a lot of revenue, calling the situation an "extremism emergency". To this person, the negative impact would have been irrelevant. These demands never stop. They call them "ethics".
Any functioning company would have fired these people a long time ago. Google leadership is full of cowards.
> Well, for one, retaliation against labor organizing is illegal under federal law.
These people are not attempting "labor organizing". They are putting on a few of the trappings of labor organizing, like drawing up lists of demands, but without doing any of the hard work that requires actually organizing a union.
In the United States, a company's employees decide whether to form a union by holding a referendum by secret ballot. Unions then elect their representatives through a similar process.
Google's activists are not attempting to form a traditional union. They know that they are deeply unpopular and would lose any fair secret ballot election in which they were on the ballot. The activists believe that by playing pretend-union, they can gain all the influence of a real union without the accountability and risk. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
The whole point of somewhere like Google is that they don't want people who will do what they're told, because such people are only capable of doing what they're told. You can't order someone to innovate unless they have no other choice.
Silicon Valley has spent years setting itself up as an inheritor of the counterculture, a place where it's possible to "think different". Employees are given a share of the business (via a complicated tax shelter of options). Startups want "contributors", people who buy into the idea that they're engaged in a positive-sum contribution to the world rather than just bringing home a paycheck. They provide all sorts of office features to encourage people to "bring their whole self to work".
(I could go on, but I expect this thread to be buried)
Edit: exhibit A, hollywood social justice warrior proudly being a nuisance, disrupting law abiding citizens with a hammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I ; the "1984" Macintosh commercial and its successor "Think Different" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs are as close to an official statement of SV founding ideology as you're going to get)
I really think that's just darkly entertaining marketing. Silicon valley in reality is a ruthlessly corporate business world, where known to be worthless options are traded for people's lives and labour. (Look up "founder's shares") Startups require cheap labour, if their investors are going to make out like bandits - that's what's really going on.
Google in particular, if they were looking for people capable of thinking outside the box, would not selecting very specifically from the box of people that are prepared to jump through the hoops of their ridiculous programming interviews. In fact, by this point in their history, they could just datamine the list of people who have repeatedly told their recruiters to take a running jump, and start sampling from there.
The equity grants awarded by publicly traded companies like Google/Alphabet are far from worthless, unlike for early stage startups where indeed most of those employee stock options end up as worthless as you say.
My understanding is that did happen, but far before Facebook went public. I was discussing options awarded by companies that are already publicly traded at the time of grant.
It wasn't always worthless, although I agree that options are a lottery ticket and you need to read all the small print. Back in the distant past of the early 2000s a Google chef made $26 million: https://searchengineland.com/google-employee-53-charlie-ayer...
(of course they subsequently changed the rules to make that less likely for non-tech staff, part of the gradual move away from "Don't Be Evil")
Of all the Silicon Valley companies, Google with its intense focus on traditional academia is not very counter culture at all. They're basically part of the educational industrial complex.
You say Google et al want people who don't just "do what they're told", yet one of the most distinguishing aspects of these places is a hiring process that specifically selects for people willing to jump through absurd hoops and full buy-in to the corporate mythology that doing this means you are simply better and smarter than anyone who doesn't.
That's not how you foster counterculture. In fact, that's probably why Google went so long without any internal employee conflict.
What is an example of these absurd hoops you talk of, w.r.t the google interview process specifically? I just went through the process and had a much more positive experience, so i’m interested to know.
The fact that you are meant to specifically study for the interview unlike 99% of all other companies, so the interview to a large extent evaluates how much time you've spent willingly studying the Google interview - i.e. how much you really, really want to work specifically at Google.
It's not exactly a recipe for hiring people that are going to push back on corporate decisions.
Employer-employee relationships can never quite be ordinary human friendships because of the power relationship. In these kinds of situations, people are going public because handling it privately has failed and it involves questions of public interest and affects to third parties.
To get an incredibly valuable lead in hiring, Google has led the market on entitlements: great pay, perks, lifestyle, transparency, and a promise of ethical and participatory governance. It might be fair to say that some of these employees have unrealistic expectations about their employer, but you can't say Google didn't ask for it.
I personally agree it's kind of silly to expect your work to be a Utopia by your specific definition. On the other hand, if Google does learn to reconcile its business and competing employee cultures, they will have done something amazing that probably makes them a stronger institution.
Because that's implicit in the contract Google signs with it's employees. People go (went, at least) because of the autonomy they're given. That autonomy isn't a perk; it's a prerequisite for innovation.
Now Google's got reduced innovation and reduced autonomy for it's employees. They didn't scale the latter and subsequently, they're losing the former.
If the employees leave, Google's another IBM. Another corpse.
Google is not a company that has such hard lines against employees. Fostering a "culture of safety" is very important to tech companies, and if a protest of 100 employees was met with their dismissal, it would have ripple effects on all the rest of the employees.
I personally never interviewed at Google, but the damore scandal was a pretty big dissuasive for me to attempt to get one. It does not look like a safe space to me.
Clearly they value these employees and want them to be happy. I would guess that if the janitorial staff tried this there would a)be a lot less press about it and b) google wouldn't put up with it nearly as well.
They also might have contracts with these people that require certain reasons for it.
Certainly it would be very bad press for google if they fired all of the people who are involved in this.
The Google organizers have taken to calling themselves the “entitled vocal majority,” after one employee publicly referred to them as the “entitled vocal minority.”
I feel like this is a small example of where my views of these employees disagrees with the author's. (I'm fine with employees having strong opinions on ethical issues, but this kindof puff quote doesn't lend them respect).
I dunno if the author thinks they're being impartial. Can't complain if they know (and the reader knows) where their preference lies.
There's a long history of naming yourself after the negative term your enemies use for you in order to neutralise it. Also "entitled vocal minority" works nicely as a parody of "moral majority".
No they were the majority in 1917. Earlier they had been the minority, but post Kornilov they were a majority at the time of the storming of the winter palace.
The Bolsheviks were a majority within the RSDLP in 1903. The extent of their support in 1917 within the wider population is highly debatable but their thought-leadership led to sufficient mindshare to (belatedly) ship the October revolution and scale their product to numerous global markets from the Americas to China within the 20th century. Adoption is currently stagnating while the product is being refactored.
The Bolsheviks, was a faction founded by Vladimir Lenin that split from the Menshevik faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) at its Second Party Congress in 1903.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsheviks
I was referring to Falwell's lot, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority ; I never knew that "Bolshevik" came from the Russian for "majority"! Every day this website teaches something.
If you suddenly and violently seize power and repress your opposition, you don't stay a "minority" for long! You take an opinion poll and people say, "oh yeah, I'm totally with the Bolsheviks...please don't send the Cheka after my family...."
The author's bias is obvious. She's not even trying to create an impression of objectivity. The activists and this article's author are congratulating each other all over Twitter. Besides, the article contains nuggets like this:
> Meanwhile, there’s not a company in the sector that isn’t grappling at some level with the ways bro-gramming culture has made tech a toxic space for women and employees of color.
Anyone who uncritically invokes this frame is waging culture war, not describing it. This article is activist propaganda masquerading as neutral reporting.
Why would an anonymous commenter need to be objective? There's no comparison to a journalist. You've commented on this thread more than anyone and no one is questioning your right to state your opinion.
>The author's bias is obvious. She's not even trying to create an impression of objectivity. The activists and this article's author are congratulating each other all over Twitter.
The irony is that actually printing someone taking the appellation "entitled vocal majority" makes them look bad, not the company.
Disclaimer: I do not work for Google, but I'm pre-inclined to favor the employees doing more or less whatever they want, but holy hell, what a way for an activist minority to alienate itself from the base you need to form a union or cooperative.
I'd be curious to hear rank-and-file Googlers' views on how this dynamic is playing out within the company. It's in both journalists' and organizers' interests to play it up, so the reality can be hard to discern.
Like every issue, there are those who are obsessed with it, for whom it takes over their lives, and then there is a large swath of people who either agree or not, but do so without much intensity.
Since the intensity of most people's beliefs is low and the specific issues are not part of day to day work, it's not really a thing that comes up except when new news breaks and people talk about it at lunch for a day.
When you take a look at how many people, in an industry where it's trivial to get another job, quit over any of these issues, it's in the single digits.
I think this is the key question. Is there a "dark matter" of concerned Google employees who would potentially mobilize if pushed too far, or is this just a vocal fringe element in a company with a 100,000 strong work force?
I mean this is kind of my point, you weren't willing to take the small step of signing a petition because you thought it could endanger your promotion. Most people are the same way, they have beliefs, but they don't believe them intensely enough to risk the downsides of doing something about it.
I think it affects some groups more than others. A lot of people get mistreated at Google (TVCs, women, people of color, trans people). It’s a lot of high achieving people and a high pressure environment. Inevitably some people will push others without realizing how hard they are pushing. It’s good in my opinion for people to speak out about this.
> A lot of people get mistreated at Google (TVCs, women, people of color, trans people)
It's true that TVCs are not employees, but this different in status does not amount to mistreatment.
The groups you mention are not mistreated at Google. In fact, the company bends over backward to recruit and accommodate them. I challenge you to name one policy that disadvantages women, people of color, or trans people. These persistent claims of mistreatment are in fact cynical attempts to achieve unearned status and special protection from normal rules that govern the company.
I think it would be good for you to speak with TVCs from disadvantaged groups and ask them if they have been subject to mistreatment. I did when I worked there, and a lot of people are subtly and not so subtly mistreated by other employees. A female TVC I know was subject to unwanted sexual comments, and when she complained she was subject to retaliation by her FTE manager. TVC is just a different employment agreement yet many TVCs are treated as lesser than FTEs.
It is absolutely good to speak out. There *are" people at Google who are suffering due to their identity. No question. But these questions have become wrapped up in other activist topics related to government contracts, ai, and more.
I 100% support anybody who has been a victim at work due to their identity and support programs to help these people.
It’s not a literal civil war. But as a TVC for two years, I felt like the treatment of TVCs was an important issue that was not fully appreciated by management. It felt kind of like a class war inside the company.
> Things got even uglier when Damore sympathizers leaked comments made on the message boards by Fong-Jones, a trans woman, and other Google diversity advocates to right-wing news sites. [this fortune.com article]
This got me curious, so I tried searching for these leaked comments, while avoiding far-right news sites. This is what I found:
> Diversity advocates at Google – including the Mountain View tech giant's highest-ranking inclusion officer – are being targeted by a small group of colleagues in an internal culture war, according to a new report. [...] screenshots from Google internal discussion boards have been leaked and posted on far-right websites including Breitbart and the blog Vox Popoli, which espouses white supremacy. [1]
> 15 current Google employees accuse coworkers of inciting outsiders to harass rank-and-file employees who are minority advocates, including queer and transgender employees. Since August, screenshots from Google’s internal discussion forums, including personal information, have been displayed on sites including Breitbart and Vox Popoli, a blog run by alt-right author Theodore Beale, who goes by the name Vox Day. [2]
> Their personal information and comments expressed in internal company forums have been leaked to the public and published on far-right websites, leading to mistreatment by online vigilantes. [..] "We need to see concrete and meaningful action," Fong-Jones said. [..] Chuck Johnson, who was kicked off Twitter in 2015 after tweeting about wanting to "take out" civil rights activist DeRay McKesson [3]
> Their tactics allegedly include “weaponiz[ing] human resources” by goading diverse members of Google’s team into making inflammatory statements, and reporting those statements as violations of the company’s rules around civility. [..] Pro-diversity employees say that their messages on internal Google forums have also been photographed and shared outside the company, leading to their publication on far-right platforms [4]
A lot of condemnation of the leaks, but I was shocked to find no trace of the leaked comments themselves - though the people whose comments were leaked are interviewed and given the chance to present their side. The contrast is greatest in [3], where the only comment quoted is the two-word "take out" of the presumably far-right Chuck Johnson.
So we have, broadly speaking, two sides making controversial comments. The comments of one side aren't published (except by far-right news sites), only their explanations given to the media. The other side does have their incriminating comments published (or parts of them), but doesn't get much of a chance to defend or explain themselves after that.
I'm just glad this one-sided reporting is on the side of truth and the good guys.
Because those links are about the leaked comments of the diversity advocates. Even so, they do contain a quoted comment (though not leaked) - the right-wing "take out". An example of the reverse wasn't hard to find:
> "Women, on average, have more openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)," the screed reads. [1]
It's a public tweet, in fact. Easy to find along with the rest of the author's opinions and explanations.
> An example of the reverse wasn't hard to find:
That quote is from James Damore's memo, and he has been interviewed by many media organizations, like The Guardian and Business Insider, so I don't see how you can claim he didn't have a chance to explain himself.
Yes - he could explain himself after getting fired, and the whole incident blowing up. To treat the sides equally, the news would have had to have been:
Things got even uglier when social justice sympathizers leaked a memo made on the message boards by James Damore, to left-wing news sites, resulting in his firing. "We must do more to foster an atmosphere of open debate." Damore says.
Yes, basically every news outlet other than Breitbart refuses to publish the racism and sexism of the Googlers in question, instead allowing them to present themselves uncritically in whatever way they like. Why? Because apparently journalists on non "far right" sites (whatever that means) share their biases.
Anyway, let me help readers who may not be familiar with this motley crew. Here are some examples of the comments in question.
Liz Fong-Jones posted internally, "Frankly, I could care less about being 'unfair' to white men" and "I feel that if there's any harm to the interests of white men from that work, it is more than made up for by the benefits to everyone as a whole".
Colin McMillen, also named in the articles, said, "You are posting devils-advocate bullshit along the lines of 'oh no, some hypothetical white man who is just barely above the hiring bar might be intangibly harmed by some Googlers who decided to give marginally more training or education to non-Googler women'"
Kim Burchett said, "In the T5->T6 promo committee I served on, 2/4 committee members were women. Yay! 4/4 members were white. Boo! 12/15 candidates were men. Boo!"
The overriding theme of the leaked comments is that if you're white and a man, you deserve bad treatment and discrimination.
This is the consequence of the postmodern neo-marxist ideology that has permeated the education system in recent years that scholars such as Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt and Camille Paglia have been warning about. Jordan Peterson specifically has been warning that those indoctrinated in such philosophies, mainly through humanities studies, have made their way into corporate bureaucracies via HR departments.
I guess that's possible although I have no interaction with kids in their 20s and early 30s at those companies. I can't remember any political interests when I was that age aside from the odd scattering of typical programmer libertarianism, a natural side effect of living in a bubble.
What I find amusing is all the fuss at these companies, perhaps about real problems perhaps not, while those same employees are all busily laying brickwork for a kind of permanent surveillance state. Given the leviathan they are building, you'd think they'd just bug the cafeteria and everyones cubicle in order to catch evil doers.
This was my first thought. While most employees of Google are just normal people who just want to get their work done, there's a vocal minority to whom it's their life. And they are infantatilized by Google. They take the bus to work, get their Free Lunch, get their nap time or yoga time. And they like to cause trouble.
Most of these protests stem from a case where one employee harassed another and the company handled it. The harasser was persuaded to resign, but since there was no criminal or civil determination in a court, they didn't withhold from him promised compensation for work done, per a prior agreement. This makes business sense--the money was already allocated, and withholding it could lead to a messy distracting lawsuit. This vocal minority was angry he got money, and imagined in some way it was as if they themselves were subject to his bad behavior.
And while this case involved "sexual harassment", it in no way affected other employees. The fact that one "harasser" seemingly got away with it with a pile of money has no bearing on how other employees are treated.
Similarly Damore (while I believe his memo was idiotic) -- his speech in no way could cause harm to any employee. He was summarily fired which is an extreme action to take, considering the person who leaked an internal google message board was never punished. He's now gone. People should put a period on it and move on with their work lives, or find another job.
> And in an attempt to quell the increase in uncivil interactions on its internal platforms, its new “community guidelines” ban slurs and references to sex acts in any work document
Rather surprised that people were getting away with that in the first place.
Edit: just realised that, like codes of conduct, the key difference is that now the rule also applies to the people at the top.
If I twist my ankle and exclaim "fuck!", would that be in violation? It's not a dumb question, there are some people who are genuinely offended by that sort of language. Would the rules back them up, or me?
In theory I'm in favor of these sort of rules, but I hope they leave some wiggle room for common sense, preferably erroring on the side of tolerance.
> If I twist my ankle and exclaim "fuck!", would that in violation?
The answer depends, of course, on the opinion the moral busybodies have of you, whether that's based on your job performance or your immutable characteristics. I've seen some pretty arbitrary outcomes from policies like this, it generally has the effect of making the IMs and intranet forums less useful, since people can't feel at ease no matter how well-intentioned they are.
I should be able to put, say, "this method is fucking up that variable" in a code comment without a puritan telling me not to do so. Which is funny, as it shows that we're going full circle.
If you think that's bad, wait until you see how nit-picky people get in code reviews. I wouldn't be surprised if there were lint rules for swear words.
If you can't deal with criticism of your code, maybe working at a big tech firm isn't for you?
Personally, I'd prefer "fucking up" to go away, along with "rape" as a colorful equivalent of ruining/causing damage to someone or something.
It associates sex with violence and destruction.
A similar thing used to happen with "gay", which kids would use as an adjective for frustrating or annoying situations.
My preferences notwithstanding, it's still better to be clearer about what's happening. "Fucking up that variable" says very little about the cause of the problem, and its possible solution.
When I think of something being "fucked up", the last thing I think about is sex. Those words have grown a meaning of their own, away from the one they had.
Personally I'd prefer to work in a company where basic elements of the English language aren't policed with authoritarian fervor and would seek out alternatives ASAFP.
What does fucking up have to do with sex? I’d imagine it’s used in a sexual context in a significant minority of the time. And that’s not what it’s associated with.
A day late a a dollar short. Google's biggest crime was what they did to the web. After using them to promote Google they turned the tables and essentially started them of clicks, unless they bought ads. Google search is ads, unless you keep scrolling and scrolling.
> at Microsoft, employees say they don’t want to build technology for warfare
Does anyone know what exactly Microsoft is doing with the military? Is this like better image recognition for drone strikes / targeting humans or more like providing operating systems for military administration? Because those could both be technically construed as “building technology for warfare” with only the first choice being the actually bad type of work.
Bill Gates & Paul Allen originally founded Microsoft in Albuquerqe, New Mexico, in order to be reasonably close to Los Alamos because they wanted to get military contracts.
This may not be a disagreement -- but I was under the impression they moved to Albuquerque to work at/with MITS[1], the manufacturer of the Altair, and Microsoft's first customer.
This was a fine recap; I’m surprised more hasn’t leaked to the press. Google’s culture is shifting for the worse, but I won’t give specifics because that would require leaking.
Alleged misconduct. That's what Googlers seem to have lost sight of.
Take Andy Rubin. One of Google's most valuable executives, he built up Android from nothing. He has a consensual relationship with a woman, but it starts to cool off and fade away. Around this time she accuses him of "pressuring" her into a sexual act, but the whole thing happened behind closed doors and there's no way to know what really happened.
Has he done anything wrong? Who knows? Google can't actually adjudicate this dispute, and Rubin claims innocence. In the ultra-feminist environment Google has accepted internally a woman can't ever be disbelieved so Rubin must be punished. But the situation is deeply unjust and everyone knows it. Rubin did great things for Google, and Google is now rewarding him by stabbing him in the back. So an arrangement is made: everyone stays quiet and the pain of the injustice and betrayal is soothed with a big payment.
Years later Googlers find out about this situation and instead of being outraged that a successful executive was fired on the basis of nothing more than heresay by someone he was in a relationship with, are outraged that he wasn't treated even more harshly. What message does this send to the future Rubins of the world? It says: don't team up with Google.
Throwaway account: the "civil war" is from a bunch of self-aggrandizing assholes. Yes there have been some big stunts (e.g. the walk out), but on the whole this counts for nothing for the rank and file employees that I know and work with.
About as far as most people o work with go in terms of "civil war" is changing their profile picture to say "no to retaliation" which is so vapid and pathetic it's not even worth doing.
Agreed. Management needs to fire these people. If they sue, great: Google's ensuing victory will create a precedent that workplace protections do not extend to unbounded activism that employees falsely claim is whistleblowing.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19601091
Not sure what's behind Google's inaction here, they really shouldn't be worried about the trouble makers defecting to somewhere else that most likely won't tolerate their bullshit.
I can't say I agree with you. What you're suggesting is basically the Wall Street model where bad and unethical institutional behavior gets a suboptimal amount of pushback.
But I don't think they "should" do so if they're calling out legitimately poor behavior that has been unaddressed by any other avenue. That wording is quite strange to me. Would you say that Rosa Parks "should" have faced the consequences of stirring things up as she did? Accepting that it is possible is a necessary part of civil disobedience, but the imposition of those consequences by higher powers is not.
There's an EXTREME amount of power imbalance between employer and employee; if employees have to fear retaliation for voicing their concerns it has a chilling effect.
I'm okay with consequences, but voicing your concerns in public isn't grounds for consequences.
Employees are signing up for a world where they don't wear significant risk in exchange for subordinating their decision making to a company.
Companies are fundamentally an organised group of people working to a common goal. I can understand very well if individual employees want to assert their individuality. However, at any moment, they have only and exactly 3 choices:
1) Cooperate enthusiastically.
2) Cooperate with complaint
3) Quit
Nobody is going to get sacked for quietly and politely voicing a concern. However, once employees start organising to influence management on business decisions they really need to pony up the capital and become shareholders. Deciding what management does is the privilege of shareholders, not employees.
Isn't this precisely describing why unions were originally generated, so that employees can also leverage power equal to the shareholders, and therefore have a say in their own working conditions?
This article is talking about:
* Amazon workers are demanding more action from the company on battling climate change
* Microsoft, employees say they don’t want to build technology for warfare
* Salesforce, a group has lobbied management to end its work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency
* Google, [employees] want a say in and control over the products they build
Those are issues going way beyond what an employee can reasonably expect to influence. Being employed by a tech company is an achievement, but the end of the day tech workers aren't that special. They don't formally get to decide how the world works.
They absolutely can't take to social media to complain about these issues and expect to hold a job with the company they are complaining about. This type of activity isn't acceptable; they can't draw a wage and overrule strategic directions from people with capital at stake. The options are work or walk.
As an employee you are paid to execute the company's strategy.
If you disagree you can of course, and even should, voice your disagreement but that should be done in a professional in diplomatic way, in private.
If you cannot do that or cannot accept the company's strategy then yes, your alternative is to leave quietly.
The new "red guards" of the left may not like it, but that's what professionalism (not to mention a free society) is. Tough.
It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. A company that can't do that should have its charter revoked. And its labor force is part of that society.
I'm assuming you're talking about the US.
We are not subjects of our government, or of some other sovereign, whether that be society or anything else. Our society is founded on individual pursuit of happiness, not collectivism.
Put another way, corporations exist for whatever reason their creators decide. So long as they operate within the law and are able to sustain themselves, societal good is a side effect and a concern of the State, not the corporation itself.
I live in the US, and sit on the the board of a governmental organization, a nonprofit corporation and an LLC.
It is incredibly obvious from this perspective that the regulations the state chooses to apply greatly constrain what it is possible for your organization to do. And this goes beyond the day to day all the way up to the mission of the org.
The state definitely has a large influence on weather organizations exists, their form and the reasons for which and methods they operate.
We, as the actual owners of that government that grants this special exception, can--and should--expect better than the barest bare minimum out of such fictional persons if they want to keep their fictional personhood. This is a transaction: "we grant you the right to operate a fictional person and you don't act like shitheads in our society."
We don't do this, largely because of the weird little melty fears that led to you going off about collectivism when it doesn't apply here except insofar that labor participation can encourage, though does not guarantee, better behavior. But we can, and we should, keep this tool at the ready because corporate entities will be good citizens only so long as you keep the proverbial fist of an angry god ready to strike; sociopaths (and your standard corporation is a sociopath by definition) only, only, respect consequences and so those consequences must be severe and always at the ready.
A careful reader might note that I said nothing about such companies operating as unlimited-liability partnerships. Because yes, fair is fair, and people (who, unlike fictive entities, have rights and freedoms even if the results of those rights and freedoms suck) have the right to do as they please so long as they aren't harming other people. But they wouldn't take that option and we all know why.
Socialism does not work. It ends in chaos and failure.
Not that you're right about your sweeping statement either, but it doesn't even begin to apply here except insofar as labor participation in direction can--not will, but can--discourage that shitty behavior.
Both require employee representation on boards, as do many other not-socialist countries. Germany also has works councils.
The truth is that employees do not dictate the direction of the company in those countries. They have virtually no power and the system is used as a discussion platform on working conditions, pay, etc.
This is not quite the same as having employees decide what the company should produce and to whom it should sell it.
They both require one third of the board to be employee representatives. It might even be half for larger German companies. How does getting to vote on decisions and appointments equate to having virtually no power?
German work's councils, for all their imperfections and flaws, have often been looked at enviously by other Western countries - including US and UK. It is those which deal with conditions, pay and what have you.
That such organization tends to also have societal value--weird that thinking about societal value gets conflated with "socialism", I guess every man is an island--is a really nice side effect, though.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I am very surprised that a moderator would take side and use a rather rude and condescending tone in replying to a commenter that hasn't do anything beyond voicing a legitimate point.
Is that what HN is for?
Generic ideological arguments are simply off topic on HN. If you like, you can think of that as an arbitrary moderation decision. I think of it as following from the site principle of curiosity. Either way, please don't post any more of those.
> It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. A company that can't do that should have its charter revoked.
This sounds like BS to me. I see all the companies doing serious harm to humanity, environment, ecology are running just fine. Do you have examples of charter getting revoked?
It sounds like bullshit because some elements of the civic discourse have expended a lot of effort to make the idea inconceivable.
For another, Google is in fierce competition with the rest of the tech companies for talent.
For another the rest of the tech companies don't seem to enable let alone tolerate this shenanigans.
2. Google shouldn't accommodate the delusional and entitled.
3. Labor unions are antithetical to sound economic theory and practice, and no other company in the business supports them.
Imagine if you could murder troublesome people because that PR hit would be a one-time thing and better than this ongoing situation. There's a reason reputation is a thing.
Also 2 and 3 are just, like, your opinion, man.
I hope for your sake that you're a boss or capitalist and not a worker.
For years now, these people have been bullying the company into advancing hard-left political positions instead of serving the company's founding mission. They have created a climate of fear for anyone who disagrees with their extreme political positions, and they have almost certainly violated their employment contracts by leaking confidential information to the press. Their friends in HR protect them.
They appear to engage in activism full-time on the company's payroll according to documents they themselves have posted.
They talk constantly about "Google's values", which they twist into claims that the company has already decided to support their political positions. They demand that Google give up billions of dollars in business by abandoning product lines and refusing to serve huge portions of the population. For example, one of them demanded that one business disable a key component that drives a lot of revenue, calling the situation an "extremism emergency". To this person, the negative impact would have been irrelevant. These demands never stop. They call them "ethics".
Any functioning company would have fired these people a long time ago. Google leadership is full of cowards.
These people are not attempting "labor organizing". They are putting on a few of the trappings of labor organizing, like drawing up lists of demands, but without doing any of the hard work that requires actually organizing a union.
In the United States, a company's employees decide whether to form a union by holding a referendum by secret ballot. Unions then elect their representatives through a similar process.
Google's activists are not attempting to form a traditional union. They know that they are deeply unpopular and would lose any fair secret ballot election in which they were on the ballot. The activists believe that by playing pretend-union, they can gain all the influence of a real union without the accountability and risk. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Silicon Valley has spent years setting itself up as an inheritor of the counterculture, a place where it's possible to "think different". Employees are given a share of the business (via a complicated tax shelter of options). Startups want "contributors", people who buy into the idea that they're engaged in a positive-sum contribution to the world rather than just bringing home a paycheck. They provide all sorts of office features to encourage people to "bring their whole self to work".
(I could go on, but I expect this thread to be buried)
Edit: exhibit A, hollywood social justice warrior proudly being a nuisance, disrupting law abiding citizens with a hammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I ; the "1984" Macintosh commercial and its successor "Think Different" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs are as close to an official statement of SV founding ideology as you're going to get)
Google in particular, if they were looking for people capable of thinking outside the box, would not selecting very specifically from the box of people that are prepared to jump through the hoops of their ridiculous programming interviews. In fact, by this point in their history, they could just datamine the list of people who have repeatedly told their recruiters to take a running jump, and start sampling from there.
(of course they subsequently changed the rules to make that less likely for non-tech staff, part of the gradual move away from "Don't Be Evil")
Counter cultural types don't have a monopoly on innovation.
That's not how you foster counterculture. In fact, that's probably why Google went so long without any internal employee conflict.
It's not exactly a recipe for hiring people that are going to push back on corporate decisions.
A real friend speaks out ...
I personally agree it's kind of silly to expect your work to be a Utopia by your specific definition. On the other hand, if Google does learn to reconcile its business and competing employee cultures, they will have done something amazing that probably makes them a stronger institution.
Now Google's got reduced innovation and reduced autonomy for it's employees. They didn't scale the latter and subsequently, they're losing the former.
If the employees leave, Google's another IBM. Another corpse.
I personally never interviewed at Google, but the damore scandal was a pretty big dissuasive for me to attempt to get one. It does not look like a safe space to me.
So people shouldn't have to take responsibility for their actions, just because they're paid for their troubles?
They also might have contracts with these people that require certain reasons for it.
Certainly it would be very bad press for google if they fired all of the people who are involved in this.
I feel like this is a small example of where my views of these employees disagrees with the author's. (I'm fine with employees having strong opinions on ethical issues, but this kindof puff quote doesn't lend them respect).
I dunno if the author thinks they're being impartial. Can't complain if they know (and the reader knows) where their preference lies.
The Bolsheviks, was a faction founded by Vladimir Lenin that split from the Menshevik faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) at its Second Party Congress in 1903. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolsheviks
> Meanwhile, there’s not a company in the sector that isn’t grappling at some level with the ways bro-gramming culture has made tech a toxic space for women and employees of color.
Anyone who uncritically invokes this frame is waging culture war, not describing it. This article is activist propaganda masquerading as neutral reporting.
The irony is that actually printing someone taking the appellation "entitled vocal majority" makes them look bad, not the company.
Disclaimer: I do not work for Google, but I'm pre-inclined to favor the employees doing more or less whatever they want, but holy hell, what a way for an activist minority to alienate itself from the base you need to form a union or cooperative.
Since the intensity of most people's beliefs is low and the specific issues are not part of day to day work, it's not really a thing that comes up except when new news breaks and people talk about it at lunch for a day.
When you take a look at how many people, in an industry where it's trivial to get another job, quit over any of these issues, it's in the single digits.
It has affected by work literally not at all.
Some people care deeply about this stuff. I agree with a fair amount of it. But from my perspective calling it a civil war is frankly ludicrous.
It's true that TVCs are not employees, but this different in status does not amount to mistreatment.
The groups you mention are not mistreated at Google. In fact, the company bends over backward to recruit and accommodate them. I challenge you to name one policy that disadvantages women, people of color, or trans people. These persistent claims of mistreatment are in fact cynical attempts to achieve unearned status and special protection from normal rules that govern the company.
I 100% support anybody who has been a victim at work due to their identity and support programs to help these people.
But that isn't a civil war.
This got me curious, so I tried searching for these leaked comments, while avoiding far-right news sites. This is what I found:
> Diversity advocates at Google – including the Mountain View tech giant's highest-ranking inclusion officer – are being targeted by a small group of colleagues in an internal culture war, according to a new report. [...] screenshots from Google internal discussion boards have been leaked and posted on far-right websites including Breitbart and the blog Vox Popoli, which espouses white supremacy. [1]
> 15 current Google employees accuse coworkers of inciting outsiders to harass rank-and-file employees who are minority advocates, including queer and transgender employees. Since August, screenshots from Google’s internal discussion forums, including personal information, have been displayed on sites including Breitbart and Vox Popoli, a blog run by alt-right author Theodore Beale, who goes by the name Vox Day. [2]
> Their personal information and comments expressed in internal company forums have been leaked to the public and published on far-right websites, leading to mistreatment by online vigilantes. [..] "We need to see concrete and meaningful action," Fong-Jones said. [..] Chuck Johnson, who was kicked off Twitter in 2015 after tweeting about wanting to "take out" civil rights activist DeRay McKesson [3]
> Their tactics allegedly include “weaponiz[ing] human resources” by goading diverse members of Google’s team into making inflammatory statements, and reporting those statements as violations of the company’s rules around civility. [..] Pro-diversity employees say that their messages on internal Google forums have also been photographed and shared outside the company, leading to their publication on far-right platforms [4]
A lot of condemnation of the leaks, but I was shocked to find no trace of the leaked comments themselves - though the people whose comments were leaked are interviewed and given the chance to present their side. The contrast is greatest in [3], where the only comment quoted is the two-word "take out" of the presumably far-right Chuck Johnson.
So we have, broadly speaking, two sides making controversial comments. The comments of one side aren't published (except by far-right news sites), only their explanations given to the media. The other side does have their incriminating comments published (or parts of them), but doesn't get much of a chance to defend or explain themselves after that.
I'm just glad this one-sided reporting is on the side of truth and the good guys.
[1] https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2018/01/30/googles...
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/the-dirty-war-over-diversity-ins...
[3] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/01/26/google-diversi...
[4] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/google-has-become-gr...
Where? I don't see any leaked comments from either side on those links.
> "Women, on average, have more openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)," the screed reads. [1]
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/google-employ...
It's a public tweet, in fact. Easy to find along with the rest of the author's opinions and explanations.
> An example of the reverse wasn't hard to find:
That quote is from James Damore's memo, and he has been interviewed by many media organizations, like The Guardian and Business Insider, so I don't see how you can claim he didn't have a chance to explain himself.
Things got even uglier when social justice sympathizers leaked a memo made on the message boards by James Damore, to left-wing news sites, resulting in his firing. "We must do more to foster an atmosphere of open debate." Damore says.
That’s because it causes the person to be targeted for harassment.
Anyway, let me help readers who may not be familiar with this motley crew. Here are some examples of the comments in question.
Liz Fong-Jones posted internally, "Frankly, I could care less about being 'unfair' to white men" and "I feel that if there's any harm to the interests of white men from that work, it is more than made up for by the benefits to everyone as a whole".
Colin McMillen, also named in the articles, said, "You are posting devils-advocate bullshit along the lines of 'oh no, some hypothetical white man who is just barely above the hiring bar might be intangibly harmed by some Googlers who decided to give marginally more training or education to non-Googler women'"
Kim Burchett said, "In the T5->T6 promo committee I served on, 2/4 committee members were women. Yay! 4/4 members were white. Boo! 12/15 candidates were men. Boo!"
The overriding theme of the leaked comments is that if you're white and a man, you deserve bad treatment and discrimination.
What I find amusing is all the fuss at these companies, perhaps about real problems perhaps not, while those same employees are all busily laying brickwork for a kind of permanent surveillance state. Given the leviathan they are building, you'd think they'd just bug the cafeteria and everyones cubicle in order to catch evil doers.
Most of these protests stem from a case where one employee harassed another and the company handled it. The harasser was persuaded to resign, but since there was no criminal or civil determination in a court, they didn't withhold from him promised compensation for work done, per a prior agreement. This makes business sense--the money was already allocated, and withholding it could lead to a messy distracting lawsuit. This vocal minority was angry he got money, and imagined in some way it was as if they themselves were subject to his bad behavior.
And while this case involved "sexual harassment", it in no way affected other employees. The fact that one "harasser" seemingly got away with it with a pile of money has no bearing on how other employees are treated.
Similarly Damore (while I believe his memo was idiotic) -- his speech in no way could cause harm to any employee. He was summarily fired which is an extreme action to take, considering the person who leaked an internal google message board was never punished. He's now gone. People should put a period on it and move on with their work lives, or find another job.
Rather surprised that people were getting away with that in the first place.
Edit: just realised that, like codes of conduct, the key difference is that now the rule also applies to the people at the top.
In theory I'm in favor of these sort of rules, but I hope they leave some wiggle room for common sense, preferably erroring on the side of tolerance.
The answer depends, of course, on the opinion the moral busybodies have of you, whether that's based on your job performance or your immutable characteristics. I've seen some pretty arbitrary outcomes from policies like this, it generally has the effect of making the IMs and intranet forums less useful, since people can't feel at ease no matter how well-intentioned they are.
If you can't deal with criticism of your code, maybe working at a big tech firm isn't for you?
It associates sex with violence and destruction.
A similar thing used to happen with "gay", which kids would use as an adjective for frustrating or annoying situations.
My preferences notwithstanding, it's still better to be clearer about what's happening. "Fucking up that variable" says very little about the cause of the problem, and its possible solution.
Hopefully they haven't been axing perspectives the way they've been axing projects!
Does anyone know what exactly Microsoft is doing with the military? Is this like better image recognition for drone strikes / targeting humans or more like providing operating systems for military administration? Because those could both be technically construed as “building technology for warfare” with only the first choice being the actually bad type of work.
1 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Instrumentation_and_Tele...
1. Outrage over previous sexual misconduct 2. Outrage over Google seeking amoral revenue streams 3. Declination of perks
The first one is just the chickens coming to roost. The second two I’ve always felt we’re due to a transition in CFOs.
Take Andy Rubin. One of Google's most valuable executives, he built up Android from nothing. He has a consensual relationship with a woman, but it starts to cool off and fade away. Around this time she accuses him of "pressuring" her into a sexual act, but the whole thing happened behind closed doors and there's no way to know what really happened.
Has he done anything wrong? Who knows? Google can't actually adjudicate this dispute, and Rubin claims innocence. In the ultra-feminist environment Google has accepted internally a woman can't ever be disbelieved so Rubin must be punished. But the situation is deeply unjust and everyone knows it. Rubin did great things for Google, and Google is now rewarding him by stabbing him in the back. So an arrangement is made: everyone stays quiet and the pain of the injustice and betrayal is soothed with a big payment.
Years later Googlers find out about this situation and instead of being outraged that a successful executive was fired on the basis of nothing more than heresay by someone he was in a relationship with, are outraged that he wasn't treated even more harshly. What message does this send to the future Rubins of the world? It says: don't team up with Google.
About as far as most people o work with go in terms of "civil war" is changing their profile picture to say "no to retaliation" which is so vapid and pathetic it's not even worth doing.