Google did this to themselves when they invited and fostered this culture. It had its naive merits.
But like many such attempts, what happens is these groups with good intentions get coöpted and controlled by others with bigger agendas-agendas which often are not in alignment with leadership.
When the PLA got too strong Mao devised the Red Guards. He didn’t want another Menshevik - Bolshevik-like episode.
Nor do companies.
It’s one thing to let people “have a say” in constructing their workplace atmosphere; to make it coöperative, inclusive etc., things which align with productivity— it’s another to interfere with the economics of the company.
There probably are. They tend to be idealists who if it ever came time for them to set rules in their newly formed society would lean on the same instincts to keep people who disagree with them out when realpolitik emerges.
I think they really meant it. It was the antithesis to the Microsoft of the early aughts. But now they have other, broader goals to work for. Arguably they have become more borg-ish than MS of the 00's.
But they’ve come to realize that at a certain point in size idealism doesn’t scale (coöperatives, hippie communes, etc) and others will eat your lunch if you encumber yourself with idealism (which can also go in the negative direction (when idealists find conflict amongst themselves and a loser is defined).
Sort of like how Jobs founded Apple as the antithesis is IBM, at least that’s how the origin story goes, and now they’re arguably closer to the latter than their original incarnation.
No, Jobs didn't "found Apple as the antithesis of IBM". Woz and Jobs started Apple because Woz wouldn't/couldn't be bothered with all the sales/admin etc involved in running a company. All the rest is Jobs BS.
>It’s one thing to let people “have a say” in constructing their workplace atmosphere; to make it coöperative, inclusive etc., things which align with productivity— it’s another to interfere with the economics of the company.
At one time, an activist employee insisted that blacks could work a lathe just as well as the white employees.
An activist employee insisted that children should not be shovelling coal.
An activist employee might insist that a woman could manage an engineering team.
All of the hard-won victories of labor were controversial, and yes, they all absolutely interfered with "productivity" and the economics of the company, itself a term so vague it encompasses everything.
Perhaps what you mean to say is that any further social progress beyond the milieu of 2011 is 'unproductive'; which appears to expose your conflation of 'productivity' with morality.
So, to subscribers of this worldview diversity is good because it increases productivity, inclusivity is good because it increases productivity, and so forth. Absolutely nothing to do with equality, human rights, dignity, or other idealisms.
Of course these same people would have argued against diversity and inclusion in previous eras and claimed that it would be unproductive, but let's pretend your fascism isn't on your sleeve and visible to everyone.
Are you only treating people well because you think it increases productivity? What would you do to people if it would increase productivity and the bottom line?
It's rhetorical, of course. These activist employees were trying to prevent Google from helping the government stick Hispanic children in cages. That's apparently too radical for modern 'liberal' capitalists of 2019, eh?
Your points are great and valid but isn't it even simpler to point out the flaw in OPs argument: if the end-all and be-all is the economics of the company then they should surely be fine going in to work tomorrow and offering their boss a 20% pay cut to help contribute to the economics of the company...
Google is where it is now, because they started as good guys. Everyone loved them because they were fixing problems, but they started to change since they became pubic and quarterly earnings became important.
Actually Google is where it is now because they were the first to build a search engine that did not trust the webmaster and therefore succeeding where competitors were sucombing to the first scirmishes in the eternal SEO war.
I don't think google was naive. They did this intentionally and while it worked, they were willing to go with it. Now it doesn't work, so they are stamping it down. I wouldn't use the term "naive" when describing Page, Brin and especially Schmidt or google in general. Also, whether Google's motto was "Don't be evil" or "Be evil", "agenda" was going to affect their company from within/internal or without/external.
Also, anyone else find it strange that every post that has nothing to do with china has a comment that somehow tries to tie the story to china?
I get that a lot of propaganda vis a vis china is being pushed due to the trade war, but being so obvious doesn't help anything.
lol this is absurd, they're fighting against rampant sexual harassment and a variety of other real workplace problems, not being mind controlled by nefarious bolsheviks
honestly using diaeresis (things that look like umlauts) while typing stuff out about how people who don't want to work for an evil company are being controlled by other forces just gives off the biggest wannabe top hat monopoly capitalist vibe imaginable.
the new yorker is the most prominent top hat aesthetic organization in the world. just look at their icon. andwhile they are often nominally opposed to monopoly they're a thoroughly capitalist news organization that is privately owned by a selection of the superwealthy.
Sounds like something straight from the Bolsheviks in an attempt to take down a larger entity purely for control.
The concept Google is worse than general society is out there. Try looking at the real world, of transport or construction or the service industry or cleaning or food harvesting. Pretty much anywhere but the industry of IT of which Google is exemplary.
1. Google is not exemplary, lmao, they have a terrible culture of paying off executives for harassment and assault which has been thoroughly documented in the NYT and elsewhere
2. the idea that if somewhere else is worse, we shouldn't fight harassment here/in our job/in our industry, is abhorrent. this sort of blase, tone-deaf attitude towards gender oppression causes a lot of problems in tech. I'm very glad people are finally vocally fighting back.
Seems like a bit of a National Labor Relations Act violation. Bizzare how the more defensive a company gets the more it is likely to violate labor laws.
"To the contrary, our thorough investigation found the individuals were involved in systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work. This includes searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs — repeating this conduct even after they were met with and reminded about our data security policies. This information, along with details of internal emails and inaccurate descriptions about Googlers’ work, was subsequently shared externally."
That would be grounds for termination in most countries.
I would say yes in most of the cases, but if there are insufficient union oversight processes, then unionization is a surefire way to close up shop due to the eventually inevitable waste/inefficiency.
Also, it's an interesting question of how much unionization helped or worsened the automotor industry's problems around 2008. (And even before.) And of course the real point is whether it helped the workers on the long term.
Plus, do unions support changing employment laws, do they advocate for better support for unemployed folks, or people wanting to switch jobs?
How come half the time I see a female engineer’s name it turns out to be a transgender person? Transgender people are less than 1% of the population... is it much higher in Silicon Valley?
Anecdotally speaking, I have met at least a hundred women who happened to be engineers, and none of them were trans. Then again, I don't work in Silicon Valley, lol.
> For a meritocracy to work, it needs to engender a culture where there is an "obligation to dissent" Eric Schmidt, et al. "How Google Works", (pp 41-42)
So now with a ship full of passengers thinking they are headed to "bring your whole self to work" town, they are changing course, and are headed to "shut up or you'll be fired" town. I can imagine the passengers are not going to be happy about it.
As they say, it's their company and they can go anywhere they want. It's just hard to understand why they had to change course, and couldn't be the place they kept telling the kids out of college about. It doesn't seem like they are struggling to turn out profits.
I wonder what the original founders think of this? Are they happy about it. Is it the company they thought Google would be...
On the good side, it seems Rebecca already got some offers. At least other companies like people who stand up for their principles.
I don't understand all these protests against defence contracts, China, CBP work. Guess what? These needs to be done by someone and if its not Google, it would be Palantir or Microsoft or Oracle or IBM. Google is not what used but at least they have better ethics than the most other companies who would jump to do whatever was asked of them. At least they could steer towards less evil. The era of no evil has ended, if there was one.
While I agree with you in general, it must be somewhat difficult to draw the line between what's a "good" defense contract, and what a "bad" one is. Surely we need _some_ defense contracts? Once you need some defense contracts, then I assume you want an ethical company handling them.
We keep them separate and for good reason. A threat from an enemy doesn't usually involve additional security for every Disney employee because Disney animatronics is AFAIK not a legitimate military target. Boeing primarily is a legitimate target. Where does Google want to be in that equation?
They can still choose not to want to work on it. I'd imagine it slowly eats at you.
If they believe that they are the best engineering org in the world, which may be true, then whatever other company does it might do a worse job.
Google also has insane margins already - it's not really a convincing argument to anyone other than shareholders that Google needs more revenue whatever the cost.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 91.9 ms ] threadBut like many such attempts, what happens is these groups with good intentions get coöpted and controlled by others with bigger agendas-agendas which often are not in alignment with leadership.
When the PLA got too strong Mao devised the Red Guards. He didn’t want another Menshevik - Bolshevik-like episode.
Nor do companies.
It’s one thing to let people “have a say” in constructing their workplace atmosphere; to make it coöperative, inclusive etc., things which align with productivity— it’s another to interfere with the economics of the company.
But they’ve come to realize that at a certain point in size idealism doesn’t scale (coöperatives, hippie communes, etc) and others will eat your lunch if you encumber yourself with idealism (which can also go in the negative direction (when idealists find conflict amongst themselves and a loser is defined).
Thats not what would happen to Google. What it would mean is Google has a slightly slower path to being a trillion dollar company.
At one time, an activist employee insisted that blacks could work a lathe just as well as the white employees.
An activist employee insisted that children should not be shovelling coal.
An activist employee might insist that a woman could manage an engineering team.
All of the hard-won victories of labor were controversial, and yes, they all absolutely interfered with "productivity" and the economics of the company, itself a term so vague it encompasses everything.
Perhaps what you mean to say is that any further social progress beyond the milieu of 2011 is 'unproductive'; which appears to expose your conflation of 'productivity' with morality.
So, to subscribers of this worldview diversity is good because it increases productivity, inclusivity is good because it increases productivity, and so forth. Absolutely nothing to do with equality, human rights, dignity, or other idealisms.
Of course these same people would have argued against diversity and inclusion in previous eras and claimed that it would be unproductive, but let's pretend your fascism isn't on your sleeve and visible to everyone.
Are you only treating people well because you think it increases productivity? What would you do to people if it would increase productivity and the bottom line?
It's rhetorical, of course. These activist employees were trying to prevent Google from helping the government stick Hispanic children in cages. That's apparently too radical for modern 'liberal' capitalists of 2019, eh?
Also, anyone else find it strange that every post that has nothing to do with china has a comment that somehow tries to tie the story to china?
I get that a lot of propaganda vis a vis china is being pushed due to the trade war, but being so obvious doesn't help anything.
Sounds like something straight from the Bolsheviks in an attempt to take down a larger entity purely for control.
The concept Google is worse than general society is out there. Try looking at the real world, of transport or construction or the service industry or cleaning or food harvesting. Pretty much anywhere but the industry of IT of which Google is exemplary.
2. the idea that if somewhere else is worse, we shouldn't fight harassment here/in our job/in our industry, is abhorrent. this sort of blase, tone-deaf attitude towards gender oppression causes a lot of problems in tech. I'm very glad people are finally vocally fighting back.
"To the contrary, our thorough investigation found the individuals were involved in systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work. This includes searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs — repeating this conduct even after they were met with and reminded about our data security policies. This information, along with details of internal emails and inaccurate descriptions about Googlers’ work, was subsequently shared externally."
That would be grounds for termination in most countries.
I would say yes in most of the cases, but if there are insufficient union oversight processes, then unionization is a surefire way to close up shop due to the eventually inevitable waste/inefficiency.
Also, it's an interesting question of how much unionization helped or worsened the automotor industry's problems around 2008. (And even before.) And of course the real point is whether it helped the workers on the long term.
Plus, do unions support changing employment laws, do they advocate for better support for unemployed folks, or people wanting to switch jobs?
When Saturday rolls around and you don't have to work, keep in mind that's only the case because of unions... and health care and other benefits.
So now with a ship full of passengers thinking they are headed to "bring your whole self to work" town, they are changing course, and are headed to "shut up or you'll be fired" town. I can imagine the passengers are not going to be happy about it.
As they say, it's their company and they can go anywhere they want. It's just hard to understand why they had to change course, and couldn't be the place they kept telling the kids out of college about. It doesn't seem like they are struggling to turn out profits.
I wonder what the original founders think of this? Are they happy about it. Is it the company they thought Google would be...
On the good side, it seems Rebecca already got some offers. At least other companies like people who stand up for their principles.
You can literally justify everything and anything with this. It's low effort and just a tactic to make one's self feel better about the world.
If they believe that they are the best engineering org in the world, which may be true, then whatever other company does it might do a worse job.
Google also has insane margins already - it's not really a convincing argument to anyone other than shareholders that Google needs more revenue whatever the cost.
I do get your side of the argument, however.