What we are seeing are the consequences of "Employee Capture". Google captured the hearts and minds of its employees for workplace productivity. Its side effects are varied. The real world only sees highlights.
Googled created a bubble from which its employees can socialize without ever needing to do so with the outside world. Why talk politics with the outside world? Stay with us, where it is safe, people are intelligent, and share your values (we swear).
This is a root problem at the company. It is coming at a great cost.
James Damore shared his views with his social group. These other activists do the same. This is what people do among their own.
Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with.
Google has a major lawsuit on its hands, regardless of whatever arbitration agreement it makes new-hires sign. Google is causing harm by capturing employees hearts and minds.
Your colleagues are not an authentic social network who you can organise with and pursue activism. You aren't hired to do that. While you are naive for thinking you could, it's not entirely your fault. Google brainwashed you.
With 20 years experience under my belt, it is my firm belief that the workplace is not a place to discuss politics, religion, or other highly personal and divisive issues. Obviously, this extends even more to the workplace itself bringing these topics up.
I'm not aggressive or even obvious about this disposition, I just gently steer clear of violating it. I feel the same should apply to companies, fine if you want to make a stand on some political issue, but don't make a show of it, because it implies that all your employees should agree with your position.
People in the world have different opinions on things, we need to be able to work with eachother on shared interests without making every place and occasion a battleground. If not in the workplace, then where?
On a somewhat related note, I don't consider my colleagues my friends, or, God forbid, the workplace a 'family'. My relationship to my employer is a professional one, trying to disguise this by intermingling personal feelings can only end in tears, when one day you discover that it was such all along, only you deluded yourself (or let yourself be led) into thinking differently.
> Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with.
I've never worked for Google so I have no basis for comparison but it's very common across white collar jobs for employees social circles to very closely if not entirely overlap with work.
Unless you participated in extracurricular activities that weren't school sponsored, you probably never learned to make friends outside of school. Work, like school, is how you develop your social circle.
The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work.
Funny thing is, that although Google boasts about its racial and gender diversity, there is preciously little ideological diversity. And once people stray, they must be purged.
> Your colleagues are not an authentic social network who you can organise with and pursue activism. You aren't hired to do that. While you are naive for thinking you could, it's not entirely your fault. Google brainwashed you.
Well, this is exactly the question at stake. And it's not Google that makes some of us believe that it is indeed possible to not be estranged from our labor, but the history of human cooperation related to sharing our labor and other resources.
We dream of sharing labor and governance of said labor. To say Google did not hire their employees to do that is resorting to one level of rules (legal or operational). But these employees are implicitly contesting a deeper level of rules (constitutional). The question of _who we are_ is deeper than any contracts or protocols that Google explicitly defines.
> the only people who the company encouraged socializing with.
This is not my experience at all. Work-life balance there was way ahead of other tech companies I’ve worked for. Most people show up, work reasonable hours, and go home. Evenings and weekends are yours.
In my experience, Bay Area startups are way more guilty of trying to exploit young people with a sense of that the startup is your family. Eat, work, play, and socialize with your team, 24/7. Some people enjoy that, and sometimes these same startups go belly up, and your social network is lost.
I have no idea where your rhetoric comes from, though.
Might this be the bigger problem of "bowling alone"? There s fewer and fewer places where small groups or people meet, and 1-to-1 socialization is not the same.
> "Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with."
Surely this is an exaggeration? I mean, being friends with co-workers is great, but surely people at google also have friends outside Google, right? Right?
>Google has a major lawsuit on its hands, regardless of whatever arbitration agreement it makes new-hires sign. Google is causing harm by capturing employees hearts and minds.
What's next, suing a woman because she breaks your heart?
>Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait)
Imagine thinking that you can literally publish and circulate several revisions of an internal company memo telling 50% of your coworkers that they should be paid less because they're genetically inferior to you in regards to the job and then when people tell you that you're kind of a dick and they want nothing to do with you, getting outraged and making a grandstand about being unfairly and terribly oppressed, while bemoaning of course that people nowadays are "too sensitive".
Sadly, you can find many examples of this amazing exercise in woke coherence right here on HN.
#Edit, since I've been accused of "being ignorant" and not having read the memo by people who clearly haven't read the thing themselves. In a section titled "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech", wholly dedicated to justifying, among other phenomena, gender pay gap for reasons other than sexist bias, in James Damore's own words:
> Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness.
This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
>Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
>Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
I've not cherry-picked these quotes. There are no omissions, they're whole, untouched paragraphs.
> earlier this month, more than 1,000 employees called on the company to cancel deals with oil and gas companies.
what's wrong with these employees? Keep your political opinions to yourself. So they propose that my company lose money because of your activism. Don't agree! What if some employees asked that Google cancel any deals with climate change NGOs? How would these employees feel about it?
> The documents concerned a mandatory tool that was recently installed on the Google Chrome browser on workers’ computers, the employees said. In October, some Google employees raised concerns that the Chrome extension was an internal surveillance tool designed to monitor their attempts to organize protests. It would automatically report staffers who create a calendar event with more than 10 rooms or 100 participants, according to an employee memo that outlined concerns about the tool
From a technical viewpoint, I don't get this. Why create a Chrome extension to monitor usage of Google Calendar? Doesn't Google Calendar have an API they could use to do this on the server-side instead? (And if it doesn't, maybe they should add the necessary features to their API to enable this, and doing that might then benefit their customers and their partner ecosystem.)
Although it's generally quite hard to get fired from Google, leakers have always been dealt with severely. Google once upon a time fired a member of the original Macintosh team for leaking information about the Christmas bonus.
My guess is that the increased closing off of various documents is to do with the increased amount of confidential partner-related information as Google scales its cloud business.
But, as is often the case with Google, much of the disillusionment here seems to be due to unrealistic expectations and nostalgia. There have always been secretive projects at Google. Chrome was super-secret; you needed special authorization to get into the Google+ area; you needed special authorization to get into areas where new Android hardware was being worked with; you needed special authorization to get into the X area; etc.
How about everyone goes to work and does their job and goes home. You can believe X, I can believe Y, and both of us believe Z, but XYZ doesn’t have anything to do with doing our jobs so we shouldn’t let it prevent us from doing our jobs. Super cool that everyone likes their own things though, I support liking things unrelated to job, just weird that people demand that their job adheres to whatever weird thing they like.
I've liked many things about Google over the years and I still admire many parts of their stack. But this crazy internal political culture is bound to end in a big kaboom and it looks like this might be it.
Evolution has created the rules that one doesn't mix politics with business. Google has skirted this rule for some time but now it's not going to be pretty.
Maybe this will wake some people up. Up to now their mantra was "we're not doing anything illegal." Yes, it might not be illegal (at least not yet), but you're acting against the wishes and interests of your users, and you can clearly notice it when the same machine is used against you.
>In the past, one of the employees said, employees could review internal documents for virtually any project underway within the company. In recent years, however, more projects have become closed off and accessible only to smaller groups on a “need-to-know” basis, the employee said.
>Earlier this year, following a series of leaks to the media, Google executives tightened their grip. They shut down thousands of contractors’ access to company documents, citing security concerns. Google’s senior managers, meanwhile, warned employees not to access or share certain documents.
Can someone explain what the controversy is here?
It reads like two people exfiltrated documents and shared them with the media to further their political (?) ends, after being part of a larger group that was warned not to do so.
As an engineer, I revel in avoiding these monolithic supercorps. I don't know why anyone would want to work in centralizing innovation and creativity into the hands of a few greedy people.
> " the other tracked the individual calendars of staff working in the community platforms, human resources, and communications teams, she said. The tracking had made the staff in those departments feel unsafe, the spokeswoman said. [...] The suspensions have been a hot topic of discussion at the company in the last week, stoking anger among some workers and prompting claims that Google is punishing people who have taken a stand against management"
To what extent do the involved parties agree on the facts as presented in this article? It seems incredible that any Google employees would be upset that somebody was fired for what amounts to stalking other employees. I assume they don't believe that's what actually happened, or they're just being totally unreasonable..
People disagree about whether it was reasonable to expect Google management to be anything like the public image it tried to cultivate.
I, personally, expected this reaction from management and I wouldn't have put my own career at risk. But I also never thought Google was an unconventional company.
Sometimes, people problems can't be solved by technological means. Sometimes you just have to talk to people. A while back I was contemplating introducing a small app for team members to express sentiments (whether they're feeling stressed, satisfied, unappreciated, worried etc), but I eventually decided that nothing beats a private conversation.
The theory behind managers soliciting anonymous comments from workers is that this cuts through preference falsification. Preference falsification is when somebody lies about their beliefs or opinions, often due to perceived social pressure or lack of trust. Preference falsification is a real problem, not just in business settings but throughout the broad domain of human interaction.
Unfortunately soliciting anonymous comments is often ineffective at combating preference falsification because when a boss tells their workers that comments are anonymous, the workers simply don't believe it (and often they're right not to.)
>> The tracking had made the staff in those departments feel unsafe
It's very strange how often this idea of 'feeling unsafe' is coming up in the media now. It seems that either:
- People have become more fragile/sensitive; or
- People have become more aggressive.
I think it may be both. I think corporations create extremely unnatural, oppressive and coercive environments which makes people more outwardly sensitive but inwardly more aggressive.
Interesting the arms race in the incognito browser wars. One day I can read Bloomberg for free incognito, the next day they detect it. Then a Chrome update and the cycle repeats. Firefox seems to be a little behind in the fight.
I do pay for sites I read on a regular basis. Can't justify a subscription for a once a month read, however. Maybe we need 99 cents per article model, kind of like buying songs on the old iTunes.
Tech worker unions are something that's probably been a long time coming. Rather than commit subversive outbursts putting your job in jeopardy, organize. You'll be much more effective in large numbers.
After what happened to Damore I am happy to hear that Google’s “activism” culture is finally getting pushback because they became bold enough to attack the company’s financial interests.
At our company if the HR goes through your social media, and finds any evidence you may be socially activist or virtue signaling or otherwise very loudly proclaiming your disapproval of something some entity is doing, you will not be hired. You will not even get a call back. You will be labeled as a potential troublemaker (not in the good way) and be placed on the blacklist.
Sounds like a recipe for an aggressively mediocre company.
Relevant EconTalk podcast episode[1] about companies with "loose cultures" and others with "tight cultures". Some people and some industries tend to lean towards a "loose" or "tight" culture and it's interesting to hear about M&As where one type swallows the other and the inevitable indigestion happens.
I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. I read your comment simply as a statement of fact, not a preference for/against that policy.
All this does is ensure only mediocre people are hired. What you described is how you might hire for McDonald’s, not a high growth company that is building something massive/valuable.
I work with a group of the most talented people in the world at what they do and 0 of them would want to work in an environment you describe. In fact they won’t even consider a company remotely like what you describe.
[+] [-] say_it_as_it_is|6 years ago|reply
Googled created a bubble from which its employees can socialize without ever needing to do so with the outside world. Why talk politics with the outside world? Stay with us, where it is safe, people are intelligent, and share your values (we swear).
This is a root problem at the company. It is coming at a great cost.
James Damore shared his views with his social group. These other activists do the same. This is what people do among their own.
Being fired from Google amounts to not just losing a job but "friends" and the only people who the company encouraged socializing with.
Google has a major lawsuit on its hands, regardless of whatever arbitration agreement it makes new-hires sign. Google is causing harm by capturing employees hearts and minds.
Your colleagues are not an authentic social network who you can organise with and pursue activism. You aren't hired to do that. While you are naive for thinking you could, it's not entirely your fault. Google brainwashed you.
[+] [-] aedron|6 years ago|reply
I'm not aggressive or even obvious about this disposition, I just gently steer clear of violating it. I feel the same should apply to companies, fine if you want to make a stand on some political issue, but don't make a show of it, because it implies that all your employees should agree with your position.
People in the world have different opinions on things, we need to be able to work with eachother on shared interests without making every place and occasion a battleground. If not in the workplace, then where?
On a somewhat related note, I don't consider my colleagues my friends, or, God forbid, the workplace a 'family'. My relationship to my employer is a professional one, trying to disguise this by intermingling personal feelings can only end in tears, when one day you discover that it was such all along, only you deluded yourself (or let yourself be led) into thinking differently.
[+] [-] cptskippy|6 years ago|reply
I've never worked for Google so I have no basis for comparison but it's very common across white collar jobs for employees social circles to very closely if not entirely overlap with work.
Unless you participated in extracurricular activities that weren't school sponsored, you probably never learned to make friends outside of school. Work, like school, is how you develop your social circle.
The growing epidemic of loneliness is probably in part due to the rise of teleworking. No longer do people grab a drink after work.
[+] [-] DagAgren|6 years ago|reply
This is absolutely, 100% false. This is exactly what you SHOULD do, and this is what unions are for.
Always organise with coworkers. Otherwise you are giving employers more power over you than you should.
[+] [-] Hitton|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samirillian|6 years ago|reply
Well, this is exactly the question at stake. And it's not Google that makes some of us believe that it is indeed possible to not be estranged from our labor, but the history of human cooperation related to sharing our labor and other resources.
We dream of sharing labor and governance of said labor. To say Google did not hire their employees to do that is resorting to one level of rules (legal or operational). But these employees are implicitly contesting a deeper level of rules (constitutional). The question of _who we are_ is deeper than any contracts or protocols that Google explicitly defines.
[+] [-] libeclipse|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icotyl|6 years ago|reply
This is not my experience at all. Work-life balance there was way ahead of other tech companies I’ve worked for. Most people show up, work reasonable hours, and go home. Evenings and weekends are yours.
In my experience, Bay Area startups are way more guilty of trying to exploit young people with a sense of that the startup is your family. Eat, work, play, and socialize with your team, 24/7. Some people enjoy that, and sometimes these same startups go belly up, and your social network is lost.
I have no idea where your rhetoric comes from, though.
[+] [-] buboard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcv|6 years ago|reply
Surely this is an exaggeration? I mean, being friends with co-workers is great, but surely people at google also have friends outside Google, right? Right?
[+] [-] SamuelAdams|6 years ago|reply
[1]: https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html
[+] [-] soup10|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uwydr|6 years ago|reply
What's next, suing a woman because she breaks your heart?
[+] [-] flatb|6 years ago|reply
>Damore said that those differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social, artistic, and prone to neuroticism (a higher-order personality trait)
Imagine thinking that you can literally publish and circulate several revisions of an internal company memo telling 50% of your coworkers that they should be paid less because they're genetically inferior to you in regards to the job and then when people tell you that you're kind of a dick and they want nothing to do with you, getting outraged and making a grandstand about being unfairly and terribly oppressed, while bemoaning of course that people nowadays are "too sensitive".
Sadly, you can find many examples of this amazing exercise in woke coherence right here on HN.
#Edit, since I've been accused of "being ignorant" and not having read the memo by people who clearly haven't read the thing themselves. In a section titled "Possible non-bias causes of the gender gap in tech", wholly dedicated to justifying, among other phenomena, gender pay gap for reasons other than sexist bias, in James Damore's own words:
> Extraversion expressed as gregariousness rather than assertiveness. Also, higher agreeableness. This leads to women generally having a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading.
>Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance).This may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs.
>Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.” I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
I've not cherry-picked these quotes. There are no omissions, they're whole, untouched paragraphs.
[+] [-] PunchTornado|6 years ago|reply
what's wrong with these employees? Keep your political opinions to yourself. So they propose that my company lose money because of your activism. Don't agree! What if some employees asked that Google cancel any deals with climate change NGOs? How would these employees feel about it?
[+] [-] skissane|6 years ago|reply
From a technical viewpoint, I don't get this. Why create a Chrome extension to monitor usage of Google Calendar? Doesn't Google Calendar have an API they could use to do this on the server-side instead? (And if it doesn't, maybe they should add the necessary features to their API to enable this, and doing that might then benefit their customers and their partner ecosystem.)
[+] [-] kjgkjhfkjf|6 years ago|reply
My guess is that the increased closing off of various documents is to do with the increased amount of confidential partner-related information as Google scales its cloud business.
But, as is often the case with Google, much of the disillusionment here seems to be due to unrealistic expectations and nostalgia. There have always been secretive projects at Google. Chrome was super-secret; you needed special authorization to get into the Google+ area; you needed special authorization to get into areas where new Android hardware was being worked with; you needed special authorization to get into the X area; etc.
[+] [-] seibelj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xhkkffbf|6 years ago|reply
Evolution has created the rules that one doesn't mix politics with business. Google has skirted this rule for some time but now it's not going to be pretty.
[+] [-] tehjoker|6 years ago|reply
...said the largest worldwide private spy agency the world has ever known.
[+] [-] throw_m239339|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intrnttrll|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chance_state|6 years ago|reply
>Earlier this year, following a series of leaks to the media, Google executives tightened their grip. They shut down thousands of contractors’ access to company documents, citing security concerns. Google’s senior managers, meanwhile, warned employees not to access or share certain documents.
Can someone explain what the controversy is here?
It reads like two people exfiltrated documents and shared them with the media to further their political (?) ends, after being part of a larger group that was warned not to do so.
[+] [-] spaceribs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catalogia|6 years ago|reply
To what extent do the involved parties agree on the facts as presented in this article? It seems incredible that any Google employees would be upset that somebody was fired for what amounts to stalking other employees. I assume they don't believe that's what actually happened, or they're just being totally unreasonable..
[+] [-] throwaway908273|6 years ago|reply
People disagree about whether it was reasonable to expect Google management to be anything like the public image it tried to cultivate.
I, personally, expected this reaction from management and I wouldn't have put my own career at risk. But I also never thought Google was an unconventional company.
[+] [-] jessaustin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myga|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] teddyh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hliyan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catalogia|6 years ago|reply
Unfortunately soliciting anonymous comments is often ineffective at combating preference falsification because when a boss tells their workers that comments are anonymous, the workers simply don't believe it (and often they're right not to.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|6 years ago|reply
Microsoft has been here for some time.
Apple is still trying to get comfortable, but has picked out a favorite chaise lounge.
Facebook should be showing up, any day, now.
[+] [-] cryptica|6 years ago|reply
It's very strange how often this idea of 'feeling unsafe' is coming up in the media now. It seems that either:
- People have become more fragile/sensitive; or
- People have become more aggressive.
I think it may be both. I think corporations create extremely unnatural, oppressive and coercive environments which makes people more outwardly sensitive but inwardly more aggressive.
[+] [-] chkaloon|6 years ago|reply
I do pay for sites I read on a regular basis. Can't justify a subscription for a once a month read, however. Maybe we need 99 cents per article model, kind of like buying songs on the old iTunes.
[+] [-] auiya|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lobotryas|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] neonate|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xwdv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inferiorhuman|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thephyber|6 years ago|reply
Relevant EconTalk podcast episode[1] about companies with "loose cultures" and others with "tight cultures". Some people and some industries tend to lean towards a "loose" or "tight" culture and it's interesting to hear about M&As where one type swallows the other and the inevitable indigestion happens.
I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. I read your comment simply as a statement of fact, not a preference for/against that policy.
[1] https://www.econtalk.org/michele-gelfand-on-rule-makers-rule...
[+] [-] driverdan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] purplezooey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] askafriend|6 years ago|reply
I work with a group of the most talented people in the world at what they do and 0 of them would want to work in an environment you describe. In fact they won’t even consider a company remotely like what you describe.
[+] [-] s3r3nity|6 years ago|reply