I'm no Google apologist, but there's nothing nefarious about this. Why on earth would any company encourage its employees to speculate and talk freely, when doing so would get them into legal/PR trouble. It's the equivalent of a lawyer telling his client to go drinking and have a fun night out with the district attorney.
Rule #1: Never talk to the police without your lawyer being present
Rule #2: Don't create a paper trail that is going to make you look bad when it gets subpoenaed
I personally think that Google needs to be broken up into 10 different companies. And I would love to live in a world where companies face antitrust enforcement because of concrete actions. Unfortunately, we live in a world where a carelessly worded email is going to cause you more legal troubles than actual anti-competitive behavior.
>I'm no Google apologist, but there's nothing nefarious about this. Why on earth would any company encourage its employees to speculate and talk freely, when doing so would get them into legal/PR trouble.
Similarly, why the heck would Google want to have employees discuss controversial topics like politics and religion as well? Workplaces are a neutral environment. You want activism, do it outside of work.
> Why on earth would any company encourage its employees to speculate and talk freely, when doing so would get them into legal/PR trouble.
There is another view, and another analogy.
A monopoly that closes ads accounts without any explanation (pointing to their 'terms of use' is not an explanation)
A monopoly that removes apps without any explanation
A monopoly that swallows competition, their patents to further suffocate market space
Is just evil.
Small businesses hurt, consumers manipulated and fair competition practices are poisoned.
So an analogy would be a private contractor for state prison system, is threatening their employees not to talk in public about their practices. While being investigated for corruption, unfair usage of federal and state empowerment, and unfair treatment of the prisoners.
I think this would be ok as far as legal practice, but hardly something one would applaud to, given the context.
Completely agree here, and I hate Google. A business is not a democracy.
I have worked for a company acquired by a Private Equity that was universally hated by managers and employees alike. They didn’t even want to hear problems internally in quiet. It still wasn’t appropriate to trash them or talk to the media while you were an employee.
If you don’t like it and you complain to HR or your manager and they don’t or can’t address the problem, you should work somewhere else. If enough people leave, change will happen. Before that, don’t expect much.
i mean this is kind of elementary. You wouldn't go work for a church if you wanted to preach atheism. Its against the immediate interest of the company which you re supposed to be working for, so by definition you are a deadweight employee
I don't see what the point of the article might be (except as click bait to get ad views, of course). I had exactly the same training when I worked at IBM, every year. "Never talk about dominating the market", yadda yadda yadda. It's sound legal advice that I would expect all corporate employees would get. VMWare won't want their employees to talk about how they dominate the VM indusrty; EMC wouldn't want their engineers talking about their enterprise storasge arrays "crushing the competition", and so on.
And at all companies, the standard line is, "never send in e-mail anything that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times, or might cause you to be deposed as a witness in a courtroom." And it's not just about anti-trust; you also never want to talk in any kind of discoverable medium how an engineering short-cut in the development of your product (say, like a 737) is going to cause people to get killed.
All of this is not unique to Google, but applies to any company with half-way competent lawyers and a half-way competent HR department.
Oh.... and if you are sure that your product has flaws that might cause people to get killed, or cause medical information to be inappropriately leaked, etc., the proper path is to schedule a meeting with your team lead and the product counsel on the issue.
Not only did I have to certify that I received this kind of training every year at every large corporation that I've worked at (and yes, this includes Google), this was also covered in my MIT Sloan School class, "Legal issues for I/T Managers" that I took as continuing education when I worked in MIT Network Operations and served as Tech Lead for Kerberos V5 development.
I'm really surprised at the comments in Hacker News on this article. Doesn't everyone get this fundamental, basic legal training? IMHO every single practicing engineer should!
> And it's not just about anti-trust; you also never want to talk in any kind of discoverable medium how an engineering short-cut in the development of your product (say, like a 737) is going to cause people to get killed.
I would. If I spoke up about something dangerous to management, and they ignore the problem in a way that allowed someone to die because of it, I abso-fucking-lutely do not want to be their scapegoat. Leaving a paper trail is an important security measure here (and good ethics).
It's an antitrust instruction employees at very large companies are given. If you're #1 to #4, it's important. If you're #326 in your industry, it's not an issue.
> And it's not just about anti-trust; you also never want to talk in any kind of discoverable medium how an engineering short-cut in the development of your product (say, like a 737) is going to cause people to get killed.
It's not my responsibility to help cover the company's ass if my they take a shortcut that gets people killed or help them avoid legal consequences for illegal or boundary-pushing behavior. My highest loyalty is not to their shareholders, and paying me a salary doesn't change that.
It's absolutely (clickbait) to get ad views -- that's the whole company's business.
It's also a political stance that aligns with said company's political disposition and (more importantly) chosen market segmentation.
Finally, this company (desperately wants to believe that it) stands to increase its profitability if it strikes back against the forces that have lowered that profitability.
The point of the article is the claim that Google wasn't so extreme about this before. If true, this means that they're seriously concerned with the ongoing anti-trust probes, and don't see them as something that's likely to go away.
> And it's not just about anti-trust; you also never want to talk in any kind of discoverable medium how an engineering short-cut in the development of your product (say, like a 737) is going to cause people to get killed.
You don't see the fucking problem with this policy?
Ultimately, I guess the solution here is that this "training" ought to be considered as damning as the kind of speech that it tries to forbid.
This is like trying to get out of a drunk driving ticket by smoking weed and wearing a blindfold.
I think the idea is that there are people who think their desire to do whatever they want is more important than their employer's right to limit bad publicity and legal risk. A quick re-watch of the movie Erin Brockovich might illuminate why this could happen but there are obviously other reasons.
It would be noteworthy if a company didn't restrict their employees from publicly talking about legal and regulatory matters. What they're doing here is standard practice.
Average employees aren't in a position to speak accurately about antitrust matters anyway. If they misspeak, it will certainly be used against the company regardless of the actual merit.
Once again, it seems the issue is less about Google (or any company) restricting you having a personal opinion about issues that affect the bottom line at work, but instead is about the disingenuous pretense that they don't restrict you.
Don't be evil. Unless it affects our bottom line. Think Different. Unless you're a monopoly, then think the same as every other monopoly has. Move fast and break things. Their things, not our things.
Cut the shit "Make us money" is the corporate manifesto.
Based on past incidents, I'd venture that Google employees are free to speak up only as long as they speak up with the "right" opinions on a vast range of topics. "You can say whatever you want, as long as it's this".
This is true, but Google also had very specific guidance around this topic when I worked there (10-5 years ago). We received specific training about this. The core message was approximately, "You don't understand the legal trouble that you're going to get yourself into by talking about markets, competitors, competition, etc. Innocent words or phrases may have very specific legal definitions or implications that may be surprising to you. Speculating about these things will bring you trouble, the amount of which which will also surprise you. At Google, we don't talk about ourselves in relationship to our competitors, we only talk about ourselves in relationship to our customers"
While I don't necessarily have as pessimistic a take on this, I do agree this article is evidence as to why I am so often against social activism by companies. Companies, all companies, the "good" and the "evil", will only ever engage in activism that is not a threat to their bottom line. Given that constraint, it means the activism is incredibly cheap in my opinion.
I mean, look at all the recent BLM support from large corporations. I mean, on one hand I'm glad to see them doing this. On the other, I know the only reason they are doing this is because it's pretty easy for them - it's largely already supported by their employees and the bulk of their customers see it positively. I can guarantee if it could negatively affect their long term prospects they wouldn't have done it.
For example, I remember quite clearly that in the late 80s and early 90s you'd hear nary a peep of support on LGBT issues from corporations, and even some of the more progressive companies had to do it with coded language (language gays understood but straight people were oblivious to). It was only when gay rights were already largely supported did corporations jump on the bandwagon.
Again, I'm not saying this is totally a bad thing, but I do think it is a cheap, easy thing. And if you know a company is never willing to do the hard thing, why put any weight into its opinions on these topics in the first place?
(This is true everywhere, not just Google, though. I’m not sure there’s any such thing as an employee who doesn’t get in hot water for bringing unwanted attention to the business.)
No, I think this is just sound legal advice. You, as a line level employee and not in the legal department, should NOT discuss any matters that have legal scrutiny. There is no "party line" outside of the legal line here.
Googler here. This is pure and simple click-bait. We are asked not to speculate on legal matters precisely so that it doesn't get misrepresented in the media or in lawsuits. I've worked at other companies with the same policy because why would you shoot yourself in the foot?
Since the NYT is denied the option of misrepresenting employee comments, it has settled for an alternate spin. What a great deal they have. Its a win-win.
It's unfortunate that the headline sounds like pure clickbait, because the story contains examples of Google's behavior being more suspicious than the headline suggests.
But, as far as the title is concerned, it seems common sense to prevent employees from talking about potentially very expensive legal issues, when every internal emails and chat logs can be potentially quote-mined by adversaries in future lawsuits.
FWIW, my employer probably also wouldn't like me commenting on imminent legal issues that risked affecting their bottom line, but they don't mind me talking about much else politically speaking.
This is a twist on the famous Upton Sinclair quote. Google has everything to gain by extending their "live at work" strategy to political conversations, until those political conversations affect them.
Byline: "A company operating in the shadow of government regulators has some very particular rules about what workers can say about it."
I don't know where the reporter gets the sense that they're "very particular." It's pretty common sense: "You are not a lawyer; don't speculate on points of law in discoverable media."
I'm sure lawyers at Google have studied the Microsoft antitrust case, where one of the big lessons was that anything you write in an email will be used against you by the Justice Department [1] -- so this is not at all surprising. In fact, I'm a bit shocked there's no mention of the Microsoft case in the article.
This is normal and expected. Where I work we have rules about what we can say in written communication. Hyperbole and jokes will not be interpreted that way if an audit or subpoena finds it. A court might decide that we didn't mean exactly what we said, but we don't even want to deal with a court case in the first place. Not only because it directly consumes money to put up a defense but also because it can restrict our ability to make money and could tarnish our name.
We also have rules against talking to press. We can send them to a department that will handle that communication, but in general they won't get anything from us because it's easy to put a negative spin on anything we say.
> ...employees are told to assume that every document and email will end up in the hands of regulators, so they should refrain from using certain words or phrases. “We are not out to ‘crush,’ ‘kill,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘block,’ or do anything else that might be perceived as evil or unfair,” according to a slide used in the training, which The New York Times reviewed.
In my experience, these policies exist largely to avoid negative PR hits.
I wouldn't be surprised if these kind of policies also change culture and behavior for the better. Or maybe another phrasing makes it clearer: If your boss has a slide deck on crushing the competition that could cause some impressionable folks to bend the rules just a little.
The article is a nice piece of spin. It seems they started with a narrative and fit the facts to it.
I've taken the trainings referred to in the article and I never once thought they were designed to dissuade discussions about antitrust issues. A more banal interpretation is that Google wants to create a culture that emphasizes creating good products not at the expense of competitors.
I've never felt inhibited about having conversations with employees about these issues. The fact is that most of the employees I've discussed these issues with don't think Google is violating antitrust regulations.
My personal opinion is that a certain segment believe that Google should just be broken up because their data collection practices whether or not there are any real antitrust violations and just see this as a tool to accomplish that end.
Anti-trust is a hack.. We need proper taxation. Large corporations like Google have TONS of advantages that small companies have so it's easier for big companies to get bigger.
Part of this is taxes... if we just taxed them properly they wouldn't grow large and wouldn't need to be broken up.
Have you ever seen a current Google employee clearly denounce Google's privacy practices? It seems they are very loud and keen to organize when it comes to issues that closely affect them, but the mass surveillance of the general population usually takes a back seat.
Do you think it's acceptable for someone to circulate a manifesto that argues that conservatives are unlikely to make good engineers, because they are more authoritarian, and authoritarians are less creative, and are less likely to challenge the status quo? And propose some policy changes that the company should take in its outreach to, and hiring of conservatives?
Even if it comes with citations to out-of-context, misunderstood, or under-reproduced political psychology studies (In addition to a complete misunderstanding of the criteria on which your own job is evaluated on)?
I'll tell you what would happen if someone did that - the right wing media would have a field day with blasting both the author of such a manifesto, and the company that employs them.
I understand that this is an uncomfortable topic for a lot of people, because it exposes a rather obvious double standard.
So that everyone is clear there's a very big difference between Google saying:
1) Use the right language concerning things like 'market dominance'.
2) Not wanting Googlers to have public opinions which are against the companies opinions
3) Suppressing voices over very material causes for concern i.e. whistle blowing.
The more nuanced issue is #1.
If Google legit doesn't believe they are a monopoly player, then they have to make sure that everyone acts and behaves in that manner, and uses the right language. If personnel go around talking about 'dominating the market' that could be effectively 'used against them' irrespective of the material nature of ostensible market domination.
A lot of this kind of stuff is vague, political, words have power etc. and things can be taken way out of context.
It's not wrong for Google to want staff to use the right words to describe market situations correctly.
Of course this means something different if in fact, objectively speaking they're trying to get people to actually misrepresent reality.
I'm sure there's a few more things you can't talk about at Google too. But the NY Times should at least do a better job of remembering their own stories.
[+] [-] whack|5 years ago|reply
Rule #1: Never talk to the police without your lawyer being present
Rule #2: Don't create a paper trail that is going to make you look bad when it gets subpoenaed
I personally think that Google needs to be broken up into 10 different companies. And I would love to live in a world where companies face antitrust enforcement because of concrete actions. Unfortunately, we live in a world where a carelessly worded email is going to cause you more legal troubles than actual anti-competitive behavior.
[+] [-] macspoofing|5 years ago|reply
Similarly, why the heck would Google want to have employees discuss controversial topics like politics and religion as well? Workplaces are a neutral environment. You want activism, do it outside of work.
[+] [-] 75dvtwin|5 years ago|reply
There is another view, and another analogy.
A monopoly that closes ads accounts without any explanation (pointing to their 'terms of use' is not an explanation)
A monopoly that removes apps without any explanation
A monopoly that swallows competition, their patents to further suffocate market space
Is just evil.
Small businesses hurt, consumers manipulated and fair competition practices are poisoned.
So an analogy would be a private contractor for state prison system, is threatening their employees not to talk in public about their practices. While being investigated for corruption, unfair usage of federal and state empowerment, and unfair treatment of the prisoners.
I think this would be ok as far as legal practice, but hardly something one would applaud to, given the context.
[+] [-] Vaslo|5 years ago|reply
I have worked for a company acquired by a Private Equity that was universally hated by managers and employees alike. They didn’t even want to hear problems internally in quiet. It still wasn’t appropriate to trash them or talk to the media while you were an employee.
If you don’t like it and you complain to HR or your manager and they don’t or can’t address the problem, you should work somewhere else. If enough people leave, change will happen. Before that, don’t expect much.
[+] [-] scoot_718|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] learnstats2|5 years ago|reply
They appear to be mutually incompatible.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gggfarov|5 years ago|reply
No it’s not. The lawyer works for the lawyer’s client, employers don’t work for their employees. Opposite.
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tytso|5 years ago|reply
And at all companies, the standard line is, "never send in e-mail anything that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times, or might cause you to be deposed as a witness in a courtroom." And it's not just about anti-trust; you also never want to talk in any kind of discoverable medium how an engineering short-cut in the development of your product (say, like a 737) is going to cause people to get killed.
All of this is not unique to Google, but applies to any company with half-way competent lawyers and a half-way competent HR department.
[+] [-] tytso|5 years ago|reply
Not only did I have to certify that I received this kind of training every year at every large corporation that I've worked at (and yes, this includes Google), this was also covered in my MIT Sloan School class, "Legal issues for I/T Managers" that I took as continuing education when I worked in MIT Network Operations and served as Tech Lead for Kerberos V5 development.
I'm really surprised at the comments in Hacker News on this article. Doesn't everyone get this fundamental, basic legal training? IMHO every single practicing engineer should!
[+] [-] mywittyname|5 years ago|reply
I would. If I spoke up about something dangerous to management, and they ignore the problem in a way that allowed someone to die because of it, I abso-fucking-lutely do not want to be their scapegoat. Leaving a paper trail is an important security measure here (and good ethics).
[+] [-] Animats|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ardy42|5 years ago|reply
It's not my responsibility to help cover the company's ass if my they take a shortcut that gets people killed or help them avoid legal consequences for illegal or boundary-pushing behavior. My highest loyalty is not to their shareholders, and paying me a salary doesn't change that.
[+] [-] elefanten|5 years ago|reply
It's also a political stance that aligns with said company's political disposition and (more importantly) chosen market segmentation.
Finally, this company (desperately wants to believe that it) stands to increase its profitability if it strikes back against the forces that have lowered that profitability.
[+] [-] int_19h|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nullabillity|5 years ago|reply
You don't see the fucking problem with this policy?
Ultimately, I guess the solution here is that this "training" ought to be considered as damning as the kind of speech that it tries to forbid.
This is like trying to get out of a drunk driving ticket by smoking weed and wearing a blindfold.
[+] [-] dboreham|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|5 years ago|reply
Average employees aren't in a position to speak accurately about antitrust matters anyway. If they misspeak, it will certainly be used against the company regardless of the actual merit.
[+] [-] Traster|5 years ago|reply
Don't be evil. Unless it affects our bottom line. Think Different. Unless you're a monopoly, then think the same as every other monopoly has. Move fast and break things. Their things, not our things.
Cut the shit "Make us money" is the corporate manifesto.
[+] [-] commandlinefan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakevoytko|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|5 years ago|reply
I mean, look at all the recent BLM support from large corporations. I mean, on one hand I'm glad to see them doing this. On the other, I know the only reason they are doing this is because it's pretty easy for them - it's largely already supported by their employees and the bulk of their customers see it positively. I can guarantee if it could negatively affect their long term prospects they wouldn't have done it.
For example, I remember quite clearly that in the late 80s and early 90s you'd hear nary a peep of support on LGBT issues from corporations, and even some of the more progressive companies had to do it with coded language (language gays understood but straight people were oblivious to). It was only when gay rights were already largely supported did corporations jump on the bandwagon.
Again, I'm not saying this is totally a bad thing, but I do think it is a cheap, easy thing. And if you know a company is never willing to do the hard thing, why put any weight into its opinions on these topics in the first place?
[+] [-] vbmallon|5 years ago|reply
Some of those rants remind me of "spontaneous" pro party demonstrations of children wearing red neck scarves in North Korea.
[+] [-] zobzu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillysaurusx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkwizard42|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awerawerawrjhui|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newacct583|5 years ago|reply
You mean gender representation. There was one incident.
[+] [-] rogerkirkness|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] owkman|5 years ago|reply
Since the NYT is denied the option of misrepresenting employee comments, it has settled for an alternate spin. What a great deal they have. Its a win-win.
[+] [-] yongjik|5 years ago|reply
But, as far as the title is concerned, it seems common sense to prevent employees from talking about potentially very expensive legal issues, when every internal emails and chat logs can be potentially quote-mined by adversaries in future lawsuits.
(Disclaimer: worked at Google before.)
[+] [-] InitialLastName|5 years ago|reply
This is a twist on the famous Upton Sinclair quote. Google has everything to gain by extending their "live at work" strategy to political conversations, until those political conversations affect them.
[+] [-] shadowgovt|5 years ago|reply
I don't know where the reporter gets the sense that they're "very particular." It's pretty common sense: "You are not a lawyer; don't speculate on points of law in discoverable media."
[+] [-] slaymaker1907|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonas21|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/02/business/antitrust-case-i...
[+] [-] throwdbaaway|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ziml77|5 years ago|reply
We also have rules against talking to press. We can send them to a department that will handle that communication, but in general they won't get anything from us because it's easy to put a negative spin on anything we say.
[+] [-] tqi|5 years ago|reply
> ...employees are told to assume that every document and email will end up in the hands of regulators, so they should refrain from using certain words or phrases. “We are not out to ‘crush,’ ‘kill,’ ‘hurt,’ ‘block,’ or do anything else that might be perceived as evil or unfair,” according to a slide used in the training, which The New York Times reviewed.
In my experience, these policies exist largely to avoid negative PR hits.
[+] [-] im3w1l|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] longtimegoogler|5 years ago|reply
I've taken the trainings referred to in the article and I never once thought they were designed to dissuade discussions about antitrust issues. A more banal interpretation is that Google wants to create a culture that emphasizes creating good products not at the expense of competitors.
I've never felt inhibited about having conversations with employees about these issues. The fact is that most of the employees I've discussed these issues with don't think Google is violating antitrust regulations.
My personal opinion is that a certain segment believe that Google should just be broken up because their data collection practices whether or not there are any real antitrust violations and just see this as a tool to accomplish that end.
[+] [-] burtonator|5 years ago|reply
Part of this is taxes... if we just taxed them properly they wouldn't grow large and wouldn't need to be broken up.
[+] [-] dessant|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2187|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vkou|5 years ago|reply
Even if it comes with citations to out-of-context, misunderstood, or under-reproduced political psychology studies (In addition to a complete misunderstanding of the criteria on which your own job is evaluated on)?
I'll tell you what would happen if someone did that - the right wing media would have a field day with blasting both the author of such a manifesto, and the company that employs them.
I understand that this is an uncomfortable topic for a lot of people, because it exposes a rather obvious double standard.
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
1) Use the right language concerning things like 'market dominance'.
2) Not wanting Googlers to have public opinions which are against the companies opinions
3) Suppressing voices over very material causes for concern i.e. whistle blowing.
The more nuanced issue is #1.
If Google legit doesn't believe they are a monopoly player, then they have to make sure that everyone acts and behaves in that manner, and uses the right language. If personnel go around talking about 'dominating the market' that could be effectively 'used against them' irrespective of the material nature of ostensible market domination.
A lot of this kind of stuff is vague, political, words have power etc. and things can be taken way out of context.
It's not wrong for Google to want staff to use the right words to describe market situations correctly.
Of course this means something different if in fact, objectively speaking they're trying to get people to actually misrepresent reality.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] panny|5 years ago|reply
And unionizing. Don't forget unionizing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/25/technology/google-fires-w...
I'm sure there's a few more things you can't talk about at Google too. But the NY Times should at least do a better job of remembering their own stories.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]