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Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

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Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#131

Post by lake99 »

justin66 wrote: post #105
googthrow2019 wrote: post #18

Someone posted preliminary sit-in attendance numbers. Attendance ranges from 50-150 per office in the larger offices. Anecdotally, I've seen very little discussion and energy this time compared to the walkout. Back then, one couldn't walk 20 feet without hitting some kind of exhortation to join the walkout. This time, more people might find out about this sit-in through this HN story than through internal channels. T…

> Posting through Tor for obvious reasons. Because the protest is such a matter of indifference at Google that... you need to take extreme measures not to be identified talking about it?

I don't work for Google. My company has strict policies to discourage employees talking to the public about internal affairs. That was the case with my previous two employers too. Frankly, it makes sense from their POV to not have their dirty laundry made public. And I take similar precautions as a matter of self-preservation anyway. I don't want anything I write here to be used against me either by my current employer or any of my future employers.

Google could be keeping track of which of their internal IPs visited which HN pages, etc.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#132

Post by chopin »

lake99 wrote: post #131
justin66 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Posting through Tor for obvious reasons. Because the protest is such a matter of indifference at Google that... you need to take extreme measures not to be identified talking about it?

I don't work for Google. My company has strict policies to discourage employees talking to the public about internal affairs. That was the case with my previous two employers too. Frankly, it makes sense from their POV to not have their dirty laundry made public. And I take similar precautions as a matter of self-preservation anyway. I don't want anything I write here to be used against me either by my current employ…

How would they do this? HN is served over https, which would make this a massive and deliberate undertaking. The only possibilities I know of would be an intercepting proxy (don't know whether Google uses this, I doubt it) or tracking the size of payloads (which would require infrastructure explicitly and only for this purpose).

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#133

Post by jarym »

jarym wrote: post #45

how did the managers doing the alleged retaliating get hired at google in the first place? I thought the crazy I interview process existed to get the right people?

Getting downvoted here but really not sure why - don't live in Silicon Valley (or the States for that matter) and it was a genuine question.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#134

Post by dekhn »

sanxiyn wrote: post #110
dmead wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe ads, but search core search stuff can't be that many people.

Why not? Search is an incredibly complex problem.

search is complex, but google spend well over a decade building infrastructure to enable search to scale without massive people count. it's a modest number of very productive people.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#135

Post by lake99 »

chopin wrote: post #132
lake99 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't work for Google. My company has strict policies to discourage employees talking to the public about internal affairs. That was the case with my previous two employers too. Frankly, it makes sense from their POV to not have their dirty laundry made public. And I take similar precautions as a matter of self-preservation anyway. I don't want anything I write here to be used against me either by my current employ…

How would they do this? HN is served over https, which would make this a massive and deliberate undertaking. The only possibilities I know of would be an intercepting proxy (don't know whether Google uses this, I doubt it) or tracking the size of payloads (which would require infrastructure explicitly and only for this purpose).

Payload size would be very helpful, but they don't need that to shortlist candidates. Correlating the timestamps of when the comment appeared on HN and when the domain name was accessed from an internal IP may be enough, subject to luck. Considering that Google is already tracking (crawling) the entire web for its core business, adding a few tweaks should not make much of a difference to their system load.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#136

Post by geofft »

cwperkins wrote: post #40
hunter23 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I guess I am out of the loop on the meaning of fascism. However, even if I substitute the word "bullying" the statement doesn't make sense to me: "Google employees protesting the makeup of the AI Ethics council appeared like the closest thing to bullying in the USA that I have ever witnessed" I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm splitting hairs, but I genuinely don't understand what the OP is trying to stay in that st…

Sorry I left for a few minutes. I don’t agree with Kay Cole James on any issue socially. My read on the situation though is that, by not recommending a viable alternative. I read that as Googlers saying they are not open to have conservative viewpoints on the council, hence them disbanding. That forcible suppression of an opposition viewpoint instead of coming to the table together to debate differences when crafting…

> That forcible suppression of an opposition viewpoint instead of coming to the table together to debate differences when crafting policy, I see as having elements of Fascism.

Do you see Orwell literally taking up arms in the Spanish Civil War against his ideological opponents instead of debating them—especially when he wasn't even Spanish himself—as having elements of fascism, too?

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#138

Post by jchw »

dx034 wrote: post #129
jchw wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, they wrote something that could end up in the media. Who wants that kind of attention? Googler in Bay Area here, non-throwaway account. Don't know enough about the situation to comment on any of the details or form an opinion, but I can attest to the fact that I didn't really notice the sit-in, for better or worse. Not to detract from or endorse anyone's opinion, I'm just bothered by the weird conspiracy…

But no media article will be able to identify the poster through their IP address. So unless you re-use your username, Tor or not shouldn't make any difference.

Sure, but Tor is overkill for any real or imagined threat in this case. So frankly, I don’t see the reason to single that aspect out.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#139

Post by dontreact »

cwperkins wrote: post #92
dontreact wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy literally said the hiring bar was lowered for women. It says that in his doc. And it's false. After everyone was upset about this, he never apologized or walked back that part of the doc at all.

Without objective data to back it up, claims on either side would be hearsay, no? For someone convinced they are at a disadvantage, how can you convince them that the system is fair?

I think the burden of proof would be on someone making a claim that runs counter to everything that everyone in the company who actually works in hiring is saying

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#140

Post by dontreact »

wyldfire wrote: post #99
dontreact wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy literally said the hiring bar was lowered for women. It says that in his doc. And it's false. After everyone was upset about this, he never apologized or walked back that part of the doc at all.

> And it's false Is it possible that Damore witnessed specific instance(s) of an explicit bar-lowering (or a trend for one team/manager) but no general policy at Google? I am asking out of curiosity, I don't want to skewer or stick up for Damore.

He didn’t back up that claim with any evidence. I’ve talked with many people who are on hiring committees and those are blinded to gender and other factors.
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