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Google Protest Leader Leaves

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141–150 of 442 posts

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#141

Google works like crazy to hire all of the smartest and the best people, but do they really need them? Billions and billions in shareholder value could be extracted by hiring a bunch of mid-tier Java programmers and having them farm Ad Words for the next decade, until the first competition shows up.

They're not hiring these people because they need them, but because they want to avoid other companies from hiring them and doing something big and disruptive.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#142

I don't really understand why it's surprising to anyone that they would face "internal retaliation" after exposing their employer as evil and boycott worthy to the entire world. By publicizing it to the degree that they did and attaching their name to it, they were putting their interests over the company. If my company started doing business practices that I didn't approve of, I would try my hardest to change the di…

Yep, and doing the "right thing" doesn't mean everyone will be cool with it (Snowden &c.), especially in highly hierarchical institutions like google. You don't get to light a dumpster fire in your own office without inhaling some of the smoke. At that scale any move outside of what you're allowed to think/do is a workplace suicide. I wouldn't be surprised if these people end up in other renowned tech companies though, google is losing on all fronts.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#143

I don't really understand why it's surprising to anyone that they would face "internal retaliation" after exposing their employer as evil and boycott worthy to the entire world. By publicizing it to the degree that they did and attaching their name to it, they were putting their interests over the company. If my company started doing business practices that I didn't approve of, I would try my hardest to change the di…

Large coorporations look a lot like governments. Normally, I bring this up from the perspective of regulations (eg. we should be willing to restrict the power of large private actors in the same ways we restrict the power of governments). However, I think it is applicable here too. If you don't like something the US government is doing, you generally aren't going to leave. You are either going to ignore it, or try to…

Google is (thank god) not the government and this analogy is bogus.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#144
post #21

Interesting to see as polarization increases, as it will given the environment, whether a company can break into two along political lines. Has that happened before in history? I wouldn't mind a seperate conservative google and a liberal google. Let the quality of the product offered decide which is better.

You end up with campuses in different areas and different products centered in each.

Happens naturally.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#145

I don't really understand why it's surprising to anyone that they would face "internal retaliation" after exposing their employer as evil and boycott worthy to the entire world. By publicizing it to the degree that they did and attaching their name to it, they were putting their interests over the company. If my company started doing business practices that I didn't approve of, I would try my hardest to change the di…

> I don't really understand why it's surprising

I don't think anyone is that surprised, but that doesn't mean that it's right.

> I would try my hardest to change the direction from the inside out or I would leave and then criticize. I don't understand the desire to stay with a company and accept paychecks while simultaneously publicly denouncing and leading protests against them.

Good for you, but they decided to do something else. I don't think they were denouncing Google as heartily as you seem to suggest. They obviously had hope that they could change things. We're also talking about old veterans of the company. How do you know that they didn't do everything that they could internally before escalating things publicly?

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#146
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the strong term "evil" is only used because Google's motto is "don't be evil". Not everyone has the freedom to instantly change jobs. The world might be a better place if employees had the right to whistle blow without being threatened with homelessness or fleeing to Russia. Unions striking and protesting against their companies for better wages seems acceptable. Why is protesting for ethical reasons withou…

Didn't they drop that motto like 3 years ago?

I'd argue they quit practicing it when they IPOd, but technically the removal of the phrase from their Code of Conduct was more recent.

https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#147
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harassment is a crime and plenty of workplace laws are in place for that. If Google fired someone for speaking up against an incident of harassment that would be a huge story in the media.

Yes, if only there was some news story alleging that Google treated workers poorly after raising harassment concerns. Sounds like you want to see that!

She reported an incident of sexual harassment that was ignored and then she was fired?

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#148
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many great people are hired not necessarily to move Google forward, but so that they don’t move a Google-competitor forward.

This makes me think about something. I don't work at a FAANG company, nor have I ever been to SV, nor do I know anyone who works at one of the many enormous tech companies around SV. In the TV show Silicon Valley they have characters who sit around unassigned doing nothing at the Google-like company in the show. Does this actually happen? Are there people hired at these companies who just don't have a project? Its en…

[deleted]

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#149
post #114
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protesting against sexual harrassement and and equal compensation are just 'your politics'? huh.

The fact you're conflating sexual harrassment (which is illegal almost everywhere) with an incredibly politicized concept as "equal compensation" (which even within one's own family there are wide disparities in outcomes, as even siblings from the same house can have widely different career outcomes, let alone in society) says everything... I also don’t like being told I support sexual harassment because I don’t thin…

incredibly politicized concept as "equal compensation" (which doesn't exist [...]

Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_equal_work

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