Google Protest Leader Leaves • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#321

Post by dmitrygr » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

wastedhours wrote: post #11

whatshisface wrote: post #5

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.

> until the first competition shows up Their worry is that competition will be started by the people they've not hired and kept on the bench. I'd imagine a large amount of their top-level hiring is driven by taking minds off of the market, more than optimising their output.

> I'd imagine a large amount of their top-level hiring is driven by taking minds off of the market, more than optimising their output.

Yes. There are entire teams full of such people.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#322

Post by xyzzyz » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #299

cobookman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manager feedback was posted in an internal mailing list. It said no such thing. manager asked her to focus on her day to day job. Her ai ethics work was not aligned to the job she was hired for.

This is not correct. Her day to day work is/was in the AI bias and ethics space, even within google.

Why do you think so? Do you have a source of any of her supervisors saying that?

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#323

Post by quibbler » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

Afton wrote: post #206

dmix wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

From the actual article: ```She was one of six women who organized massive walkouts after reports that Google paid handsome sums to executives accused of sexual harassment.```

She didn't report those incidents. She merely organized a generic protest.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#324

Post by Merrill » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #201

Merrill wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did she do that is protected under the various whistleblower protection laws? https://www.whistleblowers.gov/sites/wb/files/2019-06/whistl... I don't think that objecting to your company's AI work for DoD or plans to comply with Chinese internet search regulations fall under any of them. What did the "Open Research Group" at Google actually build?

> What did the "Open Research Group" at Google actually build? Have you made any effort to investigate who Meredith Whittaker is on your own? Her work on AI ethics was much appreciated and celebrated precisely because she was a distinguished contributor. The cultural aversion to building weapons is not novel thing in that culture.

Yes, I googled Meredith Whittaker before commenting. She joined Google in 2006 after getting a bachelor's degree from Berkeley, apparently in literature and psychoanalytic theory. By 2012 she appears to have been a program manager in initiatives regarding internet measurements. So far I haven't found any references to products or reports from the Open Research Group, which she appears to have founded sometime prior to the 2016 White House conference where she met the other co-founder of the AI Now Institute at NYU.

Typically when you see someone engaged in "technology ethics" their professional career is based on limiting or stopping the technology, rather than building or advancing the technology. See, for example, stem cell ethics. Companies don't typically set up adversarial organizations within themselves. A more usual approach is to set up temporary "red teams" to address specific issues.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#325

Post by googtrash123234 » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

Throw-away account. Personal opinion, and I don't want any shit from it.

These people do not represent the majority of googlers' views or experiences IMO. I am sure there are genuine grievances, but they're representing a tiny-but-vocal minority group that is bringing the company into disrepute over what I think are relatively run of the mill problems that happen everywhere.

For want of a better term, they strike me as "trouble makers". Re-orgs happen all the time in Google - it is quite common for people to arrive at work and discover that their job has been re-orged out of existence and they've got to find a new role for themselves within 60-90 days, or basically get sacked. If you were a manager with spare headcount and literally 100s of qualified applicants (internal and external) for that headcount on your team, would you take on someone who is a known agitator and does a lot of "off piste" work, is divisive, and generally ruffles feathers instead of getting their work done? Or pick one of the other brilliant & experienced people without a history of stirring up shit for social media outrage points?

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#326

Post by r3bl » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #280

r3bl wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand it, you just refuse to understand it. But to answer your question, yes. If enough women were affected that they felt compelled to step out, and men didn't, that's clearly a gender bias issue.

I guess I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s just an obviously toxic attitude that anything bad which happens to a woman is a women’s rights issue, so I’m not sure how to engage with an open endorsement of it.

A woman? No, sorry, try again.

Here's an article[0] from October. Relevant quote:

> After publication of this article, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Ms. Naughton wrote in an email to employees that the company had fired 48 people for sexual harassment over the last two years and that none of them received an exit package.

Unless you believe that 48 people were fired for sexually abusing the exact same woman, the problem is a bit more... shall we say widespread?

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#327

Post by quibbler » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

marktani wrote: post #262

KUcxrAVrtI wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Having a company culture where _everyone_ feels safe enough to speak up and being heard (instead of getting kicked out) is not democracy. It is smart and crucial, in my opinion. I am surprised that critizing something at a company equals being a trouble maker to you.

Listening to feminists doesn't achieve that. It rather leads to the opposite, an atmosphere of distrust and fear.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#328

Post by xyzzyz » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #87

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks good for Google to me. These protests were getting out of hand, and their demands were showing some major entitlement.

You don't understand Google culture if you think this line would fly with anyone there. Entitlement for full time employees is baked into the charter, along with transparency. That's a good thing and a bad thing, in different ways. It gave bad actors a lot of autonomy, but it also exposed them to scrutiny and pushback from good actors. What's surprising is that now these reprisals are trying to push that back to make…

You don't understand Google culture if you think this line would fly with anyone there. Entitlement for full time employees is baked into the charter, along with transparency.

This part of Google culture is long dead. It used to exist, but it doesn't anymore. There's no transparency anymore, and large factor of ending it was strategic leaks by employees, who hoped to achieved their goals by getting media attention. The entitlement is also gone in the era of cost-cutting by ruthless Ruth. The company you're thinking about entered senescence somewhere around 2012-2013 and died in 2015-2016.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#329

Post by xyzzyz » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #300

jancsika wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose Google hired person X to take their mind off the market. How would person X discover this?

It would be obvious if you felt like your job at google was bullshit.

Along with me, a good half of my friends at Google (not only on my team) felt exactly that.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#330

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

r3bl wrote: post #326

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s just an obviously toxic attitude that anything bad which happens to a woman is a women’s rights issue, so I’m not sure how to engage with an open endorsement of it.

A woman? No, sorry, try again. Here's an article[0] from October. Relevant quote: > After publication of this article, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and Ms. Naughton wrote in an email to employees that the company had fired 48 people for sexual harassment over the last two years and that none of them received an exit package. Unless you believe that 48 people were fired for sexually abusing the exact same…

Is your hypothesis that one of those 48 people snuck back on campus after being fired to retaliate against Whittaker? If not, what do they have to do with anything?