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Google Protest Leader Leaves

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Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#411

Post by damnyou »

dang wrote: post #397
damnyou wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to understand this fully. You care more about me pointing out the obvious political context we live in than about the person downthread literally comparing being gay to pedophilia. Will you, in your capacity as a moderator for one of the most influential forums on the internet, actively care about justice, or will you just protect the status quo? Pick a side. (Keep in mind that Scott Alexander made the exact s…

Other people's violations of the site guidelines don't justify your breaking them as well. That's not only a non sequitur, it's a fatal one. If you see someplace we didn't intervene where we should have, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or by emailing hn@ycombinator.com in egregious cases. We're not trying to be neutral in the sense you describe. I agree that it's imposs…

Thanks for talking about this seriously.

> most HN users on all sides would. Such a rift would kill the community. What good would that do?

Who are you excluding today with your actions? How do you know it would kill the community? I actually don't think so — the Rust community, thriving by any metric, has very strict codes of conduct. That's because the Rust community correctly optimizes for the safety of marginalized people over political diversity.

I know plenty of people that do not participate on HN today because of moderation that cares more about tone than content. Why not ban all the fascists and welcome those people? I promise that the sky won't fall.

Yes, I disagree with the premise that HN should be "dedicated to intellectual curiosity". This forum is way too important for that. For example, getting your side project on the front page of HN can have a large material impact on your life. Too many people are excluded from that today — they simply do not feel safe participating here.

You will necessarily make some groups of people feel unsafe and excluded. This is the basic truth about large communities. The question comes down to who you're going to care about: gay people or homophobes, for example. Immigrants or nativists. People affected by the structural injustices in the tech industry, or people that proudly support the same injustices. These are all mutually exclusive choices. Choose carefully.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#412

Post by bougalou »

knd775 wrote: post #55
duxup wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like the ethics council... and you protest it, and then they disband it ... that would involve a dramatic change if your role was on it. Retaliation or not, there would be some change. So any change, not sure I buy is/isn't retaliation.

I don't believe she protested the AI ethics council.

She was instrumental in organizing the opposition to Key Coles James -- see the 'ATEAC' section of https://googlersagainstdeceit.blogspot.com.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#413

Post by quotemstr »

cobookman wrote: post #20
ulfw wrote: post #4

Googlers haven’t realised yet that they have different leadership now. The open culture of discussing and opposing things that Google does is slowly degrading.

Realize Meredith and her crew are a minority of employees. We are talking Majority of googlers wanted maven. They wanted search in China. Biggest change to culture is people getting tired of SJW outrage. And a focus back on our users and business

The trouble is that Google's internal culture war did tremendous damage to the company's norms, especially after both sides developed rhetorical "nukes" like targeted press leaks.

Now, in many places, where there was one fascinating discussion, one sees only find a few remaining lonely activists talking with each other and the void. There's a certain hypersensitivity to perceived offense. Large areas of the company are now in information silos. Live questions at TGIF no longer happen. Internal social media is no longer funny or interesting. Ever discuso forum of meaningful size is getting "community standards moderation".

Yes, it looks like the activists are slowly and steadily losing the war. I wish they'd admit defeat. At this point, they're prolonging the inevitable. But still, they're going to lose, one exercise of soft power at a time.

But what's left behin? A waste. Silence. A desert where nothing grows. It's unfortunate. It's sad. But it had to be done.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#414

Post by bougalou »

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.

There is no such thing as the 'Open Research Group', outside of Meredith. see https://googlersagainstdeceit.blogspot.com.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#415

Post by bougalou »

dmix wrote: post #59
medecau wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe read the article? > Google soon nixed the board. > Whittaker said her Google manager told her to "abandon [her] work on AI ethics" and blocked a request to transfer internally.

I’m surprised Google’e executives would direct their managers to prevent what their employees are doing politically in their spare time...

They weren't. Meredith was employed full time at Google and using all of that time to work on AI Now. It was her work time.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#416

Post by JetezLeLogin »

leftyted wrote: post #385
pessimizer wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people are rabble-rousers who will never be happy No, this one is unreasonable. It's this weird narcissistic thing that people do where they define a person's identity by how that person feels about them . Just because I hate you doesn't mean I'm a hater. I also like things, just not you. Just because I'm unhappy with you doesn't mean that I am not happy, it means I'm not happy with you.

If I think my coworker is disagreeable and is preventing me from being productive and my coworker disagrees, am I "defining his/her identity"? That language seems very odd to me. What's the difference between "defining someone's identity" and "having an opinion about someone that is contrary to how they view themselves"? More broadly, you seem to be saying that the only reason anyone is skeptical of the Google protes…

The part about defining identity is, I think, referring to the fallacy of seeing someone in a context, and then thinking that they "are" that. Like meeting someone who is angry and storing them in your memory bank as "that angry person," as if they were angry all the time (they may indeed be, but you don't know). Add to that, the errors inherent in the act of perception: Are they really angry or did you misperceive it that way?

In your example, the co-worker may be "your disagreeable co-worker" (definition), or they might simply be "your agreeable co-worker" who momentarily disagrees with you or your ideas.

If your opinion about someone is right enough, often enough, that it serves as a workable summary of that person, that (ideally) a lot of people agree on, who have no vested interest in agreeing, then you could start to be objectively convinced there was no difference between your opinion of that person, and the definition of that person. But no simple definition of a person is ever going to capture the whole story - people are too complex.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#417

Post by metildaa »

quotemstr wrote: post #413
cobookman wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realize Meredith and her crew are a minority of employees. We are talking Majority of googlers wanted maven. They wanted search in China. Biggest change to culture is people getting tired of SJW outrage. And a focus back on our users and business

The trouble is that Google's internal culture war did tremendous damage to the company's norms, especially after both sides developed rhetorical "nukes" like targeted press leaks. Now, in many places, where there was one fascinating discussion, one sees only find a few remaining lonely activists talking with each other and the void. There's a certain hypersensitivity to perceived offense. Large areas of the company a…

It hardly "had to be done", and in this process that you've claimed had to be done, many of the best and brightest have escaped the large adtech behemoth.

The organization is a husk of itself, unable to maintain services for more than a few dozen months, with a disinterest in improving anything that doesn't make PR headlines (eg: Google Fi RMAs, IPv6 support inside GCP, worsening search results, etc). Eventually this will cause Google to join AOL & Yahoo, though Android & Search should provide sizable staying power.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#418

Post by Aunche »

jrockway wrote: post #363
Aunche wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to other people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not sick. I'm sure there is another side to this story. Nobody has an infinite amount of time or effort. If you're spending your time organizing protests rather than doing the job you're actually paid to do, you shouldn't be surprised that your coworkers and manager would be upset that they have…

I worked at Google. My project was cancelled and I quickly found a new one. I didn't like it, and wanted to have the same 3-6 months to find a new project that everyone else on my old team had. After much back and forth with HR, I was told that I was sick and to go on medical leave. When I got back I was on the performance improvement plan, told any attempt to transfer would be blocked, and so I just stopped showing…

I don't really understand what the point of your anecdote is. You aren't entitled to switch teams after you've already chosen one just because you're a strong preformer. They understandably don't want some teams to be stacked and other teams to be understaffed. If you don't want to wait a year before you switch teams again, you can quit or get yourself fired, which you did.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#419

Post by quotemstr »

metildaa wrote: post #417
quotemstr wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is that Google's internal culture war did tremendous damage to the company's norms, especially after both sides developed rhetorical "nukes" like targeted press leaks. Now, in many places, where there was one fascinating discussion, one sees only find a few remaining lonely activists talking with each other and the void. There's a certain hypersensitivity to perceived offense. Large areas of the company a…

It hardly "had to be done", and in this process that you've claimed had to be done, many of the best and brightest have escaped the large adtech behemoth. The organization is a husk of itself, unable to maintain services for more than a few dozen months, with a disinterest in improving anything that doesn't make PR headlines (eg: Google Fi RMAs, IPv6 support inside GCP, worsening search results, etc). Eventually this…

You may be right about the husk-ness. Sometimes companies can recover from this kind of cultural damage --- look at Microsoft's renaissance. But this kind of damage frequently causes talent flight and a death spiral.

I still think it had to be done. The activists wanted to turn the company into a tool for advancing a fringe political agenda, even if unprofitable No leadership group can or should tolerate that kind of hijacking.

It'd have been better for this culture war not to have started at all. But once the activists started it, it became an existential imperative for Google to finish it --- which it did.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#420

Post by bougalou »

charliesharding wrote: post #47

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…

The things is, those paychecks are very large. A Program Manager (Meredith's role) averages about $125k/year, and one with Meredith's tenure might make as much as double with stock and bonus. Google has been paying her salary the last two years even though most of her work is at AI Now.

Going forward as an NYU employee, as a university researcher without an advanced degree, she will be lucky to clear $60k/year. In New York. Doing the exact same work she has been doing for the last two years

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