Live data from Hacker News

Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

cnbc.com

91–100 of 600 posts

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#91
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and most SV companies are somewhere between left to far-left.

US "left" is basically center though.

Really?? There are actual communists and anarchists winning elections in the US west coast these days (e.g. Sawant, a Marxist and Chesa Boudin, an anarchist who worked for Hugo Chavez).

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#92
post #67

Nobody actively courted activists. It's more just than tech startups generally skew younger and newer generations want their companies to reflect their own values. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. And these companies are not in complete chaos. In fact apart from the James Damore incident there hasn't been any significant change in the company cultures.

Google famously hired one of the activist organizers of Occupy Wallstreet: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-who-organize...

...and they hired someone who worked on Family Separation:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/miles-taylor-fa...

Wouldn't that kind of negate your point?

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#93

Are all-hands meetings actually ever useful to anyone or ever more than merely internal PR?

I was at Yahoo under Marissa Mayer, who instated a weekly Friday all-hands, FYI, obviously modeled on whatever Google had. Those who worked at Yahoo before her said that it was a huge change, because previous upper management was pretty much invisible, no-one knew who they were, what they did, what they were thinking, which direction the company was going in. So even if you're 100% cynical about it and thinking the a…

So transparent competence > opaque incompetence > transparent incompetence.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the political position picked by the site you provided?

Google and most SV companies are somewhere between left to far-left.

Imagine saying this with a straight face when “Google and most SV companies” became literally the largest donors of neoliberal lobbying in the US during the last 10 years (also, Europe).

Your worldview skews very right if you say that. While I respect you and your opinion, the framing of Google being ‘far-left’ is absolutely out of touch with reality. Sure, Google management tries to have a position in the US culture war but in the end they still work heavily with law enforcement and military and work strongly to suppress worker’s rights.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the political position picked by the site you provided?

Google and most SV companies are somewhere between left to far-left.

How on Earth do you figure? They're all big corporations owned by capitalists. How could they even come close to far-left?

They only seem far-left if you're a reactionary drowning in "Ben Shapiro pwns the libz with LOGIC" videos on YouTube.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that they actively courted assertive people with opinions and then created a culture where you can bring your whole self to work. They did this so that they could get the benefits of creativity, which inherently requires emotional engagement, which requires that you not repress your emotions. (It turns out that it's not possible to selectively repress emotions: "I've got to watch what I say about po…

You can be creative and still act like a professional in a professional environment. One example is advertising agencies, which in the last century (in spite of what you see on popular television) were very button-up places but created cultural touchstones we still know today. (Edited to clarity I'm referencing ad agencies in the 20th century, not the SV-wannabe agencies a few have evolved into today.)

Advertising agencies are lot smaller than 100K employees. Also if there are very big agencies they are distributed and individual country/city offices are responsible for clients. Beyond corporate functions there are no business "best practices" to be enforced by headquarters.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and most SV companies are somewhere between left to far-left.

Imagine saying this with a straight face when “Google and most SV companies” became literally the largest donors of neoliberal lobbying in the US during the last 10 years (also, Europe). Your worldview skews very right if you say that. While I respect you and your opinion, the framing of Google being ‘far-left’ is absolutely out of touch with reality. Sure, Google management tries to have a position in the US culture…

The keyword there is "between".

Google is a trillion dollar company and donates to lots of political causes all over the spectrum. We're talking about the internal politics which are clearly left-wing.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that they actively courted assertive people with opinions and then created a culture where you can bring your whole self to work. They did this so that they could get the benefits of creativity, which inherently requires emotional engagement, which requires that you not repress your emotions. (It turns out that it's not possible to selectively repress emotions: "I've got to watch what I say about po…

You can be creative and still act like a professional in a professional environment. One example is advertising agencies, which in the last century (in spite of what you see on popular television) were very button-up places but created cultural touchstones we still know today. (Edited to clarity I'm referencing ad agencies in the 20th century, not the SV-wannabe agencies a few have evolved into today.)

[deleted]

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the political position picked by the site you provided?

Google and most SV companies are somewhere between left to far-left.

Google is currently fighting unionization efforts. That's not leftist.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and most SV companies are somewhere between left to far-left.

How on Earth do you figure? They're all big corporations owned by capitalists. How could they even come close to far-left? They only seem far-left if you're a reactionary drowning in "Ben Shapiro pwns the libz with LOGIC" videos on YouTube.

I said "between" left and far-left, and that's the majority politics of the employees. Also capitalism has nothing to do with left-vs-right.

By your definition, every corporation is right-wing by the fact that it's a corporation and all leftists want communism.

Post reply on HN