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Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

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Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#261

Post by jtolmar »

drewg123 wrote: post #107

As an Xoogler (left in 2015) I find that news highly disappointing. I think that without honest, regular Q&A at events like TGIF, the company will become more and more out of touch. When I was there, TGIF was watered down, but we still asked uncomfortable questions of management. I remember asking a question of Sundar when he was head of Android when the Nexus 6 came out questioning our chasing Apple into the high en…

Having left more recently (mid 2019) - TGIF had been increasingly sporadically scheduled from 2016 onwards, to the point that many of us had thought it was cancelled a few times between then and now. In my local office, snacks got rescheduled and shuffled around to be further away from where the live stream happened and sometimes start at the same time as the broadcast. The writing was on the wall for a long time.

A lot of people blamed this on leaks, but that already came to a head in the 2013-2015 era, where I saw announcements go from being made a week ahead of time at TGIF, to a day, to hours, to a few hours after the fact, to not at all. I'd attribute more to new executives who were more hostile to being asked hard questions.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#262

Post by catalogia »

zarkov99 wrote: post #208
nemo44x wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're an engineer at Google, you've probably had a great technical education, you feel empowered because if Google would hire you, you can assume most anyone else would too; you probably feel smart because of this and in many ways you probably are a pretty smart person. You're very well paid and compensated and you know it. There are a lot of things here that not only give someone confidence but also conviction.…

That can't be the whole story. Google is not the only provider of high status jobs for nerds. Why aren't Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook also rife with this sort of activism?

It also doesn't account for the behavior of similarly privileged non-nerds. Swap out "technical education" in that comment with any other form of specialized training that leads to high salaries. How does the specialization of computer science educations compare to the specialization of neurosurgery educations?

The notion that engineers are shitty people because they weren't made to take enough liberal arts classes falls flat for me. Learning about ethics doesn't make people more ethical[0][1]. And I'd say the number one problem with this industry, and the root of its increasingly poor reputation among the general public, is a lack ethics.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19529374

[1]https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/01/07/168650666/new-y...

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#263

Post by [deleted] »

malvosenior wrote: post #5

I wonder if companies like Google and GitHub that actively courted activists are now regretting their decision. For a long time it was common knowledge that you would try to keep stuff like that out of the workplace. The past 10 years have been an about face to that strategy and now we're seeing more or less complete chaos internally at these previously pro-politics (some kinds of politics) workplaces. My guess is th…

[deleted]

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#264

Post by lisper »

aprdm wrote: post #260
geofft wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Google and GitHub built fantastic engineering departments with that decision, beating the pants off several companies that followed "common knowledge." It was (and still is) a cliche that you get better results by hiring like Google than by hiring like everyone used to hire. What they're now learning is that this decision is incompatible with certain forms of revenue like military or immigration-enforcement con…

I read the "how Google works " book and I can't help but question myself if they built what they built despite of the culture. The best recipe for a company that isn't printing billions of dollars from Advertising to go bankrupt is try to follow their book and culture. If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? My guess is that it wouldn't. Google feels sometimes very much…

> If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? My guess is that it wouldn't.

Google in the early days didn't have infinite money nor market dominance and it obviously worked out. Doing what they did is what got them from A to B.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#265

Post by geofft »

bendbro wrote: post #258
geofft wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Google and GitHub built fantastic engineering departments with that decision, beating the pants off several companies that followed "common knowledge." It was (and still is) a cliche that you get better results by hiring like Google than by hiring like everyone used to hire. What they're now learning is that this decision is incompatible with certain forms of revenue like military or immigration-enforcement con…

> And they shouldn't be surprised if a company that explicitly embraces activist engineers and forswears sources of revenue incompatible with that activism, a company that says "We will talk about politics at the workplace and this is our particular form of politics," one day beats the pants off them. They should be surprised as it hasn't ever happened before. That's not to say that it won't or shouldn't happen, it j…

Didn't it happen with Google? Did they not build a more productive engineering department because they said "Bring your whole self to work, and bring your dog too" and not "We want your butt in a cubicle for 40 hours and this is just a job"?

I suspect if a company says "Bring your whole self to work, and we're actually serious about it, only bother applying if you think you'll gel with the folks already here," they'll still be able to hire as many people as they need and they'll deliver better products because of it.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#266

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

geofft wrote: post #257
malvosenior wrote: post #5

I wonder if companies like Google and GitHub that actively courted activists are now regretting their decision. For a long time it was common knowledge that you would try to keep stuff like that out of the workplace. The past 10 years have been an about face to that strategy and now we're seeing more or less complete chaos internally at these previously pro-politics (some kinds of politics) workplaces. My guess is th…

Well, Google and GitHub built fantastic engineering departments with that decision, beating the pants off several companies that followed "common knowledge." It was (and still is) a cliche that you get better results by hiring like Google than by hiring like everyone used to hire. What they're now learning is that this decision is incompatible with certain forms of revenue like military or immigration-enforcement con…

This is historically revisionist. Google was a money-making behemoth with its tentacles in many areas of innovation before it became the politicized entity we know it to be today.

Google only really became politicized a couple of years ago when certain media publications started making demands for diversity numbers within the organization and publicly shaming them for not meeting some imaginary bar in the area.

Github was the premier hosted SCM solution long before it literally pulled its meritocracy rug from under it [0] and has been living off first-mover advantage since, succeeding in spite of the activists it now employs, not because of.

I personally _would be_ very surprised to see an identity politics focused company beat either, not merely because of their [Google, Github] current status but because those in question haven't shown themselves to be capable of building much at all.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocr...

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#267

Post by seba_dos1 »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #114
darkwater wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, absolutely! Poor little white straight men, nowadays you cannot find any of them working in Google. What a pity!

The GP talked about a diversity of viewpoints , but you're talking about diversity of race and sexual identity. At the very least, most persons don't consider race to be a viewpoint.

It would be a good distinction to make if only "intolerant of my viewpoint" wasn't usually an euphemism for "not letting me being a hateful person".

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#268

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

manigandham wrote: post #150
reroute1 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and most SV companies are somewhere between left to far-left. 1) Completely contradicts what you said earlier above 2) How? When does it stop being people and start being a corp? Aren't the decisions made by employees? 3) So? You just linked 'diversity' to left and far-left, isn't that the same thing that started this side thread? How is that site linked with activism or left politics? You mentioned a "prett…

Obviously nothing is absolute, that doesn't make anything contradictory. The majority political stance is left/far-left. The company is massive and sometimes will do things people consider right-wing, but usually those things are not actually "right-wing" but just normal behavior of a giant corporation seeking to maximize profit and shareholder value. Corporations and capitalism are not antithetical to left-wing poli…

If Google were calling for the nationalization of major industries and a radical leveling of wealth, then I might call them "far-left." But being vaguely LGBT-friendly or talking about diversity is pretty centrist, maybe a bit socially liberal.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#269

Post by underwater »

ralph84 wrote: post #65

Activists at work used to focus on things that would improve the lives of workers. Now they just want everyone to be as miserable as they are.

I figure there are just people of every political persuasion who default to being confrontational.

When they are on your side you see them as principled and necessary, if you disagree with them they are antagonistic SJWs.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#270

Post by scarface74 »

lisper wrote: post #264
aprdm wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the "how Google works " book and I can't help but question myself if they built what they built despite of the culture. The best recipe for a company that isn't printing billions of dollars from Advertising to go bankrupt is try to follow their book and culture. If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? My guess is that it wouldn't. Google feels sometimes very much…

> If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? My guess is that it wouldn't. Google in the early days didn't have infinite money nor market dominance and it obviously worked out. Doing what they did is what got them from A to B.

And Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are nothing like that and two of the three are more profitable. Correlation is not causation.
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