371–380 of 600 posts
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My brother worked in ad agencies, and this is the opposite of what he said. Tons of drinking and just generally bad behavior which would only be tolerated in the worst silicon valley startups. He moved to the startup world because it has a healthier work culture.
We are surrounded by functional alcoholics (10% in the US drink most of the booze). They naturally tend toward career paths that support their behavior.
This reminds me of this sentence from a Wired article[0] in August: > TGIF's transformation from candid conversation to press conference was pretty much complete. As a Googler I'm totally not surprised this is happening. The writing has been on the wall for a very long time. [0]: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery...
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And that's fine. It's a choice. One I personally disagree with, but at least it's a deliberate choice. But if you make such a deliberate choice you need to be frank about it: you're making a tradeoff between, let's say, tranquility and openness, and favoring tranquility at a cost to people whose views are less mainstream. Or (under an alternate definition of political), you're making the choice to accept without argu…
But I think your framing is backwards here. * Banning politics from the workplace is a huge benefit to people whose views are less mainstream. In the presence of politics, people with non-mainstream views have to either lie about what they think or live under a constant cloud of controversy. * Banning politics from the workplace is the only way to keep your values independent of the political environment. If politics…
To your first point, this is only true if you're forced to participate. We have workplace social events, I sometimes choose not to participate. We have political arguments, I often disagree with the majority in those conversations. I simply don't engage when I'm not up for a debate. It's yet to be an issue. I'd agree that forcing people to express their political views is unreasonable, but that also isn't a position I've seen expressed except as a Boogeyman.
To your second point, if your values are independent of the current political climate, you need to be able to discuss how your actions align with your values. If you're working in political spaces, this necessitates discussion of political issues. To be concrete, if your values are "don't be evil", you need to be willing to have the discussion on whether or not working with the Chinese government on a censored search tool is evil. This is a really complex question (and I use this example because I've heard great arguments in both directions), but if you censor political discussion, the organization can't be held accountable, because no one is allowed to ask.
To your third point, I'm in agreement with your specific example, but asking a question about improving the healthcare policy at an all hands on HR issues would be warranted. Similarly, asking about access to gender neutral restrooms would be warranted even if it's political to some people.
To your last bit, I'm not saying that you can't ban certain things for certain reasons. As an example, banning discrimination is okay, even though some discrimination might be political.
In essence, I'm of the opinion that if you hold a belief strongly enough to ban dissent, you should be forthright about the belief. If your want to ban Republicans, or ban people who openly identify as trans (both of which are legal in various US jurisdictions), at least have the decency so say so and not hide behind banning "political discussion" or "political activism".
First. Thanks to HN for not demanding phone numbers: anonymity allows to say things that cannot be said. Second. Many googlers read HN. In some sense, HN is the extension of the internal forums. CNBC made a good summary and I can comment on each bullet point. Larry and Brin probably stopped attending because nothing important is said on TGIFs. More people -> more leaks -> less interesting information -> less attenden…
There is a lot of overlap, because both are about gaining power and influence, but there are big differences in needs, resources and routes taken. It's easy to misunderstand them.
Google, thanks to the amount of info they sit on and decisions they make about how it flows, is stuck bang in the middle of those two worlds. Other corps sit in that intersection too such as oil/energy, defense, banking, media etc but none of them have achieved info scale that Google has.
This is still early days where traditional Politicians/Parties (other than the Chinese) haven't fully processed what those info flows can do to them.
They recognize now, how important corps sitting on top of mountain ranges of data are. But the moment they loose power and influence because of those info flow is when real awakening happens. It's safe to assume Real World Politics will dominate Org Politics within such corps. Things will break apart just as they did with Newspapers and TV/Radio News.
At an individual level it's always good to think about what your needs are and be conscious of them. People who aren't, just get dragged by whatever chaos is unfolding thinking they have no role to play or choice. Those that are in touch with their needs and values experience the whole story very differently.
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> (It turns out that it's not possible to selectively repress emotions: "I've got to watch what I say about politics" subconsciously spills over into "I've got to watch what I say" which spills over into "I've got to watch what I say about anything new and controversial", and you lose the latter well before the former.) I don't believe this. I can tune out whatever random BS my coworkers a few desks over are talking…
I don’t know if I could really trust the opinions of a co-worker who believed the earth is flat. I’m pretty sure that would influence my attitude towards them in technical discussions as well.
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> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Sorry but I cannot stand that level of internal koolaid. I guess you also think that Google got the "smartest" people? There are literally thousands of companies working on problems way more interesting and with more stakes and upsides for…
If you know names of those better workplaces, I'm all ears.
It's great that you like working for Google and have found a good fit.
Some features I like in workplace culture:
- Empowering the "builders" and developers to have autonomy and guide how product development cycles are defined.
- Top cover provided by managers - managing expectations from stake holders
- Overall non-toxic environment
- Quality work and product vision
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I think it’s interesting that people absolve management from blame, when they actively hid details of military contracts with employees.
Can’t really blame them for that given the reaction. You can blame them for taking those contracts in the first place.
Now that is much less true, ditchng the meetings also makes sense.
Google grows up, ends up like most big companies.
Not a shocker, but the initial, "users really trust us to do good"culture is a major clash. Could be a very painful, enduring one.
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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…
It's true that Google doesn't need creative all stars. It needs line workers, and there's no way its culture of whimsical creativity could have survived expanding so much and so quickly. Your point about emotions is also good. Here is another way to put it. The issue IMO is that they told people they were changing the world and by making information universally available etc etc. The people who went to work for them…
I mean, just think about it. Standard Oil had the same monopoly over a valuable resource (oil then, Software and Data today) that Google has today (fine, Facebook etc too... but there is no Facebook search; also they are monopolies over different kinds of digital products). They need to be broken up; their successors will probably end up becoming quite big over time; rinse, rise, repeat.
Capitalism is an amazing thing. Only the strongest survive but then they dominate everything and strangle the market itself. Fuck that, keep the markets free of such control by non state actors.
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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?
Microsoft had a reputation from very early for ruthlessness and infighting; it's not the sort of thing that particularly attracts idealists, or encourages them to speak up if they do get hired.
At Apple, the boss (Steve Jobs) was in charge and most employees feared him. Also they were very compartmentalized and secretive. Not the same thing at all. (I'm going by press reports over the years.)
Amazon has a strong leader who sets the culture, and it's all about business rather than idealism.
I don't know about Netflix.
Facebook seems to be leaking quite a lot and has some similar problems to Google?
I think a lot of this has to do with what you think you're signing up for when you get hired. It's not like employees at a defense contractor are going to complain about military contracts. For years, many people joining Google thought they were joining an idealistic organization where they would be able to contribute to "changing the world" in some positive, non-ironic way. That's what they signed up to do. But I doubt new hires think that way anymore?