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I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

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Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#21
post #5

Google, in my mind, is the quintessential "You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" story. (To be fair, since this all is subjective, I do believe Google 2009 would consider this behavior counter to it's values and the values of the people it attracted.) The question I have is are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth a…

Or that "Don't Be Evil" was all PR nonsense from the beginning that we naively gobbled up.

The article does say Google risked all their China money at one point to stay true to their "don't be evil" mantra. They turned heel only recently. I'd say they genuinely believed and practiced it for a while, but once the upper management started to get infected with business types instead of technologists, that was the beginning of the end.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#22

He left.... because he got fired. I get that he could have sued to get some type of fake (reduced role) job back, but.... the blog would be better if he didn't make it sound it was 100% his choice.

Headline matters 10x more than the content I have read, as people won’t read more than a paragraph.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#23
post #5

Google, in my mind, is the quintessential "You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" story. (To be fair, since this all is subjective, I do believe Google 2009 would consider this behavior counter to it's values and the values of the people it attracted.) The question I have is are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth a…

One way Google, a software company in the broad sense of the term, could have avoided a blog post with such a title is to never hire a “Head of International Relations” in the first place.

Which leads to my attempt at answering the question, of how one could stay true to ones values - know the things you’ll never do. Then don’t. Ever.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#24
post #5

Google, in my mind, is the quintessential "You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" story. (To be fair, since this all is subjective, I do believe Google 2009 would consider this behavior counter to it's values and the values of the people it attracted.) The question I have is are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth a…

I'm always a bit taken aback by the heat that Google gets for even thinking about breaking into the Chinese market. Microsoft is in China and has active US military contracts. Apple is in China. Yet it's Google that gets the bad rap for trying to get into China and then ultimately turning down billions of dollars in revenue and data.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#25
post #5

Google, in my mind, is the quintessential "You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" story. (To be fair, since this all is subjective, I do believe Google 2009 would consider this behavior counter to it's values and the values of the people it attracted.) The question I have is are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth a…

Stay private. I don't think publicly traded companies can be values-driven, but if you maintain control over the ownership of the company, you can. Here I'm thinking of something like Wegman's grocery stores.

If Wegman's went public and had to meet the demands of Wall Street investors, I think they would lose what makes them special.

I can't think of an example of a large, closely held firm in tech.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#26
post #5

Google, in my mind, is the quintessential "You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" story. (To be fair, since this all is subjective, I do believe Google 2009 would consider this behavior counter to it's values and the values of the people it attracted.) The question I have is are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth a…

There is an interesting book called Maverick by Ricardo Selemar I think is his name, who took over Brazil's largest steel company in the 80's. One of the points he makes in the book is that we have this obsession with growing business, if the company does $200 million in revenue this year, it has to do $250 million in revenue next year, etc.

That kind of thing, I think this is a big part of the problem is this mindset of competition and continuous growth for no other sake than growing. Part of this is a healthy desire to improve and for a while a company can make legitimate improvements for a while, years, decades, if you keep forcing people to improve a metric, revenue or share price in this case, there comes a point where there can be no more legitimate improvement, then people start to play to the numbers and as pressure increases start to turn towards means that are unethical and illegal. We can see this in every facet of life, cheating in sports because we are reaching the peak of human capabilities, banks and "financial engineers" that spend all of their time trying to invent instruments and methods for funneling money from one group of people to another, or a more concrete example software engineers that start producing shoddy code because they have to meet a deadline.

I don't blame the investor's for this and I don't think the problem is capitalism itself either, I think we'd have a different but no less destructive set of problems if we had the government running or intervening, e.g. New lifesaving drugs take 10 years a $1,000,000,000.00 to get to market because of FDA regulations that primarily benefit incumbents. I don't know a way to fix this or solve this without changing the way people decide and prioritize things, because at the end of the day what we like to call "systems" usually just end up being a reflection of an aggregate of human desires, and bad people will ruin any system, good people can make any system work.

To tie it all back, if I were to do it the only way I could see not becoming the villain is to content yourself with not being the absolute best and not comparing, or in other words, "Thou shalt not covet." either as a CEO deciding the fate of a company or as an individual in your life. If someone has a better option I'd love to hear it, but right now it seems that the incessant desire to have more and be bigger in every material thing is at the root of the problem.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#27
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth and profit taking) with the way our society is structured? Purism is trying to do exactly this by being Social Purpose Corporation: https://puri.sm/about/social-purpose/ . However, I would not call them a "major company" yet.

Also called social benefit corporations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation If the company doesn’t have their values and goals listed in the articles of incorporation, then they have no legal obligation to follow them.

>> Also called social benefit corporations

Wikipedia says it's not the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purpose_corporation

>> If the company doesn’t have their values and goals listed in the articles of incorporation, then they have no legal obligation to follow them.

But Purism afaik does have them listed.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#28
post #25
post #5

Google, in my mind, is the quintessential "You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" story. (To be fair, since this all is subjective, I do believe Google 2009 would consider this behavior counter to it's values and the values of the people it attracted.) The question I have is are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth a…

Stay private. I don't think publicly traded companies can be values-driven, but if you maintain control over the ownership of the company, you can. Here I'm thinking of something like Wegman's grocery stores. If Wegman's went public and had to meet the demands of Wall Street investors, I think they would lose what makes them special. I can't think of an example of a large, closely held firm in tech.

Costco has done a really good job of maintaining their values in the face of pressure from shareholders, so I'd argue it is definitely possible.

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#29

It was no different in the workplace culture. Senior colleagues bullied and screamed at young women, causing them to cry at their desks. At an all-hands meeting, my boss said, “Now you Asians come to the microphone too. I know you don’t like to ask questions.” At a different all-hands meeting, the entire policy team was separated into various rooms and told to participate in a “diversity exercise” that placed me in a…

That tops Michael Scott's Diversity Day. Life is stranger than fiction...

Re: I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left

#30
post #5

Google, in my mind, is the quintessential "You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain" story. (To be fair, since this all is subjective, I do believe Google 2009 would consider this behavior counter to it's values and the values of the people it attracted.) The question I have is are there ways to stay true to values (which in some cases might be in direct opposition to growth a…

I'm always a bit taken aback by the heat that Google gets for even thinking about breaking into the Chinese market. Microsoft is in China and has active US military contracts. Apple is in China. Yet it's Google that gets the bad rap for trying to get into China and then ultimately turning down billions of dollars in revenue and data.

The rest of them have been open about the fact they are ruthless profit making centers focused only on money and you shut up and stay in line or else you're toast. Google's model was "don't be evil" and for years went on the image that they are fighting for the public good and that they were an example of the ability to be principle centered, do good for the world, and get stinking rich at the same time. Now that the pressure starts to turn up on how to be profitable it turns out that everything they said they stood for, and more importantly the ideal that they represented, turned out to be a lie.

They were able to cash in on this image of moral superiority and principle first for years and it gave them a leg up, now that they have abandoned that fall more for it.

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