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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

#51

Post by patrickk »

hpoe wrote: post #30
suddenexample wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apple at least somewhat tries to put up an image of caring about environmental issues[1] and privacy (e.g. in the aftermath of San Bernardino attack). (Of course they still have Chinese sweatshops, and who knows how much raw materials comes from child labour in the Congo so of course it's mostly a smokescreen.)

[1] https://www.cultofmac.com/268413/tim-cook-tells-profit-obses...

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

#52

Post by tharne »

throwlaplace wrote: post #35
hpoe wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>They were able to cash in on this image of moral superiority and principle first for years and it gave them a leg up okay but honestly how silly is it to take a company's branding to heart? like are we all children that believe in santa claus too? >do good for the world, and get stinking rich at the same time i'm old enough now to understand that these two things are mutually exclusive because the latter necessarily…

Doing good for the world and getting rich are by no means mutually exclusive. People pay money for products and services that make their lives better and history has shown that economic growth is not a zero-sum game.

Where companies get into ethical trouble is when they try to maintain exponential growth long after it is possible to do so in a way that is moral. You can make a lot of money doing good for the world, but you can't sustain exponential growth indefinitely without crossing a few lines.

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

#53

Post by jedberg »

nickv wrote: 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 know I'm biased because I worked there, but I think Netflix is still true to its values.

It's always been about sharing stories with as many people as possible.

They green light stuff that no one else will, some bad, some good, but they give a lot of storytellers a voice when no one else will.

I remember that the legal department was surprisingly small, mainly because they don't go around suing everyone all the time.

Overall I'd say they have managed to stay true, but to their advantage, their values have always been the most profitable path, so they never had to really choose between profit and ethics.

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

#54

Post by akfanta »

Aperocky wrote: post #43
virtuous_signal wrote: post #10

I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money". But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad p…

> ethical sense Define that. For regular people in China, does the addition of Google with some censorship make their life better? Does it improve information flow over existing domestic search engines? I think the answer is obvious. People subscribe to overly simplistic thinking - if something is not perfect, it must be the worst. I see a lot of people promoting sanctions on a country because of government. Who gets…

> People subscribe to overly simplistic thinking - if something is not perfect, it must be the worst.

Sometimes I think this is a result of information explosion. People gets overwhelmed by the amount of available information, so as a self-protection mechanism, they subscribe to the simplest binary thought process.

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

#55

Post by derivagral »

sriram_sun wrote: post #20

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…

Comment from a prior discussion around this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21935706

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

#56

Post by dx87 »

sriram_sun wrote: post #20

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…

The last time this was posted, someone found that it's an exercise based on a university study designed to address common stereotypes. The publishers of the study only tested it in an academic setting with students, though, and recommended that it not be done without a trained professional to guide the discussion. Google basically cargo-culted the experiment and assumed it would work in a corporate setting without the trained professionals.

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

#57

Post by akfanta »

shadowgovt wrote: post #45
virtuous_signal wrote: post #10

I don't have firsthand knowledge, but my conjecture is that the old Google probably had a significant % of employees who held the belief "We shouldn't censor for China, even if that makes us lose money". But over a period of years, whatever they selected for in hiring led to enough people joining, who don't give a damn about human rights in China, so the censorship went ahead. The only thing that stopped it was bad p…

Google hired a significant number of Chinese citizens and migrants who didn't leave China for political reasons. Not surprisingly, they tend not to see China's government policy as evil.

> Chinese citizens and migrants who didn't leave China for political reasons.

According to whom?

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

#59

Post by wsetchell »

Requiring every product team to go through a central human rights review seems like a bad idea.

Not only would it be expensive (new overhead for lots of product teams), it would be counter productive.

Today the product leaders are accountable for the impact of their decisions, since they are the only ones who are making them.

If there's a central decision committee, the product leaders would be able abdicate their responsibility since they didn't fully make the decision.

Over time incentives will cause the the product leaders to push for more risky decisions, committee to get less risky, and the whole company to slow down.

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

#60

Post by phkahler »

throwlaplace wrote: post #31
suddenexample wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that's because google won over hearts and minds with "do no evil" so people feel betrayed because they invested themselves in the ideology of the company. it's mostly their fault for taking branding seriously.

>> it's mostly their fault for taking branding seriously.

That's a hard lesson for a lot of people. Unfortunately it comes in different forms as well. I cant tell you how many places I've run across that seem to be paying slightly more than lip service to safety standards.

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