111–120 of 227 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's TGIF at Google? Is it a weekly event where you can ask exec questions in an open forum?
Bit like that. After hard questions starting being asked the execs locked that shit right down. Not much of substance goes on there anymore. Just fake shit and platitudes.
I'm not saying this with the intent of harshly criticizing the author, but I admit it's surprising to me that someone (who had other options) would work for 14 years at a company they clearly came to believe was making the world a worse place.
The alternatives aren't really all that better on the topics that he criticized. If you work at big tech, at that scale, it's inevitable there will be parts of the company you disagree with. From my experience there, as long as your criticism is legitimate and constructive, it'll be well received by Googlers/company, heck some of his criticism pales in comparison to the ones done with memes.
Part of an aspect of sticking to your guns ethically and morally is making choices that leave you worse off. If your ethics align with what is best for you, personally, it's not much of an ethical code
I love inside jokes. I hope to be a part of one someday.
Lots of good comics in there. A few I haven't seen highlighted yet: https://goomics.net/127/ - poor, poor Google Plus. Somehow it wasn't a warning sign that the big executive-supported project to Win Social was a laughingstock internally. https://goomics.net/202/ followed years later by https://goomics.net/294/ - everybody expected TGIF to get worse over time, and apparently it did. https://goomics.net/118/ - the las…
What's TGIF at Google? Is it a weekly event where you can ask exec questions in an open forum?
I'm not saying this with the intent of harshly criticizing the author, but I admit it's surprising to me that someone (who had other options) would work for 14 years at a company they clearly came to believe was making the world a worse place.
There's a weird sense of internal entitlement where some (likely a small, but still substantial) number of people work there, are well paid, and yet act internally as if it's some terrible place doing terrible things (yet stay working there). Whatever way they rationalize this to themselves - it's odd. I don't have first hand exposure, have only heard things through friends that were employees.
Some of the most coddled/well compensated employees in human history acting as if they're in some sort of oppressive sweat shop.
Reminds me of this: https://paygo.ghost.io/why-did-i-leave-google-or-why-did-i-s...
The employees also pushed to avoid working for the USG, pushed to avoid the JEDI contract (though they likely would have lost it anyway) while at the same time trying to work within China (while Deep Mind may or may not be indirectly assisting in Uighur camps [0]). I think this is morally wrong and the arguments are often simple/naive.
[0]: ">>Peter Thiel: ...But somehow it’s very difficult to talk about this stuff coherently. I had a set of conversations with some of the Google people in the deep mind AI technology, “is your AI being used to run the concentration camps in Xinjiang?” and “Well, We don’t know and don’t ask any questions.” You have this almost magical thinking that by pretending that everything is fine, that’s how you engage and have a conversation. And you make the world better. And it’s some combination of wishful thinking. It’s useful idiots, you know, it’s CCP fifth columnist collaborators. So it’s some super position of all these things. But I think if you think of it ideologically or in terms of human rights or something like that, I’m tempted to say it’s just profoundly racist. It’s like saying that because they look different, they’re not white people, they don’t have the same rights. It’s something super wrong. But I don’t quite know how you unlock that."
https://nixonseminar.com/2021/04/the-nixon-seminar-april-6-2...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bit like that. After hard questions starting being asked the execs locked that shit right down. Not much of substance goes on there anymore. Just fake shit and platitudes.
Well that doesn't sound very Google-y.
Though I think Zuckerberg has done a good job continuing this despite the leaks (at least that's what it seems like externally).
It might not be just the company that changed, but the employees too (which may have forced Google to change policy as a result).