71–80 of 141 posts
FYI: this is an excerpt from https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Be-Evil-Bosses-Promises/dp/00634...
Fun easter egg: the barcode on the cover (the one on the left at least) is for the book's ISBN.
Google figured out how to create a classless suite of internet services for anyone on Earth with an internet connection to use. I struggle to see how this didn't meet their original goals, what people celebrated about Google, and what made Google such an attractive place for people like the author to work. What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken fo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Billionaires use Gmail alongside impoverished people across the world.
"Here at the phone company we serve everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth" https://vimeo.com/355556831
This right here, ooh you're so close! Those 400k people were fired because white collar workers, as a bloc, became powerful, and started making demands of management, demands like "you should do something about social inequality." During the height of the pandemic, most of that energy was focused on race. And those demands were met! C-suite executives and board members were forced by their white collar employees to implement DEI initiatives at work, put pronouns in their email signatures, have complex conversations about social power and race and gender at company all-hands. These same people are now sitting behind Donald Trump at his inauguration.
Did they do those DEI things in 2021 because they wanted to, or because they had to? And if they had to, what power compelled them? Remember: these people gave 90 million dollars to someone who coerced one of his own employees to do oral sex on him in a hotel room!
The way I read this is that a company will sacrifice everything (in this case, incredible corporate culture) to maintain the balance of power between management and employee. As soon as I started reading about internal organizing, I knew exactly where this story was going to end.
Your job description re-written at the drop of a hat, sudden re-org and alienation from coworkers, feeling like an interloper at your own job, sudden gaslighting - that is what real power looks like. The only reason she was not immediately fired is because of actual labor laws, which H.R. knows inside and out. Were those laws not on the books every single one of those googler moms in that group chat would be fired within 24 hours. They probably were all pushed out in a manner exactly like Claire within the span of a few months. With a paper trail to CYA in case of a suit.
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Well, they aren't hated for the tech they built, that is cool and easily appreciated. People don't like google because they turned it into a way to sell people to others for a profit in essence. Over time more and more intrusive to the point where they are no longer worth any of the services they offer. Like a creepy stalker following you every where you go, at some point you need a restraining order. Most people don…
Ding ding ding. Google is only a few steps away from the "Orphan-Crushing Machine", or the pods that imprison/enslave people in The Matrix, because it is literally the hardware-software-businessmodel matrix which creates and maintains conditions of oppression through unprecedented surveillance and other late-stage capitalistic evils. If the office software they created existed in a vacuum, it might be appreciated. Bu…
No, that would "literally" be Palantir. Like, literally literally, that's their actual business model: selling surveillance and murder drones to intelligence agencies.
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Ding ding ding. Google is only a few steps away from the "Orphan-Crushing Machine", or the pods that imprison/enslave people in The Matrix, because it is literally the hardware-software-businessmodel matrix which creates and maintains conditions of oppression through unprecedented surveillance and other late-stage capitalistic evils. If the office software they created existed in a vacuum, it might be appreciated. Bu…
> it is literally the hardware-software-businessmodel matrix which creates and maintains conditions of oppression through unprecedented surveillance and other late-stage capitalistic evils. No, that would "literally" be Palantir. Like, literally literally, that's their actual business model: selling surveillance and murder drones to intelligence agencies.
Anyway, both are true, and if I could wipe one off the face of the earth it would be Palantir.
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> Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, McDonalds, etc. Certainly… according to who? I think some of these companies are, certainly, less evil than Google
> McDonalds McDonalds should start allowing full 50% off order discounts in exchange for customers opting-in to receiving custom-printed wrappers with hyperpersonalized advertising printed on-demand just for them. Could they afford to do it? IDK, advertising is effective and seems like a big business. I think with their McDonalds App discounts for more normal pricing (last I checked), they're half way there?
I do like that McDonalds employees call me Valued Customer instead of the Facebook Name, after enabling one of the app privacy settings.
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Let's say you could calculate a good-evil score for every large corporation by netting the good they do against the evil they do. I don't know if Google would be net-good or net-evil, but I'm pretty sure they would be far less evil than most of the other large corporations on that list. Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Gold…
> Certainly less evil than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco, Meta, JPMorgan Chase, UnitedHealth, Coca-Cola, Oracle, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, LVMH, McDonalds, etc. Certainly… according to who? I think some of these companies are, certainly, less evil than Google
Google figured out how to create a classless suite of internet services for anyone on Earth with an internet connection to use. I struggle to see how this didn't meet their original goals, what people celebrated about Google, and what made Google such an attractive place for people like the author to work. What's fascinating is that Google gets virtually zero recognition for this (Google services are largely taken fo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They de-facto created a monopoly. You can reason that its services are useful, but without also pointing out that they established a de-facto monopoly, this "analysis" is very incomplete. > what people celebrated about Google When exactly? Google initially was not anywhere near as problematic as it is today. I don't see many celebrate Google these days. > what made Google such an attractive place for people like the…
what monopoly did they create? it seems they have competitors in everything they do.
I understand Meta has an ad business as well—but no one I know uses their sites.