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Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

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Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#171

Post by thaumaturgy »

erwan wrote: post #161
thaumaturgy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, alternatively, sexual abuse is a current hot-button issue, and this is helping to create a perfect storm of people who feel either exploited by companies and their executives (because they are), or that they don't have a reasonable amount of influence in large companies (they don't), or that so many executives get to fail upward (they do), or that sexual abuse is still not handled as seriously as it should be (it…

>this is helping to create a perfect storm of people who feel either exploited by companies and their executives (because they are) What do you mean by that? I know only a few Googlers, mostly new grads. They don't seem to be worked to the bone or mistreated (9-5, high comp, benefits etc.) and have excellent working conditions (ergonomic workflow, offices with natural light, mentoring, good internal tooling). In fact…

Those are good by modern standards, but you still get to see someone get paid $2 million a month for 4 years, plus receive investments in their next venture, after committing an offense that would probably get you summarily fired.

It's pretty messed up that we look at a situation like that now and say, "well the employees only have to work 9 to 5 and they get great health benefits, so I don't see why anybody would be upset."

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#172

Post by blablabla123 »

Ptyx wrote: post #89

Reminds me that Kierkegaard has written about Google: "A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. In the present age a rebellion is, of all things, the most unthinkable. Such an expression of strength would seem ridiculous to the calculating intelligence of our times. On the other hand a political virtuoso might bring off a feat almost as remarkable. He might write a mani…

This in turn reminds me of a Dostoyevski story where a guy thinks he can make an amazing speech of 15 minutes that will convince everybody. I don't think this is how reality works

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#173

Post by lotgon »

Analemma_ wrote: post #141
lotgon wrote: post #64

200 engineers organizing a protest. 2000 engineers are afraid to organize a protest against false accusations. Inverted democracy

As about a dozen people in this thread have already patiently explained, Google investigated the accusations and found them credible. If you have evidence to the contrary, which Google didn’t have at the time of its investigation, kindly present it.

I believe in the law. Google guys are smart, but they don`t have enough skills and intelligence in this kind of investigation and they can`t make any decision about guilty/not guilty.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#174

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

lotgon wrote: post #173
Analemma_ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As about a dozen people in this thread have already patiently explained, Google investigated the accusations and found them credible. If you have evidence to the contrary, which Google didn’t have at the time of its investigation, kindly present it.

I believe in the law. Google guys are smart, but they don`t have enough skills and intelligence in this kind of investigation and they can`t make any decision about guilty/not guilty.

$90m payout sounds like a pretty solid guilty decision to me.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#175

Post by akswamy »

Have the protest organizers communicated any specific set of outcomes they wish to achieve from the walkout? The news article does not go into those details. Perhaps I have missed out something there.

In the previous protests, Google employees had their demands penned in open letters which I believe also contributed to concrete actions taken or responses given by Google. A generic protest is bound to only draw vague assurances such as those given in their all-hands meeting as reported in the article.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#176

Post by notacoward »

leereeves wrote: post #163
notacoward wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubt all you like. It doesn't matter. What matters is whether Google doubts it, and I think they know better. They know the costs of hiring and training and downtime for their business. Do you seriously suppose that they think they could just find a few thousand replacements on a moment's notice?

Now you're making a different argument. Yes, there are costs involved in replacing employees, and there are costs involved in allowing employees to walk out or refuse to work on certain projects. Naturally Google will weigh those costs. But earlier you claimed they were "the only ones" capable, and that I wanted to abridge their freedom of association. I disagreed with both those statements. Now that you've restricte…

> earlier you claimed they were "the only ones" capable

No, I claimed that they were the only ones capable of running the systems without significant interruption. Others can be trained up, but it would take months and there would be some failures along the way. You're the one whose argument has been changing, since you started with the presumption that strikes' effectiveness relies on explicitly excluding others (e.g. via law or force).

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#177

Post by ocdtrekkie »

cromwellian wrote: post #104
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Every single engineer at Google could get hired almost anywhere else. And many, who start their own projects could build those things outside Google as startups as well. (One of my favorite services was created by a Xoogler's startup.) In addition to that, while a walk out does not "move the needle" for executives or investors in any significant sense, if any even statistically significant number of engineer…

By contrast, there is no shortage of people willing to work for Google. If the most ethical people with the strongest moral compass leave, then they may be replaced with people who have less aversion to working on military drone contracts, or other things. Smart people can be moral, they can also be amoral. Google can continue to execute with either. What you're suggesting could lead to a 'morality drain' equivalent…

It is interesting that the defense you've chosen is that which many have used to defend both Maven and Dragonfly; that at least if Google is doing it, it is better than if someone "less moral" was doing it, without recognizing the reduced excellence that would occur if that were true.

Perhaps you have less respect for Google engineers than I do! If Google is hiring the best, and many of them leave because of moral issues, then Google is left with hiring the second best. You seem to treat all Google engineers as replaceable cogs which are easily swapped out. But just because there is no shortage of people willing to work for Google doesn't mean there won't be a shortage of people of the caliber Google needs to continue at their current level.

Sure, the last few moral people leaving could lead to Google's behavior getting worse, but it would arguably also lead to Google being less successful. Even less people would trust Google as their behavior became "worse".

Perhaps you believe other places are worse because you remember them being worse a number of years ago. But things like sexual harassment training are pretty much nationwide standard these days. I've never been to a workplace that didn't mandate it, and every one of them has a process to report abuse. I am curious how you believe you can work for somewhere that's better than elsewhere when nearly every Alphabet executive has some sort of sexual misconduct that can be associated with them, and it's hard to see what way forward there is for remedying this.

Is Larry Page and Sergey Brin resigning a possible endgoal here? It's hard for me to see an end to the culture of sexual exploitation at a company where it starts at the very top and those people face no penalty.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#178

Post by Analemma_ »

lotgon wrote: post #173
Analemma_ wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As about a dozen people in this thread have already patiently explained, Google investigated the accusations and found them credible. If you have evidence to the contrary, which Google didn’t have at the time of its investigation, kindly present it.

I believe in the law. Google guys are smart, but they don`t have enough skills and intelligence in this kind of investigation and they can`t make any decision about guilty/not guilty.

That’s not what you said in your first comment, you clearly said “false accusations”. Are you walking back that claim now?

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#179

Post by cityzen »

danso wrote: post #62
cityzen wrote: post #38

a "walk out"... one in which people are so darn angry they walk out of work.. and then walk right back in and keep doing their job. I wish more people would quit these mega-corps over stuff like this. "Google engineers outraged...", "Facebook employees outraged..."... so quit. Go find work at a place that isn't an evil corporation. If you didn't get the memo, Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all pretty evil…

What if the employees genuinely believe the company's overall work is good, and that these flaws can be mitigated?

If you work at Google and you really, truly believe that Google's overall work is good, good for you! I suppose I have more self respect to say that if a company is going to push me far enough to walk out, I probably need to move on in general.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#180

Post by cromwellian »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #177
cromwellian wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By contrast, there is no shortage of people willing to work for Google. If the most ethical people with the strongest moral compass leave, then they may be replaced with people who have less aversion to working on military drone contracts, or other things. Smart people can be moral, they can also be amoral. Google can continue to execute with either. What you're suggesting could lead to a 'morality drain' equivalent…

It is interesting that the defense you've chosen is that which many have used to defend both Maven and Dragonfly; that at least if Google is doing it, it is better than if someone "less moral" was doing it, without recognizing the reduced excellence that would occur if that were true. Perhaps you have less respect for Google engineers than I do! If Google is hiring the best, and many of them leave because of moral is…

It was only 2006 when I worked at Oracle, I moved to Google in 2009, it’s not like a sea change in sexual harassment reform happened between those years.

Oracle was a worse environment than Google in many ways, this is not nostalgia. Political infighting between teams was far worse, to the point that you’d have people yelling in meetings and then deliberately backstabbing and undermining other teams.

On a trip I went to Helsinki, they arranged naked Finnish sauna with beer and made no provision for the females with us, some who were from traditionally conservative cultures. After the sauna, they took the men to a strip club with Estonian and Russian strippers. I walked the female team members back to the hotel.

Startup companies in the Bay Area of course don’t have these processes, many of them don’t even have a legal or HR department if they have less than 50 people.

The toxic bro culture of SV startups has been well documented by female journalists, a lot of it stemming from the VCs themselves.

Google has 90000 people now, no one is irreplaceable, except maybe Jeff Dean :).

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