401–410 of 600 posts
I turned down an offer from Google (cloud) because I didn't want to work for a company that was so focused on politics internally. This was just after they fired Damore, not that I agree or disagree with his opinion, but because Google seems promote internal fighting. That type of culture doesn't appeal to me.
Google is promoting internal fighting ? That's the most baseless accusation I can think of and is miles apart from my personal experience.
Sounds like Googlers spoiled the well. I'm not sure exactly why but Google employees always seem to be in the news about something and have leaked conversations that management had with them. In some instances the controversy is warranted (Rubin Payout, etc.) but it must be annoying from a management perspective.
What a distasteful sentiment. Management is punishing workers with their silence, and their lack of transparency, and you have the gall to suggest these workers deserve it? That they brought it upon themselves? It's our right to speak up about our experiences, even if that means "leaking" our bosses words. In a sense, it's our duty–Google's actions impact us all, and we're owed transparency with which management's no…
Google is a company, not a collective. Companies typically have various controlled ways of disseminating information, both internally and externally.
Internal transparency (at a company of Google’s size) effectively means public transparency... ie all of the inner workings are known to everyone. I’m not aware of any for-profit organization that can function effectively that way.
Nothing to see here. While most employees are chill, I would imagine Google has a disproportionation of hyper ideologists who are intolerant to different opinions and self-righteous to bring everything down to achieve personal validation. The trust is reduced, but it is both way, between employer and employees. Without that, any conversation is meaningless.
If you're an engineer at Google, you've probably had a great technical education, you feel empowered because if Google would hire you, you can assume most anyone else would too; you probably feel smart because of this and in many ways you probably are a pretty smart person. You're very well paid and compensated and you know it. There are a lot of things here that not only give someone confidence but also conviction.…
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It's true that Google doesn't need creative all stars. It needs line workers, and there's no way its culture of whimsical creativity could have survived expanding so much and so quickly. Your point about emotions is also good. Here is another way to put it. The issue IMO is that they told people they were changing the world and by making information universally available etc etc. The people who went to work for them…
They could try to split up. The separation into Alphabet seems almost a dream for regulators who can just separate them. I mean, just think about it. Standard Oil had the same monopoly over a valuable resource (oil then, Software and Data today) that Google has today (fine, Facebook etc too... but there is no Facebook search; also they are monopolies over different kinds of digital products). They need to be broken u…
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The dude said whole classes of people were genetically inferior. That makes employee evaluations impossible. He had to go.
This is not what he said at all. He said that the interests of men are different than the interests of women. You are blindly repeating what blogs and other activists reported he said. Go read his memo.
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It's true that Google doesn't need creative all stars. It needs line workers, and there's no way its culture of whimsical creativity could have survived expanding so much and so quickly. Your point about emotions is also good. Here is another way to put it. The issue IMO is that they told people they were changing the world and by making information universally available etc etc. The people who went to work for them…
They could try to split up. The separation into Alphabet seems almost a dream for regulators who can just separate them. I mean, just think about it. Standard Oil had the same monopoly over a valuable resource (oil then, Software and Data today) that Google has today (fine, Facebook etc too... but there is no Facebook search; also they are monopolies over different kinds of digital products). They need to be broken u…
Ouch, don't let Facebook hear you say that :p
They tried so hard to get Search to stick, to the point of trying to juice the numbers by forcing you to go to a result page instead of directly to a group/page/profile in the live results dropdown.
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I assume this was for a supervisory position or an HR position? These aren’t really politically charged questions but rather questions about how to manage people and the issues that come with people. While the cause of the complaint may be politically charged, how one would handle the situation should be pretty by the book.
Even if the book is wrong?
By “the book” I meant a well thought out process that follows the law, protects parties in a dispute, prevents retaliation, encourages reporting, and is well documented and understood. I’m probably missing a bunch of other best practices - not a certified HR Specialist.
My only aim here was to distinguish between disputes that arise in politically charged areas vs. the handling of those disputes which, I would argue should not be charged at all but rather an efficient run-through of a dispute process that “works”.
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I know you're a prolific poster on here, and you often provide valuable contributions, so it's disheartening to see how full of misinformation this comment is. I've worked at many tech companies, and Google has among the best work-life balance I've encountered. Work hours vary by team and by role, but on a whole, it's very reasonable. They serve three meals, but you're not expected to eat all three meals. Some people…
And many companies unlike Google don't let you take food home. Or serve it very late, so you are working late. This is not the case at Google at all. The parent comment is so off the mark. These kind of posters have an image in their head from HN threads and keep propagating it in their comments.
Of course, now there are constant stories of tech employees griping about how evil they think their employers are, how unfairly they're being treated, how little freedom they have to express their opinions. It's hard not to roll my eyes sometimes.
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But I think your framing is backwards here. * Banning politics from the workplace is a huge benefit to people whose views are less mainstream. In the presence of politics, people with non-mainstream views have to either lie about what they think or live under a constant cloud of controversy. * Banning politics from the workplace is the only way to keep your values independent of the political environment. If politics…
(fyi I really appreciate this thread of discussion, it's quite interesting) To your first point, this is only true if you're forced to participate. We have workplace social events, I sometimes choose not to participate. We have political arguments, I often disagree with the majority in those conversations. I simply don't engage when I'm not up for a debate. It's yet to be an issue. I'd agree that forcing people to ex…
I don't think forced political expression is entirely a boogeyman. There was an article a couple months back[1] where a guy was publicly offended that (admittedly among other complaints) his coworkers weren't talking enough about police brutality. Anecdotally I have a lot of stories; for Hispanic Heritage Month, for example, we had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posters all around the office.
It's definitely important to discuss how your actions align with your values. Sometimes that will mean discussing values issues that are also political issues, and sometimes that will mean making a very slippery distinction. But this isn't the extent of the political activism at Google. When employees insisted that Kay Coles James must not be allowed on the AI advisory council[2], they didn't argue that having her would make Google do some particular evil thing. They argued that she's a mean person who holds the wrong political views, so Google must shun her.
People definitely should be honest about what they want to ban and why. But again, in my experience, most people opposed to politics in the workplace honestly do have content-neutral motivations. I'm a very strong Andrew Yang supporter, bumper sticker and pile of campaign swag and all, and I never bring it up in the workplace because I'm not there to do partisan politics.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kd3w/google-employee-me...
[2]https://medium.com/@against.transphobia/googlers-against-tra...
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Imagine if wikipedia courted specific types of activists. People should take sides but companies should be neutral,and get out of the way of people engaging in political discourse or activism.
Wikipedia is far from neutral and full of activists and people with agendas. It can sometimes be acceptable for a broad overview of a subject, but it's so full of opinion, inaccuracy, and misinformation that it should have near zero credibility for anyone who is seeking truth and bias-free knowledge. Appropriately, it has zero credibility in any credible academic environment BTW.