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Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

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Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#551

Post by threeseed »

gwbas1c wrote: post #339
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression has not been that the memo is when political discussions turned toxic, but merely the first time it very publicly breached the sacred wall of non-disclosure with the outside world. Prior to that, most everyone seemed content to be upset with each other internally.

Shortly before the memo, there were stories and comments in HN about problems inside Google. I vaguely remember a story about someone in HR getting fired because they didn't pull a white male out of the running for a job. (The details are too fuzzy at this point.)

If you are going to bring up controversial anecdotes like this the onus is on you to actually have clear facts behind it.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#553

Post by fortran77 »

This is an eye opener.

> [Google] employees discussed at length [on internal message boards] whether Trump’s win meant it’s time for a violent revolution. “How do people cope with this?” one employee wrote. “I’ve never been part of a military or war effort before. … I don’t know how useful I’ll be.”

It's about time Google tells people to take their political revolution talk somewhere else other than company internal discussion boards!

https://thefederalist.com/2018/01/10/19-insane-tidbits-james...

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#554

Post by mc32 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #415
stcredzero wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google for quite a while, 2005-2013, and even then, the internal political discussion was pretty toxic, but a lot smaller in scope since there are far fewer people. It sounds like the work culture at Google has rediscovered the emergent factors which gave rise to the traditional cultural strictures against talking about money, politics, and religion. Good science is repeatable. Given that Google is arguab…

My tenure overlapped ('06 - '10) and the discussions were lively. There were (and probably still are) interesting meta-terms like 'centathread' which was a topic that had received >= 100 replies (the gmail threading limit at the time). That said, the change in policy (what is cited at least) reads a bit like "Let's create air cover for management actions to separate trouble makers from the company." Where trouble mak…

But what is the alternative? The problem is diametric opinions end with two people (no company involved). What is the company to do to get people with opposing views to “get along”?

Let’s put up Tibet. Some people will have strong opinions on one side and another set will have strong opinions on the other side. (Most people will be indifferent).

How can the company manage that tension among people who work for them when those people believe the company has given them the freedom to pick a side and express that side and perhaps vocalize and ultimately mobilize?

I don’t see an obvious solution to this beside the traditional course. The present alternatives are even more “authoritarian” (i.e. firing the adherents of the wrong opinion, etc.)

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#555

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

maxaf wrote: post #82
webwielder2 wrote: post #59

It's funny how we pigeonhole "things that actually matter" as "politics" and that those things are somehow taboo. I mean, what's MORE worth talking about than human rights, the environment, history, etc.?

Not every place where groups of people participate in shared activities must become a forum for political battles.

Not every place where people discuss "politics" has to be a place for political battles.

People get into arguments and fights over football, for heaven's sake. Should we ban that, too?

I and my friends regularly discuss politics (on Discord, of all places) and we all have different viewpoints- everything from classical liberal to Bernie Sanders-socialist to conservative to libertarian and we all manage to get along- it's hard sometimes, and there are heated discussions, but we all leave having a good time, and, more importantly, we've learned something.

The way I see it, the problem here is that as political polarization increases, the need for frank discussion without hating people afterwards only increases, and the tolerance for it only goes down. If we want to recover even a little bit from the edge, stuff like Google's "no discussing politics" policy needs to be stopped, and replaced with "discuss politics politely or not at all" instead.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#556

Post by rdtsc »

nullc wrote: post #508

I wonder if this has anything to do with the recently leaked posts that shows google staff used the google search front end to target specific demographics they expected to vote for a particular candidate and then were shocked and upset when a substantial minority portion of those populations voted for different candidates? If discussions are leading to credible allegations that a company was promoting candidates usi…

> I wonder if this has anything to do with the recently leaked posts that shows google staff used the google search front end to target specific demographics they expected to vote for a particular candidate and then were shocked and upset when a substantial minority portion of those populations voted for different candidates?

That's my thought. It sounds that the discussions were always inflamed and lively. But why the change now, right after all that stuff came out? I suspect they are afraid of more leakers, and are afraid of lawsuits which would trigger discovery and then all the internal politics will get dump out.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#557

Post by 1_person »

sequoia wrote: post #365
webwielder2 wrote: post #59

It's funny how we pigeonhole "things that actually matter" as "politics" and that those things are somehow taboo. I mean, what's MORE worth talking about than human rights, the environment, history, etc.?

What's more important to talk about than your immortal soul? The problem is when I think those not saved by Jesus will burn for eternity and you think religious people are the bane of advanced civilization, and there's no way to reconcile these views, this is a problem . It doesn't matter how fervently you or I hold our beliefs, discussing them is only going to lead to discord. Does this mean you and I cannot work to…

I see no reason why one should not be able to recognize a common desire and work to achieve it regardless on disagreement on other issues.

However when a person's point of view is objectively fallacious (Evangelical Christians, national socialists) and advocates doing harm or passing fallacious moral judgement of a class of people (Heathens, hedonists, homosexuals, jews) and that class of people includes you I do not believe you should ever be expected to tolerate or abstain from challenging that point of view.

If an individual is advocating harm to others and can't withstand scrutiny of their agenda then that's their problem. I don't see this any differently than suggesting you should avoid challenging sexual harassment or physical abuse in the place of work in order to minimize friction. Certain "points of view" should encounter friction at all times and from all sides, because they are reprehensible.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#558

Post by cookiecaper »

jonas21 wrote: post #413
stcredzero wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at Google for quite a while, 2005-2013, and even then, the internal political discussion was pretty toxic, but a lot smaller in scope since there are far fewer people. It sounds like the work culture at Google has rediscovered the emergent factors which gave rise to the traditional cultural strictures against talking about money, politics, and religion. Good science is repeatable. Given that Google is arguab…

> Good science is repeatable. Given that Google is arguably an intellectually friendly environment, where more people than average understand how to talk in ways that get closer to truth, the inadvertent experiment conducted by Google over the past 15 years or so should hold a lot of weight. But what conclusion should be drawn from this experiment? During those years, Google grew into a large and profitable company,…

Organizational structure is a massive influence on any organization's outputs, and seems over and over to be substantially more important than the personal attributes or credentials of the pool of employees. This is discussed by Clay Christensen in the context of disruption tech theory, it's enshrined in hacker lore as Conway's Law, and I'm sure is well known across many other domains.

One could interpret the overall trajectory of Google here as reaching the limits of disruption-capable organizational design. It's likely they hit that limit some years back, and have just reached the point where they've internalized it enough to drop the pretense.

It's not all bad -- there are many things at which large corporate structures excel. They're just not typically the ones that are sought in Silicon Valley.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#559

Post by blackflame7000 »

wutbrodo wrote: post #331
blackflame7000 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe Google's interview process is flawed by emphasizing whiteboard skills over people skills.

I'm the first to say how horribly broken tech hiring is, but that's relative to an ideal. I frankly don't know of any other way to hire at large scale and ensure a baseline of quality across the company. Google leaned heavily on whiteboard interviews during my time there too, so that doesn't explain shifts in employee norms and culture.

I think they should give the option of completing a larger project on their own instead of whiteboarding questions. For example, Symantec gave a practice problem where you had to basically build a mini-virus checker with wildcards (* and ?) and they selected the submissions with the fastest times to interview. I really enjoy performance-based problems and trying to optimize threading, memory, and caching but whiteboard interviews don't really give me that opportunity to showcase those talents. I like solving big problems and whiteboard questions really test your ability to memorize trivial ones.

The actual interview was much less whiteboarding and more explaining your code to make sure you actually wrote it. It felt like a more classical interview where they aren't trying to see if you are full of BS because they already had an actual work sample that was representative of an actual type of problem likely to be experienced on the job.

Re: Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

#560

Post by ksdale »

munk-a wrote: post #369

From the other side - if the world is on fire but a portion of the population thinks everything is just fine and dandy... is it appropriate for everyone to be politely quite until that portion comes to their own realization that the world is on fire? What if that never happens? I feel like the gun control debate is particularly relevant - whenever a shooting happens one side calmly says "This is unfortunate but unavo…

I agree that it's unreasonable to argue against having a discussion for the sake of decorum. If the discussion needs to happen, it needs to happen, but I think you're ignoring the fact that many anti-gun control advocates think the current state of affairs is fine. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you think a conversation is important to have because you believe that such a conversation would reshape the world in a way that is more closely aligned with your preferred policies. Anti-gun control advocates don't want that.

This is exactly why a lot of people don't discuss politics at work. You first sentence also kind of assumes that the side that believes the world is on fire is correct. It would probably be beneficial to allow the discussion of politics at work if the side that believed the world was on fire was indeed always correct, but sometimes they aren't, and what then?

I personally would prefer, for example, if someone didn't try to convince me to do something to save my immortal soul, regardless of how ardently they believe that my immortal soul needs saving.

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