Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 1001 posts

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

#651

Post by okusername »

mc32 wrote: post #554
ChuckMcM wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Problem solved: There should be no "opinion" at the workplace outside professional topics. Unless you're the person in charge of the Tibet strategy, your opinion should stay at home.

It's a workplace, not your buddy's couch.

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

#652

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jachee wrote: post #622
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a significant difference between an ideology and an identity. I suspect that many Muslims consider that to be their identity, not just their ideology. > Why—whenever the question of hate comes up—is HN so quick to rise to the defense of the hateful? Because I'm hateful (to at least somebody). And so are you. We don't defend the hateful because the hateful are so wonderful. We don't defend them because we ag…

"I'm a shitty person, and so are you." is a cop-out and frankly insulting. > I suspect that many Muslims consider that to be their identity, not just their ideology. I can't believe I have to explain that the difference is between what's a choice and what's not: You can't change your identity. Ideology is arbitrary.

That isn't what I said. I said that there is someone who thinks you're a terrible person. It doesn't matter whether you are or not. They think you are, because you're too gay, or too straight, or to conservative, or too liberal, or your skin is too dark, or your skin is too light, or you're too old, or you're too young, or you're too religious, or you're not religious enough, or you have the wrong religion, or whatever. There are people who think that you are a terrible person.

So be careful of justifying intolerance of the terrible. That rationale can be used against you, perhaps by people a whole lot less well-meaning than you are.

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

#653

Post by anoncake »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #643
methodover wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If alternative structures worked well then we would've seen them by now Well let’s not go this far. Human civilization has existed for a tiny portion of time, modern civilization even less so. There’s PLENTY of time for better structures to be discovered.

Within current historical and cultural context, legal and technology frameworks etc the dataset is big enough to give some confidence that better structures won’t be found tomorrow or in the next 5 years.

It's odd that when it comes to social issues, this site suddenly becomes conservative and doesn't even think progress is possible.

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

#654

Post by [deleted] »

joshuamorton wrote: post #601
fortran77 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they never punished the woman who leaked that internal memo. I thought that memo was foolish and short-sighted. I don't agree with it. However, it would have been better solved by a manager first asking him "do you really think it's a good idea to post this at work?" and having him tone it down than trying to publicly shame him and get him fired. Google picked the wrong side on that. They should have made an exam…

You're making things up: the leaker was, afaik, never identified. Certainly not publicly. Nothing says they were a woman, except you. As someone who vehemently disagree a with damore and is glad he was fired, I'd also prefer it if the leaker was fired, but it seems that I'll never know if that happened.

[deleted]

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

#655

Post by einhverfr »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #633
einhverfr wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Europe and being a bit closer to the war zones, I can tell you it has affected my life in a large number of ways. It is a big reason why a lot of my voting in the US is for whoever seems more anti-war (within reason).

I also vote anti-war. Would you mind sharing some tangible examples of how it's affected your life? I'm not looking for a debate, I'm genuinely curious.

A few ways the wars have affected my life:

1. I was commuting between Sweden and Denmark when the refugee crisis (people fleeing our efforts at proxy civil war in Syria, and our efforts at direct war in Iraq and Afghanistan) caused the Swedes to have to close their borders. This was not controversial. Migrationverket could not house the number of refugees who showed up and so refugees were sleeping on the street in Sweden in November. This lead to hours of lost time every day and eventually the loss of a contract that lead to the commute, and eventually after that, to a stagnation in my work (I left Sweden for Germany in part for that reason). You would see whole families with nothing trying to get somewhere they would have some sort of chance.

2. My kids have been subject to some harassment due to the fact that they are mixed SE Asian/White, and therefore could probably pass for Afghan. This was true in both Sweden and Germany.

3. Now the lines to get things like work permits or blue cards renewed are getting longer and longer (because of capacity shortage in civil servants) which means that when I go to get this renewed, I need to plan six months to a year in advance. A large problem here is the fact that the refugees are impacting the immigration service departments. Its to the point I am considering giving up US citizenship for German citizenship just to get around that problem.

There are of course more. Not getting into the amusing problem Sweden has with hand grenades and plastic explosives (organized crime gangs scaring each other late at night by setting off bombs and grenades, though I suppose that's better than drive-by shootings).

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

#656

Post by phonon »

jasode wrote: post #587
geofft wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was also smaller, which both makes political discussions feel more personal and allows maintaining a political bias in recruiting/hiring because you don't need to fill headcount as urgently. I would absolutely believe that a company of 100 SJWs bringing their whole self to work contracting with a company of 100 MAGA hat wearers bringing their whole self to work would be more productive than putting all 200 of…

>100 SJWs [...] contracting with a company of 100 MAGA [...] would be more productive than putting all 200 of them in a single company and imposing the traditional politeness restrictions of a corporate job. So the question in my mind is, why did Google need to grow? I had trouble parsing what you wrote but I think the question you're asking (growth with employees vs growth by contractors?) is answered by Coase's "Th…

No, he's saying diversity is disruptive/adds friction . See https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128026...

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

#657

Post by bduerst »

gwbas1c wrote: post #366
manfredo wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the memo before reading the media coverage. I was very surprised at how controversial it was. It's claims were pretty modest: it did not claim that women were any less capable than men at technology, and it repeatedly stated that innate differences likely do not account for all of the disparity between men and women in tech. All it argued was that just because a disparity exists we should not assume that it is…

Ok, now go re-read Google's official response. Note that they did not respond to "we should not assume that it is evidence of discrimination, and that policies designed to engineer an outcome closer to 50/50 are likely creating discrimination"

Google fired Damore for his perpetuating of gender stereotypes. He even confirmed it with the media.

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

#658

Post by ljm »

oppositelock wrote: post #187

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. There were definitely groups meant for discussing politics, and loudmouths like me willingly participated in those - however, it was very uncivil. There was a majority view in the company, and if anyone didn't agree with the majority view, the…

That seems largely fair enough. I’ve pushed back before on conversations that make an assumption about the audience, suggesting to redirect them to the place where people have explicitly opted into that kind of stuff.

In that sense it’s not really about the politics, it’s just seeing the world outside of your own.

In almost every other case we’re okay with this. In a lot of contexts irrelevant discussion is called ‘taking it offline’.

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

#659

Post by anoncake »

okusername wrote: post #651
mc32 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Problem solved: There should be no "opinion" at the workplace outside professional topics. Unless you're the person in charge of the Tibet strategy, your opinion should stay at home. It's a workplace, not your buddy's couch.

The workplace is part of society, of course opinions belong there.

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

#660

Post by bcrosby95 »

ntnxw wrote: post #565
gwbas1c wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The memo made some very poignant points, but then the author expressed some strange opinions that I would never attempt to defend. (Even worse, there was no reason to put some of these opinions in the memo.) But what's more scary is Google's official response to the diversity memo. (For context, Google instituted certain hiring policies to increase diversity, which the "diversity memo" questioned.) If you have the ti…

>The memo made some very poignant points, but then the author expressed some strange opinions that I would never attempt to defend. Yeah but why have a discussion group about politics if you can only defend the mainstream points of view?

The memo had mainstream views. It's just a mainstream view that the majority of Googlers don't like.
Post reply on HN