I’m guessing they made enough money from google to retire. I’d imagine any company that may hire him would look at this website and probably pass on them.
On Resigning from Google
71–80 of 295 posts
Re: On Resigning from Google
#72> www.alphabetworkers.org/ > The trouble with deep belief > The reason it’s unlikely to work is that although you can persecute the prophets Sounds a bit full of themselves. They worked for a company, they no longer like the company, they quit. Great, move on. No need to make a big deal about it. It's just a job.
Google (and, really, all of Northern California) has been actively courting these high-minded idealists for a long time. The problem with these types of people is that they invent windmills to tilt at when they run out.
To me it looks like that while the high-minded idealists remained mostly the same, it's Google that transformed itself into something completely different from what it was the early days. It should be noted that in 2005, when this guy joined Google, both Android and the acquisition of Doubleclick were at least 2 years away. Google execs were probably already planning the move into an advertising and spyware behenoth back then, but I'm pretty sure the lower "cogs" like any freshly hired techie, wouldn't know that for quite some time.
Re: On Resigning from Google
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google employees provide a lot more value to Google than they are compensated for. how? can you justify what makes these people (you) so special? IN all honesty, they are probably overvalued in every sense. >Absolutely incorrect. Paychecks have nothing to do with whether you as a person find the company's policies palatable or not You are right because they already made their money and can afford to quit over whate…
> how? How do we know that employees provide more value than their compensation? Because Google makes profit.
So? Facebook makes profit, the gas station down the street makes profit.
How does a software engineer at Google worth more value than one at timbuktu? No, they are not. They just are not in the right place at the right time.
Do you think selling ads is changing the world? Do you think that makes you worth more than someone else? Wake up and smell the coffee.
Re: On Resigning from Google
#74This reads like a moral screed. That's fine. They're entitled to their own views, to voice those views internally, and if they aren't adopted to leave the company and write a polemic.
Ultimately, two thirds of their complaints involve taking a position counter to the stated national interest of the United States. Sure, maybe they believe that national interest is wrong, morally objectionable, or whatever, but the inference you draw from the writing is that it clearly is. That everyone at Google knows this is wrong, should be stopped, but isn't because of the monetary gains of doing these things.
> 2. Google Cloud sales to the oil and gas industry
I mean, if Google Cloud makes the extraction of natural gas more efficient then that strikes me as a net good for the planet. A large part of the emissions decrease in the U.S. over the past decade is from the economic viability of natural gas relative to coal. Dream of a bucolic lifestyle all you want, but reality should be confronted in these matters.
3. Expansion into the weapons industry and the business of killing
The business of killing terrorists - with increasing levels of precision - strikes me (and every administration in memory) as clearly being in the national best interest. The better targeting capacity available, the less collateral damage and need for U.S. boots on the ground abroad there will be.
You can, of course, find drone strikes morally objectionable. You can find killing what are deemed threats to the homeland as objectionable. That's fine. But to state this as an objective truth is to find yourself holding a position at odds with nearly all elected law makers.
If you, as a company, agree or disagree with U.S. domestic and national security policy, fill your boots. But Google working in concert with the U.S. domestic and national security policies isn't choosing money over morality per se.
People have different perspectives and these people clearly have perspectives unaligned with their former employers. Good on them for leaving. However, I have to say reading this screed makes it seem like the adults in the room are the executives they lambast.
Re: On Resigning from Google
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strongly disagree. > In my mind all the "internal activism" happening at Google and others is massively hypocritical. One cannot publicly criticize a company while enjoying cushy paychecks fueled by those very activities they despise. Absolutely incorrect. Paychecks have nothing to do with whether you as a person find the company's policies palatable or not. Google employees provide a lot more value to Google than th…
> Google employees provide a lot more value to Google than they are compensated for. how? can you justify what makes these people (you) so special? IN all honesty, they are probably overvalued in every sense. >Absolutely incorrect. Paychecks have nothing to do with whether you as a person find the company's policies palatable or not You are right because they already made their money and can afford to quit over whate…
I think Google believes that it would not be able to maintain its competitive edge with lower quality, lower paid employees. Having worked there, I think they are right on that account. In fact it probably wouldn't even be able to function after a few years after people who don't know what they're doing totally screw up their monorepo and eng processes.
But there's another function to high pay: sucking the oxygen out of the atmosphere. They basically hire a significant chunk of systems (and nowadays also AI) programmers available in the industry, and keep them for as long as they like. Left to their own devices, those programmers would be able to start companies, or help Google's competitors compete with Google. As things stand, everyone else (including the likes of Microsoft) gets the folks who have failed the FAANG interviews. They still sometimes get good people, but not as good as to show them the way from the corners they've painted themselves into.
Where it all goes wrong though is when they actively attract "activists". From direct observation, few, if any, of those activists actually pull their weight once hired. In fact they often prevent others from focusing on their work, so their productivity contribution is often negative. They mostly spend their days on activism on the internal Google+ and do little else. You can actually see everyone's commits at Google, as well as graphs of how much code they contribute. When I was there, I'd check those dashboards from time to time only to confirm my suspicions, without fail.
Re: On Resigning from Google
#76Random thoughts: 1. I applaud the fact that they are actually quitting the company to voice their disapproval of these policies. In my mind all the "internal activism" happening at Google and others is massively hypocritical. One cannot publicly criticize a company while enjoying cushy paychecks fueled by those very activities they despise. 2. If they think Google is discriminatory towards LGBT employees and minoriti…
>One cannot publicly criticize a company while enjoying cushy paychecks
Why is it that you think that the people who see the sausage being made are exactly the ones most unqualified to criticize it?
Re: On Resigning from Google
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google employees provide a lot more value to Google than they are compensated for. how? can you justify what makes these people (you) so special? IN all honesty, they are probably overvalued in every sense. >Absolutely incorrect. Paychecks have nothing to do with whether you as a person find the company's policies palatable or not You are right because they already made their money and can afford to quit over whate…
> how? How do we know that employees provide more value than their compensation? Because Google makes profit.
I would be willing to bet that the median employee at google is losing them money. This is true of all big companies.
Re: On Resigning from Google
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strongly disagree. > In my mind all the "internal activism" happening at Google and others is massively hypocritical. One cannot publicly criticize a company while enjoying cushy paychecks fueled by those very activities they despise. Absolutely incorrect. Paychecks have nothing to do with whether you as a person find the company's policies palatable or not. Google employees provide a lot more value to Google than th…
> Google employees provide a lot more value to Google than they are compensated for. This is because of the ethics those same employees are complaining about. An ethical Google makes less money, employees will necessarily have to be paid less, they will then go on to the next unethical company that can pay them more. It is completely ridiculous to bring home a huge paycheck and complain about the very thing that enab…
It's difficult if not impossible to quantify, but I'd suggest that google has lost an enormous amount of goodwill through their departure from 'don't be evil'. It's up there with the goodwill they've lost gaining a reputation for abandoning products. How much that filters down to the adsense coalface is debatable. But it absolutely affects the choices of top talent about where to work. Facebook is notorious among my coder friends for being a place that has to pay a large premium to attract talent, because of the shame of working for such an unethical company. No company is bigger than its reputation - certainly not a company that serves people, rather than industry. Part of what made Google so popular - so desirous as a place to work and research, was a sense that many of their policies, e.g.: the embrace of open source technologies, open standards for the web etc; were actively good. This belief helped google mindshare enormously. It's absence cannot help but hurt the company in the long term, in concrete financial terms. What they stand to gain in short term embrace of military contracts etc, will cost them not only their reputation, but their place as a major innovator. If it hasn't already, that is.
Re: On Resigning from Google
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hiding behind "it's a business" isn't an argument acceptable to most people. Sure "it's a business" but does that give it a green card to act how it pleases? We're getting into the philosophy of what we want businesses to be in our society. More and more people are realizing that the inhumane structure a business operates in isn't acceptable to them, and would like to have a say in what they're doing. This person lef…
> Sure "it's a business" but does that give it a green card to act how it pleases? of course, yes! As long as it stays within the boundaries set by the law. Do you not act as you please? Do you not eat a $40 meal while a homeless person is lying outside in the cold? DO you not send your kid to a private school at $100k/year while the kid down the street (down the highway) struggles for school supplies? > So please, s…
> of course, yes! As long as it stays within the boundaries set by the law.
This, it's even mandated by law to appease shareholders by making as much money as possible. Google changing their ways might just increase the number of shareholder x company lawsuits their legal team has to sort out.
https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/s...
Re: On Resigning from Google
#80> Attacks like this were an attack on people’s jobs and physical security: if you can strip a reform-oriented pastor of their PCUSA ordination, you also strip them of their employment and their health insurance If I'm understanding correctly, the argument with regard to "physical security" is that if you try to get someone fired, which would result in them losing their employer-provided health insurance, that they wo…
I think you are allowed to defend yourself with force against physical attacks - perhaps that's why they are making the connection. Be interesting to see someone use that as an argument in court but I'd hate to work with someone who used physical force based on this definition of physical security.