This theory is completely at odds with what actually happened. The reality is that workers at Google wield enormous power when they act together, and get to make the company drop a customer.
> > We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.
So the issue is specifically warfare technology, not DoD/military bureaucracy in general.
The bureaucracy exists solely to get warfighters downrange and on-target. I mean, what do you think they do all day, and why?
There are a few zealots that actually think like this, but most people realize that each stage in that chain is pretty lossy. There's a good portion of your wages that are not taxed, and there's a good portion of your taxes that are not directed to the DoD. Similarly, there's a good portion of the DoD bureaucracy that does not exist to get warfighters downrange and on-target - think of all the folks involved in procurement projects that are basically employment projects for defense contractors, or DARPA and the basic research it does, or the combat engineers building bridges in warzones, or the folks responsible for administering the VA and military pensions. You can be morally opposed to writing software that helps target drones while still believing that former vets should have access to health care.
No, actually there aren't. Whether or not they are successful or efficient is irrelevant. The money funding both the super efficient successful targeting system and the failed warfighter support system are fungible and come from the same "color" or pot of money.
It's not zealotry, it's understanding the purpose and mission of the organization.
Also the VA isn't part of the DoD. It's a Cabinet level agency.
Frankly it's getting annoying listening to people in tech talk about Defense matters as though they are authoritative.
The "bureaucracy" of the Pentagon directly supports warfighting across the entire spectrum. Efficiencies in government credit card processing for an Army SSGT going on temporary duty to train on employing the MRAP, enable effective execution of wartime tasks. This is a well understood and ingrained sentiment.
Speaking from a contractual perspective what does a customer care about the service provider's employee motivations? How would the customer reach into the confidential internals of the service provider's office to qualify or answer that question?
> We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.
What is interesting is that the letter says this: This plan will irreparably damage Google’s brand and its ability to compete for talent. The letter is completely addressing the concern for reputational harm, but the company did not do so prior to the establishment of the relationship as a matter of its due diligence considerations. If this is cause for the DOD to pass on Google's bid for a larger project the harm is absolutely manifest. This is analogous to the Streisand Effect where the harm was neither well known nor established but achieves both due to the complaint - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Also, the DOD is the US military and those terms can be safely and definitively interchanged. I can affirm this as a military officer. https://www.defense.gov/About/DoD-101/
1. They didn't cancel the contract. Google pledged to not renew the contract in 2019, and established a "code of ethics" for AI usage, in response to employee outcry.
2. You're implying that this is a game of hurt feewings and it isn't. It's business. The government agencies have just as much to learn from PR backlash against themselves as Google does, because they hire from the public.
> You're implying that this is a game of hurt feewings and it isn't.
I also never said or implied that. I have worked all over the country and a few times out of the country. Only in the bay area and Seattle are people so social engrossed with intermingling their personal politics with their work. Most other locations, both inside and outside the US, would consider this ethically collusive. Whether or not that hurts peoples' "feewings" (as you put it) is up to the individuals involved.
A promise to not renew a contract is not even the same as not renewing the contract. For all we know, Google might renew it anyways. Either way, Google is doing what they were paid to do for the period they were paid to do it. The DoD has no reason to have sour grapes with that. Other government agencies absolutely have no reason to.
>I also never said or implied that. I have worked all over the country and a few times out of the country. Only in the bay area and Seattle are people so social engrossed with intermingling their personal politics with their work. Most other locations, both inside and outside the US, would consider this ethically collusive. Whether or not that hurts peoples' "feewings" (as you put it) is up to the individuals involved.
I don't know what you're getting at, I've worked across the country as well (though not out of it.) The consensus among workers is different because the power dynamics are different. When I was working in the midwest, tech jobs were rare and most people did not want to put their jobs in jeopardy.
Employees at Google just feel that they have job security, because they do. Not just those in the Bay Area, but certainly those in Pittsburgh, or New York City, as well. The proof is in the pudding: to the best of my knowledge, Google employees were not fired for protesting Project Maven.
But of course people in the Bay Area feel especially safe in their endeavors. Again, they are. If a Google employee gets fired for protesting, plenty of other bay area companies will be eager to sweep them up. Some will even throw in a sweet signing bonus to welcome them in.
I don't have strong opinions about whether or not these protests are good or bad, but plenty of people across the world would love to be able to speak their mind at their job without it putting their career in jeopardy.
The Bay Area is really just the perfect place for this because it is a highly liberal area (in some aspects, anyways) and people feel extremely safe. So you get these sorts of liberal protests. I'm sure it would play out the same anywhere if this set of conditions were true regardless of political leanings.
I do agree though that the ability to protest and boycott is an entitlement. How many security, facilities, janitorial, or vendor staff have that freedom at the Google campus? In that consideration it does not sound like such a campus achieves equal opportunity employment in theory, but perhaps might by contracting other those positions to service providers. If that is true and those service providers were to boycott a Google business priority it should be no surprise when Google would refuse to continue services from such vendors. Again, this is a horrible way to do business.
> I don't have strong opinions about whether or not these protests are good or bad, but plenty of people across the world would love to be able to speak their mind at their job without it putting their career in jeopardy.
I vote with my time. If I become disgruntled with an employer I find another. Tech jobs, even in the midwest, are always in crazy demand for talent. I certainly don't put my employer's business in jeopardy to enjoy externalizing a personal opinion.
> I'm sure it would play out the same anywhere if this set of conditions were true regardless of political leanings.
History does not reflect this. I am old enough to remember the bay area was just like this during the 80s since I lived in Santa Clara. More lucrative markets were not like that without regard for job security, such as the financial district of New York. Other geographies are not like that. Most people are not willing to risk their employment relationship for the sake of freedom of exercising politics and actually look upon as a negative and potentially damaging behavior. To make the assumption that other areas are likely reflective of one's own is a form of ethnocentricity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism
I believe you are correct about all of that.
>If that is true and those service providers were to boycott a Google business priority it should be no surprise when Google would refuse to continue services from such vendors. Again, this is a horrible way to do business.
What's good business is very much opinion, many people would work for less money to keep their dignity. It's not exactly a Silicon Valley secret that Google is not the highest paying employer, after all.
>To make the assumption that other areas are likely reflective of one's own is a form of ethnocentricity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism
When I said "anywhere" I meant "in the United States." Personally, I believe culture in the U.S. is more similar than it is different. This point could be debated but there's not much of a point since I doubt there's an agreement to come to with that.
I also was not intentionally referring to all types of jobs, just software developers. It obviously doesn't make as much sense with the power dynamics of jobs that are seen as unimportant. Programmers also take months to get ramped up in a company, and carry a lot of trade secrets and knowledge that they will take with them when they leave, making it very different from a line cook for example. Therefore, you probably don't want to fire a programmer if you don't have to, and you especially don't want a bunch of programmers with important domain knowledge to all leave at the same time.
So quite a bit less broad than "anywhere."
Still, I do not have as much life experience as you, and I do not know why Silicon Valley was different in the 80s. If I had to guess, I'd guess it's because there was no Internet, and the job market was insanely different. Today most software companies have standardized on things, but in the 80s there were plenty of different microarchitectures and programming languages you might need to know on top of other mandatory skills that are not so common anymore. Nowadays for most software developers you don't need to care about microarchitectures and everyone uses languages that look like C or JavaScript. The big tech companies were definitely a lot smaller. Employees sometimes even had more direct say than they do now. Reading old stories about Apple on Folklore.org or Quora paint a picture of an employer that employees respected, but disobeyed frequently. But if they wanted to protest, would anyone hear them? Apple wasn't the massive company it is today in the 80s. Without the Internet, their message might've gone unheard entirely. And, without the Internet, a lot of employees might not have even known about a DoD deal or the implications, positive or negative, that it might have.
Basically, comparing the tech industry of the 80s to the tech industry of today feels a bit strange. Today the tech industry is one of the world's largest. In the 80s, it was very impressive if you shipped 1000 computers.
I write JavaScript for living and I have mostly worked large monolithic Java shops, so I know this is a lie, at least in software. Most software developers are simply happy to press buttons against a framework while continuously achieving a paycheck. The thought continuous refactoring or doing it free, as in open source contributions on your personal time, is still a complete mystery to many corporate developers.
Dignity is certainly not immediately present in much of the code I have seen in my career. If dignity were the principle aspiration people would not be selective in its application. I suspect the motivation is something more immediately socially conforming. Contrarily, dignity is often expressed by rejection to conforming social pressures.
> But if they wanted to protest, would anyone hear them?
The bay area has never had a problem with this and in the past didn't need social media to prove it. More traditional media channels were sufficient. The area is substantially more sensitive and less diverse now though.
> [...] I know this is a lie, at least in software. Most software developers [...]
Many != most, and even if it did, different interpretations != a lie.
Who makes everything for Google? Who makes everything for the shareholders?
The workers, the employees. If they don't want to work on something that is against their morals and ethics as a whole, they get to decide that.
Capitalists somehow forget that the workers even exist and are a necessary part of businsses, and seemingly think that all work that gets done is by pure magic. It's an immoral and unethical to not care what the workers say in quest of your personal profit.
Google employees don't get to choose their customers. They certainly don't get to choose candidacy in a federal bidding cycle. If there is confusion on this matter then perhaps you are not a sells person or a business stake holder.