>How did you argue against the inevitable "if we don't take this contract, dude across the street will"?

Collective action. They can hire 14 new guys, but they won't have any to instruct the new employees in their work.

Google is well aware of the spyware that the Chinese govt is using to oppress it's ethnic minorities, but they don't lift a finger to thwart it. They don't blacklist the app that the government requires Muslims in Xinjiang to have on their phones at all time[1]. They could easily blacklist it.

How far is Google willing to go to be friends with China? Mass detainment and ethnic cleansing are well within the realm of possibility, especially in the likely event of an economic crisis.

Will Google help sniff out their Anne Franks? Imagine trying to operate an underground railroad against the full force of Google. There are so many ways that machine learning and modern private surveillance can determine things like if there are extra uncounted people living in an area.

If Beijing did decide to solve the Uyghur problem, would Google cover for them and purge search queries?

No, this is not at all hyperbolic or reaching. American corporations did business with our enemies right up until they were forced to stop during WWII. American machines have been used to commit horrific atrocities. And read Chinese history. Read about what China has done as recently as a few decades ago.

I'm glad to see Google employees taking a break from their virtue pageantry to actually take a stand on something that matters, finally.

[1]: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...

Here is a thought for you:

If Google actually were to do anything to help they Anne Franks of China, do you think they would announce it to the world to debate on HN, or do you think they would do it in secret?

Perhaps. But "Maybe Google is just pretending to be evil" does not give me much comfort. Especially as I have friends who are ethnic minorities in SE Asia.

I'm sure they're unhappy about the dragonfly publicity, so I don't understand the point you're making.

this 100%. The business made a business decision : either veteran, that is, most valuable assets get mad and all sort of problems affecting productivty/quality happen or, a few not-yet-realized business opportunities disappears.

That was very pragmatic. Both sides wins.

Replacing people might be easy, but it's never cheap - even in industries with an abundance of candidates.

The real issue with having your work-force leave is three-fold. First, you lose all the accumulated knowledge of your team. Second, you lose the cohesiveness of your team. Thirdly, you have to _pay to get a new team_.

All of these things conspire to make all but the lowliest of jobs (think Target Associate) much more painful to replace than it seems.

In short, there are lots of hidden costs in recruiting.

There are hidden costs to taking a stand too. The costs to either side are not the point of the story.

Nor are the outcomes produced by a few brave people locally.

The point of the story is to draw a line in the sand. And that line matters when people are afraid to stand together on one side of it.

If you look at the example of Gandhi and the Salt Tax the mere act of picking salt of the ground and being threatened with arrest unified a country and sent a signal to the British were the line was. Sending that signal matters. Countries were that signal was not sent took many more decades to get independence.

I don't know man, I see so many companies voluntarily do this aftering being bought by PE -- only to flip the same company for 5 to 6x 3 to 5 years later.

I think it is a engineer's dream to think they can't be replaced. But they can, and the probs created by it simply don't matter.

Great point, turn over is expensive.

Fourth, your potential employees know what happened to your previous employees.

Fifth, many of your remaining employees may be inspired to jump ship to a FAAN if the worst comes to pass. Much easier to be a silent follower than a vocal leader.

Point 4: the new people come in with knowledge of the walk out, which can cause all kinds of secondary reactions. If this goes through every new google employee will have something to think about during the HR feel good antics.

I think you maybe are now ignoring the number of H1B / Visa / or otherwise applicants happy to take a lucrative job that don't give 1/2 a damn about any of that.

My post about SCALE was apparently too hard to understand. There is a big sea of programmers that would be happy to work for Google censorship or not.

If you want to argue the cost of replacing people - I'd argue the cost of paying people who won't do the job you want them to do.

Allegedly the secret to Google's success is hiring (and more importantly, retaining) the best of the best. Presumably Dragonfly work can be done by any H1B, but all the people who no longer want to work at Google would impact plenty of other projects.

There's a difference between your coder who can build you a chat app and a coder who can keep you on the bleeding edge of innovation. In theory.

Negotiations like these aren't won by convincing the other side through making more points via logic or evidence. You must help decision makers to realize that their choice is not win-win, that hidden costs, unwanted consequences, or just plain bad publicity await. Almost always, bureaucrat decisions are driven more by fear of failure than prospect of success. As a naysayer, your goal is mostly to spread FUD and take the shine off their bauble.

>As a naysayer, your goal is mostly to spread FUD and take the shine off their bauble.

WOW. Yes, that must be it. I can't possibly have an opinion about the matter that doesn't align with yours because surely you are right!

The only logical option here is I am spreading fear uncertainty and doubt - because I'm Google and this directly impacts me. Anyone who disagrees must be silenced because they are wrong!

EDIT: Nope, opinions not allowed. Try and hide anyone that disagrees!

I think you misinterpreted that message. I think "naysayer" is still referring to the working people who take a stand against something they feel is morally wrong. They should focus on the more 'real' business concerns so they can affect actions if not minds.

Not that you are a "naysayer" and are trying to spread fear by commenting on this website.

>>As a naysayer, your goal is mostly to spread FUD and take the shine off their bauble.

Hmm, I must have misinterpreted that. Maybe you're right.

Speaking of scale, while the world is big and a lot of people do all sorts of things in it regardless of what I do, I am the medium through which I experience the world, so betraying or not betraying myself affects everything, past, present and future, far beyond our galaxy -- as far as I am concerned.

There's always a break even point on where keeping an employee is worth less than letting them go.

It truly depends on the company and employee though. For many people that point can be extremely high so they have the power to push for ethical (or not) choices.

That power of course multiplied by the number of such people.

> There's always a break even point on where keeping an employee is worth less than letting them go.

Not if they are employees that are complaining about doing the job you're paying them to do.

Not that I don't agree with them, but in this case, Google Co has decided a route and the employees don't want to do it. I think they may find that they are more replaceable than the down votes implying the opposite are willing to accept.

How long does it take to get a sysadmin up to speed? And how much money do they lose while their websites are unavailable? What happens if YouTube.com doesn't work for a week while they get up to speed?

TIL keeping google running is a matter of two-a-penny UNIX sysadmin skills. The SRE book was a fraud!

I never said it was easy to keep Google running. The complete opposite instead.