If we remember Occupy Wallstreet and look at how many people have been placed on lists, or how many protesters got hurt, in comparison with what the movement achieved, then it's proof that leaflet-campaigns achieve nothing. The bankers are still not held accountable a decade later and continue to collect fat bonuses all around the world. Peaceful protests aren't the solution. Anyone who reads history knows peaceful discourse has never triggered change when it mattered.

Peaceful protests are just a lot of noise. Ranting on facebook or twitter unfortunately solves nothing. Real action is painful and people (often millions) die. That's the only time when change happened in the past. Denying this is wishful thinking (at best) and akin to white-washing history (at worst).

"War on the planet" is happening as we speak. Yet all people do is talk while we're getting boiled like proverbial frogs. We rather engage in wishful thinking that tech / science (our new substitute religions) will solve these problems (what else to tell kids in their 20ies today?). The reality on how change can happen is bleaker. A whole spectrum of options are available - but none of them are peaceful. It essentially involves getting rid of at least 2/3 of the global population to give the planet a chance of recovery from humanities crimes against the planet.

With the compounded damage from climate change and global dimming, even if the human population is reduced to 10K surviving individuals, it's still no guarantee that the planet survives in that case.

So leaflet campaigns and peaceful discourse are laughable considering that all humans do in the face of these terrors is to engage in identity politics and fight for individual "rights" instead of talking about responsibilities.

EDIT: clarity/typos

But the fact that these weren't only ignored but didn't even result in a meaningful discussion is exactly my point.

[1] 10 Demands Being Made By The Wall Street Protesters https://www.businessinsider.com/finally-specific-demands-fro...

[2] PICKET: Occupy Wall Street protesters post manifesto of 'demands' https://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/oct/3/...

As opposed to ranting on HN?

Google employs at least 20k engineers. I'd be shocked if 100 quit over this news.

Google could be murdering kittens to cool servers with their blood and you could probably find enough competent engineers to keep 10 Google's fully staffed. The vast majority of people do not give two shits.

Everybody dies anyway, nobody is remembered, or gets to keep anything; we can build what we want, end result is the same. The only brief moment of reality is our experience of the universe and the kind of life we lead, and if what you claim true for "the vast majority of people" was true, IMO that would just mean the vast majority are deeply sick and probably frightened shitless of death. That'd no doubt be very important for them, but how would it matter for me? Should I jump into their pool, to drown alongside them and make them feel better?

https://pastebin.com/gPgy648A

I'm also saying that people who are saying this will hurt Google or make it hard for them to hire new people are flat-out wrong.

All it takes is for a few good people to do nothing...

Additionally, leaving a secure, well-paid role in political protest takes a certain amount of privilege. My father left an amazing job in protest over immoral actions and I can assure you that it had huge financial impacts on my life growing up. I respect him for his decision and I like to think I'd make the same one, however, I can understand how people even less fortunate aren't making political choices with their employment.

Good.

It's not like a good, ethical developer is going to change things from the inside. Companies are not democracies, they are dictatorships.

So what if Google has no good and moral developers left? At least it will become more obvious what Google truly is while the 'good' developers can make a positive contribution elsewhere. It was clearly never going to happen at Google anyway, not with a incentives a publicly-traded company has.

I would much prefer Google to be manned entirely by the kinds of people I wouldn't dream of inviting into my home. I'm already against the company's existence, so Google having nobody left with a shred of integrity or backbone would make it a whole lot easier to argue for the company's demise, in whatever shape that may come.