Pandora's box is open now and I don't think they'll be able to reign it in. Thankfully, this leaves an opportunity for another generation of companies to return to a technology first message and eat the large, politically quagmired megacorp's lunch.

I wasn't aware this was a thing. Did Google openly support one candidate or party? How did they promote politics in the workplace?

> Pandora's box is open now and I don't think they'll be able to reign it in. Thankfully, this leaves an opportunity for another generation of companies to return to a technology first message and eat the large, politically quagmired megacorp's lunch.

How? What do new companies change or do differently? Are the FANGY companies doomed by a toxic culture they can't undo? And why can't they?

I'm curious.

[1] https://www.dhillonlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/201804...

"I will keep hounding you until one of us is fired. Fuck you." - Alex Hidalgo, SRE at Google

And he's still employed. Yeesh.

We're talking on an article where an employee interpreted _silence_ as racism! There is a valid point that (non-bigoted) conservative opinions are being silenced.

i.e. Say you think that we should reduce the immigration rate, and wanted to discuss your reasons with your coworkers -- would you feel comfortable discussing that @ a SF tech company?

> We're talking on an article where an employee interpreted _silence_ as racism! There is a valid point that (non-bigoted) conservative opinions are being silenced.

If you see a coworker being harassed and you do nothing, that's bad. Even if it doesn't make you a racist, if you see something and don't speak up you demonstrate lack of caring about your coworker. It's valid to point that out, is it not? How is pointing that out silencing conservative opinion?

It's not on people at work to be nice to you if your views are hurtful to those around you. The onus is on you to find out why most of the conscientious and smart people around you find your behavior and/or views abhorrent.

I've had many discussions with coworkers with me taking up both stances as a steel man and/or devil's advocate and not once have I felt uncomfortable about the discussion. You should be concerned about certain actions of very powerful people in high offices poisoning the well of discourse before you consider what you're trying to debate because context is everything. I find that is something frequently ignored when people discuss why they feel like they can't speak about certain things.

I don't care if people are offended. I don't think the topic about humane treatment is two-sided, so I have nothing to add. I think I have to figure out what I think about broader immigration issues, so I choose to talk about that.

I do not subscribe to the implicit ultimatum of "either you are interested in what I consider the most pressing issue, or you're implicitly supporting the opposition". You think it's an elephant in the room and I would say granted that's true, I don't think it's an argument that needs to be rehashed.

I think it will change toward the obvious resolution without additional fanfare (Trump will be gone within my lifetime), so I don't spend time on topics that I think are decided. Policy is always playing catch up. That's how this society works.

This isn't an implicit ultimatum either, this is about understanding and addressing the full context of a situation. If you're ignorant of certain aspects people aren't going to mind, but if you willingly try to ignore those aspects then people are going to wonder why.

It's like for example: Trying to talk about how to fix a large problem in a code base without understanding why code functions the way it does. If you just do a large scale refactor, then you break other portions of the system that expected certain behavior and now you have to do all sorts of retrofitting.

That is only if their opinion is based on (or implied to be based on) their emotional state. Arguments based on emotion are basically zero weight for most philosophical issues (like what problems are more important than others). You have no right to know, what is more important to me, so I think the judgement is ignorant.

> That's not a particularly good argumentative tactic and is a great way to ensure your argument is shut down from the get-go.

My argument about what? My morality? I choose not to care about offending a specific group of people who have a specific interest. No apologies.

> Trying to talk about how to fix a large problem in a code base without understanding why code functions the way it does.

I'm not talking about the same project (or function) as you. One feeds into the other. Ultimately, there is a black-box assumption. I don't have to care about the later components doing their job, when looking at the function that is also complex. Someone should probably be looking at both, but it's not a moral imperative to look at all functions in the world.

>You have no right to know, what is more important to me, so I think the judgement is ignorant.

This is an argument made from emotion, not philosophically or logically. You're saying that X topic ranks higher emotionally than Y topic.

Which I mean, that's also going to vary based on the context and whom you're arguing with. There's nothing wrong with caring for certain topics than others but it's disengenuous to behave like you're above emotions while making an emotionally charged argument.

I agree with that. Not sure how it's related to why someone else's state should influence my preferences.

> This is an argument made from emotion

It is not. You literally have no legal right. Without that information, you are literally ignorant and unable to make an argument about morality, from my perspective. Morality is personal, but it is a philosophy about maximizing the good across people and time, as I define it.

> There's nothing wrong with caring for certain topics than others but it's disengenuous to behave like you're above emotions while making an emotionally charged argument.

I disagree. I am going to assert that I am a human. I am not above emotion. I can and do, dismiss the arguments posed from an emotional basis. This is a little far away from where we started.

> you're ranking the value of reduced immigration over the value of treating people humanely

I don't rank it above. I just don't think there's anything left to discuss. The moral failure is practical, not philosophical. This is of no interest to me, as I already know what I believe about it. I can and do talk about immigration, without reference and feel that I am on solid moral footing.

The migrant detention issue has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of _legal_ immigration. Bringing it up does nothing other than to distract and prevent discussion on the original topic!

If we could just discuss issues _in good faith_ and stop with the name calling we might actually be able to solve some of them -- together.

The migrant detention issue absolutely relates to legal immigration because if you talk about reducing the number of legal immigrants, depending on your proposal that means people will be reclassified as illegal immigrants and subject to being detained.

You can't talk about immigration while trying to ignore the elephant in the room. Because when people point out the elephant and you ignore it or don't have an answer, then your argument is a poor one.

Maybe not openly, and they will (unconvincingly) try to deny it:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/google-resources-target-lati...

Discussing structural inequality is inherently political because it is a discussion about power.

However, I disagree with parent. You cannot have a diverse workforce that numbers the thousands and expect there not to be a discussion about power structures and inequity. Imagine if you applied that lens of thinking to a company that employs both blacks and whites in the Jim Crow era-- who loses?

Yes

https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric...

"Bring your whole self to work". Example of people bringing their whole selves to work: When Trump won the election we had executives crying on stage talking about the catastrophe. Not something you would see at a conventional company, I best most executives didn't even mention the election in front of their employees.

Note that I didn't say that Google promotes a specific political party, just that it promotes people bringing politics to work.

Serious? I mean, you can be right or left as much as you like, but to ignore that Google has been entirely sided with the DNC is to just ignore reality. This isn't even getting into the recent leaks of Google search blacklists that overwhelmingly target conservative outlets [0]. Or their internal documents that talk literally and explicitly about "preventing the next Trump situation". [1]

I'm no Trump fan... But it's tough to stick your head in the sand here.

Here is Google's Eric Schmidt wearing a STAFF badge at Hillary Clinton's election night headquarters. [2]

[0] https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/11/tech-insider-blows...

[1] https://humanevents.com/2019/06/24/google-admits-it-wants-to...

[2] https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.jvJbsV3FTMMC7PwzPY_XIgHaG-&pi...

edit: More and more like reddit everyday. Don't like the content, don't try and dispute it. Try and hide it.

It's pretty hard to say they selectively edited anything here.

https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/08/14/google-machine-lea...

Do you legitimately believe that it was edited?

Do you think the photo was faked?

Yes, or no.

There is no such thing as an apolitical workplace or company.

The company has made unambiguous statements of support for BLM yeaaars ago (tweeting "we need racial justice now" after talking about Castile and Sterling IIRC), and a company-wide meeting was interrupted by BLM protestors sanctioned by the company taking the stage (after IIRC Trayvon's shooting).

The author's complaint isn't that Google or its employees overall are silent on BLM. It's that their their specific team isn't talking about it with the frequency that they've arbitrarily decided they should. It seems like a pretty typical case of thinking that everybody should prioritize the exact political issues in the exact order and degree that you yourself do. You could make the exact same complaint for "people don't talk about DAPL as much as I'd like", or Nestlé and water rights, or climate change, or Syria etc etc. The only difference is that it's be ludicrous to consider any of the latter complaints as implicit discrimination, and yet for some reason you don't think it's ridiculous in this case.

If you talk to tech folks about poverty every single one of them will give you a great essay like answer about the injustices of the world and how they support the working class, but the very same people will treat the cantine staff when nobody is looking with lack of respect that I've not seen in many other places. And that matters personally because that to me says more than speech.

And I would say that at least from my personal experience this is not just because people in tech earn a lot. Before I worked for a stereotypical tech company my first gig was in finance, and altough bankers tend to have a bad reputation, I've rarely seen someone mind taking a train through a rough neighbourhood, or mingling with people from say a working background.

In tech on the other hand I have to say I know a lot of people who are so insular in how they live their lives while at the same time touting all kinds of inclusivity that it's honestly pretty angering. It's not that I'm surprised that rich people don't think about poverty a lot, or that the OP is surprised that predominantly affluent white coders don't have a personal connection to african-americans getting shot, it's that if they're going to voice support it better be more than just lip service.

It's a classic instantiation of the California Ideology[1]. The only bizarre or disagreeable bit is how it ever got passed off as somehow altruistic or progressive.

[1] -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

No. I noticed the same thing hearing the drum of intersectionality beaten so often.

Crenshaw's foundational piece[1] on intersectionality lacks any meaningful analysis of class (except for the class who is party to a lawsuit)! The part about entry into the country club is revealing: it's not about equality in society, it's about equality in the professional-managerial class.

Adolph Reed, Jr (despite maybe going too far in wholly rejecting identity politics) really gets the point across[2]:

>...the burden of that ideal of social justice is that the society would be fair if 1% of the population controlled 90% of the resources so long as the dominant 1% were 13% black, 17% Latino, 50% female, 4% or whatever LGBTQ, etc.

Re:

>The only bizarre or disagreeable bit is how it ever got passed off as somehow altruistic or progressive.

My take is that the left holds similar liberal viewpoints, so there is just enough overlap to wear the progressive (and therefore altruistic) cloak.

[1]: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

[2]: http://nonsite.org/editorial/how-racial-disparity-does-not-h...

It turns out that most people in the US decry PC[1]:

> 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness

There is a burgeoning movement on the left to be more lax about political correctness because the academic dialect (pedantry) required repels a lot of well-meaning people.

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majo...

Link to the study cited in [1]: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a70a7c3010027736a227...

What would you suggest the alternative to be?

The other part is voting -- gentrifiers tend to vote for their own interests and may overlook or vote against efforts the people they're outclassing care about e.g affordable housing.

I can't agree with this more.

I sat through a discussion a few years ago that really opened my eyes... a group of younger artists - that normally discussed things like a lack of racial diversity in the company, transgender rights etc - passionately cheering on the owner of a trendy brunch spot who was on the news for tossing out parents with a crying infant. It struck me that their seemingly endless compassion for humanity might not actually be all that genuine after all.

I thought that being interested in social justice would at the very least require some basic human compassion and empathy, but perhaps that's where I was wrong.