> It was a huge mistake for Google (and other valley companies) to politicize the workplace.

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.

Some of the politicization at Google may have been born out of the "Bring your whole self to work" philosophy playing out on their internal Google+ network and "Coffee Beans" discussion forum. You can see many examples/screenshots of what was tolerated internally in the Damore lawsuit[1]. I've worked exclusively for large orgs (outside of the Bay Area) and it completely blows my mind.

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

Wow, just from briefly scrolling around I'm appalled by the sort of stuff that people are willing to put in writing and send to their coworkers at Google. e.g. managers admitting to having shit-lists of people that they won't let on their teams

Damore's memo isn't 1/10th as disturbing as these comments from his coworkers.

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

And he's still employed. Yeesh.

What I dislike about conversations like this on HN, is that comments like the above don’t get downvoted because they are detrimental to the conversation, or because they are in some way a rules violation, but rather because people just don’t like them. It defeats the whole “moderation” purpose of self-moderation. And it happens every single time a political issue like racial bias in the tech industry is the topic at hand.

Maybe equating 'conservative views' to racism and sexism _is_ detrimental to this conversation?

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?

When racism and sexism are so disproportionately embraced by conservatives (e.g what views are espoused by white supremacists or proud boys or <insert recent alt-right mass shooter here>?) you must ask yourself what's _really_ detrimental to the conversation here.

> 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.

The problem is that your opinion doesn't exist in the a vacuum. If you talk about reducing immigration while saying little to nothing about the horrible treatment of people at our borders, then naturally people are going to take offense because you're ranking the value of reduced immigration over the value of treating people humanely.

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.

> If you talk about reducing immigration while saying little to nothing about the horrible treatment of people at our borders, then naturally people are going to take offense because you're ranking the value of reduced immigration over the value of treating people humanely.

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.

If you don't care if people are offended, then you're effectively saying that you give zero weight to their arguments and opinions. That's not a particularly good argumentative tactic and is a great way to ensure your argument is shut down from the get-go.

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.

> If you don't care if people are offended, then you're effectively saying that you give zero weight to their arguments and opinions

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.

What you care about is, by definition, dictated by your emotional state. I for example greatly care about issues that relate to poverty because I've experienced deep poverty before. What you effectively say by saying you don't care if you offend people is that you only care about things that are emotionally relevant to yourself. You touch upon this yourself:

>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.

> What you care about is, by definition, dictated by your emotional state

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.

That's great advice - but it amounts to 'be careful and qualify your opinion to show you're _not_ racist'. That's exactly what people are complaining about.

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.

I mean, if you're talking about racially charged topics (of which immigration unavoidably is) you should expect to have to be careful. I'm not sure what else to tell you.

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.

> Did Google openly support one candidate or party?

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

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

Food for thought, something can be political without directly referencing domestic politics and political parties. Definition: "the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power."

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?

>Did Google openly support one candidate or party?

Yes

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

> How did they promote politics in the workplace?

"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.

Would Google also support Trump supporters celebrating the victory as openly as other people took the stage to cry about the catastrophe?

>Did Google openly support one candidate or party?

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.

Project Veritas is credible now?

It's a video with a senior Google engineer explaining the documents he turned over to DOJ, how he retrieved them, and those documents clearly viewable.

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

Your link is to an article about Pinterest not wanting people to pin a site which presumably has pictures of dead and aborted fetuses

You're right, those are the leaked docs from June. Here is the one I meant to link, August's. The interview is alright, a little self-congratulatory at the end, but the documents are pretty hard to argue.

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

Are you claiming that a video of Eric Schmidt wearing a Hillary staff badge is faked?

Do you legitimately believe that it was edited?

That link isn’t to PV.

What?

Do you think the photo was faked?

Yes, or no.

Every person can support whatever candidate or party they like. Same goes for companies, especially in a democracy like the US where big donors and big money are an essential part of every election. Should be accepted by everyone or generally frowned upon. So yeah, Eric Schmidt supporting is OK. As much as I don't like it but it would be ok as well if he had supported Trump.

You cannot avoid a politicized workplace because companies don't exist in a vacuum and neither do the workers. You can do your best to ensure things remain respectful but you can't avoid certain topics unless you outright refuse to hire people of color or minorities, in which case you achieve a political monoculture which is in itself a politicized workplace.

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