Exactly.

If I'm working on a team that is rolling out a new Google drive feature, I really don't need to hear you talk about why drinking straws are a phallic symbol and used by the patriarchy to keep woman down.

We have work to do.

It's very easy to decry literal straw man arguments. As a googler, I don't think I've seen much discussion of drinking straws at all, and certainly none about how they're phallic.

If you think any discussion of politics is that infantile, I don't think there's anything I can do or say to convince you otherwise, but for everyone else, just recognize that this example is ridiculous. And real, actual, conversations about political topics aren't anywhere near as asenine. They're about important things, that often are relevant to work: privacy, discrimination (inentional and non-, by both people and machines), and literal actual government policy that affects google and googlers: immigration, taxes, etc.

I'm not sure how you could avoid those topics and still be an effective employee, or in some cases still be an employee at all.

Everyone here is talking about what _should_ happen.

Yes, the workplace _should_ be serene and work _should_ proceed in harmony.

But there are other things that aren't proceeding the way people think _should_ be happening, which they deem to be far more important.

Which is why you're seeing more people willing to disrupt the workplace, which they consider a minor obligation relative to the bigger picture.

Yup, and Google is letting those people know that there may now be consequences for their disruption. If those people still think their disruption worthwhile, they're free to proceed.

I think this is very telling, as a symptom of a diseased democracy.

People wouldn't take their fight to these environments if democracy was working, because they'd have faith in the due processes of government. But once they start thinking things aren't working, they'll go to their next seats of power. In this case it's the workplace where they can influence their coworkers and the policy of a big tech corporation.

These people are not a majority so democracy isn't fully broken yet, but the cracks are showing.

A healthy democracy isn’t meant to prop up unpersuasive ideologies.

I wish your comment was top level, because most of the comments in this thread are snarky responses that don't understand how politics turned Google's workplace toxic.

I'm sure the oppressed party in your example feels the polar opposite and don't want to hear your whining about how feminism doesn't matter in modern society because it's good enough as is. And I think that's the point :)

I assume you're being sarcastic/exaggerating, but even so.

This is just a perfect example of how polarised politics is today. Society just needs to calm down and evaluate itself instead of bickering over nonsense.

I'm not sure I'd jump so quickly to dismiss the statements of either the parent or grandparent as an exaggeration.

Yes, every meaningful change in society has come to light because everyone calmed down enough.

How is meaningful change in society related to shipping Google Drive features?

Time and a place.

Politics has no nuance or filter anymore. It's all the time on full blast, forever. I hate it.

Plenty of Google Drive features are political. For example, allowing people to monitor who has read a document. Or deciding what the default permission set should be for new files. Or whether or not the files should be encrypted at rest. Or whether the Drive client should download and sync everything, or download stuff on demand. Etc, etc.

That's a strawman argument. I think we both know there's a distinction to be made between 'political' and mainstream political conversation. Of course if you're stretching the definition it will include everything.

Outrage fatigue is a thing.

In the words of the poet Z. de la Rocha, Anger is a gift.

They can debate this on their own time. Unless you're on the straw team, this doesn't matter.

There is a time and place for political discussions.

Work isn't one of them, unless, it's directly related to the work being done.

No one is preventing you from working.

Political discussions in the work place effectively become denial of service attacks on some co-workers. Since you have to collaborate with others at work to get your job done, anything that "DoS" your co-workers "DoS" you as well. Plus it hurts the value of the equity portion of your compensation, so it a way, it's theft too.

These conversations primarily occur online and are thus easily avoidable.

>Plus it hurts the value of the equity portion of your compensation, so it a way, it's theft too.

I doubt it. The culture has probably done more positive than negative for company value. And even if it hasn't, short-term shareholder value definitely isn't the best measure of long-term success. Calling it "theft" is a big stretch.

When you organize the worlds information, then some amount of politics is a necessary part of the job. The product you are selling is built by political talk.

To give a fairly tame example. Lets say someone googles "Can crystal healing cure cancer". Do you put a box saying no? Do you put put a box saying "according to authority it does not". If you defer to authority to do you defer to different one in different countries? What if they disagree? Maybe we need a list of FUBAR countries?

I think there are a lot of reasons someone at work may not be doing work, that have nothing to do with talking about politics. BRB...gotta get to work ;)

Yes but what work? Should that work be done? Google just wants everyone to be good little soldiers and do what they’re told.

Their job is to create a forum for others to debate, and to try and maintain neutrality. Their own politics aren't necessarily relevant. Everyone wants to be able to have their political opinions, try and convince others, and not get fired. It's kind of a pick-2 situation. Feel free to bring politics in with ya so long as you embrace the philosophy that you can say anything you want on your last day.

>Everyone wants to be able to have their political opinions, try and convince others, and not get fired.

In fact, many people do not want to try and have others convince them of their political leanings.

Yeah, THIS.

Trying to convince other people of MY political leaning goes against one of the central political leaning that I have: Everyone should have freedom to believe in whatever they want to believe in. I also find it annoying when other people try to shove their believe down my throat.

I try to view political discussions as helping to spread information and confront one's own biases. Most people don't seem to though. I've had people that I agree with politically on a subject yell and curse at me because I don't believe every bullshit "fact" they sling my way.

> Their job is to create a forum for others to debate, and to try and maintain neutrality

What? Says who?

Others as in not their employees. Google indexes all the worlds information, who says their goal is to impose their opinion on it? Isn't neutrality in indexing the assumption?

> Google indexes all the worlds information

They do not collect anything even remotely close to "all the worlds information".

> who says their goal is to impose their opinion on it

Their goal is to make money. Whether they impose their opinion on the index is a business decision.

> Isn't neutrality in indexing the assumption?

Why would it be? What if the people that run google have a fundamental disagreement with certain political ideas and have a desire not to index those things?

Why would you assume that?

Speaking for myself here.

Yes and no. Ranking by definition means not being neutral, it's just that society has decided that it's acceptable to rank spam lower than other content. Neutrality looks a lot like bias from the perspective of spammers.

When you're dealing with more complex signals at scale there are so many second and third order effects that are hard or impossible to predict.

For example, the conservative bias everyone's talking about doesn't seem to me to be literal bias against the right, but bias in favour of mainstream news sources which are overwhelmingly left-wing.

I'm sure there are many issues in Search like the one I just described, and being able to have these conversations is what makes it possible for Googlers to spot these issues, decide if it's even an issue and fix it. If you ban a certain type of conversation, you'll change how people think about a potential issue.

It would be up to the details of their individuals contracts. It would be possible for someone's contract to either directly (unlikely) or indirectly (far more likely) allow for debating of politics to some degree. That freedom would be part of their compensation package, though one often not considered in simple models. I think Google is realizing they have undervalued the cost to them of allowing such an action and want to renegotiate. Since it is likely an indirect benefit, this would largely be done by changing corporate rules and culture concerning politics where workers could respond in numerous ways.

While it is possible for a contract specifying 8 hours of work without a single thought other than work (and any legally mandated breaks) in exchange for the given salary and benefits, I've never seen any organization that actually operated using such contracts.