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.