Not sure what's behind Google's inaction here, they really shouldn't be worried about the trouble makers defecting to somewhere else that most likely won't tolerate their bullshit.
Silicon Valley has spent years setting itself up as an inheritor of the counterculture, a place where it's possible to "think different". Employees are given a share of the business (via a complicated tax shelter of options). Startups want "contributors", people who buy into the idea that they're engaged in a positive-sum contribution to the world rather than just bringing home a paycheck. They provide all sorts of office features to encourage people to "bring their whole self to work".
(I could go on, but I expect this thread to be buried)
Edit: exhibit A, hollywood social justice warrior proudly being a nuisance, disrupting law abiding citizens with a hammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I ; the "1984" Macintosh commercial and its successor "Think Different" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs are as close to an official statement of SV founding ideology as you're going to get)
Google in particular, if they were looking for people capable of thinking outside the box, would not selecting very specifically from the box of people that are prepared to jump through the hoops of their ridiculous programming interviews. In fact, by this point in their history, they could just datamine the list of people who have repeatedly told their recruiters to take a running jump, and start sampling from there.
(of course they subsequently changed the rules to make that less likely for non-tech staff, part of the gradual move away from "Don't Be Evil")
Counter cultural types don't have a monopoly on innovation.
That's not how you foster counterculture. In fact, that's probably why Google went so long without any internal employee conflict.
It's not exactly a recipe for hiring people that are going to push back on corporate decisions.
I can't say I agree with you. What you're suggesting is basically the Wall Street model where bad and unethical institutional behavior gets a suboptimal amount of pushback.
But I don't think they "should" do so if they're calling out legitimately poor behavior that has been unaddressed by any other avenue. That wording is quite strange to me. Would you say that Rosa Parks "should" have faced the consequences of stirring things up as she did? Accepting that it is possible is a necessary part of civil disobedience, but the imposition of those consequences by higher powers is not.
There's an EXTREME amount of power imbalance between employer and employee; if employees have to fear retaliation for voicing their concerns it has a chilling effect.
I'm okay with consequences, but voicing your concerns in public isn't grounds for consequences.
Employees are signing up for a world where they don't wear significant risk in exchange for subordinating their decision making to a company.
Companies are fundamentally an organised group of people working to a common goal. I can understand very well if individual employees want to assert their individuality. However, at any moment, they have only and exactly 3 choices:
1) Cooperate enthusiastically.
2) Cooperate with complaint
3) Quit
Nobody is going to get sacked for quietly and politely voicing a concern. However, once employees start organising to influence management on business decisions they really need to pony up the capital and become shareholders. Deciding what management does is the privilege of shareholders, not employees.
Isn't this precisely describing why unions were originally generated, so that employees can also leverage power equal to the shareholders, and therefore have a say in their own working conditions?
This article is talking about:
* Amazon workers are demanding more action from the company on battling climate change
* Microsoft, employees say they don’t want to build technology for warfare
* Salesforce, a group has lobbied management to end its work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency
* Google, [employees] want a say in and control over the products they build
Those are issues going way beyond what an employee can reasonably expect to influence. Being employed by a tech company is an achievement, but the end of the day tech workers aren't that special. They don't formally get to decide how the world works.
They absolutely can't take to social media to complain about these issues and expect to hold a job with the company they are complaining about. This type of activity isn't acceptable; they can't draw a wage and overrule strategic directions from people with capital at stake. The options are work or walk.
As an employee you are paid to execute the company's strategy.
If you disagree you can of course, and even should, voice your disagreement but that should be done in a professional in diplomatic way, in private.
If you cannot do that or cannot accept the company's strategy then yes, your alternative is to leave quietly.
The new "red guards" of the left may not like it, but that's what professionalism (not to mention a free society) is. Tough.
It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. A company that can't do that should have its charter revoked. And its labor force is part of that society.
I'm assuming you're talking about the US.
We are not subjects of our government, or of some other sovereign, whether that be society or anything else. Our society is founded on individual pursuit of happiness, not collectivism.
Put another way, corporations exist for whatever reason their creators decide. So long as they operate within the law and are able to sustain themselves, societal good is a side effect and a concern of the State, not the corporation itself.
I live in the US, and sit on the the board of a governmental organization, a nonprofit corporation and an LLC.
It is incredibly obvious from this perspective that the regulations the state chooses to apply greatly constrain what it is possible for your organization to do. And this goes beyond the day to day all the way up to the mission of the org.
The state definitely has a large influence on weather organizations exists, their form and the reasons for which and methods they operate.
We, as the actual owners of that government that grants this special exception, can--and should--expect better than the barest bare minimum out of such fictional persons if they want to keep their fictional personhood. This is a transaction: "we grant you the right to operate a fictional person and you don't act like shitheads in our society."
We don't do this, largely because of the weird little melty fears that led to you going off about collectivism when it doesn't apply here except insofar that labor participation can encourage, though does not guarantee, better behavior. But we can, and we should, keep this tool at the ready because corporate entities will be good citizens only so long as you keep the proverbial fist of an angry god ready to strike; sociopaths (and your standard corporation is a sociopath by definition) only, only, respect consequences and so those consequences must be severe and always at the ready.
A careful reader might note that I said nothing about such companies operating as unlimited-liability partnerships. Because yes, fair is fair, and people (who, unlike fictive entities, have rights and freedoms even if the results of those rights and freedoms suck) have the right to do as they please so long as they aren't harming other people. But they wouldn't take that option and we all know why.
Socialism does not work. It ends in chaos and failure.
Not that you're right about your sweeping statement either, but it doesn't even begin to apply here except insofar as labor participation in direction can--not will, but can--discourage that shitty behavior.
Both require employee representation on boards, as do many other not-socialist countries. Germany also has works councils.
The truth is that employees do not dictate the direction of the company in those countries. They have virtually no power and the system is used as a discussion platform on working conditions, pay, etc.
This is not quite the same as having employees decide what the company should produce and to whom it should sell it.
They both require one third of the board to be employee representatives. It might even be half for larger German companies. How does getting to vote on decisions and appointments equate to having virtually no power?
German work's councils, for all their imperfections and flaws, have often been looked at enviously by other Western countries - including US and UK. It is those which deal with conditions, pay and what have you.
That such organization tends to also have societal value--weird that thinking about societal value gets conflated with "socialism", I guess every man is an island--is a really nice side effect, though.
I am very surprised that a moderator would take side and use a rather rude and condescending tone in replying to a commenter that hasn't do anything beyond voicing a legitimate point.
Is that what HN is for?
Generic ideological arguments are simply off topic on HN. If you like, you can think of that as an arbitrary moderation decision. I think of it as following from the site principle of curiosity. Either way, please don't post any more of those.
> It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. A company that can't do that should have its charter revoked.
This sounds like BS to me. I see all the companies doing serious harm to humanity, environment, ecology are running just fine. Do you have examples of charter getting revoked?
It sounds like bullshit because some elements of the civic discourse have expended a lot of effort to make the idea inconceivable.
I personally agree it's kind of silly to expect your work to be a Utopia by your specific definition. On the other hand, if Google does learn to reconcile its business and competing employee cultures, they will have done something amazing that probably makes them a stronger institution.
I personally never interviewed at Google, but the damore scandal was a pretty big dissuasive for me to attempt to get one. It does not look like a safe space to me.
For another, Google is in fierce competition with the rest of the tech companies for talent.
For another the rest of the tech companies don't seem to enable let alone tolerate this shenanigans.
2. Google shouldn't accommodate the delusional and entitled.
3. Labor unions are antithetical to sound economic theory and practice, and no other company in the business supports them.
Imagine if you could murder troublesome people because that PR hit would be a one-time thing and better than this ongoing situation. There's a reason reputation is a thing.
Also 2 and 3 are just, like, your opinion, man.
I hope for your sake that you're a boss or capitalist and not a worker.
For years now, these people have been bullying the company into advancing hard-left political positions instead of serving the company's founding mission. They have created a climate of fear for anyone who disagrees with their extreme political positions, and they have almost certainly violated their employment contracts by leaking confidential information to the press. Their friends in HR protect them.
They appear to engage in activism full-time on the company's payroll according to documents they themselves have posted.
They talk constantly about "Google's values", which they twist into claims that the company has already decided to support their political positions. They demand that Google give up billions of dollars in business by abandoning product lines and refusing to serve huge portions of the population. For example, one of them demanded that one business disable a key component that drives a lot of revenue, calling the situation an "extremism emergency". To this person, the negative impact would have been irrelevant. These demands never stop. They call them "ethics".
Any functioning company would have fired these people a long time ago. Google leadership is full of cowards.
These people are not attempting "labor organizing". They are putting on a few of the trappings of labor organizing, like drawing up lists of demands, but without doing any of the hard work that requires actually organizing a union.
In the United States, a company's employees decide whether to form a union by holding a referendum by secret ballot. Unions then elect their representatives through a similar process.
Google's activists are not attempting to form a traditional union. They know that they are deeply unpopular and would lose any fair secret ballot election in which they were on the ballot. The activists believe that by playing pretend-union, they can gain all the influence of a real union without the accountability and risk. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too.
A real friend speaks out ...
Now Google's got reduced innovation and reduced autonomy for it's employees. They didn't scale the latter and subsequently, they're losing the former.
If the employees leave, Google's another IBM. Another corpse.
So people shouldn't have to take responsibility for their actions, just because they're paid for their troubles?
They also might have contracts with these people that require certain reasons for it.
Certainly it would be very bad press for google if they fired all of the people who are involved in this.