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Comment by segmondy | Hacker News Reader

My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Most companies have issues, and these issues are not "Company" issues but PEOPLE issues. Once you're large enough, you are going to have people with differing opinions, beliefs and values. These are going to clash. If you happen to be on the losing side and don't learn to accept it, you will find yourself miserable. Accept it and solider on to change if you truly believe in your fight.

There are folks out there working minimum wage jobs who are truly miserable, back breaking labor, standing on their feet all day, standing in the hot sun or out in the cold weather, avoiding dangerous machinery and avoiding trying to be maimed or worse loose their life. Dealing with stupid harassment and constant abuse from their boss who makes a $1 more above minimum wage.

Folks out there are really going through it. It doesn't mean that we don't have tough challenges in tech, but we have become spoiled and a bunch of whiners. The majority of the population are outside the industry and they roll their eyes when these type of articles come out and these incessant complaints don't endear them to us.

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My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work (people in their 20s), or on putting in their 8 hours and going home to their families (people >30 mostly, of course they also want to do good work, just have additional new priorities in a young family).

Then there is a vocal minority who leverage that no individual's performance really affects the money printing machine. They blatantly view the company and its resources as a means to further their political goals.

They come across as incredibly entitled and tone-deaf against the actual working class or people actually suffering from oppression (say, women being incarcerated in Iran for decades for taking off their veils, or protesters in HK). No matter how petty and entitled the request, anything denied is interpreted as some larger act of "violence" against them.

What I didn't/don't understand is why management allowed that to happen. Either they actually believe in the political goals themselves, are afraid of the conflict, or believe it just does not matter for the company.

I think what management fails to understand often is that giving in to a demand is not viewed with gratitude but merely as accepting what's naturally right and good. In other words, giving in to demands 1..n does not give you credit when demand n+1 is posed. The ultimate conflict is just delayed.

I agree completely with this.

Keep in mind that true evil is MBS ordering the murder of journalist Khasshogi. True evil is invading and conquering Crimea. True evil is murdering your generals with anti-aircraft guns or watching dogs tear them apart while still alive.

Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

Did you just compare Google's advertising business to assassination, murder, and war crime?

He was contrasting them.

He literally said they do not even compare.

Yes and no, some of the projects mentioned in the article, like Project Dragonfly, involved developing the kind of censorship tools necessary to prop up dictators like the ones you mentioned.

That’s not whining imo, that’s standing up to exactly the breed of ‘True Evil’ you define here.

We have seen this before in tech: Nazi Germany was probably IBM’s second largest customer at the time. There is a moral imperative to not let something like that happen again.

We should all be disturbed that the executive team at Google felt that Project Dragonfly was appropriate.

My opinion is that someone is going to be providing that service, so it might as well be me (better the devil you know than the devil you don't).

Exactly the reasoning used by arms dealers.

The world is not absolute. It would be nice to be able to take an absolutist, moral stance against things I disagree with. But as I get older, I realize that one must be able to compromise and see in shades of grey.

Compromise is important, and one doesn't need to go the way of the Sith, but giving in on your morals is pretty much what leads to problems in this world.

I agree! But also being able to compromise so that you still can wield influence is important. For example, if an American company (such as Google) does not fill the need for this service for China, that leaves the door open for other countries to fill this void -- countries which America might not want to be furnishing this service.

So by that logic, US and like minded allies should ban their industries from working with China / Russia / Middle Eastern dictatorships? Are you advocating for complete trade barriers?

If not, why single out Google when Apple / Walmart / ... are allowed to benefit from Chinese market?

...or invading and destroying countries and countless communities across the globe with a smile on your face.

I agree with you completely!

true evil is...

This is a straw man argument. The critique made of Google is not that has come to embody "true evil". But that it has (by degrees) slouched towards moral ambivalence, and acquiescence of (yes) evil.

Serving banner ads across sites does not even remotely compare.

I think you are perfectly aware that Google is engaged in a lot more than simply the business of serving banner ads.

True evil would be if the Kremlin were to warn about the threat posed by Belgium or France to Russian security and the need to contain this threat and even declaring a national emergency. Like the USA did in their backyard, "that little region over here" aka South America. Crimea was a very logical step after NATO kept violating the promise made to never move an inch geographical beyond Berlin.

True evil is also believing all crap that yellow press and country-level echo chambers produce and then to bring it at someone’s table.

While I completely disagree with a commentor who calls “not interested in politics” an euphemism, as if they were disgusting and uneducated, your set of scary factoids likely falls right into this category.

true evil is threatening countries who wont sell oil strictly for USD with nuclear warfare

This matches my experience 100%.

Reminds me of Nassim Taleb's minority rule.

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

That majority of people can afford to focus on work or put in their 8 hours and go back to their families thanks to a "vocal minority" which was able to convince others in the past to fight for new rights and for what's right.

Obviously some people think there's more to life than cashing a large paycheck and writing code. "Not interested in politics" is an euphemism for clueless and easy to manipulate by those that are.

>That majority of people can afford to focus on work or put in their 8 hours and go back to their families thanks to a "vocal minority" which was able to convince others in the past to fight for new rights and for what's right.

That it is due to a vocal minority doesn't mean it is due to this vocal minority. Not all vocal minorities are equal, and nor should all vocal minorities be treated alike.

Freedom of speech is a great thing. That doesn't mean everyone exercising their freedom to speak results in a positive.

>That it is due to a vocal minority doesn't mean it is due to this vocal minority. Not all vocal minorities are equal, and nor should all vocal minorities be treated alike.

This is obvious and should go without saying. The parent comment gave an example of a positive consequence of an instance of this so-called "vocal minority", since the grandparent comment left no room for any positive angle on this.

I'm seriously confused how this translates into treating all "vocal-minorities" equally or that they all result in a positive.

>since the grandparent comment left no room for any positive angle on this.

I do not see this. Grandparent said "a vocal minority", which I interpret as a specific vocal minority. Like when someone says "there is a vocal person in my team who is obnoxious" - it does not imply that all vocal people in all teams are obnoxious.

My point was the example given by the person I responded to is kind of irrelevant. Yes, vocal minorities have done great things for many, many people. The GP to my comment was not talking about those, and listing positive vocal minorities that exist or have existed is irrelevant.

My interpretation of the initial comment you replied to was that pointing out that there are consequences of "vocal minorities" in the past that have led to great improvements and considering such examples almost always have significant pushback implies the possibility that perception is misplaced.

However, I see where you are coming from and thank you for clarifying.

It's not irrelevant at all. The ex-Google poster was using the fact that only a minority of Google employees are fighting for those causes to dismiss their views.

I countered by saying that vocal minorities were able to achieve great things in the past, so implicitly their arguments should be evaluated on their merit.

I was drawing a comparison between the people inside Google fighting against e.g. censorship and military contracts and others which fought similar fights before them.

I did not say that the same vocal minority is responsible for all progress. Neither did I say that all vocal minorities are alike. All of this should be blindingly obvious to any adult, unless they're trying to twist words, be pedantic or generally argue in bad faith.

> "Not interested in politics" is an euphemism for clueless and easy to manipulate by those that are.

Or a polite way of saying "I fundamentally disagree with you but don't feel like getting into a debate at work, please leave me alone."

That there exists a vocal minority does not mean they are right. There exists vocal minorities calling for the dissolution of most of your most fundamental rights.

> "I [snip] don't feel like getting into a debate [snip], please leave me alone."

I do this for all manner of things, including political discussions at work. That other people don't hold this as a default position is astounding to me.

My comment was posted on an article about Google, so it follows that it's connected to the minorities inside Google which were fighting against e.g. a censored search engine in China or military contracts.

Notably absent on their list of demands was the dissolution of most of anyone's fundamental rights.

"Not interested in politics" is an euphemism for clueless and easy to manipulate by those that are.

Conversely, there are also those who are "too political" and want to bring their politics into every aspect of their lives and the lives of those around them. People like this can be as toxic as those they are speaking out against.

My BigTechCo experience has mostly been people working a 9-5 shift, and politics doesn't play into it at all. There is a general desire to avoid conflict and not be an asshole, and maybe do some occasional good with spare cycles.

The vocal minority you refer to doesn't influence my day to day or month to month. You get people posting manifestos, and people whining about XYZ, but you only butt heads with them if you actively seek them out and want to get offended.

The idea that there are some kind of political commissars reprimanding me for "whitelisting" features for certain customers, or giving out demerits for using gendered pronouns in promo packets, is a paranoid fantasy.

>>My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics and are primarily focused on doing good work

In other words, you could end up having absolutely no conflicts about scenarios like these: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...

Or maybe even end up patting yourself in the back at the end of the quarter for outperforming KPI (e.g. ISP marketshare increase) and get a nice bonus while you are at it.

The problem with your reasoning is that your actions at FAAMNG does not happen in a vacuum.

At a certain size, corporate roadmaps and people management are inevitably political. Google modifying their search criteria to participate in China's market.. is political. Google's HR department working towards demographic goals.. is political (I'm not judging its political-ness, but it ended up being political, didn't it?).

Each of the major FAAMG companies has a political/dominance issue of some kind, one that comes to mind more immediately than all the political issues associated with those companies. Taking a swag at it:

* Facebook: privacy - exploitation (personal data exploitation)

* Amazon: automation

* Apple: privacy - enforced (withholding from gov't)

* Microsoft: [I'm not even sure, they're flying low.. perhaps monopolization, or government backdoors?]

* Google: politicization/curation

I would suggest that Google's the clearest "ideation" company here, where censorship/curation is the most core part of their business model (Facebook is social media, Google is a borg-like machine collection all of the Internet and then putting algorithms around access to it), and most prone to politicization crossing the internal/external cultural barrier. [edit:spelling]

Microsoft is the oldest of them all. Microsoft had its own "teenage years" problems... maybe it has less problems these days because it's more mature?

The article mentioned participating with China in state surveillance and censorship.

Yes, but, they're not taking as much public heat for that as other companies, I would say.

True, if we're talking about PR problems and not just moral and ethical issues, Microsoft seems to be faring relatively well at the moment.

Indeed, reading this I have to wonder how some of the characters have time to do the jobs they were presumably hired for.

I so agree with you. You seem cool and smart.

> My inside-FAAMNG experience has been that most employees seem to be not interested in the politics

...or perhaps they're not interested in talking about politics with you.

My experience also aligns with this. Probably, Google's open culture was okay in the early days of internet and the company. Now that political activism has spread across all the SV companies, I sincerely wish that leadership across entire tech industry squashes the noisy vocal minority. If someone is really passionate about their political cause, they should pursue it in their personal time using their personal resources.

Suffering is always relative and it's a slippery slope to dismiss as whining. By this logic, 99% of issues in the US are "whining" because other countries have it much worse.

Anyone in Sierra Leone could claim to a US citizen: "Sugar lobbies are meddling with public school meals and making children diabetic? Lucky you, my country doesn't have public schools and children are starving". This of course doesn't invalidate the issue.

Having lived in a third world country it would be very easy for me to dismiss "they refuse to call me by my preferred pronoun" as whining. After immigrating into the first world, it's a clear realization to me that suffering is relative and that's necessary for civilization to continue progressing through time.

Talmudic question: what's the average fertility rate of the clientele worrying about misgendering, and how does that average relate to civilization progressing through time?

(please google Talmudic questions before downvoting parent - they're asking for consistency in my example and that's fair)

The utility of the example I gave depends on your moral values [1], which admittedly was crafted for the perceived majority of the HN crowd.

The example for me is a sign of respect for the freedom to be who you want to be, in contrast of imposing your morals on others. It's a sign of advancement to me that individuals feel comfortable with themselves, instead of wasting energy hiding trying to conform to an arbitrary standard. I spend less energy calling people how they like to be called than they would spend by being uncomfortable with themselves their whole lives. I won't get into the accounting of energy wasted, take my argument or leave it.

I'm sorry you're being downvoted without explanation - cold shoulders divide people even further.

[1] Moral values change according to time and place: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mores

The M/F/Congenitally-Infertile distinction is not an "arbitrary standard", but rather a natural kind, and the essence of reproduction of the species.

Morality is something we impose upon ourselves and others precisely to coordinate the polity, in order avoid or manage conflicts (e.g. driving on the left vs driving on the right).

The issue I see with giving in to people who want to be called a preferred pronoun is the reason they want it.

They want to be called a certain pronoun because they want to be thought of as their preferred gender. They don't really care about the pronoun. They care about the opinion it signals. An opinion they don't want people to be allowed to have. In order words, they want to change language in order to change people's thought patterns and mental models. If people were allowed to speak however they want it would break the spell. It would break the suspension of disbelief.

Having your thoughts decided for you is exertion of power and dominance that makes me deeply uncomfortable. It is no small thing to give up.

I think critics of preferred pronouns would argue that there are virtually no Americans who have problems as trivial as the pronoun issue; that it’s a contrived problem. In other words, it’s not that suffering is relative—everyone agrees on that—the disagreement is about the ordering.

puts on international hat

Actually, all of you Westerners[1] are rich entitled whiners. You have consistent access to clean water that comes straight to your house, you even have a house, with insulation and carpets no less. You have a cornucopia of diverse and nutritious foods, and your social institutions will even feed you if you're poor! Not only do you have all these necessities, even your poor people have opulent expensive toys like cars, TVs and cell phones!

1. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/west...

> all of you Westerners[1] are rich entitled whiners

This is provably wrong, many people are not whiners no matter which country you look at.

A $2000 rusty car, a $40 used tv, and any cellphone made in the last 10 years do not equal opulent expensive toys in my eyes. There are homeless people with these three things. The 'welfare queen' of your conservative fantasies does not actually exist.

It's written from the perspective of someone living in a mud hut and probably not on your continent.

That's exactly the point. Even homeless Westerners have access to expensive toys. And opulent wealth is taken for granted so much that Westerners don't even see owning a rusty car, used tv, and cellphone as noteworthy.

We have safe potable water for now. As public investment continues to lag we will see more Flints in the US.

California does not provide safe tap water to all residents: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/us/the-crisis-lurking-in-...

From another perspective, you could say Westerners are people who don't let others have the best of them and bring them down. That they have incredibly high expectations and standards. That they don't take no for an answer. And they will assert themselves and their rights strongly, vocally and openly. Or in other words, give me liberty or listen to me ask for it until I die.

Now the question becomes, how much is this attitude responsible for all the richness you described? If it is partially or fully responsible, then others should adopt it as well, and they'd be better off "whining" as well.

Let's give a scenario, two kids at a table, one shouts "I demand desert". The other responds "Stop whining, I didn't even get to eat anything, at least you got an entree". Whose most likely to get what they want? Maybe the other should have whined instead: "And I demand a full meal!"

I find this argument so facile. You can agitate for greater labor rights - I don't see why anyone would be convinced by: "but look how much more shitty these other workers lives are."

Exactly - and managers would do that to tech workers in a second if they could. Let's make the best of our negotiating position while we can.

The thing is, much of this is not about their own conditions. Much of it is about the way the company treats other people, either within or outside the company.

If worker-boss relationships can't be fixed at a company where the workers are economically valuable and highly educated, how can that be propagated downwards to the rest of the economy? Do people actually want it fixed, or are they more afraid of their fellow workers than their abusive boss?

Of course people with minimum wage jobs have it worse. That doesn't negate problems experienced by people at FAANG-level companies. It's especially interesting to hear about problems at these companies, as they're usually considered paradise, when in actuality they have problems like everywhere else, usually just different ones.

The average tenure at these companies is ~2yrs, so clearly the money isn't worth it for most people. It's interesting to hear why that is without dismissing any possible problem out of hand.

I regularly have chuckles with friends about entitled tech workers. Complaining about the type of bottled water, the gym compensation plan, the type of company laptop.

It's really sad.

Oh, don't joke about the type of laptop

Our boss knows that having TrackPoint is a "conditions of employment" issue. Yes, it's a privilege... at the same time, it's what we spend 50+hrs of week on, so it needs to not cause ergonomic and usability issues every second of every minute of the day ️

I get people get all riled up about this. Even more when they are young and have no real perspective.

But it gives tech workers in general a really bad vibe. Pompous, spoiled brats.

Of course, most of these people are nice human beings, but somehow they get lost in minutiae and 0th world problems the moment they join some hot startup.

Yes, we can have discussions about 1st world problems of work conditions that don't involve hazardous machinery or manual labor, or have poor wages.

But that whole "don't complain, people have it worse" vibe extends to almost anyone living in the United States vs other countries where money means nothing, rule of law doesn't exist, or the mother country is about to slaughter thousands of people for wanting democracy.

The point is: Maintain perspective, but still continue bitching about the uncomfortable chairs.

Why is it "entitled" to make demands of your employer if you are in a position to make demands? Do you also "chuckle" at people who try and negotiate pay raises or more vacation days?

No, but some of the things people get worked up over in the tech industry can get silly, especially the ones with less experience who see themselves as temporarily embarrassed 10Xers. It’s usually in proportion to how overly seriously they take themselves, and it’s often from manufactured conceit to cover up insecurity about other things in their lives. It’s not most people but it’s definitely a type you encounter in places like SV.

Recently, they were discussing how to best secure their offices because a deranged woman came to the office and tried to kill all of them. [1]

And yes, they're also human and discuss whether single-use water bottles are bad enough that they're worth replacing, how best to keep fit so that they don't cost their employer-funded health care program too much in the long run, and yes, like many nerds, they discuss the type of laptop they like best.

But hey, if it makes you feel better to judge people, go for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting

> the type of company laptop.

Fun fact: when Google employees had Windows laptops, the government of China hacked them, trying to steal identifying information about dissidents.

Do you have state-funded hackers attacking your laptop so they can kill people?

But think about the starving children in [insert some county here]!

Quite common fallacy and useless misdirection. Article is not about minimum wage work struggles but about a struggle of people with particular skill set in particular environment. Not sure how your inappropriate outburst and lack of focus is relevant here?

My eyes are hurting from seeing these articles whining about their misery while collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

Multiple easily findable sources suggest that the median tech salary at Google is well below $150k -- probably more like around $130k.

I get your point about the "whining" -- but while the average Google definitely does better than someone with a non-tech salary -- it most cases they aren't bulge-bracket either, or anywhere near it.

Lol, let me guess, you are citing glassdoor which still uses data from a decade ago in their average. 150k is new grad rates these days and senior engineers are making on average 350k [0].

[0]: https://www.levels.fyi/salary/Google/

I think you're looking at pay minus stock options. True median comp at Alphabet is closer to $250k [1], which if you have two workers in a household puts you in the 1%.

[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2019/01/08/median-t...

Not disputing that I may be horribly wrong -- but the same source puts Larry Page's (obviously symbolic) compensation at $1 (ignoring equity) - so I'm not sure what to make of it.

This is a really bad take.

It's not a valid argumentative tactic to dismiss legitimate concerns as "whining", especially since you haven't addressed the substance of the issue at all, and it's pure what-aboutism and crab mentality to suggest that because somewhere there exist people who have it worse, you shouldn't try to make things better.

In developer words, it’s zeroth world problems.

Yes it is miserable to work in Google but you're getting proportionately compensated for your misery so you can't complain of injustice.

What is your point ? you seem to be objecting that some googlers have politics (which would be considered mainstream in many countries and companies) which disagrees with yours.

I'm not really getting your point. Is it: There are people who have it worst, so we need to stop trying to have it better? Because if so, that's a logical fallacy: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_as_bad_as

Or are you saying that, this kind of article will not win us sympathy from the greater populace, and we should adopt a different strategy in that regard?

Or something else?

>There are folks out there working minimum wage jobs who are truly miserable, back breaking labor, standing on their feet all day, standing in the hot sun or out in the cold weather, avoiding dangerous machinery and avoiding trying to be maimed or worse loose their life.

And that is also very unacceptable.

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