Google Employee Writes Memo About ‘The Burden of Being Black at Google’

We do this all the time, but would never accept a random white person to claim they represent all white people.

Al Sharpton knows nothing about the lives of black people where I grew up. He's never been there. My friends growing up were deeply resentful of his constant claim to be "the voice of black America." He's a New Yorker, through and through. And yet the media elites act as if he was an elected representative of black America.

This Google employee is no different. How does he get to speak for all black Googlers? Who elected him? How many black employees at Google think he's correct, vs. paranoid and overly sensitive?

Show me an actual survey, and I'll open up on this. But this is anecdotal bullshit, just like the placating white hosts on news channels signaling their virtue by picking up the phone and bringing Sharpton on since they don't know normal, non-celebrity black people.

I think it's important to note the role that Google plays in breeding this culture. I've worked in fintech for years and have yet to hear a single coworker talk about politics, race, or gender. It's a good policy and SV is just slowly beginning to find out what the reasons for it are.

Most companies its understood that talking about that stuff leads to a meeting with HR, I also imagine the conversations about police brutality is why they were so silent, because people are afraid to discuss it without saying something that's likely to offend or know its a highly sensitive topic.

I agree work should be neutral ground, at least if you want to keep non-hostile.

There needs to be some pushback on how far people expect others to constantly read their mind and cater to their level of offense and sensitivity. Otherwise workplaces and society itself will start to grind to a halt.

The problem is, people have been coddled so much and isolated from it to the point that they're unable to cope with it when they experience it. More people need to spend more time pushing themselves into uncomfortable positions instead of averting them. Don't let a temper get the best of you and stay rational. It makes you emotionally/mentally stronger.

Is that so? Where is this slavery taking place exactly?

Yeah, but what happens when someone never shows up for things like this? Do people start getting suspicious that they're anti-LGBT? That's my worry whenever a workplace starts trying to bring non-work-related stuff into the workplace like this.

I have a hard enough time with companies that want to have "team lunches" or dinners. Even though they're really optional (or "optional"), if you never show up for them, it makes you look like you're "not part of the team". It's inevitable with any workplace social activities: if you're the one guy who never attends, it makes you stand out. What if your company/team likes to go to happy hours regularly, and you don't drink and hate bars? Again, it makes you look like a black sheep.

Honestly, I'd prefer it if employers stopped trying to act like my family and just stuck to getting work done, and letting me go home ASAP so I can do things I prefer and eat food I prefer. (With those team meals, they always pick restaurants I hate.)

Forcing employees to have a pow-wow about their feelings on ANY issue would have me updating my CV ASAP.

To then have an 'open' culture in every respect except with racial issues (broadly defined here) as indicated by the memo's author, does not square.

Sure, the OP here may agrue that a work first culture is better (and I agree to a certain extent), but that does not fit within Google's culture.

The memo's author is correct to point out the mis-match, and in the open culture of Google should be celebrated for doing so.

If they do get flak for it from higher-ups, then I think it is fair to state that the open culture of Google is de facto dead and Googlers should adjust.

Happily for HNers, this means that the FAANGs are on the way out and their 'moats' may start to develop holes that can be exploited by start-ups. Look out for the greybeards sooner than later as the elves start to leave middle earth, so to speak.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-culture-of-transparen...

Even at companies in rural areas, people can generally be somewhat "weird" or "alternative" and still be accepted at work if they don't make their personality a weapon to annoy people with.

Absolutely not. It means your healthy outlet will be with your friends, those mututally selected for compatibility, and in contexts where such discussions are presumably welcome.

As opposed to the workplace, with people brought together by happenstance to cooperate productively, despite personal differences that are irrelevant to the production process.

> I attribute this far more towards the current climate of virtue signalling:

In many a historical era, tiny theological or political disputes have set neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother.

In the aftermath, the solution that civilized societies evolved was: don't discuss politics or religion! It worked. Let's restore it.

But that's different than a scenario where someone is proportionately reacting to something outrageous by sticking up for someone to the actual offender, or sticking up for someone to the group that can resolve the offense. Those situations seem more analogous to outrage in professional situations when people targeting their actions in a way that might actually help bring about a positive change. (As opposed to posting it on Instagram.)

I think our chemical reward mechanisms are more often hacked by rewarding promotion of conflict, rather than rewarding promotion of resolution.

In America, plenty of people know their neighbors and have their phone numbers for security purposes, and over a 1/3rd of Americans attend church. So, in the context of discussing an American company, these are very off-the-mark statements.

I’ve never had a political discussion at work.

Respectfully, are you sure you didn’t mean “Black?” “African American” doesn’t accurately capture e.g., Caribbean and Latin American identities.

I guess this explains why many Google products seem to be pretty brilliant in many ways, but then have utterly glaring missing basic features or problems which never get fixed no matter how much users complain about them.

Well… yeah, but only because I’m going to be careful what I say to avoid stepping on somebody else’s feelings. To dance around the point just a bit - there are people who I can safely be completely honest with, and people who I cannot safely be completely honest with. I’m not sure I’m the one who needs to be doing the adjusting to change that.

A tame example: I don't talk about the latest in non-volitile memory advances with my friends that I play videogames with.

I try to internalize a lot of this when I find myself ignorant on a given position one way or another. It helps one to get out of ones' own box. It's also a skill that I feel too few people genuinely exercise and resort to talking louder and trying to shut people down instead of debating a position rationally. Once you lose your temper, you really lost the argument as far as most observers are concerned and look a bit like a nut.

I think too many people spend too little time in uncomfortable or awkward situations to a point where they're literally unable to deal with them. We've had a level of societal protection for our youth to a point where we're no longer raising functional adults but really big toddlers emotionally speaking.

Rational people should be able to have rational conversations with any rational person regardless of differences of specific opinion. We're at a point where that's approaching an exception and not the rule that most people are rational.

Sounds like some Harrison Bergeron bullshit. I'd rather people have different experiences and opinions but be able to calmly disagree about it.

Just mention to point out that companies can put an effort into this even if thwy don't have to.

> my mental health has been heavily influenced by what I read in the news. ...Google needs to provide mental health support... mak[e] a[n] ... effort to create opportunities ... to seek counseling and support.

If he stated instead that his mental health was influenced by his coworkers hateful remarks, or rejecting candidates due to "fit", then yes, I would absolutely agree this is a great direction for Google to head towards.

But that's not what the employee is asking for.

Protests aren't about changing people's views as much as about normalizing active engagement by the silent whose views on the issue (even if they haven't deeply considered them prior to the protest drawing attention) already favor the protesters.

When people already opposed to position a protest takes dismiss it as unconvincing, they are missing the point. Protests are about mobilizing allies not converting enemies.

> I struggle to think of what the Women's March or Occupy Wall Street tangibly accomplished.

OWS directly produced the rapid development of anti-elite populist movements of both the Right and Left which subsequently displaced the dominant faction of the Republican Party and drastically weakened the dominant faction of the Democratic Party, it's a major reason that we have the President we have and that the pool of potential opponents for him in the next election looks like it does.

The meatspace Women's March and the online #MeToo protest movement were the central mobilizing elements in what has been one of the biggest ad most rapid social and political mobilizations of women and around women's issues—in government, workplaces, and society generally—in this country’s history, which had adverse repercussions for a number of very powerful people. It's a key element in the biggest increase in women on Congress from one Congress to the next ever.

Ultimately his and other protests led to legislation in the form of the civil rights act.[2]

[1] http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/undec...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_rights_movement

Now, in "recent" History I tend to agree with you. My personal opinion is that protests are not violent enough to cause real change.

Edit: I would appreciate feedback from downvoters. I think the few examples I provided are valid to illustrate "protests that caused real change", but if I'm wrong I'm happy to learn.

Please prove it then. I must be a little slow because it is not clear to me at all.

Realistically, "corporate diversity" usually means "we have diverse kinds of privileged middle class people in our offices."

E.g. a female CEO is considered a necessary diversity win, but generally no one cares if the food servers and cleaners - most of whom usually happen to be female too - are treated with respect and decency.

Does Google - or any other FANG - actively and practically support anti-poverty activism and awareness to anything like the same extent they support a relatively safe form of activism like LGBT pride?

In any case OP was just trying to point out the entitlement that gets instilled, and how it can be particularly blinding when you’re wrapped up in your own decadent lifestyle. It’s a very common trait among people in the valley, in my experience.

That doesn’t make the fact that ordinary workers have to travel multiple hours each way to afford housing any better. It is just a canary in the coal mine that even very highly paid workers struggle to afford housing in the area.

And if you don't like the housing options in the Bay Area, don't move there. It's very simple. The only reason housing is so bad in the Bay Area is because people keep moving there and complaining about it, but still putting up with it.

He described something more than decent.

It’s certainly true that he could have heard other things which were racist and decided not to share any of them, but I don’t really know how to evaluate that. It’s not fair to demand ironclad proof from anyone sharing their personal experiences, but it’s also not fair to condemn Google based on a nonspecific claim with no details that racism happens there.

Many of us who are reasonable and rational come to different conclusions- for example, while I fully support peaceful protests, I think any protest which blocks traffic is unwise and likely to generate negative responses in people who would otherwise be sympathetic.

> I think this could be a problem of sensitivity or awareness, rather than heart being in the wrong place.

Some people are upset over deaths and other major injustices, and, without acknowledging that, picking that moment to start complaining about how their demonstration affects getting to the train station.

I think that having awareness of why and just how people were upset, and some sensitivity to that, would cause one to have more sensitivity in how you say what one does. There will always be mistakes, but we should try.

But if you post something which doesn’t pander to the extreme left on a internal discussion group, you get your memo “leaked” out in public and are fired in less than a week (Ref James Damore).

Google only encourages leftist politics, and nothing else.

Same. In my experience, employers describe themselves that way to create a sense of obligation in their employees.

While I agree America can do better, comparing the US to Norway is like saying "Yeah, our Norway.com servers have only crashed once. Twitter.com would do well to copy how we do things; they seem to have servers crashing way more often than we do" which completely ignore issues that come into play at orders of magnitude higher scales - for if you put Norway.com under the same strain as twitter, Norway.com's servers would be crashing left and right as well.

Have you seen the homicide rate in America? You cannot quell that level of violence with hugs.

Police in the US operate in an environment where every person they encounter may have the means to kill them within seconds. This is not to ignore police brutality, but these details matter.

To compare the situation to a tiny homogeneous country where guns are illegal is silly.

Also we are currently at a point where you can find weekly stories about police abusing Latino people (typically in conjunction with ICE). No idea how you came to the conclusion that these stories are unpublished.

Law enforcement abuse stories about treatment of white and (especially) Latino people are published regularly (rarely, with white people, is there a basis even for suspicion that the act is racially motivated), and frequently are divisive (even, if when it is about whites, not usually about race/ethnicity).

being profit-seeking corporations, american news is pursuing eyeballs and clicks. truthiness, accuracy, bias, etc. are all variables in the profit equation, and not always a major influence. if idpol (or whatever) is stirring up the viewership, it will influence how they approach the "news", in different ways depending on who the producers view as their principle audience.

inserting the whole "seeking to divide" as a concrete motive seems like a dogwhistle (particularly being a narrative beloved of antisemites).

It irritated me to be asked about sports or asked what I was a fan of...

I grew a respect for sports after trying a few of them. From martial arts like Kendo or Jiujitsu, to high level chess, with enough practice you learn the rules and get an intuitive understanding, and then you see.

You see the physicality of a sport and you know how amazing that physical feat is, because you've tried something like it. You can understand on a deeper level the drama of the moment between two opponents as they are deciding what strategy, tactic and move to employ.

I may not always enjoy talking about some niche that someone else cares about, but I am now at least somewhat aware that they are trying to connect with me and they care about it because they probably know something that I don't.

So are your hobbies.

> At least politics is something that actually affects everyone whether they want it to or not.

Everyone need an outlet for team loyalty and deep emotional investments in outcomes. Spend that drive worrying about what color someone's jersey is, so you don't do it worrying what color their tie is. Then you can spend your calm, cold, and rational cycles towards politics.

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.

The company has made unambiguous statements of support for BLM yeaaars ago (tweeting "we need racial justice now" after talking about Castile and Sterling IIRC), and a company-wide meeting was interrupted by BLM protestors sanctioned by the company taking the stage (after IIRC Trayvon's shooting).

The author's complaint isn't that Google or its employees overall are silent on BLM. It's that their their specific team isn't talking about it with the frequency that they've arbitrarily decided they should. It seems like a pretty typical case of thinking that everybody should prioritize the exact political issues in the exact order and degree that you yourself do. You could make the exact same complaint for "people don't talk about DAPL as much as I'd like", or Nestlé and water rights, or climate change, or Syria etc etc. The only difference is that it's be ludicrous to consider any of the latter complaints as implicit discrimination, and yet for some reason you don't think it's ridiculous in this case.

It's a classic instantiation of the California Ideology[1]. The only bizarre or disagreeable bit is how it ever got passed off as somehow altruistic or progressive.

[1] -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

I can't agree with this more.

I sat through a discussion a few years ago that really opened my eyes... a group of younger artists - that normally discussed things like a lack of racial diversity in the company, transgender rights etc - passionately cheering on the owner of a trendy brunch spot who was on the news for tossing out parents with a crying infant. It struck me that their seemingly endless compassion for humanity might not actually be all that genuine after all.

I thought that being interested in social justice would at the very least require some basic human compassion and empathy, but perhaps that's where I was wrong.

Debate is probably the wrong term, seems he was just looking for an acknowledgement of the problem. After one of those police shooting incidents I came into work and all of my coworkers, all white and asian, were talking about how bad the incident was. People at work come together and talk about major traumatic news stories all the time. A consistent absence of that when it relates to a specific topic might seem....strange.

No, silence often means “I’m not informed enough about this and don’t want to sound like a fool.” Heavens forbid people actually think before talking and not talk if they feel like they can’t say anything meaningful.

- Police departments disproportionately killed black people, who were 41% of victims despite being only 20% of the population living in these cities.

- 41 of the 60 police departments disproportionately killed black people relative to the population of black people in their jurisdiction.

- 14 police departments killed black people exclusively in 2015, 100% of the people they killed were black. For only 5 police departments were 100% of those killed white.

Yes. That's how protests work. You're trying piss people off enough to notice and take action. It doesn't matter what they're mad at so long as they're mad enough to take action. I don't care if they're pissed off that I'm wearing dark pants that they make the social change I'm after, so long as it gets made.

Personally, political issues are usually reserved for friends & family...I don't bring them into the workplace.

Shaming others into action isn't sustainable. At best, they'll join you begrudgingly but drag their feet doing so and not recruit the next set of allies on your behalf. At worst, you persuade them to join your opposition.

Says you. What if I have an entirely third position on the issue that I'm afraid to speak out on?

> you have the ability and time to stand up for truth, justice, and freedom from oppression

I could do this, but what if my definition of what that is, is different than yours? What if I value, say, freedom of speech as the pinnacle value under the umbrella of "freedom from oppression", and you don't?

> It's precisely the silence that is deafening.

I usually wish there was more silence, to be honest. Maybe you should read the silence less as "unwillingness" and more as "people sitting aghast at what you've said, and wishing you'd just take it outside so we can go back to enjoying our breakfast".

An example is the current situations happening in Hong Kong and Uyghur. And the fact that everything we buy on a day to day basis is "supporting" this oppression.

We're not all warriors. That's a fact of any population. And the non-warriors aren't scum, despite the chest-beating of those that are.

Just speaking out against intolerance, wherever I find it :)

One could easily argue that having the freedom to express an opinion on topics for which only one opinion is acceptable is much more privileged position to be in.

Aside: Perhaps then spend the extra time to find a better way to put it then? HN is an open board like many others, but one of the many reasons people come here is for the good community and commentary that is somewhat rare online. First to comment is not (generally) that big of a deal here, we all can wait for a measured response.

Empathy. Most people are selfish and it can be difficult for us to care about an issue that hasn't impacted us directly. VR could give people the opportunity to experience what it's like to be someone totally different and "walk a mile in their shoes."

That implies you have no self-control and require the government to tell you how to think/behave.

> Not everyone and everything needs to be 'nice'; this is an ideal that needs to die.

Who said people need to be nice? I recall me saying:

> communicate with his peers in a mature, healthy, and positive way.