Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore

I'm not sure what you mean but generally in my life... I actually don't have a lot of "political" conversations every day. More often than not, none at all.

But also a bit shocked how many people feel that participating is a good idea.

When it's conversation forums with thousands of people...critical mass is achieved, and it runs amok.

Q: You mention that you were 'appalled'. Did either of you take the time to explore your presumptions behind your reasons for coming to differing conclusions (while realizing the humans are 'rationalizing creatures', not 'rational creatures')?

Limbaugh was just agreeing with the communists. Oops?

In my time at Google, there were tons of people who felt they had the right answer, and had to convince everyone else who was wrong to come around to their views.

EDIT: for the sake of the completion of thought, I want to add that the opposite is also true: a young company in a fast growing innovative industry can afford to hire a different kind of talent without harming its growth, and as the industry matures, they simply can't afford to keep doing that.

Also I'm willing to be that a startup's lack of bureaucracy and momentum lets it experiment and move faster rather than just a carefree internal attitude. I've been in midsize companies on both sides of the free-culture spectrum and have never noticed any major difference in talent or capabilities.

So the question in my mind is, why did Google need to grow?

It's the same way in every endeavor. People get used to doing things a certain way, and forget the reason why. Try a different way, and relearn the reason why :-)

It's a reason why hiring some older people is worthwhile. They can tell you why things are done in way X, so you can avoid costly mistakes.

One could interpret the overall trajectory of Google here as reaching the limits of disruption-capable organizational design. It's likely they hit that limit some years back, and have just reached the point where they've internalized it enough to drop the pretense.

It's not all bad -- there are many things at which large corporate structures excel. They're just not typically the ones that are sought in Silicon Valley.

Humans are more or less the same as a few millennia ago. Our technology is more advanced, we’ve more or less covered every corner of the planet, we have birthed billions of humans and built millions of organizations of every stripe, and dealt with as many management issues as there were and are people.

We haven’t significantly advanced in our cognitive capabilities, we’ve just learned how to outsource more to experts and computers. If there’s one difference between us and us a few millennia ago, it would be that there are so many more humans on the planet that we probably don’t have a role in society for everyone. Under, e.g. a feudal System, every person had a functional role, and those that didn’t could at least point a spear in more or less the correct orientation. Vagrants of course were prosecuted and often pressed into service doing something somewhere for somebody.

In 2018, Google had ~99K full time employees. That’s larger than most cities, and historically, most countries. At that scale, you eventually need to tell most of them sit down, shut up and fall in line. Check their problems at the door, and if they really really need to fight about something, do it off premises on their off time without company resources, just to keep the peace.

Let’s put up Tibet. Some people will have strong opinions on one side and another set will have strong opinions on the other side. (Most people will be indifferent).

How can the company manage that tension among people who work for them when those people believe the company has given them the freedom to pick a side and express that side and perhaps vocalize and ultimately mobilize?

I don’t see an obvious solution to this beside the traditional course. The present alternatives are even more “authoritarian” (i.e. firing the adherents of the wrong opinion, etc.)

Consider that other people might not want to talk about these things, and by bringing them up yourself, you're prompting others to share their own opinions, which they may not (for whatever reason) feel comfortable sharing.

There's also the reality that many of these conversations just aren't productive. Best-case scenario, one person talks, the other talks, maybe they learn a little about each other, or their mutual empathy is enhanced. But a lot of times, it seems like two otherwise civil people find out things about each other that actually degrades their relationship. "Too much information" is real and at 34, I've learned there are some questions that just aren't going to lead to a productive conversation, on balance.

That of a regular human being with rationalized opinions through the lens available to them? For some reason only because Google has a lot of power to control the dialogue you ask them to bury their head in the sand? Or are we going to pretend that there hasn't been an arms race of sorts to game search results across nearly every topic and as such one might consider removal of what one considers to either be harmful, false, or manipulative to be a part of doing the "right" job?

What's the quote again, " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing " -- Edmund Burke

And as far as Google goes, I think it would be easy to rationalize that (if I was a Google member) I have access to better tools than most to make a decision (more information).

Should people be allowed to speak out against things that other people do, but that disagree with their sense of justice?

I don't see how you can call it "arrogant" for people to act in accordance with their moral and ethical standards. We don't have the power to force the world do line up with our personal sense of justice. But we do have the power to make our lives and the lives of those around us more just, according to our own personal interpretation of that concept. Do you really think that striving for justice isn't OK?

Google is one of the largest technology corporations in existence, controlling the flow of information for huge swaths of the world's population. They have no choice but to "play politics" as many of the decisions they make can have tremendous impact on global policy and society.

> Play the right part, do the right job, and let others with the right skills and tools do the same.

No. More and more, technology firms and the individuals within them are realizing their own responsibility to consider the ethical implications of the systems they are building.

Not very much? Doesn’t everybody think like this in one way or another? I certainly know what is better for the world than the majority of the US.

Ideals aside, I think there’s a clear business reality that the radical left employee base is giving google a lot of headaches. Many might argue this is for the better, but that’s mostly because they have similar political sentiments. It seems like woke culture has made google a very tense place and is gobbling them up.

Most large companies have lobbyists. That's much more "playing politics" than simply deciding not to bid on a military contract.

Not at all because acting according to your morality is a basic part of being a human or member of society.

There's no reason that changes because you take your fun hat off and put your work hat on.

I'm often stuck in the elevator with Googlers (our office is on the same floor as one of theirs). Some of the stuff that I end up overhearing is particularly jarring. It's not really the opinions but the self entitlement that makes me wish we had faster elevators.

In the US, we have government to take these things on. We have rule of law. And rights. Both government and individuals are subject to these.

With Google, there is no rule of law or rights. Goggle does not have a constitution. If you have a problem with them, what can you do? Nothing.

There is no right to question your accuser. There is no right to protect agains unreasonable search/seizure. There is no right to free speech. No right to privacy. And so on. There is only what Google arbitrarily decides to do. And if you're not in the majority as Google defines it, then it just sucks to be you.

This is why unregulated monopolies are intolerable. The US is founded on the principle that powers are separated to keep any one entity from getting too much and being able to infringe on the rights of citizens.

Google is way over that line, with monopolies in many areas. Add the partisan activism, and this is a very toxic brew.

According to what you said in this post, It was completely just as Damore basically wrote a dissertation about things that were completely unrelated to any work done for any Google product. All that work would've been tantamount to a complete waste of company time and could be grounds for a firing.

Google users don't care at all about the politics of Google employees

I care a great deal about how Google employees or any employee at any company are treated. You should too since most people spend their lives at companies and policies and laws surrounding them impact people directly.

But I also care a lot about the politics of Google employees insofar as they exercise a tremendous amount of influence over both elections and people's ability to broadcast their messages to the world.

Since Googlers tend to veer decidedly towards one end of the political spectrum, I would like to see their ability to censor speech restricted as much as is technologically possible.

However, most private companies don't allow political discussion and it's not illegal to control this unless you live in certain states, California being one of them.

Explanation in detail here: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri...

Hell, believe it or not, I've heard people say that it should be illegal to be fascist for example. Of course these people should be ridiculed.

I wonder though if there's a conflation here between dealing with the argument itself, and dealing with all the social realities of being subjected to the person making it - how threatening they appear, how connected their beliefs are to impending action, how confrontative the exchange is, etc. Like, it's totally fair to believe that the person making the argument is dangerous, and respond emotionally from that. It doesn't mean that it's the argument itself that is being responded to - the argument might instead be evidence of impending dangerous behavior, which is different. It also doesn't mean that the argument itself is dangerous - the danger might entirely come from the circumstances, like if the argument is being used as a physical threat.

Like, I don't know, imagine it's Joyce Brothers making the hateful argument, from her hospital bed with a cocktail in her hand. It might be easier to engage with the argument in that case - to determine if it's based off of incorrect facts, bad reasoning, or just hateful premises that can't be challenged.

I'm sorry, but I don't think having to listen to co-workers ram their ill-thought-out opinion down my throat is "freedom."

Or, to put it another way: if you want to hold a political opinion, and then express it by voting, but otherwise keep it completely secret from your community... that's your right.

In Europe the abuses were different so the protections are different.

Is there a citation for this? I see lots of far-left garbage on social media generally (by which I mean posts espousing violent revolution, racism, sexism, blank slatism, anarchism, and/or communism). I'm sure there are niches of far right racism, but it mostly seems like a niche problem (and given that the far right is largely a reaction to the far left, it stands to reason that we have an opportunity and obligation to kill both with the same stone).

Ignoring bias, do you believe that every given situation that some group may identify as a problem is guaranteed to have a reputable source reporting on it?

I'd love to find a more reputable source, but one is not currently available, and I'm not in a position to create one. That does not imply that the problem being reported on is illegitimate. You should be able to assess the contents of the video with PV's bias in mind - and most of the content really does stand on its own, especially in the context of relevant quotes from employees in OPs article.

There was also a massive trove[1] of internal Google documents dumped on PV related to, among other things, AI development and arguably politically motivated guidance by internal definitions of "fairness", designed to shape search results. Should these documents also be ignored because they're only being hosted by Project Veritas? You can see them yourself...

Ironically, this is the danger of trusting only select biased organizations with curating the flow of information - as you suggest, to most people, if a "reputable" source hasn't reported about it, it doesn't exist. How many years has 4chan been screaming about epstein, as another example, without major media investigation?

The bottom line is that no entity that acts as the front page to the internet should be curating information flow without a massive, blinking disclaimer.

1.https://www.projectveritas.com/google-document-dump/

Of course she's going to claim that the video was "heavily edited." But the validity of the video comes from the fact that there is no context which makes the clips of her speaking any less damning. They clearly indicate a willingness by Google to curate search results.

>The video then goes on to stitch together a series of debunked conspiracy theories about our search results, and our other products.

I'd love to see this debunking.

>Google has repeatedly been clear that it works to be a trustworthy source of information, without regard to political viewpoint. In fact, Google has no notion of political ideology in its rankings. And everything I have seen backs this up. Our CEO has said ”We do not bias our products to favor any political agenda.” He’s somewhat more powerful and authoritative than me.

Oh, well, if the CEO says it, it must be true. This is just a weak attempt at damage control.

Wow. Yeah. Being accepting and loving is hard. It's one of the hardest things you can do, but only if that person is part of your out group.

I’m on a group chat with a couple old friends and when someone starts a debate on a topic I’m passionate about we go hard and we go deep. Suddenly it’s two hour later and here I am trying to do some quick demography with raw data from the census bureau to prove a point.

I’ve started blocking the chat until after work because debates do tend to rage sometimes. And we’re old friends with a grounding empathy and shared experiences to fall back on. Doing the same thing with coworkers during work hours? I would’ve banned it too.

Yeah but why have a discussion group about politics if you can only defend the mainstream points of view?

Like, it's probably no biggy if people say totally false and indefensible things going the other way. I don't think that's a good sign.

This led an exec to publicly state that our diversity policies "isn't code for favoring women over men" and that "being an equal opportunity employer is a commitment to following anti- discrimination laws and maintaining a workplace where everyone matters, everyone has a sense of belonging, and everyone is held to the same standards."

This was in stark contrast to our diversity hiring policies which include giving larger bonuses for hiring diverse (women and URM), giving diverse candidates two chances at passing the phone screen instead of one, setting "outcome-based goals" for hitting specific % of diverse tech employees, and even setting up a system of reservations for diverse tech workers (though this last one wasn't established until after the memo).

I guess the exec might not be lying if he is speaking from the point of view that anything less than 50/50 is discrimination and that balancing this out with discrimination in the other direction is how to create an equal hiring process.

Even the Wikipedia links are either to a general definition, or a well-referenced section that cites research papers, not to baseless claims.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16500974

Are you aware that Google solicited that feedback?

As someone who vehemently disagree a with damore and is glad he was fired, I'd also prefer it if the leaker was fired, but it seems that I'll never know if that happened.

And the internet has helped spread information, some of these issues may have been captured by Nat Geo in the 40s but others will have been missed. A status quo progression may be championed as an issue not because everyone previously accepted it but because no one was previously aware of it.

What? Says who?

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

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.

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.

Problem #1: All models are invalid, some are useful. You need to stop ignorant actors who don’t understand that 3 is not a valid approximation of Pi, while simultaneously stopping pedants who want to everything to be accurate in ways that are not compatible with the IEEE standard for float.

Problem #2: There are lies, damned lies and statistics. People who want to push $NOT_YOUR_VIEWPOINT will cite more studies than you have time to evaluate to prove you wrong.

http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3947

I recommend reading "Descartes Dream."

In other words, math doesn't exist in a vacuum.

So yes, you really should taboo political arguments if you don't want to drive away people with independent views.

Politics, religion etc. divides people.

> creating a team of moderators to monitor conversations on company chat boards

I presume your talking about one of the two leaks via veritas. Those don't say what you claim they do. I also expect your assumptions about legal threats are wrong. But such claims are easy to make sans evidence, and they do feel good.

American-Born Confused Desi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-Born_Confused_Desi

How many people live in mainland China? 1.3B. How many people live in Hong Kong? 7.4M. How many overseas Chinese are there? 50M. How many overseas Hongkongers? About 1.5M.

You can bet that if there is any one such incident happening in the globe, the press will seize on it, because it fits the current media narrative and gets clicks. By the numbers, though, you're looking at 1 in a million.

Edit: very high, it seems https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apinboard%20PAC

I would argue these perks exist because they are what top tech workers can command in the market, not because of some nefarious purpose of wanting people to work longer hours.

Sort of like how MLB players have all kinds of nice perks written into their bargaining agreement like always flying first class, etc.

This sounds an awful lot like nostalgic pining for the good old days, but there was a time not too long ago that daring to hold an opinion that others around you disagreed with wasn't an existential threat to your career. Things shifted really hard, really fast.

Reminds me of https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/the-power-of-th...

> I think it's typical when you have smart but insecure people which is most software engineers.

The distribution of "techies" has changed dramatically as everyone else in the world discovered how much money was in it, but this couldn't be further from the truth as far as classic tech culture goes. Perhaps they were "smart but insecure", but it manifested as a hyperindividualist, chaotic marketplace of ideas culture, precisely because you could be fairly confident that the people you were talking with were intelligent enough to handle disagreement without thinking of everyone as heretics, infidels, or faithful to the dogma.

It's the mainstreaming of tech, and the influx of people more in thrall to social conformity over independent thought that's tempered tech culture's famously anarchic tendencies. (I know this is a little reductive but I don't want to write an essay in a single comment. If you have a particular complaint about the way I phrased this, I'd be happy to clarify).

I should note that, to the extent that I'm focusing on the left's abandonment of liberalism, it's because I am and always have been a left-liberal, and most of my milieu has been as well. I hope it's not controversial that the right is abandoning liberalism too: I just don't have exposure to spaces where they're culturally powerful enough to illiberally enforce their dominance.