Googlers Are Protesting Company’s Deals with Big Oil
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
”Nearly nine out of ten, or 86 percent, of millennials (those between the ages of 22 and 37) would consider taking a pay cut to work at a company whose mission and values align with their own, according to LinkedIn’s latest Workplace Culture report. By comparison, only 9 percent of baby boomers (those between the ages of 54 and 72) would.“
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/nearly-9-out-of-10-millennia...
“At least those are the results of a new survey out from insurer MetLife, which found that nine out of 10 people would choose a company with similar values over a job that pays more. And they are willing to take a pretty big pay cut to make sure those values align with their own.
The average pay cut employees were willing to take was 21%. The findings were not limited to high-wage earners: People who made less than $50,000 a year also said they still were willing to part with at least some of their salaries for the right company.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/11/29/money-no-lon...
”Almost half the workforce (42%) now want to work for an organisation that has a positive impact on the world, according to research carried out by consultancy Global Tolerance. The survey of more than 2,000 people in the UK found 44% thought meaningful work that helped others was more important than a high salary and 36% would work harder if their company benefitted society.
The change, it would appear, is being driven by the so-called millennials. Of those born between 1981 and 1996, 62% want to work for a company that makes a positive impact, half prefer purposeful work to a high salary, and 53% would work harder if they were making a difference to others.“
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/may/05...
Now how many actually do? Not that many, for sure.
"By comparison, only 9 percent of baby boomers (those between the ages of 54 and 72) would."
> Now how many actually do? Not that many, for sure.
Conjecture at best.
That's why they are protesting, you know. Because "having an opinion", "not being chained by a loan until you are old", and so on should not be a "privileged" position in any sort of environment I personally want to live in.
What is your point exactly anyway? "Not all people can afford to express opinions and influence their employers, so those who can should not be taken into account"?
That's a non-sequitur, if you like attaching fallacy labels to statements.
Says who? I don't know about your ethical system, but mine certainly doesn't demand that I confine ethics to one sphere and never let it touch the others. Indeed, such an ethical system sounds completely broken to me.
"I can treat you this way but you can't treat me the same way" sounds hypocritical does it not? You're right so you get to discriminate be intoletant and harm others,is that what you're saying? If you're so right let us use established systems of society to codify your beliefs,don't use your influence amd wallet to twist arms like a coward against those who lack your power and influence.
A system where people don't arm-twist and harm each other but use civilized discussion and peaceful discourse to patiently bring about desired change is what I support.
I do not support using your power as an employer, business owner,boss, monopoly(google) and other positions of power and influence to force others to practice your beliefs! I bet you would lose your mind if a religious person enforcef their religious beliefs the same way or if the people you disagree with did the same thing.
With your way,it is not the voice of who is right or of the majority that prevails but the strongest and most powerful win. And with your way phsyical violence and war are inevitable. Like ghandi said,be the change you wish to see. And tell others with your lowdest most peaceful voice,that's peaceful change. If that don't work for you then use violence and arm-twisting like this and let history repeat once more.
But yet some regressive herd action always ends up carrying the current day, only to be lamented twenty years later, when a different but philosophically-similar goal will carry.
You wouldn't say that an individual choosing to not work at a specific company was "impractical" or "toxic", nor would you say that a small business avoiding a certain type of client was either. The real measure is when it becomes coercive.
Your comment is getting traction because red-flavor-thinking has been put in the position of pushing back against powerful corporations censoring individual speech. One of the justifications from the power-cheerleaders is "voluntary association", completely ignoring the power imbalance. And so the overall concept of voluntary association takes collateral damage despite being valid when applied honestly.
Voluntary association is a legal right but not associating based on political affiliation I am pretty sure is illegal and if not it should be. It is coercion when employees protest a company's business partners,they are using their high demand skills that got them employed to advance personal political ends. They are using their collective power to coerce business decisions in order to harm their political opposition.
The right to refuse service to customers, and birth control to employees, on the basis of religious belief of business owners, has been confirmed by the US Supreme Court.
That is not the case at all.
Looking at the cases you linked, I suspect if GCP were to deny services to gay people or abortion service providers the courts would determine that circumstances were different.
Take a look at the success of the Civil Rights movement. Do you think segregation would have ended as quickly had black activists simply stuck to laws and elections, and not protested and deliberately did things that were actually illegal: like sitting in the front of a bus or disobeyed police orders to disperse while protesting?
The extra-legal actions of the protesters and the brutal response of the authorities (all documented through the mass media) made way more people aware of their cause and gained them many allies.
Or take a look at all the labor activism in the US, back when unions were strong, which brought about things like the 40-hour work week and workplace health regulations: these were not won merely through elections.
Or look at the Suffragettes, who helped win the right for women to vote not by restricting themselves to winning elections but by direct action.
Or India's successful struggle to independence under the leadership of Gandhi. Once again, it was coordinated activism which made the difference.
The list of such successful activism could grow very long.
Which isn't to say elections are useless (though with all the easily hackable electronic voting machines and vote counting machines out there, sometimes I wonder), but to reject activism in favor of elections is to give up a very powerful tool for change.
And you think removing their access to GCP is going to stop them?
Weaning ourselves off of oil is the first step not the last.
If they start producing oil unsafely as a result of thinning margins, we protest that all the same.
That's the form our "baby steps" take, not second guessing whether it's the "right time" to protest oil companies doing bad things.
What are the bad thing oil companies do? Extract the oil you and I pay them to extract?
Spill millions of gallons of oil into the wilderness.
Lobby the government to let them get away with spilling millions of gallons of oil.
Lobby the government to prevent the building of public transit.
Shill against climate change activism.
...in the US. I am sorry that I keep pointing that out, but global warming is being fought by most elected leaders right now. With some moderate success. The per capita emission in the world has plateaued, despite a positive economic growth. OECD countries have seen a decrease, China seems to come close to plateau as well.
US' leaders are the ones who unilaterally pulled from Kyoto and Paris treaties.
And I mean, even in the US, CO2 emissions are diminishing, in huge parts because of environmental policies.
2) illegal does not mean violent and harmful. A peaceful protest is fine, I actually support that. Being loud so you can be heard is fine too. What is not fine is expecting companies to refuse to do business with your opposition in solidarity or any other move that is essentially harming your opponent and does not fall in line with peaceful activism. You shouldn't get someone fired, get businesses to stop offering services to them,exclude them from public events,subject them and their associates to humiliation and social isolation and of course you shouldn't cause them physical harm either.
If someone hires a person who denies climate change or if a person does business or works for big oil they are not responsible for the views and actions of the people/business they associate with and they do not owe anyone solidarity in form of terminating those relationships.
What yoy have these days is "activism" by form of isolating your opponents using anyone in a position of power to sever ties with them and if the pains of isolation are too much they might give way and let you win. To me that is cowardly and in some ways just as bad if not worse than physical violence. If you beat someone up they might heal,if you make them unhirable then they either starve or find more extreme people on their side to support them -- further solidifying their stance. I oppose cruelty as a method of bringing about positive change,ends don't justify means.
Moral beliefs would be a mockery if they were so strictly confined. The whole point of morality is that it's a set of rules on how to live your life by. They always apply, in every interaction with other humans.
Right now, for example, by attacking the OP as "toxic", you are applying your own moral beliefs to them.
And of course this is not "arm-twisting". Refusal to associate with somebody generally isn't - you are not owed anybody's company, labor, or their good disposition towards you.
> How would you like if businesses turn you away because of your unethical beliefs?
I'm perfectly fine with that.
This is such progress, and absolutely a direction we all should move in, and not at all creepy, scary, and disgusting AF.
I bet that they could look to China for ideas in this endeavor.
So you are sick of politics...
> it’s a common topic among like-minded people in informal conversations.
but it's a common topic.
I think the real reason you are sick of politics is because you don't agree with the politics being discussed, not politics. The reason you don't talk about politics isn't being you are sick of it, but because "most of us are afraid of the outrage and call-out culture negatively impacting our careers."
Even in a throwaway account, you can't be honest with yourself. Are you really sick of politics, or are you just sick of other people's politics? What are you really trying to say. Your comment goes back and forth and it not clear. It's a throwaway account, so maybe you can actually say what you mean?
Maybe the protests should be redirected...
I am saying a bunch of protesters at Google won't ever make them change about big oil and that they should focus on some achievable goals
That's literally 1% of their workforce. I'm sure you can cherry pick 1% of any workforce, especially a company the size of Google, that agree with anything you might want to look for - regardless of neurodiversity or your belief in how liberal/conservative Google is as a whole.
Just reeks of folks looking for a story.
What about the people afraid for their personal safety and civil rights? I bet they'd love to ignore "politics".
They do, they just get framed by the media as "rioters".
At least your coworkers are on your side and fighting for the good cause, unlike your employer.
One can be sick of people turning the office into a political battle-field and simultaneously have no problems with outward corporate lobbying. These are different problems.
It barely has anything to do with Google's work condition however, employees are demanding to have a say in who Google management choses to work with or not, that's a very different concern than negotiating severance, or worktime. Maybe that's how americans think about union in USA, that's definitely not what worker unions are about in Europe for instance.
call it what you like, writing ai for murder robots is wrong,
Workers protests have been successful in the past (guess why you work 8h a day and have 2-day weekends?). I don't see why you criticise the employees that try to make their company better.
They don't need to and don't have to threaten they'll quit, they don't have to leave for non-profits. They can protest from within the company and try to make it better. Quitting is not the only way company can feel there's a problem. Lower morale of the team, fewer new ideas and initiatives coming from employees - these are visible things, and can make a change. How big a change? How successful change? I don't know, but I support the fact that people are trying. Even if they still get their salaries and still work at Google.
“better” is an entirely relative term.
I realize climate change is a broad societal issue that does indeed heavily involve externalizing costs to society, but I think it's difficult to dispute that the ideal scenario would have no impact on them, and when it comes to Google's business and other employees, the outcomes probably slant negative.
Are there employees who don't mind working with energy companies? Are there people who explicitly don't want to limit Google's customer base? Do they make Google worse? Should we be critical of them?
Group of workers they made a request and wrote a letter asking for release a company-wide climate plan that commits to cutting carbon emissions entirely.
The most depressing thing is that people don't read the articles posted.
Isn't this more work than was typical at most points in history?
There's so much Google is doing to directly damage the technology ecosystem. It seems silly to protest some customer's business when Google itself is generating a ton of protest worthy things.
I don't care about Google employee's opinions on Big Oil or ICE but I absolutely care about their opinions on removing URLs from search results and hijacking link clicks. The latter is something they can and should fix as they created the problem in the first place.
https://www.thoughtco.com › ... › Science › Chemistry › Chemical Laws--> https://www.ycombinator.com/
What am I missing?
few results lower, the green "URL":
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Y_CombinatorProbably because employees motivated enough to protest value the actual ecosystem more than the technological one, and care more about detention camps at the border than an url format? (just a wild guess)
You still can, and should pay attention to issues one step away from you.
The OP literally called protesting one thing silly and the other thing protest worthy, so it sounds like your beef is with them.
I am not saying it would be wrong that they protest AMP and not ICE, just that you can't be surprised it doesn't happen.
Looks like it's supporting what I said.
As for bubbles we are all living in them. For example, by being an American-based activist, you believe your US-centric disagreements around enforcement of immigration policies to be a global issue. Which looks funny for someone from outside, like me. I would say that long queues for cancer treatment in my country is more important for me. Your bubble is not holier then mine, or any other human out there.
I am not American (nor living or ever lived in the USA), I am not an activist. :)
I am just able to look at the situation from the point of view of people protesting (I think it's called empathy), and I can understand why, for them, protesting ICE/Big Oil, is more important than protesting amp.
Society's use of oil and gas is a totally political question of how much pain we experience in the near term vs the long term and who pays for any trade-offs that get made. It is not kosher for employees of a company to use their corporate position to push what are private political goals.
Particularly because Google's position in the world is to provide people with facts and evidence - if they are being pressured internally by political actors then that compromises their trustworthiness as a search provider. They aren't a traditional media organisation where a page full of propaganda and lies is par for the course and everyone knows it. People expect them to use a politically neutral algorithm.
Are there people who believe that we need "urgent and decisive action" on political topics who have influence over the search index? How are they using that influence? What would happen if the next generation of employees have a radically different political view? These aren't new questions; Google's rankings are always going to be an interesting subject - and there is every chance that someone is running a smear campaign with stories of these intercompany issues. However, they are the important questions when Google employees do something political.
lol, yes, when it comes to oil and gas, it's widely expected that companies not push for political goals. Oil and gas companies companies steer well clear of those politics. Yep.
I hope that every user here tries to leave hacker news a better, more thoughtful place than they found it.
Please, do tell, then. Because "that's not a nice reaction" is not the same as an uncharitable interpretation.
It's ridiculous on its face to call for employees of a company to not engage in politics and define the use of oil and gas as political and therefore out of bounds, when the actions being taken here are engaging with the actions of oil and gas companies.
(leaving aside the idea that it's ok for me, internet commentator, to have strong opinions, but not the employees that make some product I use)
There is a difference between a company and it's individual employees, and rephrasing the statement such that "employees of a company" is replaced with "a company" in order to mock a user is rude and also not substantive.
Unless there's a good argument that managers and executives are somehow different than other employees, companies pushing for political goals absolutely are employees of a company using their position to push private political goals.
What's the difference between employees of a company pushing for political change versus company executives using their position and influence to affect politics?
ie, https://time.com/5713537/amazon-seattle-city-council/
The answer is there is none. A company is founded by people, and people run the company, either as workers, shareholders, or both. In the end, this is a good sign for us regular people. We want change, and the only way to get it is to get political. Either that, or riots.
The executives shouldn't be doing that either. However, the core role of the executive is to decide how to deploy a companies resources. That is a pretty substantial difference.
> We want change ...
'We' is presumably a group of people living in a democratic first world country. We have systems for deciding what 'we' want, and it frequently spits out results that suggest 'we' do not want change.
There is no such thing as a politically neutral algorithm. Algorithms exist to implement decisions that have been previously made, and these decisions are political in nature. Neutrality is the name given to people and institutions that support the status quo, and therefore they cannot be viewed as apolitical, even though, for lack of understanding, many believe to be operating outside of politics.
Strongly disagree. If google censors information relating to Tiananmen Square, that supports the status quo without being neutral. If they don't filter that information out they undermine the status quo while remaining neutral. I could at least understand the position that no censorship can be construed as being politically opposed to censorship, but I don't really think that's the case in all cases; it is simpler to make a tool for finding knowledge in the general case than it is to make a tool that additionally filters that knowledge on ideological grounds.
Do you have evidence for that? To use the cliché, your statement seems to show more how you see the world than how they see it.
I'm stating the obvious fact that former Googlers have made themselves notable by engaging in public activism while at the company. Both conservative and liberal. If one dreams of becoming an activist and one happens to work at Google there are footsteps to follow in.
Insofar as personal advancement goes. While there are exceptions, it should be fair to expect that what one does at work may be somehow related to personal advancement. This can be advancement in terms of getting promotions, growing skills, or establishing a reputation.
Wholly selfless people aren't the norm in corporate work environments. That's fine. You can be a good person and not wholly selfless.
Whereas protesting something separate from corporate that is a safe (because let's face it, separating kids from their parents is incredibly messed up), probably won't jeopardize their job.
Maybe at a micro-level, optimizing AdWords so that users "click more ads" is probably an incredibly empty job. Maybe by protesting something more virtuous, it gets them through their day jobs?
If you don't like AMP, at least start by admitting that the problem AMP solves exists.
All AMP pages are about 10 % size of standard pages - at least for the newspapers and blogs. Until you tell all your webdevs/managers to remove all tracking+loading 25 scripts from universe...
Please keep AMP.
From Guardian, BBC to Washpost or our national dailies - it is horribly slow. Our dailies also show 'notifications' even on desktop!
Disclaimer: I'm a googler, my options are my own, I am not connected to the AMP project.
Bandwidth is a real problem in developing countries that I feel people are not taking seriously. I don't think you understand the difference AMP makes.
Seeing tuk-tuk drivers earning $20/day watching YouTube non-stop while waiting for fares is weird. They definitely aren't going to see a difference from AMP.
AMP makes a lot less sense from the point of view of people who never touch the Internet via sub-1MBPS connections and sub-5 second latencies.
That's how culture changes.
Direct attacks on status quo culture will always fail cause Defenses are already in place to squash them.
I'd like to see oil company workers protesting the oil companies, or ICE employees freeing children from detention centers, but we all know why that isn't a thing -- folks don't apply to such work if they don't believe in the core mission.
If you as a tech worker dislike Google's practices, you should attempt to dissuade your employer from financially supporting Google. If they persist, you can go public about your objections, organize a strike, or quit.
Same thing here. Instead of fighting the fight where they could benefit whole internet by obstructing google, lets say it mildly, shady bussiness, they are fighting for some strange, far away couses with doubtfull results (or even - any results). Not saying it is worse than doing nothing but it is more like PR (company or personal) than anything else, somewhere close to: "let us talk, talking doesnt hurt and it doesnt change anything, so lets discuss some more".
Such a contervetional saying, but I get what you mean.
They have more authority in their niche so they should fight for rights in something they are expert at.
But I do think that the fact Google employees are protesting against the company deal with Big Oild is good because it generates a lot of PR and awareness around the subject,
Exactly like how Blizzard cause the situation in HK to be x10 more viral
That is whole point you see. Activists like these don't want to do anything. I would even say that they actually even don't want their own protests to succeed. They protest only for the sake of protesting.
Isn't the other view that this is exactly why Google employees aren't objecting?
Not just in a "biting the hand that feeds you" sense, either. There's a selection effect in place: anyone currently working at Google either developed those practices, supported their use, or wasn't upset enough to avoid working there. Working with oil and surveillance gets protested precisely because it's not central to what Google employees do; it makes those projects easier to stop, and means that there are people who both work at Google and reject those projects.
The best way to counter that is to work on alternatives.
I've always wondered why search couldn't be like DNS or server-side caches; every server could index all the content that passes through it, and clients would query all nearby servers.
Other HNers have previously said that indexing is the easy part; it's providing relevant results and reducing spam that's hard. Well, when the indexing is freely available to everyone, maybe we could use on-device client apps to navigate that index, each with our own preferences.
How long is it before some Google employee starts kicking up a fuss about the ethical issues surrounding Google's core business?
I for one am super excited for this being the case. I want people to protest the privacy invasions and anti-open-web initiatives.
Many companies are openly evil to a degree, but there is generally a strong self-selection at work - if one isn't keen on blowing up kids in far off lands, then one does not even send a resume to Raytheon! But Google simply hasn't been around long enough in their unabashed-Skynet state for this to have had an effect.
So instead we've got a contingent that signed up thinking they were "disrupting" the status quo to make the world better, yet now find themselves at the center of the modern surveillance and control apparatus. And so that cognitive dissonance comes crashing down in different ways, one of them being trying to change the company into what they thought it was.
In this case wanting their employer to do something - safe in the knowledge that google is so big it won’t show up in their paycheck. I would be shocked to learn (and this is conjecture on my part) that the typical google employee leads a truly low carbon lifestyle (petrochemical, electricity, transportation included)
If you look at the largest companies by revenue
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by...
these types of companies make up a large proportion.
In addition, other companies such as Big Pharma, Health Insurance and Big Banks which are unpopular with the left would also be worried about when they would be the focus of a new protest.
I am so sick and tired of this attitude. In what world is working with the military / defense contractors evil? Do people really believe that the military is inherently evil? Is there literally no regard to history, or the fact that not having a military is basically tantamount to allowing other countries to do whatever they want with you?
Lotta people will say "if you don't like it, quit" but I've never understood this. Running away isn't the only course of action available. So let's be clear: those who say this are making an "ought" statement (if you don't like what a company is doing, you ought to quit and let them do what they want) rather than an "is" statement (if you don't like what a company is doing, the only thing you can do is quit). Really illuminates the belief underlying this sentiment: corporate power is not to be questioned.
The deep question though is: should employees of a corporation have a say in its governance ?
Views from anyone in Germany would be interesting, as they seem to have a particular system for this. [2]
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4lkCECSBFw
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
I'm not sure if you're making your arguments in good faith.
I feel like climate change and aggregating user data for ads are... not morally equivalent evils.
Climate change may be a bigger issue, but that doesn't mean the actions of Google's employees are going to be effective at dealing with that issue.
Prioritizing issues does not make you a hypocrite. Probably the opposite is more likely.
That's a subjective opinion. I happen to agree, but not everyone (even outside of Google) think their uses are morally questionable.
The demand is "no business with them", not "no oil supporting business with them".
If Big Oil (and they're all looking into how to survive in a "beyond petroleum" future, to adapt the slogan BP espoused for a while) wants to use the cloud to do material science modelling (to pick some arbitrary possible use of cloud resource that an energy carrier company could have) or use map data to determine suitable places to help them transition off oil into renewables, they should pay somebody else for that service?
(Disclosure: I work at Google, not in Cloud, haven't seen that letter, didn't sign that letter, don't have a car [or other direct dependency on oil] and am looking into renewables myself, although not at the level of doing material science)
A quit can be individually done.
I can be in disagreement with both, so I'll rather be with just one, the value I provide to a company should be enough that my quit threat is good enough, otherwise, plenty of companies out there.
While I think it's good to demand change within organizations, the demand to eliminate all carbon emissions is unreasonable, and usually such demands are made by people in a comfortable position with no real skin in the game.
Nobody is saying that their only option is to quit, and nobody is going to say that.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114285/google-employee...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentago...
Given that this lever obviously works, why shouldn't employees use it?
I agree with you that the current actions being taken aren't exercising the full power available to employees, but absent a real union it's incredibly difficult to organize strike action (a much superior course of action to threatening to quit).
You should not work at the company you are engaging in activism against. That isn't out of respect for the corporation in question, but rather for one's self. That's why the people who were truly against Google's unethical plans actually left the company. They didn't just sign some form online. They practiced what they preached. "Google shouldn't be helping the CIA murder people, and I shouldn't be working at Google."
How can one be their very best self if they are receiving relatively enormous paychecks working at a company with which they apparently fundamentally disagree on policies surrounding human rights?
How can one perform optimally at their place of employment when they are forced to cognitively take in the dissonance on a daily basis caused by the way their values clash with their employer's goals?
A "real union"? They don't need that, Google employees are making absurdly huge incomes at ridiculous starting salaries which are in no way representative of what multiple of productivity they offer the firm. They have decided their priorities supported working at an amorphous blob behemoth that cooked all their meals for them, walked their dog for them, and babysat their kids for them.
What this less-than-1%-minority in Google's employee needs to do is stop having their cake and eating it, too.
You might say - well, Google is not a democratic society. But the point is that it can be. So people who hold these two beliefs are perfectly justified to work at Google, and indeed that is the most effective route to their goal: of producing their best work in service of a just society.
Your prescribed solution is to abandon hope of change and retreat to... where? Where can one find refuge, exactly? Are we cursed to flee forever?
Agreed. It's safe protesting, aka virtue signaling. If you accept a paycheck from Google, you are inherently complicit in whatever course of action Google takes. It doesn't matter how much noise you make from the inside, until you are willing to walk out door, it's just talk.
IMO Google hasn't changed dramatically overnight. They have shown their hand in regards to ethical/moral lines for a long time.
I don't understand this argument. If you genuinely care about fixing the issue, then why in the world would you quit when you can instead stay and fight and have greater impact? Actively fighting from the inside of a powerful corporation that has real power to make changes is a much bigger lever you can pull than just quitting. These people are willing to risk their jobs to fight for what they believe in; how is it reasonable to accuse them of faux activism?
I'll explain it to you: it's the only thing that works and the only thing that does not make you look like a big hypocrite.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114285/google-employee...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentago...
This is just Google specifically, not all the other times which employees have successfully forced their employer to change course.
Personally I think all this manifestation of what "should" be political-sphere politics at work is a side effect of the complete brokenness of the politics sphere for having a substantive discussion about issues that might actually improve things. It's all been driven out by culture war and various sorts of loyalty-behaviour.
That and an acknowledgement of the huge amounts of power held by extremely valuable western companies. In some ways this is the logical conclusion of Citizen's United; if companies have a privileged voice (and running a media company is a huge megaphone!), then the best thing the public can do is attempt to wrest control of that voice. If they don't, it will be used against them on behalf of the CEO or a single wealthy owner.
Not to mention the political donations.
(Diffuse stockholders seem to have relatively little control over corporate voice as well.)
I suspect the actual reason you object to quitting is that it involves sacrifice. It's easy to sign a petition or hold up a billboard but it's hard to quit your job. The problem with this approach is that humans define virtue based on sacrifice. We are deeply suspicious of virtue that doesn't involve sacrifice and we should be because that kind of virtue is indistinguishable from self-aggrandizement.
If you really want to "question corporate power" then don't work for a coporation. Of course the reason people refuse to follow this advice isn't because "they want to change the corporations from the inside" -- it's because they want money and a lifestyle that comes from working for a coporation while also claiming the moral highground.
> Let's be clear here: humans banding together to accomplish goals greater than that which they are individually capable is a good thing. Now we just have to decide the governance model. Currently we have the unchallenged shareholder/executive system. Why not create a parallel power structure representing employees?
Why are you so sure that you are motivated by a desire to improve the world? I think the correct assumption is that you are deeply selfish and, mostly, what you want is to maintain and bolster your advantageous position. I think your perspective is adequately explained by that assumption.
Even if we assume that you want to improve the world, why are you so convinced that you know how?
There already exists a parallel power structure that represents all employees, suppliers, and customers. Its the structure of government.
I checked your profile for info to contact you privately to ask, but there wasn't anything, so my apology for the public request. Could you suggest any of Arendt's writings, especially around this subject? I've seen her referenced in interesting contexts and would love to read more.
I'd recommend a collection of three essays called Crises of the Republic. If you like that, then check out The Human Condition.
What should I do if I want to question all power? Become an hermit?
If you think people work at a corporation for money and lifestyle, then you are living in a bubble. I'm betting most people work at a huge company are doing menial labour and hate it.
To have more influence over the governance of a corporation, the employees could push for a bicameral governance structure. E.g., have the board of investors elected directors with the president/CEO running the company, but also create a second board, a board of employee elected directors. The employee elected directors are elected by the employees of the corporation (1 employee = 1 vote). In order for a resolution (e.g., setting c-suite compensation or identifying types of clients the company will not cater to) to pass, both the board of investor elected directors and the board of employee elected directors must pass the resolution.
A benefit to the c-suite of this style may be that the employee elected directors can provide better feedback about the concerns of the workers before the workers start protesting and come up with solutions that are acceptable to both sides.
Climate change is the issue of our generation.
I agree that companies don't have a mechanism for dealing with it. Isn't that the point?
So...a union.
Googler's stock compensation is entirely in the non-voting class. Furthermore, most employees convert their google shares into cash or reinvest it in the broader market as it vests instead of just being long GOOG.
Employees of claw hammer factories are better off not knowing what I do with their products in the dark of a Saturday night. Let's just say I'm not hammering nails.
OTOH, claw hammer factory workers are making a product that is legal to manufacture, legal to sell, and the intended use for said hammer is also entirely legal. You will find few protestors at the gates of the Stanley Corporation because of what folks might do with a hammer or a screwdriver. After all, they're really just trying to make tools for folks to build a nice dog house for your new puppy. And we all like puppies. Did Stanley just take on a big contract to supply the tooling for the construction of a new ICBM plant? Somebody got that contract, why didn't I hear about the protests?
To me, this just sounds like folks that are itchin' to protest something, and this is all they could find. Google's not making ICBMs here. If one feels strongly about the issue, do what I've done in the past and quit. ("You didn't tell me the DoD is your only customer.")
So quitting is the only acceptable solution to disagreeing with your company? That'd ridiculous.
If you have qualms with working for a large corporation whose primarily purpose is to maximize value and profit within the boundaries of the law, then you need to find a non-profit or privately held firm that's more aligned with your values and flourish there.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2019/08/19/nearly...
Should the law be written this way? Probably not, but that's a much larger and somewhat tangential debate.
This is about a group of talented people who have the option to put some skin in the game and take their labor elsewhere, but who choose instead to put forth empty talk about the ethics of their employer all while enjoying the lifestyle that employer has offered them.
No, which is why it's a good thing the law is not written that way.
Since large parts of these are hidden variables and only come to light when certain actions are taken, I would say it is actually in the shareholders best interest for employees to complain and strike. The alternative is that top talent is leaving the company, partners untie relations and customers seek alternatives.
It's all about perception and communication.
Although you could always spin it like it would be a long time disadvantage to work with these kind of companies. I think shareholders are the ones that take the risk of people just not wanting to work under these conditions.
Google would degrade to be a career starter for gifted developers if shareholders will continue enforce their immediate profit expectations.
Basically that means that the legal obligation for profit maximization is a pretty crappy law. I doubt that people would stop investing without that legal handle.
Still, I doubt you can make a rational argument that forgoing contract X is undermining shareholders in any honest court of justice if all factors are considered.
edit: And if employees are indeed protesting, the case will be much cleaner.
Not the law. https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
Because they don't want to walk away from their responsibility, and they believe they are able to change the company from within.
No, it doesn't. Stop spreading myths.
I really encourage you and anyone else that thinks this way to spend some time learning about the growing "Conscious Capitalism" movement.
So now if you dislike ICE you have to dislike big oil also? And vice versa? What's next? Google should not do business with Chickfila because their employees dislike the ceo?
I mean I dislike google so the worse business risk with google. gets the bettet I say.
I am just afraid I will be put into a position where I either support lgbtq+climate change+blacklives matter+anti-china+anti-russia to use any tech service in the west or I learn chinese or russian and use their services. I mean, why are they so intolerant of anyone who does not conform to their very specific set of ideology and world view? They're worse than the people they fight. You can be lgbtq and work at chickfila just fine,you can be for green energy and work for ice,you can be against ICE and big oil will do business with you. No matter how correct they think they are,they cause more problems than solutions.
This is why otherwise sane people are trump supporters,because to support the alternative you have to conform to this long list of ideological views. Only intellectual cowards who can't be bothered to patiently discuss their views with their peers corner people into picking between two extremes -- where deviance is met with hostility. I refuse to accept any view or movement where I have to surrender critical thinking and be either for the movement or against it.
Now big oil has to band together with ICE? Good job on uniting your enemies against you! I can't accept any result from people like this. Ends don't justify means and freedom to think and disagree is very important.
We hear these stories all the time and I'm not sure "googlers are protesting" means 10 or 10,000 employees.
We've seen googler's post here indicate that various employee initiatives have varying levels of support but as far as media reports go they report them all the same.
I think their suggestion that Google stops voluntarily selling their services for oil companies is wrong way to approach the situation. Only reducing the global demand for oil puts oil business out of business.
In some cases a boycott is just a tax for good ethics. If the boycott is indirect subsidy for those who don't care, it does not work.
Stop helping Google create ever more refined digital portfolios on every internet user. Google does not intend for their digital portfolios to fall into the hands of the US Government, but if the US Government ever becomes significantly undemocratic, Google cannot stop that from happening -- and Google's management knows that or would know it if they would spend 5 consecutive minutes being genuinely curious about it.
Stop helping Google turn the web into an ever more refined machine for extracting money from web users while continuing to make the web less well-suited for important purposes it was originally well-suited for: namely the publication of textual and simple graphical information not motivated by profit. (The money flows from users of the web to organizations that use Google to advertise, then to Google.)
Google's insane appetite for growth already has it past the point where its principles are going out the window. Those go quietly, one by one, souls sold a nickel at a time, and with lots of self-deception and lies to the contrary. The culture is diluted with new people who do not share it, and when any group grows at 20% YoY, its culture won't last more than a couple years. Now at Google, senior leadership is more concerned with making that 23% YoY revenue bump than literally anything else. Along the way it just accidentally created a huge surveillance network that outclasses most of the world's intelligence services. Whoops.
Vote with your feet, not with your stomach. Google doesn't give a flying crap about technology except as a means to more power and money.
I just don't buy into the GP’s claim that they're putting ethics over profit.
If enough people protest against Blizzard that they make a public statement at their party (BlizzCon) about how they were wrong perhaps they're feeling the heat? If enough people cancel their services with Blizzard over this, they're feeling a direct result of their political decision on their profit.
If blizzard knew the hit they would take to US sales for kowtowing to china would only be 1%, they wouldn't flinch
What happens when employees from both other end of the spectrum simultaneously demand action?
Not quite the same when you have thousands of highly intelligent people all speaking the same language, in the same building, connected to the world's fastest messaging system.
We will only see more of this, and I am happy for that.
Furthermore, the OPEC countries don't care at all and will happily sell you oil at a nice markup if Shell and Exxon can't.
The production of oil is not the problem. They produce oil because we, as a society, have placed tremendous value on it. Once we no longer need oil they'll stop producing it.
Because, actions in both extreme would set a bad precedent for a tech giant like Google:
Extreme 1 - Fire the employees or serve them notice to shut up.
Extreme 2 - End contracts / don't sell further to big oil companies. In process, lose out vast sums of money and forever shut yourself out from the industry even if they discovered something called 'clean, sustainable oil' in future.
One, it is my understanding that most plastic is made directly from oil. If we dropped fossil fuels tomorrow and stopped extracting oil for energy production reasons...wouldn't we still need oil companies to manufacture plastic? I understand there are growing movements to reduce plastic usage as well, but I also think there would be construction niches that only plastic can serve (say, car bumpers). Is the next move synthetic plastic and then we can say goodbye to oil forever?
Second, in response to this quote:
> “If Google is going to confront its share of responsibility for the climate crisis, that means not helping oil and gas companies extract fossil fuels,” Ike McCreery, an engineer in Google’s cloud division
You know that saying, if you're going to do a job, do it right? This is my problem with these tech deal protests. The purpose of all technology is to make work more efficient and more correct. If we deny access to technology for political reasons, aren't we making the problem worse by making it easier for these companies or orgs to make mistakes? For example, imagine if ocean mapping companies denied data requests by oil rig operators. Chances are they're still going to drill (because shareholders demand it), but now they'll be in the dark and the odds of an uncontrollable spill happening shoot up. Similarly, if ICE is denied tech access, it severely harms the good parts of the org (human trafficking / child exploitation prevention, catching violent illegal immigrants). It is possible for an organization, especially at the scale of a government agency, to do both good and bad at the same time. Hell, I'm sure even Googlers have similar thoughts about certain teams within Google itself.
I'm sure that losing GitHub access won't hurt ICE that much, and losing Google Cloud is just a bump in the road for oil companies, but the end goal of these protests is to get as many service providers on board as possible. While it is every company's right to choose its customers, there seems to be a common theme among tech protests that we are only doing harm. The article quotes Google Anthos as one of the services provided in the contract. From a quick glance Anthos appears to be some sort of glorified Kubernetes thing.
I hope it is not controversial to state that Kubernetes can be used for both good and evil. It is a containerization platform, not a moral arbiter.
> “It’s devastating to think the infrastructure I’ve helped build over the last five years would be used to help incarcerate climate refugees,” they said.
Again, it cannot be that black or white. The same software that manages prisons can also manage orphanages and homeless shelters. You can use an Excel sheet for a lottery...or genocide.
The only way we can stop bad things from happening for sure is to vote. Cancelling contracts will not deter bad actors as long as they can hire someone else to do the same work, and even if every company in the Western world declines a contract on moral ground (which they are privileged to do, given they make enough money to actually get a say in what contracts to take), there are hundreds of thousands of companies in the 3rd world that will do anything for the same contract. I mean, there was an article about a Polish troll farm on the front page of HN just yesterday. Do you think a simple protest will stop them?
Here's a thought: Google is one of the richest companies in the world. They could donate $10 million to every politician in Congress right now if they vow to vote yes on legislation banning fossil fuels entirely. $10M would be enough to live comfortably till the end of your days, Big Oil lobbyists and Fox News positions be damned. For a measly $5B Google could end climate destruction tomorrow.
Bribery is legal in the U.S. through lobbying. Why do we only let bad actors use it? We have trillion dollar companies with heavy liberal bases and they still donate to Republicans!
I don't think these Googlers are wrong to protest these contracts, but I guess the point I'm trying to make is that their time would be better spent trying to buy off the Federal government and instituting wide scale regulations that would kill every oil company immediately, rather than trying to cut out a few contracts. Gotta start small though, I know.
Mind you, the plastics process itself produces greenhouse gases, and occasionally the hugely wasteful event of flaring. Every now and again either Exxon or Shell lights a huge volume of gas on fire which can be seen in a fifty mile radius near my house to remind us that individual action on CO2 emission is meaningless. It needs to be banned entirely. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-4...
AMP came about because mobile sites suck. My only beef is there weirdly doesn't seem to be an easy opt out (for the user or content producer). While that's less than ideal how can you possibly equate that with:
- Environmental damage
- Climate change
- Developing AI to help the military better kill people with drones (a previous Googler protest)
Like, what twisted world view would try and equate any of the above with AMP? If so, I seriously suggest you get over yourselves. I find that attitude entitled and, honestly, reprehensible.
The other problem you see here is Whataboutism. Like, "oh sure, Big Oil hid research into the effects of fossil fuels on climate change but what about [my pet issue]?"
Not everything has to be about everything. Not tackling every issue doesn't invalidate the protest against a particular issue. Whataboutism is what allowed the likes of Trump to get elected.
Seriously.
Disclaimer: Xoogler.
I'm just saying it feels incongruous to hear Googlers act moral about "big oil" while making their money maintaining humanity's largest surveillance system, ya know...?