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Comment by ahelwer | Hacker News Reader

Good! Employees should have a say in how their labor is used.

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.

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Employees want a say in the governance of the corporation. Most corporations have no mechanism for this leading to impromptu employee protests over the issue of the day.

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.

> Most corporations have no mechanism for this leading to impromptu employee protests over the issue of the day.

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?

> create a second board, a board of employee elected directors. The employee elected directors are elected by the employees of the corporation

So...a union.

Your comment is one big straw man. I don't think most reasonable people believe that corporate power should never be questioned. What people mean when they question whether employees would quit over an issue is that, if the employees aren't willing to quit over a cause, then that puts into question the authenticity of the demands being made. Signing a petition, sending letters, calling journalists, and posting on Twitter are low effort and low risk activities(aka slacktivism) that even casual activists can carry out, and just because someone demands something doesn't mean that they actually care about the issue as much as the optics suggest.

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.

Okay well, this "slacktivism" has led to real changes:

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).

These are pretty low standards for "real changes."

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.

"Change is possible & most effectively driven from within the system" is a basic tenet of all democratic societies. Do you believe this?

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?

England was not democratic until it was.

A lot of sizable organisations are committed to eliminate all carbon emissions. Yes it's rarely done by starving organisations and people, that doesn't mean others shouldn't do it.

> Signing a petition, sending letters, calling journalists, and posting on Twitter are low effort and low risk activities(aka slacktivism) that even casual activists can carry out, and just because someone demands something doesn't mean that they actually care about the issue as much as the optics suggest

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.

"What people mean when they question whether employees would quit over an issue is that, if the employees aren't willing to quit over a cause, then that puts into question the authenticity of the demands being made."

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?

As someone concerned about climate change and very bullish on alternative energy, I still think this is a slippery slope. Google shouldn't choose who can use its services based on politics. GCP/Search/Maps should serve all legal businesses. This is both a moral (not legal) position and risk-averse one (who knows what employees will want to censor in 10 years).

I agree for "automatic" stuff / offers generally available to everyone. But I see no problem with Google avoiding a closer relationship / specific contracts.

You're talking about standard services, Google employees are talking about consulting contracts.

I'm not sure if you're making your arguments in good faith.

> Good! Employees should have a say in how their labor is used.

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)

More people should be aware of "Exit, voice and loyalty", and its excellent discussion of the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

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.)

What's really illuminating is that you equate quitting with "running away". Quitting isn't "running away" -- it's the correct course of action if you object to what the company is doing. Sure, make your case first, but when you don't get your way, quit. It's even more remarkable that you make this comparison (quitting = running away) while pushing an anti-corporate message. I can hardly think of anything "more corporate" than equating quitting with running away.

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.

Yeah yeah we've all read Taleb - no virtue without sacrifice and all that. I basically disagree with your premise that you can only question corporate power while not working for a corporation (strong "yet you participate in society, curious" energy [0]). 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?

[0] https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha

My perspective comes from Hannah Arendt and her opinion that goodness demonstrated publicly necessarily becomes corrupted.

> 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?

Of course it's selfish. I believe myself & my fellow workers should have more of a voice in how companies are run - more power. This is because I, yes, believe we can run the company better for society as a whole. I live in society and wish to live in an even better, more just society.

More power for you is directly linked to making society better. What a fascinating coincidence.

I do believe that putting more power into democratic structures (and thus more power into their constituents) will make society better, yes. Not really a fringe opinion. Not to get too frank but this type of nietzschean-style attack against the presumed underlying motivations of ideological opponents only really works if you're an exceptionally talented writer & study of human behavior.

> Why not create a parallel power structure representing employees?

There already exists a parallel power structure that represents all employees, suppliers, and customers. Its the structure of government.

> My perspective comes from Hannah Arendt and her opinion that goodness demonstrated publicly necessarily becomes corrupted

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.

The bit about the impossibility of doing good in public is from The Human Condition. She gets it from Machievelli, who dared to "teach men how not to be good".

I'd recommend a collection of three essays called Crises of the Republic. If you like that, then check out The Human Condition.

> If you really want to "question corporate power" then don't work for a coporation.

What should I do if I want to question all power? Become an hermit?

Yes. This is why ascetics are considered saintly.

Ascetics are valorized by the propaganda of those in power (such as the religious organizations that beatify people) because they pose no threat to them.

Yes, lest your questions lead you to become powerful in turn.

> it's because they want money and a lifestyle that comes from working for a coporation while also claiming the moral highground

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.

Good! Employees should have a say in how their labor is used.

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.")

Quit is the real threat you have. If every truly valuable employee threatens to quit when company is going into directions that are non-ethical, the world would be a in adifferent place.

There's something better: a strike, or the threat of one.

A strike needs a group action, and organization.

A quit can be individually done.

So you agree we should create a union to facilitate strikes?

No, because then I'll have to entities to negotiate with.

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.

Google isn't an employee-owned company but I imagine that they do own a decent amount of stock due to the compensation structure. Maybe they could use that as an avenue to have their voice heard?

The structure of the company stock grants the founders 10x votes per share, about half of the shares owned by the public have 1x vote per share, and the other half have zero votes per share.

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.

Unfortunately this is a multi-faceted problem that transcends hypocritical employees who pick and choose about what to be outraged about (you work at a company that amasses your user's data and uses it in all sorts of morally questionable ways, but you get mad when they work with other morally questionable firms? Really?).

> (you work at a company that amasses your user's data and uses it in all sorts of morally questionable ways, but where you draw the line is when your employer engages in business dealings with other morally questionable firms? Really?)

I feel like climate change and aggregating user data for ads are... not morally equivalent evils.

It's about responsibility and effectiveness: voyeur-capitalism is something for which Google and it's employees are more directly responsible for, and one which they might be in a better position to solve (though I suspect the solution may ultimately come from a competitor).

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.

> hypocritical employees who pick and choose about what to be outraged about

Prioritizing issues does not make you a hypocrite. Probably the opposite is more likely.

Fair point. I can tell you the people I know who work at Google predominantly feel very uncomfortable with the aim of total surveillance for profit. I suspect giving these same employees more of a say in the day-to-day running of the business - rather than big-ticket issues that are easy to assemble around - could lead to improved rights for users.

> uses it in all sorts of morally questionable ways

That's a subjective opinion. I happen to agree, but not everyone (even outside of Google) think their uses are morally questionable.

Ideally there is an even larger group of employees who _do_ support their labor being used in this fashion.

Maybe so, maybe so. The important thing is they're able to voice & instrument this desire in a material way rather than just rolling over.

So let's say the googlers who are against their labor used in this fashion are just a vocal minority and the rest of the folks are largely ok with it and are simply quiet. What should happen?

There could be a democratic structure in place where employees can elect internal representatives to conduct things and advocate for/against issues on their behalf; alternatively (and more Google's style) there could be a direct democracy vote on particular issues.

Wouldn't the most Google style thing be... "Liquid Democracy with Google Votes" [1] ;) ?

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

If they're simply quiet, obviously they don't care that much whether it happens or not?

I think there is a silent majority of people who are frustrated by the ongoing politicization of the workspace. They are quiet not because they don't care, but feel that it's rude to be so "loud" at work.

you probably would have a better argument with don't really care.

Agreed, if political activism is encouraged by management, employees should absolutely do that, especially in a company that claims to have "values".

They do by finding a different employer. Vote with your time and attendance. If the employee is that disturbed by their employer's politics why would they continue to work there? This sounds incredibly entitled.

> Lotta people will say "if you don't like it, quit" but I've never understood this

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.

Objectively wrong:

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.

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