Comment by altgoogler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by altgoogler | Hacker News Reader

Googler here.

I don't consider the company evil. In fact, I think it's leading the way that we talk about ethics in computing. People talk about Maven, but it was an internal revolt--not external influence--that challenged the issues with the project.

Secondly, there's a lot of criticism about supposed violations of "Don't Be Evil". As a multi-national company, it's almost impossible these days to avoid morally complex issues. Microsoft, on the other hand, has recently been seeing in much better light due to Nadella's leadership in the post Ballmer-era. But Microsoft never had the "Don't Be Evil" and isn't getting criticism for its, e.g. defense contracts. I don't consider Microsoft to be an immoral company either.

Concerns about privacy and data handling are warranted. There should be stronger consumer protections in there area, and legislation like GDPR is good, and should be more widespread. I honestly don't think Google is the company to worry about here (or at least the biggest threat). It's companies who aren't as closely watched that are the highest risk to you. Google is pushing the state-of-the-art here, with efforts like differential privacy. From what I can see, Google respects your PII and has more advanced internal mechanisms for handling it than any other company I know about.

IMHO, Google tried to be as transparent as possible in this area. Concerned about data collection? Review your activity on myactivity.google.com. Want to move all of your data out, or back it up? takeout.google.com Location data? Google literally regularly emails you a report on your location summary so you know what's going on.

Is it perfect? No. Is there valid criticism? Sure. Could it do a lot better in many different areas? Absolutely.

Is it evil? I honestly just don't see it. Feel free to ask about individual issues if you disagree.

Thanks a lot for your reply. Do you think Google is serious about differential privacy?

Also, I wonder whether the fact that most comments on this thread come from Google (ex-)employees, and not FB's, is saying something...

> Do you think Google is serious about differential privacy?

IMHO, Yes, very much so. There are lots of other initiatives as well (can't find a public link at the moment).

> and not FB's, is saying something...

I don't think they are an evil company either, but they were somewhat cavalier with handling PII until recently. This is why I support stronger personal and data privacy laws. It's very easy to mishandle info, even with the best of intentions. Take a look at Zoom, which prioritized ease-of-use over security and privacy. This is another example of why I think people shouldn't worry (first) about FAANG, they should worry about the much smaller players that don't receive nearly as much scrutiny.

To add more flavors on differential privacy efforts inside Google; yes, when someone tries to launch something non-trivial then privacy reviewers will very likely ask them to apply differential privacy techniques where it's possible. This is causing lots of frictions on engineers who's not familiar with privacy issues, but in a good way.

> People talk about Maven, but it was an internal revolt--not external influence--that challenged the issues with the project.

The revolt started internally despite a lot of effort to conceal the project, even from engineers working on it. And Google management started to stepback only after the press got involved.

Well, that's one way to read into the facts.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are few other companies where the rank-and-file have as much pull with executive leadership and can influence strategy based on moral reasoning.

Google seemed comfortable losing any number of employees over Dragonfly, and firing organizers against it and other issues. It seemed like Congressional pressure, not employee activism, was what actually made the decision for them.

Obviously Maven wasn't shut down due to government pressure, but I feel like you drastically exaggerate how concerned Google is about valuing its employees.

I don't think comfortable is the right word. Jeff Dean personally talked to some SWEs to try and convince them to stay. Two people can take a valid moral stance and come to opposing viewpoints on the same subject.

> I feel like you drastically exaggerate how concerned Google is about valuing its employees.

I don't know what I would have to gain by such an exaggeration. It's not like there aren't a lot of current and X-Googlers that are highly critical [1] of the organization for a number of reasons. I'm not afraid of being critical, and I have nothing to gain by talking positively.

Are there other companies that regularly survey (see Googlegeist) their employees and actually make some progress on issues? Do those companies hold regular meetings with the CEO (TGIF) where anybody can ask a question? Tough questions aren't rare. They are quite common. Which other companies have those both and a survivor benefit? I'm asking seriously because I think that it's quite rare.

Do I have criticisms the company? Absolutely. But compared to corporate america, yeah, I will go out on a branch and say that Google values its staff.

[1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/

> I don't know what I would have to gain by such an exaggeration.

I think Googlers like to believe their employer cares about them, and the internal activists in particular, like to believe they are effective at creating real change. Ultimately though, I believe the Congressional hearings created that change, and more Congressional action will be necessary to curb their other issues.

> Are there other companies that regularly survey (see Googlegeist) their employees and actually make some progress on issues?

This is actually incredibly common. My employer does it, and it's one of hundreds of companies in my local geographic area that participate in the given employee survey system. At our all hands meetings, the best and worst results are shared, as well as a plan to address where employees most feel improvement is necessary.

> Do those companies hold regular meetings with the CEO (TGIF) where anybody can ask a question?

No, but then again, neither does Google after they started getting real questions that they didn't want to answer: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/15/google-cancels-tgif-weekly-a...

(Side note, reading Steve Yegge's original platform rant was an incredible highlight of my early days on G+!)

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