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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

I'm no Google apologist, but there's nothing nefarious about this. Why on earth would any company encourage its employees to speculate and talk freely, when doing so would get them into legal/PR trouble. It's the equivalent of a lawyer telling his client to go drinking and have a fun night out with the district attorney.

Rule #1: Never talk to the police without your lawyer being present

Rule #2: Don't create a paper trail that is going to make you look bad when it gets subpoenaed

I personally think that Google needs to be broken up into 10 different companies. And I would love to live in a world where companies face antitrust enforcement because of concrete actions. Unfortunately, we live in a world where a carelessly worded email is going to cause you more legal troubles than actual anti-competitive behavior.

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>I'm no Google apologist, but there's nothing nefarious about this. Why on earth would any company encourage its employees to speculate and talk freely, when doing so would get them into legal/PR trouble.

Similarly, why the heck would Google want to have employees discuss controversial topics like politics and religion as well? Workplaces are a neutral environment. You want activism, do it outside of work.

I mean, given Google operates both a PAC (https://ballotpedia.org/Google_NetPAC) and spends millions on lobbying (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/09/google-is-techs-top-spender-...), it would be pretty two-faced to claim a neutral environment for workers but also with their executives actively engaging in unequivocal political activism.

It hurts my soul every time I reminded that companies have no cap on how much they can 'donate' to politicians. Imagine a world where there was no money in politics.

you know guanxi functions without money...

For those unfamiliar with the term "guanxi"- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi

You can think of it as tantamount to one's network, and the amount of influence within that network. Basically, "it's not what you know, it's who you know".

Source- lived in Shanghai for 5+ years.

It's pretty rich to claim the who-you-know culture in China is not influenced by money. Bribery is how you get everything from good grades, to good employment, promotions, get out of jail etc.

the who-you-know culture serves a totally different function than monetary bribes. bribes are very fungible.

Can you expand on that? Bribes do get you position or grades, so I do not see the distinction.

if you really need someone to give you a breakdown + application of the idea of fungibility to bribes to see the distinction, here you go:

when you bribe a teacher for a better grade, you aren't utilizing a relationship to induce a change in outcome, you are utilizing money, money that holds value independent of who is providing the bribe.

edit:i am making the assumption that parent read at least the wiki blurb of what the parent is replying to.

Money helps you get to know people, particularly in China for things like getting grades and jobs. If, after you give them money, they then "know" you, money was still part of the equation.

Donating to politicians only has an effect to the extent that some voters insist on voting for the most well-funded politicians. They are the real problem because they are the ones actually deciding who gets into government. You should vote against all high donation-receiving politicians to help cancel out those soul-hurting votes.

Unfortunately, most of the people who complain about this stuff don't actually care enough to vote against it, and they become part of the problem themselves.

It doesn’t matter how you vote. Money in politics will win every time. Blaming the voters is victim blaming. This is just late stage capitalism at its finest.

https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...

In the US you have the choice between two candidates. Both of them take every dollar that they can get. Do you propose people should just stop voting?

The solution for the US would be the first radically reform it's election and voting systems.

The people should just vote for a candidate from a party that doesn't benefit from the current system... wait

There are other candidates but they don't spend enough for people to know they exist. Vote for one of them. It doesn't matter which because they won't win but they don't have to. They just have to "steal" enough votes from one of the major party candidates to cause them to lose. Next time round, they'll have to adjust their policy to be against political donations in order to win back those activist voters.

Money gets your word out. If people don't like your word, though, they won't vote for you.

See Bloomberg, Hilary (outspent Trump 2:1). Many other examples of well-funded politicians failing.

Necessary but not sufficient?

> Money gets your word out. If people don't like your word, though, they won't vote for you.

Note that money also buys a lot of analysis, message testing, etc. to figure out which version of your word people like best.

> See Bloomberg, Hilary (outspent Trump 2:1). Many other examples of well-funded politicians failing.

Sure, having deeper pockets doesn't guarantee you'll win (particularly if you're a dark horse), but it is the way to bet.

> to figure out which version of your word people like best.

It sounds like you're arguing that democracy is better if the politicians don't know what the people want?

I argue that democracy would be better if politicians cared about what people want. Not the top-of-their-head soundbite wants, but the actual needs driving those individual desires.

Ironically enough I believe that the current democracy we live in is effectively quite close to the original democracy, as it manifested in the city-state of Athens and wider ancient Greece. Only 3% of the total population had a vote: namely those with family titles or enough wealth.[ß]

These days we'd call it plutocracy or oligarchy.

ß: It doesn't really matter what the general population does with their votes when less than 3% get to choose what options are on the ballot in the first place.

Isn’t Trump the counterpoint to this? Nobody from the monied establishment wanted him yet here we are...

I'm not taking that bait.

Ask yourself: who were responsible for putting him on the ballot in the first place? And why? Because from looking where I am (read: not in the US), the correct choice in 2016 elections would have been "neither". But that's not a choice available - choosing not to vote is entirely different from voting "none of the above".

The comment wasn't intended as "bait". I used to be in the camp that money was basically all that was necessary to drive an election. Trump's campaign proved me wrong. The establishment did everything they could to discredit him. He spent basically half the money as his competitor. He still won.

I think money is still a problem in politics, but I think the model that money is the driving contributor is too simple.

As an aside, “neither” is an option in the U.S. but too many people have been convinced a third party vote is equivalent to throwing their vote away and thus it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy

Well... Money is a necessary requirement, because it buys visibility in all forms of media. But if we calmly look at what went on, Trump did more than just blast himself out to everywhere he could. Yes, he's an unhinged demagogue, but he also played the media remarkably well. (Calling in to a newsroom and getting unsolicited airtime in the middle of an otherwise redundant programme?)

> As an aside, “neither” is an option in the U.S. but too many people have been convinced a third party vote is equivalent to throwing their vote away

You missed my point. The option I'm talking about is not "neither". It's "none of the above". You need a way to actively express that you, as a voter, have considered the available named options and rejected all of them. Not by wasting a protest vote or abstaining to vote in the first place.

I don't believe I'm saying this, but I honestly think an Australian-style mandatory voting regime would do well in the US. At least that would force the states' hands and make voter suppression a hell of a lot harder to attempt. Combine that with ballots that always have "none of the above" option, and you might start to see something shift.

What would you think happens to legitimacy if "all options were bad" gets a larger share of votes than your supposedly winning candidate?

I think what Trump did was run a far more efficient campaign in terms of what his money provided in the media. He was able to to leverage free publicity by aligning his personality with the incentives of the attention economy.

Thanks for clarifying on the "neither" issue. I would be an advocate of a "none of the above" vote option. In my mind, it does much as the same as if people voted third party. I wasn't equivocating a third party vote to a protest vote. At a certain point, when the percentage of third party votes reaches a certain tipping point those who feel like it's a wasted vote may be convinced it's a viable option. But I also think there are other (possibly more pragmatic) voting schemes like ranked voting that are being implemented at lower levels in the country.

I would be strongly against mandatory voting and I think it could make the system even worse. I think it's important to recognize that you also have the right not to vote just like you have the right not to own a firearm, have the right not to speak up even though you have the freedom of speech etc. A "right" is not equivalent to an "obligation". I think there's issues with uninformed votes as it is and this could be exacerbated by mandatory voting. Sometimes the appropriate choice is to refrain from voting rather than casting an uninformed vote.

> I don't believe I'm saying this, but I honestly think an Australian-style mandatory voting regime would do well in the US.

Forcing people to vote is a seriously bad idea. They have no reason to vote responsibly, and likely will vote maliciously, carelessly, or randomly.

Having the right to vote includes the right to choose not to vote.

> > to figure out which version of your word people like best.

> It sounds like you're arguing that democracy is better if the politicians don't know what the people want?

I have no particular objection to politicians knowing what people want. But that wasn't how I think the money is being spent.

Rather, the use I was pointing out is centered on figuring out what people want to hear.

So, less "what positions would the voters prefer we take" and more "How can we package the policies our donors prefer such that voters choose us over the opposition". Spin, in other words.

Pertinent to this article, if there were antitrust regulations with teeth, you wouldn't have monopolies and their associated profit levels. This would both limit spending and limit the incentive for spending since they wouldn't have an incentive to create barriers to entry for competition through regulation.

This exemplarises so well american exceptionalism.

We don't have to use our imagination. This sort of experiment is being run in multiple countries around the globe.

Agree, but also nice to imagine a world where the most economically and militarily powerful country wasn’t run by corporate bribery.

I don't know about other PACs, but the one that my firm organizes is funded entirely from employee donations; no corporate money at all.

It has stated policy goals that are basically about creating an environment that's good for the firm's business and then gives a 50:50 split between the two major parties for federal campaigns.

I just can't get too excited about this being a bad thing.

It's okay because you bribe the two major parties equally?

It's OK because it's my money, and donating to a PAC like this is just a straightforward way to donate to candidates who support a business environment that's good for my employer.

To be clear, there are limits for direct political donations. What was decided, correctly, in the Citizens United vs. FEC case was the right for political activism from non-campaign affiliated entities (like corporates, nonprofits, labor unions, etc.). The context for that decision was FEC's attempt to censor a film from a conservative group made in response to FEC's refusal of classify Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 as political 'expenditure' (a film which had a clearly stated goal of getting Bush out of office). The FEC set a bullshit 'bona fide commercial film maker' as a standard for their decision, and when Citizen's United restablished itself as a film maker, their next film (an anti-Hillary documentary) was also found to be in violation. In no universe was FEC's policy fair and objective. From wikipedia, here's a crazy argument the government tried to make:

"During the original oral argument, Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart (representing the FEC) argued that under Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the government would have the power to ban books if those books contained even one sentence expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate and were published or distributed by a corporation or labor union. In response to this line of questioning, Stewart further argued that under Austin the government could ban the digital distribution of political books over the Amazon Kindle or prevent a union from hiring an author to write a political book."

Isn't that an insane conjecture? This exchange by itself probably lost the FEC the case.

>Imagine a world where there was no money in politics.

Such a world never existed, does not exist, and will never exist. Politics are a center of power. You can ban money all you want, but all you'll accomplish is create a 'black market'. I posit that you do not want to live in such a world.

> Such a world never existed, does not exist, and will never exist. Politics are a center of power. You can ban money all you want, but all you'll accomplish is create a 'black market'. I posit that you do not want to live in such a world.

The same is true of many areas of society. Medical doctors, company executives, the police, etc. all have power and there's good money involved. Still we have laws against fraud, insider trading, bribery, abuse of power, and so forth. While there are transgressions, by and large things seem to work, and when we find new kinds of transgressions, the reaction is not to throw our hands up and say "it'll always be like this!" but to fix the laws.

Which is to say: I don't get the defeatism about regulation here. Laws work. Making actions illegal and threatening a hefty prison term is an effective way of reducing their occurrence.

Now it may be hard to get such laws passed, but that's another story.

Technically, the PAC is independent. This isn't something workers have to deal with during business hours.

I'm not sure why anyone donates to it, though. Why not support your own causes?

This is a very common practice and employees donate because presumably if Google gets it's way politically, that means more money in your pocket.

Don't blame the lobbying, blame the fact that lobbying is legal.

All industries learn over time that it's an arms race and without spending the money they'll be in a vulnerable position.

The real fix is to elect those who would regulate or get rid of money in politics and punish those to take these lobby money. That's what people should focus on not how much the tech industry needs to spend on buying politicians like most other industries have done before.

A ban on politics is not neutral.

Talking about politics provides no liability to Google.

I'm not sure whichever poor PR department workers that got assigned the fallout of the Damore memo would agree with you.

Hostile work environment

If it's the politics of antitrust attention in Google's direction, then it can provide liability to Google. An employee saying in an email "Wow, they didn't want to sell to us so we crushed them. Antitrust folks won't like it but it's what they get for not selling to us."

That, or other language about "crushing" competition isn't going to play well when an antitrust investigation reveals it.

>A ban on politics is not neutral.

Yes it is. Just because you set up a false choice of "you're with me or against me" doesn't mean the rest of us have to play your game. Yes there is such a thing as leaving politics out of the workplace.

>Talking about politics provides no liability to Google.

I don't know about that. Nevertheless, it also creates a toxic environment, because there are a lot of contentious cultural and political issues that elicit emotional reactions and the vast majority of people will have a a wide variety of nuanced opinions on those, so all you're doing is introducing strife and toxicity with no benefit to the business.

> Workplaces are a neutral environment

Oh, that’s good to know.

So the workplaces are going to stop contributing to political parties and lobbyists, then? I can expect that any day now? That’s good to know, thanks!

Or did you perhaps mean that it’s only the workers that ought to be “neutral” and silent in their politics? Yes, that seems more likely to be what you meant.

Less relevant now so much WFH is going around, but I just don't want to be a captive audience to my most politically enthusiastic coworkers. I wouldn't want my employees to have to suffer each other or to have to consider political compatibility on teams. There would be reasons to have political opinions when those were relevant to the work being done or the company's actions, but it's not to much to ask people to keep their irrelevant-to-work politics out of the workplace.

Workers have to work with other workers. If workers have to deal with overhearing other workers preaching about Trump or against Trump, against or for one race or another, maybe a gender argument, maybe whether God exists or abortion is naughty - that's a shit environment. We get paid to code or sell or manage, not to hear opinions being spewed across the room.

So it is different, despite your snarky comment. A company lobbying doesn't affect your 40, 50 hr work week.

If my coworkers were harboring opinions being against certain races (i.e. racism) that they simply didn't say out loud, I would certainly feel deeply uncomfortable being in their presence, and that absolutely affects my work week. Telling people to just not talk about it doesn't really make that any better: in fact, it probably makes it worse.

Just for clarification of your point:

In the scenario you describe, how would you be aware of their racism if they didn't discuss it at work?

I wouldn't, and that would be much more insidious if I was some race they weren't particularly fond of.

> In the scenario you describe, how would you be aware of their racism if they didn't discuss it at work?

Well, I suppose if there were no minority employees in that workplace, it would be kind of hard to tell, but otherwise, it often isn't that hard. And if you are in the minority, you almost certainly can tell since, in a thousand tiny subtle ways, you're constantly being told you don't belong.

Perhaps the minor amount of snark here was uncalled for, but I don't think the downvoting was appropriate.

Anyone who thinks racism is only apparent when it is being spoken is plain wrong.

If they didn't say it out loud how would you even know, and what does it mean to harbor feelings? You read their diary? Saw it in their eyes? Used your intuition?

Aren't you worried you could be wrong if that's the standard, or someone could use that standard against you and be wrong?

"Yeah the game was terriffic, huh? Racism, sure, I'm against it."

We're banning that from the workplace now? Land of the free!

No, workers are supposed to be silent about it AT WORK. They can donate to whichever party they want outside of work.

And, presumably, if the company is making political contributions to help it accomplish its goals, I'd imagine workers could discuss that and make suggestions inside work. But when you're just discussing your personal politics, you can do it elsewhere.

Not, uh, Brendan Eich, though I suppose...

I was on the fence about the backlash, but ultimately what sealed the deal for me is his response to the situation.

As presumed-CEO and leader, he needs to have the confidence of his organization, and also the ability to address controversial difficult topics. He failed on that.

He finally did the right thing by stepping down. He would have always carried the weight of the mismanagement of the response to the employee-criticism, and that is what killed him ultimately.

A CEO position isn't a reward, it's a service position, and I believe that no one is entitled to it. (Ditto many forms of leadership) So to complain about how unfair it was to him, perhaps we should think about how unfair it was to the employees of the organization who had to deal with situation instead.

Are you sure he stepped down and wasn’t asked to leave due to the immense press coverage?

Only a world where the feelings of the CEO are the most important thing in the entire company does this difference really matter.

As CEO your job is (a) leadership and (b) communications. He failed at both, badly. Perhaps he should have reached out to internal resources more (HR, PR, crisis PR, etc), but these are things I expect a CEO to figure out.

I'm not teaching a new hire coder what a computer is. Nor am I teaching a CEO about PR and communications!

Except he walked straight into another CEO position and it's never been a problem despite everyone knowing about his donation to a political group.

Literally all he did was monetarily support a cause ($3,100) in private. He was not out there making statements or instituting changes to the company.

What does that have to do with "leadership and communications"?

I certainly don't align with his political position but respect people's right to hold one without fear or favour.

It has to be one of the most egregious acts of employee activism. And look where it got Mozilla now, the politically palatable replacement has driven it into the ground while it's only held afloat with money from Google.

I have no particular reason to believe Eich would have done better than his replacement. The marketplace has not been kind to mozilla's entire business model.

Brave has grown every month since launch, while Firefox has shrunk. But it's all coincidence, uncorrelated, meaningless; inevitable for Firefox, and yet nothing to do with me for Brave, I'm sure. :-|

Literally all he did was monetarily support a cause ($3,100) in private.

Political donations are not private. They're a matter of public record (a point Eich himself has agreed with in interviews).

Discuss the company's politics... without discussing your personal politics?

> Or did you perhaps mean that it’s only the workers that ought to be “neutral” and silent in their politics? Yes, that seems more likely to be what you meant.

No, because workers are free to be non-neutral outside the workplace. Workplaces don't contribute to political parties, an environment isn't a donor. And that's the point: the workplace environment should be neutral.

> Workplaces don't contribute to political parties, an environment isn't a donor. And that's the point: the workplace environment should be neutral.

Do you think the workplace environment of Uber is neutral on prop 22?

Yes. Support for prop 22 is a business decision that doesn't require the hearts and souls of every worker in Uber. I'd be surprised if Uber engineers, PMs, designers, etc - basically everyone other than public-facing leadership and the few involved in crafting Uber's public policy - were required to actively express support for prop 22 in the workplace or anywhere else. The average Uber worker should be perfectly able to go about their workday without diving into a political debate about prop 22.

Basically this. I don't know where the idea has crept in to people's minds that work places are a politically neutral environment, but that's not a principle that holds true in general. Union shops can require their employees who are union members to phone bank for politicians the union favors.

Work is highly political and I don't think anybody has ever pretended otherwise.

I mean, hell, political campaigns themselves are workplaces too. ;)

Limiting free speech is never a good idea. Not for any reason.

Google is picking a decent and fair path by allowing anything except anti-trust. Honestly, go to Google where you can be authentic and human about things.

> Honestly, go to Google where you can be authentic and human about things.

With respect, I think James Damore (may have) found that he couldn't be authentic at Google.

And the thing is every thing James said was correct. And he advocated for policies that would help everyone and eliminate the disparate impact on minorities by doing things like flex time or letting people move to part time for a little bit after a major life event (like having a child).

So many scholars, lawyers, and employment commissions disagree with the assertion that everything Damore said was correct that I don't think it's even worth covering this ground again.

James bumped up against the fact that regardless of what Google wants in terms of a free exchange of ideas internally, it's an American company and retaining staff under American employment law and the law of the state of California, among other states.

Once it became clear that what he said could be interpreted as creating a hostile work environment, the company's hands were basically tied on having to let him go. The alternative would have been much worse for the bottom line. And the subsequent lawsuits and dismissals have made it basically clear that he had no legal leg to stand on.

Would Google be happy if one of their employee made a statement which triggered a Title VII civil rights lawsuit? Is support of BLM a political statement or one based on race? If it’s a political statement, then opposing it, isn’t a potential Title VII violation as political preference isn’t a protected class? But if it’s a racial issue, could someone make a case the opposing it is a Title VII violation?

I have no idea what the answer is, and wouldn’t want my employees engaged in such a discussion as it could potentially come back as a lawsuit.

In that same context, I wouldn’t want James Damore writing his memo. Equally, the reason he was writing his memo was possibly because there were other conversations happening around race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. If those conversations were encouraging the advancement of the disadvantaged members of one of those classes, you could argue that is a violation of Title VII.

> Would Google be happy if one of their employee made a statement...

Would the worker be happy if their boss tells them how to speak, what to speak, and what they can't speak about?

Honestly, Googlers work very hard. This isn't as big of an issue as people are making it out to be.

How do you want foster freedom and lessen control/restrictions? Seriously.

The idea that we should limit speech...is a very dangerous path to even think about. All thoughtful points are moot compared to how those policies can be abused and destroy an entire civilization. Nazi Germany wasn't too long ago. China restricted a doctor's speech about sounding the alarm on Covid19 (so it's more recent too).

If society (a collection of individuals) continue to think that it's "okay" to restrict someone's opinions (for any justification), they make society weaker. Truth wins out. Not authoritarianism.

But...back to my main point of responding to you. Googler (and other tech companies) aren't a DC think tank. They're building and shipping things. They work hard. And those that are highly skilled, want the autonomy in work. If you restrict that autonomy, you restrict your talent pool of workers. Maybe you think that's a good choice (Coinbase would agree) but...in the long-term, IMHO, freedom is more powerful than control.

> Truth wins out.

I think that's a great philosophy for structuring a democratic republic form of government, but trying to apply that philosophy universally to all circumstances and all human interaction leaves it a giant untested hypothesis.

It would be nice if truth always won out. That would be cool. Insufficient data to say for sure that it does.

Even for a democratic country, the problem is that sometimes it takes too long for "Truth to win out". We're seeing this more and more with social media and "anyone can publish" combined with the speed of the internet. Sure, the truth may eventually win out regarding whether or not drinking bleach is a good idea, but several people have gotten badly hurt and/or died before the "truth won out". Or consider how many innocent children may have died due to the anti-vaxxers? A related aphorism comes to mind. "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Consider this quote from a recent NY Times article[1]

"These scholars argue something that may seem unsettling to Americans: that perhaps our way of thinking about free speech is not the best way. At the very least, we should understand that it isn’t the only way. Other democracies, in Europe and elsewhere, have taken a different approach. Despite more regulations on speech, these countries remain democratic; in fact, they have created better conditions for their citizenry to sort what’s true from what’s not and to make informed decisions about what they want their societies to be. Here in the United States, meanwhile, we’re drowning in lies."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-speech.html

> the problem is that sometimes it takes too long

Yes but with enough people whom build tools that amplify signal. Then the people will learn. I'm hopeful we'll shorten this delay as we age.

I haven't seen much evidence yet that the tools we're building can discern signal from noise, though they sure can amplify.

Indeed, people in this forum often seem to call attempts to discern signal from noise "censorship."

Edit: turns out I didn't have to wait long for a concrete example of that to come up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24782944

You would not have Google salaries in Europe. Coming from a Googler, this feels like you are pulling up the ladder.

If Googlers feel that strong about inequality, why not give away your fortune to social causes?

Remember this [1]? What happened?

[1] https://cypherpunks.venona.com

Damore's main mistake was doubling and then tripling down. Had he clarified that he did not understand that his memo could create a hostile work environment, there might have been some leeway for the company to retain him.

He made it quite plain that he thought he'd done nothing wrong. At that point, Google is either retaining one employee or facing a class action lawsuit risk. And he wasn't nearly 10x enough to justify retaining him. ;)

If Damore has published his memo externally to Google, and didn’t identify his employer, should he have been punished?

Should he is a moral question that I'm not interested in arguing on HN, but I doubt he practically would have been. Especially if he'd done so anonymously, obviously.

He also probably could have avoided being fired if he apologized and clarified that he did not realize that his musings on the subject could create a hostile work environment. He instead chose to double down that he'd done nothing wrong.

> Workplaces are a neutral environment. You want activism, do it outside of work.

Workplaces like Google are inherently political because they manage vast amounts of data and their actions have implications on millions—even billions of people. Ignoring this is just complacency.

Why should you only do activism outside of work? If we actually want to change institutions for the better, it helps quite a bit if the people running the institutions are also trying to change thing too. If you don’t want to get involved for whatever reason, that’s fine but I think it’s unfair to say no one should

Disclaimer: I work for GOOG opinions are my own

Why should the political opinions of the employees be preferred over those of everyone else? They're a very unrepresentative sample of people that the company's actions affect. There's a reason we have democracy, not programmerocracy.

Political changes aren't objectively "for the better". If that was true, they wouldn't be political decisions, but business decisions. The whole reason they're political is that we can't determine if they're good or bad scientifically so we resort to distributed opinion instead.

> Why should the political opinions of the employees be preferred over those of everyone else?

The people who are complicit to violence perpetrated by the company they work for are inherently making the same decision as those who are activists. Either way you end up with a programmerocracy, so why not try to reduce harm on others then? Maybe what you advocate for isn’t perfect, but if you can’t avoid politics in your workplace, why don’t you fight for what you believe in?

> Political changes aren't objectively "for the better". If that was true, they wouldn't be political decisions, but business decisions.

Very few things are objective. Some would argue that nothing is objective. This is not a reason not to act.

> we resort to distributed opinion instead

This is not true. I think it is safe to say that political decisions in our global society are overwhelming made by a very small group of highly elite individuals.

Also, for basically it's entire existence Google has been a political organization. It had a firm stance on gay marriage long before Obergefell v. Hodges set it as the law of the land.

The search engine wouldn't have had a special rainbow stripe at the top for certain search terms if the company wasn't deeply political on the subject.

> Workplaces are a neutral environment. You want activism, do it outside of work.

Equal pay regardless of gender is a political question. In the name of "leaving politics out of work", should we disallow women and nonbinary folks from advocating at work for equal pay?

Equal opportunity for people of color is a political question. In the name of "leaving politics out of work", should we disallow people of color from advocating at work for equal opportunity?

Accommodation for disability is a political question. Paid time off for pregnancy is a political question. What rights we grant to older employees is a political question. Whether LGBTQ folks can be fired for being out is a political question.

The system as I've seen it works pretty great for youngish cishet white men like me. From my perspective, things at my workplace seem quite "neutral". But when I get to know people who are at all different, I find that the workplace is not at all neutral towards them.

I would consider those political questions to be directly related to the current workspace, and so allowed to talk about. Most of the time what people refer to is activism (our company should support X, because I think X is the correct political action) when talking about neutral environments, at least from what anecdotal observations of the many times this argument has come up on HN. As well, I wouldn't consider long arguments during work about opinions on {current political topic} to be relevant or even useful. (If you really desire such, then outside work time is prevalent, though you have to be careful of pressuring coworkers into such activities if they don't want to discuss politics at all with work).

OK, and where should we draw the line?

If LGBTQ benefits are an acceptable topic, is it acceptable to talk about same-sex marriage? Is it acceptable to advocate for pro-LGBTQ policies more broadly? If not, why not? It's all part of the same thing, no?

If H-1B visas are an acceptable topic, is it acceptable to advocate that our company should support the removal of a politician who is anti-immigrant? Again, it's all part of the same thing, no?

When I start thinking about it, a lot of these workplace issues are connected to broader issues...

I try to frame those issues as "Is this within the bounds of the value I agreed to provide in return for this pay?" If "no", but my moral code demands I speak, then I'm out. Sorting out expectations directly with supervisors or HR also seems advisable where unclear.

Valuable employees leaving due to company misses on important social issues is itself a very powerful form of advocacy.

People in the minority when it comes to political views would be better off in a workplace that isn't allowed to discuss politics. Especially if they're getting triggered and trying to shame people, or openly protesting company decisions.

So for example, you're saying that in workplaces where women are in the minority, they are better off in a place where they're not allowed to advocate for their own rights (inside and outside the workplace)?

Wouldn't they be better off in a workplace where they could, you know, ask for the things that they think would make them better off?

unishark's comment was about people with minority viewpoints, not people who are part of a visible minority. For example, a woman might be the only female in a programming team, and therefore a visible minority, but her views on what gender equality means might be shared by most of the rest of the team, meaning tha she does not have a minority viewpoint.

So you're saying, (WLOG) women who happen to disagree with the prevailing (male) viewpoint are better off in offices which disallow discussion of politics. Because by telling everyone that they can't talk about political issues relevant to women, they don't have to shoulder the burden of the majority disagreeing with them?

But...by assumption, the majority disagrees with them? I don't get it.

I mean, just hypothetically, suppose some group was discriminated against at work. Women, Black folks, LGBTQ folks, folks with disabilities, whatever. This discrimination is "political", in that Serious Politicians disagree about whether it's right. I hope you don't think this is a stretch. You're saying that in a world where they couldn't advocate for themselves by talking about the issues they face, they'd be better off?

If this is about what's best for them, why not let them choose? Do we have to be the gatekeepers of what's good for them or not?

Conservative women are probably better off in offices which disallow discussion of politics.

> ...and outside the workplace...

You appear to be moving the goalpost here. Or perhaps I was my fault for not being clear. My policy was referring specifically to discussing politics within the workplace.

As for your question, everyone is of course allowed to ask for more pay. This is not what I'd call politics, but simply salary negotiation. If you're suggesting something different. Then yes, you generally aren't going to help yourself within an organization by calling your boss a sexist who needs to promise to stop being a sexist. Or whatever it is you're specifically proposing.

> they are better off in a place where they're not allowed to advocate for their own rights (inside and outside the workplace)?

Sorry, I think I was unclear. I meant, discussing inside the workplace issues that are relevant to their lives inside and outside work.

> As for your question, everyone is of course allowed to ask for more pay. This is not what I'd call politics, but simply salary negotiation.

OK. Let's take it a few steps further?

Are women allowed to say, "you know, women are paid less than men for most jobs in this country, let's advocate that this not be the case at our company?" Are they allowed to say, "you know, our company shouldn't be supporting X politician, because they're not in favor of equal pay for equal work?" Are they allowed to say, "you know, just as our company advocates for laws and regulations that we think are beneficial to our core technical business (software or whatever), we should also advocate for laws and regulations that are good for our people, like paid maternity leave."

And, just step back: Does it give you any pause that we're having a conversation about what what women are allowed to say?

Let's. Men are not allowed to say such things either, or the opposite views. So no, it is not a problem but a way to prevent problems.

I am a hiring manager who has stood up many teams in my professional career and have performed that role across multiple companies in different industries and vastly varying market caps and I have never seen a pay gap purely based on gender.

I have been exposed to hysterical propaganda about the mythical pay gap but never seen in real life and speaking about it with my peer managers neither have they.

This emperor has no clothes.

OK, that's your view on the gender pay gap. I disagree, but set that aside for a moment.

We were talking about whether it's appropriate to discuss one's opinion on the pay gap -- among other things -- at work, despite its being political. Seems like you're saying it is appropriate? Like, if a woman who reported to you came to you asking for more money to reach parity with a male colleague, I guess you'd say, "I am a hiring manager etc etc and the emperor has no clothes, here's why you make less"? If you think that's OK, then we're in agreement on this point that this is an acceptable topic for work.

As someone who has managed people myself, I think it would be highly relevant to my business function to know where my fellow managers stand on this issue.

FWIW, if I thought any protected class (or even non-protected) was the basis for a lower-than-deserved pay, I would take that to HR and/or file a whistleblower report. You're talking about illegal activity.

Casually surveying people's opinions on breaking the law and potentially leaving an incriminating paper trail that could harm the company seems similar the antitrust topic in the article.

I'd say discussions of any illegal activity on the company's behalf should be directed toward HR / legal.

Sorry I don't believe you I have seen that data from some Large UK tech companies and the sex discrimination was very obvious, as well as race, and disability.

You're straw manning my position. You can advocate for your rights as provided by existing legal and regulatory policies. If an individual feels they have been harassed or discriminated against, that individual has a right to engage their company to rectify this situation, through mechanisms like filing a grievance with company HR department, or their union (if part of one), or through the legal system.

What I'm against is creating a corporate culture that openly biases for or against certain political parties, religious or secular beliefs, or contentious policy or culture issues (like abortion). Keep those things out of the workplace, because those topics elicit emotional responses, and you want to maintain a neutral professional environment.

>The system as I've seen it works pretty great for youngish cishet white men like me.

I'm glad you had a comfortable life. Don't throw your personal experience on the rest of us. You being 'youngish cishet white man" says nothing about the experience of others with those same immutable characteristics.

Restricting discussion about religion could be a Title VII violation, and restricting discussion about politics could run afoul of voter suppression laws.

To the extent they can, Google assumes its employees are mature adults and can discuss just about anything.

The rare exceptions usually result from collision with legal constraints on that policy, such as conversations that can get the company in legal trouble. Because whether or not Google as a company wants everything open for debate, US employment law makes it fairly clear that there are some things you're not allowed to say---for financial securities reasons, hostile workplace reasons, and lawsuit vulnerability reasons.

>Google assumes its employees are mature adults and can discuss just about anything.

By that reasoning, why have any policies at all - after all 'mature adults' should know how to handle themselves.

The reality is that even (and especially) with mature adults, it's perfectly reasonable to set policies and rules on conduct. Making it clear to not engage in emotionally-charged 'debates' about contentious topics is perfectly inline with good corporate governance. Your coworker next desk over may have wildly different views on abortion, politics, religion, but none of that should matter in getting the job done you're paid for. Ideally you shouldn't even know, or care what their personal views are on societal issues.

In that context, Google is in an unusual position as arbiters of what people consider to be truth.

Having political discussions about things such as whether the utility of trans people being able to communicate broadcast-wise to all people interested in trans issues versus the utility of school systems regulating what students that have been entrusted to their care can see unsupervised is part of the job, when you work in YouTube and are designing the system for flagging content as objectionable or non-monetizable.

On top of that, Google believes there's a point of philosophy that good ideas can come from anywhere, so they encourage engineers passionate about a topic to use proper channels to weigh in on sensitive subjects. User of proper channels is key, which is why there are trainings.

That's not what we're talking about. Content policies for YouTube is something that needs to be worked out by the content team. I'm talking about internal debate and activism around contentious topics.

>so they encourage engineers passionate about a topic to use proper channels to weigh in on sensitive subjects

Sure they do. I'm sure they are perfectly OK with engineers being passionate about Trump, pro-life, religion... Yeah..

It's clear as day that pretty much everyone in this thread has a blind-spot because they just so happen to agree with the culture of a San Francisco company pushing progressive values. If you moved to rural Alabama and now you were inundated with conservative values and politics to the point where you were worried about your job if you did not consent, for example, signing your name on some conservative petition, I bet you would see the value of keeping the workplace neutral.

I've seen this first hand. There is a Director at my workplace that goes on pro-choice rants all the time. Her assistant confident to me that she's actually pro-life but feels like she has to agree publicly (and like her Facebook rants) because she needs her job. How is that good? What's the point of engaging in a pro-choice vs pro-life debate at work when you're trying to build a widget.

> Sure they do. I'm sure they are perfectly OK with engineers being passionate about Trump, pro-life, religion... Yeah.

They aren't not okay with it. You will, of course, run the risk that your fellow engineers will think you're an idiot, especially if you fail to back up your position with evidence and consider other people's positions on the topic. But refraining from actively discouraging such conversation is part of the whole "bring your whole self to work" culture at Google.

I do believe they have cooled somewhat on the topic however, after they encountered both a wave of leaks of internal company correspondence and the Damore fiasco, which was bad press for them whether or not they were in the right to terminate him.

> Workplaces are a neutral environment

Political neutrality is a cultural attribute diametrically opposed to "change the world" narratives and "eat your meals at the office" work-life balances. A lot of company cultures are politically neutral. Google isn't.

That said, a company controlling what their employees say in public about matters of strategic commercial importance doesn't strike me as politically pointed. It's a business acting like a business.

> Workplaces are a neutral environment.

Political neutrality doesn't exist. “Do not discuss politics” is a defense of the status quo.

>Political neutrality doesn't exist. “Do not discuss politics” is a defense of the status quo

Yes there is such a thing as 'political neutrality'. Every time you contract a plumber, you engage in 'political neutrality', because neither your nor the plumber interrogate yourselves on your political affiliations. You want your plumbing fixed for a fair price, and the plumber wants to get paid for a job well done and get back home in time for dinner.

Just because you set up a false choice of "you're either with me or against me", doesn't mean the rest of us will play your little game.

In your example, nobody hapened to talk about politics. There is no neutrality, just the absence of discussion.

But if the plumber tells you that his boss is a capitalist pig, you can either report him to his boss, or not. Neither is neutral.

This is both a scary and weird comment. Everything we do is politics in some form. Even the decision on what toilet paper to use is political and can have both social and environmental impacts.

>Everything we do is politics in some form.

No. When you go to MacDonald's to get a Happy Meal, what politics do you engage in? When you contract a plumber, do you interrogate him on his political affiliation?

Don't twist language.

You are misunderstanding what is being meant by political.

> When you go to MacDonald's to get a Happy Meal, what politics do you engage in?

You’re McDonalds experience is the direct result of political decisions, from the smoothness of your drive due to decisions on infrastructure maintenance, to the amount of traffic due to the political decisions decades earlier about city planning and public transit, to the cost of the meal due to trade agreements, labor laws, wage laws, corporate tax code, etc. to your risk of getting sick due to safety regulations, to the materials used in the happy meal box and toy due to environmental laws, recycled material subsidies (or lack of them), to child safety laws, to tort law and the likelihood and success rate of civil suits.

> When you contract a plumber, do you interrogate him on his political affiliation?

No, but the cost and availability of plumbers is a result of politics. From laws and regulations on trades jobs, to labor laws and the likelihood of the plumber being in a union, to government investment into tradecrafts jobs training programs, to the laws governing required certifications (if any) and the associated cost of obtaining those, what the laws are governing landlord/tenant responsibilities if you rent or are a landlord, and on and on.

The way your life plays out day to day, and in totality, is fundamentally shaped at every level by “politics”, the laws written, and the way in which they are enforced (or not).

You can torture language all you want to fit your ideology, but just be clear that is what you're doing. If you argue everything is political, then nothing is political. It is now a meaningless term that conveys no information because hey, that candy bar I just ate? Political! That dog walk I did? Political!

How about we commonly understood concepts to convey ideas? How does that sound to you?

> If you argue everything is political, then nothing is political.

Yeah, that’s not how it works. Just because you choose to not think about political decisions that shaped your plumber selections, McDonalds trip, or the city ordinance that bans or allows your breed of dog you are walking doesn’t mean they cease to exist. The world doesn’t disappear just because you close your eyes.

What you are really saying is those politics don’t matter to you, so in your mind they don’t exist. Well, they do exist to others. The labor laws and minimum wage laws enacted by a politician or vote are important to those burger flippers. The dismantling of union protections matter to that plumber and effect how much he is able to charge. Your lack of interest, or your lack of knowledge, of how politics shaped those situations does not separate those politics from the situations or make the politics not there. Nor does me speaking about those things bring about the politics, as I am merely highlighting something that was always there. I am not making it political, it always was. I am bringing it to your awareness.

Let’s look at a more extreme example to hopefully illustrate the point. Say you live in the American south during the 60s. You just want to go get a burger and fries. How could that be political? It’s just a succulent meal after all. Well you are not choosing to eat at a “whites only” restaurant. While you might not care, might not think anything about it, and might have not had a political thought in your head, that doesn’t magically separate the action from the underlying politics that shaped the way it happened and the fact that that action is political and is important to some other people. But if someone says you should be supporting Jim Crow laws by only shopping at whites only establishments, to you they are the ones making it political when in reality, it is already intrinsically political and they are merely highlighting the political aspect that always existed.

Sure but why would they care? They're not going to get into massive existential trouble because employees have strong views on political issues except that on anti-trust, a paper trail of internal people saying "we are too powerful and should be broken up" will cause them a huge issue.

> Why on earth would any company encourage its employees to speculate and talk freely, when doing so would get them into legal/PR trouble.

There is another view, and another analogy.

A monopoly that closes ads accounts without any explanation (pointing to their 'terms of use' is not an explanation)

A monopoly that removes apps without any explanation

A monopoly that swallows competition, their patents to further suffocate market space

Is just evil.

Small businesses hurt, consumers manipulated and fair competition practices are poisoned.

So an analogy would be a private contractor for state prison system, is threatening their employees not to talk in public about their practices. While being investigated for corruption, unfair usage of federal and state empowerment, and unfair treatment of the prisoners.

I think this would be ok as far as legal practice, but hardly something one would applaud to, given the context.

Completely agree here, and I hate Google. A business is not a democracy.

I have worked for a company acquired by a Private Equity that was universally hated by managers and employees alike. They didn’t even want to hear problems internally in quiet. It still wasn’t appropriate to trash them or talk to the media while you were an employee.

If you don’t like it and you complain to HR or your manager and they don’t or can’t address the problem, you should work somewhere else. If enough people leave, change will happen. Before that, don’t expect much.

> I have worked for a company acquired by a Private Equity that was universally hated by managers and employees alike. They didn’t even want to hear problems internally in quiet. It still wasn’t appropriate to trash them or talk to the media while you were an employee.

> If you don’t like it and you complain to HR or your manager and they don’t or can’t address the problem, you should work somewhere else. If enough people leave, change will happen. Before that, don’t expect much.

I'm curious, how did the PE situation you described work out? Did enough people leave to make change happen?

Sure, but I feel like any judge will treat this the same as employees talking about anti-trust. This alone is evidence.

"Don't create a paper trail" shouldn't be a thing you demand of employees if you have "Don't be evil" as a motto.

They appear to be mutually incompatible.

>It's the equivalent of a lawyer telling his client to go drinking and have a fun night out with the district attorney.

No it’s not. The lawyer works for the lawyer’s client, employers don’t work for their employees. Opposite.

i mean this is kind of elementary. You wouldn't go work for a church if you wanted to preach atheism. Its against the immediate interest of the company which you re supposed to be working for, so by definition you are a deadweight employee

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