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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...
See Bloomberg, Hilary (outspent Trump 2:1). Many other examples of well-funded politicians failing.
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.
It sounds like you're arguing that democracy is better if the politicians don't know what the people want?
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.
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".
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
> 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?
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.
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.
> 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.
We don't have to use our imagination. This sort of experiment is being run in multiple countries around the globe.
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.
"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.
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.
I'm not sure why anyone donates to it, though. Why not support your own causes?
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.
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.
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...
Valuable employees leaving due to company misses on important social issues is itself a very powerful form of advocacy.
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?
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
So it is different, despite your snarky comment. A company lobbying doesn't affect your 40, 50 hr work week.
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.
Anyone who thinks racism is only apparent when it is being spoken is plain wrong.
Aren't you worried you could be wrong if that's the standard, or someone could use that standard against you and be wrong?
We're banning that from the workplace now? Land of the free!
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.
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.
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!
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.
Political donations are not private. They're a matter of public record (a point Eich himself has agreed with in interviews).
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.
Do you think the workplace environment of Uber is neutral on prop 22?
Work is highly political and I don't think anybody has ever pretended otherwise.
I mean, hell, political campaigns themselves are workplaces too. ;)
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
Talking about politics provides no liability to Google.
That, or other language about "crushing" competition isn't going to play well when an antitrust investigation reveals it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
How about we commonly understood concepts to convey ideas? How does that sound to you?
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.
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.
With respect, I think James Damore (may have) found that he couldn't be authentic at Google.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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
If Googlers feel that strong about inequality, why not give away your fortune to social causes?
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. ;)
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.