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Comment by pinewurst | Hacker News Reader

I'm tired of FAANG "rallies" where the numerator is such a small percentage of the denominator.

I bet one could get "hundreds" of Google employees to rally behind a flat earth and many more for the abolition of mayonnaise.

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Reading down the names, it is indeed the usual woke people who are chronically enraged on corp. G+ and mailing lists and whatever. There's also the person who kept harassing me on corp chat about whether I had a non-binary gender identity. I am so completely done with woke bullshit in the workplace.

Why not report them for their harassment? Honestly, corporations should step in and put an end to this woke bs.

If you think it's a good move to complain to HR against the visible activists who have assigned themselves to a legally protected class, you don't understand this workplace.

It's unfortunate. It shows their true colors, that they're just after virtue signaling and gaining power, so hopefully people will not listen to their lies anymore.

How hard is it to answer the question or tell them that you would rather not answer? It doesn't sound very difficult.

As easy as it is to reply to a salesperson’s email

The numerator is such a small percentage because so many fear losing their jobs for speaking out. In that context, this number is quite significant. Even if you disagree with their stance, you have to admit that it takes courage to speak up in these kinds of situations.

Or simply most people don't care... No one ever gets fired for just "rallying"

That could be, although it is more than likely a small percentage because so many people do not agree with the cause.

Oh maybe that don't give a fuck and just want their big check?

Realistically, the majority just want this bad PR to go away and for Google to be better at preventing it from getting to this point.

Given the number of people I know who privately think that she resigned rather than got fired and similarly won't speak out (there's tons of internal threads talking about her being fired from what I can tell here), I think it actually is a small percentage.

> "think that she resigned rather than got fired"

Thats objectively one way or the other - it's not a matter of opinion.

I agree with you: When you say "do X or I quit", that's resigning and not being fired.

There's still a ton of people, including her, who think that she was fired. The amount of pushback from those folks for saying that she resigned has silenced a lot of people, from what I've seen.

Except that the “rallying” aligns with what is now the presumptive, dominant narrative.

It would be courageous to do the opposite.

This argument can be made about any unpopular subject.

Americans really want full-blown Communism, but are too afraid of speaking out for fear of retaliation from jack-booted capitalist thugs.

Prove me wrong.

...and their silence about it only FURTHER proves there exists a mass conspiracy to muffle the voices for -some unpopular cause-

You, sir or madam, aced rhetoric and current events. I applaud you. Science must always be falsifiable.

> The numerator is such a small percentage because so many fear losing their jobs for speaking out

Or, more likely, they don't are about the whole "woke" movement and don't want anything to do with it.

What evidence do you have to support this theory?

Perhaps the people who are not speaking out in agreement with you simply don't agree with you.

It shows how deluded the far left is honestly, when they think that anyone who doesn't agree with them is afraid to speak up, and not because what the far left stands for is outrageously foolish.

Actually, it's more so the other way. If you agree with her firing, you can't say anything or you are a bigot

No one at Google worries that signing a petition or Tweeting something is going to get them fired. No one in any kind of position of power reads or cares about these kinds of petitions, and it certainly doesn't ever reach the eyes of anyone on a promo committee.

You could make the exact same claim about a flat earth rally.

I don't work for Google but the abolition of mayonnaise is a cause I can get behind.

Just don’t eat it. Let us unwashed philistines enjoy our mayonnaise.

Abolition don't work, my friend. Are you prepared for the mob running french-fry speakeasies and feuding over moonshine mayonnaise?

I was going to say the same thing: there appear to be 2 - 3 people quoted in tweets. That's a rally?

I do think there's a larger set of questions being asked right now, around how organizations deal with differing viewpoints among their constituents, and how constituents dissent: https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/03/dissent-insiders-and-outs....

I bet you could not.

Seriously. A hypothetical that hasn't happened isn't a valid rebuttal.

> where the numerator is such a small percentage of the denominator

Especially considering that we don't know how many people would have "rallied" in favor of her firing (if there were such a thing), even if we could believe that they could do so without fear of reprisals as those rallying "against" it can.

This is not a valid argument. A company's actions don't have to result in a riot to be worthy of criticism. One meaningful complaint can be enough.

This is an argument against exaggerated headlines, not against criticism of the company involved.

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