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Comment by leetcrew | Hacker News Reader

why would a company pay someone to publicly criticize them? in the case of google, there's already plenty of people willing to do that for free.

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Yeah, why wouldn't a company want a workforce full of yes-men and engineers who care about nothing but making shareholders money and making executives look good?

There's a gulf between "hire only yes-men" and "hire activists who openly state a desire to undermine the company, who break its policies and share its internal documents to forward that agenda, and generally spend their global-0.1%-level salary accusing the company of actively harming the least among us".

False dichotomies are bad.

that's clearly a strawman interpretation of my comment.

> why would a company pay someone to publicly criticize them?

by all means, a healthy company should encourage internal critiques. but if you're going to take that criticism public, you can't expect to also collect a paycheck at the same time. do you make a habit of paying people to work against your interests?

I'm seeking to normalize community accountability practices that are pretty core to many indigenous cultures, including my Irish ancestors.

So, yeah...I'll pay for that in every organization I get involved with from here on out.

Just cause it's not normalized doesn't mean it isn't useful. The reason to do it is for the sake of actual accountability, as strictly internal accountability is nonsense.

This is the business version of "keep it in the family": it gives all kinds of toxic behaviors a shade to hide and grow in, while keeping the public from actually choosing who gets their business based on their values.

"community accountability practices" just sounds like mob justice. It seems like an especially bad idea in the current environment where people who are more than happy to join in an outrage mob after only hearing one side of the story, and sometimes aren't even affected by whatever they're targeting. A "community" shouldn't be anyone who happens to agree with you on twitter.

I think what you're speaking to is the result of a lack of normalized practices actually oriented toward accountability and healing, rather than shaming, canceling, mobbing, etc.

I'm not even saying I know how to do it. I think the current environment is an indicator of a greater need for true accountability and not the theater of "justice."

I'd also say outrage mobs are the direct result of people confusing themselves with who is angering themselves. Many adults I know still insist it is other people who make them angry, instead of it being themselves who use the stimulus of others' actions to anger themselves. We need better EQ/CQ education and what you're highlighting points directly to it.

At this point a fair proportion of the planetary population is affected by FAANG's ethical stance on ad tech. It's looking likely AI is only going to make that worse.

A "community" should also not be an enforced happy smiley corporate PR face.

And mob justice can also look a lot like running people out of town because they're not properly respectful.

But how can community accountability practices work in an organization like Google, which hires from many different communities? It seems like it inevitably produces loud, angry, unresolvable conflict whenever your community and my community don't agree on a decision.

I think the difference lies between harm and disagreement. How can it work? I don't know or have all the answers, as I've never even seen community accountability in action at a small local scale.

This highlights to me the importance of learning how to do this stuff.

I don't think it's as complex as you're making it. Community accountability works through shared cultural standards and social pressure to conform to the status quo; Google employees don't have shared cultural standards, and the whole problem here is that some of them don't think it's right to conform to the status quo. The reason you've never seen it in action is that, in a multicultural society, it doesn't work on any scale larger than a friend group.

The key word is "publicly." You can oppose without doing it by proxy on Twitter.

KODAK

It is literally the job of an AI ethicist to highlight ethical issues, so if they're publicly criticizing you, then you're likely doing something unethical.

If your team of ethicists has repeatedly highlighted issues and you continue to not address them, what should they do then? In the case of a company whose self-image is of openness and directness and benevolence, it seems reasonable that publicly highlight the lack of change is within reason.

If they cared less, they'd just shut up, but employees seem to have a higher opinion of Google than Google does of them.

Firing them in the middle of that suggests an unwillingness to deal with the previous issues, doubling down on unethical behavior.

I might be speaking from ignorance here, but I highly doubt their job description said anything about making accusations via tweet.

> If your team of ethicists has repeatedly highlighted issues and you continue to not address them, what should they do then? In the case of a company whose self-image is of openness and directness and benevolence, it seems reasonable that publicly highlight the lack of change is within reason.

if they strongly disagree with the direction the company is taking, they ought to refuse to be part of it and resign. public criticism can wait until they stop collecting the (quite fat, I imagine) checks.

edit: I guess I'm not really objecting to the public criticism before leaving the company. I'm objecting to the incredible feeling of entitlement it must take to expect to keep getting paid while actively damaging your employer.

And how exactly is your suggestion going to play out in the long term?

All the critical employees resign, until they are all eventually replaced yes-men who just care about the money or are too afraid to speak out.

And if a company is doing something unethical, then why is it inherently _bad_ to damage that company until it changes direction? Acting in unethical ways has to hurt the bottomline, otherwise what incentive is there for a company to change?

This is a false dichotomy. You can be critical and do so respectfully and within the company.

Damaging your employer should be the last resort.

Cutting off your limb to stop an infection isn't inherently _bad_. But it is if other treatments are not even considered.

I don't understand why people seem so confused about the notion of employment.

If a company hires a security researcher, and that security researcher finds that the company is not listening to their advice, is it their responsibility to publicly expose the security flaws of the company?

What if you hire a plumber, and the plumber doesn't find that you're taking his advice regarding your toilet. Is it the plumbers responsibility to publicly comment on that?

Well, what she is doing is called performative acitvism. She is doing staged martyrdom in front of Twitter mob and activist media. She can try to do the job well, if she felt like she was being hired as a PR move and not for any actual impact, she should've quit and told her story. I guess she didn't feel she will get any media attention if she has taken the high road. Instead she created all these drama including blatantly violating company policy. I am not sure whether she has done all these things in good faith.

Unfortuantely the amount media attention (including this very thread) these people get, it will encourage more staged martyrdoms. Soon, we will have our own tech industry reality TV show. Sadly, that's the reality we are heading into right now.

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