Google parts with Cloud VP over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Is the LinkedIn post renouncing their anti-semitism a spontaneous act that triggered the firing? Or were they internally in trouble with HR and the LinkedIn post renouncing antisemitism was a last-minute attempt to get ahead of an issue that could damage their career? We can’t know, but I suggest being careful whenever someone expertly and publicly spins themselves as the victim in a situation like this.
Either way, a company’s hands are virtually tied when someone publicly makes declarations like this:
> “I hated the Jewish people, all the Jewish people”!
And that same person is responsible for matters of customer relations and/or managing internal employees. Whether or not he genuinely renounced his beliefs, making a statement like that adds suspicion on top of past and even future actions by this person. When (not if) he has to make a difficult decision or take an unpopular action involving Jewish customers or employees, they will always wonder how much his public declaration of past hatred for Jewish people was a factor.
> Employees who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said the frustration with Awadallah’s leadership style had been building for months, leading up to this week’s all-hands meeting, where employees confronted him about their discomfort with his manifesto, working with him and the leadership attrition of his reporting leaders.
At the very least, if your job is dev relations you've got to be somewhat adept at how to communicate publicly. It sounds like his manifesto didn't hit the mark.
And I'd have to question why he decided to do that in the first place? Did something force his hand? I feel like many people have had the experience of growing out of past prejudices but posting a manifesto about it is not something I've seen too often, certainly not in the workplace.
So, he admitted to antisemitism in the past and shared how he has grown or is growing past it. This kind of admission by him has the ability to challenge other and positively reinforce others who are in a similar situation to him. That _positive_ reinforcement for change away from antisemitism.
He was pushed out which is a form of _negative_ reinforcement. That will teach him and others not to speak out with stories of how they have changed which will limit others from positively reinforcing future change like this.
The way this influences people going forward is worth noting.
These kinds of manifestos/confessionals on LinkedIn are so completely inappropriate. There's no reason this guy needed to ever publicly say anything on this topic no matter his intentions real or perceived, and it is absolutely predictably that he stepped in it.
I think if someone had asked him at an all hands for his position on the israel palestine conflict, and he said something like:
"I grew up in a strict Egyptian Muslim household, indoctrinated to hate Israel and Jews, and it wasn't until I was exposed to jewish people and became friends with them that I realized how toxic those ideas were, and I regret that I ever held those ideas and no longer do. And now I hope that everyone on both sides of that conflict can have the same realizations that I did, and realize that we are all human and just want to live in peace"
I don't think it would have been an issue, or at least not to this degree. It's possible to acknowledge a past flaw, talk about how you've taken steps to address, and move on in a productive way. But that's not what he did.
If you read the entire LinkedIn post, it's pretty cringey. It starts off going deep into how much he hated Jews, then talks about how long it took him to not hate Jews, then he takes a sharp right turn to point out that because he is .1% Ashkenazi according to 23andme, he's technically also Jewish, so isn't this whole thing just an idea? Aren't these political and cultural boundaries just ridiculous ideas we need to get past? Then he takes a swing at Zionism that I don't quite follow, and he wraps things up.
First off, no one asked him to share his thoughts on the subject. Second, it's easy to find someone attempting to co-opt your identity via a saliva DNA test offensive. Third, by trying to talk about how made-up these groups and identities are, it can come across as erasing them. Fourth, and finally, his political views on solving the Israel-Palestine conflict have nothing to do with his previous beliefs.
Again, if he stuck to what he used to believe, and how he sees that's wrong, that's less controversial. But he uses it as a springboard to offer up a grand unified theory of racial identity which, again, no one asked him for his ideas and solutions to this extremely complex problem.
Then, from the article, apparently he continued to espouse these views in public, defending them, referencing his .1% jewish heritage as a defense.
But setting aside all of the exact specifics - if you're a VP at any large company, you should know this is not acceptable. You have to be able to read the room, you have to listen to feedback, and you have to know how to communicate with others. You have to be able to build trust and rapport with your team, it's not about being "right". If he was unable to do that, as it seems like was the case, then he's not a good fit.
Another way i was thinking about it, is someone on such a high position can't be such a dummy, therefore he might have unconsciously chose to spend some of his accumulated status/power to stoke some awareness to some factor that he believes it should be more spread; and managed to do a terrible job a communication whatever was his thorn.
As an aside, I think telling someone "nobody asked you for your opinion" is pretty rude. I don't think its constructive to put limits on people's freedom of personal expression in that way. It was a personal message/blog that they felt like getting off their chest. Google firing him just for this (if that is the case, I guess we don't know for sure) is absurd IMO. My sense is that it became a PR issue and Google just got rid of him rather than actually fostering a place where differing opinions are welcomed. This cancel culture is getting crazy.
> I see someone who was genuinely baffled at the thought that there are good people of a particular ethnicity, when he was brainwashed completely to the opposite.
As I think I said at the top of my comment, if he had stopped there, I don't think there would have been as much hay to make (though that's an unknowable). Personally I found the writing of that first section awkward, and a little uncomfortable (man, he really likes to emphasize just how much he hated jews), but I at least can understand the desire to share a personal transformation.
Site note: Perhaps the jaunty tone of it is part of what I find off-putting? It's got a very "ho ho ho, man, wasn't that a crazy time" kind of tone, when other similar personal transformations that I've read are grounds for regret and reflection. Not that someone has to wear a hairshirt for every past belief they realized was wrong, but this one seemed inappropriately casual.
But the problem that I have with the piece is really the rest of it - I think it's a little patronizing, I think using 23andme data to justify your positions is problematic, and I think paragraph after paragraph you see someone expounding at length on their ideas about very complex subjects, subjects that are near and dear to people's identities and politics. It's not a dialogue, it's not a jumping off point for a discussion, it's just a polemic.
Even that, though ill-advised, probably could be forgiveable (after all, this bubbled up a while ago - the post was published over a month ago), but according to the article instead of taking feedback and starting a discussion, he continued to argue the same points that his team was telling him were offensive. That's not great leadership, that's not listening to the team, that's not navigating a complex situation with grace. He didn't have to just fall on his sword and apoloogize, but as a VP you have to at least be thoughtful about how you handle these situations.
Heck, I'm not even a VP, and I've had to deal with these types of very complex political and personal issues in the workplace, and I handled it better than this guy did. Leadership is listening, understanding, engaging respectfully, and disagreeing where appropriate. It doesn't sound like that's what was happening here.
> As an aside, I think telling someone "nobody asked you for your opinion" is pretty rude.
My point is, it's not like someone asked him to articulate his thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict and he just handled it badly. He chose to wade into one of the most polarizing and complicated topics, not just in a casual offhand comment, but in a >10k word essay that ranged from his own personal beliefs, to israeli oppression, to whether israel is a democracy, to his own status as a jew. All of these topics are highly polarizing and people have very strong opinions about them. He's entitled to his opinions, but publishing them to the world and then doubling down on them when confronted with the reaction is an unforced error. He should have known better.
> This cancel culture is getting crazy.
Look, I've only managed teams 1/10th the size of what he was managing, and even I know that posting something like this online is ill-advised and inappropriate, and I would never do it. If someone asks me privately what my beliefs are on a particular topic, I'm happy to have the discussion - but I'm not going to go to my audience of 12k followers on linkedin and proclaim them, as he did. If someone wrote something years ago that pops up, I'm usually onboard with forgiving them, because people say stupid things and people change. But respecting your team and the people you work with means recognizing that there are different beliefs and values and that the words you say matter.
The author is deeply involved in this complex subject and discussion. They have more than a good reason to have an opinion on it, and express it. I don't want to get into his tone/wording. I'm going to give him a wide pass just because its probably not his first language, and also because those types of things are highly culture-specific.
> That's not great leadership, that's not listening to the team, that's not navigating a complex situation with grace. He didn't have to just fall on his sword and apoloogize, but as a VP you have to at least be thoughtful about how you handle these situations.
Sure, a more street-smart/savvy person would probably do things differently. But fundamentally, I think that people don't have a right to not be offended. For e.g. I don't like the idea of people calling something offensive - like say the drawing of a certain prophet - and forcing others to accept their view. Its strictly a case-by-case thing. I'd want to know exactly what was so offensive. Maybe from a purely business perspective, Google did the right thing, but from a social discourse / wide-tent-philosophy standpoint I think it is disappointing.
Anyway, I appreciate you writing out your reply, and I don't really want to argue with you or change your opinion or anything, but just like how we can respectfully co-exist on HN, it should be possible to do so within a company too. Maybe I'm placing too much faith in a random person who I had not even heard of before this article ! :) I guess I just believe that people can still have integrity even when we disagree with them.
I still think your reaction to his opinion or view is a bit childish. But as I said, understandable in a corporate environment. The mistake was to give this opinion in an "official" position.
You should also refrain from stating your reaction in such a context.
It doesn’t look at he’s really open to feedback, doesn’t seem much sensible about how people react to his opinions in general.
Other people might take the wrong message from his demotion, but then it also means they didn’t really care looking into the details, so wouldn’t they have been mistaken in other ways if he stayed in position and continued spitting weird manifestos ?
As a Jew I would love to create dialogue with a person who realized the past hate was unjust, to hear why the hate existed and more importantly to understand what opened their eyes.
It is that process that will help eliminate hate across the board. Today as a society we approach discrimination through censorship and cancel culture which unfortunately will not solve deep rooted hate.
There were opportunities for this to happen with this person. They did not go great.
The Powers That Be took a short look at this drama and decided that no, this is not the hill to die on. They never are. Being perceived as tolerating antisemitism because VP Weirdo keeps getting "misunderstood" over a "manifesto"? That's not even a hill anymore, it's a grave someone dug for themselves.
Unfortunately in the countries around Israel with whom they have had wars, there is significant anti-Semitism: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3136059.stm
And in Israel there is significant anti-Arab sentiment, which rose significantly as a result of Palestinian terrorist attacks in the early 2000s: https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-shows-large-swaths-of-isr...
Is forgiveness and growing from our mistakes completely dead now?
Yes. And you nailed it; there can be no explanation of anything anymore. Nuance is irrelevant. Best to keep all conversation strictly professional, maybe talk about sports teams or the weather but that's it. Your personal thoughts must now be either kept completely internal or published anonymously if you wish to take part in our progressive society.
"As a person of X, I realized I was discriminating against people of Y." That's guilt. That's fire-able.
Don't emulate behavior just because it's fashionable. You might get the impression that society is run like a college campus now, but it isn't. All this activism isn't for you, it's for political control.
-- Elisabeth Bruenig
To me, this is the work, the hard part of inclusion. Understanding that people are not always perfect and sometimes very flawed.
But then again, he seems to be lacking in leadership skills if he keeps getting "misunderstood" regarding his manifesto.
Protip: your VPs should never write any kind of manifesto involving jews in any shape or form. Stick to banal business management tropes like anyone else.
We should be encouraging such introspection and admittance of past failures. It gives people the opportunity to change. If we don't reward people for changing, they will never change!
The difference is in that case Google reassigned Bobb to a position which would not be compromised by their past. In this case, they outright fired Awadallah. That raises some red flags.
As many other commenters have pointed out, we don't know the whole story and probably never will. This line from the article might shed a little more light on the situation, though:
> Within the manifesto, Awadallah describes how he was "cautious" of VMware co-founder Mendel Rosenblum based on his last name
If Awadallah had a history of antisemitism while at the company that had been recently uncovered, it could make sense for him to be terminated. And if that were the case, I doubt Google could speak publicly about it.
I want to promote a society which doesn't hold people forever accountable for past mistakes and allows them to change and improve. But I also don't want to promote a society where misdeeds go entirely unpunished just because the perpetrator apologized in a social media post. It's hard to strike a balance and I'm hesitant to comment any more about this story without more information.
If you look at the top brass at any large org, they all subjugate their individualism to focus on reinforcing carefully crafted PR/legal sound bites.
You should allow your opposition to at least believe they have an alternative to digging in and fighting you to the bitter end. Even if you have no intention of allowing them to escape or surrender, you should let them believe it's still possible.
I don't mean to be pedantic, but stomping an anthill wouldn't be 'winning' you would be pressed into your own retreat pretty quickly.
I believe the quote holds true, leave an out they will retreat or at least try. Cutoff all egress and it's a fight to the death.
Or was that what you were saying and I misunderstood? Or was I just wrong on all accounts?
There was an alternative though. The alternative was for this guy to not make a cringy blog post about his past anti-semitism, and simply not talk about it.
The solution to people having horrible ideas in the past, is not for them to make giant, public renouncements.
Instead, the solution is for those people to be ashamed enough about their past positions, that they won't even admit that they held them.
That is a really good solution for most people, as most people are not going to have every little detail of their past interrogated. It is very much possible for people with these bad ideas, to merely stop having those bad ideas, pretend like they never had them, and join productive society.
But it’s a genuine, good post. There are so many better ways for Google to have handled this than to just fire like they’ve done with AI researchers before.
The relevant comic is: https://goomics.net/327/
It is weird to create a list of "good" Jews. But it seems to me like it may be a genuine attempt at positivity.
Most of what talking heads cry about Cancel Culture is just "consequences for having bad attitude/behavior". But this case seems like things going overboard.
This leads to the contact hypothesis as a means of reducing prejudice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_hypothesis
- If you are an executive for any company, maybe don't publicly share your opinion of the israeli/palestinian conflict, using your real name, and try to buy twitter ads pointing to it
This makes it a little clearer why Google parted ways with him.
(And you see I'll be downvoted here for even mentioning it. Q.E.D.)
While it starts off benign enough with renouncing antisemetism and wierdly anti-zionism it soon goes into a tirade.
After the first few parts it's mostly about the Israel-Palastinian conflict (mostly denouncing Israel's actions), with a lot of denouncing Trump a long the way.
For a company trying for the last few months to get rid of politics in the office, I can definitely see how this would be a firing offense from a top executive.
How does that inspire anyone to change their view?
That's not necessarily terrible.
Such places increasingly do not exist.
With few exceptions, practically all electronic communication can be traced.
Microphones are almost everywhere and voice recognition is very advanced.
"Privacy" increasing means that someone is paid well enough to not need to monetize your communications, but that they will still have the data ready to hand over if law enforcement comes knocking with a warrant or subpoena.
We need to encourage a society that takes words into context, and assumes good faith instead of imagining the worst possible interpretation of everything. Similarly, we need to encourage people changing their views. Casting out anyone who said something bad, ever, independent of any character growth or changes of opinion as one becomes more knowledgeable, is going to lead to people continuing to hold horrible views... just in private.
Right now there is zero incentive to publicly apologize about anything or change one's opinion because people don't care about that, they just want punitive actions taken regardless of any changes afterwards. That doesn't really help address the underlying issues of racism, -isms, etc, at all....
You can't pretend there are no consequences to stating you have feelings that can impact other people. Even if what you're claiming is that you're reformed.
"I'm a recovering alcoholic," says the doctor. "Great!" say all of the lawyers with malpractice lawsuits against the doctor. You just can't avoid those consequences.
People will always hold horrible views. That's not going to change.
Of course there's an incentive to change your opinion - growth. If you need to PERFORM that you've grown, then I think that's pretty dangerous attention seeking. If you want to make a livelihood out of being a leader, where your transformation is part of your credentials, then yes, that's a risk, which you have to calculate.
> That doesn't really help address the underlying issues of racism, -isms, etc, at all....
I'm not really convinced talking does address those. Especially not on social media. I think people have to get to know each other on a personal basis.
It's funny to me how we all run so hot and cold on social media. Right now, y'all are defending social media, in the context of performing that you're reformed on some topic.
Also, so much of this is tied up in the context of employee / employer relationships. Like, if you don't work for a company, you're probably way more free to express your views, to a point.
Like for instance, Bill Cosby wants to do a stand-up tour.
Should he be "cancelled"?
If you feel strongly no, then, well, I guess you can support venues that want to host him.
Some companies are going to shun people like this VP. Maybe you want to support companies that don't.
Or what about the Google Creep [1]?
How much should he have to apologize, or take sensitivity training, etc, before you'd hire him at a company where he'd be in touch with sensitive user information? We're all going to have different answers to that. We can't come up with one rule. So, maybe you want to support companies that give people like him a second chance. I don't feel that need.
There's lots of other parameters that are way more important to me, in evaluating companies I want to do business with, than their being responsible for managing the healing and forgiving process for people who made public mistakes that put the companies they worked for in potentially hot legal water.
[1] : https://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-te...
Well, you can though. Let me tell you a different thing that it signals.
It signals, that if you hold a harmful ideology, that not only should you change to it, but that you should be ashamed enough that you will never admit that you even held these ideas in the past.
It is not that hard, for most people (emphasis on most. If you run for senate, or something, it is a different story), to simply lie and say that they never held these opinions in the past.
Incentivizing people who believe these things, to vehemently deny they every held them, doesn't sound too bad of an outcome to me.
Has Mel Gibson recovered?