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Comment by xoofoog | Hacker News Reader

Okay, Googler, how about some data to back up that assertion? Let's have a googley-argument where we're respectful in showing that we're smarter than the person we're putting down.

Here's my data. Google values consensus - fact. This "wisdom of the crowds" philosophy was core to founding google - Larry & Sergey's brilliant insight that the collective votes of hyperlinks was a stronger signal than things like H1 tags and HTML titles in picking good search results.

But consensus means, in a literal sense, that everybody needs to agree on the right thing to do. Problem is in reality people don't always agree. So what happens when the group needs to reach consensus but people disagree? Since Google doesn't have a respectful way to disagree, the holders of divergent opinions must be minimized - either pushed out of the group or proven to be not smart enough for their opinions to be valid.

God I hate myself while I'm writing this. I left for a reason.

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> But consensus means, in a literal sense, that everybody needs to agree on the right thing to do.

I want to push back on this. I think there is absolutely such a thing as “rough consensus” where everyone gets to air their concerns, but the group still makes a decision where not everyone gets their way. Rough consensus processes are much harder to do over a mailing list because there’s no sense of what “the room” wants - since all the air gets taken up by the people who have the most time & are the most argumentative. It’s much easier to achieve rough consensus in person - especially amongst groups who have good working relationships with each other.

In many ways this is a product failure of mailing lists and the like. I’d love more answers in this space to allow us to make better collective decisions, remotely.

That's a little over simplified the complexity of making a decision. A decision rarely reach a fully supported level of consensus in any cases. The process is more focused on reaching an accepted level for everyone, which usually means "I don't like it but that's FINE so I won't block it". The consensus of decision is grey instead of black or white.

Also, "the holders of divergent opinions must be minimized", not really. You can even continue without a consensus as far as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

"wisdom of the crowds" means respect everyone's opinion IMO. Direct attack to your colleagues will end up with warning from managers or being fired. It doesn't have any meaning of enforcing maximium level of consensus.

The problem of "try my best to prove I'm not WRONG" is much broader than Google's company culture. It's part of our self defense process and has been well identified in psychology (Well, same emotion as what you feel in this thread when someone opposed your opinon, your are trying to prove you have better understanding of the problem or smarter than them as you described yourself). Google's culture is trying to (maybe not that successful) minimize that type of self defense since it's harmful in many cases.

Holy shit. Sounds like my company.

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