What is it with all the Googlers systematically prefacing their comments with "Opinions are my own"? Is that some kind of policy at Google? It's so ubiquitous now that it feels almost like some kind of humble brag.
This is because people attribute the actions of one person to the whole group. An example from the HN page yesterday - Microsoft insults dev, then takes credit for his idea (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284419). The title was changed later by HN mods to something less incendiary.
But the point stands. 1 person working at Microsoft out of 182k said something sarcastic. That sarcasm was interpreted as an insult. Then the entire organisation was blamed (Microsoft insults dev). This happens because it’s easier for us to think reductively. Nuance is too much effort.
That’s why employees go to great lengths to add these disclaimers every comment.
The point at which I started doing it religiously though, was after I made a comment about one of Red hat's competitors. Somebody wrote another post where they talked about Red hat employee Said certain things, so that's the red hat perspective or that's what red hat thinks or something like that. I want to make absolutely clear that everybody reading anything I write knows that I do not speak officially for Red hat. My opinions are truly my own.
"VMware seems to dominate the bare metal landscape. Even though Red Hat has a competing product, there's still a ton of customers that want to run OpenShift on top of VMware so we end up working with it a fair amount. They made some design decisions that I wouldn't have made, but overall it's solid technology if you don't mind proprietary."
I didn't (and still don't) think that was a negative comment. It felt very factual and fair to me. But "overall it's solid technology" is my opinion, not Red Hat's, and it seems ridiculous to me that people would say it was Red Hat's opinion, but ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
Previous companies I worked at (like Cisco) explicitly said in my employment contract that I couldn't post things online about the company without prior approval from PR or whoever.
Part of why I do it is also so people know I may be biased as I'm financially motivated to have Google seen in a positive light and be successful.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31279881
We are specifically told to disclaim that we don’t speak for AWS when we speak on social media about anything related to the company.
Even if not, if I say something positive or get in a discussion about AWS on Hacker News that is opinion based, I disclaim so people can consider my biases (“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”)
Also when I post on r/aws, I sometimes disclaim. It depends on the question.
If someone ask “how can I stop API Gateway from timing out after 30 seconds?” - ie something that can be answered factually (you can’t) and post documentation, I don’t bother about saying where I work.
On the other hand, if someone asks, “what are the steps I need to take to improve security on AWS?”. Then my usual reply starts off with, “I am a consultant in Professional Services at AWS, I’m not your consultant. All opinions are my own”. The last thing I need is to be in the middle of a controversy because a company got breached based on taking my very generic advice and saying they were listening to me.
Wouldn’t you think it was kind of dishonest if I said “I think everyone should move to the cloud” (I wouldn’t say that) and not disclose my biases? Most of my arguments are much more subtle. But I would rather err on the side of disclosing than people think I’m astroturfing.
There are lots of people on HN that work at companies that get discussed all of the time. It would be dishonest if we didn’t say where we worked when talking about them.
It’s considered the honest thing to do as you’ve seen many of us do when we talk about the company we work for.
We all have biases. I was biased toward cloud computing when I worked for a 60 person startup. But if AWS had gone belly up then, I would shrugged and start working with Azure. Now I have a financial interest. Of course I’m going to be more biased.
If there's no actual policy for these sorts of things, that flips the coin and makes it very unfair that I don't know where you work, sounds like an interesting place :P
The standard cop out is to say that line even when it’s completely unnecessary. It’s just easier to add it than consider how your words may be missunderstood.
If you wore an I’m with her! tee, you would not claim to have a neutral opinion on politics.
Someone literally explained to you that it's a matter of transparency, and you're jumping to, "well obviously they're just bootlickers".
If you work for Google, comment in public on Google stuff, with an account that says “I work for Google!”, I would say it is not possible for you to remain independent, no matter what kind of spell-of-disclaiming is attached to your post.
When it comes to Google matters, one either comments as a Google employee, or not at all. It comes across as distasteful to try to do wade in while waving off claims of bias with “opinions are my own” with the implication that they are unbiased.
Maybe what these people mean is: I work at Google so this is biased towards them, but they didn’t tell me to write this, and perhaps I should be reading it that way?
Good thing nobody said this, then. They're just making it clear that they're not explicitly relaying company opinion.
> with the implication that they are unbiased.
Nobody's trying to imply this. Obviously if you work at company X, you're gonna have at least some subconscious bias. The point is to make your potential bias transparent, so others can judge for themselves.
> I work at Google so this is biased towards them, but they didn’t tell me to write this
Yes, though of course the amount of bias can vary. I used to work at Amazon, and my opinion of Amazon didn't seem to significantly change when I started working there, or when I left.
(Of course some people develop a more negative opinion of a company after working there, rather than a positive one)
I'd say that a situation where you feel the need to add that sort of disclaimer generally means you should keep your mouth shut, but stopping people from talking about things they know about will never happen.
In other industries, you'll find similar boilerplate disclaimers like "this is not investment advice." Particularly amusing when it is attached to even character-limited tweets.
To borrow your broken analogy and fix it, if someone were to post "Hey, here are all the reasons I'm voting for (candidate) and I think you should too", and didn't disclose that they work for that candidate's campaign, don't you think any credibility they might have had is gone once it's found out?
What I’m getting at is that opining, disclosing, but then claiming the opinions are unbiased just does not compute.
If it's positive, then leaving off the disclaimer is basically astroturfing.
If you're wearing an I'm with her! tee, you also aren't her spokesperson.
It's not neutrality, it's non-representative
The point of the "I work at X" disclaimer is to explicitly point out that you do have a conflict of interest that the reader needs to be aware of.
Disclaimer: I work at Google and my thoughts are my own. ;)
Disclaimer: All my opinions are Google's ;)
Why do people think it? If they see me say "I work at Google" in the comment, and then say some sort of opinion or recommendation or prediction, they might think that that's an opinion that's widely held or officially promoted within Google, or that the recommendation is something that Google recommends or that the prediction is something Google predicts. The sentence "I work at Google" could be thought of as something I'm invoking to say "I'm an authority believe me", or "I work at Google, so I can provide you info from Google", rather than a disclaimer about a conflict of interest. That's why "I work at Google" is often followed by "but my thoughts are my own".
The phrase "identify as" refers to considering that a nontrivial part of one's identity.
These are separate concepts that happen to use similar wording.
I remember a time when I was younger and I too would present much of my persona as being based in the company for which I worked.
As time passes this fades significantly. I feel much more like my own person now, from whom my employer benefits, and not the other way around.
Delusions of grandeur? Moi? Or the true wisdom of age? Why not both!
Especially in my case, I do speak for the company in a limited scope when I am working with one of our customers or when I do approved communications in the form of blog posts, presentations, etc.
I’ve worked for 8 companies over 25+ years. The current company I work at (AWS) is another means for me to exchange labor for money.