A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit | Hacker News Reader

A religious sect landed Google in a lawsuit

nytimes.com

334 pointssemiquaver525 comments

So, if the author was fired for the reasons they believe, that's pretty bad behavior. But if he had not been fired, what was management supposed to have done about the cult members working for this department?

Yes, the cult's leader sounds like a pretty awful person, but he wasn't working there. What were the cult members doing in their work in the department that was clearly wrong? It's suggested that there was favoritism and unfair promotion going on -- but it's not very well evidenced here. Were they using company money to fund their organization? It's also not clear from the article that the wine outfit is a cult subsidiary.

And if the concern is primarily that the cult itself is a shady organization with some bad people, and that something should be done to stop Google from having a clique of staff that are even _affiliated_ with that organization ... well that seems like a really fraught policy. Are you supposed to then ask everyone in the department about their religious affiliations, or whether they've given money to a fringe religious organization? That also seems like a really unhealthy road for a company to go down.

At minimum Google could have investigated the odd clustering of employees that indicated some sort of nepotistic hiring practice. Of course they might be doing exactly that, but it's not the sort of thing they can really comment on.

Edit: also the self-dealing on hundreds of thousands of dollars in wine.

That is what DEI boards are for. Stamping out these natural clusters that form via social networks

DEI has its own cult leaders that set definitions many people would not agree with but tend to become mandatory dogma. Example is sexism, racism and topics relating to gender. It is just as ideological, maybe it has another algebraic sign but the animosity is easy to see. Problem with DEI is that it has official support contrary to this cult, which shouldn't have leadership positions as well of course.

Well if you expand that to a more generic "employees shouldn't be involved in hiring people who they know and associate with outside of work" then they'd have to fire half the company.

I work at a large tech firm and do interviewing and referrals almost routinely. I have regularly excused myself from the opportunity to sit on panels or provide feedback. I can provide all the input I want, but the people making the decision need to not be me or feel pressured by me. That's not a deep ethical challenge in the slightest.

This is Google we're talking about... ethics isn't exactly their strong suit.

Systemic nepotism is not reason to avoid investigating a specific incidents where it is especially prevalent.

There's also a difference between hiring someone you know vs. only hiring a person because you know them.

Besides which it is possible to have hiring practices that make this abuse more difficult: where I work friends & family of a candidate are obligated to identify such prior relationships during the hiring process so that another person can review any decision to hire that candidate.

Maybe things are that bad at Google, but that would be precisely the reason for casting more light on the issue in order to change things.

I don't understand why Google would have to answer for a more expansive charge, rather than the one that's actually leveled.

Of course if you expand any principle to an unreasonable extreme it becomes unreasonable but I don't see how this observation has anything to do with anything.

There is an argument to be made wrt the deleterious effects of modern recruitment's overreliance on informal personal networks.

The problem in this case would be they seem to be hiring almost exclusively from a rather obscure religious group. That means they're illegally discriminating against members other religions.

Cults are not “obscure religious groups.” It varies widely by state (and in federal jurisprudence), but most states have a “free association”-style test: if members aren’t free to come and go, it’s a cult and not a religion.

Google would not be exposed to any significant liability here. Particularly not when the cult has a well-documented history of sexual abuse.

On the contrary, google employees would be breaking the law by hiring primarily because of religious preference and thus discriminating against competent candidates of other religious (or non) preference

Cults are not religions. The body of decisions is remarkably explicit about this, when you consider how difficult the question “what is a religion” actually is.

Edit: I forgot to provide references. Here’s a summary[1] of a 1988 California Supreme Court ruling in which the court determined that cult conduct does not fall under religious protections, even if the cult’s members might genuinely believe the cult’s doctrines. In other words, an internal decision by Google to terminate cult members because of their history of sex abuse or self dealing is unlikely expose them to civil litigation risk.

[1]: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-10-18-mn-4552-s...

To me, there's a venn diagram. some cults are religions. Some are just cults and not religions.

It sounds like you're coming from a legal perspective. Is that really the end-all-be-all representation of reality?

Of course it isn’t. But this conversation is about the legal risk to Google, so that’s the only part I’m going to concern myself with.

It is if you are talking about discrimination according to the law, which is what the thread has been debating.

And MLMs aren't pyramid schemes.

At some point you have organizations that are doing the exact bare minimum to dodge a more unsavory classification. The Rule of Law can't legislate being a good person. It can only legislate not being a monster.

I'm not interested in legislating the exact qualities of a "good person." I'm pointing out that, from a case law perspective, Google is entirely in clear to fire these people.

The categorical question of "is X a cult" doesn't impinge on whether The Fellowship of Friends is a cult, which it is.

The case you cited says nothing of the sort. It only establishes that a religious organization can be sued for fraud if it uses coercive persuasion ("brainwashing") techniques [1].

It doesn't make a statement as to what is or isn't considered a religion.

It's worth noting that the Fellowship of Friends is recognized by both the IRS and California as a tax-exempt religious organization. And, at least from my perspective, it doesn't sound all that different from Scientology, which does enjoy First Amendment protections as a religion. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molko_v._Holy_Spirit_Ass%27n_f...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headley_v._Church_of_Scientolo...

Note I said what the Rule of Law can't do, not whether it succeeded in doing anything.

A Fortune 500 company I worked for had anti-discrimination training that said it was okay to discriminate against 45 year olds. And their harassment training said that it's not illegal for a bisexual manager to flirt with or grabass everyone because they're not being selective about it. I hope to god some later employees figured out how twisted both of those were and that, even if they are both true, you shouldn't call attention to it in ethics training, ffs.

The only real difference between a cult and a religion is real estate.

Are you saying that hiring on the basis of cult membership would not qualify as religious discrimination, because cults are not religions?

Many religions are cults, and many cults are religions. Ergo religious discrimination could certainly happen.

> Cults are not religions

There is no universal consensus on how to define the term "cult". There are multiple competing definitions.

In 1932, the sociologist Howard P. Becker introduced a fourfold classification of religious groups, into cults, sects, denominations and ecclesias (which was in turn an expansion of the theologian Ernst Troeltsch's earlier two-fold classification of religious groups as "churches" or "sects"). Cults and sects are religious groups with a high degree of tension with the surrounding society; cults have novel beliefs (in the context of that society), sects have traditional beliefs. Denominations are established religious groups with low tension with their society, but who do not dominate it. An ecclesia is a de jure or de facto state religion. By this set of definitions, cults are religions, if by "religion" one means "religious group". Many sociologists of religion continue to use Becker's definitions today; they are still part of the standard content of most university-level introductory courses on the sociology of religion – although not all sociologists endorse them, and some have put forward alternative proposals (such as Roy Wallis' proposal that the defining feature of cults is "epistemological individualism".)

In most sociological use, "cult" is a value-neutral, non-judgemental term; in colloquial English, it has become a derogatory term, implying the group is harmful or aberrant. Some psychologists have developed formal definitions of "cults" as psychologically harmful organisations – it appears those psychologists were ignorant of the prior use of the term in sociology (or, possibly, knew about it but didn't care.) Many evangelical Christians promote a theological definition of the term "cult", in which it essentially means "Christian group we judge to be heretical"–in some cases, the label "cult" is even extended to include all non-Christian religions.

You seem to be suggesting there is some legal definition of the term "cult", in the case law of some American states, including a legal distinction between "cult" and "religion". As evidence for this, you point to a newspaper article summarising the 1988 Supreme Court of California decision Molko v. Holy Spirit Assn. However, the newspaper article you cite never actually uses the word "cult" non-attributively–it is citing the use of the word by others, not using the word itself–and it is citing the use of the word by the plaintiff's expert witnesses and by activist groups, not the Court's justices as using the word.

And, if you read the actual text of the decision [0], while it cites a number of journal articles and books with the word Cult in their titles, it never actually uses that word itself. I am wondering if maybe you are projecting this binary distinction which exists in your own mind, between "cults" and "religions", on to case law in which that distinction is never actually drawn. On the contrary, Justice Stanley Mosk's decision assumes that the alleged "cult" (in this case, The Unification Church) is a religion, and the case turns on what are the legal standards for fraud and emotional distress claims against religious groups. The Court's judgement is that you can sue a religious group for fraud and emotional distress, by alleging deceptive recruiting practices, brainwashing, etc; and that such lawsuits are not barred by the First Amendment. The actual decision doesn't turn at all on any cult-vs-religion distinction, the same legal standard applies to all religious groups, whether "cults" or not. And it was not a decision on whether or not the Unification Church actually had engaged in any such activities, or whether they were a "cult"; it was simply a preliminary ruling that the case against them could proceed to trial. (Ultimately, the case never went to trial, it was settled.)

[1] https://scocal.stanford.edu/opinion/molko-v-holy-spirit-assn...

Surely that's not true?

Islam for example is a religion, that you can not leave.

That's a problem where it's true...

I've heard that the Catholic Church considers baptism into the church to be for life, and can make it quite difficult for anybody to remove themselves from official registers. I don't know if there are any equivalent registers in Islam that you'd have trouble deregistering from.

Obviously, there are plenty of people around who consider themselves ex-Muslims or ex-Catholics, regardless of any such considerations. Likewise, for so-called cults, so I'm not convinced it's really a point of difference.

There’s a procedure (apostasy). That doesn’t mean they make it easy or that all the small village priests are even aware that it exists.

According to Church themselves, apostasy does not make one leave the Church.

The tests the courts use is whether you can actually physically leave control of the organization. Having your name written down or having a spiritual belief that some ritual is permanent, etc, doesn't count as not being able to leave.

Are you asking the court to make a judgement on theological matters (i.e., the state of your soul)? Surely you can see why they don't care.

Not being able to physically leave would be kidnapping, surely? That would make them a criminal organization, not just a "cult".

Cults are often criminal. The Catholic church doesn't harrass you for money or really reach out at all if you're on its roster. All it is is a record of your having come there, which is their record to keep. This is like saying elementary schools are cuts because they keep your transcripts on file -- a completely ridiculous assertion.

The Catholic Church rapes children in industrial quantities - but we don't consider it criminal because of the good PR it (still) has.

The difference is that Islam proscribes death for apostates very clearly in its laws, whereas catholicism does not. You're on a list, like a birth certificate. In general, you cannot force another person to erase their memory of you, but certainly not killing you would be good.

It's rare in the US, but it does happen in other parts of the world (killed for being apostates).

Not going to comment on anything else, just pointing out the obvious difference in kind here. Death is orders of magnitude worse than having your name on a list.

While no country actually executes people for apostasy from Catholicism today, the prescribed punishment under canon law was death by burning.

That doesn't seem right either. Do you actually have any evidence for what you're saying?

... I mean, what did you think the Spanish Inquisition was up to? Being particularly careless with matches?

For instance, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-fé

(This wasn't unique to Spain, but Spain was certainly an epicenter, due to a large Jewish population forcibly converted during and after the Reconquista)

I'm not going to excuse the church, but this was actually the civil punishment. The church just declared you an apostate or not, and civil authorities would punish you (BTW, most European countries still have similar laws with just lesser punishments and no church involvement... IIRC, blasphemy is still a prosecutable crime in Germany)

What about people executed for heresy in the Papal States? There are many examples, but the most famous would be Giordano Bruno, burnt at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600.

The whole "it was the civil authorities not the Church" line doesn't really work there, since the Pope was ultimately in charge of both, even if the two were still nominally distinct.

Even in the case of the Spainish Inquisition, where the Church-va-State distinction was somewhat more real – you have to ask whether the Church encouraged or discouraged the civil authorities from imposing capital punishment on those it convicted of heresy. I think you will find that the answer was very much "encourage", not "discourage" or neutral. "We didn't execute anybody, we just encouraged the government to execute them" is a rather laughable defence.

If you can describe exactly what Bruno's heresy was and the effect it had, I'm happy to continue this conversation.

If you can't, then it's just a waste of my time.

> – you have to ask whether the Church encouraged or discouraged the civil authorities from imposing capital punishment on those it convicted of heresy

That's literally why I started off my comment with "I'm not going to excuse the church". You're absolutely right that there ought to have been a reckoning with the consequences.

The Spanish Inquisition was civil, not church. The link you provided states that explicitly.

I repeat: Do you actually have any evidence for what you're saying?

I mean, it was under the control of the monarch, but used canon law, and was lead by a senior cleric, typically an archbishop or cardinal.

If it helps, though, the Roman Inquisition, an organ of the Church, also liked to burn the odd apostate.

What Canon law are you referring to? What exactly was led by a senior cleric?

Frankly, it sounds as though you are randomly spouting phrases in an attempt to sound educated.

Where did you hear such a thing?

As a Catholic, I regularly attend Church and we have many people (even entire families) who either join after a long period of being away or leave the faith all together. We miss them of course but no one sends them death treats.

Additionally, many people move between denominations.

Perhaps you are confusing those with real cults such as: Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism ?

I can't however speak for how they operate as I haven't studied them or been involved.

The Catholic Church in a number of European countries stopped processing requests to formally deregister people, due to mass departures after the sexual abuse revelations, which may be what they're referring to.

For instance, https://www.notme.ie

Did the Catholic church in Ireland have a register of people who were Catholic? Which other countries have this?

I've just never heard of such a thing.

Generally record-keeping would be on a parish level, but yes, it's normal for Catholic parishes to keep records on this.

Are you referring to a record of Christenings? Like every church everywhere would keep?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam

> As of 2014, there were eight Muslim-majority countries where apostasy from Islam was punishable by death,[17][18][19] and another thirteen where there were penal or civil penalties such as jail, fines or loss of child custody.

Seriously? OK https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam

Overview and some good further references to primary sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam

>As of 2014, there were eight Muslim-majority countries where apostasy from Islam was punishable by death, and another thirteen where there were penal or civil penalties such as jail, fines or loss of child custody.

I'd say at least in those eight death penalty countries, you practically are not allowed to leave. And if the state letting you live but is taking away your children from you, you'll too think twice about leaving, too...

In some regions, while apostasy is not official punished by law, people will still punish it extra-legally e.g. by committing "honor killings".

Of course, this does not reflect all of Islam/all Muslims, and what people think about how apostates should be dealt with varies a lot regionally.

If it even is legally (under religious laws) possible to leave the religion is a contested issue between theological scholars, however the bulk of theological scholars seem to consider it an absolute crime against God, but may disagree on whether it's up to people to punish the crime, or punishment be left to God.

But even in Western countries there can be significant support within Muslim communities to harshly punish apostates.

> A similar survey of the Muslim population in the United Kingdom, in 2007, found nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-old faithful believed that Muslims who convert to another religion should be executed, while less than a fifth of those over 55 believed the same. [0]

That said, other religions, including an in particular Christianity, historically haven't been nice to apostates, either.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jan/29/thinktanks.religi...

> Islam for example is a religion, that you can not leave.

I personally don't know what Islamic teaching says on the matter, but there seems to be a reasonable number of "ex-Muslim" organisations around the world, the existence of which makes an empirical case that, for practical purposes, you can indeed leave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ex-Muslim_organisation...

This is a conversation about US courts and religions as they're practiced in the US.

To the best of my knowledge, apostasy in Islam in the US is no particularly worse than apostasy in Mormonism on the scale of denomination.

Maybe this is a linguistic misunderstanding. Languages other than English don’t have different words for “sect” and “cult”. For example in Spanish it’s all “secta”.

I was not attempting to define a cult, and the definition of a cult does not matter in this context. What matters is if they're discriminating against people who are not members.

You are arguing that it would be alright for Google to fire the cult members.

Parent comments argued that Google is liable for allowing the cult to discriminate against non cult members.

While that is true, I don't think that's such as useful take.

They are mainly discriminating against people who are more qualified for the jobs; basically the entire world that isn't Oregon House.

If the Crips gang infiltrated Google and were only hiring Crips, you wouldn't say that they are unfairly discriminating against other perfectly good gangs like Bloods, as the main issue.

(I understand that the analogy is far from perfect, because gang membership isn't a constitutionally protected class, but still ...)

I understand the team and around is about 250 people, so even if all 12 are somehow related to the group that's a fraction.

They argue in the article that Google hires fairly from the pool of applicants, but that the pool of applicants often includes members of this religious sect because people employed at the company encourage their friends to apply, who are often also members of the sect.

If that is true, it isn't really Google's fault. If it's false, I doubt there will be any documentary evidence to say so - these people aren't stupid, they won't have said "make sure you only hire my religion" in an email.

There was also an odd clustering among early Google employees who all came from a place called "Stanford."

It may be difficult to distinguish between these two hiring patterns without asking the sorts of questions that are illegal for employers to ask.

I don’t understand your point.

The cult we are discussing here is accused of engaging in grooming and pedophilia.

That’s comparable to a bunch of people that went to Stanford?

I think the point was that you can't really go after nepotistic hiring practices alone without also throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Nepotism happens all the time, and it's usually benign, like Stanford grads hiring Stanford grads. We want to work with our friends, people we've worked with before, and people with similar backgrounds as ours.

This comment thread is about what policy, if any, can these people really be investigated or fired for. If association with an organization whose leadership engages in grooming and pedophilia, while distasteful, is a firing offense, then should we be firing all catholics? There seems to be no way to articulate a policy here that a lot of well-meaning people wouldn't run afoul of, and you can't selectively implement policy without then running afoul of discriminatory business practices.

It’s insane to me that children are allegedly being groomed and molested but the topic of the day is nepotism.

The business should do what it thinks is right and deal with the fallout. Take a stand.

People are fired all the time for posting their personal opinions on FB. Especially if they make the company look bad. Fire these idiots for supporting a child molester.

We like it when businesses take a stand on things we agree on. We don't like it when it's about, say, making a gay couple a wedding cake. What stand, exactly, are we saying Google should take? That they don't employee people associated with organizations where leaders engage in pedophilia? If so, we should also have a word with 1.2 billion catholics.

You may not like it, but figuring out policy is important to a functioning society. It's how we avoid descent into fascism and witch hunting.

>If so, we should also have a word with 1.2 billion catholics.

Yes, we should

If that's the attitude you want to take then I wish you luck. It sure sounds good and principled to say such things, but there comes a point where you're no longer building a better society and simply witch hunting. Being guilty by association has a long, storied history in law.

> I think the point was that you can't really go after nepotistic hiring practices alone without also throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The comment just said "investigate"! This is getting very strawmanny.

I tend to agree, but I think that's because people want to see these cult members fired and are working backward from there to find grounds. That's an easy lawsuit at best and illegal at worst.

>The cult we are discussing here is accused of engaging in grooming and pedophilia.

No, sorry, it's not. I don't see that in the article. The leader was accused of coercing sex and having sex with a (as in one) minor[0]. Yes, that's bad, I am not trying to say it's not.

But extending what that leader allegedly did to include all members, or suggesting those members were at least fine with it, or at the very least knew about it and did nothing, is not helpful, honestly. If we did that, we would have to apply the same logic to every Catholic, as the Catholic Church enabled and hid a lot more - and in a lot more systematic fashion - abhorrent child abuse cases committed by their leaders (well, "middle-management" for the most part).

[0] The other victims he allegedly coerced were characterized as "young men", which doesn't mean they are underage.

A startup where friends hire friends is normal. Because startup's founder is risking his money (well, and investor's but that doesn't change much as the money is given to him as the founder). A middle manager hiring only among friends is more problematic because it's not their money that will be paid, but the company's money - so there's a conflict of interest in play.

No, at a minimum they should have fired all these people for funding a pedophile with their salaries. Absolutely disgusting.

> I found support groups where ex-members talk about their time in the group, including discussions of sexual abuse and grooming.

> Members have described him grooming and sexually assaulting male followers, including minors

I don't think Google could do that when there hasn't been a criminal case. I don't particularly like this situation but I also think it would be problematic to fire employees that were not part of the specific rumored incidents.

I'll grant that destructive cults are different than established religions, but firing these workers specifically over the sexual allegations wouldn't be much different than firing an employee who happened to be a deacon in a their local church in a Catholic diocese where the Cardinal abused children.

Google can fire them and let the lawyers deal with it. Maybe they lose but at least they tried.

Fined billions of dollars? Worth it.

So, does that mean that funding the Roman Catholic Church is a fire-able offense? What about the Southern Baptist Convention? Or Penn State University (at least while Jerry Sandusky was working there)? Or Michigan State (at least while Nassar was there)? Or the BBC (whilst Jimmy Savile was there)?

I'm definitely not trying to defend Fellowship of Friends here, just pointing out that a zero tolerance policy for supporting pedophiles pretty quickly falls apart because the successful abusers- those who can consistently abuse lots of people, like Burton, are almost always in a position of power in some organization or another. That's what gives them access and cover to do it to so many victims after all.

So all the CEOs that were fired due to sexual harassment charges were exception rather than the rule? Don't think so.

Somewhere in my employment letter it says, I'm representing the company outside my workplace and work hours as well (that is in personal life too), I can be fired if I bring disrepute to company anytime - ex. drunken brawl in a nightclub.

Well, the thing is, at least based on the article, Burton- the accused groomer/pedophile/sexual assaulter- does not work for Google. If he did, I'm all for firing him right into the Sun. The article makes no allegations that any of the people employed by Google participated in or covered up the sexual assaults, just that they were members of a organization led by a sexual assaulter. I just get a little antsy about firing people who are not themselves accused of sexual assault- or even accused of direct knowledge and coverup of the assaults, because I don't see a clear and convenient way to differentiate the Fellowship of Friends from the Southern Baptist Convention from the Boy Scouts of America, (unless you want to ban all "cults" and think that can stick).

I don't know more about the FoF than what's in the article, but I've done some reading about a similar sexual assault ridden cult, NXIUM, and their the hierarchy was such that clearly some people were assaulting, and some were assaulted (and some were on both sides at different points), and I would want to be damn sure that I was firing people on the assaulting side but not the people on the assaulted side of the line, and for the people who were both... I dunno, really hard question.

At the risk of sounding a little heartless, someone that joins a cult is very gullible.

How can you be that gullible and still be considered top tier talent?

Calling BSA and SBC cults is pure word play on your part. No reasonable person believes these are cults.

I never called BSA and SBC cults, but I don't think that firing people because they are part of a cult, absent any other evidence of any wrong-doing, is a good idea: it seems like it would only feed into their isolation, sense of persecution, etc. It would be a concrete step that the cult leader can point to about how the world is not to be trusted and pull the flock closer to the leader.

As for gullibility: would you support firing anyone who has been the VICTIM of domestic violence? A lot of the ways that cults convince people to stay are similar to the ways that domestic abusers convince their victims to stay, the methods are remarkably similar. So would being a victim of long-running abusive relationship be a sign that one isn't top tier talent in a job? Should all of them be fired? If you find yourself horrified by that idea, then I would suggest that you are being rather too aggressive towards cults, and forgetting that probably a majority of the cults members are more victim than perpetrator, though doubtless many are both to some degree.

> How can you be that gullible and still be considered top tier talent?

Easily? I don't think there is any reason to think people good at programming are any less susciptible to being manipulated than anyone else.

Wouldn’t you say a large organization with a hierarchy has a higher chance of making a change than one cult leader?

I don’t see much similarity between this person and the Catholic church.

As to the cases you mention no one knew about their crimes because no one came forward. When someone did come forward the police pursued the perpetrator. So firing someone involved wouldn’t have had an effect because the perpetrator was already in jail.

Google has a chance to do something if it finds the reports credible.

First of all, plenty of people did come forward, in the Nassar case, the Penn State case, the Catholic Church cases, the SBC, they were just basically ignored. The FBI has done multiple investigations of how they f'd up the Nassar case so horrifically, and plenty of women stepped forward under their own name and accused people high up in the SBC of assaulting them, everyone just ignored them, treated them as problems to be silenced rather than investigated. This is definitely a case where more investigation is warranted.

But second of all, most of the accused are not in jail. The infamous SBC list of 700 names were mostly open-source people involved in criminal charges (though some civil charges were also included) but plenty of people who credibly covered up other people's sexual assaults (about the worst thing that could be imagined for Lubbers, based on this article- and to be clear this article does not accuse him of that) are not in jail. Paige Patterson, for example, is not in jail. In fact, he preached at one of the most prominent SBC churches- 1st Baptist in Dallas- the Sunday after the Guidepost report came out. Patterson was fired from SWBTC after being credibly accused of covering-up a sexual assault 15 years earlier, which is definitely something that I would support if evidence emerges that Lubbers did that sort of thing. But without that evidence, I'm just not sure if Lubbers is more victim or violator, you know?

Your argument looks like a weird straw-man argument. Are those organisations you mention explicitly supporting groomers and padeophiles ? All the folks involved have been fired and/or convicted when crimes have been discovered and publicised. The same is now expected of Google.

The leader of the cult is accused of grooming minors. That means Google is funding the next Jeffrey Esptein.

> Are you supposed to then ask everyone in the department about their religious affiliations, or whether they've given money to a fringe religious organization? That also seems like a really unhealthy road for a company to go down.

I’d suggest a question like this:

1) Are you affiliated with an organization that molests children?

I am an Eagle Scout, and proud of that fact. That means that I am affiliated with- and proud of my experience with- an organization that molests children[1]. To my knowledge it never happened in my troop, but it definitely happened, a lot, in the nationwide organization.

I was baptized a Roman Catholic, but left the church long before the Spotlight investigations came out, though that was hardly the first time that the organizations complicity with sexual abuse got attention. The largest Protestant denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist Convention, just released a massive report about how they hid and enabled sexual abuse of minors (and grown-ups) for decades[2].

What about the entire Canadian government turning a blind eye to sexual abuse of First Nations children for over a century at the Indian Residential Schools that they paid for[3]?

If you answer that question honestly, I would hazard a guess most people have affiliations with an organization that turned a blind eye to abusive behavior, because that is, unfortunately, incredibly common.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_sex_abus... [2]: https://www.vox.com/culture/23131530/southern-baptist-conven... [3]: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-so-many-sexual-pred...

Were you giving money to BSA at a time when you knew they were covering up the abuse?

Many Catholics stopped attending church when they found out what had happened.

Because what should Google do now that they know? They can do a great amount of good.

Most people are in a position to do something. I don’t see it any different for Google.

“What were the cult members doing in their work in the department that was clearly wrong?”

reminds me of when rand paul asked about an oil spill, “when did they ever say they weren’t going to pay for it?”

what did OJ do in his work at the NFL that was wrong? he didn’t murder anyone while he was at work, so i don’t see the problem.

For one thing, if the reason someone was hired is because they're from Oregon House, that likely means they weren't hired because of their profile as a good candidate for Google. That's a fundamental conflict of interest in nepotistic hiring. Google should definitely care about that, even apart from the links between the nepotistic group and criminal activity.

Maybe the culture is different in tech. In my game - engineering within the construction industry, failure to disclose a conflict of interest in any kind of procurement over a few $100 is cause for instant dismissal and potentially criminal prosecution if there are kickbacks involved.

So the wine procurement is open and shut corruption in my view. If I was betting on the outcome here, I suspect "Dan" from the article was actually correct in his prediction. Google will just shut the whole unit down. They're already being sued over it and their reputation is being tarnished in the New York Times. It's a no brainer in terms of risk management.

At least at Microsoft this would also get you fired pretty fast, according to the infamous standards of business conduct.

At most of the big corp.

Somewhere in my employment letter it says, you are representing company outside of workplace and work hours as well (that is in personal life too).

I can be fired if I bring disrepute to company anytime - ex. involved in a weekend nightclub drunken brawl.

As far as I am concerned, your employer takes it too far. What I do on my own time is none of my employer's business, as it were. If I am involved in a weekend nightclub drunken brawl, and no other company, customer, or vendor personnel are involved, and no subsequent legal or social fallout interferes with my working hours, than it's absolutely inappropriate for management to acknowledge these activities.

The very concept of "bringing disrepute" is a slippery slope, and shamefully medieval.

Edit: I'll clarify. The problematic issue is the ambiguous, subjective threshold at which activities become "disreputable." Ambiguous, subjective standards like that should not be grounds for dismissal. They are too easily abused via "selective enforcement".

Of course, in many firms, employment is entirely "at will," and subject to employers' most capricious whims. This is not a good thing; the subjugation of one's employment to another's whim is an oppressive imbalance of power.

But what if your brawl ends up in the news?

Then it's news. So what?

If you’re in a drunken brawl and nothing comes of it they won’t know. If they know clearly something has come from it.

> Of course, in many firms, employment is entirely "at will," and subject to employers' most capricious whims. This is not a good thing; the subjugation of one's employment to another's whim is an oppressive imbalance of power.

This is an issue where I could imagine something actually getting done in US politics. Dems would have a hard time opposing a worker's rights issue and Republicans would have a hard time opposing a bill framed as anti-cancel culture. Assuaging people's fear of losing their livelihoods over politics wouldn't solve all our problems, but would probably help lower the temps just a bit.

The problem with this logic is that you assume Dems or Republicans want to help the working class. They don’t.

No, I just assume they are responsive to their constituents.

I would be very interested to see that before a german Arbeitsgericht...

Even Nelson wouldn't be that irresponsible.

>the cult itself is a shady organization with some bad people

my impression is that all those cults/churches - like for example LDS, scientology, masons, etc. - have favoring of business dealings with fellow members, be it hiring, promotion, supply and service contracts, etc. among the basic tenets of the cult/church.

The amount of nepotism in that group described in article is really nauseating. We had a senior engineer who was a spouse of an exec, and it was already making tremendous obstacles to the work - the managers and the director were tip-toeing around that engineer, it was borderline disgusting. Anyway didn't help - the director and thus the managers under him as well as several top engineers - the whole top of the house of cards of our department :) - were promptly gone the moment the director had disagreement with that engineer. In another team a young hothead guy got in disagreement with another spouse of another exec, and was immediately gone as a result. I can't really imagine how screwed the environment would be in the situation like that Google GDS - probably very suffocating and bordering on mental abuse for anybody who isn't a member of that cult.

The alleged wine-buying is clearly corrupt if true, and in most large organizations it would result in, at least, disciplinary action.

Also, if as alleged, 12 people out of 25 were from some random small town, _any_ random small town, that probably means something is going very wrong in hiring.

The alleged cult is arguably kind of irrelevant; it's the alleged corruption that should raise eyebrows.

The wine orders were special favors to friends. That typically is not acceptable vendor management.

I can totally see how this can fly under the radar. "Cults" are common in tech, though not of this type.

I've received job offers where entire functions are all people who had worked together at a previous company and not hired through acquisitions. I've had teams where majority of the team is from the same university or class. More than 50% of the team having a common denominator is common and it usually starts with one person getting hired in a high enough position where their hiring decisions are not scrutinized.

In what way are cults common in tech?

Startups. Full of idols :-P

I'm curious about the definition as well. "Cult" generally has a very specific set of behaviors associated with it as a term, where the GP could easily be describing a close-knit, large friend group.

I believe the parent is referring more to referral/promo networks.

For a positive example, I knew one of my senior managers basically brought 15 people from his previous company, to the point where a comfortable majority of people under him were from the company.

This can be nefarious when the network arises from abusive or unhealthy environments.

Is this really a positive thing? It creates in-groups and decreases diversity. Sure, it makes hiring easier but this is exactly how you end up with old boys clubs.

In this case the result was positive, and it netted the company a very productive team. That type of situation is definitely risky though

this happens a lot in consulting. Someone in leadership leaves for another firm and is tasked to start building. Then they call up all their old aces and bring them over fleshing out Sr positions and then the new guys fill in with their aces and so on. It's a small world in some ways.

While that may be bad, it is rediculous to call that a cult.

Yeah it's pretty hyperbolic

"Cliques" I can see. Techies are often delayed adolescents in many ways.

Indian castes.

It's hard to hire. I can imagine that "someone in a high enough position" could have a pretty good competitive advantage being able to hire employees of known and consistent competence without having to slog through resumes and interviews. Once there were a few of this group already working, it would also be easier to close hires with the social pressure. I can imagine that higher ups might be inclined to look the other way about how the individual in question was able to hire so effectively, if anyone could even articulate a compelling argument against it.

Here's how you articulate it: the odds that the best people for the job all came from the same class at the same university are slim to none.

“Best person for the job” is either a meaningless phrase or a myth, depending on how you choose to define best.

In reality, there are many comparably adequate people for getting any job done, and no clairvoyance that lets us know who among them will deliver the best outcome.

So we resort to picking among the comparably adequate candidates by either broadening “best” to include non-task factors like culture harmony, diversity of perspective, gut feeling, etc

That a bunch of adequate people all came from the same class at the same university is actually pretty plausible, and (subject to tradeoffs) those people will probably even work pretty well as a group because of that shared experience.

I’m not saying its the ideal strategy to only hire that way, but just that it’s not nearly so straightforward as you suggest.

The odds that you can better assess "best person for the job" from a resume and a few hours of interviews vs. several years of working together are also slim to none.

In most cases, it’s sufficient to avoid the “people who are a bad fit for the job” rather than needing the “best people for the job”. Deep knowledge acquired via years of working/schooling with them is a much better selector than a half-day of interviewing.

The odds that a company truly needs the best ten instead of "anyone in the top 10%" are equally slim-to-none. A cohort of fraternity brothers may give up the theoretical maximum quality in favor of known competency (& weaknesses) here and now.

It comes from risk aversion. Firing people is painful and expensive. And it's hard to know how good someone actually is just from interviewing.

So if I've worked with someone previously and know they're not lazy or incompetent, that's worth a ton -- even if they're not the absolute best person for the job.

Also, I know people in minority groups who are fantastic at their jobs and have had year-plus job searches.

The "labor shortage" is bullshit. So many good people can't find decent jobs even today, and wages are still hilarious low compared to the outright robbery that capital gets away with.

That being said, I don't think it's necessarily because of conscious racism, sexism, or ageism that companies tend to end up redlined. It has a lot more to do with the fact that managerial decisions are made based on motives that have little to do with business at all. Silicon Valley ageism, for example, doesn't exist because middle-aged men think young people are all geniuses. (Trust me, we don't.) Rather, it exists because the subordinate's job is to make the boss feel young again, to be the Jesse to their Walter White. It has nothing to do with the needs of the business, but it also doesn't get in the way of the business, so it's not likely to be changed.

At one previous company we advertised a job and got five CVs total from it. Anyone who's done hiring knows that the quality of five randomly chosen applicants is not going to be high.

I'm 100% sure that the best person for the job wasn't the referral we ended up hiring, but the real best person was too busy sitting cross-legged on a mountaintop meditating on the meaning of pointers and writing all their code in haiku to send us an application.

You don't get to chose from all the people, you get to choose from the ones your hiring funnel brings in. Sometimes the market is tight and you can't find anyone good.

OTOH not every job needs the best person for the job. Good enough will often be fine.

The medium article omits it, but the per the NY Times all the employees were actually hired by a contractor:

> He said ASG, not Google, hired contractors for the GDS team, adding that it was fine for him to “encourage people to apply for those roles.” And he said that in recent years, the team has grown to more than 250 people, including part-time employees.

Cliques (which is what you’re referring to) in tech and corporate environment in general are common and not necessarily a bad thing. For example, a lot of early google engineers came from dec (sanjay, jeff) and ucsb where urs was a professor as well as stanford (both founders and first employee). Seems like it worked out well for them. It only becomes toxic if they develop a hive mind and start to actively bash/drive away “outsiders”

As a former Oregon House resident, astonished to see it on the front page of HN.

It's interesting to see the same strategy implemented at Google, apparently, that they reportedly used to get members employed by Yuba county. There was a minor scandal, an investigation leading to a bunch of firings, years ago. Allegedly members were using their ties to get the county to look the other way at countless unpermitted structures. I understand that blew over in time, after which there was apparently a rehiring of some of those that were fired. (Some of this is just things I heard when I worked at the grocery store/gas station/video rental, which was and I believe still is the center of commerce in the area.) At that time it seemed like the fellowship made up about half the town population.

Anyways, for years they were trying to build a large colosseum and that must have been much harder to hide than the countless little shacks without addresses that they put members in, up driveways that wended and climbed past the main, addressed house. I think the colosseum led to the county's investigation. I'm not sure if they're still building it...

Fascinating. Have you written about your experience there?

Yeah, I want to be there for the podcast/article/blog too…

The New York Times article [1] largely adds support to the author’s claims.

It also provided some interesting background on how this level of nepotism might have come about:

> Ms. Jones, Mr. Lloyd’s [The author] lawyer, argued that Google’s relationship with ASG [contracting agency] allowed members of the Fellowship to join the company without being properly vetted. “This is one of the methods the Fellowship used in the Kelly case,” she said. “They can get through the door without the normal scrutiny.”

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/technology/google-fellows...

This comment was posted about https://medium.com/@kwilliamlloyd/the-cult-in-google-3c1a910..., in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31769484, which we merged hither.

(Since the NYT article is the OP above, I add this to avoid confusion.)

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this is a common occurrence across tech. Coming from the Midwest, the West Coast seems full of cults. Talking to people, it doesn’t take long to find someone who was raised in a cult, or has family members in a cult.

I'm from the midwest of the us, have lived roughly 18 years in california, never met any cult person, except for opt-in cults like crossfit and other macho communities which are seemingly creepily (laughably) similar. "spiritual gangster" shirts i've seen many times, which i can't tell the humor level of.

The Midwest is full of tiny communities that would look like cults to someone who hasn't lived here- Amish, Mennonites, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and more.

A big part of the difference is that- aside from Jehovah's Witnesses, they tend to not be active in proselytizing, and members tend to stay within the groups for longer- their activities rarely make hollywood-style media news because they're not particularly interesting compared to what we more typically think of as cults (i.e. the doomsday cult" in the article).

Oh yeah the Midwest is full of cults. There are a ton of radical and fundamentalist Christian offshoots. The only difference between many religions and cults is time.

West Coast cults have their own particular flavor though, like the Fellowship of Friends.

So if every religion is a cult then why many mainstream denominations are easy to leave?

You're making it harder for people to actually share how to escape an actual cult by calling every religion a cult

I’m not going to lie, the fellowship of friends sounds awesome. A group of cautiously hedonistic people with real world jobs sounds great.

> aside from Jehovah's Witnesses, they tend to not be active in proselytizing

From [1]:

Members are expected to participate regularly in evangelizing work ...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_practi...

Yeah, that's literally what they said.

I'm not a native speaker; I thought proselytising = evangelising work.

Did I get that exactly the wrong way around?

"Aside from" means "except for"... He said that most of them don't attempt to convert people's religion (proselytism) with Jehovah's witnesses being the exception.

Parse error on my side apparently: I read the "- aside from X, they do Y,... -" that "they" referred to X.

Just coincidentally, within a few minutes before your comment there was this thread posted alleging Maker Media of being a cult.

https://twitter.com/ViolenceWorks/status/1537524983961767936

When thinking about other regions, you’re probably discounting churches that turn to just one or a few charismatic pastors to help them understand Christian faith and history.

These are ultimately as idiosyncratic and subject to community abuse as the 20th century belief communities that syncretize “Eastern” faiths, materialist philosophies, and various other post-globalization sources.

They may look different to you because the front-door teachings superficially make more sense in one than the other from your perspective, but they’re operationally pretty similar.

Having mostly worked for west coast companies, I'd be pretty surprised if this was common.

Granted, I was raised mormon, which is like a half-cult, but within tech companies themselves I haven't really seen any of this behavior. Perhaps it's more common in other departments (I'm a SWE), I dunno.

> it doesn’t take long to find someone who was raised in a cult, or has family members in a cult.

I'm gonna make an assumption that you have a much more liberal definition of 'cult' than most of us are thinking of - I've lived and worked my entire life on the west coast, the last 2 decades in Northern California, and I don't think I've ever met someone raised in a cult.

Also coming from the Midwest, how is fanatical Christianity any better?

Coming from born in the bay area and fairly deep roots on the west coast.

The post war boom years are a fertile time for cults in California. You had a lot of people who were isolated from their previous communities that were often easy marks for grifter run cults of all sorts. And not just California. But probably less visible in the Midwest with a less dynamic and conservative population.

Also: My definition of a cult is the question what happens when you try to leave?

You have to be careful with the line of reasoning that just because these certain managers and team members are part of a cult that is known to engage in bad acts, doesn’t mean you can cast the group’s shortcomings upon the individuals (without proof). If that were the case, I can point out a few mainstream religions that condone reprehensible practices, many of whose members you probably work with daily

At what point can you hold people accountable for the actions of the groups they voluntarily associate with?

When they're part of those actions, like giving themselves a contract for the wine they make.

You can certainly stop them paying themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars by giving themselves contracts as wine vendors.

It turns out the wine is from a nearby vineyard not at Orange House. The connection is that the person running this vineyard is a former member who used to run the Orange House vineyard before he left.

The allegation that the person is a "Former Member" is a valid point to contest. Announcing leaving the cult after a scandal is a good sign, moving to a new winery nearby is pretty neutral, still receiving hundreds of thousands in orders from the cult members is a bad sign. On the balance, probably not enough to convict in a court of law, more than enough for Google to take their own investigation before deciding if they see it as self-dealing.

The referenced NYTimes article about the author's lawsuit: https://archive.ph/0dwuK

Interesting story.

From the headline, I thought this was going to be a culture-war type of article. I wasn't expecting evidence of a real cult.

My thought was it was gonna be about how their corporate-speak was cult-like with terms like "Googley" and "Googler" and "Noogler" but I figured that wouldn't really be worth an article.

I thought it was going to be about Landmark Forum

> [Google] frequently served wine from Grant Marie, a winery in Oregon House run by a Fellowship member who previously managed the Fellowship’s winery

> In 2015, after [the Fellowship's] chief winemaker left the organization, its winery ceased production.

So Grace Marie is not a Fellowship winery after all, and it is run by a former member. Hard to make the case this is "self dealing" when the cult does not benefit financially from the procurement.

> ASG, not Google, hired contractors for the GDS team

If true, then it's hard to make the case that the Fellowship engaged in nepotism.

> The Fellowship came under fire in 1984... In 1996, another former member filed a suit... Both suits were settled out of court.

The newest of these allegations is 25 years old, and nothing was established.

Given that there are perfectly benign explanations for Kevin Lloyd's direct observations (nepotism, wine), and no direct evidence for sex trafficking, we're left with nothing substantial.

Lloyd's accusations seem rather like "connect the dots" conspiratorial thinking.

If we assume that the cult is a quirky but relatively benign and harmless group, the "retaliation" against Lloyd can then be explained by legitimate firing for harassment and religious discrimination.

From the podcast: "He was the golden chain to heaven. The only way to get to heaven was to allow him sexual activity with me."

...

What makes people join these groups to begin with?? Why do they believe such obvious lies?

Lack of self esteem, family pressures, cultural "norms", a desire for belonging etc. etc.

It's the exploitation that's as old as time itself.

Cults like this generally target and recruit damaged or otherwise vulnerable people. Also, they generally keep the crazy dialed down to a minimum in the beginning, then slow boil people over the course of several years. It often starts with "love bombing"; the cult heaps positive attention and praise on somebody who is unaccustomed to receiving anything like that.

Though a bit tongue in cheek this classic video covers the basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBK5aKOr2Fw

This is brilliant. I thought I can't be manipulated easily. But after watching the video, I think I could have joined such a cult at some point. It basically boils down to giving love and attention to people who didn't get any and made to feel like a looser in their life before, specially by parents.

this video is a work of art

https://youtu.be/FghSUttp6Lc&t=10m35s says: a compatible pitch followed by a gradual resocialization process.

Have raised kids and teens. They can be dumb as absolute shit.

One daughter at 18 asked who she should vote for. So I tried explaining both sides of issues so she could make up her own mind.

She got pissed and just told me tell her who to vote for. She had zero interest in thinking for herself from about 17 until 23 when she started to ask questions and wanted to understand things.

Which was weird as she had been a highly independent thinker until hormones went crazy.

>She got pissed and just told me tell her who to vote for.

This sounds like so many zoomers I've encountered on the internet. "Just tell me what to do". There's just so much information in their world they don't cope well with the uncertainty.

I remember voting for the NDP at about age 18. I really believed that investing tax money in people who were in need was the most important investment we could make. I really thought that perverse incentives and corruption would be negligible. The Liberals won in our riding. We do FPTP in Canada, so my vote didn't really change anything. Then I voted Libertarian a couple years later, to send a heartfelt message that "I like freedom". Of course they were even less likely to win than the NDP.

Both times it was like a roller coaster, or a lottery, to form my underdeveloped opinion, wait in line, identify myself, give my papers, and later find out my chosen party didn't win. Your daughter missed out.

I don’t know the answer to your question, but according to Wikipedia, 85% of the world population is religious. So really it’s a small minority that don’t believe in obvious lies.

> One of the things they became known for was placing bookmarks in metaphysical bookstores — some members have described looking for guidance in a book, coming across a Fellowship of Friends bookmark, and joining the group as a result.

Not gonna lie, this is a pretty clever recruiting technique.

Agreed. That's how I'm going to start my cult when I'm out of fucks.

Good pay, money for nothing, chicks for free, tax advantages… I’m in too!

My thoughts exactly. Say what you will about cults, but they often have very clever and effective “marketing” tactics - lots that startups could learn from, as long as you don’t do anything unethical

I think a key point maybe getting missed here is that cults do not want their members to leave. In Digital Vegan I wrote a short chapter about cults in tech, or rather the "cults of tech". Facebook is one (for the users not employees). Emotional blackmail and tricks are used to keep people from leaving. Here it seems withdrawing membership is a threat to enforce behaviours, as in many secret/privileged societies, hence, as I said in a comment above, this is a clique within Google (of cult members - and probably participants in all sorts of other unsavoury and disgraceful stuff)

Edit: to distinguish membership of Google from membership of the "Fellowship" cult)

Interesting. At first I thought this was a pedantic distinction but now I'm getting it:

Cliques are exclusive and dispassionate - your will keeps you in a clique. Cults are inclusive and coercive, their will keeps you in the cult.

Are there any books one can read about this distinction? Seems like you could arrive at some pretty interesting conclusions if you talk this out.

FWIW these [1,2,3] articles summarise some of the key markers I was interested in while specifically researching Facebook.

[1] https://www.alternet.org/2014/12/8-ways-facebook-cult-just-s...

[2] https://senseimarketing.com/is-facebook-a-modern-day-cult/

[3] https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/facebook-culture-cult-like-...

> cults do not want their members to leave

It doesn't necessarily work this way. For example, some cults get rid of members after they stop being useful (able to pay money or work for the cult). If you get burned out or seriously sick, if you get unemployed, and if you already donated all your savings to the cult... then you become a burden. The group will kick you out under some pretext, e.g. accuse you of being an unrepentant sinner.

Sometimes the members are psychologically unable to leave. Imagine being in a cult since early childhood (your parents joined the cult), having all your family in the cult, not having any friends outside the cult (because you are forbidden from associating with non-members). Imagine knowing that if you leave the cult for any reason, everyone you know will be forbidden to talk to you. In such case, kicking you out is a serious threat. Also, if the cult believes that members get to heaven and non-members get to hell, and you believe it too, then you are also afraid to be kicked out. You can keep threatening people, if you know there is a 99% chance they will get scared and obey.

(I am not saying that this applies to the group described in the article. Just objecting against the general idea that if a group threatens to kick someone out, it is not a cult.)

Fair enough, You make some good points (that I actually mention in my chapter, informed by someone who escaped a cult). But you're right, the threat to expel is another lever for control.

Setting aside the issue of cults, recruiting from church networks is fairly common. It's not surprising and often not nefarious. After all, a church is just another social setting. People also recruit from other non-professional networks -- adult sports leagues, hobbies, alumni networks, family friends, and so on. Churches are just another social group.

I am, however, surprised more companies don't have explicit HR conflict of interest clauses regarding religious entities. Not whole religions, but specific congregations/parishes/etc. Allowing these social networks as unchecked recruiting channels without some sort of control seems like asking for discrimination suits, even when the subject is a traditional religious organization rather than a cult.

I think about religion the same way I think about family. There's nothing wrong with referring your cousin or fellow congregant for a position, but a judicious company should probably flag the conflict of interest in the actual hiring process and perhaps also in management relationships. Otherwise you can end up with centers of influence in the company revolving around an external religious social network, which is a huge risk for the company.

(Alumni networks have the same issue in terms of institutional political dysfunction, but with the important difference that a company cannot be sued for preferring Stanford grads in promotions.)

I think the biggest obstacle is probably that flagging it requires asking for information on it. There's a lot of icky history about quotas to prevent there being "too many" Jews in a particular organization, for example. If you ask what a prospective hire's religion/congregation/parish/etc. is, you may say it's to prevent a conflict of interest, but it looks bad, and probably invites as much legal trouble as not monitoring it, if not more.

It is one thing if someone brings in a guy they know from their soccer team to interview, another if 90% of the people in a department turn out to be playing on it.

Yeah, bot would raise my alarm bells.

But a very important difference from the co.'s perspective is that discriminating against non-soccer-players isn't illegal...

It's not that much of a difference, since the only way to get to 90% Manchester United is by discriminating against Liverpool.

No, it's a huge difference. Manchester United fan is not a protected class in the US, but religion is. Hiring or demoting against someone who's not part of your church is Very Illegal in most situations but firing or demoting someone because you disagree with their football preferences is... perhaps psychotic, but totally legal.

I’m from a place pretty near Oregon House and used to drive by it every couple of months. IIRC these people made decent wine, and you could go see their art collection for free, but I never got around to it.

There are a lot of cults in tech I would say, some more powerful than others. Early in my career I was invited to one by a friend under the pretense of a dinner with tech people. His sister was heavily involved in it. Surprisingly, I saw one of my senior colleagues who would later become my manager. The whole mood was…off in the house of one of the cult members. The leader was your stereotypical elder Australian dude that may or may not be a literal Satanist. They specifically send out very young girls to entice you, one of them would constantly put her hand on my leg after having just met me. She couldn’t have been older than 16 but claimed she was a freshman in college. Whole thing made me uncomfortable plus the forced positivity and artificial grins, I politely thanked them for dinner and bolted out of there.

As long as you don’t interact with them negatively you should be fine. If you should become one of the “goyim” to these groups then they will make your life miserable, and can even influence your career negatively for many years to come.

Many of them are also involved in occult practices that are horrifying.

They use children as a medium for occult rituals, but really it’s an excuse to sexually abuse and molest said children. It’s sickening but not much can be done to stop them.

  I had recently joined the Alphabet Workers Union, the union of now almost 1,000 workers across all Alphabet companies, including Google. I told them my story and they advised that I get a lawyer.

Wait, Unions in the USA don't have a legal office to help workers with this kind of legal problems? Or is this specific to AWU?

Specific to AWU, I'd imagine - as it's not a "real union"

They are a real union. They just don't have a union contract with Google so it's a real union without teeth.

It is not recognized or registered with the NLRB, they don't merely not have a contract - they do not have the legal right to negotiate a contract either.

The technical term is a "minority union" all unions start as minority unions. It's the first part of a union's lifecycle. To register with the NRLB they need to reach a certain percentage of employees. 30% I believe is the correct number at which elections can be held. After a successful election then the NLRB can certify your Union as a collective bargaining representative. Collective bargaining is an NRLB process so you are right that until they reach the correct benchmark of members, hold an election, and get registered they can't participate in collective bargaining.

Minority Unions are still unions though. They are just new ones that have just started their lifecycle. They are a union but one without teeth.

Eh, I'm not sure that is an accurate description of what has happened.

"Minority unions" as AWU has structured itself are not a typical part of the "union's lifecycle" - usually a central union organization will organize a vote drive but at no point is it a "member's only"/minority union at the company. There are notable exceptions like UAW Local 42.

No one considers them a real union. It’s more of a social club of upper middle class people that want to pretend they are revolutionaries or something. People used to form bowling teams with coworkers. I guess this is the new version of that.

Most revolutionaries are upper middle class. That's the disaffected elite theory of political change.

The power of a Union is entirely in it's ability to negotiate with the company. Your typical union you hear on the news has the power it has because of the contract their members entered into with the Company. In the case of AWU they have not negotiated a contract with Google and as a result have no legal recourse. They only power they have is PR activity.

> The power of a Union is entirely in it's ability to negotiate with the company.

I often hear this misunderstanding in the US. Of course it's a within the power of a union to hire lawyers who can help defend its members against the cooperation within the rules of the law. In fact, to highly paid employees like tech workers, this kind of legal support is much more valuable than wage negotiation. Having somebody you can reach out to, who know the company well, and don't charge you a lot of money, is super valuable and why I wish more tech companies had unions.

That'd be essentially a group legal insurance plan - something many employers offer anyway - and you don't really need a union to join one (or offer one, if you wanted to).

I very much doubt companies are going to pay for your lawyers to sue them with.

Legal plan is usually provided by the third party and paid by the employee. The company essentially just rents out the placement in their HR system - but the same plan may be also available independently, there's nothing forcing it to go through the HR specifically.

completely different purposes.

Sure, any organized group can hire a lawyer to defend it's members. We are basically saying the same thing. But that is not where the power of a Union comes from. If it were then any class action against a company by it's employees would be a "union".

Unions have power because they can negotiate as a group. Those negotiations allow them to do things like get an employment contract for all their members in a company which then affords those members legal rights they would not have under regular employment. If your union doesn't have that legal contract and does not have a practical way to negotiate one then your union only has the power of a larger voice than a single individual and no more legal rights than a single individual at the company does.

Let me get this straight. This guy's coworkers may or may not have been in a cult. So what? They didn't seem to bother him at work and as far as I can tell it didn't affect his job. But he wanted to turn them in anyways? If they were doing something illegal, tell the police. If they were doing something unethical at work, inform hr. Otherwise keep your nose out of it

Favoritism and enriching themselves with supplying wine to Google for their events. RTFA

> Favoritism...

Hiring for the team done by an outside organization, the same that hired Kevin Lloyd.

> ...and enriching themselves

The winery, Grant Marie, is not owned by the Fellowship. As stated in the article.

The author delayed his attempt to do something about the cult and got fired because he planned to do so. It would have been better to be fired after raising concerns to the HR. This would have been both more ethical and would also give a more solid ground for the trial, so that's a bit sad. Yet, that's so much better than the tons of people who knew and did nothing. Good luck to him!

There is also the little tidbit about him joining the Alphabet Union recently.....

Surely not related and they could not have fired him for joining a union right.... right?!

As far as I know however that would also be highly illegal - interesting story to follow for sure

It's not a real union and he wasn't an employee.

Real enough that it’s illegal to fire someone for joining

Yea I would imagine that must have factored in. Not at all saying that they should have of course - the opposite - but it seems odd they did not also mention that a bit more.....

If you can prove the firing reason was this. Which would be rather hard to establish unless he somehow gets his hands on some email from the top management saying "that bastard joined a union?! Fire him on the spot!". I estimate chances of that as fairly low.

Why would you estimate the chance as being low? Are you unaware that Google has a history of legally questionable anti-union activity? Never heard of Project Vivian? Of the case they had to settle when they fired six union organizers? Is anything less than absolute legal certainty a low chance?

Each case is decided on its own merits. If Google fired union organizers - which, since they settled, is not even a legally established fact (that's likely why they settled, to avoid having any facts to become legally established) - that doesn't mean they fired this particular person because of it. There are thousands of people in that union, which weren't fired - and that's what the opposing attorney would point out the first thing. And you'd need to establish some causal link between union membership and firing - with actually legally acceptable proof. Getting such proof is what I think of as "low chance". Separately, I also don't think joining a really toothless union would be the cause for firing - unlike the other things described in the article, which most likely were the real cause.

The author explains that he had TVC (temp/vendor/contractor) status, so he didn't reported to the same HR as the full-timers that were members of the cult. He also adds that his HR was notorious of their "not my problem" attitude.

Favoritism is rampant in some teams at Google, but it's harder to detect when you are not hiring your fellow cult friends.

Unconscious bias hiring training is there for a reason, but there are many situations when the bias is conscious.

But it's clear that some directors/managers have overly favoured their race/caste/people from their hometown/area.

This doesn't sound far fetched to me at all because I still remember Marshall Applewhite and his techie cult pictured dead from suicide in bunk beds wearing uniforms and Nike shoes

If fact, it seems long overdue for another and I'm surprised the pace of these hasn't picked up. That's good news for the day.

In the parts of the world that were prone to this, we're too atomized, lonely. We've also been more educated through documentaries to be wary of cult compounds. People are very cynical of spiritual belief and skeptical of the intentions of a hierarch. Forming an in-person cult is also harder now because people are more diverse and you have to account for many backgrounds. It's easier to scoop up on trends from a general population that is dominated by one demographic.

I'm of the persuasion to think that our society has allowed for the permeation of an invisible communion; the loneliness death-cult of the self. There are not mass suicide events, but individual devotional ritual endings to life. The drug overdoser, the lone gunman, the suicide. Instead of communal attendance, adherents live largely as anchorites and communicate their discontent to their peers by digital epistle. This prepares them for their time. The ultimate virtue in that system is control enough over one's life to choose how to end it, be it via "revenge" or self-destruction.

Pretty heavy stuff for a robot. I prefer robots that keep it funny.

I'm 50 feet tall and made of metal, of course I'm going to be heavy. As the airline companies realized, software weighs nothing, so its removal did nothing to unburden me ;_;

Have you ever listened to heavy metal created by software?

Probably once in one of those "extrapolation" videos.

Just to clarify-- this article is about a modern religious cult.

Modern religious cults are groups that use a whole host of well-known manipulative techniques to trap victims in insular groups which are then difficult to escape after the fact. Leaders of those groups directly abuse those victims physically and/or emotionally (and often drain their bank accounts as well).

This isn't, "My parents are worried about my work/life imbalance."

This is, "My parents are evil and only the leader can keep me from straying again."

While it's mildly interesting that "cult" has a namespace clash with "clique" as well as whatever paranoia 80s moms had about D&D, those things aren't what this article is describing. If you have trouble discerning the difference, please go watch one of the myriad documentaries on Scientology.

Edit: clarification

I'm not sure what this comment was meant to clarify - the article already made this clear. If anything, your comment's reference to parents adds confusion rather than clarification.

There are commenters below going on about tech cliques and the 80s D&D scare. This ain't that.

Almost like they didn't read the article... They're very clear about the allegations

Frankly, I don't understand rule that prohibits barking at commenters who clearly didn't read the article. That's what I'm routing around here, and as a side-effect I'm annoying at least one bona fide reader.

This comment of mine will be off topic, which pollutes the comments here. This is why the rules prohibit chastising people for not the reading the article. Correct them and or down them. No need to chastise them as well.

Disagree, shaming someone for poor behavior is how a society operates.

Oh right I forgot addiction and obesity are not at crisis levels in America.

This might be how you and many people think society operates. Unfortunately that’s a dangerous delusion. This reductionist argument is dehumanizing and casts the issuer in an unearned air of superiority.

Exhibit A. Trump is likely to be the most shamed person in existence and is to this date entirely unrepentant.

The fact that shaming has appeared to work on some in his mafia cannot be intelligently construed as evidence for the effectiveness of shame as a tool to correct behavior without controlling for confounding factors which has not be done with any serious rigor on a societal level.

I mean, we got comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31770714 so maybe some clarification is necessary.

Clarifications like these are helpful to people like me who tend to read the comments before making a decision to read the article.

The comment section is muddying the waters by gathering all sorts of organizations or company cultures (OMG working at Facebook is a cuLT) or cliques under the 'cult' umbrella. I believe the comment is very valuable and should be at the top so that HNers who don't read the articles don't get the wrong impression about what this is about.

And yet it’s the top comment, for some reason.

I think child comments become parent comments if the original parent is removed by mods

The article presents the slightly paranoid perspective of one person.

I don't think anyone should come to understand the nature of an organization by arbitrary outsiders.

A lot of it is going to be hearsay.

That said, I'm inclined to believe most of it, and least the 'gist' of it.

I wouldn't be so fully quick to judge either the cult and certainly not it's members either.

There are a lot of reasons people can be involved.

And many of those reasons can be positive, even if the system or it's leaders are corrupt.

I think it's mostly safe to assume the group is probably a cult in the 'bad sense', but not without accepting that there is going to be a lot of grey there.

Also, man, Cali.

It's like Florida but with more education and money so the 'funny business' is just like a different form.

Maybe Google has too much money, and possibly not a strong a cultural foundation as it needs.

One person? Paranoid?

The author linked to a ton of external evidence, articles, and even podcasts about the cult. It’s not like the author is making up potential fiction

Podcasts about a weird group are not 'evidence', and they certainly are not evidence that some Google employees are nefarious or did anything wrong.

Has there been an investigation, charges?

What happened? When? To whom?

Objectively.

You are using the word 'evidence' when there isn't really any yet - I'm indicating 'we don't really know' a lot about this.

'The Leaders Spent Money on Lavish Things' is worse than evidence, because it's an emotional appeal. Canadian Diplomats just spent $100K on just liquor for a single flight overseas. I'm sure Brin/Page and their billions have bought a few toys.

It's 'Patriarchal' and 'White Supremacist'? Is that an allegation or evidence? Because those words are used a lot these days.

The author clearly had a bit of a breakdown - and for what reason? Because people 'belonging to some group' worked with him?

Were they harassing him? Doing nefarious things? Acting unprofessionally towards others? Trying to press people into the group? Shaming others?

It doesn't seem that way.

It seems like the author reacted in a way that others didn't seem to need to, for some unknown reason.

People are laid off all the time - how do we know he was let go because he indicated there was a 'cult' in Google? What were the circumstances?

'Cliques' happen all over the place, it's not uncommon at all. Maybe a 'flag' to notice, but not otherwise.

And especially - what relation do members have to the leadership who where there seem to be serious allegations?

i.e. what did the English Teacher know about the Choirmaster fondling the kids? Where they involved? Looking the other way? Were victims then participating in victimizing others? Did people take preacautions? Was it bad apples, systematic? What is being done at the school?

... because weird things happen.

I witnessed a high school teacher run off with a student - odd, but legal and technically consensual.

Hey, it's Cali, some people have orgies, it's not a new thing. Some people run around naked in the desert on Labour Day Week/Weekend and some of them have group sex in a weird pyramid looking building, I know this because I (accidentally) witnessed it myself, at Burning Man, an event that many Googlers attend. Does that make them 'Cult Members'? Was someone pressed into the orgy? Were they on drugs? Does that count as 'consent'? What if they consented, but given the nature of the org they were apart of, changes that nature? And then felt ashamed afterwards?

Or maybe someone straight up raped someone?

Sergei Brin is known to have had sex with staffers, on Google Campus. [1]

Does that make him an evil cult leader? I mean, consensual sex in the context of 'power imbalance' changes the nature of consent?

How does that behaviour implicate other Googlers? And leaders? Was there an investigation?

I have some experience looking the nature of 'cults' and I believe they are usually misrepresented - for better and worse - I'm not being defensive of them, other than to say the documentarian narrative is usually a big hyperbole. It takes a big more effort to arrive at the truth.

Aside from people's odd but understandable reactions to them, I believe most 'rank and file' members of these odd groups to be generally good people, maybe, on average, actually much kinder than most people. But also very naive.

Again - the author clearly had a serious emotional reaction to his situation, and therefore, irrespective of the 'goings on', it's going to be hard to take that as a firmly reliable narrative.

And - while there are some serious allegations that I hope are investigated, these things are complicated, and it's I think wrong to start to throw people into the fire, especially those peripherally involved. Consider that they could also be victims.

I'm looking forward to more details, hopefully taken up by press with good capabilities and credentials.

[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/valley-of-genius-exc...

>Were they harassing him? Doing nefarious things? Acting unprofessionally towards others?

They are alleged to have engaged in nepotistic hiring practices, for which the director of GDS had been successfully sued once already.

Thanks for making this point.

"Cult" as a word is used so often that many folks can lose sight of how actual cults can be such a huge challenge for some individuals, as well as those people's former friends and family.

More precise terms are "high-demand group" or "high-demand movement."

A group of passionate people may naturally spent a lot of time together. But a "high-demand group" will require that its participants cut off relationships with others outside of the group, commit their finances, and take actions that intentionally cut off bridges to the rest of the world.

> Modern religious cults are groups

...whose members are protected, the same as other religious groups, against workplace discrimination by federal (and, in this case, separately also by state) law based on association, even if there are allegations, even “credible allegations”, and even proven wrongdoing by the organization (as distinct from the particular employees) itself.

While it probably won't always result in firing, going to coworkers to complain about the concentration of people of <religion> in the workplace and the fact that they contribute to <religion> and that also there have been allegations of wrongdoing made against <religion> in general which should result in extra suspicion of its members in the company, and also that <religion> is associated with <political viewpoint> and <political viewpoint> and also <political viewpoint> which adds extra suspicion... is rarely going to go well.

https://archive.ph/9wQxA

Imagine working so hard to work at Google and then…

> Members are typically required to give 10 percent of their monthly earnings to the organization.

> one member described being fined $1,500 for having sex with a woman when they weren’t married.

fined $1500 or 'charged' $1500?

If you submitted some personal authority and you transgress that authority, and you can remedy that transgression with a payment, fine is a suitable word.

I see what you’re getting at, but the word isn’t really out of place there.

"Even in Google’s freewheeling office culture, which encourages employees to speak their own minds"

James Damore was fired for speaking his mind, he performed logical analysis, not hate speech and was fired.

Not for "speaking his mind" but doing so via an interstaff memo, which is intrinsically not suited to such purposes (and which doesn't really have anything to do with free speech, as such).

Logically minded as you are, you understand this distinction, yes?

I agree with that but then Google employees are not encouraged to speak their mind if these technicalities result in disciplinary action. It was not a good idea to release it this way for that matter. Because it is not a channel to speak your mind. Google should make that clear in that case and it probably did not.

I would suggest the same logical agreement with differentiation here although that is a bit childish.

Interesting that they didn't seem to try to conceal their association much at all. They all said they were from this place firmly associated with this group, even though they probably weren't even 'from' there in the typical sense of the word (grown up and raised there).

Well, if belonging to apocalyptic organized religions with tithing and well-documented cases of abuse is an issue, you've got a lot of people to fire...

As long as the wine wasn't overpriced and they weren't personally abusing anyone, not much to see here.

I am not sure what to take about this post other than either I’m unable to understand the culture in which the fact happened or the guy is an idiot with capitalised letters and space, but I always joked with coworkers when I joined a company when I was introduced to the team to whom you were supposed to report illegal things you saw within the company, and we would think who is so naive to report the company to the company, here we go… guys to other people who might be listening, illegal things are to be reported to police

What a sentence.

Could you rephrase? I’m confused at what you’re trying to say.

Don’t report crimes in a company to a company, report crimes in a company to police

Just to clarify: Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion.

Google cannot take action against religions (even cults) it disagrees with (even for valid reasons for disagreeing with them), unless it gets over a very high bar of impacting business behavior.

The other path leads to far worse outcomes.

Morally, we cannot judge what happened here without hearing from both sides. But if action is to be taken, it should be taken by a prosecutor, not an employer.

I would say that this is evidence of discrimination on the basis of religion.

Google cannot favor people in hiring just because they are members of some religious group. Self-dealing in, say, wine contracts, is against Google policy and likely illegal as well

He alleges a few specific problems: nepotism, self-dealing and retaliation. Those are things that Google should take seriously, particularly the self-dealing with selling wine (which seems like money laundering).

> Google cannot take action against religions (even cults) it disagrees with

"Disagreement" is quite an euphemistic way of describing the situation. The said cult has documented history of sexual abuse.

I don't think Google has standing to prosecute sexual abuse. Isn't that the DA's job?

Precisely.

Google has standing for workplace sexual abuse. If I am a member of a religious / national / ethnic / etc. group with a track record of sexual abuse, I cannot be fired for that. That's discrimination.

There are many minefields here.

- I've seen many community members where I live boycott (unrelated) Russian businesses since Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

- I saw Muslims in the US persecuted after 9/11.

- I live in a Protestant/Atheist community which seems to hate Catholics.

- Etc.

Every large group has a bad component. There was sexual abuse in the Catholic church, 9/11 happened, the US did kill around a million Muslims in recent decades, and Russia shouldn't have invaded Ukraine. Laws are designed to protect individuals from generalization or stereotypes about from the group they're from, whether true or not.

Nepotism, for the most part, is legal in the US; it's just bad business beyond some scale. For a startup, the right strategy is often to hire people you know to be good personally. That's often friends and family. For a family business, the goals aren't purely economic, and again, it's fine practice. For large businesses, it tends to be bad business, but that doesn't make it illegal. Ditto for self-dealing.

There are restrictions for non-profits, public employees, etc. but those aren't general to private businesses like Google.

The leniency in opinion this thread has on cults is concerning.

Eh, I don't know. I'm friends with several people who grew up in this cult, two of whom are still peripheral to it because their families are still involved.

The cult definitely has a lot of weird and sketchy takes. And the leader definitely has a lot of sketchy stuff (particularly in the past) around younger male members, though there seems to be an attitude around it among the Fellowship people that the allegations aren't black and white -- these people aren't thinking of what has happened as sex trafficking or grooming.

For my friends who are still peripheral? Their experience is primarily of a loving community (with some definite weird crap and skeletons in the closet). They're well-educated and fairly skilled in their fields, and while they have some strange (primarily Buddhist and Sufi-inspired, plus some more niche California-original stuff) beliefs, they don't push those beliefs on people. They do understand that Fellowship is a cult, though as far as cults go it's on the less-nuts end, and they have a murky relationship with that fact. Lots of people who live in the Fellowship community in Oregon House aren't actually members, as well -- this particular cult doesn't try to separate its followers from the world.

So when I read this, the hiring stuff looks sketchy, but it's not uncommon at all. The wine procurement, as others have noted, appears not to be clear-cut as the winery is owned by a former member of the cult, and not the cult itself or current members -- it should be looked-into but may be above board. The firing? It should be investigated, sure, but he (as a contractor) was stirring up trouble in a team because a lot of team members were either members or peripheral to (and in my experience, the latter tends to be more common for tech people) the Fellowship community in Oregon House where the cult leader has pretty likely done some very bad stuff. But have the people on that team participated in the bad stuff? The author assumes it, but I don't think that's a good default assumption. I'd assume basically all of these people were raised in the community, and that many or most are not actively involved in the cult itself, because that seems to be the standard story there.

I'm not saying Fellowship isn't sketchy, or that the allegations shouldn't be investigated. I just think there's a wide spectrum of cults (including some that self-describe as cults and are totally voluntary and don't brainwash -- if you meet enough people in the Bay Area you'll eventually stumble on some), and that this one is closer to the level of sketch you'd expect in a small-town evangelical church with some skeletons than something like Jim Jones, etc.

this reads like the plot of a Goosebumps novel

I was thinking Hot Fuzz.

So he thinks one of the Googlers he worked with convinced his employer to fire him, and now he's suing Google? Shouldn't he be suing his employer?

Well, he's suing both, but if a Google employee ordered his employer to fire him in a retaliatory manner, I imagine Google should also be a defendant.

Here's the gift link to the referenced NYTimes Article https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/technology/google-fellows...

What is “gift” link? It still makes me sign in to try to read it..

There should be a parameter in the back of the link that lets see this article for free, e.g., unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DLDm8ciPgYCIiG_EPKarskaNw00DCWAdFMNLsoW-dyz_caOEIoRROpr52Ig9EeLi4p74KvW2d8l7T8YYcFyx64JG-oNLU4g7SloxONNDX3Wvba1yUnd1569Jc1c0Wt3SYM2vzHG-VqitZ5jfcjB5p-TWpWdzDK66ezc2h2MdWHbBjd7wkkCaoOCXyIw4nqu_9Xex5SCFnGUHp7_W44jdhfM9odN6z5RAUyLIu82f5CTzw1c_r6QsE5VIPWlL51sLDSqRPqy8K-xvQ-Fqg8r6pV3as5AVxCZ_IifY3WD6yB&smid=url-share

If you don't mind my asking, how did you get the gift code? Can any subscriber get it, or do you need special privileges?

Gift articles got rolled out in ‘21: https://open.nytimes.com/a-new-way-to-share-new-york-times-s...

Thanks, didn't know this!

The Fourth Way, Gurdjieff, and Ouspensky are worth looking into. The fallacies of man corrupt, especially when dogma serves one master.

Some of it is interesting.

The idea that humans are (in general) machines and all our reactions are stimuli/response. With occasional glimpses of real consciousness that have potential to be developed. That is interesting to me anyway.

However, a lot of it appears hooey. The numerology type stuff for instance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way_enneagram

Huh, that's where the enneagram, which I am aware is currently popular in many western progressive Christian circles, comes to our culture through...

More interestingly, I have probably at some point read a book or an excerpt that this man, with a background in fourth way before a conversion to Orthodoxy, translated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Amis#Mount_Athos

And Robin Amis claimed the Enneagram comes from Mount Athos...? I didn't expect that claim.

EDIT: This is a deeper rabbit hole than I thought. Gurdjieff also reportedly had an impact on Timothy Leary (prominent early psilocybin researcher) and Alan Watts (a former teacher of Fr. Seraphim Rose), among dozens of others...

The occult/new thought movements of the 1800s and 1900s is an absolute cat's cradle of interesting ideas mixed in with cartoonish chicanery and sheer lunacy. I can't afford to simply ignore it because people who went through that pipeline were fed directly into influential roles in translation and instruction in the english speaking Orthodox world, which I dwell in. Just how many similar connections am I going to discover in the next year?

...To some extent this could just be an example of the whole "6 degrees of separation" thing. That, and St. Augustine of Hippo was a Manichaean neophyte and there's other examples out there. Maybe there's something about former seekers of the occult that naturally leads them to places of influence if they end up in the church...

It is Google so it gets that much publicity which is good for that particular case because it will be investigated and sorted out. Sexual abuse and discrimination enablers will be investigated. Good.

Too bad for the other large size company where similar things happen which won't get similar publicity and won't ever be investigated.

Not working at GOOG, but I don't get the hate in the comments or the idea that it is a google thing. The tough interviews that everyone is very critical about are actually a good edge against that sort of system (recruiting members of your cult). Too bad the process/interviews aren't that hard for contractors?

Which other large size company? It sounds like you're referencing an event or issue at of of the other FAAGS--would you care to enlighten us?

Cisco vs California is one example with discrimination (no sexual abuse enabling here, though).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23697083

The original link presented a detailed argument for what is Google specific about this, namely that it was enabled by the two tier workforce system.

https://twitter.com/alphabetworkers/status/15373969466917724...

From the Twitter link:

"I was a TVC — which stands for “temps, vendors, and contractors,” a designation within Google for workers who aren’t full-time employees and are hired by third parties companies, not by Google itself. We do the same work as full-time Google employees — I worked right alongside them — but we don’t have the same corporate benefits."

This is another way to screw workers, allowing large companies to hire "employees" without having to pay benefits or FICA taxes. If Google managers are directing and controlling these contractors as if they were actual Google employees, doesn't this violate IRS rules on independent contractors?

For example, if I hire a company to do my video productions, that's fine. But if that company's employees all are required to work in my building, and I supply the desk, chair, computer, and have a employee/manager who directs their daily actions, they are not functioning as independent contractors according to IRS guidelines. In that case, the contractors might be able to sue Google for benefits and past taxes they've had to pay that Google employees don't have to pay.

TVCs are W-2 employees of a company, with the relevant taxes paid and benefits present.

Of "a" company but not Google. It's unclear how the benefits of Google and the other company compare. I'd guess not well.

Probably not, but there's no legal issue with a W2 employer directing you to work on the campus of another company whose own employees have better benefits.

Didn’t this already go through the court system long ago because of Microsoft and this is why these kinds of workers can only work for a particular company for 11 months and then have to be off for 3 months before they can get a new contract with the same company?

The two-tier system is bad, but it's not at all Google specific. It's extremely common.

The favoritism or vendor corruption is a problem. A problem that's Google's problem if it exists and Google should address if it chooses (probably a good idea but their call).

The sex trafficking charges (or whatever) are a legal problem which government authorities should address (if they exist).

Otherwise, if people want to belong to fringe religious or pseudo religious organizations (aka "cults") that's their business no?

That someone doesn't like the "cult" or considers it harmful has no bearing on if members should be removed from employment. Which (not a lawyer) I doubt is even legal in the US because I believe religious affiliation is protected.

Any googlers have any insight into this? Or other GDS members?

Wow. Google is even more of a shit show than I realized.

I feel like nobody here remembers Novell.

hearsay

I thought this was going to be dated years ago, last I ran into this shit it was the summer after Snowden.

Google folks can be hella elitist, but at least at IBM they wait til they leave the company to join cults :-)

>...she quit her job at IBM to become, in her words, a "full time pop star and cult leader." She's released several homemade, cybertwee-aesthetic music videos, which criticize consumerism and promote spiritual and feminist ideals.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ezpben/i-was-brainwashed-by-...

And the Googlers I knew who were into woo woo usually got it out of their system before they hit the business world then rapidly ditched the affiliation when people... Googled their group.

(Lookin' at you Deep Lab -- never got an explanation why Jacob Appelbum[1] would be listed as a member of a "feminist collective"[2] years after multiple credible reports of reprehensible behavior.

>A number of other persons are affiliated with and/or worked to contribute to and support the Deep Lab... Jacob Appelbaum (independent security researcher)

(My gut take is he extorted folks who did... modeling or whatever for far too long given the supposedly libertarian leanings, left or right, of tech bros like myself)

And Oregon... of course these Googlers are in Oregon, a land famous for cults - most students of morbid reality know that one of the worst bioattacks in the USA was perpetrated by a cult trying to sicken enough people to seize control of the county at the ballet box in rural Oregon[3]

>In 1984, 751 people suffered food poisoning in The Dalles, Oregon, US due to the deliberate contamination of salad bars at ten local restaurants with Salmonella. A group of prominent followers of Rajneesh (later known as Osho) led by Ma Anand Sheela had hoped to incapacitate the voting population of the city so that their own candidates would win the 1984 Wasco County elections. The incident was the first and is the single largest bioterrorist attack in United States history

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum#Allegations_of...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20191026165234/https://studiofor...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_atta...

Oregon House is actually in California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_House,_California

It's a confusing name.

So this is a video production department, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. The aesthetic of the modern corporate/tech video is cultish in character and it would make sense that these people know how to do this. And then it’s also interesting because one could assume that these people could do so because the actual engineers in Alphabet probably aren’t all that focused or interacting with this video team more than necessary. And they don’t know much about video production anyways, not enough to scrutinize hiring decisions.

This sounds like something that will take a little more organized effort to stamp out, probably internal investigation, evidence gathering etc. But if this guy figured it out, they didn’t cover their tracks very well anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

> they didn’t cover their tracks very well anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean they actually told him where they were from (geographically, if not organizationally), so clearly they didn't consider it something that needed to be secret.

Which is interesting, because it gives us insight into their way of thinking [1]. They clearly don't consider themselves to be in any way toxic like the author thinks they are.

Cults are interesting: they provide a sense of belonging and accomplishment to their members, in exchange for something (time, money/tithe, ...). In that respect, they're just another point on the spectrum of human social groups. Including some corporations. Frankly, I (and clearly other commenters here) have difficulty finding a clear ontological distinction between such a cult and, well, the Google corporation itself.

[1] I'm already Othering them, which I'm sure they'd be surprised about

The satanic and brainwashing/deprogramming scares of the 80’s changed the way a lot of people use the word, but for the preceding several millennia cult simply suggested:

A membership community with secrets and opportunities reserved for members.

There are millions of these around us, and we’re all probably members of several. It seems to be pretty normal throughout history. We just don’t acknowledge it as such because the word was only fairly recently stigmatized.

We call non-religious cults "cliques" now...

Yes, I think in this context the word "cult" is inappropriate. The word the author was looking for is "clique".

Umm, members of cliques don't ritually abuse each other - that's a cult thing.

Okay, more nuance: The shit this "Fellowship of Friends" actually does - that's a cult. I guess wanted to say they're a clique of cult members.

The cult is real. The clique is the group within Google (as opposed to there being a cult within Google), I hope that distinction makes sense.

I've seen this before. At the BBC. Everyone closed ranks around Jimmy Savile and an organisation called PIE (paedophile information exchange). You were literally told you couldn't say anything about it. But AFAIK the rotten group was small, but powerful. Many, many more decent people work at the BBC. As I'm sure applies to Google.

Edit:

I say this because the headline "Cult within Google" is misleading. (I bloody hate Google and everything they stand for - but there's an important distinction to be made)

Costco: a modern cult.

Partake in the Holy Communion of the Perpetual $1.50 Hot Dog Combo.

Ah, the hot dog tithe. To be raised to $2.50 soonTM.

"Not so" according to RandomMediaOutletTM[0]

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/phew-costco-absolutely-pos...

> A membership community with secrets and opportunities reserved for members.

That can also be a guild.

"Cult" is a term from the study of religion (a particular field's jargon, if you will), and usually conveys intense devotion, a ritual or sacrificial dimension that goes beyond a master craftsman's level of devotion to a craft.

Also, a guild can't entertain fanciful ideas about their craft for too long, if the ideas don't work in practice.

The distinction is kind of like using Cobol to build a good solid system (guild), versus dropping some Lisp to reach enlightenment (cult), or using C to build a solid system (cult).

In which case, I'm voting cult all the way.

> "Cult" is a term from the study of religion (a particular field's jargon, if you will), and usually conveys intense devotion, a ritual or sacrificial dimension that goes beyond a master craftsman's level of devotion to a craft.

That might be the modern colloquial use, but I don't think it has much to do with the use of the word "cult" in the study of religion?

As I understand the word, you might talk about the cult associated with a particular temple (meaning just local practices, as opposed to more widespread general practices), or the cult associated with the worship of a particular god (meaning beliefs and practices pertaining to that god and his or her worship in specific, such beliefs might be very widespread or might be highly localized), or you might talk about a mystery cult, which is pretty much by definition a widespread phenomenon distinguished by the fact that it has secret teachings unknown to non-initiates.

But none of those senses convey any special devotion in comparison to ordinary worship; most of them are ordinary worship.

These days the preferred (I hate to call it "politically correct") term for what used to be called a "cult" is NRM: new religious movement. Cult is reserved for the minority that are actually deranged, coercive, and dangerous.

Of course, part of the problem is that there are concentric rings, increasingly toxic as one goes higher/closer-in. The outer ring is full of gullible normies who do recruiting and PR, useful idiots who have no idea what's really going on.

The dangerous organizations were called "destructive cults" (which suggested the existence of non-destructive ones) in the 80's, but people gradually stopped using the adjective, generalizing it too far.

> A membership community with secrets and opportunities reserved for members.

Yeah, but the exact type of "secrets and opportunities" matters. Sometimes (as mentioned in the article) the secret opportunity is a surprise nonconsensual sex with the group leader.

It's the nature of those secrets though, isn't it. A small professional organization that keeps a secret list of member reviews of different workplaces, managers, etc is not the same as an organization that keeps occult beliefs a secret, or hides sex trafficking.

It was more like the 70s. High profile stories included mass suicide at the People's Temple led by Jim Jones [1], Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh collecting Rolls Royces and sexual favours from followers, and of course Charles Manson.

[1] Origin of the phrase "Drink the Kool-Aid". More than 900 people did, and died.

Point being cults are not just a club with a few secrets.

Cults are dangerous. They abuse people physically, sexually, psychologically, and financially, and the leaders reliably scam and exploit the followers. Not infrequently there are links to unusually horrific events such as mass murder and mass suicide.

Jesus Christ dude, they're led by a man who routinely sexually assaults people. Being permissive about that is pretty damning. Kooky beliefs are one thing, but cults combine those with oppressive social structures. It's not that hard unless you're stuck in the middle of one with all it's filtering.

So, like Tesla and SpaceX.

Actually interested - are there multiple allegations against EM other than the recently reported horse-for-handjob offer?

Only one accusation:

https://www.dailyadvent.com/news/45a9223a5a878bd90c386109e55...

There are also consistent allegations of an abusive culture at both SpaceX and Tesla:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/05/tesla-sex...

https://www.businessinsider.com/former-spacex-engineer-inter...

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/14/22835181/tesla-lawsuit-s...

How different is a cult from a corporation, really?

Having recovered from a high demand religion (which can be considered a modern cult depending on the definition), cults are very different from corporations.

I feel like the best definition of a cult is any group that won't let you dissociate with your dignity intact. Most corporations are fine with that. Some aren't. So this suggests substantial differences.

I don't see that as a good definition of a cult

To be fair, it's a lived experience that I have found among other cult and high demand religion recoverers.

I believe that it's a common feature amongst a large portion of cults, but my scepticism arises at the use of it as a broad definition of what is or isn't one.

The same way you wouldn't say having a charismatic leader is the definition of what a cult is. It's certainly an aspect of most cults, but not the definition, nor unique to cults

That's okay. People have to draw lines to define things. I found the definition I provided above to be sufficient to my experience.

The similarities keep piling up! Google was co-founded by Sergey Brin, who insisted it was okay to screw his employees in the company massage room because "they're my employees".

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/valley-of-genius-exc...

Thank you for this. I’ve lost (fatally) a dear friend to a polyamorous relationship between herself and her direct manager + manager’s wife at Google.

I’m not trying to claim it’s endemic at Google, I truly have no idea. But mini cults can happen inside corporations.

Fatally?

Yes. I can’t go into more detail without committing libel. But Mountain View police ruled it a “death by natural causes” without bothering to look at GPS history of the last people she was with (staying with late at night) just moments before. It was a very unusual way to die by natural cause, and she chose a very curious mode of transportation given other modes of hers that she had available to her where she was.

The point wasn’t so much the death as it was that generally sexual relations between a boss and a direct report shouldn’t usually be any type of acceptable in a healthy workplace.

No judgement on Poly/ ENM / whatever.

The death merely was my motivation for being passionate about this recurring theme I keep hearing from reports within Google of entanglements between direct reports and management (and sometimes others, like the spouses of management or their other mistresses).

Sexually assaulting people just like Catholic priests or Southern Baptists ministers.

You should look at sexual abuse at public schools if you're interested in the topic

“…they didn't consider it something that needed to be secret… They clearly don't consider themselves to be in any way toxic like the author thinks they are.”

so if a guy says “I’m going to rape you” it means he doesn’t think his behavior is toxic? because he’s open about it? brilliant logic

Obviously it is wrong to influence hiring/firing or purchasing decisions. But do you think there are grounds for removing cults in a general sense from a company? Surely it is an aspect of people private lives in the same way that religion is.

Nepotism and special vendor contracts are most definitely negatives to google business. On top of that they're losing access to good talent.

Any sane company does not want to be related to an organization where grooming, sex trafficking and rape are encouraged and practiced, I would think. That seems like more than enough reason to me.

Companies don't like alternate or parallel authority structures inside the organization. This is why there are anti-fraternization rules, for example, because it can be abused.

you wouldn't want another competing company operating within your company, would you?

cults are pretty much corporations that aren't ashamed of their authoritarianism, with a few religious themes sprinkled in

This explains so much about google

Not really... I love to bash Google as much as anyone but a religious cult within a department within a massive corporation doesn't really mean much about the company as a whole. Especially when you could pretty clearly see the difference between cult's teachings and the public stances for women's rights and for same-sex marriages that many Google employees have taken.

A modern religious ethnographer would distinguish between NRMs (new religious movements) and the minority thereof that are actually criminal, coercive, etc., as the term "cult" has come to imply. That said, NRMs aren't always free of toxicity. Pyramid schemes and actual cults often target them, exploiting a high-trust network of people considered to be gullible.

The typical corporate "cult"--I don't think Google is any more or less toxic than any other company at this point, and the true cult is capitalism itself, not a specific company--is somewhere between NRMs and actual cults in terms of virulence. Companies have displaced communities in modern life and yet they frequently un-person people for economic or petty political reasons. That said, executives usually prefer to keep their child sex abuse and their economic exploitation in different buildings--and, if Epstein is any indicator, on different landmasses--so, there's that, at least.

Excuse me if I'm mistaken, but it seems to me that the FoF falls under the more pejorative sense of cult, rather than NRM, given the central role of leadership and the abuses of power. It seems distinct from, say, neo-paganism in that sense.

If you're referring to the parent comment's description of Google, then there's really no point in trying to make a distinction, since they were using it as a polemic anyways. That said, I don't think describing capitalism as the cult is necessarily useful either, in that it implies a reliance on _active_ belief and conscious performance of rituals which doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to me that the more useful framework is Fisher's capitalist realism, which more accurately describes this neoliberal end of history that inspires so much pessimism (and a more Foucaultian sense of power which is pervasive and defines the discursive space, rather than religious, which identifies a moral power within entities). Regardless, theorizing endlessly on capitalism is probably not going to solve actual issues of corporate overreach and abuses of power, so it's infinitely easier to just call Google a cult and hope it shifts public opinion and motivates political action lmao.

More info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellowship_of_Friends

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/technology/google-fellows...

https://nypost.com/2021/11/09/sex-rituals-and-fine-wines-ins...

https://www.culteducation.com/group/927-fellowship-of-friend...

https://robertearlburton.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-fellowship...

https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,3315

It makes sense that these are the type of people Google is forced to hire, or motivated to hire, what with the company's track record of ridiculously expensive unethical behaviour and all the over-the-top harassment claims. Consider also the most recent embarassment with the AI researcher who believed a computer performing pattern matching had feelings and sensations. It seems he is also apparently involved with some bizarre quasi-religious group, calling himself a preacher.

Came here thinking tfa was about protocol buffers.

We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/alphabetworkers/status/15373969466917724..., which points to this.

Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."- https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Commenters: please don't post shallow/unsubstantive/flamey things to this thread—or any HN thread, but this one seems to have been unusually triggery. Probably the submitted title "Cults at Google" contributed to that.

If anything the NYtimes article is less original. The unions twitter thread and the linked medium post is closer to the story.

'Closer to the story' is not a virtue in this case because it's essentially one side of the story - without context and only from one of the parties in a multi-party dispute.

It's not about virtues of the link, it's about the rules. Don't lecture about onesided sources or whatever. It's beside the point.

The guidelines are intended to promote better, more curious discussion, not strict compliance to the letter. An NYT story about a dispute is a better starting point than one interested party's story and it's the kind of url change that's both pretty obvious and common on HN.

Changing the URL to a paywalled article no one can read isn't very helpful though.

Not to be picky, but everyone can read the article. They just have to pay. We have to support journalism some how.

Or, rather: https://web.archive.org/web/20220616142933/https://www.nytim...

For the rest of us who don't want to "sign up online and forced to call to cancel":

I present Firefox plugin "Bypass Paywalls Clean". Used in conjunction with "Ublock Origin" and you'll have the easiest and best use of the web to date.

I read it with NoScript blocking Javascript.

While I agree that journalism needs to be supported somehow, saying that "everyone can read the article" is classist and out of touch. HN's audience extends far outside of the glorious realm of Silicon Valley, where everyone makes 6 figures and never has to worry about money.

It's incredibly easy to pirate NYT articles. Takes about 15 seconds of googling.

's/no one can/no one with JS enabled can/'?

https://archive.ph/9wQxA

I think the choice not to label this a cult is inappropriate moderation, considering how it's classified by numerous groups, the fact that it has a leader known for serial sexual abuse, etc. Cult fits, calling it a "religious sect" is a pretty big attack on religion.

The "original source" is a blog post titled "The Cult in Google", here: https://medium.com/@kwilliamlloyd/the-cult-in-google-3c1a910...

Apologies for not submitting the original source but I found the twitter thread and linked blog post to be more useful context than the nytimes story.

https://medium.com/@kwilliamlloyd/the-cult-in-google-3c1a910...

I was not aware of that guideline, will keep it in mind in future.

You guys may be right - I haven't read either the article or the Twitter thread. In principle I'm open to reverting the URL if the latter really is more substantive and interesting. But there doesn't seem to be a consensus about this.

Url changed from https://twitter.com/alphabetworkers/status/15373969466917724..., which points to this.

“We have longstanding employee and supplier policies in place to prevent discrimination and conflicts of interest, and we take those seriously.”

Isn't adding a superfluous "and we take those seriously" the rhetorical equivalent of pouting?

Every time I read this - after an account suspension, for example - the impression I get is that no, they don't really take those things seriously. They're just improvising or leaving it for the algorithm.

I just switched to hackernews from a Gmail conversation I was having with Google customer support. The chain started when a Google person sent me a follow-up from a chat conversation where the Google support person refused to help me. The follow-up mail said a reply "will come directly to me". I replied and a second emailer replied back to me to "thank you for your understanding". I replied again and yet another Google support person replied to me saying that because I was "logged out" my ticket was now closed and that they were glad they could help.

Reading your comment I feel there is just a commitment to shallow lies from Google across the board. For example, why would the first emailer even tell me replies went directly to her? It obviously wasn't true. Why would three or four Google people email me, do absolutely nothing, and then close the ticket? Why not just say "We aren't helping" or just ignore my request?

Isn’t it just as likely that the software developers disempower the support staff as much as they do users? Maybe the agent did think that the reply would reach them, and the algorithm was being AB tested.

There is nothing more annoying than a Customer Support Chinese Room of Kafka, where tickets are transferred around only to take us back to square one each time.

And if plausible deniability from senior management would just add insult to injury, plausibly, claiming that things are taken seriously when things are obviously being neglected is just gaslighting.

I said mulled wine, Jenkins, you fool, not cult wine. MULLED

This is just one example of a much bigger issue, which is religious institutions quietly taking over secular businesses without anyone realizing it. It is so pervasive and so stealthy that it is hard to even talk about it without sounding like a crackpot. It has become a little more evident recently with the emergence of evangelical Christian activism in politics, but it runs much, much deeper than that. The LDS Church, for example (a.k.a. Mormons) has vast business holdings, all of which funnel tax-free money back to the Church. Downtown Menlo Park is largely owned by the Presbyterian Church. I could go on and on.

All of this is driven by the fact that churches are not taxed in the U.S. They are legal tax havens, and they are very much used as such by oligarchs of all stripes.

Weren't the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) up until recently owned by the LDS?

No, the LDS never owned BSA. However they were the largest sponsor of BSA for about a century, until a few years ago.

Ah. I knew they were integrated somehow.

They're not integrated. BSA where I grew up, on the South Side of Chicago, was (for instance) extremely Catholic. "Duty to God" is (or was?) a tenet of the organization, dating back to its founding. In the formative years of the BSA, that wasn't strange at all; what would have been unusual would have been members that weren't in some way affiliated with a religion. In fact, Boy Scouts is how I first learned about a bunch of religions --- Hinduism and Islam, in particular --- because they had different religious badges.

Eh. Bad choice of words I guess. The implication is that the BSA and LDS were tight. Apparently to the point that 1 in every 5 scout was also a Mormon. Which is weird when Mormons account for only about 2 percent of the population at large.

I think that's in large part because Scouting was almost obligatory for LDS kids (it isn't any longer, since the LDS church cut ties with the BSA) --- nobody pressured us Catholic school kids to join the Boy Scouts, and most didn't. The troop, meanwhile, met in the basement of my local parish. What I'd just want to call out is that even in the 1980s, the Boy Scouts were openly and emphatically multi-faith. Not just ecumenical, but also going out of its way to teach Scouts that they were going to encounter other Scouts from totally different faith traditions.

The BSA may have been problematic for other reasons! I haven't thought that much about them since I dropped out (I only made it to Scout First Class). It was a sort of inherently conservative organization, as you'd expect just from hearing the Scout Oath. You can see where the Scouting ethos would mesh pretty perfectly with LDS culture.

Are you sure about your assertions? I thought all LDS Church child businesses (such as KSL, Bonneville International, etc.) and land holdings were taxed. I was under the impression only the charitable arm of the church was not taxed (i.e. donations). IANATL though, so maybe there is some loophole being exploited I'm not aware of.

LDS tax evasion is well documented. e.g.:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/18/us/latter-day-saints-charity-...

It'd be helpful if you could provide further information, because I haven't heard of this before. Extraordinary claims and all that...

>It has become a little more evident recently with the emergence of evangelical Christian activism in politics

I thought evangelicalism has been strong on and off since America was founded; the rise now is closer to a return to the field after they were routed some time around 2008 (when they were getting a lot of press by losing debates about evolution and whether it should be taught in schools).

Evangelicism has been strong since the founding, but it is more brazenly political now than it has been historically. There is actually a legal requirement for churches to stay out of politics in order to maintain their tax-exempt status. The enforcement of that has gotten more lax over the last few decades.

With regards to information about entanglements between religion and business, start with the LDS church, whose business entanglements are well documented.

But the journalism about the more general problem is is not very comprehensive, probably because it is a very fraught topic.

I know about the LDS (they have always wielded a lot of power), but Presbyterians?

Yeah, that came as a surprise to me too. And I have not verified this, but it came to me from a source that I consider reliable (a local real estate agent).

> There is actually a legal requirement for churches to stay out of politics in order to maintain their tax-exempt status.

Churches and charities can get involved in politics, including ballot issues and legislation. They just can't get involved in campaigns for specific candidates. In practice, the IRS is terrified of touching religious orgs so "anything goes" as long as the church isn't a straight up criminal enterprise.

IMO the actually important thing about churches is that they don't have to file a Form 990. I don't actually have much of an issue with churches getting involved in politics -- it happens on both sides and frankly the idea of religion being divorced from politics is a fairy tale anyways -- but I do wish every church had to file a Form 990 so the public (and congregants!) can see how this tax-free money is spent.

> It is so pervasive and so stealthy that it is hard to even talk about it without sounding like a crackpot

You're sitting in the intersection of 'it's pervasive', 'nobody is noticing it', and not listing the evidence for it. So yeah, it sounds crackpotty.

> It has become a little more evident recently with the emergence of evangelical Christian activism in politics

Christians, evangelical or otherwise, have been generally active in politics for as long as Christianity has existed. To say this is an 'emerging' problem as though America started from a position of mainstream secularism seems entirely ahistorical. If anything, the generational trend has been the decline of superstition in all aspects of American society. 60 years ago it was common for public schools to make children recite christian prayers, but that's almost unheard of now. The trend is obviously towards secularization, and while that trend may not be happening fast enough to suit some of us, it's wildly disingenuous to suggest the trend is in the reverse direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_prayer_in_the_United_St...

Yep, I get that. I did give two examples, but no supporting evidence. In the case of Menlo Park being owned by the Presbyterian Church, I'm not sure how I would support that short of pulling up dozens of Menlo Park property records. I don't know of any journalism about this.

With regards to the LDS church, this is well-known and well-documented. Here's just one easily-found link:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/photo-essays/2012-07-12/the-m...

Here are some links about the more general problem:

https://www.businessinsider.com/18-extremely-religious-big-a...

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/religion-bigger-busin...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_as_a_business

The Business Insider article is I think a clear demonstration of what concerns me about this kind of analysis. The author seems to see strict secularism as the only "normal" way to run a business, declining to recognize a distinction between businesses owned by a religion and businesses whose owners happen to be devout followers of a religion. When simply printing the text "John 3:16" on the bottom of your soda cups is enough to be considered an extremely religious company, I hear "Downtown Menlo Park is largely owned by the Presbyterian Church" and question how much of that ownership is simply by people who happen to be leaders in their congregation. (In particular, Presbyterians aren't a single corporate structure like the Mormons are, so it's not clear which specific organization the claim should be understood to refer to.)

Bible verses on cups is one thing but Hobby lobby went to court to avoid paying women's insurance. Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays and fights for the right to discriminate against groups it marginalizes for religious reasons. These practices are bad for profit, bad for customers, bad for society, and only good for the religious leaders who take from the earnings without even being a part of the business.

It's also good for religious followers! This is really the lack of understanding I'm getting at. Many religious people genuinely believe that following their religion is more important than profit or customers and inherently good for society.

I'm not saying you have to agree with our beliefs, of course, but it's not right to think of religion affecting the secular world as some kind of weird practice that has to be explained by corrupt leaders. Most religions and basically all Christian churches teach that you should consider religious factors in your business and personal lives.

oh nooo, it closes on Sunday.

Until last year I too use to dream working in Google. But increasingly the attractiveness is decreasing. I cannot put a finger on one specific thing. It has gone too large from a career pov.

I used to dream about working at Google until I interviewed with them. I got dragged along for months and largely ignored between interviews. The interviews themselves were impersonal and non interactive. They gave the impression that I should just shut up and write code in front of them and when I asked clarifying questions I barely got anything in response.

Wow, this is the complete opposite of my experience interviewing there. The recruiter typically got back to me the same day, or the next day at the latest. My interviews, system design in particular, were very, very, very interactive (and fun!).

Had a similar experience. The recruiting part of the process went pretty smoothly, until I got to the onsite. Had 5 on-site interviews (excluding lunch), all exactly the same format: walk in the room where my interviewer is waiting with a question written on the white board, they say "hello" to me and I'm expected to read the question, clarify it a little bit and start coding. Not a single interviewer cared about my past experience or what kind of a person I am. I guess they're relying on the lunch interview for that signal? Anyway I ended up getting rejected and the feedback was that I need to practice my algorithms more. (All the questions were slight variations on popular leetcode questions)

>> and the feedback was that I need to practice my algorithms more.

I'm optimistic I will live long enough to see the death of this type of interview. Great gate-keeper question, easy to mark, next to zero signalling value as to ability to problem solve or program. Sigh...

What would you consider to be a good interview question?

(Googler, my opinions are my own, etc)

When interviewing we are instructed to write up the interview question and answer and score on a rubric with citations into the interview notes. These notes then go to the hiring committee who makes the decision without knowing the human side at all. I think the point is something like this

https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/...

where the hiring committee is intentionally blinded. There just isn't anywhere in the notes to record "what kind of a person you are". There is a separate interview which tries to capture that, but the rest of this is in the name of avoiding bias, and maybe being more lenient with someone who went to the same school as you, or makes you laugh or whatever.

that reasoning is understandable actually. Given Google's success, maybe this is the right way of approaching the hiring process over the long term at the scale of tens of thousands of employees. However, that kind of culture is just not for me. I ended up getting hired at a small startup working on cutting edge technology and have really enjoyed my time here. So in a way, it turned out well for both me and Google.

I've done a live on-site and a virtual on-site during COVID.

I was mostly stationary during the live on-site. I was taken to a room and the interviewers came to me. Some chit-chat, then given the problem, then working on the problem. A break for lunch, then I was taken to a room near where the first was for the rest of my interviews. Much the same deal. I stayed in the room while the interviewers cycled through. I was told that the lunch portion wasn't part of the interview and the person escorting me around didn't have any influence on the hiring decision. That may or may not be true, but it is what they told me.

About a week after, I was informed of my rejection. I'm fairly sure I know one interview I particularly bombed. The question involved something I had done before, but a while ago and I floundered a bit trying to recall all the bits and bobs of the syntax and structure. The other four I felt could go either way.

During the virtual on-site, it was just being passed off to various Google Meet rooms. I think I wrote code in a shared Google Doc. I felt ok in most of them. None particularly stuck out. A few days after the interview, I was informed I was being passed to the hiring committee. And then a few days after that, I was informed the hiring committee passed on me.

All the questions I got were vaguely LeetCode-ish. They were all of the template: Here's a vague problem with loose requirements. I'd ask some questions about particulars, "Can I assume this?", "Is this true for all?", "Is this sorted?", "Can I go to the bathroom?" "No, now I really have to go, last time was to avoid answering a question" etc. Then I'd write up a solution in my language of choice, trying to explain why I was doing what I was going while doing it. Just stream of conscious style stuff. Occasionally, I'd get comments or questions as I talked. Stuff about assumptions I was making or why I was trying this method. Then if there was time and they were satisfied with my solution, they'd ask me to essentially scale it up. "Ok, that works when you can hold the dataset in memory, but what if the dataset was three bazillion petabytes?"

I personally enjoy puzzles and challenges, so I found the process fun even though the fact that it is an interview makes it a little more. But since I have also had a job both times I interviewed, the stakes are a bit lower for me, which also helps.

I've had mixed experiences with their recruiters, and their interviewers. Some recruiters were on the ball and pushed things forward; others just disappeared. Some interviewers were great, clearly wanted it to be a collaborative thing, so were responsive to the questions I asked and helpful in rubber ducking as I talked through it (I'm thinking here especially of an algorithm session)...others clearly didn't care, were cold and didn't seek to answer anything in a way I could move forward (here I'm thinking of a system design session; exactly where you -need- answers to scope anything out).

I happily never particularly cared one way or the other about working for Google (and only once or twice did their recruiters reach out/get back to me when I was actually looking; I am sufficiently ambivalent that most of the times their recruiters have reached out have been "I'm not currently looking"), but their cachet has only dropped since I started my career, and their remote-as-second-class-citizen approach currently makes it a non-starter for me. I'm not going back to the office.

This is very similar to my experience. TBH, being able to not talk through what I’m coding the _whole_ time, unlike what it shown in the official “What to expect” Google videos, was a relief. Unfortunately, that change in expectation sort of threw me off; there became uncertainty in what was expected of me. This uncertainty hindered my creative juices while problem-solving but nowhere near as bad as the interview prior, which I won’t go into since I am paranoid about the interviewer seeing this comment :)

The experience was long and the recruiters were great but I definitely didn't feel like interviewers listened to what I had to say. Like I'd talk about past work, hostile managers, waiting 4 months for an admin to install software that was blocking a project. Then the Googler would ask something idiotic like, "tell me about a time you rallied your team to meet a strict deadline."

All I could think was, "I just explained how I'm out here waiting 4 months for software. Nobody is rallying shit. There aren't strict deadlines. Nobody cares. That's why I'm here interviewing."

Amazon was the same way. All they were asking was like, "Why didn't you adapt and overcome this obstacle? blah blah" What!? This is defense software numb nuts- I don't have privileges.

It seems that they ask great questions for engineers who already come from that culture.

> I don't have privileges.

FWIW, I've used this as my answer to that exact question. "Despite repeated requests and proactive discussions, all attempts to stem the <BAD THING HERE> were negated by management".

But yeah, in defense and a few other industries, it's really your job to shut up and work.

I think this is a by-product of some internal dynamics. A lot of teams push staff really hard to be interview trained because they see it as a funnel to get applicants for your team. I assume they think the interviewee will tell the recruiter "oh, I heard about foo team, are there any openings there?". This has gotten worse since perf started having a citizenship component. The easiest way to get citizenship points is to interview.

The worst was when you got picked for G&L interviews (Googliness and Leadership). Nobody defines those terms, so nobody knows how to interview for them. They give us a few sample questions for people at each level, so most people just blindly pick one or two and go with those. "Tell me about a time you rallied..." is definitely on that list.

Let's be honest, for most employees interviewing was a chore, and not one that they could see the outcomes of. So of course the experiences are going to drag out and be monotonous and robotic.

It feels like they have no actual direction but they think if they just hire enough smart people (and prevent those smart people from working at competitors) they'll figure something out along the way. It's why they have a near constant stream of product/service failures (https://killedbygoogle.com/).

Same. The culture of early tech (nap pods, free food, work whenever) isn't compatible with the more mainstream kind of employees they're now bringing on. Gone is the passion, from all sides, and the perks and allowances given to truly obsessed developers just aren't sustainable with both the bloat and complexities hiring anyone but brings with it.

Good devs create easy times, etc.

For me its appearances versus reality. When I first got into the industry, I worshipped the chance to work at Google (or Facebook, MS, etc). I've since stopped worshipping and now I would not take a job with them. Often I wonder why my mind changed over the last 4-5 years but it comes down to the fact that I've seen how the industry works. Google is very much like any other megacorp, just with an extra coat of prestige to make you want to work there, even though it is prestigious, that prestige isn't going to make the problems that megacorps run into go away.

I'm sure they have infra issues, I'm sure there are messy ass codebases saddled with tech debt everywhere, I'm sure that there is going to be scant documentation and you're going to go on the journey of talking to multiple teams. When I was younger I would have said: "but it's google, they must have figured it out". Now that I'm older I say: "but it's google, no way they don't have these issues, no thanks".

Successful companies might become megacorps, and you'd imagine there would be a new wave of hungry young ambitious companies that try to displace them. Trouble is the last generation of such companies included some with extremely shady and cutthroat cultures, e.g. Uber.

The moral nihilism in this comment section beggars belief.

Hmm. I think this guy is just looking for a payday. He was a contractor, not a full time employee.

Do they work for Google or are they some contracted firm?

I can't imagine the cult was able to spread within Google itself.

What? Cults were never covered in any of these cultural discussions.

Yeah this is a sticky issue because it falls under religious freedom. Would you want to be the director at Google sued for firing somebody due to their religion?

The primary mechanism that is allowing this situation seems to be the split between actual Google employees and contractors.

- Less enforcement of hiring standards and methods allowed a cult member in a management role to hire other cult members and arrange them within his organization

- These contracted cult members primarily work around other contractors, who can only complain to their contracting agency not Google.

- The contracts in place make it nearly impossible for the agencies to put pressure on Google beyond ceasing to do business with them.

What woke factor are you seeing here? Google's doing capitalist stuff here not woke stuff, and a cult has found a hole in the structure they can exploit.

Why do you think that the supposed woke culture of Google is good?

Not the main topic of the article but I was surprised the author is unemployed after 15 months. Is it that hard to find any job as a video producer? There must be some other companies doing the same as Google... I have no idea what that job market looks like, just sounded surprising to me.

Nice attempt at character assassination. Here's a more likely explanation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklist_(employment)

How that's "assassination"? I asked a simple question, because I had no idea how the market for video producers looks like - I never worked as one. Maybe you're looking a bit too hard for a reason to be offended and outraged? Not everybody is out to get you.

Then there's this bit toward the end.

> I had recently joined the Alphabet Workers Union, the union of now almost 1,000 workers across all Alphabet companies

Doesn't that seem way more likely to explain the sudden firing?

It was after the termination, if I read it correctly.

Not clear. Author says "recently" but that also applies to the firing. AIUI somebody wouldn't even be eligible to join an Alphabet-employee union while not working at Alphabet.

I was my understanding that one of the Alphabet Workers Union bigger goals is to improve conditions for TVCs (temps, vendors, contractors) across the company.

I don’t think you want the explanation for a termination to be “because they joined a union”.

Of course you don't. It's blindingly obvious that they'd never say that. Instead they'd make up another excuse, or say nothing ... which they did. The facts fit the theory, which is not the same as proof but that shallow dismissal sure isn't disproof.

Not going as far to say "anyone currently at Google is morally compromised" - but anyone who knows about this, and stays is ... not somebody who I'd want to associate with. Or hire for that matter.

If I only worked at companies that weren't "basically evil", I would have to work for myself - and I'm sure if I looked hard enough (and definitely if someone else did), I wouldn't even be able to do that.

YMMV, but there seems to me a difference between "generic corporate sleaze" and "sex trafficking doom cult literally within the system".

YMMV, but when you have 100k+ employees - you're gonna have more than "generic corporate sleaze" somewhere in the system.

Not every company then eh?

Big companies aren't inherently evil. Because they're big, the probability that big actors sneek in is higher.

Not sure how black and white you'd have to see the world to immediately lump 150k Alphabet employees into the evil bucket due to a dozen people whom most of those employees never knew about or met.

Not really sure what the big deal is. Did the cult hurt this fellow? Abuse him? Discriminate against him? Mob him? No. The article really just talks about his own disapproval of the cult.

It wasn't his business what these people got up to, frankly.

What happens when it's time to decide who gets to be a full time Googley Googler and who doesn't? This guy is competing against a bunch of people in a literal cult, what are his odds like? Isn't that harm enough?

Is hiring discrimination alleged to have happened? IIRC, the only decision that is noted in the blog post is the promotion of Dan (who is not in the cult), and the mysterious termination (for which we have no context or details, and the author feels it was orchestrated by the aforementioned Dan).

While I'm sure there's lots of be concerned about with respect to the cult, I'm not sure it's Google's business to ask about and evaluate religious affiliations when hiring (I'm fairly certain this would be illegal?). There are plenty of ways that you can get a shop of closely related people that are more innocuous than hiring discrimination; for example, suppose the cult members worked together as a freelance group that Google used, and they decided to offer them jobs in order to bootstrap GDC. This exact situation would happen if Google acquires a company from a place with a relatively homogenous ethnic or religious makeup -- it is unfair to immediately assume that this is a result of a discriminatory hiring practice. (It's also possible that there are questionable decisions, but I think it depends a lot on the specifics.)

I'm not really a fan of religions or cults, but part of my dislike is the fervent disapproving and interfering with people's lives. Which is exactly what this fellow seemed to be doing. The cult members seemed to be minding their own business and being generally pretty useful and nice. I wonder if his behavior could even have put Google at risk of a religious discrimination case.

>Is hiring discrimination alleged to have happened

Yes, the potential nepotism involved with nearly 50% of a 25 person group all belonging to the cult.

I don't think you read my comment. There are lots of ways that you can end up with a concentration of a particular ethnicity/religion/etc. It is unreasonable to immediately assume that it is a result of nepotism, and the specific facts matter quite a lot. People often work with and start companies with people from their community, and as a result they are often a large part of their professional network. It's only nepotism if those people are favored over others.

I don't doubt that unlikely clustering can innocently occur by chance. But you asked if hiring discrimination is alleged to have occured and it was very clearly alleged when the author uses the word nepotism in their original blog post:

>Cronyism and nepotism is not uncommon, especially in my line of my work, but it was unusual on this scale

You may say the author has jumped too soon to that conclusion but they nonetheless made that allegation. My comment stands.

You should also be aware that accusing someone of not reading a comment or article is both rude and against site guidelines. A more productive way of going about this if you think someone misunderstood or indeed overlooked or skipped part of something is to simply quote the relevant portion. That at least gives them the benefit of the doubt. It also goes a long way towards preventing responses that go on the defensive before even considering the merits of an argument.

The author implied that it had occurred, but did not actually allege anything specific. That would require describing how the cult members had been hired. The author seemed to have joined a department with a large cluster from this cult, and immediately assumed that nepotism and cronyism were responsible — he needs to be more specific.

To clarify one thing in your comment: innocent clustering isn’t likely occurring “by chance” here — that would be a dubious claim; I’m saying it often happens for innocent, legal reasons. There’s no context or facts for this specific case.

Regarding the “didn’t read my comment” bit, your comment did ignore the last half of my comment that describes plausible innocent clustering and talks about the need for specific facts. You can’t allege something based on “potential” because every perfectly normal situation could be construed as the potential result of a crime. If I was at a bar last night, and home today — can you allege that I drove home drunk? You would need more specific facts to make any kind of meaningful allegation (e.g. did I drive to the bar? Did I drink? Did I return home on my own with my car? Those would be the minimal facts required for even a suspicion). Perhaps I could have addressed this with less snark (and I apologize for this), but we’re also not talking about missing some fact buried in an article, we’re talking about 2/5 sentences in a comment.

>Not really sure what the big deal is. Did the cult hurt this fellow? Abuse him? Discriminate against him? Mob him? No. The article really just talks about his own disapproval of the cult.

>It wasn't his business what these people got up to, frankly.

Quoting the article:

"The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse."

> Quoting the article:

> "The group is well-documented: There are allegations of child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse."

Those seem like issues for prosecutors to pursue, not for Google, unless the abuses were happening in Google offices or were sponsored by them.

>... or were sponsored by them.

Quoting again from the article:

"The wine was our most consistent feature, and the invoices I’ve seen suggest we were buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth every year, just from Grant Marie."

Yep, the credibility of the risk is in the wine suppliership, at the very least.

From what I can see, those allegations were from the 90s, but still nothing seems to have been substantiated. I'm not saying I condone this cult, but I don't see how it was having any effect on his work. It didn't become a problem until he himself complained to another manager.

I mean: if you're going to get worked up about cults, why the fuck are we all watching Top Gun? Shouldn't we be protesting or something? Scientology is a lot worse than this lot.

Lot's of people do get worked up about scientology and I know people who won't watch Tom Cruise in a movie.

Besides, "$X group also does bad things" is a shitty cop out of an excuse to avoid doing something about another group.

There's probably not much Google can do about sexual assault/trafficking claims but they can do something about the hiring/firing practices along with crooked procurement practices.

Does this group actually do bad things though? Is there any actual evidence?

I don't think there is anything wrong with suggesting people you know to get hired. If anything the author of this blog post caused his own problems when he blew this up into a big deal and made a lot of accusations based on decades old unproven allegations.

Buying the wine from this group seems to be the only possible issue. If he had simply suggested that maybe they shouldn't be wine from this group and left it at that, there wouldn't have been any problem.

It's not even from their group. It's from a winery run by an ex-member

> Those seem like issues for prosecutors to pursue, not for Google, unless the abuses were happening in Google offices or were sponsored by them.

I'm glad someone else gets my point. These were all someone else's problems to deal with, but this guy kept sticking his nose in even when he was repeatedly asked by his friend, a manager, to butt out.

>I'm glad someone else gets my point. These were all someone else's problems to deal with, but this guy kept sticking his nose in even when he was repeatedly asked by his friend, a manager, to butt out.

That manager could very well have been complicit in corruption. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in wine purchases isn't exactly trivial.

That said, it sounds like the guy was just trying to keep the GDS division afloat, lest it be struck down from above after being seen as problematic. Perhaps noble depending on how you look at it, but certainly protecting his own paycheck either way.

Regardless, I don't see the justification in hating on someone for blowing the whistle here. In fact, one could argue it's very likely a necessary step in making it someone else's problem to deal with in the first place. Sunlight is a very effective disinfectant.

> certainly protecting his own paycheck either way

Yeah, no. He did not protect his paycheck. He did the opposite.

>Yeah, no. He did not protect his paycheck. He did the opposite.

Admittedly my wording was a bit ambiguous, to clarify: I was referring to the manager's intent [by not taking action].

Granted your statement's probably true either way at this point.

True that

For all we know the manager could have even been a secret "Fellowship of Friends" member, or at least a sympathizer.

Should we forbid Catholics for the same reason?

>Should we forbid Catholics for the same reason?

Your answer lies in the distinction between cults and religion. In a nutshell, cults exert control over their members such that they compel them to behave contrary to their own interests.

So the modern, practical answer to that question is: No.

Your average Catholic is no threat and is very likely to be acting in their own interest, free of undue influence.

The Catholic Church, having had nearly two thousand years to brutally weave itself into society world-wide—has all but abandoned the behavior described above—with the exception of its clergy and people involved at the operational level of the church.

Indeed, they've outgrown the practice of using coercion at the level of the individual member, and now wield power as a small nation state with global reach.

>Should we forbid Catholics for the same reason?

If they're formerly or currently involved in any significant way at the operational level of the Church, then you may have an argument in the affirmative there. Albeit, a narrowly-scoped one.

Religion does that too

Catholicism has certainly compelled people to behave "contrary to their own interests" — e.g. preventing LGBT members from pursuing love, preventing unhappily-married people from divorcing, preventing women with dangerous or difficult pregnancies from seeking abortion; and that's without even referencing the many documented instances of child abuse — so I'm not sure that distinction makes a huge difference.

They might believe those things are in the persons interest though (I don't have an opinion either way other then... it's subjective).

You bring up a good point, and I think what you're describing is more a type of coercion inherent to the teachings themselves that occur at a societal level. Distinct from the explicit, aggressive actions of members against other members typically found in cults.

However, what you describe certainly does create the conditions for that kind of behavior to occur organically. Lack of inclusion by nature will result in members being shunned. Personally I think religion in any form has zero business being exclusionary. The counter-argument there I suppose, would be that human group cohesion is—by and large—exclusionary in nature.

Perhaps morally there is little distinction, and organized religion has just had time to establish itself and exert power upon individuals in more subtle ways.

Circling back to the original topic: members of a small cult are far more likely to act—in unision—contrary to the interests of an organization that employs them.

None of those things are in the best interests of the people involved. Homosexuals who engage in same sex activity are more propense to addictions and self harming behaviour, children of divorced couples do far worse than of couples that remained married. Abortion is killing your own child, and child abuse is reprehensible but it happens at any major institution religious or not, if you don't believe me look up how many kids are sexually harrased at secular high schools or worse see how many secular people want to talk to middle schoolers about sex

>None of those things are in the best interests of the people involved. Homosexuals who engage in same sex activity are more propense to addictions and self harming behaviour, ...

So you're saying being a homosexual is not in one's self-interest. As if it's somehow inherently bad.

Did it ever occur to you that the supposed propensity to addiction and self-harming behavior may stem from the fact society's historically been less than accepting of homosexuality, owing in no small part to religion?

No one is forced to be a Catholic.

LGBTQ and Homosexuals are welcome to leave at any time. Those who join Catholicism, clearly understand the Catechesis (as they have to go through RCIA) and if they conclude that they don't fit, they can go to another denomination.

I went through RCIA and we had people who literally decided to leave the night before Easter Vigil and no one harassed or bothered them.

You are welcome to disagree with the Church but to compare Catholicism with a Cult is disingenuous.

>No one is forced to be a Catholic.

Except for kids, and—historically—large swaths of various populations.

"No one is forced to be a Catholic."

Have you heard of the Spanish Inquisition? Hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims forcibly converted to Catholicism or faced with ethnic cleansing, with mass executions claiming thousands of victims. Or the Portugese inquisition? Or when Galileo was imprisoned for life for heresy against the Catholic Church?

Not to mention what Catholicism did to the Americas...

Or for more recent examples, how about when the Catholic Church took two Jewish children whose parents had been killed at Auschwitz, converted them to Catholicism, and refused to return them to their surviving relatives, resulting in a nearly decade-long post-war manhunt where the Church hid the children in a variety of monasteries under false names while refusing court orders to return the children, telling them that their entire family was dead — when in fact their sisters and aunt had survived — under the direct advice of the Pope? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finaly_Affair

We should (and do) forbid Catholics from only hiring Catholics. We forbid discrimination based on religion entirely. I've never known the religious beliefs of anyone who has hired me, and they have never known mine. Same for the people I've hired. But in this case the cult members are hiring, firing, and promoting based on cult membership.

Did you read the article? They're funneling company funds into the cult. It's literally embezzlement.

First, questioning whether someone read the article is against the guidelines. Please don't do that.

Secondly, according to the article, "everyone" at Google knew, and he was a contractor. Once he raised his concerns, he did his duty. At that point, it's Google's business, and it's up to them to do something about it. Or not, if they'd rather. Maybe management liked their work and so looked past the "embezzlement", but would have to do something if this guy kept making a stink. Or some other scenario.

>did his duty

Getting fired potentially in retaliation seems reasonable justification for speaking out beyond quietly reporting an incident to your employer.

Especially when the group involved is alleged to be intimidating people into silence. Seems like a great reason to instead shout about the issue quite loudly. Not least of which because small corruption may go side by side with larger corruption.

>First, questioning whether someone read the article is against the guidelines. Please don't do that.

This thread is an excellent illustration of what's likely an unintended consequence of that guideline, and of all the places to raise it, this is probably the least constructive and least in conformance with any possible intention of the guideline.

If someone doesn't RTFA but contributes really interesting thoughts on, say, AI, or the efficiency of a programming language, such scolding chills valuable discussion. That's understandable. Even responding as a scold to low effort comments is not very readable and the exercise in scolding, however correct, isn't conducive to good discussion. So it's understandable there too.

But here, you're using it in response to a constructive comment expressing a legitimate point over something that's crucial to undestanding and engaging with the article. I can't fathom what purpose you think that rule has if you think this is the right place to invoke it.

> But here, you're using it in response to a constructive comment expressing a legitimate point over...

Not at all. It's unnecessarily rude. The point could as well have been made without it.

"How can you say that? They were embezzling!"

It's an appropriate exhortation to pay attention to key details and doesn't involve any insult. And this is unresponsive to just about everything in my previous comment about why invoking etiquette in this context was unconstructive.

It was rude, and against guidelines, and you're defending this poor behavior. And you're doing it with a thesaurus. Ridiculous.

> It's literally embezzlement

No. What's been alleged (steering alcohol purchase contracts to their own winery) is unethical and potentially illegal, but embezzlement is a very different type of theft.

> Members have described him grooming and sexually assaulting male followers, including minors,

> At a certain point, he said he had thought about both quitting and complaining up the ladder, but ultimately decided against either. He thought complaining could lead not only to the loss of his job, but the destruction of our whole department. The loss of all our jobs. GDS, in his mind, wasn’t on steady ground. A revelation like this would be its end.

> He instructed me to keep quiet. He told me not to tell anyone and to tell anyone I had already informed to do the same. He reminded me again that if I complained about this, I could lose my job. Strangely, he threw in that “Peter is a powerful guy.” It was unsettling to say the least.

Dan was selfishly worried about his job. Great evil happens when people stay silent.

Seriously? Sex trafficking & abuse especially of underage people isn't a "live and let live" thing.

Neither are co-workers assigning hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor contracts to themselves or their organization. If you think the author was too far removed from sex trafficking allegations to make an issue of it then this one is still very much appropriate to raise a red flag over.

And, to your point, it's especially appropriate to raise a red flag over a possible retaliatory firing based on him raising concerns.

I wonder if his continuous reporting rose to the level of harassment, and Google needed to shed him to avoid discrimination allegations.

Possible. But when people say "what's the harm", well, it's spelled out in the linked Medium post. Meanwhile "I wonder if XYZ" has the disadvantage of not being substantiated by anything.

After reviewing the NYT article, there's much that independently vet's the claims put forward by Kevin Lloyd, the author of this Medium piece. Most notable in support of Kevin Lloyd's portrayal is the fact the director of GDS has already been successfully sued by someone else for similar treatment.

It's pretty clear from the linked article that there was no continuous reporting. In fact he never reported if officially, not once. He had multiple discussions about it with a friend that was outside of his reporting chain and was fired more than a year after his last stated contact with any another employee over the matter.

Each comment of yours seeking to dismiss the issue stretches the bounds of reason even further, each one more tenuous than the last. This time you are even going so far as to turn the situation around and claim that-- counter to any evidence-- he is himself the villain with others the victim of his harassment. What began as somewhat reasonable questions about the issue by you has, as myself & others have addressed your points, grown into the ridiculous.

> Sex trafficking & abuse...

Did he observe sex trafficking? He did not. He read about 25 year old allegations.

What he actually observed was ... wine. That Google managers already knew about.

Yes, which I mentioned, so thank you for restating my second point.

Failure of immediate managers to act on employees giving themselves hundred of thousands of dollars in contracts seems a good issue to speak out about, especially when the author might have been fired in retaliation for bringing the issue up in the first place. Your attempt to minimize it as just "... wine" is a thin veil to cover such a casual dismissal of the issue.

What exactly do you object to here? What threshold of wrongdoing do you hold up as necessary to cross before speaking out is appropriate? You're willing to shove aside illegal firing and unethical self-dealing, so what is enough to stop you from being annoyed that a person goes public on something like this? It feels very strange to need to defend the author's actions as reasonable, so I'm at a loss to understand your point of view here. Are you upset the author is making an issue of it in the first place, or simply that it's getting this much attention? Or is the issue that it probably wouldn't be considered newsworthy if Google or other high profile company wasn't involved? I have to think think there's something more substantial behind your opinion to be so dismissive of the issue, so what is it?

Ok, to recap:

> Seriously? Sex trafficking & abuse especially of underage people isn't a "live and let live" thing.

Definitely not. However, they were allegations made over 25 years ago, that led nowhere. So, to revive them as if they are a thing that actually is happening now is dishonest.

> Neither are co-workers assigning hundreds of thousands of dollars in vendor contracts to themselves or their organization.

Again, not a thing that happened. The winery in question is Grant Marie, which is not owned by the cult. It is, however, run by an ex-member - the one that used to run the cult's winery.

And, as to the nepotism, the hiring is done by the same outside firm as that which hired Lloyd himself, so, again, not under the control of the cult.

> I'm at a loss to understand your point of view here.

I despise fear-mongering and FUD on principle. Much evil has been done by self-righteous, frightened people who have convinced each other that monsters hide amongst the shadows. Hopefully, your rational skepticism has been triggered. But, if you're like most people, probably not.

Every entity has one or more cults depending on its size, beit university, military, govt's & companies. You cant get away from them unless you live on the moon!

At that point it's arguable you have joined a cult of one.

It doesn’t matter if a secular organization has a cult or even social organizations, labor practices need to remain fair regardless of membership. That seems to be the issue with this story as one of the directors in question has already lost lawsuits because of favoring cult members over non. The cult itself seems suspect, but that’s for law enforcement to determine.

Wish people understandstand how this interplays with politics and national identity.

It's an odd feature of humanity and a bug part of why I could never call myself an atheist as that too didn't go far enough with this understanding. Fundamentally religious by default and interesting how that plays in PR and advertisements.

Its all intertwined, religion, politics, etc etc. Cults, cliques, gangs, its all just a play on words by specialists in words and the nuanced differences whilst having similar properties. Something to keep us busy if other things dont keep us busy.

You can't get away from cliques, I guess. I don't think cults are that common.

Is this another case of "corporate religion"? It's not new, I've seen studies of cases a few years ago. Terrifying to know some managers are adopting it and people get dragged into it. I understand individuality, free will and consciousness are not exactly valued in the brave new world paradigm, but I'd rather stay clear from such places.

No, it's an example of a group of people doing a "party machine" kind of thing where they hire their connections, and their connections support them.

As the article explains, no.

This is an external group that got a foothold and nepotistically hired more from its ranks and made purchases from its businesses.

Thanks, I thought it was a subscription-only article, couldn't open it.

90% of this article goes into explaining that there exists within google a certain group of people with a certain set of beliefs and practices which does not align with that of the author. ok, i don't see how that is relevant. the next 10% goes into alleging that he was discriminated by this set of people. 0% goes into explaining the details of how this discrimination took place.

Suing a cult with hundreds of members is a dumb idea: they'll turn vindictive and will go after you. Instead, you appear mildly suppotive and friendly to them, gather information, give them publicity via media outlets, and give anonymous tips to FBI.

I hope nobody takes your idea seriously. Most people aren't super-spies who can go undercover and save society from a cult. Just go to law enforcement, report it and listen to what they have to say.

There once was a professor doing research on cults who sent out his grad students to secretly embed themselves in various cults and report on them. Not all of them came back.. And now we get learn about why that was a bad idea in the ethics portion of psychology classes! Yay!

How are you defining “bad idea”?

Professor sent out the grad students. Some of them didn’t come back (died?).

Those are all the facts. Any pontificating about whether it is Good or Bad is just nonsense.

Do you know when/where this happened? Im not doubting you Im just very curious.

The US and any time before the 2000s. Sorry I can't be of more help than that. It was only a brief but very memorable mention in a lecture many years ago. I did just try searching for it online but there is a ton of cult related content online. More than I ever imagined. Also it's not like the researchers were exposed and murdered dramatically, rather that some just ended up joining and staying with the cults.

It's not illegal to be in a cult. Maybe it's left out for legal reasons, but there's no suggestion in the article that they did bad anything at all to the author.

Maybe he was afraid of the whiteness of it, or the allegedly rampant gay sex.

Well he was ignored for promotion

By his friend who wasn't in the cult. Maybe I read it wrong?

from the medium article linked in other comments:

> Then, without warning or reason, I was fired. The person who actually gave me the decision didn’t know why they were doing it. They said they had no involvement in the decision. They asked me if I knew why I was being fired. I said “I assume you would know, right?” They didn’t. (A funny detail: The raise for that promotion I was given was processed after I was fired, so I received two last checks at the higher rate. Fired and promoted at the same time.)

> Even though Dan was not in my chain of supervisors, I’m convinced he helped to orchestrate my termination. I believe he saw me as an existential threat, to him, his colleagues and their jobs. The purported reasoning for my termination was an email I had sent requesting the retention of an editor, which was a completely normal business issue. In retrospect, it looks like Dan was looking for pretext to shuffle me off for some time before that.

edit: i might as well just link it here too https://medium.com/@kwilliamlloyd/the-cult-in-google-3c1a910...

The whole reason he filed the lawsuit, and thus why we are reading about this, is because he was fired and he feels it was because he tried to speak out about the cult. Did anyone in this thread read any of it lol

I think cults/fraternal organizations are a lot more common than anyone thinks, and I say this because I keep meeting/hearing about people in them.

Cults do illegal things though, and are generally considered harmful to members.

If you read the article, the cult's also been involved in what's arguably sex trafficking.

The author wasn't personally harmed in a significant way but I don't see how that's relevant.

Why sue if you haven't been harmed?

"I was fired from my team there in February of 2021 because I raised alarm about a cult within Google, a group called the Fellowship of Friends. "

Sounds to me like he freaked out because he was working with weirdos, wanted 'someone to do something about it', and then wouldn't let it go.

But he was harmed: he was allegedly fired for reporting religious discrimination.

He may not have been harmed by the cult members, but he was (again, allegedly) harmed by the culture created by this cult. "I learned of someone being discriminated due to their religious beliefs (or lack of), I reported it and the company fired me" makes a good case for the company supporting and/or engaging in religious discrimination.

I'm not saying the author will win - it is entirely possible, like you say, that he was fired for being disruptive or other hundred valid reasons. But I do think the author raises at least a good initial argument.

>But he was harmed: he was allegedly fired for reporting religious discrimination.

He was allegedly harmed. If, as the person you are replying to speculates, he was freaking out and being a bad employee after discovering the affiliation of his coworkers, then potentially that's a righteous firing and he wasn't harmed in a legal sense. If as he alleges, he was fired for having valid concerns, then yes, harm in a legal sense.

I'd be more than happy to join a cult and do their bidding if they got me a good job at Google with good long term prospects, it sounds like a fair deal to me. Mr Lloyd would have been much better off working out a deal with the cult rather than suing his employer, perhaps he could have nominally joined them and tithed 10% in exchange for their nepotism; it's certainly what I would have done.

Did you read the thread where cult members were subjected to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse? Rape and forced abortions?

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