Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

Yes. Stadia execs lied to their own employees. It's a pattern for the company.

This call was followed by a contentious Q&A where the Stadia boss was confronted about his email from just the week before which suggested anything but a wholesale shutdown of the studios. Harrison expressed his regret over the misleading statements made in his previous email, according to four sources with knowledge of the call. When asked what changed from the week prior, Harrison admitted nothing had and told those on the call, “We knew.”

https://kotaku.com/stadia-leadership-praised-development-stu...

View on HN

I'm sure there's some sort of doctor-like logic going on in some heads where you tell the patient everything is going to be fine because the surgery goes better if they aren't freaked out before the anesthesia hits.

But with team dynamics getting thrown in I think that narrative sounds noble and glamorous but has little to nothing to do with reality. Instead it's an equal part "I can save this" and "we aren't gonna save this but we need people to stay to help with an orderly shutdown", and the Mushroom Treatment (keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit).

At least with the mushroom treatment though you end up with some very tasty and healthy products!

I am not a product.

> I'm sure there's some sort of doctor-like logic going on in some heads where you tell the patient everything is going to be fine because the surgery goes better if they aren't freaked out before the anesthesia hits.

That is a clear violation of informed consent. Even if it might lead to better short-term outcomes, over the long-term it leads to degrading trust in doctors. Same with this case. It gives all of us (internal employees, outside devs, businesses, customers) even more reasons to never believe any promise that comes out of the mouth of an Alphabet executive.

I am at the moment trying to get an appointment with a doctor to tell him the same thing to his face.

What you shouldn’t do is enumerate all of the potential side effects in vivid detail. That’s the WebMD curse. But if someone wants you to look at your work you should look at your work, not blow them off on the phone. That’s just more arrogant asshole behavior, which contributes to White Coat Syndrome.

What are we going to call WCS for mega corps with short attention spans? Because I think we need one.

Google Syndrome fits well

I found much more peace as an employee by accepting that all executives lie to some degree

In their circles it’s called “controlling the message”, “not causing panic”, “simplifying” etc. They often simply do not believe it’s lying

I try to work for companies that aren't openly evil.

The greatest idea since sliced bread... too bad that leaves a vanishingly small pool of potential work.

"Working as Intended"

Pull Request: Remove "Don't be evil" from the Code of Conduct.

you best bet of doing that is spinning off your own company. I unfortunately cannot afford to do that.

I think it's realistic to assume that this happens but it doesn't mean it should be accepted. How can you trust in the leadership of someone you know will lie whenever they think it will get them a slightly better outcome? Execs like that are not leaders and they should not be in those positions.

> How can you trust in the leadership

You shouldn't. At best, they are fellow travelers. At worst, they aren't accountable to you, and their incentive structure usually does not drive them to behave ethically towards you.

Execs aren't paid to lead, they are paid to deliver business value. Ethical leadership is often incidental or counterproductive to it.

In this case, the execs were paid to do everything possible to promote and grow the product. And that's what they did.

My very first TGIF after my noogler one, I sat behind some disgruntled employee who kept yelling at the stage about how the execs were lying to us.

I thought it was fairly rude and also I thought the execs were simply using careful language. After attending a bunch more TGIFs, I finally realized that nearly every exec had a very specific way of presenting things that sort of made their work sound perfect, even if it was shit. You can see an example in "An Update On Google Reader" or "Advancing our Amazing Bet on Google Fiber", or even this one.

Was it Vic "OKR=1.0" G?

No, way before that. The very end of Google Classic era.

They should probably try implementing OKRs at Google. I heard it helps with transparency.

Surely these executives will be severely reprimanded for their lack of integrity, lest employees throughout the company begin to assume that such behavior is the standard.

Actually, the Stadia management were this close to being shitcanned for failing to live up to Google ideals. The only thing that saved them was when they announced that their group had already pivoted to a promising new product idea featuring a built-in messaging client.

Upvoted because I had to think twice if this was sarcasm.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com