Good. You're there to work.
It also feels uniquely selfish. "I love the money but I still want to protest!" If you feel so strongly then quit but that would require sacrifice.
It also feels uniquely selfish. "I love the money but I still want to protest!" If you feel so strongly then quit but that would require sacrifice.
Idk, these guys looked unplanned and childish, which lightens the credibility of their claims. They went zero to occupying an executive’s office—there wasn’t even a petition stage. That’s not the kind of escalation anyone wants precedent for, because if you provide it you’d better be ready to make space for a perpetual environmental and MAGA lobby in every leader’s workspace.
And while the PR impact of this hasn’t been negligible, it’s also been light. Outside HN it hasn’t really registered.
I divested all my GOOG stock when the Gemini debacle happened. I figured they were too entrenched in political ideology to compete with AI and would just slowly decay. For me, this is a positive PR impact as it shows GOOG is getting back to competing instead of collecting rents on technology they created decades ago.
I think it's silly that people will protest like this with the expectation that they won't immediately get fired but that's the play if you want to make noise.
I bet they are equally ineffective.
Doesn't it seem like there's quite a gulf between compliant silence and quitting?
I don't know much about these protests so I can't say whether I agree with them or not, but the general idea that there's a black and white choice here doesn't make sense.
Also, doesn't it seem likely that many of these people understood that they could be terminated or face other discipline for their participation in these protests? That is, many may have understood they were putting their jobs on the line, right? That's no small sacrifice.
Maybe the company coffee machine starts using new beans and I don't like the taste. No one else is complaining, so should I keep my mouth shut?
If I say "hey I don't like this coffee" and everyone else goes "it's fine" then I have to get different coffee. If however everyone else says "it sucks" then maybe it'll get changed back.
I assume these people would have refused to work for an arms manufacturer or an oil company, but maybe they could try to change one of those from the inside.
I'm serious, have the balls to tell them you won't work for them because you consider them immoral. Take a stand. Something else will come along.
Having said all that I think if you don't quit then having an in-office protest without resigning is pathetic; it lacks the honesty of giving up your paycheck and reeks of entitlement.
If you cant come to terms with what your employer is doing, it's in the right of the either party to terminate the contract.
Morality is a subjective argument and non-sequiter here anyway.
Though morality can be subjective, culturally we have coalesced on many shared moral values (a subset of which have been codified into law, for example, it is both immoral and illegal to kill someone in most peace time circumstances). And since "morality" encompasses a broad set of expected behaviors that manifests in practically every facet of our lives, it's unfortunately relevant at pretty much all times. Morality is quite necessary for high functioning societies.
Since companies like Google dilute responsibility and behave collectively as sociopaths in the pursuit of money, I'm quite glad we have people willing to self-sacrifice to keep them from behaving a-socially (or, arguably, evilly). Yes, it's probably safer and "logical" for most people to avoid sticking their necks out for what the believe in.