Both my parents belonged to unions almost their entire careers and I find this article mildly insulting, at best.
Google offers: 18 weeks paid leave to new mothers, unlimited gourmet food/snacks, free gyms/workout classes onsite and recognized stock compensation expense of $11.7 Billion last year.
They have over 100,000 employees. It's not surprising that a small percentage of employees want more say, without having earned it. But let's not equate the AI engineer, security engineer or others with actual activists like Cesar Chavez or Mother Jones.
2
I guess none of these people read Orwell's Animal Farm. That aside, their social justice stance is over the top. Imagine if you worked at a car manufacturer and decided to protest because some people will drive drunk. Or worked for a medical supply company but decided to protest because supplies are being sold to abortion clinics. As a VP where I worked once said, "The company owes you nothing, we settle up every payday."
3
It's ironic that the employees are fretting some contract with ICE. Google's core business took over the local and global ad revenue that supported newspapers and newstations that had real investigative journalism and replaced them with YouTube influencers, AI opinion echo chambers. The real news sources either went out of business or were bought up by billionaires.
That is the foundational evil that Google was/is built on.
They should create a multi-billion dollar and annually growing foundation that provides grants to investigative journalists local and global to compensate. The ICE stuff is a consequently, as it were, frosting on the cake.
7
The most consequential "Google Revolt" may well be Huawei's. Success is likely to turn a lot of foreign OEM's to intiate supply and service chains and product lines reliably free of toxic Trump contamination - call it TrVID-20.
2
The activists in this article seem to cast working on projects they don't like as employee abuse. Given what they're paid, I find that a bit rich. Making a living is essentially transactional. A long time ago, you put in the right effort, you got food, clothing and shelter. You stop putting in the effort, you stop getting food, clothing, and shelter. Today, you do what your employer wants, they give you money to buy food, clothing, and shelter. You stop doing what they want, they stop giving you money to buy food, clothing, and shelter. Employment is basically a simple thing.
Now, if a business has a monopoly on the jobs in an area, a union may be appropriate to prevent a business from taking undue advantage. Likewise, if a union has a monopoly on the workers in an area and abuses that situation, it may be better to get rid of it. Nothing, however, in the google situation seems remotely like abuse to me. It reads like employees that somehow feel entitled to something that may rightfully be granted them by management, but can just as rightfully be taken away, to wit, a say in what business the company is in. If they don't like it, given their salable skills, they should move on.
4
@gp The way I look at it, every worker has the right to call out unethical behavior. Google has been limiting those rights. Workers are joining together to get back the rights for a more ethical workplace.
These workers are continuing to work while trying to improve their work environment. Making an obscure rule to legally fire people for that isn't acceptable, and a union seems like the perfect tool to fight that.
2
@Dan I don't disagree in general, but there can be a lot of disagreement on what's ethical and what's not. It was clear to me that the things Google was working on could be and, in fact, are viewed as ethical by others. That said, it renders the activist's discussion not about what's ethical but about nothing more than taste. That means that management did nothing "wrong", just something the activists disagreed with. Unions came into being and continue as such to right wrongs, not to settle simple disagreements.
How much time have these socially conscious tech workers spent thinking about the consequences of their actions? I don't mean their self-serving protests at work. I mean their whole involvement with technology and the industry's mindless insistence that everything that can be automated should be automated.
What do they think truck drivers will do when they automate trucking? Is a job in an Amazon warehouse stuffing boxes as good as the job at the now-closed local store? Is customer service better now that companies tie the hands of customer service reps with automated systems that nobody bothers to keep up-to-date or maintain? Are we satisfied with companies that no longer pay people to answer our questions because tech workers designed chatrooms and forums where other customers can flail around answering these questions for free? Who facilitated the collection of our data and then gets even more business cleaning up the mess that results when the security is breached? Why use AI to make automated systems act more human? Who are the humans who want to interact with AI?
Technology is a two-edged sword. There are many good uses, but automating everyone who doesn't want to sit at a computer out of a job, eliminating face-to-face or person-to-person interaction, and violating everyone's privacy are mistakes we will all pay for with our mental health. It is always good to see people checking their moral compass, but quite frankly, they are all a little late and a dollar short.
7
"Management makes the rules, if you don't like it, work someplace else."
And that "someplace else" is going to be your competition, most likely a company that is willing to include its employees in management decisions. That's how Google has been so successful.
"Unions only bargain for working conditions and wages, they don't have a say in business ventures."
Traditional unions perhaps but there is no good reason why that must be the rule. We evolve in order to meet new challenges. It's called innovation.
"Management decides what business the company will do, not its employees."
Thankfully, this norm is rapidly changing due to the ways in which we've seen this outdated perspective limit innovation and employee engagement. Intelligent companies know that to remain competitive they must evolve and create cultures that attract the best talent. As a result, managers are more and more aligning with their actual function: enabling employees to produce value vs. pretending to have some arbitrary authority over their direct reports.
Real authority has always been with the employees, they're just now realizing that fact. It is quite strange that regular people would resist this leveling of the playing field.
2
@Blake I can see you're passionate about your beliefs, a good thing. And I see that what you describe may indeed be the best way to run a business. A couple questions for you:
Do you consider it ethically wrong to run a business in a way that's you think is not the best way?
Do you distinguish between owners and managers?
Consider: Say, you have $100,000,000 to build a business. Your dream is to make X. You start your business and things go well for a while. Then a faction of employees don't want to work on X. They say they'll only work on Y. You still dream of building X while you write out the paychecks every month. What do you do with the pro-Y employees?
In another post, you mention employees replacing management. Without a strong union, have you ever seen that by any method other than changing jobs?
@gp Love the inquiries. Thank you.
Do you consider it ethically wrong to run a business in a way that's you think is not the best way?
Not necessarily. In my role an exec coach, I'm seeking solutions that optimize for the business's goals. Ethics is only a component if factors into the goals (it often is but doesn't have to be).
Research indicates that the strongest indicator of high performance teams is the degree of psychological safety (the willingness of team members to express and recieve feedback).
I work with executives that run billion dollar companies. They are rapidly moving to embrace cultures that engage and inspire employees to bring their best game. The best CEO's understand that the most effective way to lead is to flip the org chart upside down. Leadership serves the organization, not the other way round. Those who get this wisdom, see incredible loyalty and engagement.
Do you distinguish between owners and managers?
Absolutely. An owner (or top leader) role is to vision and inspire. A manager's role is to clarify expectations, remove obstacles (when needed), and help diagnose problems.
As to your hypothetical scenario, unfortunately I'm constrained by the word limit to respond.
Finally, my recent posts here reflect a degree of passion that I wouldn't necessarily bring to advise a client. While I personally value transparent servant-based leadership models, it may not be the best fit for all orgs.
Thanks again for the dialogue.
@gp Love the inquiries. Thank you.
Do you consider it ethically wrong to run a business in a way that's you think is not the best way?
Not necessarily. In my role an exec coach, I'm seeking solutions that optimize for the business's goals. Ethics is only a component if factors into the goals (it often is but doesn't have to be).
Research indicates that the strongest indicator of high performance teams is the degree of psychological safety (the willingness of team members to express and recieve feedback).
I work with executives that run billion dollar companies. They are rapidly moving to embrace cultures that engage and inspire employees to bring their best game. The best CEO's understand that the most effective way to lead is to flip the org chart upside down. Leadership serves the organization, not the other way round. Those who get this wisdom, see incredible loyalty and engagement.
Do you distinguish between owners and managers?
Absolutely. An owner (or top leader) role is to vision and inspire. A manager's role is to clarify expectations, remove obstacles (when needed), and help diagnose problems.
Finally, my recent posts here reflect a degree of passion that I wouldn't necessarily bring to advise a client. While I personally value transparent servant-based leadership models, it may not be the best fit for all orgs.
Thanks again for the dialogue.
1
I am glad to read so many comments here that seem perplexed by the action of the Google activists. It indicates that there is still a large contingent of dis-empowered perspectives, holding on to the idea that management makes the rules. It's clear that we are still at a turning point in company culture.
It's no wonder these perspectives linger, despite the clear limitations they produce. In the past, if an employee was dissatisfied with the decisions that management was making, their only recourse was to leave. But to go where? Invariably, other companies would have similarly toxic "top down" structures.
Only in the past generation have we begun to really witness new paradigms of equality emerge in company cultures. I salute Google, both its activists and managers, for boldly trailblazing much healthier forms of leveraging employee potential. They clearly recognize that empowering employees not only optimizes productivity and innovation, any less will drive your talent to your competitors, especially those with more inclusive cultures.
This is the culture war at its best. Employees and management working together, not "top down" but hand in hand to establish a much better place to work and as a result, a more resilient and competitive business.
Bravo Google.
Remember when Google began as the DO NO HARM company? Now reputation defender can scrub your past sins if you have the money and clear google caches (try and find all the past investigative articles about the Kochs on google now) and they have partnered with Big Brother here and abroad ( so what if Chinese authorities grab you up, torture and kill you ). DuckDuckGo all the way.
4
News flash: You don't get paid to spend your day looking for ways to embarrass and shame the company who pays your salary.
Unless the company is doing something illegal, in which case you may receive protection as a whistle-blower, no employer will put up with this. If you don't like the ethics of the company you work for, change companies. And if you can't financially afford to change companies (like the transitioning employee who now wonders where the benefits will come from to complete transition), maybe you should keep your head down and do your job.
This is less a story about Google as it is about some delusional young people who think that they should be paid for subverting the company they work for.
10
@Jack Sonville
Ok Boomer. The "keep your head down and do your job" was how it USED to be. That messed up toxic culture is not the future of work and certainly won't be tolerated by highly skilled employees. So no. We're not going to do that. We're going to use our voices, organize, and leverage our influence to ensure the company is being run in accordance to the values we signed up for. And you'd best get used to that approach cuz that's the direction the rest of industry is heading.
Management is not some unquestionable authority. They are simply managers, which means they help remove obstacles from the paths of workers busy making products that help the company succeed. The real authority lies in the cooperation of the workforce.
Good thing you're not in management.
7
@Jack Sonville
News flash: that same ethic, "defer to the bosses unless it's illegal," worked well for the German corporations like Thyssen and Bayer (then called IG Farben) that used prisoners of war as slaves in Nazi Germany.
Of course this was not just not illegal, but encouraged by the government.
As was chain gang labor in this country's recent past.
Be grateful for employees' moral courage - some day the life they save may be yours. We need more labor activism everywhere. You too can get sick and need more care than your bosses wish to provide.
1
@Blake You won't always be considered "highly skilled," and even when you are, you can be replaced. In fact, as a highly-skilled worker, most likely you're developing the technology that will replace you.
Is all of Silicon Valley? With the inmates running the asylum. The founders created this mess, by establishing a culture that is unworkable. Google has every right to support ICE and it’s horrible, yet legal, policies. I wouldn’t work there. As someone else said, just leave. Back in the day on Madison Ave, our issue was whether or not to work on a tobacco account or even at an ad agency that represented one. We made our choices and moved on.
6
@Cloud 9
Nope! That's precisely NOT how it works anymore. Managers are welcome to propose business strategies but they are only empowered to make decisions by the consent of the employees. Managers are not "in charge" anymore. Like everyone else, they have as organizational function, specifically to make it easier for employees to do their jobs. Otherwise, employees will be forced to organize and remind management who possess the real power.
As I read this a chill went through me. Reminded me of the numerous stories of WWII scientists and engineers refining mass murder techniques.
No, Google is not doing that...yet. But these are slippery slopes. Responsibility for how the technology you create is used is on you. You can't look away. You are culpable. Refining drone software that can be used for extrajudicial killings is morally abhorrent and must be shocking when you realize your work could be used in this way. No wonder Google workers are pushing back.
As a society we are conveniently closing our eyes to the high tech potential for evil as we lavishly enjoy our 'click-and-enjoy' on line culture.
Kudos to the Google engineers...smart, young and idealistic. They should be supported and listened to. Google needs to wake up. In fact we all need to wake up. Precious rights and liberties are seriously at stake.
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@Patricia not conducting an extrajudicial killing of a terrorist that is organizing mass murder is also morally abhorrent.
2
I can't imagine anything more absurd than one of the most successful companies in the world letting a few employees try to dictate corporate policy. Especially when the compliants involve doing important work for the US government. The fact that loyalty to their country is being subordinated to some holier than thou sense of right and wrong is just bizarre on a individual basis. But on the large scale is very dangerous. Does anything thing rival nations like China has these issues?
8
@Todd
I can't imagine anything more absurd than a vast number of highly skilled and intelligent workers allowing a small number of management personnel to dictate whether or not their innovation will be used for unethical purposes.
If employees do not like how management is running the company, they replace the management not the employees. A handful of managers are easy to replace, thousands of creative technology innovators are not, especially when they'd just go work for your competition.
3
I pity the idealistic workers at Google, whose time is clearly short. Startup industries competing for talent wave the flag of idealism and "doing no evil," but when the dollars start flowing those at the top become isolated and greedy. I'm referring to Page and Brin, who clearly now believe they are the geniuses who created tech,
when, like Zuckerberg, they're only the ones who monetized it.
Industrial democracy is an idea that helps an industry grow fast by appealing to the idealism of its workers and convincing them to work faster and harder "for themselves and humanity." It's always a shock to such workers when the business turns the capitalist corner and they discover they're just replaceable components in an exploitative system. Too bad it's so predictable.
8
Where was Noam Scheiber when James Damore was fired? Some firings are more equal than others, it would seem. This positively oozes and reeks of hypocrisy.
5
On the fence about the terminations, I admire their ethics, but I don't approve of their methods; subscribing too calendars they have business subscribing too for instance, that is clearly espionage.
4
And so, this is the chaos of democracy. Yeats said it succinctly, "the center cannot hold." It is the death knell for the American experiment.
It's even scary reading some of the comments here, do people really think any other person is less deserving of a fulfilling life than they are? Because while it's easy to explain off or disguise your unhumanistic beliefs with "it's business and business is..." you still have to internally have the conversation, what do you care about?
Are we as people supposed to be quiet subjects to our kings and queens existing to simply drive profit and revel in bones that are thrown at us? I'm sorry but even if history sings its song and we as "woke" people are somehow on the wrong side of this perpetual class struggle I will keep my feet firmly planted in MY reality that a person's life, mental health, and quality of said life should ALWAYS come before a profit motive, no matter the "costs". Society has functioned for so long in such a broken way, why can't people see that's why we're here now?
12
@Robert. Much appreciated.
Apparently morality, compassion
etc are passe.
4
Why is anyone surprised when corporations act like this?
This article, for me, illustrates the story beneath the Tower of Babel allegory – a monolithic structure, built by many hands, which has become corrupted through the building process until it's contributors are no more than bricks and the only common language offer between them is one of greed, resulting in more than a few evil deeds.
Do no evil, indeed. No wonder Google removed this from their corporate code of conduct.
This tower needs to be torn down or regulated by a better code of ethics.
3
In a variant to the Wall Street Rule (if you don't like the company's management, sell the stock), if you don't like what the company you work for does, leave and get a job elsewhere. Despite what they all say, management doesn't want your input and certainly doesn't want to hear about anything that will reduce their profits. Better yet, work for yourself. I worked for a major corporation for four years and left, swearing I'd never work for anyone else again. It was the best decision I ever made. The ethics I choose to follow are mine.
3
It is Google's challenge and responsibility to decide what it wants to be now that it has grown up. Responding to employees' concerns with policies seemingly made up on the fly is a big part of the problem here. It may be a huge, sprawling mess of an organization but it is full of smart people and they need to decide on their policies, and then stick to them. It's the stick to them part that is getting them into trouble.
This is highly entertaining. Google employees could set up a union sure. I'll even say they should. But and it's a very very big but unions only have say on working conditions & wages. They zero, zilch no say on what projects you or the company work on PERIOD, If you choose not to do the job then your unemployed. That's the way of the working world and isn't going to change. No union in the world can dictate what the company works on. That isn't within the power of ANY union.
One last note for those crying about how these people should get in management's face and protest management's decisions? If you do that and you can. You WILL be gotten rid of. It probably won't be the reason given. But it will happen because if the bosses are looking for a reason they'll find a perfectly legal one. One thing I have learned in 4 decades + in the working world is choose your battles carefully, frontal assault is never a good idea & unless you are truly unique (And few are) you can always be replaced by someone who works cheaper.
One should never pick a fight with one's bosses unless one is prepared to be unemployed irregardless of how ethical your stand is or your bosses proclaim themselves to be. It is a business NOT a democracy don't confuse the 2.
4
@Stephan
You're still locked in outdated thinking. Management are no longer "the bosses". That perspective is quickly fading and rightly so. Management simply has a function, which is to empower and facilitate the workers' ability to produce value.
Company culture is changing. Big time. All across industry. Whenever a person says something like "and that will never change", just smile and in your head say "Ok Boomer". Cuz not only are things changing, they already have. And for the better.
Who in their right mind wants to slave away, offering one's valuable creative gifts to an employer that's going to use them as they see fit. Absolutely not! The fact that we used to operate that way is mindboggling. The employees have ALWAYS had the real authority. It's prime time that is recognized.
I was just a drop in the ocean of big tech, and I used the internet a lot for work and chess. Now, I've dropped Gxxgle as my search engine and am much happier with the Ducks in my smaller tech pond. Plus, they don't sell my data to make money.
2
Workers should organize if they need to improve their working conditions, compensation and benefits, but Googlers who are trying redirect company policies that don't affect those things are way out of line. It's not enough that they have the cushiest conditions and compensation packages, but they want the company to embrace their political beliefs as well. Big mistake. You exercise your political beliefs at the ballot box. And their aversion to the company selling products to the government because they might be used for defense or for border enforcement is an absurdity. If Obama were still president (whose defense department and border patrol were no different from Trump's), you can bet those liberal dissidents would be oh so complaisant about selling product to the government. In addition, the USA must have the most advanced military capability, and opposition to that goal is nothing short of treason.
5
Googlers learning how it feels to be a conservative on a college campus. The irony!
4
Brilliant piece of reporting. Thank you.
1
"Don't be evil ... unless there's good money in it."
4
Proud snowflake here.
1
@Sara. Snowflake here too !!
1
As a nursing and Union employee, the healthcare system would have me taking care of 6-10 patients vs 4 in patient. The companies want you alone bc 1 on 1 they can intimidate you. Unionize bc there is strength in numbers. Look at the pilots unions at all the airlines. While you have to not destroy the goose, you must get a golden eggs to live. An educated work force and union leadership is a must need for this country bc the 1% has all the money now....now they want all the power.
6
I do not know the gender ratio at Google but likely white males dominate - yet in this article women are equal if not more so the targets of the“official” retaliation?
3
Hey at least they gave up their "Don't be evil" motto. They know how false that would sound now.
1
So a few anti-American malcontents lost their jobs for trying to undermine the law (in this case, it appears, immigration law). If they were really the Leftist heros they claim to be, they would have resigned when the realized they were working for a company that supports American laws.
2
What a nonsensical article.
Employee(s) means you are an individual who works part-time or full-time under a contract of employment, whether oral or written, express or implied, and completely within the bounds of that contract of employment's defined duties and rights.
The way an employee stops their company from doing something, is to quit. That company. Everything else that they propose to; or actually do; is irrelevant.
Next meaningless NYT Mag article please.
4
All corporations are like this Google is evil as any other.
Early out of college I worked for Hoechst AG a German chemical pharma giant. I learn six months into the job they produced Zyklon-B used in the gas chambers, they also used concentration camp slave labor. Max Haber nobel laureate, was the "father of chemical warfare", Zyklon-B came out of his lab, Haber was Jewish, the banality of evil I guess.
I had to really sit down and review my career path (I stayed the money was great). FEAR controls my life, my masters who control my wallet control me. Threaten me with economic hardship and I comply (not proud of it).
During WWII IBM supplied data machines that the Nazi's used to tabulate concentration camp statistics, how many various groups of people were murdered etc. Ford Germany had a plant that built the Wehrmachts heavy trucks, thousands of trucks were built at this one plant, oddly enough it was never bombed until late 1944 or early '45 (?). What man will do for money.
3
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
1
@John The video of Oppie saying that is on YouTube. it's incredibly moving.
I just don’t get it. Especially in this jobs economy, if someone doesn’t like their job or doesn't like what their employer is doing, it seems to me that a proper course of action is to simply find another job more aligned to one’s economic/political/environmental/whatever ideals and move on. Did purportedly high-minded employees who staged walkouts or work stoppages forfeit their pay while not doing their jobs? I didn’t think so.
6
@Chris CLONEY . There is such a thing as a civil society which is more advanced and less sadistic than the world you describe. Many economically successful countries operate that way such as Germany. The Board had reps from the union and from
the permitted. So you aren't expressing a law of economics but your personal taste for a society in which might makes right. Another society more like that was the USA in the 50s and 60s when unions limited worker exploitation. Our economic productivity under those conditions was the envy of the world.
3
The Greatest Generation knew this: Unions make you strong.
With unions, our parents and grandparents demanded and got the 40-hour work week, the weekend, pensions, and health benefits. Starting with Reagan, the GOP defanged unions, in part by dividing them over race. And so, we have lost all those gains made by the struggles of our parents and grandparents.
Anyone who thinks they can subvert Google or any corporation from inside is fooling themselves.
Solidarity forever!
11
@ELS. You nailed it. People who say it has to be this way as a law of economics would be the ones who under other circumstances would justify slavery..In fact I think the range of personality types is pretty indep of time and place. If our population were transferred to 1930 Germany, who do you think would have joined the nazi party? the democratic tree huggers? I don't think so. the people who are on the right here today would be the people on the right in any other situation.
Thats why i don't care for Republicans. I know what
they are capable of.
3
My spouse works at Google (I loathe the company - I am a Luddite) and this doesn't surprise me at all. I went to visit my spouse at the office this past week and was asked to sign a statement confirming I didn't have coronavirus and hadn't been exposed to it in order to gain entry to the office. I was furious they felt it appropriate to ask about my health in this invasive way.
Google spoils its workers so they will remain loyal and serve as cogs in the machine because they are told they are "special" and indispensable. Free meals and snacks (remember, food is a primary reinforcer in terms of shaping behavior - it's powerful) and other perks make working there feel like an exclusive club and all go a long way to creating automatons.
Because of its size and ubiquity and the fact people can't seem to live without it (or avoid it, as another commenter here expressed) society has seemingly granted them the ability to do as they see fit as a powerful company.
I could work at Google because of my line of work and make a lot more money than I do in my current work arrangement, but I don't want anything to do with them. I wish more people realized that NOT feeling dirty when it comes to whom we help realize financial gains and power is better than feeling dirty and part of the crowd. Maybe this only kicks in on the death bed for many? Any corporation as large as Google is dirty with a capital "D", there can be no other way.
6
@KP Google wasn't invasive about your health at all. You wanted to enter their premises. You could have walked away and not answered the silly question that in the end meant nothing.
4
@David That's right . They should have taken the visitor's temperature and drawn their blood..at least!
@KP During a time of a pandemic, I think your abhorence of being asked whether you currently are carrying it is ... a bit of a stretch as an example of horrible corporate behavior.
Also, I've run 3 startups now, we offered free lunch too, we just use doordash or eatclub, not a big deal.
3
How many readers think that there is no place for morality in business, e.g. would happily sell gas ovens to nazis? Many companies did. To those on the right, do you have moral limits which ate just much more flexible than those of the snowflakes? Or are you qualitatively different, and have no moral limits at all ?
I'm not trying to make any particular point, but I'm curious and really don't know the answer.
25
@Robert You've hit on my, ironically, central, problem with the right and the left. I think everything is more about striking a balance.
In fact, I wish there was a political party called after our founding fathers: "Balance of Powers" that would just try to inject self correcting feedback into everything.
"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Acton
13
Since 99% of the public has no concept of how to be citizens and has never learned anything about the history of the labor movement in the USA, it is no wonder the Google employees are distressed to find they are actually merely subjects, ruled by the inevitable oligarchy which only is interested in money. “Don’t be evil” was simply a catch phrase that covered up for the eventual usurpation by good old fashioned greed. In past times the employers hired Pinkerton agents or co-opted and paid off local politicians and police who would simply shoot strikers knowing the dead could be easily replaced. Today, the bullies just need to fire a few and harass any other “troublemakers” and the majority of employees will duck and cover. Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook are just the modern versions of the Robber Barons of the past. We don’t really have citizens in this country any longer. We have consumers who will swallow any slick con and want to be distracted by whatever pumps up the endorphins, even of the thrill is deeply perverse and evil. The trolls are winning because we either can’t pay attention or just don’t care. Apparently enough who are exercising their franchise are voting for this outcome. Guess they think this is what makes America great.
30
@Rmayer Yes, Google employees are subjects but well paid subjects. If these workers are offended by what they do, they can quit and find other employment. It's what I did when I felt that the financial organization that I was working was operating in an unethical manner in their relations with customers.
3
So many craven responses here. I thought Americans were supposed to be fiercely independent, fighters for increased democracy, and fearless in their pursuit truth and the rights of all. Never have I heard so much cowardice and obsequiousness in the face of the bottom line. No wonder we are becoming a banana republic.
24
@KT
The power of big corporation has always been on par (or greater) with the political power of the representative government in the US for the last century.
The awareness of the corruption is just getting greater as the ability to imagine breaking away from such system.
Unfortunately, we need a revolution in Capital management and corporate governance to really have a corporate system at the service of the people rather than trying to control them.
I sure hope we can pull this of this century or the planet is toast.
2
@KT Superb answer KT.
Many posters consider morality in general to be a weakness. Shall we sell our work to the highest- bidding dictator ? I guess so. Otherwise you're a snowflake. At one time around the Nuremberg trials there seemed to be a consensus in America that we were better than that. That the individual moral compass had some value. But these people have zero compassion, its just the almighty dollar that matters.
Brutal people. I teach college and find that some of the students realize that their parents are really horrible people.
19
@Robert So when these students find out that their parents are horrible people do they break away and start paying for their own education?
1
@Robert College is a wonderful place for earnest intellectuals to go to share and expand new ideas, and to shape young minds. It is also a good place for narcissistic frauds to find a ready supply of impressionable student worshipers, some of whom, after they finish college, realize that their favorite professor was really a horrible person. Your interest in awakening your students' to the evils of their parents raises the hair on the back of my neck. Are you an educator or a predator?
1
What is surprising about being fired if you publicly denigrate your employer?
13
@Jon I grew up in the Bay Area with the kids who started these companies and when your brand is "Do No Harm"--employees are not ready for the tipping point when stockholder pressure for growth may cause what they see is harm. Google and others may loose creative genius if they don't figure this out.
6
Google has the right yo determine work policy. Anybody opposed can and should leave.
10
@lieberma Do they have the right to change the policy AFTER you have signed on the bottom line? Doesn't a contract define the obligations of both parties?
4
@lieberma
By your logic we should surrender all work rights.
What if there is a race to the bottom in term of suppression employees representation and recognition as stake holders in the company success (not just next quarter stock value) ?
If your boss declared, you have to now work every week end and take Tuesday off only, would you say they "have the right to determine work policies".
2
@Chris Yes. Company management (or government agency management can change company policy and policy interpretation at any time subject to various legal or existing contractual constraints. In what world is that not true?
In practice, such changes often respond to changes in the external legal, regulatory, or business environment. It remains to be seen whether the NLRB finds that Google's changes violated any contracts and the the firings described broke the law.
This is much more than a story about disgruntled workers advocating for union representation.
19
One becomes a workplace "activist" at one's own risk. Having run multiple companies for 3 decades and engaging with dozens of others, I've yet to see that particular skill listed on a job description.
15
@John D
Maybe the lack of work place activists is the reason we are in a race to the bottom economically in this country. When 2/3s of the country has no savings; when life spans are going down and suicides are going up; when the younger generation embraces socialism because they can see they will never get healthcare or make a middle class living without it and when less than 10 people have more money than the rest of us put together THERE IS A PROBLEM.
2
Having read this, and not a technological wiz, over 60 and questioning of tech's control these days, but a strong, independent minded individual who does not always agree with corporate mentality- money is first, last and always, and power in the market is second- how do I, as an individual AVOID Google? I would like to display my displeasure at their attitude, their 'contracts' that go against everything I believe in etc, by not using their products/services etc- How do I, an individual- avoid them. I sense that if I use their search engine etc I am contributing to their bottom line and giving them more power. I do not want to 'help' them in any way.....I want them to 'hear' my everyday person message- and I suspect I am not alone- they are not acceptable to me in society.... how does one do that?? Advice is welcome!
7
@SR Like we said in the sixties "take the toys away from the boys". We need a socialized economy, one that works for all of us, not just the "boys" (who own).
10
@SR Use a search engine called duckduckgo.com
1
@SR Use a different search engine? yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Swisscows?
Or don't use a search engine...?
1
We all know that companies are not "democracies". However, with such cutting edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, there seems to be zero regulatory or ethical guardrails for known & yet to be discovered negative consequences on the human race.
The tech companies have long argued that they would police themselves and act in an ethical moral way benefiting the individual and society & global community. Google's founders meme of "do no evil" seemed to satisfy government officials & the public alike.
Can you even begin to imagine how naive this all sounds when compared to other industries codified regulatory framework, such as with biotech and pharmaceutical companies? We wouldn't dare allow such industries to experiment on humans without a regulatory framework, and formal ethics committees reviewing their every step & how it impacts humans.
But for the most part we allow technology companies experiment on humans with zero oversight.
I am certainly not against working with the DOD or other government sponsored initiatives. But all should have an ethical framework, codified into our laws.
"Do no evil" memes may have been sufficient in 1998. Not today. AI has the potential to completely do a 180 on humanity, or worse.
It is long past time to reign technology in. These super smart employees recognize the same.
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@WoodApple
Ubiquitous misspelling meme of the moment!... "Rein" them in, not "reign"!
5
I used to work in Silicon Valley so I'm sympathetic to these workers. I used to work a company whose "mission" was to make the world more "open and connected". And now that company is a huge factor in the spread of misinformation. Go figure.
But I digress. There's something that the "get off my lawn" and "those entitled millennial" commenters need to understand: These companies specifically make themselves out to be "different" places to work. They go to great lengths to create company culture and extra-curricular social interactions - especially since they demand so much of your time. They shuttle you to/from work; they feed you; they host lavish parties. They make people feel like they're special for working there, that the work they're doing is special, and that it's not about making money. And in the early days that was true! These companies weren't always profitable so that narrative wasn't so insidious. It's not that these people are young and need to learn the way the world works. To work at a tech company is in many ways to be in a different world.
I learned the hard way that that was very much a facade. It's like being in a simulation and, upon poking around the edges, finding out its not real. It's traumatic, because you realize you were lied to and manipulated. A gilded cage is still a cage.
Things are changing, thankfully. When it comes to these huge tech companies the right hand is finally getting a clue as to what the left hand is doing.
24
@Ex Silicon Valley Ya know that at-will policy you sign on day One?
A union of highly creative, intelligent and good hearted persons? How that would change history.
8
@John They would form their own company and become the employer they hated.
I grew up in an era where dad would say no one owes you a living, Companies never owed anyone a living,that is their nature from the CEO to the janitor. in today's era everyone is a victim,everyone is offended. 20 somethings making six figures need their safe space from micro-aggresions. before computers breaking into the bosses office and going thru his files would have been grounds for immediate termination and possible arrest,now when they get caught, boo hoo i was a victim because i am not a straight white male.
14
@doncheech
"In today's era everyone is a victim,everyone is offended"? Precisely -- including those who are straight white males!
1
@doncheech Actually each generation should inherit the benefits of all those previous generations--all of whom worked to make this world possible. These advances should not be captured and monopolized by a few who profit from it and control it at the expense and opposition of the majority of the population.
3
@Mitchell Yeah, but straight white males, particularly if paying their own way in life, are the only "victims" the bien pensant ignore.
It's about the right of workers to organize, which at its heart is a free-speech issue. This Google story shows the ugly face of America, where the working person is powerless, and where so many people think that is OK.
22
@Woody Google's employees unquestionably have the right to organize into a union. As individuals and, should they unionize, as a union, they have the right to negotiate with company management on matters that concern them, within constraints established in the law, subject to company management agreement. Additionally, those who are Google shareholders may offer proposals at periodic shareholder meetings. Negotiation rarely grants any party everything it wants, and union agreements usually don't cover matters of business practice; and shareholder proposals almost never pass, but that's life.
Rampant narcissism. Employees who expected to be treated as the company's moral guiding lights suddenly found they are well . . . employees. Or were employees.
18
@publius Yes, they should have demanded sweat equity as should all workers,i.e. the ones who make the profits possible.
I am a psychotherapist in NYC who sees a lot of young adults just out of college and into their first jobs. One of the first things they have to learn is: this is not college anymore, where you can protest those in "authority" for their lack of political purity or wokeness and expect to be obeyed. College presidents and deans are craven functionaries who run for political cover, and beg for forgiveness, at the least sign of protest from their little charges. Not so in business. In business, if you set yourself up in opposition to your employer, you will be gone so fast it will make your head swim. Some of my clients have heeded my warning, others have not. Those who have not then learned the hard way.
And what do they expect? Businesses are there to stay in business, not sabotage themselves so they go out of business and employees lose their jobs. As Samuel Goldwyn once said about the movie business, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." (although today it would be Twitter)
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@Jose Pieste
I am not sure you have spotted the dark undertone here, which is that these people are affraid that projects they work on are being covertly marketed as weapons. Not only to their own governmental agencies, but also possibly to other states with very scary ideology and reputation. That would freak out anybody in their right mind.
And frankly, if I had these kind of worries and your reaction as my therapist would be to a warn me that I could get fired, it'd be a very brief and very last session. Because you'd have failed to unerstand the issue to say the very least.
I will quote a quick Google search result here "patronizing: apparently kind or helpful but betraying a feeling of superiority, condescending."
14
@Jose Pieste Thus we get the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. This is what freedom and liberty mean in capitalist democracies.
7
@KT. do you mind if I use that line? the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie- that's good.
I don’t remember anything I just read because the realization at how messed up data and statistics regarding economic, professional, political and even the criminal stats will be be for women.
1
I greatly regret the fact that Google was allowed to acquire Nest, and so I cannot buy and set up a great smoke detector and carbon monoxide alarm without doing business with Google.
6
@Charles E Flynn It was not Google who designed the Nest to be dependent on a cloud service run by the Nest provider. Nest devices were potential internal spies on your activities from their inception. Google, by virtue of a good deal of expertise and experience, is better equipped and probably considerably more likely to shield this data from criminals who want to use it to harm you, and Google is no more likely than the originators to allow the government to use it against you.
@Charles E Flynn We all get to make choices in life. Would you rather have the safety of the great smoke detector and carbon monoxide alarm or would you rather participate in your one-man and irrelevant protest against Google. Your choice, nobody else cares.
@Charles E Flynn because SimplySafe and all of the other competitors don't exist?
Google is not the only high-tech company where this is happening. Speaking from personal experience and those of friends, they preach liberal beliefs while shutting down independent thought. They preach diversity but that's a facade because the most important expression of diversity IS thought and expression of those thoughts. These companies don't allow individuals to think anything but the party line. To succeed, you have to be a head nodder to whatever is the corporate rhetoric and whatever the highest echelon wants you to think, say, and do.
15
Gone are the "good old days" of a start up minded business with activism and the people having a say in what goes on with and drives the organization. Now it's big business with white collar "Big Brother" watching everything that goes on.
As the saying goes (and this goes for other companies as well as Google) "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely." Google is no exception.
15
@Life-long Yankee
Ringing statements like this would be more understandable, by far, and maybe more persuasive, if their proponents gave a detailed description of Google's (or Facebook's or Amazon's) "power."
I think this clash was inevitable. As AI makes its way into every aspect of life, including law enforcement and military applications, there will likely be many talented, young people like these Google employees who will raise pointed questions about specific applications of their work product. Companies need to be prepared to respond constructively. Just trying to shut people up will not be a winning strategy. Even loosely organized groups of employees have many ways to communicate among themselves outside of management scrutiny and control. This new generation of tech workers are not all just happy to have a steady paycheck. Some do care about how their work impacts the world. I would not expect them to go away quietly.
14
To guarantee future growth opportunity for Google Cloud Platform and to make sure it would still have a chance to compete with Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, Google has no choice but to work with the government on some projects.
Some people may overlook but many technologies were first utilized by the military or intelligence agency before it becomes mainstream. For example, AWS's early dominance was largely helped by the CIA's decision to select the company as their platform to build out its first cloud infrastructure.
The intelligence community has plans to utilize multi-cloud providers in the coming years just to ensure that they would always stay on top of new leading technologies. As a result, any decision not to participate by a cloud provider probably would put them at a hugely disadvantaged position to compete with others. In that sense, even though it may not be a decision fully understood by Google employees internally, but strategically can the company afford not to? It's not an easy decision for their executives in my opinion.
5
@Tyler P.
If the company in question looses its credit in the eyes of its primary customers and its employees, is it worth the gamble? Apple held its ground recenty, Facebook might learn some lessons over the years, right now it seems to be Google's turn.
2
@Tyler P. Not fully understood by the employees? I think the problem is that the employees do understand. Remember, not every human is pure evil. Many posters pretty much seem to be, and in their anger and shame, must dehumanize those with any compassion at all
2
Go back a couple of years to the Masterpiece Bakery controversy and you find many of the socially conscious making the claim that a business that services the public and uses publicly funded infrastructure has an ethical obligation to sell to any customer, even if that customer might use the product in a manner the owners find morally offensive.
Now, we find the socially conscious claiming that Google should refuse to sell its products to the Defense Department or to CBP, because they may use the products in a manner that they find morally offensive.
Which is the correct method of doing business?
17
@michaelscody In the former case, discrimination is illegal. Once a service is opened up to the public, there can't be discrimination. This should be appropriately codified.
As far as business, it depends on how they are run but if they are meant to be dictatorships then it is simply a matter of degree of how benevolent there are.
You can see my many comments here on the side of the employees but in the end I agree someone has to make the decision and that always has to be the supervisor in a business. I always say that my mentees can push the envelope as much as they want but when push comes to shove, I'm the decider. But within that framework, there's a LOT allowed and I always listen.
4
@michaelscody - I see no reason why those two concepts are mutually exclusive.
@CTBartholomew Let's put it in the form of a simple, yes or no, question.
Is it ethically correct for a business to refuse to sell its products to an individual or entity which will use them in a manner the owner or employees find morally offensive?
2
Here's a pledge we cynics\skeptics can get behind. It replaces the blind loyalty stuff with something more logical:
I pledge allegiance to the principles for which the United States of America stands. And, although, it has often fallen short on many occasions, I recognize the many great things about it and pledge to help it achieve those principles and vigilantly hold it accountable when it doesn't.
14
Alphabet is mainly an advertising company. Its goal is to maximize profits. We should not be surprised when its tactics veer from social goals.
4
@tanstaafl
Alphabet? Any capitalist business (which is most businesses) has but one goal: increase the profits by any means!
@openmind
"Any capitalist business (which is most businesses) has but one goal: increase the profits by any means!"?
How totalitarian! The goal of any truly FREE enterprise is whatever goal its proprietor aspires to fulfill -- as long as it can afford to stay in business.
3
@Mitchell
Well, if you are VC funded the goal will be increase profits (including using unethical means if your brand can tolerate it [don't get caught!]).
FREE entreprise is highly dependant on financing, so not so free to set the goals in reality.
Sometimes we disagree and that's okay. The company used their leverage and the employees used their leverage. As long as we agree to be honest and transparent with each other, it's all good. It's the lack of honesty and transparency we should never allow.
6
Many people seem hardwired for loyalty. I, like, many others are either hardwired for the skeptic\cynic role or we've arrived here after seeing so many examples where loyalty led to terrible results. We prefer to stay detached and vigilant.
To all the loyalists out there, given so many instances where it went wrong, what's the limit of loyalty?
15
@David Are you saying people should or shouldn't be loyal to Google? Or Google shouldn't be loyal to its employees.
It's just business. It's not even healthcare (for the most part). If Google's search engine wasn't there, there is bing and heck, even webcrawler is okay - not as good as Google but it's incremental to me.
Google's business is tracking your searches and selling you stuff (or advertising) based on your search. THAT is the money making idea behind ALL these social media companies. What a waste.
1
@RamS an hours work for an hours pay.
Fifty years ago at the age of 23 and a graduate of Yale Law, I went to work for a big Wall Street law firm, making the big bucks and working the long hours. Everybody was impressed. A lot of lawyers and secretaries thought I was the "kid" who took the coffee and danish orders for the restaurant on the ground floor.
I quickly became aware of what the job was all about: money. You took a bathroom break? Bill it! Your client was a crook? Defend him. And most important, your opponent was to be destroyed at all costs.
As my torts professor once said, "You want justice? Philosophy department's in another building."
For me, America lost its soul a long time ago. Google? The same.
175
@george eliot
I practiced law for 44 years (fah, fah from Wall Street). Defending clients is what we do. Some aren't just crooks, they're killers. I've been ordered by Federal judges to defend crooks.
That said, Wall Street firms rip clients off left and right. But the weird thing is, the clients seem to like it....
20
I worked in Silicon Valley for a decade, late 80s to late 90s (when you could actually drive 101 and own a small home). Even back then, our small start-up firm that went from 30 to 300 employees embraced inclusion and dissent; it was a very healthy environment that led to exponential growth. I now work as a machine learning, neural network engineer at a big telecom firm in Philadelphia. Try dissent at my firm today and you might find yourself standing on 18th street without a job pretty quickly. There is a culture that rewards toeing the line and even showing strength by firing contractors (who are distinctly treated like 2nd class citizens). I'm approaching retirement and keep my head down and do my work. I used to have friends at work 20+ years ago. Now, I keep to myself and churn out work to make my boss look good. I'm fearful for my kids in this new work paradigm. It doesn't just happen at Google.
195
@XXX Have your kids start their own company. When I didn't fit well w/in the norms of big tech, I just started creating companies that better suited me.
Google hires smart individuals with outstanding talent and knowledge, and is surprised when they use their powers to protest against company policies (and find documents that are just sitting there on someone's G-drive.)
I worked at the Googs for 3 years (I was part of an acquisition) and I met some of the most amazing, charismatic people I've ever run across.
As what the founders thought of as a movement as well as a company became a corporate monolith, they continue to be SHOCKED, SHOCKED that there are individuals who don't like the way things are changing and say so.
They quietly got rid of "Don't Be Evil" as a company motto; they continue to employ thousands of contractors who do a considerable amount of the company's work (without the health insurance and stock options) and I see friends who love their work growing doubtful of what they are doing it for.
It never was the benevolent paradise that it was portrayed to be in its early years (what company is?) but the growing hypocrisy will always be called out by the Googley until they are dismissed, and "Googley" is redefined into what Orwell might have said: "He loved Big Brother."
244
@Kathleen Warnock
Employers are under no obligation to retain employees who violate company policies and work against company interests.
Employees are not slaves, and if they disagree with company policies and practices they are totally free to seek employment elsewhere, or to found companies that reflect their preferences.
Companies are not democracies that cater to the whims of employees; imagine a grocery store where a check-out clerk refuses to ring up and bag meat products because he is a vegan.
48
@Mon Ray
Your "our way or the highway" formula is incredibly short-sighted. The best executives appreciate input and constructive criticism from their teams.
Top software and AI engineers will always be employable and therefore can afford to press executives to be more considerate of their values which Google loudly claims to share.
If you go around trumpeting your company as a force for good in the world don't be surprised when people hold you to the standard you claim to follow. It is one of the reasons they came to the company.
Do no evil, remember?
104
@Laurence Bachmann
As noted in the article, Google has canceled its mantra "Do No Evil."
15
The search component of Google needs to be converted to a not-for-profit, regulated pubic utliity that can hire the best engineers needed to maximize the results of search rather than steal personal data to maximize profits. Google has been ruined by greed. Many of these folks sound like the idealists who started Google and built it into a highly-valuable search engine before the Wall Street suits took it over.
10
@Mister Ed
While you're at it, put everything under government ownership: the banks, the newspapers, the oil companies, factories, retail companies (like Amazon). It worked out so well for Venezuela.
8
I find it ironic, and quite telling, that certain Google employees are so adamantly opposed to their employer working with a US Government agency, yet have no issue with their employer censoring search content for the Chinese Communist Party.
4
@Randy - I'm not certain where you draw that conclusion from. Certainly there are employees that are adamantly opposed to both. If you are just making a guess at the number of employees that are opposed to one and content to the other then I would counter and say that I would guess that most employees that are opposed to the first are also opposed to the second.
2
@Randy From the article:
"Over the summer, another secret program, nicknamed Dragonfly, came to light in The Intercept. The project would censor search results in China on behalf of the Chinese government, and after months of internal protest, Google appeared to back away from that program too. "
2
Google are turning into the swines we once trusted that they ought not to be. "Don't be evil" where did that go?
Similar path that Amazon have taken. These tech companies are becoming far too big and far too powerful. People need to realise this and stop relying on these companies and take up jobs at their competitors.
To just sit and wait for something to occur is not the right approach. Freedom, democracy and equality are always worth fighting for, even if it costs you in the short run.
5
@Rob It was a bait and switch.
@Rob "Democracy dies in darkness"? Coming from Bezos, that's truly gallows humor!
1
Good on Google for firing employees who were not doing their job.
6
@Lin Wow, that's pretty craven.
3
It should not surprise people that a company will can you faster than a tuna if you don't support the company and even quicker if you act to undermine it. While it is interesting to see these idealistic millennials who have been coddled their whole lives and taught they can do no wrong currently thinking they can effect change in the corporate monolith from the inside. The fact is that we live in a capitalist society where the bottom line ultimately matters the most. Very few leaders in corporate America want to be singing Kumbaya with people who don't follow the lead of management. That may work in summer camp, but not in the real world. No one is saying that the leadership is right, but if you don't agree with it, don't expect it to change just because you think differently.
11
@DWAC Expert Thus capitalist "democracies" are a form of dictator ship.
2
Dissenters need to know when their dissent is not meeting their objectives and stop accordingly. It is better to yield than to peril ideals.
2
I don't understand. Vote with your feet. Google is not the be-all and end-all company. If you are truly talented, take your talent else where. Google is a business that needs to make money. Take a look at their stock price.
23
This is Trump's America, where the disloyal get shipped out at first peep.
That aside, American's seem to have gone out of their way to erode their own employment stability by complacently accepting, and even agreeing with, the demise of Unions.
15
@Lmeyer There has never been a time under any president where employees could advocate against their employers and keep their jobs. Especially in the six figure realm. Forget it.
I have found that thinking of Google as a behemoth ravenously vacuuming up data about anyone and anything it can, without regard to the ethics or wisdom of said vacuuming, and with the sole intention of "monetizing" that data, keeps me clear-eyed about what it does and why. Thinking of it in any more benign way is folly and naive.
14
Google got a big, big pass that permitted it to reach scale. It's "Do Not Evil" mantra was a great way to set itself up as the "Anti-Microsoft." Microsoft, having narrowly survived an anti-trust trial, was reluctant to go after Google full-force for fear of further litigation. Google's special sauce, Larry Page's Page Rank, was nominally protected by a patent -- but many technologists know that its reverse index and recursive assignment of authority by citation density was hardly novel (patent examiners aren't well paid).
An examination of Google's acquisition of YouTube is also instructive. Google had its own video indexing/hosting facility prior to YouTube. But it didn't have the content to build its audience. Movie and TV producers were loath to license their material at economically viable rates. Had Google permitted the posting of copyrighted material they'd have been sued and lost and lost.
But startup YouTube didn't have deep pockets, and so it built it's dominant position by turning a blind eye to the copyright material users uploaded to it. Once YouTube attracted an audience doing what Google couldn't do legally, Google bought it.
Viacom sued Google soon after, but Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, all testified that their acquisition wasn't motivated by that. Funny though, Eric Schmidt testified that his emails from the period happened to be purged as was his habit for 20 years. People who knew him in graduate school and at Sun say otherwise
9
Google got a big, big pass that permitted it to reach scale. It's "Do Not Evil" mantra was a great way to set itself up as the "Anti-Microsoft." Microsoft, having narrowly survived an anti-trust trial, was reluctant to go after Google full-force for fear of further litigation. Google's special sauce, Larry Page's Page Rank, was nominally protected by a patent -- but many technologists know that its reverse index and recursive assignment of authority by citation density was hardly novel (patent examiners aren't well paid).
An examination of Google's acquisition of YouTube is also instructive. Google had its own video indexing/hosting facility prior to YouTube. But it didn't have the content to build its audience. Movie and TV producers were loath to license their material at economically viable rates. Had Google permitted the posting of copyrighted material they'd have been sued and lost and lost.
But startup YouTube didn't have deep pockets, and so it built it's dominant position by turning a blind eye to the copyright material users uploaded to it. Once YouTube attracted an audience doing what Google couldn't do legally, Google bought it.
Viacom sued Google soon after, but Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, all testified that their acquisition wasn't motivated by that. Funny though, Eric Schmidt testified that his emails from the period happened to be purged as was his habit for 20 years. People who knew him in graduate school and at Sun say otherwise
5
Ostensibly hip bosses are still bosses.
Ostensibly hip capitalists are still capitalists.
Ostensibly hip for-profit companies still exist to maximize profits for the benefit of owners.
The honeymoon is over for hi-tech companies that tried to appear to be enlightened, hip, and different. They're not different; that's just their--successful--p.r. campaign at work.
23
@AnotherCitizen I think the transition comes with the scaling up and cashing out. But that seems to be the standard route.
1
Ostensibly hip bosses are still bosses.
Ostensibly hip capitalists are still capitalists.
Ostensibly hip for-profit companies still exist to maximize profits for the benefit of owners.
The honeymoon is over for hi-tech companies that tried to appear to be enlightened, hip, and different. They're not different; that's just their--successful--p.r. campaign at work.
@AnotherCitizen Let the unionization begin.
2
In my opinion the problem with Google is that it is too big. Including contractors, 200,000 or more employees. The impression I get from reading public statements by Sundar Pichai is that he doesn’t really know what most of his company does.
On top of this, Google is largely controlled by use of highly restricted voting stock owned by a small number of people who like Pichai don’t really know what they are doing or even what most of Google does. So divorced, they spend their time building ever bigger houses and holding orgies like the Emperor Tiberius on the Isle of Capri.
I don’t understand why investors in Google stock don’t press to break up the company. Dump the often ridiculous side businesses (Google X, Wings, Sidewalk Labs and many others) and any Google investor could live like the Emperor Tiberius on what remains.
3
@sguknw YOU answered your question - Google stockholders have NO power. Just like FB. and many others. It is the USERS/ customers who have the power, and must use it.
2
@sguknw from the outset Google has said they don't plan to manage towards maximizing quarterly earnings. They became a juggernaut specifically so they could afford to experiment with what you're calling ridiculous side businesses. And I'm sure Sundai Pichai knows what all of these projects are about.
@Tamza
There are always law suits and other avenues for investors. Not pursuing law suits means these investors are paying for other people's orgies with their money. Really greedy people ought to know better.
all we have to do is use a different platform from google and Fakebook.Duck Duck.
7
@Morris Lee I agree, but it isn't always easy. I dumped Facebook back in 2012, but can't get away from Google. While I use DuckDuckGo for my search engine, Google provides email accounts at most universities. Amazon isn't any better, and they host a truly enormous amount of content via AWS, scooping up everything they can in the process. Even by blocking cookies, selectively blocking JavaScript and third party domains, routing traffic through a VPN, and isolating various sites in different browsers to reduce the usefulness of fingerprinting, I have no illusion that I'm not being tracked.
While nation-states and their governments still hold much more power than corporations in most respects, the latter are approaching the point where it seems feasible that this isn't immutable. Information is power in this brave new world, and I'm afraid as a society we've become all too comfortable with big brother watching, so long as we get quick search results and voice assistants on our smart phones.
4
Yay Gen Z - just when you thought that millennials were the worst employees in the world - here is an easy life lesson - if you badmouth your employer constantly and if you couple that with organizing a union - you're going to get fired.
Or in the immortal words of Harry Dunne:
"Just when I thought you couldn't get any dumber, you go and do something like this... and totally redeem yourself!"
8
@SteveRR The US succeeded in the world in part due to unions, I'm not sure what the problem with collective bargaining is, and likewise with having a thick skin. I'm in academia and we're doing really well and contributing to the US and both of these are routine. Heck, the entire country and government is based on these ideals!
But you're saying businesses need to be different? I disagree but whatever. Only way to prove you wrong would be to start a company and do it differently... come up with a slogan like "do no evil"... wait, wait, wait...
6
@SteveRR That organizing a union is obvious fodder for termination for some people speaks volumes about where we are as a society. It is sad how far we've fallen from a world where people believed that workers were as - or more - important to the success of a business as the management was.
7
@RamS - Not every company needs a union, and I'd argue that the highly paid tech engineers at Google are doing just fine without one. None of the complaints in the article deal with wages or benefits. These Google employees feel they have a right to decide what contracts/projects the company takes on, but they're quite mistaken.
2
Whatever happened to those 2 nice boys whose mission was "Don't do evil."?
10
@Secundem Artem
They took their company public listed it on the NASDAQ stock exchange and discovered a little something called a fiduciary duty to the actual owners of the Google - you know - the shareholders - that entails they have profitability and success as the primary drivers of business.
Those pesky fiduciary responsibilities can really cramp your kumbaya props with the woke folks.
6
@Secundem Artem Capitalism is the same as it ever was, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
What one has to realize is that Google, in spite of the lipstick on the pig to convince you otherwise ("do no evil","No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company’s activities.",“Google’s commitment to human rights is unwavering,”, etc), Google's management is demonstrating that they are no different than the Russian assets at Facebook: they'll sell your mother's soul to Satan to get more data that can be monetized. And if they'll sell your mother's soul to Satan, do not doubt for a minute that they would undertake projects for the DOD, ICE, Nazis or anyone else who had their checkbook open.
Tech workers need to make a decision about what kind of company they want to work for. Yeah, Google may be the most pampering, generous outfit to work for, but, you DO have to get up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror. Talent that has a problem with what they see will look elsewhere. Does that hurt Google - yup - diminishes their talent pool...
And, for us mere mortals, the tracked, the targeted, the suckers who the tech giants con into GIVING them our data (explicitly or covertly)... Might be time to revolt! They can't "fire" us! How do we do that? Don't use their apps, services, browsers... Use open source stuff; use the best tracking blockers; use a VPN for ALL your on line activity; deny them your data.
It's in the consumer's hands to decide which companies thrive, and which perish, so take action - that's your voice!
We
14
@Charlie H Google might be able to reasonably guess your politics based on where you live and go every day, and what web pages you visit, but their governmental involvement is more about lobbying and government contracts. Facebook, on the other hand, has a lot more information about your politics based on who your friends are, your comments on their posts and likes, and what groups you follow within Facebook. And they're selling this info to political parties for micro-targeted advertising. Apple and Amazon seem less invasive.
2
"Her specialty, ethical questions relating to artificial intelligence, was no longer a priority for Google Cloud."
That would be your first clue of how the company really thinks.
10
When you go to work , leave your politics and activism at home
10
@Sy That's kinda close to what Nazis said when they were asked why they commited atrocities: "Just following orders." We don't live in a world where the work we do exists in a vacuum, disconnected from people.
18
@Aluminum It really isn't kinda close at all. I myself, in a field that is not even closely related to Silicon Valley, I am sick and tired of people out of the woodwork always questioning my integrity and how I do the job I was asked to do by someone else. It is unnerving and I wish I had the power to get rid of them like at Google.
8
@Paucus Why would anyone question your integrity?
I think it is dictatorial behaviour which is damaging to an organisation. But it's hard to run a business somewhat democratically though academia does it better (of course they don't make much money either but it's not bad).
1
Got me to boycott them.
5
Good for Google! You want to pursue your political agenda, you'll have to do it on your own time and your dime!
Welcome to the real world, millennials!
13
If anyone thinks when a company tells you to "speak up! we want to hear you!" and you believe them, I can sell you an igloo in Alaska.
12
Glad to see Google finally melting some snowflakes. While every person in the company should have a voice, it shouldn't dictate and supersede it's leader's objectives.
11
This is just a jumped-up labor-management dispute in which the NYT wants to romanticize people who sneak out private documents or have their own beefs about social issues (LBG, etc.) that have nothing to do with the bottom line.
If you go behind the company's back then expect to get fired. if, as a result, you are out on the street then you'll have reason to re-think your Crusader Rabbit mentality.
11
"Silicon Valley has often held itself up as a highly evolved ecosystem that defies the usual capital-labor dichototmy....."
Can anybody take such Newspeak jargon seriously?
Spy on your own company because it does work for your own government....get fired. A high-schooler could understand this.
13
Really sad to see so many comments here critical of the employees and not critical of Google's practices.
But it illustrates the blatant ignorance of history and the Ayn Rand cult in this country.
All of them forget that private industry is what enabled must of the fascist states to become threats to global stability and to human rights. It was IBM that installed the counting machines that tallied citizens by ethnicity and religion, which facilitated the Holocaust.
Wake up. Private business can be used as a tool of repression and to support human rights abuses!
22
@lmcs
IBM? You forgot to mention Bayer and IG Farben "patriotic" German firms that participated directly in "their own" government's atrocities.
2
It's always you're "part of the family", until security walks you out the door.
6
@Hal lol - a boss of mine was fired and I asked point blank "Do I need to start looking for a new job?" "Oh no - you have nothing to worry about." Unfortunately, the new boss had different ideas, and I learned a lesson.
I note a number of comments suggesting that working with the Department of Defense is unethical - or evil, or worse.
Why would any citizen want our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines to go into battle with anything less than the best equipment and the best intelligence? If you don't like "forever" wars, take that up with Congress. Don't hamstring the folks who have to do the actual fighting.
16
No one is entitled to a job.
If you act like a fool and lose your job...that's just too bad.
12
"Dark Mirror" comes to mind
1
Isn't (wasn't?) Goggle's famous motto
DON'T BE EVIL
George Orwell would understand
3
Does anyone think it is right of you go to a barber shop to get a "trim" and th barber takes it upon theirselfs to make you bald because the baber thought you would look better
would you pay them or fire them ?
3
Unfortunately no one taught these idealistic millennials how corporate America differs from liberal collage campuses.
They felt they are special because they worked for Google but realistically these engineers were just cogs in the machine - replaceable by smart, skilled, and less idealistic graduates.
12
I would point out that working for a company where (internally and externally) 95% of what they do is good, 5% is bad is still tons better than most corporations where they can’t even spell “good,” or where the board would laugh if the subject of being good was even brought up….
.
8
Most everyone starts off life idealistically but then the rubber meets the road and ideals are repeatedly put to the test. Google started with noble ideals and even today is not "as evil" a tech company as some others (FB started as a scoring system for women) but both are basically marketing machines which is such a waste of human potential to be trading ad money for eyeballs. A lot of the tech being worked on Google at most is good stuff but not the very edge of forefront of knowledge and innovation where the risk of failure is great. Because there's a bottom line money motive, they tend to work on things that'll make them money.
I've had many of my mentees go to places like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. out of 100+ trained. Some go into public service/government. More than a dozen of them have independent investigator positions in academia. While I don't hold it against anyone regardless of which option they choose, it's only in academia with a position of sinecure that people have the freedom to practice their ideals (mostly). Academia can also corrupt and it can induce laziness but in terms of following one's dreams and remaining true to one's principles, it's hard to beat it.
7
A few entitled, extremely well paid, low status employees take upon themselves to chart the company policy and strategy. Rummaging about other people's calendars, accessing internal documents they don;t need for work, raising mayhem - really, who wants such employees?
What right does a low-level engineer have to lecture Google about its contracts with ICE... except to resign. So resign they did. A nonevent.
11
@Kai I think everyone employed by Google has a right and duty to lecture it about its practices. Whether Google has to do anything about it is different. I agree they can't do it on company time and dime, that's all. That said, you watch - these people may well be selling themselves short by working for Google. Perhaps they should start their own companies and go toe to toe and least give Google a blood nose, or better yet, design apps that give smugglers a better chance of avoiding ICE or whatever that cause that fits them. I don't understand why they don't use the same tech to their advantage. These kinds of articles are informative---hopefully more of my mentees will stop deciding to go work for these bigger companies.
That's what I'd do (though I would turn down Google in the first place, which I indeed did a while back). I don't understand your defeatist attitude. If these employees are being bad, best way to learn is by being an employer. If these employees are being good, then the revenge is success.
4
Each of these former employees reminds me of the incredulous Grandpa Joe after learning that stealing from Mr. Wonka is not without consequences.
2
Subversive behavior by employees is not the same thing as disagreement and debate. At the end, there is no slavery and employees can leave and there is no right of employees to simply act out. If employees dont like the company, then leave.
4
If they don't like working at Google they should find a job somewhere else. Employees do not run the company.
3
@Joseph B So what happened to "corporations are people"? You can't have it both ways. Is a company its employees or not?
But thanks for making it clear that "do no evil" was a joke.
2
@Joseph B
Employees Do run run the company.
That is why goggle management is so terrified of a unionized workforce.
2
When we walk out of work every day, we are at liberty, because we live in the greatest country on earth where liberty, freedom of speech, the right to assemble, etc. are fundamental rights. It's a hard truth to learn that, inside any corporation, these freedoms hardly exist. You may be employed in an oligarchy, an autocracy or a downright totalitarian regime. You just have to live with it or move on. That's the great (or not so great) thing about capitalist business. It lets private industry leaders in a free nation be fascists if they are so inclined.
3
What is inherently wrong about providing services for the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol? Problems with CBP are due to some specific policies pushed by the current despicable Executive branch, not the CBP itself. Fix the policies by electing the right people and then holding them accountable.
Employees who don't like specific contracts should bring up the issue, but if the company does not alter course to suit them, just leave. Don't breach company policy.
This article is not very satisfying, it seems like it is describing normal levels of dysfunction seen in any human organization.
6
So many of these "entitled Googlers with their giant paychecks" comments remind me of the now old joke about the three people and the pile of cookies. The banker takes all the cookies except one, then turns to the second person and says "careful, that immigrant down there is about to take your cookie."
Yes, Google employees each get a proverbial economic cookie and a lot of the commenters here apparently do not. But... Let's keep our eyes on the cookie JAR that is being carted away as we speak.
6
@Tyson You think that is what it is? Jealousy?
You don't think it's paid Google trolls here to stir up the pot? Would you put it past Google?
It could even be Russian trolls.
I never understand freedom loving Americans defending dictatorial practices (yes, I know how companies are supposed to be run but if they could do ANYTHING then...).
1
I remember the first day this amazing new browser rolled out called Google. I fell in love; it was better than anything else and we did such great things together. My superpower is using Google to search nearly anything, however arcane, so much faster than most others. With Google I am a rocketship on the Information Highway. Then came Sky and Maps and Docs and so many other wonders and I threw sparkly confetti and rejoiced.
Ah, Google, how naive of me. Now I read this and feel used, tainted, and yet walking away from this long term relationship of ours is not so easy even if it might be the right thing to do. The moral thing to do, if this is how you crush dissent. But I want to make excuses. I want to remain comfortable. I want to rationalize why there is no real harm in staying with . Oh the allure and convenience, until I no longer mind that this company cannot be disentangled from my life without immense disruption and your seduction is past the point of no return...
3
@Ann Smith Crush dissent??? Really??? This is a job under discussion not Tian Mien Square for goodness sake.
@Bill Oh. Sorry. Did you miss the hyperbole? I remember when freedom of speech meant being able to have an opinion at work and not be fired for it. Because...people need income. Which usually comes from jobs. Which used to be protected by unions. The world, it has changed...
1
I know a handful of people who joined Google a few years ago when their company was gobbled up by it. They hate it there.
4
I'll bet they never had this problem at Ask Jeeves.
1
If I ever set up a company, I will learn from Google's experience. Don't trust your employees too much. Launching their own personal investigation into Google's activities, while drawing a paycheck from the company? Are you kidding me? As a Google stockholder, I am glad that Google took measures to protect itself.
You want to investigate Google, you run for Congress and then start one from an oversight committee. What, too much work and too little pay? Oh you poor baby....
7
@TK Give you company name after you start it. So that we can warn our friends.
If ever you worked for a big company you will know that there is something called "Code of Ethics" or some such thing in all companies which all of them drone about. Google even had it as a motto: "Do no evil". The employees were only using the tools they were allowed to use.
Internal forums/employee groups are allowed in any company and company should make itself very clear to the employees about the jobs they are about to do if they want good people to work for them.
We all know companies which went bust after they made it clear that smart employees are not welcome.
Google is dangerously moving toward that path.
2
One word: UNION!
4
Welcome to the capitalist system! Business unionism, dues-paying rackets are not the answer though the impulse to unionize is encouraging. Only the overthrow of the capitalist system and establishment of democracy in industry where Marx's mantra, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need is urgently required. For further enlightenment www.slp.org.
3
It's fascinating to see Silicon Valley sell itself as the proper righteous way to behave in a capitalist system for the past few decades only to have bigotry and disdain for their fellow man as the big business behemoths in the past. At least in the 80's when the fiance was running running amok they weren't selling us that they were trying to save the world.
Hypocrites.
4
The question really is (or should be) do employees have the right to attempt to hinder contracts their employer has that are legal in a free society? My response is no. They should either quit or not publicly condemn their employer. What they are saying is really " I have an excellent job with excellent pay and benefits and I really do not want to forfeit them by leaving and I really do not want my employer to make money catering to Trump and his cohorts."
7
Despite the optimistic tone at the end of the article, all of the evidence so far indicates that “working within the system” rarely works.
3
Every American should ask themselves why billionaires are so terrified of unions.
22
@Steve Like the NFL and other sports franchises? Unions are a concern because they allow for mob rule by employees, who pretend they are exploited while all agreeing to the terms of their contracts. Unions would ensure all google employees would be paid less, that seniority would matter more than performance, and they'd demand all this control without themselves putting in risk capital (employees never have to return salaries when companies lose money).
5
@Steve How many union jobs pay as well as Google pays engineers?
3
@Steve They are more afraid of Bernie and Elizabeth!
6
Several times while reading this terrific story of worker oppression Google style, I thought this is what it’s like to live and work in China.
10
One commenter has suggested that the ex-Googlers described in this article will find employment with other ex-Googlers, and none of them will be in Kansas.
However, when climate change (fka global warming) floods America’s coasts and turns Silicon Valley into Silicon Fjord, Google and all those high-tech companies will be fighting to relocate to Kansas. Prince Charles, Greta and other pundits assure us that it is only a matter of a few years before this happens.
As for the ex-Googlers mentioned in the article, I am sure they have expertise and knowledge to transfer, both about high-tech stuff and protesting employer policies. Even if they are hired for their high-tech capabilities and their on-the-job activism is ignored, it is doubtful their new employers can match Google’s salaries and benefits. I predict they will face a hard climb out of the blogs-and-gigs economy but I could be wrong, which is why I would like to see NYT do a follow-up on how these folks make out post-Google.
Also, please consider the possibility that there are many people who lived in or went to school in other places but choose to live in Kansas; the alumni directories of the Ivy Plus colleges have lots of examples.
I acknowledge that Kansas is not currently a hotbed of high-tech activity, but just wait until the coasts start to submerge; I suspect Warren Buffet has already started beefing up his portfolio with Kansas properties for just such an eventuality.
4
I am thrilled that Google is finally starting to fire people. If I presumed to tell my employer how to do business or what business to do, I too would be fired and rightly so. No idea why these snowflakes have decided google is wrong for helping the DoD protect American lives but they have got to go. I hope google continues to fire employees who are out of line.
91
@K. Edwards
Except that the culture of Google encouraged (or up until last year, apparently) actively questioning management frequently. Management saw it as good disruption because THAT's how Google became GOOGLE.
62
@New Yorker
Yes, I get that. I always thought that would come back to haunt them and it has. Google is finally stepping up and drawing lines which I am sure will benefit them greatly.
22
@K. Edwards
Often rank-and-file employees know more about the business and how to do it better than management does. They should be encouraged to offer advice, rewarded when it is useful, and not fired if their recommendations differ from management's decisions.
40
The company has rules for a reason and our feelings about a subject does not give us a right to protest those rules. They should have been fired sooner.
18
@David Kane
What are the odds, do you think, that any of these companies would violate YOUR rights if the government or ANY government or company offered them the right price for it?
Do you think all of the surveillance gear they sell us is strictly for OUR convenience, to better serve US?
8
@David Kane
No, you see, they got FIRED for following the rules as they then existed.
Do you see that now?
6
@David Kane
So folks should never question anything?
5
How did these employees find time to work? All this researching, activism, walking out, coded email - when did they get their work done? Maybe they were fired for poor performance.
Who decides the projects at Google? Did the employees expect a vote on every major project. This is a tight job market and these people seem very well qualified. If they disliked Google's activities so much, they could have found another job quickly.
76
@MoscowReader Oddly enough it turns out that in the tech industry you aren't always sitting in front of your keyboard banging away on code. Sometimes you are waiting for a compile to finish, or a team mater to check in their changes, or you are running a test harness or other non interactive activity.
You can also stay at the office and do other things when you are on your off time. I know that's a strange concept but we do that sometimes because we have access to resources that we might not have outside of the corporate infrastructure - such as internal mailing lists, group discussions, etc.
So during that time we end up being able to use our brains to find things out, talk about them, and work on issues that matter to us.
Yes, this is very different than being server or cashier where you are moving all of the time. I understand your confusion. I hope I helped to clarify things for you.
37
@MoscowReader
Much work can be considered multi-waiting rather than multi-tasking. When I code, create reports, or attend meetings, or respond to email, it is generally a single task, a single focus. But what happens when you've sent your code to a build server and responded to all of your emails? It doesn't make sense to start another focused task, like another coding project, since I need to stay focused on the code running through the build server and getting deployed. To do otherwise would be the dreaded multi-tasking.
For me, it means spending some time on low concentration tasks like the internal communication network, posting something new, reading updates, and responding to posts. Maybe I'll search for solutions to other problems. But still, if nothing is engaging there, I check my social world, scan my RSS feed, or maybe grab a tea on a quick walk. For others, its talking with colleagues.
I'm productive, but that doesn't mean that I need to be 100% glued to work tasks.
20
So what happens if the union boss says they support working on the CBP projects?
"Activists" are typically political minorities seeking outsized voices for personal gain, using tactics that we typically condemn as illegal. They often put the company, and all the employees, at risk with little consequence to themselves.
29
@Joshua
That's a complete misunderstanding of a union bosses position, power, or ability to "direct" a union.
A union allows member control over strategic and tactical issues, and if the workers do NOT want to build headcounters for despots, the shop foreman, union rep, etc. better be ready for a fight with the members. It's called a strike and an election.
At the very least, if somebody is GOING to build headcounters for despots, you can be sure it isn't YOU.
7
Thanks NYT for this excellent piece of reporting and an even bigger thanks to the courageous activists who are fighting the US war machine and the corporate hoodlums laying waste to our society and our environment. They are an inspiration to all of us. Bravo!!
5
While doing business and making money, Google does a lot of good for people around the world. Being a physician, I am able to search any topic, find reference, got to a journal and get information.
The activists in the company are few and if they don’t like the management, they should quit.
3
“The worst I thought it could be used for was making rich people more rich.”
That pretty much says it all, doesn't it.
In the private sector, employees feeling excessively entitled generally come to discover that their sense of entitlement is getting in the way of their employer's business plans. Commonly, this is when other firms beckon, whether or not the employees realize it in time to depart before being pushed out.
Google's mistake was in fostering the overweening entitlement some of its employees seem to be experiencing. No doubt it won't be long before that error is corrected. It's inconceivable that a company the size of Google is going to permit social activists to determine its direction.
8
@BayArea101
spot on.
@BayArea101 I've placed a few of my mentees in Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. (most are in academia). I was even once recruited by a Google headhunter but obviously turned them down.
Google's "do no evil" PR is an attractive message to young, bright people but I'm sending this to my current mentees to tell them how bad it can get working for someone else. Hopefully it'll change a few minds from wanting to work for someone else since I strongly believe supersmart people should be working for themselves and thereby the world/universe.
(I've already just changed one mind unrelated to this incident but this article will help my discussions with others even more.)
So I would say that something like this, whether justified or not, would take away talented people from joining Google and from their perspective, it is Google's loss.
I'm surprised at the level of deference to Google in these comments. Sad. No wonder this country is in the political state it is.
2
I have been to the googleplex for lunch. Very smart, young and yes very pampered employees on salaries of about $200K plus free gourmet meals and other benefits that very few employers offer. Our host who used to work for Apple suggested Google is a better employer for most employees. Some of their pampered employees who are prima donna's because their skills are in high demand.
What makes Silicon Valley a great place to work is if you don't like where you work, then it is easy to find a job elsewhere. I don't think these disgruntled employees should have the right to dictate to their employer what customers they should engage, nor do I think the views of a few represent the majority of those who work at Google.
The bottom line is these Google employees are being well looked after and if they are not happy they should find a job elsewhere.
8
Google developers agitating to share power reminds me a bit of nobles agitating to have the king acknowledge their rights. On one hand, it's hard to work up much sympathy for the barons/tech workers who are already waaay better off than the peasants whose existence makes the aristos' luxurious lives possible. But on the other hand, the Magna Carta was an important step in the right direction.
So while I wish all those tech workers would put some of their time and effort into strengthening labor laws and other policies designed to protect workers generally, I also wish them well in their quest to challenge the Divine Rights of Big Tech.
12
Our tech world has emerged without a thought of the social changes it would bring.
I live in a college town where students now walk looking at their phone and the student bars have multiple blaring TVs. These bright young people live in a tiny and noisy world, and they are fearful of the future.
It's hard to find a place where people sit and talk and where one can meet new people. We're all rushed and detached...
and apparently powerless.
Good for the activists. They have courage. Maybe some of them, now fired, will tale the time to walk around outside and notice that the sky is blue.
10
Despite the optimistic tone at the end of the article, all of the evidence provided here supports the premise that, at the end of the day, “working within the system” rarely works.
10
No one has a right to work anywhere. But unless they are breaking the law, a company has a right to do business as it sees fit and with whomever it sees fit. And it is also free to change its policies and business strategies at any time (which is only natural as it grows). With very few exceptions, most of us are employees-at-will and can be dismissed for any reason that is not illegal. Whether I agree with the company's business practices or not -- and in many instances, I don't -- I don't see that they've done anything that is legally wrong.
As for those profiled, if you don't like the way your employer does business, you have choices. 1) Learn to live with it. 2) Leave and find an employer that aligns with your values. Or 3) Speak up and hope the company agrees to change, but understand that doing so may come with a price. Kudos to them for standing up for what they believe in and trying to ensure that Google is more ethical. Maybe they will convince others to stop working there or stop using Google's services (because hitting them in the pocket book is the only real way to make a company like that change), but in the meantime, unfortunately, they ended up with the booby prize behind door number 3. Sometimes, that's the way things go in the real world.
19
@Josie
Another choice is to unionize, and a further choice is to use government to pressure the employer to change, perhaps by making unionization easier or getting enforcement of present laws that somewhat protect unionization drives, or even by mandating worker representation on employer management structures such as boards of directors.
17
@Josie
I don’t disagree. But the problem is that Google likes to pretend it is morally superior. Remember the “don’t be evil” mission statement?
Google is not special and is not the exception. Google is just like the rest of other unethical companies. But if your ethics are similar to Trump’s, don’t pretend you’re Mother Theresa.
3
@Josie If I worked at a company doing business with the Trump administration, especially border protection, I would hope that I would protest too. Or quit.
3
Gee, and all this time I thought Google was a non-profit engaged in social justice reform. And now I learn it is a business and works on a business model. I guess that's why the employees earn so much money. And why management can make decisions about the direction of the company.
Forming a Union of software engineers would be fun to watch, but those involved better want what they wish for. They will soon find that their salaries and benefits -- both tangible and not -- will become subject to negotiations.
11
I have mixed emotions. Is the fact that Google suddenly began to enforce policies that most companies have as a reason for dismissal, make these actions somehow ok? Sometimes, people are trusted to act as a team but begin to believe they are actually managing partners. They're not.
4
One of the social phenomena I have noticed over the last few years is people attempting to claim a moral high ground for their actions being challenged on it. Some of this is unfair and counter-protective where disadvantaged identities/cultures tear down each other or their allies by pointing out everything wrong with what they did, rather than focusing on the positives. Alienating allies is rather strategically shortsighted as is tearing apart or tearing down each other within movements or communities.
But very large companies looking for ever-increasing revenue streams will naturally, arguably inevitably start to do business that is not entirely “White hat” or is even decidedly black hat (defense department contracts for example).
But how much should a company like Google have to pay in order to be called “good?” While fostering an open environment where policy and business practices can be challenged, how far are they required to take it? As far as I can tell, this open environment was costing them millions of dollars and rather than being given credit for being reasonable in the first few instances, it seems employees just wanted more and more.
For people with some of the most enviable work environments complete with jaw dropping salaries, it seems like these employees weren’t very appreciative and just expected the company to keep hemorrhaging business.
None of them were hired to be activists after all…
.
13
@SMcStormy when a company's greatest assets are inside the heads of its employees, it's good to listen to what's going on in there. That said, once any company reaches a certain size, it inevitably becomes involved in matters related to nationalistic and political impulse. Though if defies the "huge is good" trajectory, it could be good to spin off the more questionable sections rather than force employees to be complicit in functions they are against. Misleading employees about the ultimate fruits of their labor is to say the ends justifies the means, which is a questionable but common strategy.
8
@SMcStormy
If your boss tries to buy or rent your conscience, get the price as high as possible and then take the deal. We are talking about the real world, after all. And if you have no qualms about renting or selling your conscience, this makes you good management material.
1
@sdavidc9 /You paint things in black and white terms.
I’m in my mid-50s and have had a job since I was 11 (paper route). I put myself through my undergrad working 3 jobs, no loans.
I have never worked for a company that did everything hyper-ethically, and most don't even make an attempt at even pretense.
Google appears to at least at ethically in many internal and external situations. The article talks about how the first time around, the company listened to employees and didn’t renew the contract. Most companies simply would have fired everyone involved.
Instead of being rewarded for being responsive, the rabble-rousers doubled down to raise even more problems for Google’s management.
I have been told several times that I can be ethical to a fault. I have routinely taken stands inside companies, either for myself or more often, for others. In nearly every instance, I have gotten rewarded straight in the butt (by both the companies in question and the people I tried to stand up for). That said, I’m not perfect, but then, I don’t think most people are.
Google seems to be doing pretty good ethics-wise, even if they have strayed from their initial philosophical stances of the founders.
.
The idea that selling digital ads by targeting people based on information that you've essentially stolen from them is going to save the world? That's insane.
If you work in tech, you are helping to create the AI master race that will, sooner or later, enslave humanity.
If you don't like that, get a job in construction. You'll be healthier for spending less time staring at a screen.
22
Hard to imagine an American Company wanting to get a contract with the American Government
17
Remember when Google's mission statement was "Don't be evil"?
25
@gmg22 After reading thru a lot of these comments, I'm wondering how many of the were submitted by IRI Consultants.
2
This is a tough problem. Especially when framed as a dichotomy between workers and management. Everybody who has a single direct report is a manager. And even people without direct reports should be managing things.
Companies need coherent management. Two hierarchies within a company each trying to set direction is a recipe for chaos, especially when one is loose and political. And chaos harms customers, shareholders and all employees.
People have a right to have opinions and share them with colleagues and a right to leave a company that is doing things they think are wrong.
And managers have a duty to do what they deem best for customers and employees. But at the end of the day, its their job to decide what to do and to and wear the consequences, not that of self-appointed groups of employees.
If you don't like it, leave. Leave en masse if thats what you decide, let the company bear the consequences, but don't expect the managers to stop managing, or to pass their job of deciding to you.
That is not to say that you are not right in your judgments about what should be done. Managers may be wrong, as may be you.
9
A somewhat biased and one-sided portrayal. Certain employees disagreed, based on their own personal political viewpoints, with some of Google´s activities. This led to their committing actions contrary to company policy and in some cases, apparently unethical behaviour. They can hardly be surprised, nor should NY Times readers, that they were terminated. It would be nice if now and then the NY Times would present, as Paul Harvey used to say, "the other side of the story."
18
Yep, your employer is not your democratically elected government. It's a company that pays you to do your job. You don't like it, you can quit -- as so many millennials do whenever their delicate sensibilities are ruffled -- and become a burden to your parents once again, as future employers will likely not look too favorably upon your revolutionary tendencies.
15
Rubin's 'sexual misconduct'??! On information, he was 'credibly' accused of forcibly extracting oral sex from a colleague, in his hotel room.
That's criminal behavior - shamefully swept under the rug - and euphemized in this article - because he's a remarkably proficient programmer.
He should be in state, not federal prison, instead of out enjoying that $90M. What's his victim doing now? That'd be a good article. Anyone know?
11
Oh, the entitlement! Where do these people think their GIANT paychecks are coming from?
15
Short answer... these "activists" don't own or control the business... don't like the business practices... find another job.
16
I worked at Google a long time and am intimately familiar with many names mentioned in this story. To be fair, this article is a bit one sided. (For example, I know at least one of the people mentioned in this article who left was difficult to work with, arogant, and widely disliked by teammates, including myself, years before they engaged in protests. This was probably their last straw.) For a long time now, Googlers have treated the original open discussion culture as a blessing for the masses to try to dictate business strategy like a democracy. The employee blowups about product direction have been happening for years (i.e Reader, Real Names, Hangouts... I could go on and on) and created a huge headache. The protests just haven't leaked so significantly until now. This culture was mostly tolerated by the co-founders, although they did seem to find it annoying. But they had originally created the culture to be more like a graduate school, versus a traditional business where people shut up and did what they are told. Serious crack downs on open debate and protest didn't start until Sundar took over. He has a very different way of going about business that is more traditional, probably due to being an MBA grad and former McKinsey consultant. Ultimately, Google just got so big that they can't tolerate endless protesting and I can't blame them. If employees want a say, they need to work up the chain of command and earn it or vote with their feet by leaving.
61
Fascinating. It's one thing to lobby your employer to reconsider a contract for political or moral reasons. It's entirely another to abuse your employee clearance to access internal documents to further a personal agenda. And I think we all know these employees probably did not keep these documents to themselves; the whole point is presumably to share them with like-minded activists and the media to try to influence the company. I'd be curious to hear of a company that wouldn't fire an employee for this. It seems to me that there is a real culture of entitlement here. May it is the company's fault for encouraging this culture. But it's hard to feel sympathy for the employees who did this. We're talking about quite a bit more than "expressing dissent."
19
Even with a black mark on their resume these people will be fine. They were hired by Google, which has its pick of the best and brightest in the tech industry. If they had the savvy to get a job there and keep it for years, they have the necessary grit to find work elsewhere.
1
Google is a corporation, not a charity or a non-profit. If these employees dislike what the company is doing, then leave. If not, Google has every right to can them for insubordination or a host of other reasons. I know millennials are used to being called 'special', but they are not; they are cogs in a machine, so get used to it or find another job.
20
As far as know, Google, and most high tech companies for that fact, are at-will employment companies. This means an employee can be dismissed by an employer for any reason, and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal.
So what is the story here?
16
Companies like Google and Facebook swim in an ocean of incentives designed to gradually make them more traditional, exploitative, and anti-social. That's what's happening.
It's why Google is becoming less tolerant of internal dissent, and it's why Facebook is making the policy decision to welcome paid political lying onto its platform.
They have all the clout they need to impose their will, and thereby increase their profits. Free-market ideologues protect them from effective regulation. Consumers have demonstrated no ability to organize, and no large-scale interest in leaving their platforms. Workers can be fired.
When push comes to shove, why should they put up with the inconvenience of social responsibility? Until someone forces them to, they won't.
4
I don't "google" anything. I do internet searches. I know, four syllables instead of two (app instead of application, Queen's English, yada yada yada).
I don't use gmail and I use a different search engine.
6
@Joe
Glad to hear that Joe from Lansing.
Google is on the path towards being unionized. They are checking all the boxes: Big splashy mission statement and promises that are not kept, Management with huge salaries, Hammering those who disagree, Hiring anti-union mercenary companies, A growing disconnect between workers and management.
When it happens, not if, it will be no ones fault but Google's.
To the employees: When one unionizes the first contract starts from a blank slate. Do not assume that you will begin from where you are, then negotiate up from there. There are also very limited things that are subject to negotiation, usually wages and working conditions. This is long settled labor law. You will have no say on who the company does business with or other decisions reserved for management. If you take action on one of those items that is a 'Wildcat Strike' which your union will pledge to prevent. See what is happening at the strike by graduate students at UC Santa Cruz.
There are benefits to unionization especially in a huge company, but there are also definite limitations and costs. Oh, one last thing, the contract will include an 'exclusive bargaining agent' clause. That means you must join the union to work there. If you make the union mad and they kick you out, you will be fired.
6
@Bruce1253 - I work in Tech and have worked in a couple of FAANGs.
Unions require you to think as a group, about levelling off salaries, about seniority before experience or excellence…. The philosophy of unions is the complete opposite of the way in which most software engineers I have ever met thin, and I have been in the field 3 decades and in a few countries.
It all comes back to an ancient truth: "The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil." The internet was beautiful until the power seekers took over.
3
Are we honestly supposed to feel sorry for insanely well compensated tech workers, at Google no less? In my state there are people cleaning grease traps, nailing shingles, changing diapers in nursing homes, and pumping portable toilets for state minimum of $9.25 (and unlike in major metros, they are not all foreign born).
10
The former employees claim to be some of the "most sought-after" workers in the country based on their unique skills and unquestionable intelligence. At the same time, they're too naive to realize that demand for their skills should empower them to CHOOSE to leave and go work for an employer that more-closely reflects with their own ethics and values.
But then they couldn't have their cake and eat it too.
5
@Stephen this argument is so tired and in bad faith
2
@JP Are you suggesting these employees have a right to work at Google? Or that Google has an obligation to cater to the ethical whims of every one of its employees? Even when those employees create liability for the company by raiding the skunkworks and leaking information about a DoD contract, the details of which are presumably confidential? Frankly, these employees are lucky they aren't being sued into oblivion by Google or criminally prosecuted by the Federal government.
Personally, I might have ethical issues with certain corporate practices (testing products on animals comes to mind). The best way to avoid that quandary is to simply choose not to contribute my own capital (whether earnings or labor) to the cause.
It's that simple.
2
One thing I would never want to become is a techy. They make their technology so unreasonably complicated at time in areas where it could be made so simple. It's no wonder that they end up with lives that are basically patterned in the same way.
1
I have friends who were engineers on many of the firms that
came into existence in Silicon Valley in the 1970's.
The patter was almost always the same.
A group of idealistic young engineers formed a company and worked very hard and got stock options in lieu of large salaries.
Then the company got so big they had to bring in
Corporate Financiers.
The first step the Financiers made was to isolate top
management from their old friends in Engineering via
moving them to a new building and requiring appointments
to see the "Bosses", appointments monitored by the
Financiers, and if a meeting was granted, someone from
Finance was always there.
As time when by the highest paid employees were in Finance.
Then when the economy went south, they fired as many of the original engineers, further isolating the "Bosses".
Soon the ideal of the founders were forgotten
and it was all about making money.
Google found easy pickings when it was first created,
now it has to compete for new contracts and those who get
in the way of those profits shall be eliminated.
Greed is Greed and Google has become googily Greedy.
49
@John Brown The same is true of many companies, once getting an MBA became the end-all and be-all of higher education.
Corporations that used to show some semblance of social responsibility soon lost it, in sole pursuit of the bottom line.
6
"If the nation’s most sought-after workers can’t stop their employer from behaving in ways that they deplore, where does that leave the rest of us?"
Google has more than 100,000 employees, and is a public company with widely distributed institutional and individual ownership. For those needing a clue, a group of employee activists is generally not empowered to determine corporate strategy based on a particular political posture. Surprise, surprise.
37
I wonder how many workers are happy and appreciative of working for google in comparison to these half of dozen who left or canned due to disagreement with management. Nothing in this world short of god can please everyone. In a free country, an employee is free to leave and the company is free to discharge an unhappy employer in a normal daily business transaction.
32
@tedc
The issue here is about ethics. Those happy and appreciative employees may simply not be aware of what the company they're working for is doing or they know and don't care. Everyone has their own ideas about what's ethical and what isn't, however.
8
@tedc
In a free country workers can organize and decide what impact they want to have on the world. Either a small group of extremely rich and powerful people decide the future based on what's good for them or a large group of not-so-rich not-so-powerful people make the future for themselves.
4
@Mary Yes and everyone has the ability to pick up and leave a company if their personal idea of what is ethical does not match that of the company paying their salary.
5
There are improved, secure and private search engines. I stopped using google when I realized I was being tracked. Always click on "File" on your computer and ask for a private page and then use a secure search engine. I have discovered this approach is especially recommended when searching for airline tickets, which keep rising in price if you do not use a secure and private search page.
The problems Google is now having are typical of any large corporation; unions are meant to counter greed of managers. who are not the original founders. I support the Google and other tech employees in becoming unionized; protect your future. Unionizing will also protect against unrealistic work loads, or a greedy manager; in tech industries managers are under a great deal of pressure to fulfill what is needed for a new product design, and often workers pay the price.
15
@K.M Could you provide references about a private page and secure search or should I trust Google to do that?
This further confirms the correctness of my decision taken 2.5 years ago to stop using Google and replace it with an equally if not more effective search engine. Key: it is one that does not track you. However, the fact that Google sends me an email announcing an update to their terms of service at the very moment i'm reading this story has me worried. I guess will have to change my email too.
12
How can you possibly mention James Damore in a story about Google suppressing dissent and not mention that Google fired him for his dissent?
26
@Alexander
James Damore also never argued that "women were less suited biologically for careers in technology than men" as stated by the writer of this article.
He did state that there were population level differences between men and women that might explain the lack of equal representation in the tech world, rather than bias and sexism.
He clearly stated that one could not make any assumptions about individual men and women based upon these population level distributions.
36
@Alexander
Not only that, Google had asked for his opinion, along with the opinions of others, regarding ways to attract more tech-savvy women to the company. Damore made a good faith effort to offer suggestions, and when his reply wasn’t woke enough, he was thrown under the bus. I’m a progressive, and I consider Google’s treatment of Damore shameful.
12
@Frances Except that that IS an argument that women at the 'population level' are less suited for careers in technology than men. We "social justice warriors" are kinda tired of the gaslighting, you know? If this was Damore's (and others' argument), just let them own it. Such people believe there is, or probably is, a biological rationale for workplace bias. Period.
Which prompts a question: Did Damore's little manifesto ever consider or answer the question of why there was such a HIGH level of representation by women in the early days of programming, that then dropped to levels lower than that of men once it became more lucrative and high-status? It's not that they couldn't do the work. It's that they got elbowed out by men once they saw the shimmer of gold in them there circuits.
5
Google, another member in good standing, of the authoritarian state.
13
You really only have 2 choices in a situation like this:
1) Unionize
2) Quit
14
@Dave T. I would add a 3rd: advocating for employee representation of the board which is what Elizabeth Warren would mandate!
2
@banba : Elizabeth Warren may WANT that, but the President (should she win the election, which is far from obvious now) has no such power to impose rules or regulations on industry.
ONLY CONGRESS CAN MAKE LAWS. The President can sign laws, or not sign them. He cannot make new laws.
1
@Concerned Citizen As Trump has strenuously demonstrated the President has many executive privileges which has he hasn't been shy to exercise and neither should progressives!
2
This is what happens when human decency and ethics are thrown out the window under what I call the bane of present day humanity: the Real Existing American Capitalism (the expression is based on, and respectfully borrowed from, the East German Communist regime's description of their system as "Real Existierender Sozialismus") which has, for quite some time now, arrived at the same level of moral bankruptcy which did in Soviet-style Communism: Organized Irresponsibility.
8
What did these people expect? I mean if you won't support the company's strategies and goals, why should you work there? No one is self entitled to a high paying tech job.
62
@BD Maybe they expected at least some ethical standards?
3
@BD What they expected was probably some pretty serious repercussions like losing their jobs but they persisted anyway to improve things.
Not sure why you think your defeatist attitude toward improving worker conditions is some high ground that makes you smart.
4
@BD So I once was recruited by a headhunter representing Google and of course I'm a through and through academic so I'd never consider it and to me it'd be a demotion to work for someone else esp. a for-profit business but nonetheless this person tried a bit to change my mind. One of the things she said something like that to have the kind of freedom I have right now it would be a matter of convincing the principals. So the possibility of flexibility was dangled but of course it'd never match that of academia but nonetheless given the people I've placed in such places, there is some wriggle room depending on how high up you are recruited and what your talents are.
No one is entitled to anything but if you look at who Google considers its most valuable people, they're willing to go to further lengths than they are for these employees. These people are in a sense worse like that $90 million settlement or whatever given to some predatory Andy guy (it was in the news).
All this is a good example to have my mentees stay in academia or have them start their own businesses. My wife isn't an academic but is a serial entrepreneur. She could never work for anyone without killing them either but she's a great boss and runs a very close to democratic ship (small # of employees), like I do my group (small # of mentees).
It takes different kinds - I think changing from inside is as useful as leaving it and starting new.
3
It sounds like it is time for a union.
7
@David Lindsay Jr. As a member of a union for over 20 years I don't think unionizing would solve the problem besides this is bigger than google. American capitalism is based on the exploitation of workers what we need is democratic socialism which progressive candidates Bernie and Elizabeth are advocating for.
3
@David Lindsay Jr. Google would not be competitive if unions ran the company.
@banba All those highly paid google engineers suffering from exploitation by google because they are too stupid to contract for their own good and interests and need central planners to fix it for them. That was funny indeed! Good one.
How many people look at google search everyday? What is on this web page that would even suggest "technology to save the world"? Instead we are increasingly close to losing the planet for human habitation as we know it, and have seen increasing fascism in American politics to hasten this. Google founders gave to Ted Cruz, a Texas-oil-oligarch-climate-change-denier, in the last election cycle.
The word "fascism" in politics means "steal". The wealthiest, whether German industrialists of the 1920s and 30s, or oil oligarchs of today are paying off politicians willing to take their money in order to steal from you. Google even supports this by stealing your personal data and offering them targeted advertising to maintain their monopolies and the status quo, no matter what it is.
Look around a little. They are even trying to cancel clean air laws in the U.S., and we still have the world's highest (by far) per capita carbon air pollution in the world. China, where they have used the Chinese government as their labor contractor, has air pollution so bad that on normal days people there have trouble just breathing.
Carbon levels go up as we now have a government in the U.S. that tries to increase them every day, and rush to a tipping point where it will be too late to do anything about it. Google supports this, not only in their business practices, but by not using google search to warn, educate, people what's going on with the planet science that can save people's lives.
6
the idea that any corporation is a democracy is ridiculous. The sense of employee participation that may have been floated at the beginning is not sustainable when the company's stock price is on the line. Where these guys get the nerve to insert their personal and political issues into decision making that's way over their head is beyond me.
Assuming they're all stockholders, they could try to take the company private (good luck with that) so it is not accountable to anyone, or found their own business and do what they like.
The actions described in the article would have gotten them fired at any other company. The idea that google is somehow different is fantasy.
47
@alocksley Yes, it is similar to the company towns of old, that existed in mining communities. The owner of the company was like "dad" and provided for the workers. Haven't we already seen that this model has failed?? That is why unions came into existence, to protect the rights of the workers. No one in this country should ever be fired for trying to start a union; it would be medieval to do so. The benevolent owner may work in a small company, but unfortunately personalities distort the intent in corporations.
5
@alocksley
As much as it sickens me to see Big Brother come to fruition in these greedy tech companies and see these companies profit from human misery, I agree with you. When you hate what you contribute, stop contributing. No amount of money is worth your soul.
I empathize with these young employees, but until they own the company, they can’t dictate the path the company takes. As for unions, look to Detroit. Often, they are just as greedy and everybody loses. Sigh.
5
@K.M Except that Silicon Valley is not by any stretch of the imagination "a company town."
3
Imagine the uproar from these "activists" if a Google employee agitated for Trump or conservative policies.
21
@M How do you see their contract with border control, then?
2
@M
Yes. Conservatives are just so persecuted. /s
2
@Mine2 I think M probably meant "openly." As long as you say the right things, most of the other virtue-signalers out here will give you a pass and not look too closely at what you actually do.
1
I do not trust anything big tech (or small tech!) says in public face. It's always lies.
People who believe that drone surveillance or any of the other dystopian police state stuff being developed for use against non-citizens will ONLY be used on non-citizens is not facing reality.
There is real money in data.
And real power in surveillance.
Amazon/Ring uses the police as their sales force & dictates what can be said by them in official statements. They give them away all over the country or discount them and encourage people to install them. They can use the video without all the oversight and court approvals.
The police also now are using facial recognition that can identify someone from even poor video footage/with face coverings.
Do we trust ANYONE -- CBP, ICE, DOD, the police, marketers, NSA, ANYONE -- to have these tools & trust that the organization nor any individual within it with whatever personal motivation will use these staggering invasive tools against us?
Do we trust that they won't accidentally leak or be hacked by criminals nor terrorists nor adversarial governments these tools or data that make us so vulnerable?
We accept that China is a surveillance state now. We saw how the protesters in Hong Kong had to fight against massive government surveillance and it was seen as a violation of their rights.
Who do we think created the tech that their government used against them? Who do we think they bought it from?
7
@Texan Dem You blame for tech for bad government. You likely blame voters for bad government. You blame corporations for the corruption of politicians. Why is it you don't get that a centrally planned monopoly -- government -- is necessary, but must be limited and focus on liberty and equal protection.
Did you use tech to spy on your family, neighbors, etc. Or is the fact that tech exists not a compulsion to exploit others with it? No, when government does it, they do it to maintain their monopoly, corrupted power over the people. They are responsible for their actions, not those who provide tech.
Google starts and grows based on creativity. It appreciates and respects the people making this happen. The organization reaches a certain size and level of success, becomes an engine of commerce, and a different dynamic takes over: don’t come between us (company as a whole now represented by managers whose power is productivity, not creativity) and our ability to make money. Same old story. Take the thing apart before it starts killing people.
5
There will never be a union at Google. The decline of unions in this country is a long, sad story involving, among other things, conservative ideology played out in the political arena. Remember Reagan's handling of the air traffic controllers' strike? That was a big, fat nail in the coffin. How about "right to work laws," which allow employees who refuse to join the union to reap its benefits anyway? And on the other side, there's union corruption and mob affiliation.
Any gains made by activists will occur because Google weighs an issue and decides it can appear to "give in" when it doesn't affect their business plan. The history of labor organizing was very bloody. Business owners don't care for unions. That's still true.
8
@LingoDuo Few workers care for unions, which is the only reason they don't exist. By law, a company cannot block a union being formed, and cannot fire an employee for trying to start a union. No, workers don't like unions because it becomes a game of seniority over quality, of equal outcomes over differences in skills and effort and value created.
2
@LingoDuo The amazing thing is that conservative critics will say over and over again "You don't like the pay or conditions, don't work there" -- EXCEPT when it comes to unions. Then all of a sudden, someone's inability to be a free-rider is just an intolerable violation of their constitutional rights. How about this: You don't like it that your workplace is unionized? Find another job.
1
@LingoDuo A better solution is to elect one of the progressive democratic candidates!
1
I think all these Google protesters are deluding themselves. It's not the work for the DOD or ICE that has the most inhumane results. It's the clever advertising that is getting people to buy more and more stuff. But they managed to ignore the real work they were doing (advertising) and pretend they were doing tech work.
28
@bob This is exactly how I feel, well put.
1
Google management wouldn't get away with this if the workers unionized and demanded contract language that protected them from these arbitrary abuses. Until private workplace workers figure that out, this will continue to happen. It really is that simple.
7
Good for Google. The fired employees were just that: employees. They were not the top management authorized to make strategic decisions nor the owners of the company. If they do. Ot like the direction the company is taking, they can leave at any time. But they probably like the high pay and benefits.
The authors made a snarky comments about white techies being the stereotypical image of a Google employee. According to 2019 demographics for the US, their employee base is only 53% white, less than its position in the overall US population. And that is down from 60% in 2014. Meanwhile, the Asian position has increased from 30 to 36%. Sounds pretty diverse to me.
22
@luxembourg : just as in New York City competitive high schools…"Asian" is not considered "brown enough" to be diverse.
Asians are considered "honorary whites" who have smarts, high test scores and grades and who dominate honors programs, competitive high schools and Ivy League colleges….and yeah, dominate the tech industry. (By Asian, I mean also Southeast Asians, or Indians, Pakistanis, etc.)
White are not remotely in total domination in these fields! and their percentages are shrinking yearly.
1
This is a fantastic article--thank you.
I applaud the google employees and hope the ones left keep organizing. Google is very, very wrong here. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have already gone even further down that wrong path, so it's important that Google employees push back. Their intellectual contributions are what has ultimately kept the company growing.
Robert Oppenheimer was horrified by the use of the nuclear bomb to kill people. It's important that engineers (and anyone really) be able to speak out if tech they create is going to be used for a nefarious purpose at odds with the reason they invented it.
9
Google is a company focussed on building the best technology. It is not a platform for activists nor is it unionized.
There is no law that your employer shares your personal values. Employees need to understand and take that account in finding an employment fit for themselves.
Employees are free to voice their concerns and disagreements outside of workplace and even stage their movement outside of Google - w/o using Google resources. And they are free to quit Google at any time.
Its ironic that the employees consume the golden eggs but complain about the hen that lays them.
21
These are people who never learned what "that's above my pay grade" means or how to say it. If you don't like the company you work for because of some of what it does, change jobs. Then go ahead and speak out about it. Or do something to rise in its hierarchy and gain a greater voice in what it does that way (though your view still may not be the one that wins out). If you can't do either one and have too much invested in the company you work for (because you've been there for a long time) but disagree with now, just bite down and finish out your time there. Keep your politics where they belong, which is not in your performance at work. How hard is this?
29
Interesting that an industry that initially heaped scorn on labor unions as part of their disruption campaigns now looks to them for help. That they thought Silicon Valley was truly different only to find it never was and never will be. That their owners couldn't care less about their workers and never have. That their products are dangerous if not regulated properly. That you are not special and unique among businesses.
So you'll pardon some of us if we withhold our sympathy. Especially union members. Good luck.
5
The real problem is that employees of for-profit business are trying to resolve issues the political system and the public institutions of representation should deal with. Rather than trying to be activists to influence corporate policy from within the company it would be wiser to be politically active to change the legal environment Google operates in. Political support in the public domain, for instance, for antitrust enforcement, facial recognition software only under warrants and under judicial review, public funding of election, end Super PACs etc. are far more consequential than agitating of this kind. Neither corporate law nor labor law are substitutes for political representation. As long as there is a market for cybersecurity software Google has the choice to be in that market. How government uses that technology is a concern for all of us and that calls for activism, Google employee or not. How of these employees actually vote in elections? How many are registered as Democrats, Republicans, Green Party, etc. Activism in the broader realm of state and national politics are far more relevant to building and maintaining checks and balances on corporate behavior.
49
I work in this industry. I've also found that too many have little or no interest or concern in the consequence of unbridled tech. The basic question of "because we can, should we?" is virtually never asked. Worse, in the now giant technology firms that were once bastions of purported tech idealism MBAs from Sloane, MIT, Wharton and Harvard now have a major say in corporate policies. Technology fields whether software development firm or IT service providers are ripe for unionization too. 60 or 70 hour work weeks aren't uncommon and it's considered all part of the culture. 24x7 support and 2am phone calls are too. These are largely uncompensated since all are "salaried professionals". Even NY's compensation of its IT workers follows that model for all above entry level. That these giants would now embrace the union busting tactics of Walmart isn't at all surprising.
22
@AnObserver These people are overpaid pampered prima donna's who are not upset about pay and working conditions, but want to run the company. They are merely employees who should find a job elsewhere if they are not happy.
2
The only thing that will help Google employees is if they show strong solidarity and follow basic, proven labor organizing steps. I would advise them to work with the folks at Labor Notes to learn how. Once they have a union Google will not be able to retaliate in the same manner without serious consequences.
15
Google first do evil always do evil. Why are we allowing them to destroy our country?
14
@joe Hall Because We cant stop searching...or enriching ourselves with the information Google can provide.
2
The job of the corporation is to keep the client happy. It is the client that ultimately pays for the on-the-job naps and unlimited free snacks. If the client is not happy there will be no use for the employees. The talented but very young and inexperienced in life’s trivia work force needs to warm up to this idea. Further, they need to understand that every person is replaceable.
29
@SK
Google has plenty of clients. And customers, like me, who will scale back if it continues to do unethical things. And they obviously worry about recruitment and retention or they wouldn’t offer all those perks you think employees should be grateful for.
13
@SK - "Further, they need to understand that every person is replaceable."
This isn't true. Specific people built the tech that has kept Google growing. I know people who work at Google and the talent they recruit is very specific and very skilled. They have to "audition" for a full day to become employed.
I'd argue Google is lucky to have them, not the other way around.
14
@SK Well, I for one am a client that is not very happy with the way Google is treating its employees. Not to mention a slew of other ethical questions. It is articles like this one that can make clients of Google think twice about keeping their services with Google.
5
With rare exceptions you adjust to the world (or Google in this case), it doesn't magically adjust to your whims or desires.
But good luck trying.
Generally in my experience besides doing your job well or leaving, you can also meditate. Often that's the best way to change your world. At least to lessen the impacts.
18
Google is not doing much good anymore.
Just look at how it’s polluting and gentrifying Boulder, CO.
10
Tech was fun and cool until it started invading our privacy so much. It's time to heavily regulate it. Americans should still have freedom, personal freedom that others can't steal,sell, or alter, and the right to keep our information private. At the same time hate speech should be regulated with current laws, we need a definition of what hate speech is for the modern times.
13
@Missy
Americans increasingly choose to forgo privacy and willingly hand over huge amounts of personal data in the name of convenience. If people are really concerned about privacy they might start there.
7
@Anon
Most people have no idea what they've agreed to let Google, Yahoo, et alia gather from them or how the companies are allowed to use it. It's all just a magic box that tells them things with pretty pictures.
Privacy should be opt OUT, not opt IN, that is the default is the should NOT get your data, not all settings open for "them". This is what people should be screaming for.
14
@Anon Why does it have to be all or nothing. Businesses should be ethical, that is what is missing from tech they have been allowed to get away with not being ethical. I would go back to phone booths and snail mail but the world isn't that way anymore, time to regulate the new normal.
3
So many ultra conservative comments of this article.... Against unions, against activism, protests. etc. The US is truly doomed....
67
Maybe it's time to breakup Google?
12
Or tax them. And take public ownership of the surplus data they generate.
3
Big platforms like Google and Facebook are way more powerfull than any state in the world. Sooo much knowledge!
3
Every time Google management or spokespersons make a fatuous, lying, or "weasely" statement about their unethical actions, print it here in the comments of the New York Times and everywhere else you can think of with daring and whimsy. Document their attempts to intimidate and silence, and their illegal suppression of workers choice of labor organization.
At the most important times, it is imperative to bear witness.
Fight them with truth, courage, wit, and humor (they hate being laughed at).
11
Google is an evil company.
Many companies might feel a tug to do wrong but are precluded from actualizing those tendencies by limitations of wealth, opportunity or, sometimes, a sense of right and wrong.
Google has, as it's core product, something that requires evil: information about people. It has the means at it's fingertips and the wealth to carry it off. And, make no mistake, information about people at the depth that it can be harvested by Google, is tantamount to slavery. They own everything but the body. Though, given their wealth, they doubtless have bought some of their employees body and soul.
They do evil to Americans and their dealings with China are nothing short of traitorous. Traitorous and vile in what they are enabling over there.
In the words of Eben Moglen, they are "fastening the procedures of totalitarianism on the substance of democratic society".
I wish the Democrats in the House would look at Google, a real "existential threat". Problem is that they are probably getting campaign "contributions" from this corporate chancre
12
The Stepford Wives sort of comes into my head. Not a direct analogy - but like the story of a place that sells an apparent 'ideal' - which logically our brain tells us cannot be, but we're somehow and lazily drawn by the cosiness. And of course it turns out to be the nightmare it always had to be. This is a new type of fascist corporate structure emerging. We're warned.
8
Google is evil. They cannot be trusted, full stop.
I refuse to use products that they own or that I'm aware they are involved with. They are way, way too intrusive in every possible way. Avoiding Google is the only sane way forward. (And yes, it can be done!)
8
@L
I think its extraordinary difficult/nigh on impossible to extract Google/Alphabet or several other mega-tech companies from your life entirely.
Who owns what exactly is opaque and difficult to discover and they are embedded in many critical aspects of our lives, work, home, shopping, entertainment, religion, political, etc. lives such that even if we intentionally opt out, they're still there in places & ways we can't control.
Facebook has a profile on everyone, even someone who has never had an account or visited the site or owned a smartphone.
If a friend or neighbor or family member has a Ring or Alexa or other surveillance device & you visit them, you're being surveilled just like they are despite your choosing not to purchase those products.
Cell phones are extremely accurate tracking devices and most adults & many children have them on their person or nearby at all times.
There's a new exercise toy tech is trying to get into our homes that is called -- not kidding -- "Mirror" & it's a huge 1984 style 2-way screen/mirror they are hoping to get us comfortable putting up in our homes & getting our kids comfortable interacting with.
We should not accept this from tech or our govt but they know we will. We'll surveil ourselves and pay them for it. That's what emboldens them to do such irresponsible, violating and evil stuff.
2
Irene Knapp is my new hair hero.
4
This reminds me of the old joke about the parents who just can't *wait* for their brilliant, gifted, best-and-brightest baby to begin walking and talking - then, when it happens, all mom and dad do is tell them to sit down and shut up.
11
Throughout the article, the use of the politically-neutral label “activist”, instead of “political activist”, implies that everyone else at Google agrees with these selected people’s personal politics.
20
@Davis
You either miss the point or fail in trying to twist it politically.
Not all the issues raised are political (gender, dem v gop). Many are economic (pay, hiring, promotion) or ethical (we say we do good; oops we aren't, now what?)
5
Pretty much the same story as what happened at PBS in the '70s.
Weirdos claimed public money was sponsoring a liberal agenda at PBS. Chauvinists and neo-cons began to descend on PBS and as usual they win. People just didn't want to go to work and look at them let alone deal with them.
You can see their handywork in the programming to this day. Instead of endless hours considering nature, culture and our habitats you will find the same bottom line as network junk with sex and violence.
That the U.S. actually ran tobacco out of airplanes and offices and public spaces continues to perform as an example of what it takes to do the right thing. Tobacco killed millions, and still does, but the model for running them out of town is as this column is titled: The Future Of Work. Heaven help us, again.
4
The only thing George Orwell got wrong, eventually, will be the date, 1984.
13
Google despite great marketing and turning a blind eye is not an ethical company. It has built its billions on the ' theft " of data. It knowingly says one thing and does another...so please let's stop talking about Google and ethics in thes ame article. We will look back on Google and Facebook as the first step in our loss if freedom all to save a few pennies
12
This is what happens when university's become petri dishes for one's personal activism. With due respect, the majority of the people profiled seemed to have an agenda going into employment. Google is a company. It is not a humanitarian offshoot of the United Nations. No one wants to work in a hostile, hateful environment, and I've never met a person of any gender or persuasion that endorses division. But the sole purpose of Google or any company's existence is not as a platform for a person's personal gripes about society. A generation hunting for offenses is leading to loneliness, isolation both economically and personally and an anger that their highly curated ideals don't always translate to every person and every situation. Real life is complicated. They missed the memo. However, I respect them, their attempts to criminalize anyone who doesn't see it their way have fallen flat. We're about to have four more years of Trump because of a culture enabled by professors and progressives who advocate a cult-like approach to everything. They peddle victimhood with great success. It actually is every bit as dismal and frightening as Trump. It also seems highly manipulative.
72
@MCS
Fine, but you miss the point that this isn't whining children, it's adult professionals trying to hold a company to the high ethical standard it set for itself and emphasizes during recruitment.
10
@MCS
Seriously? Wow, so education shouldn't be about asking questions or encouraging people to think for themselves beyond taking things as they are -- enabling a person to develop a moral code or sense of ethics to take out into the world? Pardon me for thinking that's what colleges and universities should do/be. Looks like you think education should be about training folks to be unquestioning worker bees and once-educated, become unthinking ciphers in the service of profit above all else. It's that thinking that got us Trump who demands blind loyalty, no questions asked, and conformity to the status quo which appears to be the direction these silicon valley cos are headed.
13
@MCS
There is nothing humanitarian about the United Nations. It exists to protect dictators from their peoples, and to perpetuate conflict.
5
Why is anyone surprised when a company fires employees who complain and try to foment conflict and revolt?
The same activists likely cheered about James Damore's firing for his daring to point out the superficiality of diversity goals and programs. He was a source of conflict, says the justification for his prompt excommunication from Google's church of social justice.
It never occurred to them that picking fights internally is similarly frowned upon by management. It never will inside their self-righteous echo chambers. As they say, do unto others......
42
@Matt Good observational.
6
@Matt Because it's against the law.
@Matt : ah…the bell of "cancel culture"….not so much fun when the bell rings for thee!
3
The fable ends. Just another factory with bad, insecure, bosses.
Eastern Airlines, failing a bad bosses alienated fliers and workers alike, tried openness as a path to embraces its labor force in a community quest for survival. The turnaround was spectacular. Smiling employees from marketing executives to baggage handlers to gate attendants to stewardesses...and smiling customers. Then along came the newest boss, Frank Borman, spewing tirades akin to: "In the zoo, there are the animals and the zookeeper. At Eastern, I am the zookeeper."
Eastern Airlines announced on January 19, 1991, it had ceased operations and was effective, immediately, selling off its assets.
7
@Bob
No, corporate vulture Frank Lorenzo killed Eastern. Boreman made it work well enough for that to happen.
Lorenzo was selling off Eastern's assess (upstreaming) while running it into the ground, eventually to be cited for "neglect and mismanagement".
That's exactly the kind of ethical mess you hope to avoid with trust and openness between employees and managers. You will be amazed what your employees can figure out: they have not only the knowledge and experience, but also the motivation: KEEPING THEIR JOB.
2
All Google work must stop until the 3 laws of robotics and the charter of rights and freedoms for conscious entities are established.
For the time being, THERE IS *NO ETHICS IN TECH*, people have to insert it and maintain it with oversight.
anything that can be weaponized is being weaponized as we speak.
9
Surprise! Google is just like any other corporate mammoth. Its goal is profits, and any dissent or disruption that it can't buy it will target for elimination. It acquires our personal data and sells it to marketers which sell it to other mammoth companies.
Tech is all right, perhaps necessary, to use. But don't worship it as mankind's savior. It's just business.
23
@mk
Well no, it's business. And it's personal. And political. And government. And military. And police. Local and national and global.
Our shrugging at betrayal and violation by tech companies as if it's the cost of modern life is a HUGE problem.
They will not draw their own line.
They are convinced the possible is inevitable and anything profitable is morally required.
Apathy and consumer and citizen acceptance of an inevitable fascist dystopian police state outcome is why it continues to escalate. And it won't stop escalating bc there is no line if we don't draw one.
2
I am pretty sure all of the ex-Google employees profiled in this article were earning nice six-figure salaries and had generous benefits like stock options, health insurance, quiet pods and free snacks.
I am also pretty sure that these folks will be surprised to learn 1) that other employers will probably not be clamoring to hire them and 2) they will find it hard to land jobs that come close to matching Google’s salaries and benefits.
I hope the NYT will follow these folks over the next several months or even a year to see how they fare.
43
@Mon Ray Perhaps, but I don't think that's the point. The real issue here is that Google has lost its moral compass while becoming a monopoly. And now is colluding with forces of oppression to help suppress the truth in China and aid family separation in the US.
28
@Mon Ray
They will go to work for other Google employees who left and scattered. There is a great deal of expertise and knowledge they can transfer. All those opportunities will be outside Kansas.
6
@poslug
When climate change (fka global warming) floods America’s coasts and turns Silicon Valley into Silicon Fjord, Google and all those high-tech companies will be fighting to relocate to Kansas. Prince Charles, Greta and other pundits assure us that it is only a matter of a few years before this happens.
As for the ex-Googlers mentioned in the article, I am sure they have expertise and knowledge to transfer, both about high-tech stuff and protesting employer policies. Even if they are hired only for their high-tech capabilities, and their on-the-job activism is ignored, it is doubtful their new employers can match Google’s salaries and benefits. I realize I could be wrong about this, which is why I would like to see NYT do a follow-up on how these folks make out post-Google.
Also, please consider the possibility that there are some people who lived in or went to school in Cambridge and choose to live in Kansas; the Harvard alumni directory has lots of examples. I know, Kansas is not currently a hotbed of high-tech activity, but just wait until the coasts get flooded.
5
Seems like Google employees have a lot of time on their hands; they're searching other people's calendars for sport and organizing walk-outs. That's not how concerns are addressed when you are acting in the best interest of the company; it is how you seek to control and sabotage it. No doubt Google has made mistakes of conscious and integrity; it's ran by people. People do these things. I find it amazing that Google HR has failed to set-up a vehicle for employees to air concerns in a respectful and forthright manner. As for a fellow contributor's remarks comparing their behavior to child labor, you obviously are not aware of the perks and pay of Google Engineers - including naps - that are extended to legal age persons.
33
@Patricia They encouraged staff to speak out on issues of concern, have not established a clear policy on these issues, and ultimately fired staff to stifle behavior that was condoned int he past.
11
@Patricia
Read the posts below on time utilization while waiting for compilers balancing high concentration tasks with low concentration tasks.
2
@Robert google created an avenue to express employee concern bit the staff in this article manipulated said avenue to inject their emotion and their politics between nap time
5
Employers are under no obligation to retain employees who violate company policies and work against company interests.
Employees are not slaves, and if they disagree with company policies and practices they are totally free to seek employment elsewhere, or to found companies that reflect their preferences.
Companies are not democracies that cater to the whims of employees; imagine a grocery store where a check-out clerk refuses to ring up and bag meat products because he is a vegan.
60
@Mon Ray
Yes, yes. Let's set a precedent to give companies all of the power over their labor. They always have the workers' best interests at heart!
We can see that from the history of child labor in this country. We all know the companies all stopped this abhorrent practice out of the goodness of their heats. It wasn't activists and labor organizers that finally pressured them into them into stopping.
No one is saying that companies are a democracy. Everyone KNOWS there is a power imbalance. That's why the executive in the article above got a 90 million dollar payout when he broke the rules of the company and these software engineers were just terminated. That's why we need unions. To help level the playing field.
Saying that no one should ever stand up for what they believe in and should just leave is short-sighted. If you saw someone beating a woman in the street, would you just walk away because "she could just leave?"
82
@Potato Companies owe their employees an opportunity to work in a reasonable environment. They do not owe them a platform to criticize company direction.
22
@Mon Ray Agreed, however your example of a cashier not checking out someone w/ meat bc they are vegan is actually happening in pharmacies around the country---refusing the customer medications bc they themselves are opposed to the medications.
17
RIP "do no evil"
Larry & Sergey are 40 something billionaires and those guys have other stuff going on now that's more important than ideology, corporate greed.
Steve Jobs is dead, long live Steve Jobs.
7
@NDV
Jobs made his money selling overpriced junk. Someone once gave me a slightly used Apple computer. It died in a couple of years. My no-name IBM-style PC was going strong after 10 years.
2
@Jonathan Katz : I am not a fan of Jobs, but I have an Apple Desktop (iMac) from 2011 - I bought it used in 2014 -- no problems of any kind (though the operating system is going obsolete, darn it).
To have an Apple computer die in only a couple of years is unusual. Most of mine have lasted from 6-9 years.
2
Google execs. are hunkering down in their bunkers intending to hold on until AI is powered by quantum computers and Googles work force is no longer required.
4
@Mary Elizabeth Lease I actually think the current crop lack the vision for that. More likely they're just hunkered down collecting the money.
4
@Mary Elizabeth Lease
Indeed, even the Google Execs. won't be needed ....
3
This is just standard corporate evolution. Many companies start out with talented people but eventually internal politics and general human greed drive talent out and replace it with fearful do-nothings who behave more like a royal court than a corporation. Think of Trump being the leader of a corporation. That is what every corporate leader is, a Donald Trump. Of course they will bully, and of course they will blunder and it is only the few capable people in the corporation who keep it from crashing. Which is why if you work for a corporation you should quit. They can't help but be evil because they are all run by someone exactly like Donald Trump.
I have never understood the need of so many people to follow a loud mouthed buffoon, but it is a common human activity. Every corporate employee does it.
15
@Chris An accurate and concise observation. I'd like to have this quote transcribed to parchment and mounted on my wall.
2
Why would a tech company want to have a motto that includes "evil" in it? They knew a lot about it - even then! If you join'em, there is a price to pay. No sense complaining about it. Too long an article. Too much detail. Perhaps Google's HR department can use the article to forewarn prospective employees.
6
The idea of a "socially conscious business" has been an oxymoron until the last 2 decades. Now, ethically sourced coffee, green investment funds and such populate the landscape. But at a certain point profit rears its capitalist head and looks for nourishment. The necessity of creating shareholder value versus the health of an obscure Peruvian farmer's child is relentless but inherent in the beast. What these young workers are displaying is naivety.
14
@kevin sullivan
The farmers providing "ethically sourced" coffee are not getting paid any more than those providing non ethically sourced coffee. The higher price being charged are the result of the promotion value being captured by the "philanthropists" organizing the marketing.
It does feel good to think that cup of coffee is benefiting some poor farmworker.
7
@kevin sullivan
things that can't go on forever don't.
The necessity of creating shareholder value needs to evolve to address sustainability because we are not including long term environmental cost in the production cost of goods. Eventually that reality will rear it's ugly head.
5
@kevin sullivan Only government regulation prevents corporations from the eventual decisions capital will make in order to make an extra buck. When it's government organs subverting the business model - we're in a bad place.
4
While my gut instinct is to support these Davids against Google's Goliath, both owners and employees were engaged in surveillance capitalism: the Orwellian tracking and use of people's personal information to make bucks -- lots of 'em. The complaints chronicled here are like claiming the Mafia is unfair to its soldiers.
13
Based on my experiences using Google Fi, perhaps they should focus a bit more on actually doing their jobs, rather than honing their protest skills.
17
Google is a gigantic corporation and therefore authoritarian. It is the nature of the beast. If you don't like that, quit.
I am a doctor who used to work for a gigantic corporation (Kaiser). It was and is authoritarian. I did not like that, so I quit.
Another way to play it is to earn as much as you can as fast as you can and save half or more of your salary, so you can buy your freedom ASAP. I've played that game.
Unionization is harder. Don't depend on it happening soon.
Capitalism is oppressive to its workers, no doubt. But, even as a worker, you can turn things to your advantage if you save.
18
@vbering the idea of using capitalism to your advantage as a worker is precise. you just proved that capitalism is the opposite of oppressive. Thank you.
3
@vbering I have done what you suggested. I love my freedom and I don't have to compromise my principles.Be your own boss ! It is initially hard but very rewarding in the long run.
1
@JG
That's the way to do it, JG.
Give me a break. No one at Google cares whether someone is trans or socialist or Republicans, etc. The bottomline is just get the work done. Try to contribute to a pleasant atmosphere, etc. but you're hired to get work done.
There are ways, and then, "there are ways" to negotiate and make a workplace as equaliterian as possible. These 4 employees should work for a non profit if they feel so militant about their mission.
56
@Dolly Patterson
They could make even more money working for a charity.
2
@ebmem
You must be kidding. Google's pay and benefits are hard to beat and cannot remotely be matched by charities.
4
Corporate execs who know how to lead will seek out input from employees at all levels of the organization. And, wise leadership understands that employees are humans with human needs to feel proud - and not horrified - by the effects of their work.
Being a leader means managing the expectations and emotions of those who report up to you. But Google seems to think there is another way, and they've turned to the section of the play book where the intimidation tricks and corporate doublespeak can be found.
There isn't another way, so long as workers are humans and not robots.
Execs dictate strategy and employees implement it. Without employee engagement, a company like Google will find itself adrift in the doldrums.
7
@JP
It is one thing to seek input and another to attempt to make institutional things that have no bearing on organizational objectives.
There is authoritarianism in the activists who seek to silence anyone not agreeing with their viewpoint. They are not having a debate about the morality of the software, they are seeking to prohibit their employer from selling products to Customs and Border protection because they want to favor illegal aliens.
In the debate about LGBSQ employment issues, which have zero commercial impact on the business, they seek to have anyone who does not tow the official orthodox view excluded from input.
8
@ebmem
Why would you assume these tools, when weilded by the state, a corporation, an individual or a foreign government, won't be used on YOU?
Do you trust Google that much?
EVEN IF only used by CBP & IF we agreed use was moral & legal to solve immigration issues, do you trust that every single CBP officer who has access will never abuse it or that these tools will never be leaked or hacked?
Where do you think the end point for all of the increasing surveillance is?
Will we be more free?
What will our society look like?
How will tech know when to stop?
Who will make them stop?
Where does this go?
2
It is not exactly a constructive policy to work for a company and try to remake it according to one's perceptions that run against of those high up. If you want to continue to be employed by some entity, "Yours is not to reason why ...", but to do the job. Those who are fired are not crusading victims of the system, but people who did not find the right way of interacting with the administration.
22
Eileen Naughton is not the "longtime head of HR." She has had that job for only three years and she came from Sales.
Laszlo Bock was SVP of People Ops from 2006-2016.
11
When employees take management's motto, "Do no harm" seriously, then management used 'its iron fist' to force conformity to their policies which might 'Do harm'.
2
It's interesting that we us the term 'engineer' in talking about people who...deal with software in various ways. All states have processes for licensing professional engineers in various sub-disciplines - civil, mechanical, chemical, etc. - but no aspect of software (design, coding, testing...). Kind of elevates them on a rather diaphinous pedestal.
Maybe there should be a more tangible pedestal. We might have fewer security disasters and MCAS problems.
8
@Doug Fuhr "Engineer" is a very common component of many tech workers' titles, whether they write code, build configurations, or make powerpoints. Having "Engineer" in one's title is not a badge of honor. I have had "Engineer" in my title before and never have I written a line of code.
1
@JP I understand it is common. If it is without meaning in the context, it should not be used.
A meaningful and widely recognized accreditation program wb beneficial.
3
@Doug Fuhr, licensing is mostly done for areas where there the work of a single person has a public safety impact, for example a doctor. For most areas of engineering however the work is done in teams and, where there is a safety aspect, there are processes to assess and deal with it.
Also, professional licensing is not a sign of competence, just a kind of guarantee that the individual will have gone through a specific set of training. A lot of licensing is barely more than a check-box exercise.
3
These employees are serving an absolutely critical role in society right now. The tendrils of Google and other tech giants are deeply rooted into the operation of businesses and governments around the world in addition to all of our personal lives. The ramifications of any project that comes out of Google ripple outwards. Maybe it feels like just a tool they have created, but once it is in the hands of a nefarious actor does it become a weapon that can be used to monitor, censor, or suppress?
Without internal dissent, how will they ever ensure they are pursuing ethical practices and equity for the people all over the world their technology affects?
There must be always be a forum for the employees at the forefront of these issues to call into question the ethical decisions of their company and they have to be able to do so openly and without fear of retribution. I commend the employees who are currently fighting, risking their own employment and livelihood, to stand up for what is right.
121
What do airline pilots and software engineers have in common?
As someone who has worked with thousands of each, I can tell you that those two sets of job holders are typically (a) the most intelligent employee groups in their respective companies, and (b) the employees with the largest blocks of non-productive time built into their job responsibilities.
This is a toxic combination in both airlines and tech companies, as members of these employee groups have ample time to reassure one other that - being demonstrably smarter than those who run the company - they (and only they) have all the answers.
Many factors, of course, led to the demise of Pan Am, Eastern, TWA, and so many others, but major miscalculation of self-worth by pilot unions certainly contributed.
Will Googlers make those same arrogant miscalculations?
32
@John I'd be interested to see the facts which state unions at Pan Am, Eastern, and TWA were significantly different than unions at American, Delta, or United. Unions played no more a role in the failure of the first group, than the success of the second group. If there is sourced verified material that says otherwise, I'd be interested see it. Otherwise, it seems your statement amounts to a smear on unions which you're trying to present as analysis based on facts.
12
@John
Agreed - Corporations are unfortunately filled with people (“employees”)
I also agree with you 100% the problem is the people - in fact, I’d go as far as to say the solution is getting rid of any person who isn’t on board with management.
Taken to the end you suggest, we would have a utopia of companies of only compromised administrative personnel writing memos about AI to workers that are long gone finding safer places to raise a family far from corporate overlords ...
I will join john galt and wait your utopia out :)
1
@John So your position is that highly trained and highly skilled employees with transferable job skills in an hiring market should just shut up and do as they are told?
5
As someone who has followed the socially conscious business field, including into the large company category which so many think impossible, this is so sad. The "Don't Be Evil," proudly hire back a Chinese employee in trouble with his government, we can talk about anything culture seems gone.
Yes, living up to a high ethical standard can be hard, and the issues that come along over the years can get messy. But they were on the right track. And providing a badly needed model for how capitalism, and the tech sector, could evolve.
What went wrong? Why did they stop trying?
Was there no way to try to apply their technical genius to ethics, even as the issues got harder?
Were there, are there, no creative, out-of-the-box possibilities?
Tragic.
14
@Matt Polsky
What went wrong? Easy: Google got HUGE and Money Talks.
What do YOU think happened?
6
How disingenuous that you not only willfully distort what Damore wrote, you also conspicuously neglect to mention he was fired for it. In an article about Google employees supposedly being wrongly terminated for their political stances! It is ludicrously evident that your concern is only for those employees in ideological compliance with wokeness cult. There is nothing liberal about that.
112
@Greg
So you recognize that it's dangerous to allow a company with such impulses to sell increasingly powerful, increasingly invasive & increasingly secretive surveillance tools to governments or whoever can pay?
Do you want such a company making tools & algorithms you'll eventually be subjected to & live within the society they create?
2
@Greg : Damore absolutely did not say "women are not capable of doing computer work".
He said that relatively few had an interest in it -- though those that did, were absolutely capable -- and that attempts to ATTRACT more women into the field had failed.
It was an observation, not an accusation -- and he was brutally "cancelled" by cancel culture who deliberately misstated his words.
30
@Greg Good point that the author is clearly in the sway of the Google dissidents. Like taking at face value Jordan's comment that Google "can't beat the workers into submission". Oh no?
1
Corporations are by definition unethical as the corporation is a legal fiction designed to shield it's leaders from full accountability for their actions. A moral fiction.
97
Unionization is the only protection in the near future till we are done with the clean up of what the conservatives have done with our constitutional rights.
83
@Sean Cairne As a union member for over 20 years I disagree that unions are the only protections. In my experience unions create tension and conflict between management and the union members and they only create mediocrity. The answer is for all Americans to enjoy the protections that union members now enjoy - healthy working conditions, paid health care, paid maternity and paternity leave, guaranteed vacation, paid sabbatical etc.
20
@banba Maybe so, but the trend we are on is super-wealthy CEO billionaires and an ever-expanding underpaid contractor workforce without job security or benefits. People fought and died to create and protect unions for good reason.
18
@Junewell Unions are antiquated special interest groups and besides their impact has been over stated. It was the workplace activist Frances Perkins and FDR's Secretary of Labor who got major worker protections like the 40 day work week, social security, unemployment. welfare, minimum wage and overtime laws enacted. Further protections in this country can only come from the Executive Branch.
8
The fact of the matter is that Google is not an NGO, and it is up to the business leaders - not the employees - to decide which projects to work and which customers to work with. It is not a democracy, and shouldn't be. If employees don't like this, they can leave the company and set up their own, following their own vision and morals. You can't expect to work for a company founded and run by other people to follow your exact vision of the world. Another option is to work your way up in the company until you are in a position to make decisions about its direction. But if a company starts to follow this trend of cowing to employee demands, it is destined for failure; it will become a lumbering and inefficient body. The business leaders' job is to set the direction and abide by the law; the employees job is to follow this direction, end of story.
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@Michael It's also up to the employees to decide if they wish to continue working for a company doing things that they find wrong. Believe it or not, employees in this situation have a considerable amount of power. If they leave then it will take months to bring someone else up to speed. Even an internal transfer will take more time than anyone wants. That means slipped deadlines and significant added costs.
Tech companies like Google live and die by the skills and dedication of their employees. You can't just slot some random person in and hope to replicate the successes of the past. You need smart people who are both dedicated and innovate in order to succeed in this market. Employers who end up alienating their employees end up stagnating and that's just another word for dying in the tech world.
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@Michael
You are quite right, that is why Marx called this system "wage slavery". The only way partial democracy enters into a workplace is via a union. And as we see, democracy doesn't really exist outside the workplace, as the same oligarchs who own the companies, own the government as well.
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@Michael
You're essentially saying that corporations cannot afford morality or ethics. You may be right, but, if you are, the idea of capitalist democracy is an oxymoron.
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