Google's Civil War

http://fortune.com/longform/inside-googles-civil-war/

by lxm • 7 years ago

128 143 7 years ago

fortune.com

ddebernardy• 7 years ago

https://outline.com/ggbLy5 to get past the obnoxious mandatory cookie.

dillonmckay2• 7 years ago

past, as a preposition.

lisper2• 7 years ago

"Past" is a preposition, e.g. "First past the post"

thrower123• 7 years ago

Also gets rid of the awful autoplay video above the fold that starts blaring out immediately. Thanks!

lisper2• 7 years ago

Simply disabling Javascript works too.

atomical2• 7 years ago

Both Apple and Google support Saudi Arabia by refusing to remove the Absher app from the app store. Could any current employees shed light on if there is any internal disagreement on this?

Razengan• 7 years ago

There's also an official Chinese propaganda app on the App Store that you cannot even rate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19601091

kyrra• 7 years ago

I have no real understanding of the situation. But I believe the app is just a webview on top of various Saudi websites. It doesn't even do push notifications, they come instead through text messaging.

SamReidHughes• 7 years ago

Do you want a central authority dictating what code you can run on your computer?

atomical2• 7 years ago

Is an employer allowed to use code to discriminate against female employees? No, that's outrageous. Apple and Google should take the high road.

fyoving4• 7 years ago

I don't understand how someone can proudly be a nuisance to those who sign their paychecks nor how can an employer tolerate any of it, at the very least this situation is unfair to the majority of employees who are just "going to work".

Not sure what's behind Google's inaction here, they really shouldn't be worried about the trouble makers defecting to somewhere else that most likely won't tolerate their bullshit.

dralley2• 7 years ago

So what you're saying is, employees shouldn't complain about (censorship, bosses tolerating sexual harassment, etc.), they should either put up with it or leave quietly (possibly to their own financial detriment)?

I can't say I agree with you. What you're suggesting is basically the Wall Street model where bad and unethical institutional behavior gets a suboptimal amount of pushback.

herohamp• 7 years ago

They should but they then also face the consequences

NotPaidToPost5• 7 years ago

That's how employment works.

As an employee you are paid to execute the company's strategy.

If you disagree you can of course, and even should, voice your disagreement but that should be done in a professional in diplomatic way, in private.

If you cannot do that or cannot accept the company's strategy then yes, your alternative is to leave quietly.

The new "red guards" of the left may not like it, but that's what professionalism (not to mention a free society) is. Tough.

wffurr4• 7 years ago

Well, for one, retaliation against labor organizing is illegal under federal law.

For another, Google is in fierce competition with the rest of the tech companies for talent.

fyoving4• 7 years ago

For one, they are would be retaliating against employees who generate bad PR for them.

For another the rest of the tech companies don't seem to enable let alone tolerate this shenanigans.

googthrow20196• 7 years ago

Well, for one, retaliation against labor organizing is illegal under federal law.

These people are not attempting "labor organizing". They are putting on a few of the trappings of labor organizing, like drawing up lists of demands, but without doing any of the hard work that requires actually organizing a union.

In the United States, a company's employees decide whether to form a union by holding a referendum by secret ballot. Unions then elect their representatives through a similar process.

Google's activists are not attempting to form a traditional union. They know that they are deeply unpopular and would lose any fair secret ballot election in which they were on the ballot. The activists believe that by playing pretend-union, they can gain all the influence of a real union without the accountability and risk. They're trying to have their cake and eat it too.

pjc509• 7 years ago

The whole point of somewhere like Google is that they don't want people who will do what they're told, because such people are only capable of doing what they're told. You can't order someone to innovate unless they have no other choice.

Silicon Valley has spent years setting itself up as an inheritor of the counterculture, a place where it's possible to "think different". Employees are given a share of the business (via a complicated tax shelter of options). Startups want "contributors", people who buy into the idea that they're engaged in a positive-sum contribution to the world rather than just bringing home a paycheck. They provide all sorts of office features to encourage people to "bring their whole self to work".

(I could go on, but I expect this thread to be buried)

Edit: exhibit A, hollywood social justice warrior proudly being a nuisance, disrupting law abiding citizens with a hammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I ; the "1984" Macintosh commercial and its successor "Think Different" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs are as close to an official statement of SV founding ideology as you're going to get)

neffy• 7 years ago

I really think that's just darkly entertaining marketing. Silicon valley in reality is a ruthlessly corporate business world, where known to be worthless options are traded for people's lives and labour. (Look up "founder's shares") Startups require cheap labour, if their investors are going to make out like bandits - that's what's really going on.

Google in particular, if they were looking for people capable of thinking outside the box, would not selecting very specifically from the box of people that are prepared to jump through the hoops of their ridiculous programming interviews. In fact, by this point in their history, they could just datamine the list of people who have repeatedly told their recruiters to take a running jump, and start sampling from there.

fyoving4• 7 years ago

Tell that to the suits who invented the future at IBM and Bell labs.

Counter cultural types don't have a monopoly on innovation.

idlewords3• 7 years ago

I don't think you hire bold out-of-the-box innovators to run AdSense.

malvosenior5• 7 years ago

Of all the Silicon Valley companies, Google with its intense focus on traditional academia is not very counter culture at all. They're basically part of the educational industrial complex.

eigenvector2• 7 years ago

You say Google et al want people who don't just "do what they're told", yet one of the most distinguishing aspects of these places is a hiring process that specifically selects for people willing to jump through absurd hoops and full buy-in to the corporate mythology that doing this means you are simply better and smarter than anyone who doesn't.

That's not how you foster counterculture. In fact, that's probably why Google went so long without any internal employee conflict.

burtonator• 7 years ago

The BEST thing someone can do when you're they're friend is tell you when you're doing something wrong so you can correct your behavior.

A real friend speaks out ...

pacala• 7 years ago

A friend tells you in private, and also cuts you a lot of slack. A jerk berates you in public at every opportunity.

evrydayhustling• 7 years ago

To get an incredibly valuable lead in hiring, Google has led the market on entitlements: great pay, perks, lifestyle, transparency, and a promise of ethical and participatory governance. It might be fair to say that some of these employees have unrealistic expectations about their employer, but you can't say Google didn't ask for it.

I personally agree it's kind of silly to expect your work to be a Utopia by your specific definition. On the other hand, if Google does learn to reconcile its business and competing employee cultures, they will have done something amazing that probably makes them a stronger institution.

lallysingh• 7 years ago

Because that's implicit in the contract Google signs with it's employees. People go (went, at least) because of the autonomy they're given. That autonomy isn't a perk; it's a prerequisite for innovation.

Now Google's got reduced innovation and reduced autonomy for it's employees. They didn't scale the latter and subsequently, they're losing the former.

If the employees leave, Google's another IBM. Another corpse.

conanbatt2• 7 years ago

Google is not a company that has such hard lines against employees. Fostering a "culture of safety" is very important to tech companies, and if a protest of 100 employees was met with their dismissal, it would have ripple effects on all the rest of the employees.

I personally never interviewed at Google, but the damore scandal was a pretty big dissuasive for me to attempt to get one. It does not look like a safe space to me.

Nullabillity• 7 years ago

at the very least this situation is unfair to the majority of employees who are just "going to work".

So people shouldn't have to take responsibility for their actions, just because they're paid for their troubles?

jccalhoun• 7 years ago

Clearly they value these employees and want them to be happy. I would guess that if the janitorial staff tried this there would a)be a lot less press about it and b) google wouldn't put up with it nearly as well.

They also might have contracts with these people that require certain reasons for it.

Certainly it would be very bad press for google if they fired all of the people who are involved in this.

rgoulter• 7 years ago

The Google organizers have taken to calling themselves the “entitled vocal majority,” after one employee publicly referred to them as the “entitled vocal minority.”

I feel like this is a small example of where my views of these employees disagrees with the author's. (I'm fine with employees having strong opinions on ethical issues, but this kindof puff quote doesn't lend them respect).

I dunno if the author thinks they're being impartial. Can't complain if they know (and the reader knows) where their preference lies.

pjc509• 7 years ago

There's a long history of naming yourself after the negative term your enemies use for you in order to neutralise it. Also "entitled vocal minority" works nicely as a parody of "moral majority".

mcguire• 7 years ago

The Bolsheviks were actually a minority.

Apocryphon• 7 years ago

I think it’s a twist on the silent majority.

googthrow20196• 7 years ago

The author's bias is obvious. She's not even trying to create an impression of objectivity. The activists and this article's author are congratulating each other all over Twitter. Besides, the article contains nuggets like this:

Meanwhile, there’s not a company in the sector that isn’t grappling at some level with the ways bro-gramming culture has made tech a toxic space for women and employees of color.

Anyone who uncritically invokes this frame is waging culture war, not describing it. This article is activist propaganda masquerading as neutral reporting.

malvosenior5• 7 years ago

Yep, it's impossible to take journalism seriously when they use "bro-gramming" in an article. The journalists obviously have an axe to grind.

eli_gottlieb• 7 years ago

The author's bias is obvious. She's not even trying to create an impression of objectivity. The activists and this article's author are congratulating each other all over Twitter.

The irony is that actually printing someone taking the appellation "entitled vocal majority" makes them look bad, not the company.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Google, but I'm pre-inclined to favor the employees doing more or less whatever they want, but holy hell, what a way for an activist minority to alienate itself from the base you need to form a union or cooperative.

idlewords3• 7 years ago

I'd be curious to hear rank-and-file Googlers' views on how this dynamic is playing out within the company. It's in both journalists' and organizers' interests to play it up, so the reality can be hard to discern.

Eridrus2• 7 years ago

Like every issue, there are those who are obsessed with it, for whom it takes over their lives, and then there is a large swath of people who either agree or not, but do so without much intensity.

Since the intensity of most people's beliefs is low and the specific issues are not part of day to day work, it's not really a thing that comes up except when new news breaks and people talk about it at lunch for a day.

When you take a look at how many people, in an industry where it's trivial to get another job, quit over any of these issues, it's in the single digits.

inlined3• 7 years ago

The set may be larger than reported. E.g. I didn’t sign the Maven petition because I was up for promotion and work in Cloud.

UncleMeat2• 7 years ago

It has come up precisely twice in my immediate working group in the last few years (the Damore thing and the first walkout).

It has affected by work literally not at all.

Some people care deeply about this stuff. I agree with a fair amount of it. But from my perspective calling it a civil war is frankly ludicrous.

TaylorAlexander3• 7 years ago

I think it affects some groups more than others. A lot of people get mistreated at Google (TVCs, women, people of color, trans people). It’s a lot of high achieving people and a high pressure environment. Inevitably some people will push others without realizing how hard they are pushing. It’s good in my opinion for people to speak out about this.

deogeo3• 7 years ago

Things got even uglier when Damore sympathizers leaked comments made on the message boards by Fong-Jones, a trans woman, and other Google diversity advocates to right-wing news sites. [this fortune.com article]

This got me curious, so I tried searching for these leaked comments, while avoiding far-right news sites. This is what I found:

Diversity advocates at Google – including the Mountain View tech giant's highest-ranking inclusion officer – are being targeted by a small group of colleagues in an internal culture war, according to a new report. [...] screenshots from Google internal discussion boards have been leaked and posted on far-right websites including Breitbart and the blog Vox Popoli, which espouses white supremacy. [1]
15 current Google employees accuse coworkers of inciting outsiders to harass rank-and-file employees who are minority advocates, including queer and transgender employees. Since August, screenshots from Google’s internal discussion forums, including personal information, have been displayed on sites including Breitbart and Vox Popoli, a blog run by alt-right author Theodore Beale, who goes by the name Vox Day. [2]
Their personal information and comments expressed in internal company forums have been leaked to the public and published on far-right websites, leading to mistreatment by online vigilantes. [..] "We need to see concrete and meaningful action," Fong-Jones said. [..] Chuck Johnson, who was kicked off Twitter in 2015 after tweeting about wanting to "take out" civil rights activist DeRay McKesson [3]
Their tactics allegedly include “weaponiz[ing] human resources” by goading diverse members of Google’s team into making inflammatory statements, and reporting those statements as violations of the company’s rules around civility. [..] Pro-diversity employees say that their messages on internal Google forums have also been photographed and shared outside the company, leading to their publication on far-right platforms [4]

A lot of condemnation of the leaks, but I was shocked to find no trace of the leaked comments themselves - though the people whose comments were leaked are interviewed and given the chance to present their side. The contrast is greatest in [3], where the only comment quoted is the two-word "take out" of the presumably far-right Chuck Johnson.

So we have, broadly speaking, two sides making controversial comments. The comments of one side aren't published (except by far-right news sites), only their explanations given to the media. The other side does have their incriminating comments published (or parts of them), but doesn't get much of a chance to defend or explain themselves after that.

I'm just glad this one-sided reporting is on the side of truth and the good guys.

[1] https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2018/01/30/googles...

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/the-dirty-war-over-diversity-ins...

[3] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/01/26/google-diversi...

[4] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/google-has-become-gr...

icebraining2• 7 years ago

"The other side does have their incriminating comments published (or parts of them)"

Where? I don't see any leaked comments from either side on those links.

deogeo3• 7 years ago

Because those links are about the leaked comments of the diversity advocates. Even so, they do contain a quoted comment (though not leaked) - the right-wing "take out". An example of the reverse wasn't hard to find:

"Women, on average, have more openness directed towards feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas. Women generally also have a stronger interest in people rather than things, relative to men (also interpreted as empathizing vs. systemizing)," the screed reads. [1]

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/google-employ...

jmull• 7 years ago

I think it’s the publishing of the comments that is the key thing, not the comments themselves.

That’s because it causes the person to be targeted for harassment.

repolfx2• 7 years ago

Yes, basically every news outlet other than Breitbart refuses to publish the racism and sexism of the Googlers in question, instead allowing them to present themselves uncritically in whatever way they like. Why? Because apparently journalists on non "far right" sites (whatever that means) share their biases.

Anyway, let me help readers who may not be familiar with this motley crew. Here are some examples of the comments in question.

Liz Fong-Jones posted internally, "Frankly, I could care less about being 'unfair' to white men" and "I feel that if there's any harm to the interests of white men from that work, it is more than made up for by the benefits to everyone as a whole".

Colin McMillen, also named in the articles, said, "You are posting devils-advocate bullshit along the lines of 'oh no, some hypothetical white man who is just barely above the hiring bar might be intangibly harmed by some Googlers who decided to give marginally more training or education to non-Googler women'"

Kim Burchett said, "In the T5->T6 promo committee I served on, 2/4 committee members were women. Yay! 4/4 members were white. Boo! 12/15 candidates were men. Boo!"

The overriding theme of the leaked comments is that if you're white and a man, you deserve bad treatment and discrimination.

pjc509• 7 years ago

And in an attempt to quell the increase in uncivil interactions on its internal platforms, its new “community guidelines” ban slurs and references to sex acts in any work document

Rather surprised that people were getting away with that in the first place.

Edit: just realised that, like codes of conduct, the key difference is that now the rule also applies to the people at the top.

itronitron• 7 years ago

also, how about banning slurs and references to sex acts in any work communication?

darkpuma• 7 years ago

If I twist my ankle and exclaim "fuck!", would that be in violation? It's not a dumb question, there are some people who are genuinely offended by that sort of language. Would the rules back them up, or me?

In theory I'm in favor of these sort of rules, but I hope they leave some wiggle room for common sense, preferably erroring on the side of tolerance.

new2627• 7 years ago

What about sex workers though?

conanbatt2• 7 years ago

I'm surprised a rule is the solution for that.

village-idiot• 7 years ago

If you want to change a culture, rules like that are often a start of the process. But the rule alone is certainly insufficient on its own.

wswkb2• 7 years ago

I should be able to put, say, "this method is fucking up that variable" in a code comment without a puritan telling me not to do so. Which is funny, as it shows that we're going full circle.

pjc509• 7 years ago

Why? Are you asking to be able to swear in front of clients too? Because the code isn't guaranteed to stay in front of favourable eyes forever.

skybrian2• 7 years ago

If you think that's bad, wait until you see how nit-picky people get in code reviews. I wouldn't be surprised if there were lint rules for swear words.

If you can't deal with criticism of your code, maybe working at a big tech firm isn't for you?

dictum• 7 years ago

Personally, I'd prefer "fucking up" to go away, along with "rape" as a colorful equivalent of ruining/causing damage to someone or something.

It associates sex with violence and destruction.

A similar thing used to happen with "gay", which kids would use as an adjective for frustrating or annoying situations.

My preferences notwithstanding, it's still better to be clearer about what's happening. "Fucking up that variable" says very little about the cause of the problem, and its possible solution.

onetimemanytime• 7 years ago

A day late a a dollar short. Google's biggest crime was what they did to the web. After using them to promote Google they turned the tables and essentially started them of clicks, unless they bought ads. Google search is ads, unless you keep scrolling and scrolling.

whatshisface• 7 years ago

The company says it is trying to manage its ballooning diversity of perspectives and projects

Hopefully they haven't been axing perspectives the way they've been axing projects!

lawrenceyan• 7 years ago

at Microsoft, employees say they don’t want to build technology for warfare

Does anyone know what exactly Microsoft is doing with the military? Is this like better image recognition for drone strikes / targeting humans or more like providing operating systems for military administration? Because those could both be technically construed as “building technology for warfare” with only the first choice being the actually bad type of work.

rudolfwinestock2• 7 years ago

Bill Gates & Paul Allen originally founded Microsoft in Albuquerqe, New Mexico, in order to be reasonably close to Los Alamos because they wanted to get military contracts.

wcarss• 7 years ago

This may not be a disagreement -- but I was under the impression they moved to Albuquerque to work at/with MITS[1], the manufacturer of the Altair, and Microsoft's first customer.

1 -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Instrumentation_and_Tele...

dfilppi• 7 years ago

Usually you replace them.

inlined3• 7 years ago

This was a fine recap; I’m surprised more hasn’t leaked to the press. Google’s culture is shifting for the worse, but I won’t give specifics because that would require leaking.

inlined3• 7 years ago

I would define Google’s troubles or decline in three parts:

1. Outrage over previous sexual misconduct 2. Outrage over Google seeking amoral revenue streams 3. Declination of perks

The first one is just the chickens coming to roost. The second two I’ve always felt we’re due to a transition in CFOs.

repolfx2• 7 years ago

Alleged misconduct. That's what Googlers seem to have lost sight of.

Take Andy Rubin. One of Google's most valuable executives, he built up Android from nothing. He has a consensual relationship with a woman, but it starts to cool off and fade away. Around this time she accuses him of "pressuring" her into a sexual act, but the whole thing happened behind closed doors and there's no way to know what really happened.

Has he done anything wrong? Who knows? Google can't actually adjudicate this dispute, and Rubin claims innocence. In the ultra-feminist environment Google has accepted internally a woman can't ever be disbelieved so Rubin must be punished. But the situation is deeply unjust and everyone knows it. Rubin did great things for Google, and Google is now rewarding him by stabbing him in the back. So an arrangement is made: everyone stays quiet and the pain of the injustice and betrayal is soothed with a big payment.

Years later Googlers find out about this situation and instead of being outraged that a successful executive was fired on the basis of nothing more than heresay by someone he was in a relationship with, are outraged that he wasn't treated even more harshly. What message does this send to the future Rubins of the world? It says: don't team up with Google.

chuckout5783• 7 years ago

Throwaway account: the "civil war" is from a bunch of self-aggrandizing assholes. Yes there have been some big stunts (e.g. the walk out), but on the whole this counts for nothing for the rank and file employees that I know and work with.

About as far as most people o work with go in terms of "civil war" is changing their profile picture to say "no to retaliation" which is so vapid and pathetic it's not even worth doing.

googthrow20196• 7 years ago

Agreed. Management needs to fire these people. If they sue, great: Google's ensuing victory will create a precedent that workplace protections do not extend to unbounded activism that employees falsely claim is whistleblowing.

Google's Civil War

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