Why I'm Forced to Say Farewell: Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass

https://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/post/leaving-google/

by timedude • 1 month ago

342 266 1 month ago

mayrhofer.eu.org

Google will want him terminated immediately and will probably make him some settlement (combined with a threat) to keep his mouth shut, going forward. Meanwhile, the media will be clamoring for interviews and more sound bites.

mpenick• 1 month ago

He’s from the EU. I think that Google can’t terminate him immediately.

jongjong• 1 month ago

Unless they send in their fully automated war drones.

bigiain• 1 month ago

Didn't he say he moved to Mountain View? Surely California employment law applies, not any EU laws?

saltyoldman4• 1 month ago

. Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.

So if our enemies had no qualms at all about doing this, wouldn't it make sense that we have weapons that can at least counter, and potentially fight back? Would it be facilitating injury if the AI is used to stop an ISIS linked attack in our homeland?

"Don't be evil"

Can evil also be interpreted as letting your government be impotent in protecting you?

izacus• 1 month ago

If you actually read the article you'd know that the Googles government isn't friendly with the author's government, which makes your nitpicking nonsensical.

lokar4• 1 month ago

Your argument is not really responding to his.

He has, and has had, a specific moral philosophy he follows. When he took the job the public (and once he started, internal) words and actions of the company fit within that philosophy (or closely enough). Now the company has changed and they don’t fit. Further, the obvious changes happened without any real notice or explanation.

It seems reasonable in that situation to leave. FWIW; I was in the same situation, and left.

Do you fault him for his personal moral code? He is not telling you how you should act.

leptons4• 1 month ago

Can evil also be interpreted as letting your government be impotent in protecting you?

When they rename "Department of Defense" to "Department of War", there can be no mistake about the intention of the government. They aren't "protecting" us, they are actively starting unnecessary wars, because cruelty has always been the point for them.

rayiner11• 1 month ago

Did you just realize this now? The name "Department of Defense" has always been a euphemism. The last time we were in a defensive war was World War II--ironically, when the DoD was still called the "Department of War."

mieses• 1 month ago

he is a self described pacifist. how nice to be him.

nathan_compton• 1 month ago

I don't know, it seems like being a pacifist is harder, since it exposes you to violence to which you cannot retaliate while alienating you from your peers with less stringent moral opinions. Doesn't seem like it really makes anything easier. You don't have to look hard to find that history is replete with pacifists who paid social and legal penalties for their moral stance.

jubilanti• 1 month ago

You seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of https://enwp.org/Pacifism

daedrdev• 1 month ago

I have met pacifists who say all war is bad* and thus the Russia Ukraine war should immediately end, without any ideas on how to get that to happen except a few who imply Ukraine should roll over and be consumed.

*or this is an inter-capitalist war

saltyoldman4• 1 month ago

Or, you don't understand the main criticism of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism#Criticism

themafia• 1 month ago

if the AI is used to stop an ISIS

Describe that scenario to me. What precisely is the language model going to do? To defeat a _terrorist_ organization? I feel like this is way to asymmetric of a philosophy to actually work, but, I'm curious to know what your imagination holds on this one.

Can evil also be interpreted as letting your government be impotent in protecting you?

The government _is_ impotent in protecting you. If they weren't we wouldn't need courts. Or a constitution. Or the revolution which started it.

Finally, there is an argument to be made, that our government, and it's imperious ways, were the primary force which led to the creation of ISIS in the first place. Perhaps if we weren't telling lies about yellow cake and mobile chemical labs while indiscriminately bombing innocent civilians we wouldn't be facing such a ridiculous world security posture.

saltyoldman4• 1 month ago

You must be one of those people asking to free Karmelo?

Some things are just simple. ISIS is a terrorist organization you're carrying water for. Most of the mission of ISIS is simply spread Islam and kill infidels. Islam had that charter prior to the creation of America by the way.

int_19h2• 1 month ago

I'm not a pacifist, but I wouldn't work in any place related to the US military for the simple reason that it is mostly used to wage wars of aggression these days, or provide materiel to other countries that do. Stop doing that and then we can seriously talk about defensive military tech. I left NVIDIA in part because it is too heavily involved in these things (and Palantir and Anduril specifically).

Regarding this specifically:

Would it be facilitating injury if the AI is used to stop an ISIS linked attack in our homeland?

it again depends on what exactly said AI does. If it's used to surveil most people most of the time, for example, then that probably does reduce the odds of an ISIS-linked attack on US, but the surveillance itself would be a greater injury at that scale.

taid9iK-• 1 month ago

Good for you. Us. I always wondered what being pacifist means specifically in this space. Thank you!

moomoo112• 1 month ago

well at least the TC and stock appreciation was worth it right?

sorry not being a jerk but many of these kinds of posts just come off as performative and attention seeking. you could have just quit, literally everyone knows how FAANG operates.

These are the most successful companies in the history of the world. What do you expect? DO you need a PhD to figure this out?

aucisson_masque• 1 month ago

It's great to follow your own moral compass, whatever the cost.

Much harder than taking the money and blindly following management decisions.

andriy_koval• 1 month ago

Its easier once he vested his director level stock compensation since 2017.

spiralcoaster2• 1 month ago

Right, because I'm sure that's not what he's been doing this entire time. Everyone knows Google has been a shining beacon of goodwill since 2017.

JuniperMesos4• 1 month ago

[flagged]

ashleyn• 1 month ago

Considering they rolled back DEI along with everyone else after Trump's second victory, it's difficult to view those previous "values" as anything other than cynical kissing-up to the previous holders of power.

toomuchtodo2• 1 month ago

It’s the cost of buying goodwill and lower regulatory burden from the administration in power at the time of implementation. DEI? Non DEI? Like an umbrella, just depends on the weather, its business as usual regardless.

rayiner11• 1 month ago

Considering they rolled back DEI along with everyone else after Trump's second victory, it's difficult to view those previous "values" as anything other than cynical kissing-up to the previous holders of power.

The previous policies simply reflected the culture of employees and HR managers that had graduated from universities that openly practiced race-conscious admissions after Grutter v. Bollinger. The change in policy likely came not from the new administration, but the Supreme Court's SFFA decision in 2023 that reminded everyone the civil rights laws require race blindness.

CMay• 1 month ago

For what it's worth, I think for an organization that size that needs the best talent from anywhere, It's probably much better to discourage political activism at work. It can tend to turn away the most logical and reasonable well grounded people who want no part of it. The people who _need_ work to be political can go get hired for explicitly political organizations where that is the job.

Creating a distaste in people without like minds has been an intentional goal to cause exodus after exodus on various platforms, in companies and so on. If you let that get out of control, you can poison a culture almost unrecoverably. We can't let that happen to our critical tech companies for national security reasons.

acdha• 1 month ago

You have to remember that most companies _chose_ to setup DEI programs: it was a routine recommendation from lawyers because it gave them a string defense in lawsuits — the next time some manager abuses their position, they can cut that person loose and point to their various programs as evidence that whatever happened was limited to that manager and not company culture.

Tuna-Fish• 1 month ago

They were not cynical kissing up to previous holders of power, they were desperate attempts to cover their asses against EEOC lawsuits. And they didn't end because of Trump's second victory, they ended because the Supreme Court defanged EEOC (and half the rest of the federal regulatory agencies).

The actual reason for the "corporate DEI" in tech was that since Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), EEOC could sue companies that had lower minority proportion than population norm for discrimination, and could could prove the discrimination in court using nothing but the racial makeup of the employees, and some policy at the company that could in theory have disparate impact. And under their standards, literally any policy has disparate impact.

This hit other sectors first, to which they responded by hiring more minorities. But tech had the problem that schools were consistently producing fewer minority engineering grads than the population proportion, and in a world where approximately every engineer got employed, some US tech companies would have to have lower minority representation than the population no matter what they did. And because the disparity between engineering grads and racial population proportion was so high, in fact most large companies would fail to meet the necessary minority proportions.

But EEOC would not instantly file suit against every offender, instead they would file ~40 such suits per year, targeting large companies that they considered particularly bad. And so companies that felt they might get hit soon started doing DEI programs, at first to attract more minority engineers (from other companies in the same sector, which would then fall under the limit, making it zero-sum), but then they realized that the EEOC didn't really sue the companies that were the loudest at touting their DEI credentials, and it all became extremely performative, no longer trying to attract minority talent but to be the loudest company talking about the subject. Iterate over that for a few decades and it got really weird.

It ended because Trump named 3 SC justices on his first term, and in a few important cases between 2023 and today, the new SC tore the whole thing down, and suing a company for disparate impact is now considered unconstitutional.

throwa356262• 1 month ago

That was a crazy period when Google first fired him, then fired people criticising him, and then fired people criticising the people that just got fired.

But let's be honest, the guy was kind of unhinged. I would not have fired him, but neither would I have kept him in my team.

lokar4• 1 month ago

I agree, internally, looking at a fuller picture of his activity, he was off. Constantly bringing the subject up out of context, starting fights, etc. but they should have just warned him.

3adk1a• 1 month ago

He wasn't unhinged, he somewhat clumsily posted evolutionary biology literature fragments on a channel where it would offend parts of the readers.

In response to a "let a thousand flowers bloom and speak your mind" request from Google management snakes. The problem is that some tech people take these requests seriously.

Google of course has identified itself as Trump sycophants and hypocrites by now. Maybe they should invite Jordan Peterson, Gad Saad and Elon Musk to give keynote speeches.

dpark• 1 month ago

but neither would I have kept him in my team

Let’s be honest, though. That’s firing from your team.

4MOAisgoodenuf• 1 month ago

Google exists to make money and is happy to change their opinions to suit the current force in power.

But that “critique” of gender diversity efforts said that the lack of women in CS was due to some innate difference in women (rather than a social division that is neither innate nor universal across time or cultures) While also decrying the lack of affirmative action for conservatives.

It’s neither the tipping point for Google, nor is it a hill worth dying on

Manuel_D9• 1 month ago

The gender disparity in computing is largely universal across cultures, though. That's why the assumption that it's culturally determined is on shaky ground

NetOpWibby• 1 month ago

In my experience, Big Tech's billboard to "bring your best self" was just to get super eager people with great skills into their ranks to help accelerate business. Once you're on the inside, it's quite clear that's a farce and in fact, you should keep your mouth shut and your head down.

Alas.

annzabelle2• 1 month ago

Had a coworker at a bank that was trying to emulate Tech (Capital One - all in on AWS and PIPs) who bought into it. Ended up PIPed and then is doing a PhD in a completely unrelated field.

We had a mental health slack channel, and a racial politics one that rehashed Israel/Palestine daily.

danpalmer5• 1 month ago

[flagged]

socalgal22• 1 month ago

Sounds like you're responding to incorrect summaries? He was not intolerant of woman in the workplace. His memo was specifically in support of women in the workplace.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170813080340/https://www.theat...

raincole• 1 month ago

Thank you. I was afraid that people will eventually forget about that point of inflection. I think for many of us, the specific event was what made us realize that you really can't separate technical issues from political ones.

mempko2• 1 month ago

[flagged]

JuniperMesos4• 1 month ago

I think there's a lot more political will now than there was a decade ago for explicitly repealing the sections of American civil rights law that define what a "hostile workplace" is, in order to make sure that something like Damore's memo would not count. Certainly, this is something I think about when evaluating political candidates.

tmoertel3• 1 month ago

James Damore was a poorly educated person. He didn't understand how to use statistics and decided to use them in a hateful way.

What statistical argument did Damore make?

hintymad2• 1 month ago

Did Googlers give lots of pressure to the management? I was wondering which side the management is closer to: being cowards, or being hypocritical

jensensbutton2• 1 month ago

Nah, James Damore just did a stupid thing at work and wasn't talented enough for it to be overlooked. He deserved to be fired. Morals don't need to come into it.

They lost their moral compass a while ago, but it had nothing to do with Damore.

DashAnimal2• 1 month ago

I always hate the James Damore discussion because it's like the least interesting part. You have a company dealing with internal political mayhem trying to find the least disruptive, not only internally but now externally because this shit has leaked. It's a workplace, and youre trying to keep people effective and working. And some googlers got too comfortable with what they were sharing on a work machine, not just to their coworkers, but tens of thousands of employees.

The support of war efforts is clearly a change in moral compass that is much more fascinating though.

pryce5• 1 month ago

100% agree. The James Damore flag was immediately taken up by major figures in transphobia (like Singal, Soh, etc) and pro-fascism campaigners (like Molyneux), both of which are political programs are absolutely incompatible with maintaining a non-hostile workplace environment for employees. (and not incidentally, both of which a premised on discredited bioessentialist pseudoscience)

I find it is a deeply cynical move, to be asked to place the James Damore "was it employer overreach-or-not?" episode in similar proportion to critiquing a company's actions regarding issues such as mass surveillance and/or assisting war efforts, especially when the accusations about those broader issues are tied to complicity in the 2020s resurgence in fascist politics. It is so cynical that I can't believe it isn't intentional.

dekhn2• 1 month ago

I think if Damore had limited his criticism to the corporate DEI (which I found to be a bit heavy-handed and prone to critical theory groupthink) in a short doc, he probably would have been a bit more successful (in helping Google rein back its DEI training).

One rarely stated thing I learned over time working there is that managers read eng-misc and will prevent you from transferring to their team if they didn't like what you said, or how you said it, or who you said it to.

tomhow2• 1 month ago

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

JuniperMesos4• 1 month ago

Unfortunately, times have changed. Google management has quietly abandoned its goals to become carbon-neutral because of the AI model energy usage. Worse, Google management is now signing deals with the US Ministry of War—where “any lawful purpose” by the current US government has already been repeatedly demonstrated to be in violation of international laws. None of this is being debated or communicated within the company. It is just decided by top-level management (I was part of the management chain before, and I hadn’t heard of any of these changes through internal channels). With my moral and ethical principles, I cannot—explicitly or implicitly, directly or transitively—support the current and ongoing actions of the “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality” US Ministry of War.

This entire article is already engaging in political and ideological battle - René Mayrhofer is explicitly saying that he's unwilling to work at Google because he has a political problem with some of the decisions Google is making, namely abandoning earlier stated carbon-neutrality goals and being willing to make deals with the US military.

My contention is that if he considers this to constitute Google losing its moral compass but not the James Damore incident, which happened the same year he started working at Google; then there's no particular reason to think that his notion of a "moral compass" is any different from object-level agreement or disagreement (or simply not caring), about any particular decision that Google makes. Someone similar to Mayrhofer might well be willing to work for Google because they make a different judgement than he does about the political importance of AI model energy usage; and throwing terms like "moral compass" around is exactly equivalent to having an object-level disagreement about a political issue.

ams92• 1 month ago

“I got the bag and now have developed a conscience"

readthenotes1• 1 month ago

" Don't be evil"

The slogans are on the walls because they are not in our hearts.

Google has not changed its moral compass in 20 years. You just didn't want to admit it

mv4• 1 month ago

Translation: now I can FIRE.

spiralcoaster2• 1 month ago

[flagged]

raffael_de2• 1 month ago

there are plenty of people who are financially independent but who don't choose to follow their moral compass.

trhway• 1 month ago

Being financially independent is the moral compass of the financially independent.

paulryanrogers• 1 month ago

I think the implication is that their moral compass was disregarded or non-existent until they gained their independence. Therefore not worthy of serious consideration.

People who don't ever consider or speak of morals or ethics are beside the point.

ElProlactin• 1 month ago

In the world of Big Tech, it seems a lot of moral compasses coincidentally start working after the people holding them have cashed out.

hiddencost• 1 month ago

You really haven't ever encountered someone who believed in anything, have you?

hsuduebc22• 1 month ago

I mean, it is quite obvious for years that Google is now classical immoral tech corporation, which now means current administration servant. They changed their code of conduct in 2018 along with they “Don’t be evil” to “Do the right thing” because world is not "black and white". This obvious shift into moral ambiguity with then changed code of conduct should signal the shift in policy. Eight years ago. Not even mentioning their actions.

This is not about "believing in anything" other than a stable job and money. I respect the author that he felt this moral tradeoff was enough.

I'm afraid, we cannot expect anything else from every publicly owned company, because sadly, it's in human nature to be selfish if you are not the one who suffers from your actions.

moomoo112• 1 month ago

I actually did this. And that's why I feel confident calling out people like the guy in the article who enjoyed the upside and then do this performative cringe.

I quit my job working for oil and gas companies, and taught myself how to code and then worked at a company that actually made non-asshole software that went on to IPO so things worked out.

I didn't choose to help oil and gas companies, the company I worked for had them as customers so the work I did helped oil and gas. I chose to give up the money and do something else.

So I don't give a fuck about downvotes. I actually lived it, and I don't give a fuck anymore either to call people out.

blastonico• 1 month ago

Back in 2017, I had this theory that Google was run from the Vatican and the Pope himself was the CEO.

Trasmatta• 1 month ago

Yeah, it's wild to be writing a post like this in June 2026. Even if he thought Google was somehow still salvageable, how did he justify staying there after Google immediately bent the knee to Trump with the $1 million bribe a year and a half ago?

socalgal22• 1 month ago

Maybe he should donate every cent he got through Google and its stock to prove he's serious?

ActorNightly• 1 month ago

The virtue signal is definitely true.

However its the statement that "Google lost its moral compass" has never really been true.

Its pretty clear at this point that companies solely respond to economic tides, which are governed by what people truly want. And Id argue that people in general have lost their moral compass (in the sense of how they vote, in politics and with their wallet, not what they say)

1dontnkow_5• 1 month ago

Look I understand he didnt give up on every good thing in life following his principles. But how many people actually resigned and wrote their reasons why?

It at least gets circulated and discussed. Even at Google I'd assume people who have the privilege, seriously thought of leaving or way better if someone knows something really shady is going on, whistleblowing.

The thing is sure you are right, but if I started living my life "I cant ever say or have principles and act based on them, because about 25 years ago I broke one so now its not allowed" then, that surely, would ruin my life and if everybody did society and wouldn't these companies love that? When we all give up so easy? Aren't the companies the first that go on sexual harassment allegations with "if this was going on for years, why you coming out now, huh? Ncncnc".

So my point is, its still appreciated. Lets work with reality and not that idealistic version of society where only the perfect people can decide our ethical directions because they dont exist and we will fall into the dark.

lbrito2• 1 month ago

“Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan (...) —it was a north star for teams making hard calls

I've developed an involuntary, muscle-level reflex that forces me to close the tab immediately when I read these "not just X -- it was Y" LLMisms.

I realize the author might be human and am sorry if that's the case, but I can't help it.

morganf• 1 month ago

Same for me. It is the spectral signal of LLM writing. I'm a writer and last week I re-read one of my own books, that was written a few years before LLMs appeared. And I saw I used the "It's not X; it's Y" construction and I cringed, and now I have a moral dilemma: it feels so painful LLM robot speak that I want to rewrite that sentence for the next edition. But on the other hand, I want to keep it in because it is what I wrote and it was me talking not an LLM. Oh the moral dilemmas one must face!!!

wrs• 1 month ago

What’s painful is that you’re thinking of letting robots suppress your authentic voice. Also, they got that way by copying humans, and if you continue to cede to them everything they copy, you’ll have no place left to be.

FloorEgg3• 1 month ago

Surely there are times when using that pattern is a great way to communicate the point to be made. The problem is LLMs over-use it and apply it in lots of cases when it's not appropriate.

My low-confidence theory is that it's an artifact of making the LLMs better at coding.

My two cents: think carefully if that pattern is a really great way to say what you want to say in your book. If it is, leave it, if you could say it better, change it.

How LLMs write and how people feel about them is evolving and the current dynamic will pass...

int_19h2• 1 month ago

Chatbots can be prompted to write into all kinds of styles, this is just their default "help me with the homework" presentation. It doesn't make sense to drop some construct where it is appropriate just because bots overuse it.

runeb• 1 month ago

So it was you! /s

FloorEgg3• 1 month ago

The author might be human, but used an LLM to help them draft the letter. Something I do sometimes is brain dump into an LLM and have it help me organize it, and then I iteratively refine what I want to say.

20 some odd years ago I read zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, and it made the point that writing is hard when trying to decide what to say and how to say it at the same time. Just stuck with me. Brain dumping into an LLM is one way to get some momentum.

That said, the negation parallel pattern LLMs overuse drives me nuts and I'm always having to manually edit those out. I can't help but wonder if there is an advantage to thinking like that that helps with coding. E.g. defensive negation in coding probably improves code quality, but it dilutes good writing when over used.

3D39739091• 1 month ago

Brain dumping to a blank page and organizing your own thoughts is still an option.

tejohnso• 1 month ago

That example flowed well and didn't stand out to me.

But what happens when you no longer feel that you have a decent chance of being able to determine that something might have been created with LLM assistance? Do you not mind because you can't tell anyway, or do you refuse to read anything at all for fear of potentially consuming some LLM assisted work?

I'm fine with it as long as it's not full of the usual signals, because that's just bad writing that I don't enjoy.

lbrito2• 1 month ago

I had exactly the same thought yesterday. For now the "its not Y, its X" idiom is a strong LLM marker. It should be fairly simple for the brain trust at the labs to get rid of it, and I'm sure they eventually will when prose writers becomes a relevant enough customer base.

It already is very hard to identify AI text, and we probably consume a lot of it unbeknownst to ourselves. Its like microplastics now -- you can find it everywhere (or so the propaganda goes).

I don't have a solution for when they fix that stupid idiom. I'm already reading less current things in general because of this, and might just do more of that. Even if its impossible to distinguish, I think people will pro-actively mark their stuff as LLM-free. There isn't a tech to support/prove that rn, but there might be in the future.

beambot• 1 month ago

Google removed "Don't be evil" from its Code of Conduct in May 2018. Shocking that it took 8 years for the author to make their ethical stand -- during which time Google stock went up 600%...

Ferret74462• 1 month ago

No it didn't, it's still in the employee handbook. As the saying goes, a lie will go around the world before the truth can put its pants on.

What changed was Google's motto, and it changed from "don't be evil" to "do the right thing". The given reason is that the prior motto also included inaction.

Rebelgecko• 1 month ago

It was still there when I started in the 2020s

bicepjai• 1 month ago

Also comparing something to northstar is also the tell tell sign

pjmlp2• 1 month ago

I love this dichotomy.

"Look what I did with Claude, LLMs are going to change our world!"

"Lame author, used an LLM to write a blog post."

sunshine-o• 1 month ago

Sundar Pichai in 2018 stated very clearly that “AI applications we will not pursue: …
3. Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.

Really?

Algorithms for ads and mass surveillance were always at the core of Google model.

And there is not really such thing as "internationally accepted norms", Google, as a pioneer, literally defined them at the time.

asadotzler3• 1 month ago

Algorithms for ads and mass surveillance were always at the core of Google model.

You may not have been around back then, but we had half a decade of Google before that model, and it was quite nice, nice enough to get us to leave our other search providers--and to hand them the keys to our inboxes.

BiteCode_dev• 1 month ago

I refused an interview from google in 2010ish, because it was already dubious with all the tracking and advertising they were doing, as well as the rising censorship.

So if you decided to go in 2017 with all that happened since, your moral compass was already broken with google's. Snowden already revealed what all that data was used for with program like PRISM. You already seen the total lack of interest in preventing scams in their ads as long as it brings money. You've seen the antitrust fines. The tax avoidance schemes. The election influence concerns over youtube content.

What I read is "I know have made enough money from Google immorality, I can virtue signal by taking an early retirement and pretend I'm a great person".

asadotzler3• 1 month ago

This take I can get behind. Google's leadership has been total garbage for at least 15 years. My experience as an employee of one of Google's closest business partners was that it started going south in 2008-ish and was certifiable by 2010.

These people who act like it's all suddenly gone down hill weren't there or weren't paying attention. If someone believes Goog's only turned to shit since about 2017, they were mislead, probably by the paychecks that kept them from looking too closely.

pryce5• 1 month ago

would you allow that it was bad enough to be fairly labeled garbage in 2011, yet could you still concede it has degraded significantly further since then? Or are you arguing that not only was it bad in 2011, but you are contending it hasn't (also) become worse?

lokar4• 1 month ago

The PRISM stuff about google was mostly BS. The only thing was the non-encrypted traffic on “dark” fiber between data centers. And some may have been a reference to systems to comply with court orders via the DOJ which everyone of any scale does (eg a “wiretap” on a Gmail account).

The military work came out in 2018

lokar4• 1 month ago

Instead of downvoting try responding. Do you not believe me? Do you think the law enforcement access was bad?

localhoster• 1 month ago

Not that I care in particular

But claiming that google lost it's "moral compass" just now is a claim only rich people can make because they retire, not quit.

Google is literally the largest, most organized, tracking and profiling company in the world. Which they tend to grow even larger with the rise of LLMs.

Turning a blind eye of that for the opportunity or whatever, and than claim that _just now_ they lost their moral compass, is being a hypocrite.

madrox• 1 month ago

I tend to agree. My first reaction to this post was to check the date, because I would have assumed this had been published around 2014.

Google's moral compass was gone long before this man even joined. That doesn't make them particularly evil, but they have joined the ranks of ordinary, publicly traded corporations.

zerobees2• 1 month ago

Right. I have respect for Rene, but going by the "HN quitting manifestos" like this, Google has lost its moral compass at least 50 times at various points in the last 20 years.

The company is constantly changing, but also hasn't changed all that much. It always talked the talk and was eager to tell others how to behave, but was almost never willing to give up any real revenue to do the right thing. The usual justification was that if Google doesn't do it, someone else will (and that someone else is obviously not as moral as Googlers are).

If you're old enough, you might remember that they vocally opposed privacy-violating, disruptive display ads. That was their whole schtick. But that was before they realized there's a lot of money to be made by acquiring Doubleclick.

mempko2• 1 month ago

Why do you have respect for Rene?

neves• 1 month ago

I when they thought it was unethical to disguise an ad as search result.

hunterpayne2• 1 month ago

Agreed, the Google the author described arriving at probably didn't exist in 2017 like stated. It probably was dead by then. But since the author agreed with the politics at the time, they ignored this. Now that things continued to degrade and political winds changed and they have to deal with the negative consequences of some of those decisions, they are taking their ball and going home.

Its really hard to take such articles seriously. Its borderline gaslighting and says a lot more about the author than Google or US politics. In fact, even though I have no idea who this person is, I don't have a good opinion of them after reading this. And that ironically was the exact opposite of the intended effect of writing this for the author.

ryukoposting• 1 month ago

Welcome to Silicon Valley. We fuck up the environment, we tear apart the fabric of democracy to line shareholders' pockets, and we knowingly build the modern tools of fascist oppression. But look at us! We elected a progressive Democrat!

pjjpo• 1 month ago

At this point I assume anyone with more than five years at Google is morally bankrupt to at least some degree. I don't want to paint them as bad people or anything but can't find better words for it - it's so obvious that if you stick around, you are accepting it and likely contributing to some degree. People I still talk to are generally honest about accepting it. I wonder if they will all reneg with this sort of quitting post when the time comes.

emodendroket5• 1 month ago

I mean, this guy is probably not a bleeding heart, but he had a certain line and wouldn't cross it. I'm not sure the potshots are really warranted. We all realize they were not bleeding heart do-gooders, but saying you're OK with that but not with certain uses of AI in warfare doesn't strike me as incoherent.

qnleigh4• 1 month ago

I know Google's track record prior to the DOW contact is far from perfect, but is it really so hard to understand why it crossed a line for a lot of people? Why are we acting like ad tracking/targeting and developing autonomous lethal weapons are morally comparable?

senordevnyc2• 1 month ago

Because HN posters constantly have their outrage meter pegged at 11, and there’s no room for nuance, good faith, benefit of the doubt, or different perspectives, anywhere. Big corporations and wealthy people are all the worst of the worst, nothing less than pure evil, as bad as Hitler or Stalin.

grebc3• 1 month ago

Do people forget Eric Schmidt ran this company for how long?

jcgrillo• 1 month ago

Palpatine himself

grebc3• 1 month ago

The resemblance is uncanny.

cryo323• 1 month ago

Google management never had a moral compass. They just pretended they did until it was no longer convenient.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 1 month ago

If the founders had no moral compass it is rather naive to believe that management or the company as a whole would have one

cryo323• 1 month ago

I’ve known enough googlers to know there’s problems in that department. The worst being a friend was married to an SRE and he was fucking nuts. As in disturbingly Ayn Rand and eugenics.

tim3333• 1 month ago

"Perfect is the enemy of good"

They are probably more moral than the average large US corporation.

cryo323• 1 month ago

There's good and there's a bunch of immoral technology oligarchs. Don't wash over reality.

mrkiouak• 1 month ago

As someone who worked at Google, it is absolutely ridiculous to claim Google only lost its moral compass in this decade, let alone suggest it HAD its moral compass in 2017 when the guy was wired.

Complete joke, do some introspection.

storus2• 1 month ago

Is he a canary in the coal mine, announcing things that are coming?

Hugsbox• 1 month ago

Not at all. He made his money, so now he can act all morally superior even though we've all known Google to be a menace since long before he started there in 2017. This article is downright ridiculous.

storus2• 1 month ago

Things can always get worse; everyone has a threshold in what level of dirtiness is still okay. As Android security director he might have seen some incoming things he can't ignore any longer.

bflesch• 1 month ago

So the guy was Google's planted ~expert~ lobbyist for the European Commission and now he's rich enough to quit, and makes a blogpost about it because people are rightfully skeptical about his motives?

mhitza• 1 month ago

Director of Android Platform Security

Is this the person I have to complain about for the removal of fulldisk encryption in Android 13?

harry8• 1 month ago

Google's entire "do no evil" bring your own identity to the job and all of that was pure marketing to hire better engineering talent.

Instead of monetising software sales, they monetised access to Free software performing an end run around the GPL by distributing access to it over the internet allowing them to make the public good proprietary google property. They threw out some crumbs at best.

Remember the un-publicised puzzles to paradoxically get media attention, hiring highschool kids with a demo that made the news because it made the news and all the rest of the BS. I guess it worked. Now they're big and bad and the Free software optimism is largely dead so they don't have to bother and now make killbots for the Pentagon.

Where else you gonna work? Go test the market, nerd.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 1 month ago

I do find it amusing when I see these LinkedIn fodder posts saying “I left [Meta/Google/OtherGiantCorp] because the company I joined 10 years ago doesn’t hold the same values anymore” as if these companies weren’t already fucked up evil pieces of shit many years before you joined. People are always trying to justify that they aren’t working for something purely evil. I guess you have to try to feel like that giant pile of cash on offer isn’t dirty money and you need validation from others to sleep at night

Yhippa• 1 month ago

Makes bank for 9 years Quits Takes the moral high ground on the way out despite highly profiting from all the things he's decrying

Pretty nice life if you ask me.

mrcwinn• 1 month ago

This is exhausting.

saintfire• 1 month ago

I see everyone coming up with an arbitrary date of when Google lost their moral compass that aligns with their own moral compass. In that vein, I feel like when Brin and Page released a paper stating how PageRank could never be beneficial to a consumer with ads and then launched an ad company powered by page rank is when Google became evil.

tehjoker• 1 month ago

I think what is being lost is that despite Google having lost its morals at various points, and Don't Be Evil being burried, this man's resignation does signal yet another dark turning point in the future of the Google organization.

They are now openly partnering with war industries and the government to assist them in doing things like bombing a school full of girls, killing hundreds in an entirely indefensible war of aggression.* This is a very dark red line to cross and despite Googlers being wealthy and privilaged, it is nonetheless a significant protest that deserves to be heard on its own terms. Ideally, a protest would change policy at the company.

Google management: Stop cooperating with the immoral and illegally operating War Department!

* I don't have evidence Google directly participated in the Minab school bombing, but this is the side they are supporting.

hintymad2• 1 month ago

Personally, I don't get why people blindly reject any collaboration with the military. I understand that they are pacifists, but I still don't get it. When I look at history, I see so many tragedies caused by being weak. Both Germany and the Soviet Union were able to invade Poland, for instance, and the Katyn massacre is a national scar. And who wouldn't want to defeat invaders like Genghis Khan? Have you ever heard of the Yangzhou massacre or the Three Massacres of Jiading? Why would we let civilization succumb to barbarism?

Don't get me wrong. I hate war. And never-ending wars like the Iraq War anger me to no end (and for that matter, I think G.W. Bush and his cabinet were truly evil). Of course, the danger is real; a military built for defense can easily become an instrument of tyranny or empire if left unchecked. That is why we must maintain rigorous civilian oversight and strict checks and balances over its power. But that does not mean the military, by default, is always evil, right?

rayiner11• 1 month ago

It's because Americans and many Europeans under the shield of the U.S. military and have never in their lives felt a moment of fear about external threats.[1] They never have to meaningfully confront the central fact of their existence: that they enjoy a vastly disproportionate share of the world's bounty in a way that would be impossible without overwhelming military power. I suspect people living in say Ukraine don't talk like this.

[1] As I get older, I'm more sympathetic to Colonel Jessup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk.

nixon_why697• 1 month ago

The Colonel Jessup character was guarding a fence in Cuba. Seriously. Cuba. Imagine hearing that sanctimonious speech about "the manner in which I defend you" and then you find out it's a fence in Cuba.

There hasn't been an existential threat to the United States since the Civil War, and that one was self-inflicted. Obviously we need to maintain a military but 99% of what the current military does is either for economic goals or hollow national pride.

watwut3• 1 month ago

As in 2026 US army is not used for defense. It is used for offense and proudly so.

impossiblefork4• 1 month ago

In EU countries where war with Russia was seen as possible, for example, here in Sweden that is not the case.

The military preparations this fear leads to take a very special form though: investment in actual defence, commitment to stay behind and fight in case on an invasion, that sort of thing.

Obviously working on defence technology is part of this, but it also shapes the direction of the defence technology you work on. Sweden's forces have looked rather different from forces that intend to conduct offensive wars, especially historically. Tanks specifically designed for conducting ambushes are one example. Artillery emplacements designed to sink invasion fleets and to resist direct nuclear attack are another.

cbruns• 1 month ago

The cold war and kids practicing sheltering under their desks never happened?

tristanj2• 1 month ago

I have thought about this a lot, and concluded that the peace we have today largely stems from all major powers having nuclear weapons, and leadership in each understanding that avoiding nuclear war is the utmost priority. All foreign policy choices are aligned to prevent military confrontation and avoid nuclear war. Thus there is an overemphasis to resolve disputes through diplomacy. But the plebeians do not understand this, they assume the peace today backed by nuclear weapons is genuine and permanent, they don't consider the nuclear weapons hidden underground, and advocate for policies like pacifism that do not reflect reality.

This quote sums up the current situation:

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.

floren• 1 month ago

Shocking how a quote from some 2016 novel now rolls around the Internet like it's fucking Aristotle

qnleigh4• 1 month ago

Economic interdependence is also a big factor. If you depend on someone selling you things or buying them from you, you have a lot more to lose by invading them.

1dontnkow_5• 1 month ago

I use that quote alot too when it suits me but given we are actually talking about war and crisis isn't it more accurate to say:

"Hard times eradicate most of the population and some survive with heavy PTSD and regrets, then after the destruction some peace agreement is reached and so after many years of rebuilding the good times do come."

tastyface3• 1 month ago

I can't speak for anyone else, but as a Christian, it's really quite simple: any death that you help cause is a black mark on your soul. Maybe you can repent for it, someday. But it's not something that will just be let go when the day of reckoning comes.

Incidentally, I'd feel the same way about killing someone in self-defense.

Ferret74462• 1 month ago

What if avoiding causing a death instead results in thousands of deaths? Do you give yourself a moral high five and stick your head in the sand?

hhjinks4• 1 month ago

I thought accepting and believing in Jesus as Lord was all you needed to enter heaven?

John 6:40 (KJV) 40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

pjmlp2• 1 month ago

As someone from a Catholic country I always find hard how we mix that peaceful message with was was done in destruction to this day in the name of spreading faith since the ruling religions changed a few centuries ago.

tim3333• 1 month ago

Some nominal Christians like Hitler and Putin had odd ideas on that stuff. I'll give you Christ was pretty peaceful.

aakresearch• 1 month ago

Indeed, I hear you 100%. It may be painful to watch "your" military engage in wars that are not righteous, from one's perspective. Are there even "righteous" conflicts these days? But short of demand to abolish all state military, what is appropriate way to express one's indignation? Hopefully all can agree that such demand would be insane; but why, then, those "pacifist" performances, which effectively are calls to deprive military of the best weapons, people, thoughts, strategies, are not considered insane?

Agree or disagree with particular foreign policy or military action, why do people forget that the bulk of military is staffed with their fellow citizens? Many of whom aren't terribly privileged to enjoy ample alternative choices to elevate themselves socially or financially. It is exactly this lot who benefits the most from DEI policies, cherished by "pacifists", is it not? It is them who are the first and most massive direct casualties, caused by not having access to the best, superior materiel, doctrine and training on and beyond the battlefield.

I'll be the first to point that military and paramilitary forces attract many with unchecked lust for violence. That "pride", "honor" and "patriotism" are often terribly misused, to uphold goals of those with impure, malicious ambitions. Who, I grant it, also disproportionately represented in the command echelons of military and beyond. But if we are honest, that scum won't be shaken or taught a lesson by SotA technology being withheld from their use or corporation refusing cooperation. It is their subordinates, who, maybe naively, subscribe to "ideal", unquoted interpretation of Pride, Honor and Patriotism, will bear the brunt of being crippled (by the consequences of the withholding and refusal) on the battlefield, and pay with their lives. Don't their lives matter?

ngcazz2• 1 month ago

This is an academic point. The US represents one third of the world's military spending because it uses force to further the economic interests of the elite. To work in a "defense" supplier is to support this.

emodendroket5• 1 month ago

When I look at history, I see so many tragedies caused by being weak. Both Germany and the Soviet Union were able to invade Poland, for instance, and the Katyn massacre is a national scar. And who wouldn't want to defeat invaders like Genghis Khan? Have you ever heard of the Yangzhou massacre or the Three Massacres of Jiading? Why would we let civilization succumb to barbarism?

Well, what if people had refused to lend their talents to Hitler or Genghis Khan?

laughing_man2• 1 month ago

What if you're on the receiving end and don't get a choice?

impossiblefork4• 1 month ago

Presumably they reject it because they see the military used offensively?

NicuCalcea• 1 month ago

In this specific instance, this is the military of a country different from the one of the author. A country that is increasingly hostile towards its allies and does weird shit on the international stage that is difficult to justify.

econ2• 1 month ago

Weird shit is just by lack of cosy cover story.

Each military operation has a cool story in advance and a different cool story afterwards. Neither is ever true and if someone finds out the "truth" it usually isn't even half the story.

Usually if you go back far enough there is some guy with an obviously stupid idea. It then takes effort to keep the stupid idea alive and side shows become the main act.

nnettbe• 1 month ago

The author may agree with you. They write:

strictly defensive action is somewhat different

1dontnkow_5• 1 month ago

Because most other countries don't even have a quarter of the military and resources the US has and there its usually about survival and defense of their borders with direct neighbors or at worst case region.

But with the US military, at least the years I was alive, it seemed to be never a real national security threat at the borders but very far away and for so not obvious reasons.

In the end however I agree with your "defense is necessary" and that's why NATO exists and should be developed further so its more strict and almost all nations worldwide join.

econ2• 1 month ago

Personally, I don't get why people blindly reject any collaboration with the military

If you don't understand don't call it blindly.

If the country doesn't align with your world view at all there is no reason to fight for its military. Let those who like it the way it is do the fighting. If it is the complete opposite of what you would like you should fight against it. Aggression should scale with how offended you are.

Why would you blindly cooperate with some military?

kermatt• 1 month ago

Companies do not have moralities. They have revenue targets.

Any statement to the idea of a moral compass is just a form of marketing when the politics of the day align with it.

The best we can to is have independent moralities, while balancing that with the need to eat.

stevenalowe• 1 month ago

Virtue signal noted

groan• 1 month ago

I’m not in the minority anymore it seems. The general attitude in this thread, “negative” though it may be, represents a far more grounded and blunt truth of the matter.

I’d just like to add, as always: this person should give back all the money Google paid them. Of course, that has not once happened in the history of these pious pieces, and so the meme endures.

abhv• 1 month ago

I don't understand the negativity here.

He is a top expert on a security topic. Running Android platform security gives him an opportunity to have incredible positive impact for many people---which he did for a decade.

People weigh trade-offs.

At the beginning, he may have had high ambitions to deploy interesting, research-forward ideas to Android; at this point, he has accomplished a lot of that. Maybe now, he is considering other factors.

Guessing that people are only money-driven or have made some decision because of threshold personal wealth is awful, especially if you do not know them.

Almost all academics I know (I am one also) are driven by personal curiosity, intellectual ambitions, a need to identify and solve problems, and a strong desire for positive contribution. I know Rene and believe this to be true of him.

grebc3• 1 month ago

The conclusion is what people are having issue with.

If the guy made some money for his work, good on him.

tzs• 1 month ago

I don't understand the negativity here

Most of the commenters are experienced programmers, and like many experienced programmers have largely lost the ability to think about things in non-binary terms.

You see this on most threads that aren't about a mostly technical subject.

I think I can still think in a non-binary way despite decades of programming but I attribute that to to getting burned out about 10 years into my career and taking a break to go to law school. Looking back at my writing before taking that break I can see that I was thinking in a very binary way.

First year law school does a really good job of breaking that.

I seriously think that some of the things from first year law school should be moved into the standard bachelor's degree program for CS, and maybe for several other STEM degrees, taught exactly the same way they are taught in law school. Maybe contracts and torts. Those are both good at building up your non-binary thinking. Heck, maybe do nearly the whole first year of law school, spread out over the 4 years of your bachelor's degree.

s1artibartfast• 1 month ago

So much bitterness in these comments, looking at the world in black and white. With 200,000 employees, google is a complex set of humans, where many will have different experiences. People doing really good work, and people doing the opposite.

gordian-mind2• 1 month ago

"I am also a European academic. That means the current US government has become hostile to me"

Such a bizarre claim. EU academics seem under mass psychosis lately.

watwut3• 1 month ago

US government is openly hostile to Europe. The Greenland crisis was only few months ago. Before and after that, it was just a stream of insults and attacks.

To be fair, US government was OK with Orban and tried to help him stay in power. It is OK with authoritarian far right movements and is trying to help them too. But, if you are pro-democracy European, US is a hostile country trying to destroy your democracy.

gordian-mind2• 1 month ago

It's weird that you don't mention academics. My words were precise though. This "open hostility" is not an official stance but a projection.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-adminis...

Currently, the few "pro-democracy" (left-liberal, I presume?) European governments are cracking down hard on freedom of speech. Your worldview is lacking coherence.

QuantumNoodle5• 1 month ago

While EU is actively trying to erode encryption and privacy of all digital communications.

phyzix5761• 1 month ago

The majority of carbon offsetting efforts are called non-additional assets. A forest that was never going to be cut down or an unusable field in the middle of some rural area sells credits to companies to "offset" their carbon emissions. This doesn't actually create any net benefit to the environment. The industry also experiences fraud with double counting the same assets as some vendors will sell the same offset credits to multiple corporations.

promano• 1 month ago

Google's whole business is built on top management abandoning its moral compass. Sergey Brin and Larry Page wrote that "advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers". Then they got into advertising anyway.

QuantumNoodle5• 1 month ago

Looks like he updated his "About me" section

At the moment, my main focus is [...] fighting against (governmental or corporate) mass surveillance

While he always had "Ethics in Computer Science” as an interest, I wonder what blinds people into accepting offers at Google -- the advertising company. I want to take his words as sincere, but Google has been privacy violating for longer than his tenure with android. Money and prestige is a hell of a drug I suppose. He could very well work for grapheneos but no money or immediate persteige there (sadly).

pyb• 1 month ago

To me, Google switched the "Evil bit" around the time of the Dragonfly debacle (2018)

If OP is only seeing the problems now, they must have been selectively blind.

QuantumNoodle5• 1 month ago

I mean, I get it. I have a family, financial obligations, etc. Certainly not shaming anyone for fulfilling those obligations working for a successful company. But don't put yourself up on a pedestal and cloak yourself in righteousness behind a veil of strong morals

QuantumNoodle5• 1 month ago

I want to see more of "I'm rejecting this offer to work for Google bc my moral compass" not from folks who are paid out and ready for the next thing already.

tim-star• 1 month ago

its funny how long some people wait to decide the company they work for has lost their moral compass. "dont be evil" is already 8 years dead at this point.

QuantumNoodle5• 1 month ago

josefritzishere• 1 month ago

Google is behaving like a company in decline, committing crimes, and vigorously enshittifying products trying to increase revenue.

AbstractH24• 1 month ago

I heard someone say recently that writing such an essay is a rite of passage when leaving google.

At first I thought they were exaggerating; now I think it truly is.

leopoldj• 1 month ago

Ah, a litany of left wing grievances. Got it.

Why I'm Forced to Say Farewell: Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass

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