
Google Protest Leader Leaves - tech-historian
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-16/google-protest-leader-meredith-whittaker-is-leaving-the-company
======
leftyted
There are two narratives:

1\. These people are rabble-rousers who will never be happy and are disrupting
the work environment at Google.

2\. These people are highlighting legitimate problems within the company and
are trying to enact positive change.

Take your pick. But be aware of both narratives. And be aware that neither of
them is unreasonable.

~~~
nvrspyx
1\. is a bit presumptuous though if you’re going to jump to the conclusion
that they’ll never be happy and that this would be a continuous issue after
the enacted change that they were protesting for. It’s a rather baseless
assumption if the only thing to go off of was an organized protest with well-
defined ethical motivations. Unless there’s evidence of rabble rousing
intention, it seems that 1. _is_ unreasonable.

With that said, I have not followed this closely. For all I know, that
evidence does exist and/or Google leadership has chosen not make said evidence
publicly available.

~~~
leftyted
People who tend toward 1. would say that Google has bent over backwards to
accomodate protesters and has acceded to their demands multiple times, e.g.
canceling their project in China and dropping their contract with the US
military.

Seems reasonable to me.

~~~
nvrspyx
That’s a very good point. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I haven’t
followed the situation (or other Google situations like the ones you
mentioned) closely. However, I feel a just-as-reasonable explanation is that
Google did those things to save face because if they truly felt those were the
right things to do, there would be no retaliation and there would be an
implicit agreement that the intention was morally motivated and not intended
rabble-rousery.

On the other hand if the situations you mentioned are unrelated to the Women’s
March, which it seems they are, then I really don’t see them as being relevant
to whether or not the people in question were rabble rousers. Protestors are
not a constant set of people and each protest and the organizers of said
protest have to be looked at individually, at least in terms of determining
whether 1. or 2. is most reasonable.

Otherwise, it’s a broad generalization of “protestors”, which would
inadvertently make 2. the more reasonable narrative as well because 1. would
be moot to the specifics of the particular situation.

~~~
jrockway
> Google did those things to save face

Companies don't have thoughts or emotions. A company's actions are a result of
the individuals that make it up. When you see controversy like the China thing
or military contracts, that's just how decisions get made in big companies.
Someone wants to get money from the military. Some other people don't. They
discuss it and the company makes a decision by individuals taking action.
People inside Google that wanted to do military contracts heard the
counterarguments and didn't carry on. That's all.

Maybe Larry Page thought "hey, this is bad for our brand" and fired all in
charge. But that seems very unlikely. What seems likely to me is that the
people that wanted to do the project heard the controversy and decided on
their own that it wasn't a good idea.

As the company gets bigger, there are certainly more and more of these
controversies. It does get hard to manage when you feel personally responsible
for what others have done and your voice is not heard. That is why people are
leaving.

~~~
nvrspyx
This all simply supports my point then: it’s an irrelevant argument in the
current discussion. If the Woman’s March protest had zero influence, then the
point is simply moot.

Furthermore, I specifically mean the leadership at Google when I simply say
Google. I’m referring directly to the people deciding resolution or
retaliation. Whether that’s a single person or a group of people, it doesn’t
matter. By enacting a change that’s protested for, they’re legitimizing the
concerns set forth by the protest (aka supporting the notion that they’re real
moral issues and the opposite of rabble-rousing)

------
ulfw
Googlers haven’t realised yet that they have different leadership now. The
open culture of discussing and opposing things that Google does is slowly
degrading.

~~~
cobookman
Realize Meredith and her crew are a minority of employees. We are talking <
10% of employees shared all her views.

Majority of googlers wanted maven. They wanted search in China.

Biggest change to culture is people getting tired of SJW outrage. And a focus
back on our users and business

~~~
ulfw
The majority wanted Project Maven and search in China?

~~~
icxa
Rephrased slightly differently: The majority want opportunities that will
advance their careers, increase their stock values, and keep the company doing
well (which usually means bigger bonuses)

~~~
coliveira
Rephrasing even more: there is a number of rats that are capable of doing
anything to advance their careers and to make more money. When a few people
appear that value their conscience more than money, these rats will fight
them.

~~~
dang
Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines? They ask you not to take HN
threads further into flamewar and not to call ante-upping names like "rats".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
ehvatum
“Whittaker also publicly denounced some Google decisions, including the
appointment of Kay Coles James, a conservative think tank leader, to an AI
ethics board. Google soon nixed the board.”

Many people hold strong beliefs that conflict with the strong beliefs of
others and engage in open debate rather than walk-outs. I can only assume
Whittaker realized that her views would not prevail, but felt that she was
nonetheless in the right, and therefore resorted to alternative means of
pressing her point.

~~~
renjimen
Or maybe she just didn't want to work for a company with questionable morals
anymore.

------
hirundo
Rowboat politics. If one of the rowers decides that she doesn't like the
direction the coxswain is steering and starts to row in the other direction,
it tends to annoy the other rowers. This is true whether she is right or not.
If she can't change the coxswain's mind it's better for both her and the rest
of the crew for her to find another rowboat.

~~~
enraged_camel
Your analogy fails right away with a simple example: if the renegade rower
realizes that the team is rowing towards a waterfall, then it is indeed _not_
in the team’s best interest to push him or her out.

~~~
LordFast
Pioneers are seldom welcomed with open arms and often made into pariahs. Not
picking a side here, just stating a fact.

The fact is also such that most pioneers would not end up having chosen a
better direction than status quo.

The harder some people try and toe the line, the harder some other people will
try to rebel, and then the system starts trending more towards extremes.

------
charliesharding
I don't really understand why it's surprising to anyone that they would face
"internal retaliation" after exposing their employer as evil and boycott
worthy to the entire world. By publicizing it to the degree that they did and
attaching their name to it, they were putting their interests over the
company. If my company started doing business practices that I didn't approve
of, I would try my hardest to change the direction from the inside out or I
would leave and then criticize. I don't understand the desire to stay with a
company and accept paychecks while simultaneously publicly denouncing and
leading protests against them.

~~~
KirinDave
It's literally illegal. There are laws against retaliation against
whistleblowers. That is why it is surprising.

> I don't understand the desire to stay with a company and accept paychecks
> while simultaneously publicly denouncing and leading protests against them.

Because you don't want to see the thing you worked so hard to build misused to
build killer robots and "war minds"? Seems reasonable to me. Google's got a
different mission and sometimes the leadership forgets it, and needs to be
reminded.

~~~
Merrill
What did she do that is protected under the various whistleblower protection
laws?
[https://www.whistleblowers.gov/sites/wb/files/2019-06/whistl...](https://www.whistleblowers.gov/sites/wb/files/2019-06/whistleblower_acts-
desk_reference.pdf)

I don't think that objecting to your company's AI work for DoD or plans to
comply with Chinese internet search regulations fall under any of them.

What did the "Open Research Group" at Google actually build?

~~~
serioussecurity
So many arm chair lawyers on HN. The parent is wrong. It's illegal because it
violates the NLRA, not whistleblower protections.

"Protected concerted activity".

If you want a good primer, "Labor Law for the Rank and Filer" is a good one.

~~~
sverige
I'm not clear on what Whittaker's role was with regard to the Chinese project,
but the final straw appears to have been her protest regarding the composition
of the AI ethics panel.

How is an outside ethics panel going to affect their working conditions? The
people on the panel don't have any say on employees' pay, promotions,
disciplinary actions, assignments, or anything else that might affect their
working conditions.

The idea was to have some people from outside the company look at the tech and
its potential hazards and provide some input on the ethics of developing and
deploying it. People inside the company said, No, we don't want that
particular viewpoint to have a seat at the table on this outside committee.
The ethics panel had nothing at all to do with their working conditions.

~~~
pessimizer
Are you trying to make a fine distinction between "working conditions" and
"work"? You just said that this panel that she was protesting the composition
of would look at what the company was doing and plans for what the company
wished to do, and have input into the ethics of developing and deploying them
(and I'm assuming changing them or ending them, otherwise this panel's only
job was to kiss paper.)

The employees of google would then be expected to produce and maintain these
projects. That's their work. At the least, they're expected to share a roof
with these projects, and profits from the work they do could be spent on these
other projects, or vice-versa.

~~~
sverige
It's not a fine distinction at all.

'Working conditions' includes those things I mentioned: pay, promotions,
hours, etc.

The AI ethics panel may or may not have led to a change in the scope of
'work.' We'll never know, because the panel was disbanded. Presumably Google
is now making decisions about future AI work without the benefit of the ethics
panel.

In any event, organizing a protest against the composition of this outside
panel that had exactly zero power to change Google employees' working
conditions does not fall under the NLRA. Apparently Meredith Whittaker was
counseled along the same lines, which is why she resigned after trying to
pressure Google into changing their decision by using publicity via the press,
rather than suing under the NLRA.

------
SpicyLemonZest
I don't know, this seems like a pretty weak article. Sometimes people just
change jobs and there's nothing nefarious about it. If Whittaker had been
fired for her activism, or even just felt forced out, wouldn't she herself be
talking about it? She wasn't afraid to tell the media about Google mistreating
her in the past.

------
whatshisface
Google works like crazy to hire all of the smartest and the best people, but
do they really need them? Billions and billions in shareholder value could be
extracted by hiring a bunch of mid-tier Java programmers and having them farm
Ad Words for the next decade, until the first competition shows up.

~~~
wastedhours
> until the first competition shows up

Their worry is that competition will be started by the people they've not
hired and kept on the bench. I'd imagine a large amount of their top-level
hiring is driven by taking minds off of the market, more than optimising their
output.

~~~
KirinDave
This couldn't ever work. Folks that smart want to do things that are real.

~~~
asdff
Some people are brilliant but just want to be financially comfortable enough
to do the things they actually want to do. Ask some CS majors why they are
trying to get into the field and a huge swath with frankly say it's because
they can bust ass now and get six figures at 22 years old and coast the rest
of their lives. Not exactly the reality, but that's what freshman CS majors
are thinking about when they hand their resume to the google rep during the
career fair.

~~~
KirinDave
Yeah, working at Google is not a great plan for "coasting" now or later.

------
choonway
Wrong fit. You should always recognize who is your paymaster.

She would be better off as an independent activist, a face for other
disgruntled employees who have to remain anonymous because they have
responsibilities to family etc.

------
duxup
It's always hard to gauge this stuff.

The early moment seemed to have support but it seemed to sort of fizzle later
on... but the media attention remained making it really hard to get a feel for
the real scope of these issues / how many google folks shared their views.

I've worked long enough to encounter management who would retaliate, and
employees that once they find a cause are willing / do everything they can to
die on it. I don't know if ANY of what happened at google is one or the other
or both or none.

------
AdmiralAsshat
I thought this story had already been reported a month ago. But no, I was
wrong, that was the _other_ organizer of the Google Protests, Claire
Stapleton:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/google-
wa...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/google-walkout-
organizer-claire-stapleton-resigns)

So to clarify, _both_ of the female Google employees who lead/organized the
protests have now left because they say they faced retaliation. That looks
very bad for Google.

~~~
dmix
What retaliation have they faced from Google exactly?

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
[https://www.wired.com/story/google-walkout-organizers-say-
th...](https://www.wired.com/story/google-walkout-organizers-say-theyre-
facing-retaliation/)

>In a message posted to many internal Google mailing lists Monday, Meredith
Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after the company
disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told that her
role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was told that, in
order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI
ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at
New York University.

>Claire Stapleton, another walkout organizer and a 12-year veteran of the
company, said in the email that two months after the protest she was told she
would be demoted from her role as marketing manager at YouTube and lose half
her reports. After escalating the issue to human resources, she said she faced
further retaliation. “My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to
other people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not
sick,” Stapleton wrote. After she hired a lawyer, the company conducted an
investigation and seemed to reverse her demotion. “While my work has been
restored, the environment remains hostile and I consider quitting nearly every
day,” she wrote.

Both are now gone.

~~~
duxup
If you don't like the ethics council... and you protest it, and then they
disband it ... that would involve a dramatic change if your role was on it.

Retaliation or not, there would be some change. So any change, not sure I buy
is/isn't retaliation.

~~~
knd775
I don't believe she protested the AI ethics council.

~~~
duxup
I'm pretty there was some protest surrounding the ethics council.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
There was separate protests that the ethics council was inappropriately scoped
and those on the council not fit to be there. The protests Meredith was on was
regarding the letting go with generous severance packages of employees found
to have been sexually harassing co workers, and the lack of resources within
Google for those victims of sexual harassment/assault.

~~~
sverige
She was active in organizing the petition drive that successfully pressured
Google to keep Kay Coles James off the committee. [0] [1] [2] [3] [4]

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/01/google-
ka...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/01/google-kay-coles-
james-removal-employees-letter?source=techstories.org)

[1] [https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/04/google-employees-call-
on-...](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/04/google-employees-call-on-company-
to-kick-heritage-foundation-ghoul-off-ai-ethics-board/)

[2] [https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/04/leftist-googlers-kay-
cole...](https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/04/leftist-googlers-kay-coles-james/)

[3] [https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/05/google-drops-heritage-
fou...](https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/05/google-drops-heritage-foundation-
president/)

[4] [https://www.newstarget.com/2019-04-06-leaked-emails-
suggest-...](https://www.newstarget.com/2019-04-06-leaked-emails-suggest-
google-is-a-leftist-cult.html)

------
thinkingemote
Its a shame this submission might be flag killed as there continues to be
important issues to discuss.

The main thing it seems to me is that if a worker is unhappy with their
company and is so unhappy their protest (and organise a walk out) their
employer its even more clear they are unhappy working there. The unhappiness
or alienation will increase.

I might have got it wrong though .... did these protestors say they were happy
working there and just unhappy with other things or people?

It seems like it's a wider issue that's common across all work places. What
should be the best way for people happy working with their colleagues or team
but concerned about other things with the organisation to continue their good
working environment and share their views? Maybe it's just a HR thing.

~~~
50656E6973
>What should be the best way for people happy working with their colleagues or
team but concerned about other things with the organisation to continue their
good working environment and share their views? Maybe it's just a HR thing.

It's a corporate thing. Profits over ethics, laws, and people. That simple
principle cannot be changed from the inside.

------
SolaceQuantum
Do we have any real information regarding if this is as a result of
retaliation? The article provides evidence that at least one of the organizers
claim they're being retaliated against; do we know how widespread this may be?

------
googtrash123234
Throw-away account. Personal opinion, and I don't want any shit from it.

These people _do not_ represent the majority of googlers' views or experiences
IMO. I am sure there are genuine grievances, but they're representing a tiny-
but-vocal minority group that is bringing the company into disrepute over what
I think are relatively run of the mill problems that happen everywhere.

For want of a better term, they strike me as "trouble makers". Re-orgs happen
_all the time_ in Google - it is quite common for people to arrive at work and
discover that their job has been re-orged out of existence and they've got to
find a new role for themselves within 60-90 days, or basically get sacked. If
you were a manager with spare headcount and literally 100s of qualified
applicants (internal and external) for that headcount on your team, would you
take on someone who is a known agitator and does a lot of "off piste" work, is
divisive, and generally ruffles feathers instead of getting their work done?
Or pick one of the other brilliant & experienced people without a history of
stirring up shit for social media outrage points?

------
franimalia
Cute timing wrt Whittaker’s departure, considering Peter Thiel’s diatribe
against Google just yesterday regarding Google’s involvement in proceedings
with China. [1]

Meanwhile, Facebook assumes widespread immunity in ethical ontology within
Thiel’s (goofy) narrative, all being quite selectively convenient given Thiel
sits on FB’s board.

Both stories were initially broken by Bloomberg, which is also charmingly
harmonic, temporally. Thiel likely pushed to collate onto Whittaker’s thunder
is my (mere) immediate speculation.

Disclaimer: Worked as an engineer at Bloomberg 8+ years (now in academic
scientific research), I doubt Bloomberg consciously coordinated the stories
but anything’s possible, I suppose. (as mentioned, more likely the stories
coordinated themselves in alignment to Bloomberg publication - if anything).

1\.
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20447055](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20447055)

------
chupa-chups
Almost same content but w/o free article limit:

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20695964/google-
protest-l...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20695964/google-protest-
leader-meredith-whittaker-leaves-company)

------
dannykwells
It stories like these that make me wonder, is it better to take an
adversarial/external approach to change (like Meredith) or to work slowly
inside an org and change it from the inside?

Of course the external/adversarial approach can generate huge changes quickly
by relatively junior folks, but always comes at a huge cost and is not
sustainable (see: most of the people who did these protests have left). So you
get one shot, and worse, it sends a message to others that this behavior isn't
tolerated. So in the long run, could even lead to worse outcomes overall.

On the other hand, the idea that you can change the system before it changes
you...well we all know how that usually works out.

~~~
hangonhn
Change from inside has a very poor track record. People who say that are
usually rationalizing their involvement. Even non-violent protests are
adversarial. The history of the world seems to suggest that is the one tried
and known method for change is adversarial confrontation. If you look at it
from a game theory/economics point of view, there is little incentive for
people to change unless you change the landscape and the factors that compel
their behavior. Change from inside really doesn't have that because
organizations/organisms/nature are resistant to change -- if it is working why
risk it? Very few organizations have the ability to disrupt itself.

~~~
luckylion
> Change from inside has a very poor track record.

Has it? Or is it just less visible because it happens over a decade or two?
Germany's left wing and their March Through The Institutions comes to mind as
a very successful change from inside.

------
pontifier
This may be a bit off topic, but I registered the domain GoogleProtest.com
several years ago when I had a problem with them.

Does anyone have a suggestion of how I can donate it to whoever needs it?

------
shay_ker
I'm surprised no one has linked Meredith Whittaker's statement on this:

[https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/onward-another-
googlewalko...](https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/onward-another-
googlewalkout-goodbye-b733fa134a7d)

------
kodz4
Interesting to see as polarization increases, as it will given the
environment, whether a company can break into two along political lines.

Has that happened before in history?

I wouldn't mind a seperate conservative google and a liberal google. Let the
quality of the product offered decide which is better.

~~~
geofft
Hasn't that question already been answered by the fact that the epicenter of
tech is in liberal Silicon Valley?

If conservatives could compete, they would have done so already. There are
exceptions of course, but statistically, leftists are better at tech.

~~~
tvanantwerp
Correlation != causation. Could be that, because cities become tech hubs, and
because cities tend to lean left, that anyone who wants to work in tech will
move to a city and be influenced by the left-leaning culture. I've known
people who were farther right, went into tech, moved to cities, and are now
farther left.

~~~
geofft
Sure, but the effect is the same. A "right-wing Google" won't succeed because
left-wing policies are more beneficial to the growth of cities, which are
beneficial to the success of organizations like Google.

It is actually sort of surprising to me that _cities_ are _tech_ hubs - you
should be able to deliver fantastic products while working remotely and never
meeting anyone in person. (And the free software/open source movement is an
existence proof of that.) So there must be something else about cities that
makes them better at not just the success of tech companies but the success of
groups of tech companies.

~~~
0815test
> left-wing policies are more beneficial to the growth of cities

Left-wing policies like urban exclusionary zoning? Yeah right. Look at how
Texas and other Sunbelt states are doing, despite them being in inherently
more challenging parts of the country than CA.

~~~
tm1265
Texas cities are doing good in spite of the state's political culture, not
because of it. All the cities except maybe DFW are in a constant struggle with
the conservative state government.

------
hnthrow
she's a fraud.
[https://googlersagainstdeceit.blogspot.com/](https://googlersagainstdeceit.blogspot.com/)

------
mtgx
Google is going to shoot itself in the foot over the long term with the type
of decisions it has been making lately both against its users and against its
employees.

I imagine that since the protests started they've already begun filtering out
the people with a higher level of ethics in their interviews - but the new
class of people they hire are not going to give them the same results in the
long-term, especially if they are no the type of employees to question the
addition or removal of a feature, etc, but just do as they are told. Google's
current leaders are slowly but surely killing Google's spirit.

~~~
neilv
I've figured for a long time that the hazing interview process is partly to
select for people who'll play along with whatever the company does.

------
rimliu
Change your organization or change your organization.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>Whittaker also publicly denounced some Google decisions, including the
appointment of Kay Coles James, a conservative think tank leader, to an AI
ethics board. Google soon nixed the board.

I wonder how much that contributed. No matter the personal political leanings
of the employees, most companies try to stay on the good side of both sides of
the political aisle. When the president of Heritage Foundation (which is about
as close to establishment conservatism as possible) was opposed so vehemently,
it really created a rift with conservatives and now there are Republican
Senators who now are calling for Google to get reigned in. The business
leadership can’t be too happy about that.

~~~
damnyou
The fundamental problem of tech companies is that they need to keep two groups
of people happy: whoever is in power, which is the bigoted right at the
moment, and employees, who are generally not bigoted so on the American
political spectrum are overwhelmingly left-wing.

This is an impossible task. My opinion is that Google should support its
employees and deliberately position itself against the right. No matter how
much ground you concede to them, they're going to act in bad faith anyway, so
why listen to them at all?

~~~
dang
We just asked you yesterday to stop taking HN threads further into flamewar.
We ban accounts that do that. We have to, because doing that destroys the
curiosity this site exists for. Would you please review the site guidelines
and take the spirit of this site more to heart when posting here?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
damnyou
I want to understand this fully. You care more about me pointing out the
obvious political context we live in than about the person downthread
literally comparing being gay to pedophilia.

Will you, in your capacity as a moderator for one of the most influential
forums on the internet, actively care about justice, or will you just protect
the status quo? Pick a side.

(Keep in mind that Scott Alexander made the exact same mistake of trying to be
neutral rather than choosing to be on the side of justice. Now his blog is
overrun by fascist trolls. Hacker News is not far behind.)

~~~
dang
Other people's violations of the site guidelines don't justify your breaking
them as well. That's not only a non sequitur, it's a fatal one. If you see
someplace we didn't intervene where we should have, the likeliest reason is
that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or by emailing
hn@ycombinator.com in egregious cases.

We're not trying to be neutral in the sense you describe. I agree that it's
impossible, that everything is ultimately political or at least connected to
it by one or two hops, etc. But this is a hard problem with no easy
answers—actually with no answers, so far as I can tell. I certainly don't have
one. In particular, the answer you're offering is not an answer. Picking a
side and banning the other side would explode this community. It isn't just
people on the banned side who would oppose such an approach; most HN users on
all sides would. The rift would kill the community. What good would that do?

Another reason is that political issues are more important than most of what
appears on HN. Justice is more important than Rust. Does it follow that no
website dedicated to less important things has a right to exist? I don't think
so. I think it's ok to have a forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity, even
though justice is more important than Rust. It's fine if you disagree, but
then it would be good to make clear that that is what you disagree with. So
far I don't think I've ever heard anyone come out and say so. But if you do
agree that it's ok to have a forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity, I
think I can argue confidently that the approach we take as moderators follows
from that.

~~~
damnyou
Thanks for talking about this seriously.

> most HN users on all sides would. Such a rift would kill the community. What
> good would that do?

Who are you excluding today with your actions? How do you know it would kill
the community? I actually don't think so — the Rust community, thriving by any
metric, has very strict codes of conduct. That's because the Rust community
correctly optimizes for the safety of marginalized people over political
diversity.

I know plenty of people that do not participate on HN today because of
moderation that cares more about tone than content. Why not ban all the
fascists and welcome those people? I promise that the sky won't fall.

Yes, I disagree with the premise that HN should be "dedicated to intellectual
curiosity". This forum is way too important for that. For example, getting
your side project on the front page of HN can have a large material impact on
your life. Too many people are excluded from that today — they simply do not
feel safe participating here.

You will necessarily make some groups of people feel unsafe and excluded. This
is the basic truth about large communities. The question comes down to who
you're going to care about: gay people or homophobes, for example. Immigrants
or nativists. People affected by the structural injustices in the tech
industry, or people that proudly support the same injustices. These are all
mutually exclusive choices. Choose carefully.

------
_zachs
Cool! Does she want a medal or something? I'm not sure why people feel like
they should be rewarded by their own company for publicly going against them.
Talk about entitlement.

~~~
dang
Please don't post personal attacks to HN or call names in arguments.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
gtfratteus
As a googler, I say good. People like her have made going to work exhausting.
Leave your politics at home and let me do my job in peace.

~~~
dmix
I was amazed there was even a Resist@Google group within Google. I’m okay with
people protesting the companies actions but Google seemed to be internally
supporting protests on company time and property. Which has pitted employees
against each other across political lines.

I don’t see why Google cant just keep it apolitical in the work environment
while being open to critiques externally and not caring what their employees
do politically in their spare time.

~~~
damnyou
"Apolitical" means no speech or actions to change the status quo. That is fine
if and only if the status quo is fine.

~~~
dmix
I just said the company should be open to external critique. Which the
employees should be free to engage in their spare time...

~~~
damnyou
Why only in their spare time?

~~~
dmix
Because you're paid by Google...to work at Google? And other employees
shouldn't have to be fed your politics constantly just because they have to
show up at work every day just like you do.

~~~
Afton
Let's take a step back. When I work somewhere, my job is much larger than
'deliver code'. It includes (and will show up on my Review) things like 'team
building' and 'contributing to a non-hostile work environment'. It is
everybody's job to make sure that their workplace is non-hostile. This is the
cultural version of 'see something? Say something'. If you are in a workplace
that makes that impossible, or retaliates against people who agitate for
improvement, then that is a real problem.

TBH, the real problem here is people's different views on the Overton window.
I suspect that is why you are getting such vigorous blowback on these topics;
your window isn't aligned with at least some of the people on this thread.

------
fyoving
One less person on the payroll to generate negative news and internal strife
is surely a positive development.

~~~
entropea
Positive for Google & Shareholders, but not for the rest of the 7.7 billion
people on Earth.

------
soup10
No matter how good intentioned if you stir up shit for your employer they are
going to want you gone.

