I've enjoyed Ceglowski's talks but he says a lot of things that just are clearly wrong in this article.
"When you have a monopoly you can’t really have a consumer boycott," Ceglowski said. "People can’t realistically not use Google or Facebook at this stage"
What? People can't not use Google or Facebook? I use Bing sometimes, it works fine, and of course you only really need to use search engines at all if your job requires it. And lots of people don't use Facebook, or used to use it and no longer do. This statement is just so clearly and factually false it is disappointing.
For progressives like Ceglowski, organizing tech workers is ... about pressuring companies to do better on a range of issues, from sexual harassment in the workplace, to user privacy and security, to election integrity
"Election integrity" presumably meaning that he wants the tech industry to control what people see about politics and politicians, lest they accidentally vote for the wrong guy.
As for doing more on progressive agendas ... the big tech firms are all notoriously controlled by an extremist "progressive" agenda already. How exactly does this guy expect Google to do even more than it already does on things like privacy and security, or sexual harassment in the workplace? They fired Damore for having the audacity to point out that years of bending over backwards to recruit more women had failed to make much difference because women don't study CS at the same rate - a verifiable fact that upset a bunch of fundamentalist feminists.
The idea that the tech industry needs to unionise to force tech firms to be even more Clintonite, globalist and to try and control elections is tremendously disturbing. My respect for this guy has plummeted.
No, the tech labor force needs to organize to force tech firms to operate in ways that respect the majority of their employees, rather than ignoring them entirely.
That sounds good, but in practice, such organization will amount to the destruction of the meritocracy and the elevation of a certain set of political views to the status of job requirements.
A tech union would, I think, inevitably devolve to the kind of organization that denies the existence of skill differentials.
It's closer to a meritocracy than practically any other field. I firmly reject the postmodern war on quality and the dismissal of merit as an illusion or a form of oppression. Impact matters.
This is a field that in 2017 still deploys vast amounts of new PHP code, and in which the most successful new database offering of the last 5 years has been MongoDB. You've got a very tough row to hoe to support the argument that it's a "meritocracy".
Google recently settled a lawsuit with its engineers for $410 million, for colluding with other tech companies to keep engineering wages down. It's currently under investigation from the Department of Labor to determine whether they are giving equal pay for equal work. I don't think the meritocracy you describe currently exists.
> What? People can't not use Google or Facebook? I use Bing sometimes, it works fine, and of course you only really need to use search engines at all if your job requires it.
Peter Thiel has a book called Zero to One that spends an entire early chapter discussing the techniques companies like (specifically) Google use in order to hold a practical monopoly while not exposing themselves to anti-monopoly regulation. In Thiel’s opinion this is deliberate, and a tactic that should be used in the readers’ own company.
> "Election integrity" presumably meaning that he wants the tech industry to control what people see about politics and politicians, lest they accidentally vote for the wrong guy.
That’s a pretty poor-faith interpretation of “election integrity” given that the companies ‘idlewords targets include companies that have spent the last few weeks testifying before Congressional committees on this very topic.
> They fired Damore for having the audacity to point out that years of bending over backwards to recruit more women had failed to make much difference because women don't study CS at the same rate - a verifiable fact that upset a bunch of fundamentalist feminists.
Ah! See, I knew you were capable of a good-faith interpretation of someone’s writing.
> ...even more Clintonite, globalist and to try and control elections is tremendously disturbing.
"When you have a monopoly you can’t really have a consumer boycott," Ceglowski said. "People can’t realistically not use Google or Facebook at this stage"
What? People can't not use Google or Facebook? I use Bing sometimes, it works fine, and of course you only really need to use search engines at all if your job requires it. And lots of people don't use Facebook, or used to use it and no longer do. This statement is just so clearly and factually false it is disappointing.
For progressives like Ceglowski, organizing tech workers is ... about pressuring companies to do better on a range of issues, from sexual harassment in the workplace, to user privacy and security, to election integrity
"Election integrity" presumably meaning that he wants the tech industry to control what people see about politics and politicians, lest they accidentally vote for the wrong guy.
As for doing more on progressive agendas ... the big tech firms are all notoriously controlled by an extremist "progressive" agenda already. How exactly does this guy expect Google to do even more than it already does on things like privacy and security, or sexual harassment in the workplace? They fired Damore for having the audacity to point out that years of bending over backwards to recruit more women had failed to make much difference because women don't study CS at the same rate - a verifiable fact that upset a bunch of fundamentalist feminists.
The idea that the tech industry needs to unionise to force tech firms to be even more Clintonite, globalist and to try and control elections is tremendously disturbing. My respect for this guy has plummeted.