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Comment by gedy | Hacker News Reader

Discussing politics and religion at work is always, always distracting and divisive. Do it outside work hours please.

Seriously, the only thing I truly gleaned from all the internal screenshots here is that Google is a horrific place to work where people are fighting about politics and the like with other coworkers. The infighting, the whole idea of blocking or blacklisting fellow employees... Who would seriously want to work in that hostile an environment?

Most of that is on mailing lists that nobody forces you to subscribe to.

Mailing lists which have a direct and immediate effect on your employment status and ability to be promoted.

How so? For the majority of employees, the lists' main adverse effect on promotions is the time sink that they represent, just to read them. When I was there, only a minority of subscribers actually posted in the conversations. The rest would read them, mute them and sometimes frown ("why the hell did I sign up for eng-misc again?").

This is par for the course for any place where you're given a microphone, for good or for bad.

I would guess expressing a viewpoint strongly aligned with the individual most responsible for your promotion would help you land that promotion. Likewise voicing an opinion counter to a popular narrative of that individual could prevent you from getting one.

If the majority of your team or even just the management level of your department are participating, you must pick a side, keeping in mind silence and abstaining from emotionally charged discussions if often seen as picking a side in and of itself.

In my almost ten years, under almost as many managers and directors, only one of them was occasionally active on any of the lists I was on. Although some of his discussions with others got a bit tense, they were mostly of tech policy nature and I never felt afraid of disagreeing if I wanted to - with him, of all managers. Just one data point to say that perhaps "horrific" and "hostile" are a bit excessive.

Disclosure: I work at Google.

Because the promotion process is based on feedback from your peers, but is decided by a random selection of people two levels higher than you, this shouldn't particularly be the case. I mean you could obviously alienate all your peers, such that nobody would give you even the faintest praise in your peer feedback, but that seems almost as hard as being promoted :). Again, your manager and your management chain don't directly decide whether or not you're promoted here. It's overall refreshing, if imperfect.

Damore's memo specificially cites Googlers receiving peer bonuses for participating in political conversation on these lists. Surely receipt (or lack thereof) of such bonuses would be taken into account by the random people who determine promotions, yes? At the very least, alienating peers puts you at a financial disadvantage.

I doubt anyone can give a very good answer to this without saying anything confidential, but suffice to say no, I don't believe that's the case. Perhaps others will chime in.

No, most of that is in the heads of employees and management. It leaks out through those mailing lists but that is not where it starts.

Damore's lawsuit included screenshots of a high-level manager boasting about blacklisting employees who say the wrong thing about social justice. That makes for a toxic environment, regardless of what mailing lists you happen to be on.

And Google notoriously colluded with other employers in a “no poaching” scam that suppressed workers rights as well. Deeply toxic.

More on the blacklisting http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/10/19-insane-tidbits-james-...

The original scam https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/25/no_poaching_a_doj_n...

I haven’t seen this reported, but seems really interesting to me. I just spend five minutes googling trying to find the actual memo, but came up empty.

Sorry with such a dumb request, but if you have the link ready I would appreciate it.

Edit:never mind, I tried some more using “screenshot” instead of “filing.” I found them.

Sorry, I should have been better about citing my sources. The manager who was blacklisting people for their opinion of social justice was Paul Cowan, see page 33 of Damore's lawsuit [1]. That section has many more examples of such behavior, which should be enough to persuade you that it's a systemic problem.

This article[2] is also worth reading, it highlights a bunch of other shocking tidbits from the lawsuit.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/368688363/James-Damore-vs-Go...

[2] http://thefederalist.com/2018/01/10/19-insane-tidbits-james-...

That's what media articles would have you believe. How else would they get clicks?

this is one of the more important points that isn't being discussed enough. Why does the workplace need to be turned into a political minefield, there's something incredible presumptuous about the idea that everybody is supposed to proselytize at work.

Damore wasn't hired as an inhouse biologist but as an engineer. Same goes for everybody else. I personally have enough stuff to care about at work, I don't need to be drawn into any culture wars, if you want to discuss politics do it over a drink after work.

I partially blame Google for this because they have fostered a culture that turns the work environment into a living environment to squeeze as much brainpower out of their employees as possible. We need to go back to professional environments.

This is arguably also better for diversity in the first place. Women and minorities seem to do better in rule based environments like academia rather than summercamp like startups.

I more than partially blame Google. Open discussion on diversity at Google was the entire point of the Google-created forum.

(1) Lots of people say Google should be approaching diversity in one way. (2) Damore says Google ought to be approaching it another way. (3) Damore is fired. Not told "no, we're not going with your suggestion". Not told "you can't quote those studies". Fired.

If you're going to encourage this kind of discussion, you'd better be ready to hear researched opinions without firing people. But Google wasn't in a position to do that, so they shouldn't have encouraged it.

Damore was fired for stating without ambiguity that not only should Google drop diversity initiatives, but that some current Google engineers are innately less talented than others based solely on their gender.

That creates a hostile work environment. Which is why he was fired.

His opinion was not "well researched". He quoted respectable studies then took multiple leaps and applied them inappropriately.

I don't understand how anyone who doesn't understand why he was fired can hold down a professional career.

> His opinion was not "well researched".

I never claimed it was "well" researched, just that he was citing honest, peer-reviewed studies. [Insert rational, mature critique of Damore's citations.]

> Damore was fired for stating without ambiguity that not only should Google drop diversity initiatives, but that some current Google engineers are innately less talented than others based solely on their gender.

Damore:

"I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions."

"Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from women in the following ways or that these differences are 'just.' I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions."

Are either of these the quotes you are thinking of?

The employees at Google that are invested in these discussions seem to care a lot about improving Google, they just have different ideas on what needs improving and how to make it happen (to get a sense of how different consider Holzle's 'the majority of your coworkers' comment). Other organizations might manage this by setting up a one or more day workshop or retreat in order for selected employees to hash out the vision and action items.

It doesn't have to be, per se - and really shouldn't be.

Practice the principle of charity. Assume the best of your debate parter(s). Argue in good faith. Desire truth, not for your claim to the correct one. Find shared values in others, even amidst disagreement. Decouple political beliefs from your identity as a person.

There's no real good reason discussions about politics and religion ought to be divisive.

Politics means "everything that affects society" so how can a company like google ignore "everything that affects society?"

Why? If you are distracted by political discussions, just put on your earphones. Just like I do when my colleagues discuss which football team that is the best.

Okay.....but who was talking "politics"? James Damore? James Damore's co-workers? Both? Nobody?

Diversity and social justice type topics have become political wedge issues unfortunately, so everyone.

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