I read that a few times and I just fail to parse it. Can anyone explain the idea there. How are the topics connected? Is there something obvious I am missing or it is supposed to be satire which points that people can offended about anything.
> The dilemma is especially striking at tech companies, which typically cast themselves as open meritocracies
Not like all tech companies. Google milked morality perception for years "Don't be evil etc...". It has no doubt paid huge dividends. "We are not like those crusty old evil companies with suits and ties, we are young playful, cool and super-nice! Come join us!".
Even though it is a huge tech giant which tracks millions of people, know what they email, what credit cards they use, what sites they visit, lobbies the government more than financial giants, defense contractors or telecom companies, somehow deep down the first instinct I have is still to think of it as cutesy little startup with colorful letters that does search better than AltaVista. A small underdog that everyone loves to root for. Their morality marketing is really that good.
And well people bought into that propaganda and now they are finally paying for it internally. So animal rights activists are somehow fighting with racial justice ones. And besides getting invited to product management meetings, one gets invited to talks about how their coworkers sexually identify as "a yellow-scaled wingless dragonkin".
> The Google spokeswoman said an employee working on Talks at Google on a volunteer basis unilaterally made the decision to cancel the talk
Aha, I think they are slowly, after great fanfare and drama, realizing that maybe the workplace should just be for work. People will just start objecting to any talks. Doesn't matter the topic, because with a few rhetorical tricks, an intelligent enough person can be offended (or claim to be offended) by anything.