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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

To add some context: remember that Google has employees who felt personally threatened by election results (immigrants and transgender employees). Nobody knew what Trump would do.

The worst fears turned out to be overblown, but it was hard to make the case for not worrying at the time. Telling people they had nothing to worry about would have simply been offensive.

There are few election results that employees would consider to be threatening like that. It was very much a special case.

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There are people personally threatened in every presidential election, and most of those fears are overblown pretty much all the time. Lots of extremist views in this country and lots of people feeling threatened about pretty much everything.

Should google have held the same weeping festival in case Hillary won, and someone was personally threatened that she would start a new war in Syria or lead to war in Russia? Which could lead to a nuclear war? Of course not. That would be as ridiculous as what happened now. You don't cater to those kinds of views in the workplace.

The correct response is not to hold a company meeting about how threatened anyone feels in an election, but to talk about the new products being rolled out and what you expect from your employees in their business life. And there are lots of blogs and opportunities for Google employees to express their political views outside the company. No public weeping of executives is required.

Oh come on, you're doing a terrible job of understanding how your political opponents think.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, and certainly not uncivil ones.

It was trivial to make the case, and that people didn’t see this represents a massive epistomological failure. Perhaps it would have been offensive, but adults should not be indulged when they engage in hysteria.

Eh. Maybe you could have used platitudes like "America has survived worse" and "most people in government will follow the law, even if he doesn't." But those aren't particularly comforting.

I was around when Bush won re-election. After he lied us into war. I couldn't believe it. I was absolutely stunned, depressed, and horrified that something like that could happen.

Yet not once did I expect my employer to "comfort" me. I mean, my God, that's not the job of an employer. Friends comfort you. Your employer is not your friend.

Google appears to have a long history of infantilizing its workforce, partly - one hopes - as a sort of group-bonding in-joke, and partly - one suspects - as a darker psychological management strategy with objectives that are not always unambiguously in the infant's best interest.

Seems everyone's down-voting you, but considering the huge number of immigrants and international employees at Google, it'd be crazy to expect a Trump win to be treated neutrally when the foundation of his platform was antagonism of immigrants and other countries.

And it wasn't completely overblown, there were many Googlers trapped inside or outside the US immediately after Trump took power; one, for example, had no way for her parents to meet her newborn baby as they were all banned from travel. [0]

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/one-google-employee-on-trump-or...

I work in a research hospital, I went through a lot of similar meetings, and a lot of emails talking about where to get help if you're feeling down.

I remember thinking hey this is a bit over-blown... but then I talked to this Iranian guy on my floor: he was extremely shocked and depressed. He had a situation on his hands -- he wanted his wife to come to America, but was afraid that wouldn't be possible and he was entertaining the idea of just quitting and returning to Iran.

Surely at Google, where a lot of immigrants work, they went through similar experiences.

So I totally am okay with what I see in the video -- I think it was the right move by GOOG executives to take that position, if only for the employees.

What happened with your friend's wife? Did she come over?

Considering Trump is still in power, and the travel ban is still in effect, I'd say that's a no.

Americans have a short memory.

The ban has exceptions for, for ex. students; there are still ways.

Also, many people think that openly accepting immigrants is what makes both google and America great. It was pretty clear that trump was very anti immigrant. And that’s a direct attack on the success of google.

And the first thing he did policy wise literally confirmed everyone’s worst fears.

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