lfcc

> (...) It happens to be relevant here (...)

Then it should be discussed. Along with the policies already mentioned in the article and it's disingenuous not to do so. How can we expect to make informed decisions if we selectively choose what information to expose or hide for discussion?

It mentions tax rate laws, but those don't actually cover why Amazon effectively paid no taxes. I.e. massive investments in R&D, stock-based employee compensation, carry-forwards losses, and whatever else I may still be missing.

I don't think it can be considered fairly informative if it doesn't cover how we got to those values. From reading this article, one could still ask if a tax rate is at 21%, how does that mean a profitable company doesn't pay any taxes?

Amazon is not Jeff Bezos. Taxing him would be a whole different topic of conversation. Probably more on the topics of executive compensation, taxes for high incomes, and a bunch of other possible subjects.

Interesting discussion to be had, for sure, but not what the article is really about.

I agree that engagement and discussing policies is important. But it does feel disingenuous and aimed at provoking outrage (to trigger a knee-jerk reaction) when you just mention a fact like "look at these rich guys that don't share anything!" and ignore the context of why it got to be the way it is.

And I'm not saying that there aren't changes that could and should be made. Just that this particular article doesn't have the feel of a fair debate aiming to inform people, but more of an outrage-inducing propaganda.

You could also question the validity/fairness of existing complaints.

Ultimately, I don't think taking the argument down this path of conjecture over allegations (or lack thereof) will help clear our view of what is or is not the reality at the company. That's what company wide satisfaction surveys or platforms like Glassdoor are for. And in both accounts I don't see many signs that Google is doing poorly.

Edit: and the results of investigations prompted by these accusations might shed some light as well.

I missed that. I'll correct my original post. Thanks!

Perhaps I'm still too naive and innocent, but I don't think this represents the overall reality of the company. A lot of people participated in the protests mentioned and only two statements of retaliations were given (edit: or at least leaked to the media), with "more than a dozen" shared during the meeting in question. Given the sheer size of the company, if there was "systemic" retaliation I'd expect these to be in the order of a few hundreds, or many dozens at the least.

In addition, we're only seeing this from the perspective of those who feel they were retaliated against because of those protests, with absolutely no additional context or perspective of the managers/execs/peers (which I think we will never obtain for rather obvious reasons).

Personally, I have found Google to have a really open culture of communication. You're generally free to give your opinion. I'd be much more afraid of retaliation from peers due to something I said being considered offensive by some of them, than by an executive or my manager due to speaking out against the way the company does things (which happens all the time and by large amounts of employees). Of course that's just one experience and I may have been lucky with my own team.

disclaimer: I recently joined Google but I'm only aware of these incidents from media publications such as this and everything above is just my personal opinion on the incident.

Edit: Added that "more than a dozen" other stories were shared in the meeting according to the article, as I had originally missed that.

I don't think they're trying to cut on their headcount, but probably trying to cut on the cost per head.

Can Gamers really be boiled down to such a homogeneous group though? I think many of the younger fortnite console gamers already have very different views from your average young/middle aged adult on steam.

Stadia doesn't have to steal all of steam's userbase to be able to reach critical mass for their own userbase and videogame streaming seems like a logical next step (like music and video streaming were) if a good UX can be provided (and I think they're aware of latency concerns and would not enter this market if they thought it unfeasible to provide a good gaming experience).

Disclaimer: I work for Google but am otherwise unaffiliated with the Stadia project