There will always be new protests.
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Editor’s note: Google used to be the most innovative company. From search engines to Gmail, maps, Chrome, Docs, Photo, translation, to unmanned vehicles, Project Loon and other moon landing programs, Google can always use one. Innovations attract everyone’s attention. But in the last three years, the situation has changed. Since the strike against the ban, the Google employees have continually challenged the company’s decisions, and other employees have challenged those challenges, causing the company to struggle to cope with the endless hamsters in recent years. It seems to have been extinguished by employees one by one. What happened to Google in the past few years? Or at a deeper level, what kind of trend is the US technology giant facing? “Connected” magazine used a long article to reveal the secret to us. The original author is ASHA TIKU, titled: Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech. This article is compiled by 36kr and published in sections. This is the second part.
Google: The Three Years of the Happiest Technology Company (1)
Second, left and right is difficult
In many ways, Google’s internal social network is like a microcosm of the Internet itself. They have their own filter bubble, their own cyber violence, their own edgelord (frustrated helpless but funny guy). Contrary to popular belief, those networks are not all liberals. Just as the conservative right wing rises on YouTube, it is also looking for ways to expand itself in the Google rationalist debate culture.
For example, for a while, Chrome engineer Kevin Cernekee was one of the moderators of the company’s conservative email list. Over the years, Google employees have been fairly consistent with Cernekee’s description: as a sly in GooThe inner right social network of gle is looking for a sense of existence, and he deliberately distributes inflammatory articles to liberals and conservatives.
In August 2015, a fierce debate broke out on the huge IndustryInfo mailing list, which was why there were so few women in the technology industry. Last year, Google became the first Silicon Valley giant to release employee demographic data, and revealed that 82% of its technical staff are male. For many in the IndustryInfo network, this number constitutes a clear and painful evidence that Google has to make a change. When the discussion fell into a quarrel about diversity (Cernekee also joined), a senior Google vice president tried to close the list. Cernekee began bombing the executive’s Google+ page with a post that criticized the pro-diversity “social justice political agenda.” He wrote: “Can we add a statement of a clearly prohibited view to the employee handbook so that everyone knows what the bottom line is?” In response, Google Human Resources issued a written warning to Cernekee saying his comment ” Rude, destructive, disorderly and disobeying.”
Although Google has taken action on the other side of the debate, the exegesis of Cernekee has had a more sustained effect. In November 2015, Cernekee filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that Google’s warning constituted retaliation for his political views. He also claimed that he condemned his right to participate in “protected collaborative activities”—that is, he had the right to freely discuss his working conditions under the National Labor Relations Act.
Cernekee is still active on the internal channel while still having a legal battle with Google for several years. In 2016, when the Golden State skinheads and the far-left protesters clashed in Sacramento Park, Cernekee defended the former on Google’s Free Speech mailing list.
But although Cernekee is very eye-catching within Google, he is barely visible on the open Internet. Therefore, Cernekee will not be Google’s most famous pagan. This inside and outside is due to the relatively silent Google search engineer James Damore.
In late June 2017, Damore participated in a diversified corporate event at Google headquarters. He claims to have heard organizers discuss the need to provide additional job interview opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities, as well as a more friendly environment. (Google says it won’t offer additional interviews for specific people.) In Damore’s view, this seems to violate Google’s hiring process, which isStarted to ferment within Google.
Pichai was on vacation at the time, but his deputy told him that it would be best to deal with it as soon as possible. Pichai asked to convene all management teams to attend the meeting. But by Saturday, a copy of Damore’s memo had been leaked to Gizmodo. Although Google employees are still waiting for official replies from senior executives, managers who want to express support for women have begun to loudly condemn the internal memo on the memo.
For Google’s website reliability engineer Liz Fong-Jones, the views on the memo are particularly familiar. Google’s engineers did not join the union, but within Google, Fong-Jones basically fulfilled the functions of union representatives, and he conveyed all concerns of employees from product decision-making to inclusive practices to managers. When the company released Google+ in 2011, she had already acquired this informal role; before the release, she warned executives not to ask everyone to use their real names on the platform, and that anonymity is important to vulnerable groups. When the public turmoil was the same as Fong-Jones predicted, she sat in front of the executives to negotiate a new policy with the other party – and then explained the need to compromise the anger of the employees. After that, managers and employees began to come to her to mediate various internal tensions.
As part of this internal advocacy work, Fong-Jones has become accustomed to the internal forums on how diversity is discussed, unlike Cernekee, Damore, and other “just asking questions” colleagues. In her opinion, it has been too long for Google’s management to let these things go bad. It’s time for them to express their views. In an internal post on Google+, she claimed that “the only way to get rid of all Medusa’s heads is that all the comments are not on the platform.”
A few hours later, Fong-Jones’s “Medusa” theory detonated Google’s internal network. Abusive remarks with racial and gender discrimination are full of blog comments from right-wingers. Someone wrote anonymously: “They should throw all those monsters off the roof.”
Monday morning, Google executives finally met to discuss how to deal with Damore. It is said that the opinion is divided into two factions. Half of executives believe that Damore should not be fired. But YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and public relations director Jessica Powell are urging the audience to think about how Damore would react if he used the same view of race rather than gender. This convinced the executives: the engineer must go. In a note sent to employees, Pichai said he would fire Damore because of the persistence of gender stereotypes.
Pichai tries to make the information passed unbiased. He wrote: “It is not acceptable to think that some of our colleagues’ traits are not physiologically suitable for that job. This is not acceptable. At the same time, some colleagues questioned whether they can speak at the workplace. (Especially those minority views.) They also feel that they are threatened, and this is not acceptable. Everyone must be free to express dissent. “Then he promised to fly back to the Bay Area to attend the TGIF meeting on Thursday to discuss the matter.
Unsurprisingly, Damore was slashed and triggered a wave of negative reports from the right wing. Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, and Ben Shapiro both criticized Google; New York Times columnist David Brooks called on Pichai to resign. Damore’s virgin interview was dedicated to the oil pipe dignitaries Jordan Peterson and Stefan Molyneux, who were supporters of “racial realism.” The alternative right wing regarded it as an endorsement for himself, began to concoct Damen’s fan, put his head on Martin Luther’s body, and nailed his memo to the church door.
More leaks from within Google are fueling the situation. Screenshots of Google employees’ conversations on internal social networks (some dating back to 2015) began to appear on Breitbart (right-wing news site). At the same time, on a pro-Trump subreddit sub-section, photos and personal information of eight Google employees (both homosexual, transgender or colored) were placed. Fong-Jones is one of them. Their profile is instantly the target of personal attacks. Two days after Damore was fired, Breitbart’s former technical editor, Milo Yiannopoulos, shared the collage on Reddit with 2 million Facebook fans. He wrote: “Look at who is working for Google, and it’s all right now.” – It seems that the decision to lay off Damore is the decision of the eight employees.
For employees who are targeted, leaking is terrible. How many of their colleagues broke the news to the alternative right wing? How many leaks are there? What do their employers have to do to protect them?
Google has fired an employee in the past for leaking Memegen’s internal fans. However, when the exposed employee reports were harassed, Google’s security team told them that the screenshots may be in compliance with the legal definition of “protected collaborative activities” (Cernekee also cited this labor rights).
For Fong-Jones, the security team’s answer is both shockingIt is also instructive; she does not realize that the leaker can also be protected. She said: “Everyone thinks that Google has the absolute right to stop you from discussing anything related to Google.” However, Google’s hand is clearly bound by labor law.
The executives feel that they have done their best. They proposed to arrange for employees who were searched by human flesh to stay overnight at the hotel. But in the eyes of human workers, Google’s fear of a strong resistance to alternative right-wings and further threats of legal action seems to outweigh the concerns about the safety of loyal employees.
To Pichai should go to TGIF On the day of answering questions about Damore, the chaos has surrounded Google. That afternoon, Damore returned to Google with a photographer (“New York Times” recently called the alternative right-winger Anne Leibowitz). For the upcoming scene, the engineer teased his 40,000 Twitter fans and said, “Mountain View is live.” The savvy tech reporter immediately asked the insiders to broadcast them in real time.
But before the meeting began forty-five minutes, Pichai sent an email to his 78,000 employees. “Speak a little longer. Sorry to be a bit late, but we will cancel today’s conference hall meeting. Just as we have pushed us forward together, we would have liked to have a candid and open discussion today.” However, he wrote The issues submitted by employees for discussion have been leaked to the media. He also vaguely hinted that the presence of employees by human flesh is also one of the reasons for canceling the meeting. Pichai wrote: “On some websites, the names of some Google employees have been put on.”
Fong-Jones is at his home in Brooklyn when he receives an email from Pichai. She had hoped that the executive explained why, in view of their dismissal of Damore, they had already let his memo flow inside Google for more than a month. It now feels like Google is taking advantage of the insults she and other employees have encountered as an excuse for not answering questions. She said: “It’s 100% different from my new idea. It won’t make me safer. In fact, for those who harass me, this is almost a victory.”
In the internal promotion work, Fong-Jones has been happy to meet executives as required. She keeps their secrets. She complied with the rules. She also lets others do this. Executives talk to people they trust, and they don’t believe in people who will reveal their tone to outsiders. But now Fong-Jones decided to do it himself. In October, she invited a labor organization that typically targeted blue-collar workers to teach Google employees more about protected collaborative activities. Perhaps an understanding of the labor law will come in handy.
Translator: boxi