I'd recommend folks read the last section of the announcement where these changes were announced [1]. The section is titled "Mission First", and I'm pretty sure the recent altercations at Google Cloud's offices over the past week [2] motivated much of the writing in this section. This seems like a stark change in how things happened at Google, and to put it explicitly in a blog was something I couldn't imagined to have happened in ~2017-2022.
> We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion that enables us to create amazing products and turn great ideas into action. That's important to preserve. But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics. This is too important a moment as a company for us to be distracted.
Honestly, good on them. Having a culture of honest and open discussion about work is important, but there's a very vocal minority in many companies that thinks their political opinions are both objective fact and the most important thing to discuss at any given work function.
When that kind of attitude seems to receive official support from the company it actually does make people with different political opinions feel unsafe at work. This is not okay, and it's not healthy for the company, and I'm glad to see Google finally pushing back against the idea that loud political fights are appropriate in the workplace.
When the mission is make money within the existing institutional frameworks it's much easier to be apolitical and that seems to be the change here. But when your culture is explicitly "make the world better" you can't avoid getting mixed up in political issues.
How the devs felt about police for example likely affected the maps feature for reporting cops on the road. Same with Google Maps history at abortion clinics. The read on various news organizations definitely affected the choices for Google News partnerships. How you feel about government surveillance and "the deep state" likely affected how they built their messaging apps. Even down to the sign-up form where you're asked your name/sex. A conservative Google would have made very different decisions.
It's really hard to do anything non-trivial that doesn't end up brushing up against political issues de jour.
I'm not so sure. You point to a vocal minority, I see something amiss for the company.
If I were "corporate" I would be asking myself why it is a group of my employees faced arrest, job loss to make a statement about company policies. I would want to know if it suggests a bigger problem down the road for the company.
Google employs ~180k people. At that scale, even 50 employees involved in these protests would be 0.02%. That sure sounds like a very vocal minority to me.
> If I were "corporate" I would be asking myself why it is a group of my employees faced arrest, job loss to make a statement about company policies. I would want to know if it suggests a bigger problem down the road for the company.
I think that's exactly what corporate is doing. Corporate thought it through and came to the conclusion that this happened because Google created a culture where a certain type of employee thought that Google was the place to push their personal politics. They would like people who feel that strongly about a political issue to move on to another workplace and let their coworkers get on with their lives.
I find the use of "this is a business" logic to dissuade political discussion about a company's own business practices to be extremely troubling. Yes, there can be a discussion about the proper way to have these conversations, but dismissing discussion of ethics with an attitude of "this is a business" has lead to some horrific outcomes throughout history.
TJ Watson (of IBM) had a similar "this is a business" outlook: “I’m an internationalist. I cooperate with all forms of government, regardless of whether I can subscribe to all of their principles or not.” IBM's machines were extremely important part of Nazi Germany's Holocaust efforts, and there is evidence that IBM was actively working with Nazi Germany after the invasion of Poland [1].
Anyone notice the last few days tons of people bringing up the IBM/Holocaust connection? I've seen maybe half a dozen people in different threads bring it up. It almost feels coordinated, like those are the marching orders that were given out somewhere: "If this topic comes up, compare it to IBM and the holocaust, make these points, etc."
Google is being accused of writing software that facilitates the intentional killing of civilians. Whether you agree or disagree, that's what the accusation is. In that context, for people who accept the accusations, IBM seems like an obvious choice for an analogous company. Do you have a better comparison?
Honestly, good on them. Having a culture of honest and open discussion about work is important, but there's a very vocal minority in many companies that thinks their political opinions are both objective fact and the most important thing to discuss at any given work function.
When that kind of attitude seems to receive official support from the company it actually does make people with different political opinions feel unsafe at work. This is not okay, and it's not healthy for the company, and I'm glad to see Google finally pushing back against the idea that loud political fights are appropriate in the workplace.