[algaeselect]

On the internal memegen site, where people post and vote on memes, the AWU folks (they have a red logo around their profile picture, so easy to identify) are basically Debbie Downers. Constantly posting comments or memes shitting on the company. Whatever it is, see red logo around profile picture, you know it's going to be a "this company sucks" comment.

They very much give me the vibe of the "late stage capitalism" 23 year old reddit type. I remember one post from a guy complaining about how the company abuses its employees because in the EU everyone gets so much more vacation. I guess he didn't compare his US salary to EU salaries. Checked profile, tenure: been at company 6 months, and already complaining.

[srockets]

Union's power is in the enforcement of employers to accept collective bargaining (that's why the misnamed US "right to work" laws are so effective at disenfranchising workers). AUW, as it currently organized, lacks that power, so yes, all that remains is bitching.

Which is why memegen exists: it is a way to disarm Google's employees. Had they didn't had memegen to post on, the higher probability more would tunnel their disappointments into organizing.

Those disappointments were created by Google: they (used to) market themselves as a benevolent employer. People get on board, and realize that the truth is far from that. Of course, they wouldn't be able to hire some people they wanted to if they had told them the truth. Should those employees know better? Maybe. But any relationship, including labor, is built on trust.

[sitkack]

Memegen is a way for employees to vent with no action taken by leadership. It serves its intended purpose.

[srockets]

No further action taken by employees as well. If memegen didn’t exist, some might be inclined to escalate, actually forcing leadership to do better.

[tmoertel]

That's essentially the thesis of Hirschman's treatise on Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

[Sleepful]

Holy molly, this explains 99% of management behavior out there. Basically this explains why every single manager I have had has the exact same narrative, something along the lines of:

"I hear you because we care about you, your concerns are noted, but please stop thinking for yourself and stay in your lane, because we are a family"

[filoleg]

> Which is why memegen exists: it is a way to disarm Google's employees.

Are you in PeopleOps and trying to do the reverse-psychology trick with this?

I am only halfway joking. It seems rather strange to me that if memegen is such a helpful tool for Google higher-ups to suppress the employee discontent, given the string of recent memegen changes that caused large uproars from those same employees (removal of downvotes/overall score display specifically).

If anything, those recent memegen changes (along with plenty others) do the opposite of attracting people to memegen. If PeopleOps/higher-ups wanted to incentivize people to use memegen (so that they would waste time on that instead of unionizing), why would they make those massively unpopular changes to it?

Personally, I think Google higher-ups/PeopleOps are, at best, neutral on memegen or, at worst, negative on it. I am almost certain if memegen didn’t exist already since the olden Google days, it wouldn’t have been allowed to get created at the present-day Google.