[Teever]

Was it different or are the people who voluntarily started working for Google around that period unable to admit to themselves and others that it was always questionable to work for a entity like Google?

To certain observers this was obviously the direction tech monopolies were going to go.

What have those people always seen that you're only now beginning to admit is an inherently defective aspect of these organizations?

[cynicalkane]

Holy cow dude, I am not personally answerable for all the faults of a megacorp, nor am I "only now beginning to admit" anything in your imaginary personal history about me that you made up now.

This entire thread makes me sad. A handful of people, the original writer and some other commenters, are saying "this corporation has changed for the worse in some ways" and the overwhelming majority of posts are these weirdos attacking them for why didn't you specifically say the opinion that I want, and why didn't you say it sooner than this post I just became aware of?

[Teever]

It's too convenient that so many of these stories go something like "It was okay when I joined but somewhere along the way things there got dirty, but I'm still clean!"

Why is it always that way?

Why is no one ever writing "It was always dirty there but I convinced myself that it wasn't until I couldn't do it anymore."

Because people don't want to admit "I made a mistake."

That's why.

[dpark]

That’s one possibility. Could also be “it got worse”. Could also be a combo of the two.

This “holier than thou” stuff is lame. Shaming people for having a job. You working for UNICEF?

[Teever]

It isn't in dispute that it got worse.

Most of us have worked at a place that was either bad enough that we knew and didn't say anything or that we should have known was that bad. That isn't anything new. You do what you gotta do and all that.

What we're splitting hairs over is whether or not Google (and others) were already "too bad to work for" 10-15 years ago. And whether or not some people correctly identified this and others didn't / did but say that they didn't.

You're totally right -- very few of us have careers entirely at places like UNICEF. That's just reality. What isn't reality is the image some people like to portray that they didn't know or couldn't have reasonably known that the entity that they were a part of for so many years was no UNICEF.

[buran77]

> I am not personally answerable for all the faults of a megacorp

It's not very fair for you to answer for the faults of the megacorp but to be honest you kind of put yourself in that position when you defended the indefensible.

For all intents and purposes, looking from a user/customer perspective, Google is just as morally bankrupt today as it was 9 years ago. And that's what really matters. You can rationalize it, you can pretend that you couldn't see the trend, that it didn't smell as bad back then, but at the end of the day what Google is doing today is just as morally acceptable as the things they were doing in 2017 were at the time. We just pushed the baseline down and normalized the ever worsening behaviors.

So let's not judge 2017 with the eyes from 2026 when the things done back then look more palatable. If you were to ask 2017 me about Google you'd get the same answer as today. Then again I wasn't paid by Google so I could afford to give that answer.

[dpark]

> what Google is doing today is just as morally acceptable as the things they were doing in 2017 were at the time. We just pushed the baseline down and normalized the ever worsening behaviors.

You can’t hold together your premise for 2 sentences. If you admit that the behaviors are “ever worsening” then you cannot logically believe that it was the same 9 years ago.

[buran77]

> You can’t hold together your premise for 2 sentences

Or maybe you were so eager to lob a snarky remark that you failed to put in your full attention and intellectual capacity to understand what I said. See, this is how you assume good faith. So let's run through it again with clarifications that would pierce even a googler's shield, shall we?

>> morally bankrupt

...Is what I said. Morality is a sliding window, it moves with time to follow the tolerance of society. But when in the past you supported something that was outside that window for that time you can't come a decade later and over-impose today's window of morality to make it look like "we were pretty swell back then by today's standards". Morality by comparison isn't morality. Otherwise all you'd ever have to do is wait for someone to do worse and then you're Mother Theresa.

Google will do worse next year, and even worse the year after that. Because every generation of its employees see dollar signs and embrace doing the shitty thing of the day. Today's generation implements Android lockdowns, first party malware, more spying, you name it. Even the googler in the submission thinks this is a sign of moral bankruptcy. But ten years from now when Google will have promoted through a few more shittiness levels this same generation of googlers will come out to say "this is not the company it was x years ago". And if I'm still alive maybe I'll tell them the same thing as today: they went morally bankrupt when they embraced doing the shit of the day, not when that finally became tame by comparison.

[dpark]

Attacking someone for leaving Google because they are no longer comfortable with Google’s actions is some combo of virtue signaling and counterproductive purity testing.

You’re not influencing anyone’s behavior nor meaningfully educating anyone. You’re basking in your feeling of moral superiority while you look down your nose.

[buran77]

> Attacking someone for leaving Google

Did I? And who would this person I attacked for leaving Google be? My comment's right up there, feel free to just copy/paste the "you're shit because you left Google" part. It's fine, don't scramble, that's not the point.

Good on them to leave, better late than never I guess. In you frenzy you ignored that the point almost everyone on this side of the fence makes, this thread included, isn't "bad that you left", it's "don't pretend it was morally better when you joined". Because that's how all these people like to wash the stench and paint themselves in a better light. When (generic) you started a decade ago you had to wade through what in 2017 was neck deep shit, looking for that paycheck. Googlers of today also have to go neck deep, just in what 2026 defines as shit [0].

> You’re not influencing anyone’s behavior nor meaningfully educating anyone. You’re basking in your feeling of moral superiority while you look down your nose.

My friend, it's just me, you, and the other googler here on a submission marked as dupe and already in the HN cemetery. I wasn't putting on a show for the world. I know you are personally invested in defending your choices at any cost lest your internal moral framework collapses. Your livelihood and self worth depend on that. And I know I'm not educating you because every one of the people who lies to themselves that "they did it better in their time" will still lie to themselves for that paycheck in the future. Every few years they have to explain how it wasn't like that at the beginning, when it totally was for anyone with eyes and not just a money counter. No rando on the internet will ever educate you differently.

And believe me when I tell you I will never feel morally superior to anyone working for Google and friends for two reasons. I've probably done worse in my life before I've done better, and bragging about being morally superior to a generic googler is a victory without glory.

[0] But I'll leave you with what I told googler #2 earlier:

> You know how $1 in 2017 is $1.37 in 2026? Well it's the same with character in a society that just degrades morality. What looks like an unacceptably high moral debt today in absolute figures is probably the exact same debt you took on a decade ago if you adjust for "moral inflation".

[cynicalkane]

Where did I defend whatever "indefensible" things you're accusing me of defending? The OP post described specific ways Google's culture changed, on the inside. I said those were true. This was the entire scope of the claims I made.

Your response to that is "my personal opinion is canonical, your specific examples to the contrary don't matter, and I'm going to go ahead and imply you're bad for working there or saying anything."

I'm not going to spend more time here. I don't think you and these others are commenting in good faith.

[buran77]

> It was different 9 years ago, in ways that are specifically described in the blog post you're ignoring

I'm not OP but I'm not ignoring anything. In 2017 Google was doing just as many "questionable" things for that time as today. Googlers at the time were embracing doing the shitty thing of the day. All that happened in the meantime is that Google did even shittier things that made those older ones look tame by comparison.

By the time you were at Google the company had a litany of reported concerns. Look at them [0], look at how many happened before 2017. And that's just one list, only about very public privacy concerns.

You know how $1 in 2017 is $1.37 in 2026? Well it's the same with character in a society that just degrades morality. What looks like an unacceptably high moral debt today in absolute figures is probably the exact same debt you took on a decade ago if you adjust for inflation.

> I don't think you and these others are commenting in good faith.

An entirely expected yet still disappointing cop-out.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_with_Google