Agreed. It is possible that Google acted in a purely political manner. It is equally, if not far more so, that this guy is severely misrepresenting the nature of his actions.
We all know how liberal capital is.
“Famously liberal Silicon Valley?”
Hardly: they’re actually garden variety rich libertarians. Don’t care about religion, screw whoever you want … but don’t you dare even think about getting anywhere near my money. Taxation is theft. Those people are poor because they deserve it. And, of course, my income is scientific proof of how right I am about everything.
First of all, if you think Google is some bleeding-heart liberal company, obviously you’ve never heard of YouTube, home to the most homophobic, vile, alt-right extremist crap in the universe. Which they monetize. Take a listen:
Secondly… yes, a company can totally fire you for your political beliefs. It’s not a protected class. I don’t know if that’s what happened here, but so what? These are the same guys saying that companies shouldn’t be required to serve gay people… but they should be required to employ Republicans?
Get out of town with that. Don’t like it? Don’t use Google products. Can’t not use Google products because they’re too monopolistic? Maybe don’t keep voting for people who think corporations are people and should have more rights than humans.
Eh, that’s not quite what it found.
Specifically, it find that they were libertarian when it came to government regulation. But that’s sightly different than what you suggested.
What the actual study found was:
We show that technology entrepreneurs support liberal redistributive, social, and globalistic policies but conservative regulatory policies—a bundle of preferences rare among other economic elites.
I think you’ll agree that’s different in important ways. Specifically, notice that they are supportive of liberal redistributive policies.
They can “support” whatever they want - are they actually doing it? And I’m not talking about the mega-wealthy Zuckerbergs and such, who can give away a million dollars like most people could give a homeless guy 50 cents.
I mean the Google engineers making a couple hundred grand, etc. How many of them are living tight and austerely off of $100k and donating all that unneeded income to those who are less fortunate? How many are giving away any significant portion of their wealth (significant here meaning such that all they are left with is enough to allow them to live lower-middle class, for example)?
It’s a lot like “supporting” climate change efforts but driving a full sized SUV. Who gives a fuck what they “support,” if they don’t actually have to live that life.
Imagine some of the alt-right trolls that eventually got banned here as your coworker.
Here’s my theory:
Google has close to 100,000 full-time employees. They have an internal version of P&R, and probably a tiny fraction of those 100K folks post there regularly… maybe a couple dozen.
Likely their posting population is pretty similar to ours. They have one or more Scott Gibsons, a few Slyfrogs, your odd Telefrogs, and one or two Timexes. They certainly have an Olaf or maybe two.
This guy was their Malathor. It wasn’t that he didn’t “fit in” with the rest of the folks on the board (though he didin’t), it was that he wasn’t interested in debate – he just wanted to raise hackles, insult people, and make the “Libs” cry.
I imagine he was asked to stop once or twice, but couldn’t help himself because he couldn’t stand the idea of not “winning” the arguments. So they booted him.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, that study was investigating their beliefs… those beliefs then show up in the types of people they support for government.
And those folks do in fact often vote for candidates who would generally be considered left of center.
Again, the only thing that they stray away from the left on, is a lack of support for regulation on industry. And really, as someone who works with the government on tech stuff, I can understand why. Once you get into high tech (or really any kind of highly specialized knowledge field), dealing with government regulators can be absurd, because the folks in government literally do not understand what they are regulating. Remember the “series of tubes”? In a ton of cases, the guys in government are literally incapable of making good regulations, because they don’t know enough. Hell, I’ve recently had to deal with some of the new cybersecurity regulations… they dumb. They were clearly made by folks who didn’t really grasp the core problems, and so they kind of parrot buzzwords, and make regulations which are simultaneously cumbersome and useless.
Anyway, according to that study, the folks they studied tend to be left of center when it came to things like tax policy, or spending that money to help the less fortunate, etc. And they vote for folks who push those ideals.
But again, I don’t care who they support for government. What is stopping them from putting those beliefs into actual practice? Accepting far less pay. Donating large portions of their pay, so that they live like the janitors who clean their buildings, instead of like, well, Googlers.
Supporting things is convenient, because if those things never happen even when you support the candidates, you can conveniently live your very wealthy, upper class life, and never have to actually give up the things that put you in your position of privilege, while all the while you can wring your hands and “support” the removal of that privilege which conveniently never happens.
At the same time, anyone with wealth privilege can very easily give up that privilege today. It’s really simple. Just give away what you have, and don’t accept more than you actually need to live.
Two comments, Sly, keep them in mind:
- You’re reading news of this on the WSJ. Understand the venue and skew, and yes, I do mean skew.
- Even IF Google was in the wrong here, as already mentioned, political views are not a protected employment classification. It’s and at-will employment state like so many others that we all work in. They could fire him for just about anything not protected and be without legal recourse.
Also mentioned, it sure sounds like he took major offense to that initial chat, took offense to the subsequent firing and tried everything he could to bring it to light, attempting to report Google for firing him illegally, and when that failed, apparently talking to news orgs willing to take on the story. All of this as a new employee.
Doesn’t this strike you as … I dunno, like perhaps he has a problem? Maybe he’s a bit sheltered thinking anyone cares about his, “rights,” to be of a political mindset in any way?
We’ve seen this from both sides of the spectrum, so I certainly don’t think it’s just conservatives, Republicans, or well paid Google engineers.
Gman was banned for being an outspoken conservative!
Politics are for the dinner table and your friends at the bar. It’s been that way forever. Mixing politics at the workplace is a recipe for disaster.
Hell, I hate Trump with the heat of a thousand suns, but I don’t even tweet in my personal account about it. And when I’m in job searching mode I scrub my social media of anything that’s even the tiniest bit political.
Yes, we have free speech in this country. You also have the freedom to put your own foot in your mouth if you so choose. I hate Nancy Pelosi and AIPAC too, but I can’t go on rants about them either in public or people will judge me as anti Dem and anti Jewish, even though I’m not either of those things. Try criticizing the GOP and it’s leadership when you work at a bank. You’d be ostracized.
You can’t be so naive as to think you can say anything you want, especially at work, and this guy just learned his lesson. Leave that shit for the pub and your friends and family.
I would understand this, if it wasn’t on a company platform specifically set up for political discussions. Did they fire everyone who discussed their political views on the liberal side too?
I mean, I also don’t think we essentially want to set up political honeypots in the workplace either. “Come discuss your political views here! We’re an open and engaged culture! Oh, no, not those political views, only the right ones. Sorry, you’re fired.”
Yes, I admit, I view it with suspicion - I can easily imagine some race-baiting or misogynistic troll or something similar pretending to not understand why everyone was offended. At the same time, I’ve seen as much liberal intolerance of diverging viewpoints as conservative. That’s why I’d really like to know more about what happened, what was actually posted, what type of parameters were around the forum used, etc.
I don’t really have a problem with him exercising the options available to him after he got fired - I really don’t want to the EEOC and similar functions to again be gated by one’s personal politics.
I agree with you completely. Strangely, where my SO works (a bar,) they ban anything political on any of the TVs. They can’t ban conversations, obviously, but they don’t want any snowflake customer to get triggered by which TV station, news org or political discourse that might be on. They didn’t even air the last two presidential elections. They will gladly put on a sporting event, game, movie or horrible HGN show, way too often. But the general manager knows his customer base is diverse and chooses not to stir the pot directly.
We’re getting to a point in society when people are just expected to not talk about politics at all. Like everyone’s opinion is so special that they shouldn’t take any heat for it or hear any feedback on it. And I truly feel that’s been at least part of the problem for our very vast divide right now. Hell, we post here in what’s described as an echo chamber and I know I surround myself with news, shows and links that tend to uphold my beliefs. It’s really hard to even step outside of my own circle. And yet I remember some good discourse between me and a few of my old drinking friends not that long ago. I miss that. Not because it would usually change my mind but unless you actually listen to people and understand their real issues, it’s so easy to just throw their opinions into a bucket of stupid things you feel are wrong without actually thinking much about them in actuality.
I’m not sure there is a real way out of this spiral either.
Maybe they set it up just so they could tell people to “take it to the P&R board”
That’s a fair point, it was probably a bad idea to set up the forum in the first place. But if he was warned he was appearing to rub people the wrong way, he should have course corrected immediately. This was probably a kid who liked to argue with his friends in college and took that same attitude to the workplace. At that point we can probably chalk it up to nativity on his part, I think.
Just reverse this story and imagine it was a progressive kid working at a bank and posting to the bank’s message board, and was warned. It sucks to lose your job over that but I wouldn’t blame the bank too much. You have to read your audience.
Errrr?
In our country, supporting people for government is putting those beliefs into practice.
You vote for people to implement certain policies. And the group in question here tends to support politicians who support things like increased taxation on the wealthy and application of those revenues to help the less fortunate.
I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to get at here… saying that someone can’t be progressive unless they live like Jesus and give away all their earthly belongings?
I don’t understand your point.
Oh I agree, there is a huge divide and intolerance of opinions from the other side as applies to both parties and mindsets. Right or wrong, we don’t want to listen to it. It’s even harder when in a group of like minded people and the lone opposite player comes into a conversation. He could have easily ruffled feathers of someone in management, even directly in HR.