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Google is struggling to discuss the recent diversity memo controversy internally:
Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, canceled a scheduled all-hands staff meeting—moments before it was scheduled to begin—meant to address concerns over a controversial essay published by former employee James Damore.
In an email to staff, Pichai explained that questions from employees had been leaked and that, in some cases, specific employees' identities were revealed, exposing them to harassment and threats. Instead of today's large-scale meeting, which was to be livestreamed to Google's 60,000 employees worldwide, smaller groups will meet sometime in the future.
"We had hoped to have a frank open discussion today as we always do to bring us together and move forward. But our Dory questions appeared externally this afternoon, and on some websites Googlers are now being named personally," Pichai said in the email.
Also at CNET.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:13PM (3 children)
That sounds like it could be a likely outcome. It's not like Google is going to run out of candidates anytime soon but the pool of candidates could start to become seriously skewed, from the sound of it Google has become like SJW-central already so it could already have happened. From information that has gotten out they have always looked at the extreme end of the hiring curve, the exceptional individuals. Now all that might remain are the exceptional then that also fall into the left of the political spectrum (or GAL-people if you prefer the GAL-TAN-spectrum instead), clearly diminishing their pool of potential talent. Nothing they have said or done so far have alleviated that issue. Which could severely hurt them in the future. Once they could hire people with just the fact that they are Google -- nice paycheck, stock-options and a lot of work-perks like lunches and a "relaxed college atmosphere". But if that all comes at the cost of having to buy and obey their "progressive and diversity agenda" it will or might turn people away, after all there are most likely options that offer similar perks but are not going to be in your face agenda wise.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 12 2017, @07:10PM (2 children)
What's GAL-TAN?
Any ideas for companies that offer the same Google pay and perks?
This will be interesting. To see if the founders brings out the axe and how their tarnished image will affect the companies capability to perform. Must be frustrating to see their creation go south because of sour work climate.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday August 12 2017, @08:46PM (1 child)
GAL-TAN (Green-Alternative-Libertarian vs Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist) is a proposed replacement, or supplement, to the Left-Right-Scale of political views used by some in the political- and social-sciences. Instead of being two-dimensional (left vs right), it adds another dimension (economic left vs economic right on the x-axis, authoritarian vs libertarian on the y-axis). So you get four quadrants (Autho-Left, Autho-Right, Lib-Left, Lib-Right) instead of just being left or right, they are trying to position people better -- how do you want to spend the money and on what and how much rules and nationalism do you like. That said I'm not to sure about it, it's been around for about a decade and it has not caught on with the common man. Also when you put various political parties in there things usually don't change all that much. Basically all the "good" that like diversity, multiculturalism and wanting to blow all the tax money on that gets put in one corner while the once that don't like that and wants to spend all the tax money on defence and law and order get put in the other.
Considering some have already started to write op-ed pieces about Pichai resigning or being fired I guess something is brewing. It's not all glorious articles where people suck up to the mighty Google anymore. But perhaps this won't last.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/opinion/sundar-pichai-google-memo-diversity.html [nytimes.com]
I'm fairly certain that a lot of the similar companies offer similar perks. But then they are also similar in their desires or thought regarding all that might be wrong with Google. So I'm somewhat at a loss really.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 12 2017, @09:53PM
I'll agree that the political dimensions have increased. Now that is something the binary party system of US will have trouble dealing with. The general fault of the GAL movement is lacking order to prevent chaos and to realize real world limits.
I would say that employing traditional and authoritarian system rules usually prevents people from being flexible and to do development either as a person or in a production environment. But that doesn't mean they lack value, however when questioning them or altering the rules. It's necessary to make a systemic analyze as to why they exist in the first place. Sometimes the best move is to not play. Right now it seems we get just two polarities without any sense.
Which seems very much like some divide and conquer being orchestrated.
Being nationalist is very much paying attention to self preservation. But letting that getting in the way of being flexible would be self defeating.
As always one has to delve into the circumstances and inner working of rules and virtues to understand them from a holistic and systematic view such they can be improved rather than changed just for the sake of it. Not much different from making computer systems work.
The current projectory contains a serious backlash because the positions and policies of many players are simply unsustainable. If no conscious and good macro steering is done the most probably fall out is corrective actions taken on the micro level which will result in a chaotic macro level.