This. A thousand times this. They identified a market and branded themselves in a way that profited them while it profited them. There is literally nothing “woke” nor “left” about that and never ever EVER was. No part of US work culture escapes the realities of US work culture. Google profited from differentiating themselves through the perception that they offered some kind of enlightened workplace. That’s how good marketing works. It got them investors. It got people excited about their ideas and tolerant of their bullshit. It attracted competitive talent at competitive cost. It grew their brand. They never had to make that perception true and they only needed it to be believable for long enough to gain advantage.
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You’ve heard of a thing called job retention haven’t you, Mr. Math Wiz?
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I’ve seen this scenario, “X needs to happen or I quit”, play out many times IRL and it never ends well for the person making the threat. This is the usual result. I am honestly surprised anyone who isn’t hopelessly naive tries to pull that anymore.
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Except, you know:
https://mobile.twitter.com/william_fitz/status/1335004771573354496
From what Googlers are saying (e.g. above), Google suddenly decided to enforce a review process that they normally just totally ignored. Which is how this kind of discriminatory fuckery usually works.
And what is being revealed of Googles inner workings (above), there’s not much doubt to benefit Google, so to speak.
According to the Googler’s tweet above, very much the first part, and they don’t even bother with the second. If it was a “rule,” it was largely totally ignored.
Their only real branding was “Don’t be evil.” I guess attempting to not be evil is leftist? That’s the conservative position, that in business, evil is cool? (Never mind, I have the last 40 years of Republican rhetoric about business to tell me that’s the case.)
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To be fair, this isn’t an unaffiliated or independent researcher. She was a staff scientist at that very same corporation. It’s not a professorship with academic norms and freedoms.
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The following article has a bit more detail.
tl;dr Google didn’t like the risks, and probably also the title “stochastic parrots”
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That was always just a catchphrase.
(Posted from my Android tablet. I know, I know…)
Last night I set aside my reservations against horror movies, and sat down to watch Bombshell. The thing about that film, that also applies here, is that when a whistleblower knows they are about to be fired from a toxic work environment(and shields themselves accordingly), then the narrative that reaches the public is not going to resemble what really went down. Not much, anyway.
There is an update, and I’m sure Google apologists will fi d a way to discount this story as well:
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