The blog post is from June 19th. Google Doc from June 17th.
My guess? He shared the Google Doc link with his peers, but forgot that Google Docs links are public for anyone who knows the link, so someone just forwarded it to oblivion, and he was forced to publish that as blog post. The addendums kind of reflect that.
That's a great reminded that any Google Doc with a shareable link is basically a public document for all intents and purposes.
it's typical for googlers to leave a note like this in gdocs when they leave As thats the standard at google. i imagine its the original and google hasnt decided to turn off public sharing on it
9 years ago was 2017-- and by that time Google was already doing sleazy SEO shit, scanning peoples emails to who them ads, trying to make ads seem like general search results etc etc
And yet it directly speaks to the comment it was replying to. It makes the point that RSUs are generally multi-year; so if you're getting them with _any_ frequency, you never get to the point of "the last RSU vests".
But does it matter that it is or isn't privileged? Thats the root question. What are you trying to highlight?
I have to assume you aren't trying to shame someone for moral opinion about talking about facts on the table - as that does 0 for any kind of public discourse.
I think the "last RSU" was more a figure of speech. At some point a person passes above an earnings level where they feel comfortable deactivating the "money making mode" and let their conscience speak.
All of these things are 100% bullshit and always have been. It's tragic that Google actually had people believing them when they championed "don't be evil".
Maybe they should not have joined the company in the first place if they had "morals" or "principles". Yet they still joined in 2017 even after knowing that slogan was removed anyway.
Company mottos, principles, slogans and values are all fake fronts to lure in these sort of people alongside the free food with the carrots on those sticks.
Once that all runs out or the company goes south and stops being a daycare, then they start doing silly virtue signalling posts like this.
Now you are seeing who was there for the 'good vibes', free food, rest n' vest and who was there to keep the company alive.
...And finally we know that this is a love letter to get themselves hired at Anthropic. I think you might need more than that honestly.
yep, and happy to make everyone around them feel guilty when they got theirs. i strongly dislike people who do this performative crap while unfortunately believing in their right to say it.
<rant>
I am so tired of reading these stupid "why I am leaving my job after making millions". One thing I can say about myself: I work for money. That's it. Lots of things the companies that I work for (normally 25,000+ employees) do immoral and unethical things. Still, I stay, earn money, and I don't write stupid fucking self-righteous blog posts after I leave. At this point, blog posts like this look like an "own goal".
</rant>
Whilst I appreciate the commitment to their values, I wonder where they stand on the 'safety' of their users as it relates to the Android Developer Verification update (currently top of HN, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48755965).
"Security" vs Openness
> “make things so secure that we ourselves can’t break them, whether the device costs $1000 or $100, or the user is a celebrity or a refugee“
That can mean different things to different people in different contexts. Could easily mean building a software platform with security features that banks will build their apps to require.
The only stated reason for his resignation is that Google is no longer adhering to their promise to not use AI for weapons. I was surprised that the reasoning was so one-dimensional.
While I don't agree with the author exactly, I do admire someone sticking to their guns (no pun intended). Like Oscar Wild said, "Morality, like art requires drawing a line somewhere".
One of my favorite 80's movies was Real Genius with Val Kilmer. He accidentally helps develop a weapon and then goes to extreme measures to prevent its use. For some people creating weapons is a line they wont cross and that's not a bad thing.
They should have stuck with the charging money model instead of giving away services for the cost of attention.
There is a deep irony in Google becoming one of the greatest corporations ever on the back of an ostensibly socialist utopia business model. Everyone on earth with an internet connection can use the full suite of google products (which pretty much every person reading this chooses to use daily) without having social class be a limiting factor like it is with paid services. Litterally anyone with internet can access and use the same youtube and office suite that a billionaire on his yacht is using (perhaps the billionaire has yt premium though).
And here we are, 25 years later, and google is considered one of the most evil and malicious corporations, despite most people never paying them anything (and a large subset of those never loading one of their ads either).
From a high level POV, its an incredibly perplexing outcome. Compared to someone like Apple, who charges money, has zero openness, and prices to align with first world upper class, still being largely beloved.
You know, Google hinders competition. They are so powerful, they dictate the rules. If you do not play by Google's rules and align to their algorithms, you are allowed to consume, but not to provide. You have to pay them and others to even gain a small amount of visibility in their search results. The Google and YouTube algos are unfair as f*ck and promote the already successful.
Why is this a Google doc and not just an HTML page? I was super-confused when the links didn't behave like normal links. This is like when people post a screenshot of an Apple note.
I came to Google via acquisition end of 2011 and left end of 2021. Google bought my employer so it could further cement its display ads monopoly. They never had a moral compass, they just wore one in a costume so that nobody would dig too closely into their business practices.
We got to wave pitchforks and ask tough questions at TGIF for a while, and march in pride parades under a Google banner, and get fed nice treats and the like but under it all was still just an old fashioned railway monopoly.
A huge fire hose of cash that let it play in all sorts of domains and espouse some vaguely California Ideology liberal/libertarian ideals while doing it.
But the moment that monopoly came under threat and the moment they felt they no longer needed the costume, it came off.
Google never had a moral compass. Anybody who thought it did was naive. It's not possible for a corporate entity to have one.
Uh, its a company. It never had a "moral compass". And if companies had any attributes at all, it would be a Psychopath.
Maaaaaybe when Dunbar's lower number was 13, the people working did. When Dunbar's 150 was hit, sure they had " do no evil" but that was just marketing spiel.
When they bought Doubleclick, that coffin was welded shut and thrown in the ocean. Only the rubes believed the adtech marketing shit.
It's a systemic issue unfortunately. When some of these unethical CEOs say that they feel like they have no control and that if they didn't do it, someone else would, I believe them and it makes sense. That's why they should try to reform the system.
This mirrors my own experience as a European that worked at FAANG in the Bay Area.
It used to be a dream job. Now I've relocated back to Europe and want nothing to do with American Big Tech. It's become toxic and completely counter to my values.
America has become a much darker place that has a very different place in the world. American tech companies have not just accepted, but actively embraced this transition. I am not interested in joining them and being complicit.
It's an interesting time window you chose. Why would there be an anomaly during that window (if there is one)?
Perhaps it is due to the outward-facing, civic-oriented values coming out of WW2?
There was a lot of reflection in America on what went wrong in German pre-war thinking and culture coming out of that period.
The WW2 men in their 20s in 1940 were in their 40s in 1960s and their political power would have kept growing through peer older politicians into the 90s.
I'm glad to see Europeans wising up about the US. But as a Latin American whose country suffered from the US-backed Operation Condor, Yankees being soulless subhuman scum is nothing new. Europe was just too glad to reap the benefits as US allies to care about the truth.
The CIA instigated a coup in Guatemala in '54 which led to a civil war and the Maya genocide.
BIT of a broad brush there but we can take the critique.
While we vote for our leaders we don’t exactly get a say or have awareness of what sort of covert bullshit some over eager Yale graduate is doing as a top secret operation.
>" I still believe in Android as the (currently) best end-user facing operating system for mobile devices, with its balance between openness, flexibility, and security."
I do not give a shit whether it is the best. If one can be cut off instantly by whims of some algo with no recourse - thank you but I'll pass. Yes I still use Android phone but mostly as phone, GPS and camera all of which can be replaced.
I do not develop for Android or iOS exactly for the reason of not being in control. Stick to desktops, servers and browsers as deployment platforms
> When Google offered me the job of Director of Android Platform Security in 2017, it was impossible to refuse. Yes, Trump was already president—my family and I had qualms—but he seemed contained, even ineffective.
Why make this about trump and politics. It’s just a job.
Can anyone in this industry really say goodbye without posting it? We act like artists, believing our ideals will illuminate the world with our moral compass.
Not until tech companies stop pretending tech jobs are special. It’s part of the entire industry culture at this point that you join certain positions to “make a big difference.”
Yet most startups are just b2b AI sass or whatever.
These tech-bro public resignations are so tedious. Ostensibly he seems fine with the existence of AI mass surveillance and AI powered murderbots but he just never envisioned a scenario where they would get used that wasn't congruent with his politics.
That doesn't appear to be stopping the current administration. That's why I think you should be more concerned about the tools of oppression existing rather than the laws that govern them.
The last time I worked for someone else was 1992 so one didn't really use personal sites like this where one would whine about why they left their job for all the world to see. We all have our reasons for quitting but something like this just gathers the "Yeah!!" crowd but no one gains anything from it and it's quickly forgotten.
You've already forgotten the content of his post now. Right?
Good for you, just try to remember those old days when you complained about bosses and "whine" about things to your friends and some work colleges about day to day stuff. Now think what you would say about a situation when you were fed up and had to quit because you couldn't take it anymore and every day you had these tasks going against your values ( doesn't matter if they are "right" or "wrong", they are yours ).
Also, Google is a multi-billion dreadnought with hundreds of millions of dollars for PR, lawyers and lobbying every year. I'm sure they can take a post about someone "whining" and quitting their job in disagreement. Something tells me Google be fine...
Pathetic whining. He's upset that Google abandoned their carbon-neutral goal? Welcome to the real world, adults deal in trade-offs, and Google must play in AI or resign itself from the future of technology. And similarly, America has military interests that demand the involvement of the private sector. You'd think that after four years of war a few hundred miles from Austria's borders, this man would start to get it. But he's still living in the ivory tower of luxury beliefs.
This comment make a couple assumptions I don't agree with:
1. That technological development and a "carbon neutral goal" are incompatible. Carbon neutrality is precisely a problem of technological development, with green energy, battery technology, and improving the grid all on the vanguard of modern technological development. The problems caused by global warming will only get more severe (even if they don't cause the apocalypse) and these technological issues will be correspondingly more important for the survival of any other tech that depends on energy.
2. That America's military interests and private sector involvement are inevitable. I think that Google could influence an overly militaristic policy precisely by withholding support. We are _not_ a dictatorship where everyone and every institution must bend their will to the leader, and changes are in fact sometimes made through a show of resistance. This may be a somewhat naive view, but I think it's more correct than one that sees US politics as so inevitable that even Google has no choice but to fall in line. Sure, it would probably cost them to resist, but as another commenter pointed out: ethical decisions typically have a cost.
I can't imagine ignoring personal ethics in career decisions. I also find it troubling when personal ethics are inaccurately dismissed as "identity politics". Supporting carbon-neutrality and rejecting military applications are clearly matters of personal ethics.
They're resigning because Google is complicit in killing people. How is that "identity politics"? Do you just throw the word "identity" in there for no reason?
identity pol: "people organize and advocate based on shared demographic characteristics"
What in this post is possibly identity politics? It sounds like personal ethics to me. I don't appreciate identity politics, and when you muddy the term with having a spine and anything you don't like you make it harder to debate the actual problems the term is normally associated with.
When did m'lord permit you to use that serf mind to imagine? Ethics are for brains but your lot are for grains.
When you view someone's choices for purpose & ethical boundaries through a lens that presents as identity politics, you are revealing your alienation from civilization. Talent with basic freedoms can be selective about their pursuits. If you hold a idea that you are a mercenary or machinery, consider how useful that is to ambitious sociopaths that have abandoned civilization.
Why post a Google docs copy of the original article?
https://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/post/leaving-google/
The blog post is from June 19th. Google Doc from June 17th.
My guess? He shared the Google Doc link with his peers, but forgot that Google Docs links are public for anyone who knows the link, so someone just forwarded it to oblivion, and he was forced to publish that as blog post. The addendums kind of reflect that.
That's a great reminded that any Google Doc with a shareable link is basically a public document for all intents and purposes.
Discussion of the blog post (284 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496396
The blog post now also contains a second addendum that the Google doc doesn't have.
I think that article is rather a copy of the original Google Doc, judging by the included go link.
it's typical for googlers to leave a note like this in gdocs when they leave As thats the standard at google. i imagine its the original and google hasnt decided to turn off public sharing on it
> Google was a different company 9 years ago.
No it wasn’t.
actually it was. they were no angels. but a majority of devs wanted to do good. now everyone wanta to make a quick buck no matter what.
im surprised dave is still there too. probably can't let it go...
yeah, looks like some history rewriting.
9 years ago was 2017-- and by that time Google was already doing sleazy SEO shit, scanning peoples emails to who them ads, trying to make ads seem like general search results etc etc
Google was *exactly* this company it is today
The "Don't be evil" motto was diluted in 2015 when alphabet was formed, and taken down in 2018, so yeah, things were brewing from before.
The author of this article disagrees:
> “Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan of often-referenced Googliness—it was a north star for teams making hard calls.
It definitely counts for something that at least one senior leader felt the slogan was relevant for decision making.
The author is not cynical enough.
Do you going around telling people how virtuous you are? No, good people just try and be good.
The slogan was a red flag right from the start.
Morals only matter when they restrain someone from doing something beneficial to themselves.
Absent a stake in the outcome, it's just virtue signaling.
And when Google was forced to choose between juicing ad revenue and its morals, it chose the former.
And it was just something that some guy said in a meeting
That’s quite a bit different from helping to kill people.
Let’s not lump every ethical issue into one. And not conflate SEO sleaze with aiding murder.
Truer words have never be told. It truly wasn't. Google had been rotten for a very long time.
"Google was a different company n years ago" where n is how long they've been there + ~6 to 12 months
The employee experience was very different 9y ago.
16 years ago it was
Isn't his just weird repost of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496396 ?
Maybe send it out like a leak to get more attraction?
moral clarity usually sharpens the moment the last RSU hits the brokerage account
Sometimes.
Sometimes not.
I left with more than 4 million in RSU's left.
Pretty much any Googler who leaves will be leaving lots of money on the table.
This is because they are usually 3/4 year grants, so it's pretty much impossible to leave without lots of unvested RSU.
There are some 1 year grants, but those are much more uncommon (~1%)
This must have been a long time ago? Because that's leaving over a billion dollars "on the table" at the current price.
"in RSUs", I think that meant $4M, not 4M shares.
You realize how insanely privileged that is?
Not just the facts but the frame. Amazing.
And yet it directly speaks to the comment it was replying to. It makes the point that RSUs are generally multi-year; so if you're getting them with _any_ frequency, you never get to the point of "the last RSU vests".
It remains privileged. I have my golden handcuffs too, probably most on HN do. That doesn’t change the reality expressed.
But does it matter that it is or isn't privileged? Thats the root question. What are you trying to highlight?
I have to assume you aren't trying to shame someone for moral opinion about talking about facts on the table - as that does 0 for any kind of public discourse.
Yes you’re right. I’m sure nothing good can come from recognizing privilege. Especially in a thread reeking of it with no one else mentioning it.
You’re right sir.
Nothing advanced here. I’ll get back to lashing myself for my insolence.
Lol JFC
I think the "last RSU" was more a figure of speech. At some point a person passes above an earnings level where they feel comfortable deactivating the "money making mode" and let their conscience speak.
almost like it's by design!
Alphabet dropped “don’t be evil” from its moto in 2015. This guy went in knowing how the sausage was being made.
Motto's, slogans, mission statements...
All of these things are 100% bullshit and always have been. It's tragic that Google actually had people believing them when they championed "don't be evil".
they did not. it’s still right there in the code of conduct
https://abc.xyz/investor/board-and-governance/google-code-of...
scroll to the bottom
> scroll to the bottom
that illustrates the point nicely...
"But the motto was on display..."
"Yes, it was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
That is not corporate motto.
the motto was always a part of the code of conduct (it was the preface), it just moved from google's to alphabet's when it became a subsidiary.
Maybe they should not have joined the company in the first place if they had "morals" or "principles". Yet they still joined in 2017 even after knowing that slogan was removed anyway.
Company mottos, principles, slogans and values are all fake fronts to lure in these sort of people alongside the free food with the carrots on those sticks.
Once that all runs out or the company goes south and stops being a daycare, then they start doing silly virtue signalling posts like this.
Now you are seeing who was there for the 'good vibes', free food, rest n' vest and who was there to keep the company alive.
...And finally we know that this is a love letter to get themselves hired at Anthropic. I think you might need more than that honestly.
Post-deposit clarity
>*"You cannot explain something to somebody whose livelihood depends upon [others] not understanding..."
Something. $omething. something. $teinbeck?
yep, and happy to make everyone around them feel guilty when they got theirs. i strongly dislike people who do this performative crap while unfortunately believing in their right to say it.
Exactly.
<rant> I am so tired of reading these stupid "why I am leaving my job after making millions". One thing I can say about myself: I work for money. That's it. Lots of things the companies that I work for (normally 25,000+ employees) do immoral and unethical things. Still, I stay, earn money, and I don't write stupid fucking self-righteous blog posts after I leave. At this point, blog posts like this look like an "own goal". </rant>
Also his complaints about morale compass failure are largely activism goals. Hard to make money when you waste it.
I tell employers I’m clearly a mercenary and I am only here for the money. I do great work, but I’ve been compensated well.
Whilst I appreciate the commitment to their values, I wonder where they stand on the 'safety' of their users as it relates to the Android Developer Verification update (currently top of HN, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48755965).
"Security" vs Openness
> “make things so secure that we ourselves can’t break them, whether the device costs $1000 or $100, or the user is a celebrity or a refugee“
That can mean different things to different people in different contexts. Could easily mean building a software platform with security features that banks will build their apps to require.
That is wasn't even covered says enough for me.
Google never had a moral compass. They went in, got their money, and left when it was easy and barely affected them. They still profited.
> Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass
This needs a "2004" date.
he resigned because of... "politics"? and not because of the path Google has chosen for Android security?
The only stated reason for his resignation is that Google is no longer adhering to their promise to not use AI for weapons. I was surprised that the reasoning was so one-dimensional.
While I don't agree with the author exactly, I do admire someone sticking to their guns (no pun intended). Like Oscar Wild said, "Morality, like art requires drawing a line somewhere".
One of my favorite 80's movies was Real Genius with Val Kilmer. He accidentally helps develop a weapon and then goes to extreme measures to prevent its use. For some people creating weapons is a line they wont cross and that's not a bad thing.
The actual reason is right at the top: he's a director who was "promoted" to IC.
He has not been responsible for Android Security since 2019.
https://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/post/leaving-google/
They are one and the same.
"Enough of my equity has vested, virtue signal engage."
google used to be cool
25 years ago
They should have stuck with the charging money model instead of giving away services for the cost of attention.
There is a deep irony in Google becoming one of the greatest corporations ever on the back of an ostensibly socialist utopia business model. Everyone on earth with an internet connection can use the full suite of google products (which pretty much every person reading this chooses to use daily) without having social class be a limiting factor like it is with paid services. Litterally anyone with internet can access and use the same youtube and office suite that a billionaire on his yacht is using (perhaps the billionaire has yt premium though).
And here we are, 25 years later, and google is considered one of the most evil and malicious corporations, despite most people never paying them anything (and a large subset of those never loading one of their ads either).
From a high level POV, its an incredibly perplexing outcome. Compared to someone like Apple, who charges money, has zero openness, and prices to align with first world upper class, still being largely beloved.
You know, Google hinders competition. They are so powerful, they dictate the rules. If you do not play by Google's rules and align to their algorithms, you are allowed to consume, but not to provide. You have to pay them and others to even gain a small amount of visibility in their search results. The Google and YouTube algos are unfair as f*ck and promote the already successful.
Your comment in itself is deeply ironic.
Not as cool as Yahoo! used to be.
A typical case of false nostalgia for something that never existed .
[dupe] Discussion on website source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496396
Why is this a Google doc and not just an HTML page? I was super-confused when the links didn't behave like normal links. This is like when people post a screenshot of an Apple note.
Because it was intended for colleagues and not the wider public.
https://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/post/leaving-google/
"Don't be evil" was just a diversion from a path that was laid out from the beginning.
And it worked --- for a while. Until the path became impossible to deny.
Yeah, I'm sure the "don't be evil" charade was good marketing from the get-go or else they would've never taken In-Q-Tel funding.
I came to Google via acquisition end of 2011 and left end of 2021. Google bought my employer so it could further cement its display ads monopoly. They never had a moral compass, they just wore one in a costume so that nobody would dig too closely into their business practices.
We got to wave pitchforks and ask tough questions at TGIF for a while, and march in pride parades under a Google banner, and get fed nice treats and the like but under it all was still just an old fashioned railway monopoly.
A huge fire hose of cash that let it play in all sorts of domains and espouse some vaguely California Ideology liberal/libertarian ideals while doing it.
But the moment that monopoly came under threat and the moment they felt they no longer needed the costume, it came off.
Google never had a moral compass. Anybody who thought it did was naive. It's not possible for a corporate entity to have one.
Uh, its a company. It never had a "moral compass". And if companies had any attributes at all, it would be a Psychopath.
Maaaaaybe when Dunbar's lower number was 13, the people working did. When Dunbar's 150 was hit, sure they had " do no evil" but that was just marketing spiel.
When they bought Doubleclick, that coffin was welded shut and thrown in the ocean. Only the rubes believed the adtech marketing shit.
While I can understand the concerns, I wouldn't use a google doc to air my grievances though
It's a systemic issue unfortunately. When some of these unethical CEOs say that they feel like they have no control and that if they didn't do it, someone else would, I believe them and it makes sense. That's why they should try to reform the system.
This mirrors my own experience as a European that worked at FAANG in the Bay Area.
It used to be a dream job. Now I've relocated back to Europe and want nothing to do with American Big Tech. It's become toxic and completely counter to my values.
America has become a much darker place that has a very different place in the world. American tech companies have not just accepted, but actively embraced this transition. I am not interested in joining them and being complicit.
European companies aren’t much different so just be sure to check where you stand first before you’re SURE you’ve actually escaped.
Darker than what other point in America’s history?
Perhaps darker than the initial mild optimism of the early internet.
It is easy to forget US history as the vast majority of us have only been exposed to the 1960s to 2000s era which in retrospect seem like an anomaly.
It's an interesting time window you chose. Why would there be an anomaly during that window (if there is one)?
Perhaps it is due to the outward-facing, civic-oriented values coming out of WW2?
There was a lot of reflection in America on what went wrong in German pre-war thinking and culture coming out of that period.
The WW2 men in their 20s in 1940 were in their 40s in 1960s and their political power would have kept growing through peer older politicians into the 90s.
I'm glad to see Europeans wising up about the US. But as a Latin American whose country suffered from the US-backed Operation Condor, Yankees being soulless subhuman scum is nothing new. Europe was just too glad to reap the benefits as US allies to care about the truth.
The CIA instigated a coup in Guatemala in '54 which led to a civil war and the Maya genocide.
BIT of a broad brush there but we can take the critique.
While we vote for our leaders we don’t exactly get a say or have awareness of what sort of covert bullshit some over eager Yale graduate is doing as a top secret operation.
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
>" I still believe in Android as the (currently) best end-user facing operating system for mobile devices, with its balance between openness, flexibility, and security."
I do not give a shit whether it is the best. If one can be cut off instantly by whims of some algo with no recourse - thank you but I'll pass. Yes I still use Android phone but mostly as phone, GPS and camera all of which can be replaced.
I do not develop for Android or iOS exactly for the reason of not being in control. Stick to desktops, servers and browsers as deployment platforms
This dude only now thinks Google has lost its moral compass? In 2026?
Bruh.
"I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy"
> When Google offered me the job of Director of Android Platform Security in 2017, it was impossible to refuse. Yes, Trump was already president—my family and I had qualms—but he seemed contained, even ineffective.
Why make this about trump and politics. It’s just a job.
> Why make this about trump and politics.
They go on to explain exactly why in the fifth paragraph.
> It’s just a job.
Nobody operates in a vacuum.
> Why make this about trump and politics
Because that's who and what you empower when you work for a company that works with said administration.
> It’s just a job.
So was being a concentration camp guard.
Can anyone in this industry really say goodbye without posting it? We act like artists, believing our ideals will illuminate the world with our moral compass.
This is surreal.
Not until tech companies stop pretending tech jobs are special. It’s part of the entire industry culture at this point that you join certain positions to “make a big difference.”
Yet most startups are just b2b AI sass or whatever.
This was a post to colleagues.
Someone else shared it out. Now, calm down. Your acting emotional. Maybe try smiling.
These tech-bro public resignations are so tedious. Ostensibly he seems fine with the existence of AI mass surveillance and AI powered murderbots but he just never envisioned a scenario where they would get used that wasn't congruent with his politics.
Ratified treaties are the supreme law of the land and he's pointing out "all lawful uses" isn't what the admin says it is.
That doesn't appear to be stopping the current administration. That's why I think you should be more concerned about the tools of oppression existing rather than the laws that govern them.
The last time I worked for someone else was 1992 so one didn't really use personal sites like this where one would whine about why they left their job for all the world to see. We all have our reasons for quitting but something like this just gathers the "Yeah!!" crowd but no one gains anything from it and it's quickly forgotten.
You've already forgotten the content of his post now. Right?
> The last time I worked for someone else was 1992
Sometimes it’s fine to see a topic and tell yourself “I have no relevant knowledge in this area so I won’t comment”.
1992 is actually insane, this is before common commercial email.
Good for you, just try to remember those old days when you complained about bosses and "whine" about things to your friends and some work colleges about day to day stuff. Now think what you would say about a situation when you were fed up and had to quit because you couldn't take it anymore and every day you had these tasks going against your values ( doesn't matter if they are "right" or "wrong", they are yours ).
Also, Google is a multi-billion dreadnought with hundreds of millions of dollars for PR, lawyers and lobbying every year. I'm sure they can take a post about someone "whining" and quitting their job in disagreement. Something tells me Google be fine...
>but no one gains anything from it
venting can be helpful mentally/emotionally.
readers can feel solidarity, comfort in a shared experience, etc.
This was a post shared with colleagues. Apparently, reaching out to colleagues and friends is verboten now?
You are getting emotional. Maybe try calming down?
everyone _works for someone else_, it's entirely about what the structure of that relationship is.
You don't make your own food do you? Build your own car? Make your own git repos?
Seems like you might want to have a better view about who you work for.
Your comment has nothing to do with what I wrote.
Pathetic whining. He's upset that Google abandoned their carbon-neutral goal? Welcome to the real world, adults deal in trade-offs, and Google must play in AI or resign itself from the future of technology. And similarly, America has military interests that demand the involvement of the private sector. You'd think that after four years of war a few hundred miles from Austria's borders, this man would start to get it. But he's still living in the ivory tower of luxury beliefs.
This comment make a couple assumptions I don't agree with:
1. That technological development and a "carbon neutral goal" are incompatible. Carbon neutrality is precisely a problem of technological development, with green energy, battery technology, and improving the grid all on the vanguard of modern technological development. The problems caused by global warming will only get more severe (even if they don't cause the apocalypse) and these technological issues will be correspondingly more important for the survival of any other tech that depends on energy.
2. That America's military interests and private sector involvement are inevitable. I think that Google could influence an overly militaristic policy precisely by withholding support. We are _not_ a dictatorship where everyone and every institution must bend their will to the leader, and changes are in fact sometimes made through a show of resistance. This may be a somewhat naive view, but I think it's more correct than one that sees US politics as so inevitable that even Google has no choice but to fall in line. Sure, it would probably cost them to resist, but as another commenter pointed out: ethical decisions typically have a cost.
I cannot imagine allowing identity politics to drive your career decisions.
I can't imagine ignoring personal ethics in career decisions. I also find it troubling when personal ethics are inaccurately dismissed as "identity politics". Supporting carbon-neutrality and rejecting military applications are clearly matters of personal ethics.
They're resigning because Google is complicit in killing people. How is that "identity politics"? Do you just throw the word "identity" in there for no reason?
Then, I'm sorry to say, you have no spine
When you have no morals to speak of, it doesn't come up much.
"identity politics" is such a lame way of saying "having a conscience".
I cannot imagine actively working towards what one believes would be a worse world.
It's just regular politics, no identity involved. Everything is political - including our careers.
identity pol: "people organize and advocate based on shared demographic characteristics"
What in this post is possibly identity politics? It sounds like personal ethics to me. I don't appreciate identity politics, and when you muddy the term with having a spine and anything you don't like you make it harder to debate the actual problems the term is normally associated with.
The person youre replying to also employed the term TDS in recent comments, which I believe refers to Trump Devotion Syndrome.
Muddying waters and making debate impossible are his goals. He hoped to antagonize everyone with his trigger word.
When did m'lord permit you to use that serf mind to imagine? Ethics are for brains but your lot are for grains.
When you view someone's choices for purpose & ethical boundaries through a lens that presents as identity politics, you are revealing your alienation from civilization. Talent with basic freedoms can be selective about their pursuits. If you hold a idea that you are a mercenary or machinery, consider how useful that is to ambitious sociopaths that have abandoned civilization.