The Next Level Of Tech Activism: Google Employees Walk Out, Demand Changes From Management

from the time-for-some-changes dept

Fri, Nov 2nd 2018 1:38pm — Mike Masnick

Over the summer we wrote about the increase in employees at big tech companies leading internal protests against business decisions made by those companies -- mostly around providing tools to the government or military that might be used in ways that many people find to be immoral. It was interesting to see this play out (and stay tuned for next week's podcast, where this will be discussed). More recently, there have been similar protests from within Google over its plans to reenter the Chinese market with a government-approved version of its search engine.

Yesterday, thousands of Google employees took this to another level. Following a recent (horrific) NY Times piece on massive failures by Google management in dealing with sexual misconduct at the company, Google employees all over the world participated in a walkout protest over management's activity. They also put together what appears to be a fairly modest list of demands, including an end to forced arbitration over harassment and discrimination claims, further commitments to fight pay and opportunity inequality at the company, transparency on sexual harassment at the company, a better way for reporting sexual misconduct, an elevated role for a "Chief Diversity Officer," and adding an "Employee Representative" to the Board of Directors.

I have a bunch of thoughts on this -- some of which I may explore more deeply in future posts, but at a first pass, I think this kind of activism by employees is a very good thing. Remember, Silicon Valley has long promoted the idea that its workforce is much more closely aligned with management than traditional companies, in part because of the free flowing nature of stock options and grants. As someone who spent years studying traditional labor/management malfunctions, the more mutually aligned approach that Silicon Valley claimed to have had in the past was a huge part of its strength and a key reason why the industry as a whole has been so innovative. Unfortunately, in the past few years, it does seem that this alignment has diverged, and in too many cases, management has been pursuing growth and opportunities in ways that go against the interests and beliefs of the employees. There may be reasons for this, but they're not good ones.

While Silicon Valley has long had an antagonistic view towards traditional labor organizing and unions (which I think is the right call for a whole host of structural reasons), it's fascinating to watch employees at these companies gravitate toward these kinds of protest behaviors to make their voices heard.

As we've discussed for many years, the power of innovation in Silicon Valley is driven by its employees and their ability to continue to innovate and create wonderful new things -- and to take their brainpower and move to other companies. Perhaps it's no surprise that, as we've had a few companies become bigger and bigger over the past few years, there's a center of gravity that has allowed management and an employee base to lose the alignment of interests. It's an unfortunate trend and one that hopefully these actions can help correct.

On a related note, the idea of an employee representative on the board is a fascinating one. Other countries (most notably Germany) have done this under law (and we discussed a proposed law to do this in the US just a few months ago on our podcast). I think companies would be much better served in doing so, if only (again) to better align the incentives of the employees and the overall company, which should lead to better long term results.

My one quibble with the list of demands is with the focus on the "Chief Diversity Officer." It is not that I'm opposed to companies focusing on diversity as a goal -- I think that's actually especially valuable in a company that seeks to serve nearly the entire globe with services. But, it reminds me of the rush a decade ago for companies to create Chief Digital Officers. As I said back then, a Chief Digital Officer made it look like you treated "thinking digitally" as just another silo, rather than something the entire company had to understand at a gut level. The same is true of diversity. Having it be a "role" in the company perhaps might make sense as a forcing function to make sure that someone is making sure that the company is moving in the right direction, but to achieve true diversity within a company, you need everyone to understand, deeply, the value of diversity in helping to push companies forward, to build truly innovative products, and to understand how those products and services could potentially impact millions or billions of people (in both good and bad ways). So nothing against placing an emphasis on diversity, but creating a Chief Diversity Officer feels a bit too limiting, and creates a situation where it's too easy for people to pass the buck and assume that diversity is an issue for that role to focus on, rather than for everyone to focus on.

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Filed Under: activism, diversity, management, sexual misconduct, silicon valley, tech activism, walkout
Companies: google

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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 1:45pm

> Silicon Valley has long promoted the idea that its workforce is much more closely aligned with management than traditional companies

In this case, maybe not so much:

https://qz.com/work/1326942/sergey-brin-started-google-with-some-strange-ideas-about-his-female -employees-according-to-a-new-book/
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Barney Google with the big Googly eyes (old song), 2 Nov 2018 @ 1:48pm

The Register puzzles what it means to be "Googly":
Googlers walk out over 'sex pest' executive scandals - We [The Register] went along to CEO-approved demo in San Francisco

The speakers tried out a range of traditional call-and-responses which elicited heartfelt but low-key responses. Bizarrely, the most popular chant spoke to the peculiar insularity and cult-like tech culture that has come to dominate this city: "This is what it means to be Googly," the loudspeaker offered again and again. Which presumably means something to the gathered masses but which left bystanders notably confused.

Sheesh.

"Googly" means vague grrr and stuff, DESERVES HOOTS.

PS: thanks for quick response covering this after I suggest, fulfilling my need for hoots.
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Barney Google with the big Googly eyes (old song), 2 Nov 2018 @ 1:53pm

Re: The Register puzzles what it means to be "Googly":
The Left is funniest when they try to be consistent. What a bunch of deluded numchucks. -- But they'll be loyal because highly paid from the nearly free money that Google gets.

They're just NPCs, though, mere decoration, sex toys, and organ donors for the few at the top.
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Barney Google with the big Googly eyes (old song), 2 Nov 2018 @ 1:53pm

Re: The Register puzzles what it means to be "Googly":
The Left is funniest when they try to be consistent. What a bunch of deluded numchucks. -- But they'll be loyal because highly paid from the nearly free money that Google gets.

They're just NPCs, though, mere decoration, sex toys, and organ donors for the few at the top.
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Barney Google with the big Googly eyes (old song), 2 Nov 2018 @ 1:55pm

Re: Re: The Register puzzles what it means to be "Googly":
From another IP address because got the "Held for Moderation" LIE, yet it went through second try! So my guess is an Administrator blocked the prior IP address, cause ALL the text got through without change. Explain that, Techdirt.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 1:59pm

They're just NPCs

At least that means they’re not getting played.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 2:12pm

Re: Re: The Register puzzles what it means to be "Googly":
If you think Google management is "left" then wtf is right anymore?

It is strange that when some big daddy warbucks corp announces its record breaking profits it is a good thing and there are drinks all around, but when Google reports a profit (not even a record) it is money stolen from ... just who is it stolen from anyways?
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 2:19pm

If you think Google management is "left" then wtf is right anymore?

A largely meaningless label. If you believe you're on the "left", the "right" is everyone you disagree with, and vice versa. Details don't matter, just root for your team.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 2:44pm

Re: Re: The Register puzzles what it means to be "Googly":
Strange.

I've found in most games that NPCs are more likely to be irrelevant constructs that often talk to to themselves multiple times.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 2:47pm

If I ever make a game, I now know what I will call two of the NPCs within it: Shiva and Ayyadurai.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 2:51pm

I bet men aren't hiring anywhere near as many women as they used to out of fear of #metoo.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 3:06pm

What do you have that backs up your assertion being anything other than your own personal opinion?
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Bamboo Harvester (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 3:12pm

And tomorrow's headline...
...Thousands of positions available world wide at Google...
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keithzg (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 3:19pm

left/right

A largely meaningless label. If you believe you're on the "left", the "right" is everyone you disagree with, and vice versa. Details don't matter, just root for your team.

While that's true in the abstract, I feel like the self-identified "right" is worse about this than those who self-identify as other political designations, however. In particular, the recurring meme in American political thought lately of "the left is, and always has been the real fascists!" and such is just so hilarious and ahistorical that if I didn't know better I'd think there was something in the water.

But yeah, compressing the multidimensional and multirelational facets of human society down to a single one-dimensional continuum is already a nearly psychotically oversimplified way to see the world, and then to further compress that down to a binary value of just two options . . . it's a mindblowingly dumb approach, and yet somehow it's almost taken as a given in much of (certainly American, but even elsewhere) discourse about politics and society.

Everything collapsed down to us-vs-them, the home team versus the visiting team, the good guys fighting valiantly against the bad guys in an uncomplicated narrative of heroism and black-and-white morality, with any of the shared assumptions unquestioned but the differences blown up to mythological proportions. (For instance: The "left" side of American politics offers a system where the government arranges a somewhat-regulated health insurance market as if that's anything near a real solution rather than just a band-aid . . . but then anyways the "right" side of the publicly-acknowledged debate decries this minor arrangement of for-profit companies as overt socialism?)

And then when trying to go "beyond" that, we mostly just get "bipartisanship" or, on the more critical end, lamentations about "both sides"; even the critiques of the status quo implicitly presume the reality of a binary possibility space for all of organized human endeavors. It's an astonishingly unimaginative worldview, and all the more depressing for its ubiquity, and how it shackles our democratic institutions.

Here in Canada, for instance, the Ontario government just prematurely killed an experiment in Universal Basic Income; can't even let the other side gather data about possible programs, never mind the idea of letting people decide what to do with money (rather than the government directly spending it themselves) sounds pretty right-wing to begin with, this is a program started by the Liberal government so the Conservatives will be damned if they let it even have a chance of succeeding in any way . . .

But hey, I'm getting off topic, and TGIF right?

[sobs uncontrollably]
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keithzg (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 3:20pm

Re: And tomorrow's headline...
That would be an exceptionally idiotic move by Google PR-wise, particularly as they're fighting desperately these days to not be seen as being (or at least becoming) the bad guys.
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Christenson, 2 Nov 2018 @ 3:24pm

Chief Morale Officer???
Perhaps the Chief diversity officer should be the Chief Morale Officer... in charge of diversity and other moral and morale issues that affect the company.

As to that alignment between engineers and managers...the problem is, one bug in Chrome, or whatever other product it is, the origin of which has a lot to do with how a developer feels, can do *huge* amounts of damage to the company. And it's really tough to measure value in that kind of environment.
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Bamboo Harvester (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 3:32pm

Re: Re: And tomorrow's headline...
And it would only happen... ONCE.

Which could be recovered from. With enough spin, they could sell it as a "good" thing.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 3:45pm

Re:
Two years of public figures coming out with statement that they are less likely to take one-on-one meetings or projects, without a third-party chaperone of sorts, to observe the interaction. Guilty-until-innocent is a high-stakes game with no upside and horrific downsides.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:00pm

Re: Re:
(Anecdotes are not evidence)
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:05pm

Re:
Perhaps the biggest farce is the way the press uses "far left" and "far right" (terms which practically no person or organization self-identifies as) which by any measure should be roughly equal in number if defined by any kind of neutral centrist position, but instead the terms seem primarily used as a sort of weapon to try to smear people whose political views the writers (or their bosses) don't like.

A quick Google search returns this:

"far left" on nytimes.com = 8300 search results
"far right" on nytimes.com = 380,000 search results

"far left" on breitbart.com = 38,900 search results
"far right" on breitbart.com = 2,820 search results
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:08pm

Re: Chief Morale Officer???

...the problem is, one bug in Chrome, or whatever other product it is, the origin of which has a lot to do with how a developer feels, can do huge amounts of damage to the company.

"Bug" is just a nice word for "mistake". Many people in other industries get fired for making mistakes.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:32pm

Re: Re: Re: And tomorrow's headline...
No need to fire everyone, just find out who the ringleaders are and dispose of them using any of the various tried and true ways of non-firing firing. Reward the people who refused to join the walkout. Nothing new, it's what companies have been doing for ages. Anyone who thinks this will be the last walkout should prepare themselves for a rude awakening. Such things never end on their own.
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CyberKender, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:43pm

"The Next Level Of Tech Activism:"
Isn't that just the tried and true first step to forming a union?
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WalnutCreek, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:43pm

Re: Who owns Google
well, the owners of Google (Alphabet Inc) control that company.
If any Google employees or outsiders object to any Google operations/policies -- such objections ultimately reside against the specific Google owners.

Just five men basically own and control Google :

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the dominant stockholders and together have 51% of the corporate voting power. Their choices control Google overall.
The three other major Google owners are Eric Schmidt, Sundar Pichai, and John Doerr.

So Google ain't some humongous, mysterious, inscrutable behemoth, galactic corporate entity -- it's really just a few flesh & blood guys like the rest of us.
Business owners call the shots -- talk to them if you don't like the way they run their business.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:44pm

Re: Re: Who owns Google
Ummm - ok
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Mike Pence, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:49pm

Re: Re:
I never am in a room alone with a woman other than my wife

or something like that
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:50pm

Re:
Is Vegas giving odds on that?
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 4:54pm

Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
"Many people in other industries get fired for making mistakes."

It depends doesn't it?

Was it a mistake to not follow procedure? - that's a firing
Was it a mistake to spill your coffee? - no big deal, clean it up
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Anonymous Monkey (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 5:36pm

Re: Chief Morale Officer???
The Beatings will continue until morale improves!!!
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Christenson, 2 Nov 2018 @ 7:36pm

Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
First, firing people for mistakes means you get people who won't take risks of being wrong. Then a company like SpaceX comes along, makes a few mistakes, and gives Boeing and the rest of the world quite a run for its money.

Second, its code... they think there were still half a dozen bugs in the code for the space shuttle, and it was some of the most intensively studied code in the world. Any complicated code is going to have bugs.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 7:56pm

Re: Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???

Was it a mistake to spill your coffee? - no big deal, clean it up

Must be nice to live in such a sheltered world. Your job is to serve coffee and you spill it on someone? Fired. Or spill your coffee in some equipment? Fired. And your former employer can report it as termination for cause, which means you will not be eligible for unemployment benefits either. If you had medical insurance, that will be gone too. Better hope you don't get sick. Especially if you become homeless and wind up living under a bridge.

For spilling coffee.
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That One Guy (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 7:57pm

Re:
I mean, the name would be fitting for that level of behavior, but why would you want to be reminded of them on a regular basis by putting them in a game like that?
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 8:19pm

Re: Re:
which by any measure should be roughly equal in number if defined by any kind of neutral centrist position

Certainly not "by any measure". That's just one potential way of defining and using that scale. It's easy to think of at least two others, and I see no reason to immediately declare one to be the only valid one:
- The scale could be based on any geographical and temporal scope, which necessarily recalibrates it. The national and global scales are going to look very different, as are scales based on the past decade versus the past century versus the past millennium. And all combinations thereof. All of which could be valid ways of categorizing political stances, and most of which would mean that that "far left" and "far right" would rarely be perfectly balanced in any one given time or place.
- The scale could be based on more abstract definitions of political principles, or incorporate rubrics of abstract criteria, in which case it would be fixed (subject to some interpretation) and again would in no way require the far left and far right to be balanced at any given time.
Which is not to say that people don't also use those terms subjectively as a way of expressing a negative opinion about a political view. But the idea that the scale must always have an even distribution doesn't hold up.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 2 Nov 2018 @ 8:33pm

A fair point. Maybe I’ll just stick to the Prenda dopes. 😄
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Nov 2018 @ 9:23pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
The solution is to spill some on yourself, then report the unsafe work environment and claim that firing you would be illegal retaliation. Or, you know, leave the Machiavellian coffeeshop in favor of one of the other dozen in walking distance.
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Ben (profile), 3 Nov 2018 @ 5:47am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
Another solution is to emigrate to a country that has fair and sane (for relative values of sane & fair) employment law and a health system that is (mostly) free at the point of delivery.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 6:04am

Re: And tomorrow's headline...
Oh look - more idiocy from BH...
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 6:57am

Re: Re:
Given Shiva, he'd probably then claim he invented NPCs if you pulled that off.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 7:01am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
What? My job is to serve coffee? From where did you get that, outta yer ass?

Why did you just assume that the coffee was being served to a higher up as a job duty rather than simply some minion having some morning joe? ........ This is quite telling.

Wow, you would be a real winner of a manger - climbing that ladder can be very grueling while stepping on the heads of others.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 7:09am

Re: Chief Morale Officer???
"As to that alignment between engineers and managers...the problem is, one bug in Chrome, or whatever other product it is, the origin of which has a lot to do with how a developer feels,"

fyi: Not all "bugs" originate within development, the developer or the tools used. Many times the errors, aka bugs, have their origin within management. The developer will tell management that is a very bad idea only to be told to do it anyway. Not sure what this "alignment" is you speak of but I suppose it could be some silly agile crap.
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Moooooo, 3 Nov 2018 @ 7:13am

Re: Online next level of property sale.
The next level of bullshit is purchases ans sell bullshit online. No website necessary, just spam blogs with your bullshit. You can find all type of bullshit here and it is 100% trustable (is that a word?) the next approach of bullshitting and purchasing more bullshit.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 7:15am

How much of this is just the unique disfunction of Google?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 7:16am

Re: Re: Re: The Register puzzles what it means to be "Googly":
The whole of CA is so far left that most of the people there consider Stalin to be right wing.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 7:55am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
Foreign countries might be unwilling to accept immigrants who are only qualified for minimum-wage coffee-serving jobs, and those people are unlikely to have the funds to simply buy citizenship (immigrant investor programs etc.). Realistically you'll have to be lucky and persistent enough to claim birthright citizenship somewhere with good laws or useful passports, or move while you're young enough to get into "study/work abroad" programs.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 10:12am

Re: Re: Re: Re: The Register puzzles what it means to be &quot;Googly&quot;:
What an ignorant thing to say.

Are you telling me that those Californians who want to split the state up into three different states (or six) with one of them being some sort of right wing haven with laws to placate their insecurities ... you're telling me that these folk are lefties?

Hahahahaha, I got my laugh this morning, thank man.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 10:17am

Re: Re: Re: Re: And tomorrow's headline...
Yeah - what good advice, go drag the "ringleaders" thru your revenge machine making an example of them in front of the other employees - that's the ticket,and I'm certain that such policies produce the best motivation in your minions - not.

btw ... such behavior is abusive and is an indication of more serious things to come. I would be updating my resume.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2018 @ 10:20am

Re: Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
Risk taking in the Aerospace business can be considered suicidal.
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guy (profile), 4 Nov 2018 @ 7:50am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: And tomorrow's headline...
Yeah it turns out that when you make an example of employees that just tells everyone they need to find new jobs.
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guy (profile), 4 Nov 2018 @ 7:51am

Re: Re: Re: And tomorrow's headline...
Odds are very good it would only happen once because those positions would go unfilled.
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guy (profile), 4 Nov 2018 @ 7:54am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
If no one took risks in the aerospace industry there wouldn't be one.
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guy (profile), 4 Nov 2018 @ 7:55am

Re: "The Next Level Of Tech Activism:"
Yes, but tech unions are uncommon.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2018 @ 1:10pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
Tell that to the families of those who lost their lives.
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2018 @ 2:02pm

Re: You lost an arguement to an NPC, again
That’s some nice right wing nut job horseshit you’ve got right there blue.
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torin, 4 Nov 2018 @ 5:58pm

re: CDO
Mike -

In reading your piece, I can appreciate the entirety of your comments to include position regarding the Chief Diversity Officer (CDO). However, I firmly believe that every company should have a CDO.

While diversity, equity, and inclusion should be of interest to all, we know that is not the case. Therefore it is best if 1) someone is responsible for setting strategy and 2) monitoring those results.

We've seen over the last decade specifically a chasm in representation and in large part because no one was guarding the hen house. We can and will course correct and do such faster with the interest of many.

Not a few. Again, good take on Google - thank you.
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tracyanne, 4 Nov 2018 @ 6:49pm

the people there consider Stalin to be right wing.
Once any government gets to the point of being an Authoritarian Dictatorship, and they have millions killed to maintain their hold on power, the difference between Right Wing and Left Wing is little more than semantics.
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Ninja (profile), 5 Nov 2018 @ 4:11am

Well, here the company would do some PR handling, throw some empty promises and quietly fire the employees leading the thing as soon as the dust settle for bad performance.

Labor relations are inherently unbalanced in favor of the employer.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Nov 2018 @ 4:37am

Re: the people there consider Stalin to be right wing.
Right Wing and Left Wing is little more than semantics.

.. in all cases. However, this does not mean they are the same.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Nov 2018 @ 6:37am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Chief Morale Officer???
The families of those who lost their lives would likely disagree with you and be offended that you tried to belittle their accomplishments, sacrifice, and contributions to science and history.

To wit, most of the pioneers in the aerospace industry didn't die for nothing, nor were they deliberately killed. Most of them died doing what they loved and advancing science in the process. Their deaths were largely accidental due to the fact that they were doing something no one else had done before. While their deaths are still sad and tragic, the fact is they made aerospace safer for everyone else in the process. We learned from what went wrong and took steps to make it safer.

If history had no risk takers, we'd still be living in caves. Your argument is invalid.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Nov 2018 @ 2:54pm

Re: re: CDO
torin,

It does call into question the sincerity you have on this topic when your username links to your business that involves contracting out individuals to promote diversity and inclusion within a given company.

Your sincerity on the topic may very well be genuine. That you have a financial incentive to promote a specific stance unfortunately makes me question this, however.
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Wendy Cockcroft, 12 Nov 2018 @ 2:39am

Re: left/right
RE: UBI

Here in Canada, for instance, the Ontario government just prematurely killed an experiment in Universal Basic Income; can't even let the other side gather data about possible programs, never mind the idea of letting people decide what to do with money (rather than the government directly spending it themselves) sounds pretty right-wing to begin with, this is a program started by the Liberal government so the Conservatives will be damned if they let it even have a chance of succeeding in any way . . .

I told you!!

The trouble with relying on handouts, wherever they come from, is that sooner or later they come to an end, usually as a right-wing effort to save taxpayers money. What we ought to do is pay people more for the work they do and provide them with the services they need to keep them on their feet and in work. That way nobody can pull the plug and leave them up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
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