For Google Management No Hurdle Is Too High
November 10, 2023
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
I read “Google’s Open Culture Collides With the Israel-Hamas War.” Note, gentle reader, that the Gray Lady charges for you to read her golden words of wisdom.
The main point of the write up is myth debunking. Google, as you may recall, is a wondrous place. The smartest people in the world (sorry, McKinsey, Booz Allen, JPMorgan Chase, et al, your employees are not Google grade. The proof? Those employees are not working at Google; therefore, the fentanyl thing, the Charlie Javice matter, the original BART mishap, etc.).
The young Googler looks at the high jump and says, “I am a Googler. I can jump over any hurdle. Logic and data will prevail.” Thanks, Microsoft Bing. With some Photoshop work, the image is a C+, not high school science club grade but “goog” enough.
The NYT reports as actual factual the following:
Google has long been a hub for employee activism, including over the company’s business with Israel. But workers looking to express support for Palestinians say they face hostility.
Is this a long-winded way to say, “Bias” or religious “persecution”? Yikes. At the Google, where data is the driver of decisions?
The news story offers:
Pro-Palestinian employees say the company has allowed supporters of Israel to speak freely about their opinions on the topic, while taking a heavy hand with Muslim employees who have criticized Israel’s retaliation in Gaza.
Interesting, but where’s the data, the objective information that comprises an intelligible signal?
The article continues:
But at Google, the issue has a unique meaning. Even compared with its Silicon Valley peers, Google has become a hub for employee activism, a legacy of the company’s open and informal founding culture.
I noted this somewhat downbeat sentence in the Gray Lady’s intentional or unintentional Google myth busting write up:
But now, he [a Google software engineer named Mr. Gilani] said, he’s worried that retaliation against Muslim employees is having a chilling effect on speech at Google, and he has developed a playbook for how to speak on the subject at work: Condemn Hamas and move on.
My view remains that Google is operating under the precepts of a high school science club. High school organizations like a science or math club do not want people in the meetings who cannot solder a defective LED bulb or who cannot talk about matrix multiplication. Is that discriminatory or a type of social barb wire fence to separate the good cattle from the bad sheep?
Several observations:
- Google management is confident it can jump over high hurdles. Google has management athletes in abundance
- The social issues within Google seem to clump like iron filings around a high school science club electro-magnet charged with race, religion, and gender. Note that I said “seem” because reality at Google may be a digital Utopia I am unable to perceive from rural Kentucky
- The article in the New York Times does little to keep the myth of Google and its happy logo from the dents and dings of culture.
I suppose there are data to prove that Google’s approach to management is on the money. What’s on the money is Google’s effort to generate advertising revenue, but that’s just the view of an old dinobaby.
Stephen E Arnold, November 10, 2023
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