Internal 'Civil War' Pits Google Against Its Own Employees (fortune.com) 276
Google employees "want a say in and control over the products they build," reports Fortune, in an article headlined "Inside Google's Civil War":
As the so-called techlash has cast a pall over the entire sector, organized employee pushback is slowly becoming part of the landscape: Amazon workers are demanding more action from the company on battling climate change; at Microsoft, employees say they don't want to build technology for warfare; at Salesforce, a group has lobbied management to end its work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency... But nowhere has the furor been as loud, as public, and as insistent as it has been at Google. That's no surprise to Silicon Valley insiders, who say Google was purpose-built to amplify employee voices.
With its "Don't be evil" mantra, Google was a central player in creating the rosy optimism of the tech boom. "It has very consciously cultivated this image," says Terry Winograd, a professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford who was Google cofounder Larry Page's grad school adviser and would go on to serve on the company's technical advisory board. "It makes them much more prone to this kind of uprising." Page, now 46, and cofounder Sergey Brin, 45, intentionally created a culture that encouraged the questioning of authority and the status quo, famously writing in their 2004 IPO letter that Google was not a conventional company and did not intend to become one... Now Google finds itself in the awkward position of trying to temper the radical culture that it spent the past 20 years stoking.
Boasting more than 100,000 employees between Google and its parent company, Alphabet, executives acknowledge that the company is struggling to balance its size with maintenance of the principles, like employee voice, that were so foundational... The walkout was an inflection point, a sign that the company is now poised to disrupt something even more foundational to our economic system: the relationship between labor and capital. It's a shift that could perhaps begin only in Silicon Valley, a place that has long believed itself above such traditional business concerns -- and, more to the point, only at this company, one that hired and retained employees on the premise of do no evil. Now employees seem determined to view that manifesto through their own lens and apply it without compromise, even at the cost of the company's growth.
With its "Don't be evil" mantra, Google was a central player in creating the rosy optimism of the tech boom. "It has very consciously cultivated this image," says Terry Winograd, a professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford who was Google cofounder Larry Page's grad school adviser and would go on to serve on the company's technical advisory board. "It makes them much more prone to this kind of uprising." Page, now 46, and cofounder Sergey Brin, 45, intentionally created a culture that encouraged the questioning of authority and the status quo, famously writing in their 2004 IPO letter that Google was not a conventional company and did not intend to become one... Now Google finds itself in the awkward position of trying to temper the radical culture that it spent the past 20 years stoking.
Boasting more than 100,000 employees between Google and its parent company, Alphabet, executives acknowledge that the company is struggling to balance its size with maintenance of the principles, like employee voice, that were so foundational... The walkout was an inflection point, a sign that the company is now poised to disrupt something even more foundational to our economic system: the relationship between labor and capital. It's a shift that could perhaps begin only in Silicon Valley, a place that has long believed itself above such traditional business concerns -- and, more to the point, only at this company, one that hired and retained employees on the premise of do no evil. Now employees seem determined to view that manifesto through their own lens and apply it without compromise, even at the cost of the company's growth.
Who'da thunk it. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you pitch yourself to the world and prospective employees as working to improve the world, they get upset when they find out you lied to them.
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"Improve the world" is subjective.
We have antibiotics, and we have diseases resistant to antibiotics that were easily treatable years ago. Have we improved the world with them? Subjective opinion, it depends upon who you ask. ;)
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Now that's something where I'd have to say citation needed. How on earth should antibiotics be a driving factor in a birth rate decline?
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"civil war", next up Infinity, and end game (Score:2)
Well instead of infinity, they can just say Googol. If you don't get the pun, google it.
Re:Who'da thunk it. (Score:5, Interesting)
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In other words, management by numbers and choosing the wrong metrics means that people who want to have a career stop doing their job and instead optimize for what's measured.
So silicon valley has finally grown up and is now playing along the rules of every other corporation.
Re: Who'da thunk it. (Score:2)
Put principles where your mouth is (Score:4, Insightful)
If Google employees truly feel this strongly about their principles, they have a very quick and obvious solution: they can quit working at Google. If they're truly as irreplaceable as they feel, a mass quitting would cripple Google and enable any competitor to snap up such choice talent.
So long as they keep eating at the free Google restaurants, working in the posh Google offices, and taking the huge Google paychecks, their commitment to revolutionary fervor is less than impressive.
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LOL.
There are other ways of trying to improve your situation than just giving up and quitting.
Whether it's the company you find yourself working for, or the country you find yourself living in, it's up to you to make and be the force of change you want to see. That's the beauty of America.
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I have a business deal with my employer. If it works out for both of us, I continue working for him. If I ain't worth the money asked, he will fire me. If the time and energy invested by me is not sensibly compensated by the money I get, I quit.
Anything else is misplaced sentimentality.
Re:Put principles where your mouth is (Score:5, Insightful)
If Google employees truly feel this strongly about their principles, they have a very quick and obvious solution: they can quit working at Google.
Or start a union. The entire point of a union is to give employees collectively a say in corporate policies.
If they're truly as irreplaceable as they feel,
They didn't say they are irreplaceable, they said they want to help decide corporate policies.
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But then they get into disagreements about what the union is doing, and their only recourse is (again) to quit working there. Except unlike quitting a company, unions usually span many different companies if not an entire industry, leaving you with little to no recourse except to stop working in the industry if you should disagree with a union's policies.
The problem isn't limited to Google or com
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"But a few puny shares of stock give my hardly any say." Well yeah. What people who want to empower the employees seem to forget is that owners are powerful because the power is concentrated in the hands of a few. If you dilute that power so that every employee has a little piece of it, then the power each individual employee has is not much more than having no power. You haven't really empowered the employee, you've just replaced tyranny by the owner with tyranny by the majority.
This argument makes no sense. If an individual employee wants to maximize their power, they will typically get more by joining a union than by buying stock. This is especially true at a company like Google, where most stockholders don't have any voting rights.
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You are free to start a union, but there is nothing (in the US anyways) that forces the company to bargain with the union. So the only method the union would have to force the company to work with them is the threat of all of their members quitting. This would also require that a large percentage of workers to join this union, and of course that they would be willing to quit. Being a new union and limited to the employees of a single (or a couple) businesses, they also wouldn't have the funds to pay these
Re: Put principles where your mouth is (Score:2)
Re:Put principles where your mouth is (Score:5, Insightful)
And Google is not beholden to listen to them in any way
That's right, so if you are an employee and you want power at your company, start a union. There are, of course, downsides to unions, but this is their primary function, and they've been proven to work.
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Re: Put principles where your mouth is (Score:2)
Re: Put principles where your mouth is (Score:2)
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If Google employees truly feel this strongly about their principles, they have a very quick and obvious solution: they can quit working at Google.
Perhaps they feel they can make a bigger difference by not doing that?? Even if, you know, it bothers some people. ;)
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No. You cannot change other people, there is exactly one person you can change: Yourself. If you want change, this is what you can actually change.
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This!!
ballot box of severed toes (Score:2)
Nothing sends a message far and wide like your "choice" talent with its head on a pike above the main gate. Here's the magic decoder ring you seem to lack: choice talent bearing the black mark of a "bad apple" will not be hi
the broken link from the above (Score:2)
Corporate Consolidation [youtu.be] — Oliver's best montage of all time
My bad. I lost the h from href in the original markup.
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Re: Put principles where your mouth is (Score:2, Informative)
Oh yeah. DeBlasio is a real jewel... When he bothers to show up for work. And did you guys ever find that 850 million dollars of tax payer money that Mrs. DeBlasio frittered away? He's a fucking joke and he doesn't even realize it. All those policies from Giuliani and - lefty Bloomberg of all people - that DeBlasio recinds are going to push new York into the shithole it used to be before Giuliani cleaned it up.
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No more stop and frisk
What the fuck? Hasn't he seen the impact that's had in London?
Look forward to your massively increased murder rate in the next year or two.
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Don't really care -- NYC isn't London. Stop and frisk was dumped by policy around 2015. In 2017 and 2018, NYC's murder rates were lower than in any year since the 1960s. Clearly, it hasn't caused murder rates to spike, and maybe the UK's crime wave has other causes. (Cuts in social services by the Thatcherite cunts in charge probably aren't helping much.)
Anyway, stop being a coward and begging for more authoritarian policies to protect you.
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Given the UK is substantially ahead of the US on social safety nets, access to education and providing support to disadvantaged peoples and has cut services only because they were being funded at unsustainable levels, I think it's clear that you know fuck all about the UK.
I mean, if nothing else, you conflate stop & search with police violence. Here's a fucking clue: They're different things. It's possible to recognise the crime reduction benefits of an unpopular policy without demanding the police assa
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The wars that happened while the government that was overspending was in power?
Oh, there's a fucking coincidence.
"Employees" = an incredibly small number... (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you want mindless code monkeys you should hire that.
Most professionals on the other hand are hired because their input is valuable. Then don't be surprised when they give you their input.
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There are however ways to provide input.
You could make your views known, help management understand the viewpoint of their staff, offer constructive business appropriate responses that will boost morale and assure a workforce that's productive and content.
Or you could be a whiny cunt bleating about shit in public, damaging your employer's reputation and disrupting your colleagues.
Me, I'm surprised when employees at a large corporation take the second approach.
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And when these inputs are ignored?
You can't make blanket statements about how some group "should" behave, when you don't know what's going on.
To follow up on your concerns about " damaging your employer's reputation" and "disrupting your colleagues". If this is disrupting them, then they are bad at their jobs and should be fired. If someone's reputation is being damaged by simpily having their actions known, then that person shouldn't be doing things that damage their reputation. The alternative is "Snitche
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You aren't being paid to post opinions on social media either, so shut your mouth and know your role. Be drone.
That's how it works right?
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Get on with it, lads! (Score:2, Troll)
Solution, hire older workers. (Score:2, Insightful)
Employee walkouts sound like something that happens in college campuses. And guess what? The median age at Google at least a couple years ago was just 30:
https://www.businessinsider.com/median-tech-employee-age-chart-2017-8
People in their 20s are still convinced they can accomplish things through these silly one-time walkouts!. "We need to DO something!" is the normal rallying cry, These silly protests normally accomplish nothing. Real change happens through slow, regular action, not protests.
So that's
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You are not at risk, it is not yours (Score:5, Insightful)
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When you are not at risk, when your money is not on the line
Most employees have quite a lot on the line. Losing your job is for most people a much worse monetary event than having your investment go down a few percent in value.
Also I think it is safe to assume most employees have quite a bit of their savings in Google stock, so their money is on the line there too. And as stock owners they should be allowed to have an opinion on how the company is run too.
Of course, the rest of the owners and/or managers may not agree, but we can't fault them for expressing their op
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as stock owners they should be allowed to have an opinion on how the company is run too
So turn up at the AGM and express those views there. They can even propose changes in the corporate behaviour that the other stock owners can vote to support.
we can't fault them for expressing their opinions
We can however fault them for how they express their opinions.
I guess I shouldn't though. Their actions and Google's responses have been fantastic in assuring me that I wouldn't be able to work there. My skin is the wrong colour and I look like a man.
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Why on earth would working for those show you're bereft of ethics? That's simply not logically consistent. Unless you have a very tenuous grasp on what makes up ethics.
What's absolutely bigoted (and bigotry is unethical) is simply removing people from places you don't like, irrespective of their calibre, individual ethics and so on.
The monster comes for its creator (Score:3, Insightful)
Give a mouse a cookie (Score:2)
And it wants a glass of milk.
May predict the demise (Score:2)
Go tech Unionization!!! Create One Union to rule/run all tech innovation. The Union governance board can assign success and tech innovation to the deserving companies that have the correct beliefs.
Just my 2 cents
Yea right (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll believe developers actually give a shit about something when they start refusing to build internet of things apps that force you to use cloud services that spy on you. I want my connected things to be under my control and my control only. "Connected" and "cloud" doesnt have to mean someone elses control. When I have thermostats and shit in my own home that i have to ask a companies permission to change temperature on... I can't believe developers give a fuck. When they write software that has phone home routines and doesn't respect my privacy... I can't believe they give a fuck.
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Yep. And products with undisclosed microphones...
"Even at the cost of the company's growth" (Score:2)
And therein lies the rub. Google is a public company, and public companies exist to drive profit growth. They don't exist to be moral, or provide a net good to the public. Even if leadership in the company from top to bottom is full if idealistic moralists, a public company is ultimately responsible to the shareholders, and if the company pursues morals over profit that leadership will be replaced.
This is by the way why so many brands these days are virtue signalling how woke they are - to deflect from actu
Re:"Even at the cost of the company's growth" (Score:5, Informative)
public companies exist to drive profit growth
No. They all have an individual corporate charter which details their purpose. Profit may or may not be part of that.
if the company pursues morals over profit that leadership will be replaced
Fortunately most shareholders understand that running a business requires rather more than immediate profit maximisation.
Work for anything else (publicly traded, government, etc) and morals are going to be compromised - and you should be fully aware of that.
Work (or don't work) anywhere and morals are compromised. It's not a black and white world, get used to handling the shades of grey.
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I don't know what public corporate structure you're familiar with, but MBAs here in the US are taught it's morally imperative to do whatever it takes to increase share value. Shareholders understand "My stock value goes up" and "My stock value goes down." Most of them have zero interest in the company's long-term success as an investment because the stock market does not reward that sort
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MBAs here in the US are taught it's morally imperative to do whatever it takes to increase share value
So tell the idiots teaching them to get a fucking clue.
Social issue priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
It's so funny how these employees have priorities that all seem to involve social issues.
How about Microsoft employees sick to death of shipping buggy software? I'd imagine the people who were there are as intelligent as anyone and they must get sick of marketing managers and other management types who don't care about crap getting released.
Google employees are bent about deals with the Chinese government or ambiguous claims of sexual harassment, but not at all bothered about relentless data collection and spying on Americans as a normal course of business?
Jesus, talk about myopia. Maybe un-focus from the narrow ideological issues and instead focus on the basic "evil" of their actual business model.
Time for a choice? (Score:2)
SJW = death (Score:2)
When SJWs start invading your company, your company is doomed...especially when they believe they're making the world a better place when all they're really doing is building an advertising network.
The best thing that could happen (Score:2)
These tech employees also forget that they are hired to do a job. There value to the
small company, big company (Score:2)
Many of us here (particularly here) remember the days before Google, when the tech world was most concerned with Microsoft killing innovation, buying small companies, and trying to consolidate the market. We had good reason to worry. Despite a few centuries of different business approaches, innovation and growth continues to come from small companies.
Put simply, consolidation of an industry typically leads to stagnation and corruption (corruption in the sense of lax standards, drifting principles, cutting
They don't want to be employees (Score:2)
Talent and Ethics (Score:2)
Leftism is naturally divisive and destructive (Score:2, Insightful)
It's no secret that Silicon Valley as a whole leans very far to the political left. So it doesn't surprise me at all that they're having trouble like this.
Leftism is an ideology that's built upon division. That's why they're always focused on "minorities" and those they've divided into "advantaged" and "disadvantaged" groups. Leftists desire divisions they can turn against one another.
It also doesn't help that many leftists are extremely bitter and angry. They always want to "protest". When there are no rea
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> leftists are extremely bitter and angry
Er... the left hardly has a monopoly on angry activists. Go play a drinking game where you watch a video of a Trump rally & do a shot every time you see some angry, foaming-at-the-mouth person who's convinced everything that's wrong with their life is due to immigrants/non-Christians/socialism/taxes. You'll be shitfaced drunk within 10 minutes.
The main difference between angry leftists and angry conservatives is that angry leftists feel intellectually compelle
Re: Leftism is naturally divisive and destructive (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Righties are the ones that commit terrorish"? Really? Then you don't remember the Weathermen, nor have you paid attention to Latin American politics of the last century. The far left wing is not innocent of attacks on civilian populatoins.
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How about all of the physical attacks currently occurring on college campuses against anyone with a conservative position.
ANTIFA youtubes would be another good reference of how the left is physically attacking anyone that does not agree with them
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Works for terrorist groups, works for whole countries, why not for corporations?
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Programmers aren't floor cleaners, you can't just hire another one and expect him to pick up where the old one left off.
Vast multitude will choose money and comfort (Score:2)
In this labor market, replacing technicians is hard. Training them up on your products is time-consuming and expensive. Google negotiates with its employees on these issues because it must.
No they do not. They need only fire the most zealous. That will be a very small number. The multitude of followers will learn it's not their projects, you don't get to collect generous salaries and generous benefits and also retain control of how your work is used. Want to retain control, be an entrepreneur not a worker for a huge publicly traded company. The vast multitude of followers will choose their money and comforts.
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It's OK. I'm sure the most zealous have already thought of this eventuality. Logic bombs and timed-release malware in code are a real thing... call it insurance against scum like Google.
Call it go to jail and pay restitution to Google, all that money you earned going back to the corporation. And being somewhat less than hirable going forward.
Basically double down on being an example to the followers to behave.
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Well, you should be a good programmer and also security expert if you're zealous...
Want to take a bet that I can leave behind enough to cripple your infrastructure and put the blame on you?
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Obviously, the key is to contaminate your colleagues' code with this stuff ... there's always that collague who needs a bit of help...
"Colleagues", also known as "witnesses for the prosecution" :-)
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You say witness, I say patsy. And of course he blames me, that's what any guilty person would do, try to shift the blame on the guy that's no longer here!
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Maybe the Chief Diversity Officer?
Re:Put your money where your mouth is (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Too many Google employees seem to think Google is their daddy, not their employer. Get off your ass, stand up, and unionize. Then just watch how fast all those leftist ideals that Google management pays lip service to go right out the window. Google is fine with token lefty shit like "diversity initiatives," firing James Damore, and other token PR bullshit. But try to form a REAL union, and you'll soon see their TRUE face, and it's the face of pure greedy capitalism. Their lips say "We're good liberals." But threaten their bottom line and they'll hit back in a way that makes Donald Trump look like Che Guevara.
If you want a REAL voice, you're going to need to form a REAL union, which is going to take REAL work and sacrifice. And if you think your kind daddy Google is just going to let you do that without a fight because you asked politely and they donated to Hillary Clinton, better think again snowflakes.
Re: Put your money where your mouth is (Score:3, Insightful)
Google fucked themselves by accepting the idea that diversity is a laudable goal.
They should have made a firm statement that they are a meritocracy, and that they support equal opportunity based on merit without regard for race, sex or culture.
Instead, they went along with the idea that having members of different races, sexes and cultures representated was an important goal in and of itself.
That was a big mistake, and it is going to plague them for a long time.
If you are running an NBA team, you do not fil
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Google's problem is that they originally consisted of very smart people who don't give a fuck about genders, races, sexual orientations or whatever other bullshit currently became oh so important, not because they are misogynist, racists or homophobes but because they genuinely didn't give a fuck whether you're a straight white guy or a trans bi lesbian m2f who sexually identifies as an attack helicopter. Because it doesn't matter AT ALL when it comes to creating hard- and software. And that's all these peo
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They should have made a firm statement that they are a meritocracy,
OK. Define "merit." Who gets to set the rules?
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OTOH, if you're trying to design a product for rich White males, then fill your company with rich white males. Detroit auto did that. They scoffed when the women asked for cup holders in their cars. Toyota listened (but it was still full of rich Asian men).
If you're trying to design products for anybody in the world, you might want to have a lot mo
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If you are running an NBA team, you do not fill it with women
Is Google an NBA team? If not, then shut the fuck up.
Re: Put your money where your mouth is (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm not white. I'm part white, part native and I came from a lower middle class family.
I suppose I could probably compete on the basis of affirmative action, but I would never do that, because asking me to give me a job based on my race rather than my merits is fucking degrading, and I've had a distinguished software development career spanning two decades without needing to do so.
Go fuck yourself, you racist, sexist piece of shit.
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Google set themselves up for this over a period of decades. They certainly enjoyed the recruitment advantages over the years. Now, they're just soaking their crying towel that TANSTAAFL.
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This. Too many Google employees seem to think Google is their daddy, not their employer.
Not quite. They think Google is their college. Google has actively encouraged this attitude. They don't have offices, they have "campuses." When you want a meeting with a manager, you go during "office hours." You eat at the cafeteria, or sitting out on the quad, and you ride private buses to and from the campus. You travel between buildings on loaner bicycles. The people all around you are dressed like they're on their way to poetry class. Little wonder that protests should come next.
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The problem is, evil pays better than doing good.
In the short term, perhaps it might seem so to people without morals or good sense. In the long run, doing good is always better.
For example, short term Boeing got their 737 MAX to market and was making money hand over fist in sales. After a couple planes crashed and killed everybody onboard, Boeing is completely fucked. Doing evil clearly does not pay better.
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You'll be flying in a 737 Max soon enough. They have already fixed the "Bug" ;-)
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It's going to be August at the soonest. But now that they've proven that they can't be trusted, they will enjoy many years of enhanced oversight.
They'll also enjoy a distinct disadvantage when negotiating future sales of ANY aircraft.
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Well, the dark side is after all quicker, easier and more seductive...
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I'd love to know how many of the loudest voices are US citizens.
Certainly almost all of them. If there are immigrants, they've lived in America for a long, long, time.
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In other words, how many Native Americans are working there, smiling, and telling everyone else to sod off? :)
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Employees give a shit about an awful lot other the compensation they receive. They care about the commute, the working hours, whether they can work from home, the quality of the office, the competence of their colleagues and whether they like, the non-monetary aspects of their employment conditions, whether their manager is any good or not and what the overall corporate culture is like.
Most people wouldn't move job for an extra 10k/year if all of that got worse.
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Grits are amazing if you know what you're doing with them. I personally like to drown them in various types of sugars. However I may just be ghetto and institutionalized slightly.
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I like a little salt and pepper along with a little sugar. But there are likely hundreds of ways to enjoy them
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I grew up in the hood, so I've tried just about everything on them.. Cause when its what you got you make that shit work lol.