Category: Development

I view this as a failure of management.

I have a rule when it comes to hiring, and that is to hire people that I can support. That means that I hire people that I can have open communication with and who can listen to constructive feedback from me – and who can give me feedback as well. I hire people that will tell me what is on their mind. Hand in hand with that, is that I make sure that I’m someone that people are generally comfortable sharing that kind of stuff with.

Then, if I’m doing my job correctly, I’m checking in with them regularly. So if one of my staff starts saying things like this about our company:

I can address their concerns, one at a time, before they get incorporated into some “manifesto” that then spreads like wildfire across my company. From my perspective, if I’ve gone to the trouble of hiring this person, I need to treat their concerns as valid even if I don’t agree with them. Maybe they need coaching, maybe they need mentoring (maybe I need to hook them up with a mentor), maybe they just need assistance thinking through the opinions they have. But I, as their manager, cannot be brushing off their concerns.

That being said, the concerns in the above image (that are directly from his manifesto) absolutely need to be addressed. In the effort to create an equality based workplace and society, we must keep in mind that not everyone feels like they have experienced the benefits of not being discriminated against. What matters to people the most, regardless of the justice or injustice in the rest of the world, is their own experience. If it is in fact true that there are “programs, mentoring, and classes only for people with a certain gender or race” – that absolutely needs to be rectified. It comes across as blatantly unfair. We don’t know what support any particular person has experienced throughout their lives. We cannot be assuming that any given white man doesn’t feel the need for these programs as well.

If I’m really doing my job, as a manager, coach, or mentor, I’m separating the concerns about policies and practice from ideological and political stances. That is definitely something that needs to be done with this guy. He quotes a lot of research and data that has been politicized in our crazily biased political world, and does a lot of theorizing about why Google is the way it is… All that stuff really is irrelevant. The questions that need to be addressed are all around “what policies and practices do you disagree with or want done differently?” Once you allow the conversation to get into theorizing about why things are the way they are, or grand theories about what principles the company should or shouldn’t emphasize instead of addressing individual practices, you get into areas where people are likely to be offended and alienated.

The ideas that he presents in his manifesto are not exclusive to him. They are, in fact, common in our society at large. That means that if you aren’t dealing with them when he brings them up, you are going to end up dealing with them when someone else brings them up. You can’t actually expect to have a workplace that has diversity of ideas if you marginalize people with these concerns, or fire them when they express them. They absolutely need to be addressed, and where appropriate, rectified.

Otherwise, you end up looking like this to a large portion of the population:

I’m not saying this cartoon is accurate. I have no idea what it’s actually like at Google. But I can say, for certain, that this is what it looks like to a lot of people who are outside of Google looking in.

(Sorry, I have no idea who created that cartoon. I found it floating around the internet unsourced)

Another thing that needs to be addressed, is this. Again, directly from his “manifesto”:

Yes, conservative people do often feel like they need to stay in the closet in largely liberal groups. Look, I know that liberal people think that they are open-minded and non-judgemental – I used to think the same way. That is in direct conflict with the experience of many conservatives. This is part of why we are experiencing the division in our country that we are; people of a conservative viewpoint did not feel like their viewpoint was being addressed in the news, media, or entertainment of our culture at large. So they made their own. I’ll let you all deduce the consequences of that.

Obviously, if you’re going to empower those with different ideologies to be able to express themselves, you need to do it in a context where people aren’t purposely making each other angry, where they are being civil, and where they are being respectful. So essentially the opposite of what is going on in our popular society at large. Maybe you haven’t experienced that kind of environment, but it is certainly possible to do.

Most importantly, if you are in regular communication with your staff about their needs and can address this stuff as it comes up you can offer coaching and perspective that makes a difference. Lots of what this former Google manager said absolutely does need to be communicated to our manifesto writer. Things like this:

“If you’re a professional, especially one working on systems that can use terms like “planet-scale” and “carrier-class” without the slightest exaggeration, then you’ll quickly find that the large bulk of your job is about coordinating and cooperating with other groups. It’s about making sure you’re all building one system, instead of twenty different ones; about making sure that dependencies and risks are managed, about designing the right modularity boundaries that make it easy to continue to innovate in the future, about preemptively managing the sorts of dangers that teams like SRE, Security, Privacy, and Abuse are the experts in catching before they turn your project into rubble.

Essentially, engineering is all about cooperation, collaboration, and empathy for both your colleagues and your customers. If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to. Solitary work is something that only happens at the most junior levels, and even then it’s only possible because someone senior to you — most likely your manager — has been putting in long hours to build up the social structures in your group that let you focus on code.“

I’m not saying that our manifesto writer is all-correct (absolutely not). I’m saying that in any managerial context you give someone an opportunity to correct their error-filled ways before you terminate them.

And, most importantly, there is nothing about the manifesto writer’s tone or writing that indicates that he is some sort of raging ideologue. He sounds to me like someone who can be reasoned with. He openly says that he wants a diverse workplace. He cites a lot of his points with data and studies. That is a great entry into getting him to rethink his viewpoints, by pointing out that how those studies are flawed – or pointing out how his thinking about them is. If, in fact, it is. Part of engaging with people who disagree with you, is that if you are going to do it honestly and effectively you have to be open to them teaching you something about the world as well. I know it can seem really important to fight for our viewpoints in the face of resistance, but it’s difficult if not impossible to listen while you are fighting.

Under every position is a concern or series of concerns. When I am a manager, I view it as a big part of my job to remove the concerns of my staff so that they can focus on doing their work.

Instead, what Google has done is reinforce those concerns by literally firing him for expressing them. This is not isolated to him or to Google either. Google has reinforced those concerns amongst the millions of people nationwide that have them. Now, they are stronger. To them, this is what happens when conservatives speak up in liberal environments. They lose their job.

Google has chosen a side in the culture wars, whether it wanted to or not.

Why do you think there is so much push back against PC culture? Because this stuff happens.

For reference, here is the “manifesto“