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.
This has little to do with shareable links and everything to do with the trust you put in whoever you share it with.
There's not much difference between them ctrl+v-ing the link to a third party, vs them ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v-ing the contents to another party. If anything, by just sharing a link, you have a chance to disable the sharing and hope the content hasn't yet been copied.
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
This is incredibly annoying to see in the real world. People who pontificate values on LinkedIn but work for a company they disagree with, only to see them stay until they hit 4 years and leave. No idea how they think they have any moral high ground.
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.
<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>
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.
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.
right, I don't see the connection between being _forced_ to resign and his his pacifist principles + as EU academic he sees himself as target of likely mass surveillance
> Then there were the people. Larry and Sergey were still answering some tough leadership questions every week, and “Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan of often-referenced Googliness—it was a north star for teams making hard calls.
I'm sorry, but this is very hard to believe. I get 9 years is a lot of time, but Google has been awful for much longer thant that. In fact, 2018 was the year the motto was removed from the handbook, which certainly indicates it wasn't anything like a "North Star":
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.
This makes no sense.
These priviledge souls going through the world as if they matter is weird. Go back to the dark room, stare at the screen and shut up please.
Translation: “My GSUs that I received at $35 and upwards for the last 10 years have made me enough money such that I can now finally make the “moral” decision that I’ve always wanted to do but was willing to swallow until I made enough money. Now I can pretend I was always the moral person that I purport to be, even though not much has actually changed except my financially-improved courage.”
This is needlessly cynical. Everyone has thresholds, and it may not be tied (at least exclusively) to money. Those that _assume_ that the morals of others are always at whim of financial gain are those that I trust the least.
He is worth well over $20M given his title and the skyrocketing of Google stock since 2017. He could have left years ago if he were really so morally outraged.
There’s nothing more useless than a multi-millionaire “finally” taking a moral stand on something. I guarantee that this same person without the money would not have posted this ridiculous manifesto declaring his moral piety.
If he donates all his wealth away because it was made “immorally” then I will change my stance. We both know he won’t and that’s how we know his courage is really just because he’s rich.
I worked at Google for a similar span. It was different 9 years ago, in ways that are specifically described in the blog post you're ignoring, which I and many other Googlers would confirm are true.
Was it different or are the people who voluntarily started working for Google around that period unable to admit to themselves and others that it was always questionable to work for a entity like Google?
To certain observers this was obviously the direction tech monopolies were going to go.
What have those people always seen that you're only now beginning to admit is an inherently defective aspect of these organizations?
Holy cow dude, I am not personally answerable for all the faults of a megacorp, nor am I "only now beginning to admit" anything in your imaginary personal history about me that you made up now.
This entire thread makes me sad. A handful of people, the original writer and some other commenters, are saying "this corporation has changed for the worse in some ways" and the overwhelming majority of posts are these weirdos attacking them for why didn't you specifically say the opinion that I want, and why didn't you say it sooner than this post I just became aware of?
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
Most people that one would describe as evil do not see themselves as evil, but rather see what they're doing as justified. Saying you're not going to be evil means literally nothing.
Don't be the bad guy, ok, but if you think your goals are noble enough then crossing lines becomes acceptable. Google sold everyone on the "we're going to change the world for good and improve everyone's lives and make all information accessible and free" line, and in doing so justified everything else they did - privacy invasion, monopolistic behavior, etc.
The fact that they said "don't be evil" should have been a massive red flag for everyone, not a green one.
Exactly. Everyone who posts here regularly believes themselves to be “not evil”. Working for Google, Facebook, burning resources to produce ai slop, etc.
Not me of course. I’m making the world a better place by introducing ai into your Facebook feed.
Google was providing cloud computing to the DoD before 2017 - there's no real morale difference between providing lower level compute vs providing a higher level AI algo other than giving yourself an excuse by adding one layer of abstraction (obfuscating?).
Very convenient to suddenly decide it's enough after collecting a massive paycheck for 10 years.
It is worse now than it was 9 years ago, but it even then it was clearly moving in the wrong direction. And the current google is the result of trends that started long before 2017.
When one of those ways is supporting mass killing, I'd say even one way would be enough to make it a completely different company. Your post is asinine.
I think a big difference is the majority of developers knew they could find employment relatively easily elsewhere, so they felt comfortable protesting things they didn't feel comfortable with, and google leadership had some level of accountability to employees. Now though, if you speak up you might get targeted for the next round of layoffs, and the current job market is a lot tougher, so you could end up unemployed for quite a while.
Exactly. Google's "don't be evil policy" was never applied on Google itself.
It was enforced on users, advertisers and publishers.
Roughly 15 years ago, it no longer applied to advertisers. 50% of ads (if not more) are utter scams.
Jup! From day 2, the moment when they discover that customer data (yours, mine, everyone's) is more valuable than gold.
Also the interaction with government and defense and intelligence is well documented: from google docs to maps and clouds.
I wish people will read "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" by Yasha Levine and stop feigning ignorance.
I even expect that minimal level of awareness about the real business culture and inherent nature of these internet mega-corps for people in top positions.
"Don't Be Evil" is a psychological machination for people working at google to ease their life in work related cognitive dissonance and marketing speak to the rest of us.
If I were an angel (actual, not fallen yet) I will not tell my self: "Don’t Be Evil".
My motto will be "keep being holy" or "be holier" or something that keep me in my angelic state or better.
So even the “Don’t Be Evil” motto by itself already spill the beans!
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.
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 don't think there's a big risk the European startup I work for now is involved in bombing brown people in the Middle East, actively accelerating climate change or dividing society for engagement.
Seems like a much better bet for my values, at least.
Luckily, we've gone through that phase around ninety years ago in Europe. We've been trying to avoid it happening again ever since, though right now is a dangerous time here as well. But hey, at least Europe hasn't fallen yet.
If you think you've "gone through that phase", you're not paying much attention.
European companies exist to extract profit without regard to decency, same as American companies. BP filling up the Gulf of Mexico with oil? European. Wirecard's fraud? European. HSBC money laundering? European. Dieselgate? European.
I'm sure I could find more.
Hell, Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and raised by Soviet parents.
The US was founded mainly as an experiment in European mercantile colonialism. This is just a continuation of that.
The downside of there not being any American exceptionalism is that everything you see in America is not an exception.
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.
Surely, there is a spectrum between "founders doing whatever they want with the company" and "the market entirely dictating the company's every action."
I could see some of that in 2011 (I started before the ipo), but it was almost all from ads. People in other parts of the company had a very different experience.
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.
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.
>" 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.
Agreed that the comparison is extreme; I wouldn't have made it myself.
But it's also not harmless to work at a company which makes tools/components/software for killing people. It wouldn't be "just an office job". Sometimes it's hard to make the call, e.g. a spreadsheet can be used to tally inventory or prisoners at a work camp, but when your company is directly involved e.g. in enabling surveillance by a nation whose actions you consider immoral, then it's probably time to quit.
If the mention of the US or Trump as the motive for quitting makes anyone irritated, consider the same situation if it was a guy saying he won't work for a company which is developing AI to enable Putin to better identify dissenters or bomb Ukraine.
I actually think “just a job” is a justification in the following ways.
- Soldiers and police are a thing in society. They use violence in ways deemed just by society. I do not think their role is immoral.
- From experience I know that the number of people who can look at the incentive structure they are in and decide to operate outside it is basically 1%. Humans just aren’t wired that way.
- So I do not know in what ways a Nazi soldier could stop doing what they were doing - except in the same way you are free to escape industrial society and capitalism, by moving into a cabin in the woods in isolation.
This is why leadership is so essential. The leaders we choose and the systems we build around them determine what people will actually do.
Individual moral failure is self-inflicted not systematic.
Your comments are full of nonsense hyperbole. The comparison isn’t remotely close. I’m glad this guy left Google - dragging down his company and teammates with his insufferable leftist politics.
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.
tl;dr : Android head of security has quit on principl as he is a pacifist and Google are now working with USA department of war. And also as they scrapped the carbon neutral promise due to the AI Datacentre race.
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.
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.
Like a slap in the face from a psychopath. It's not about "good", "bad", "honest", etc. It's literally the world EVIL that they no longer want to swear off. Astronomically monumentally fucked up psycho shit.
Dictionary:
*EVIL*
: morally reprehensible : sinful, wicked
an evil impulse
an evil tyrant
evil deeds
the evil institution of slavery
: arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct
a person of evil reputation
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...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496396
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.
This has little to do with shareable links and everything to do with the trust you put in whoever you share it with.
There's not much difference between them ctrl+v-ing the link to a third party, vs them ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v-ing the contents to another party. If anything, by just sharing a link, you have a chance to disable the sharing and hope the content hasn't yet been copied.
>That's a great reminded that any Google Doc with a shareable link is basically a public document for all intents and purposes.
There is also a great reminder next to the button you click to get a shareable link in Google Docs.
> That's a great reminded that any Google Doc with a shareable link is basically a public document for all intents and purposes.
As per design.
Google gives you sufficient control over access permissions. If you make it public, you have to know anyone anywhere can see it once they get the URL.
I frequently share Google docs and sheets links widely and to entirely unknown readers. That is part of the utility of the tool.
Google Docs had the best authz system when it came out and it's still an exemplar.
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
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.
same I left with approx that amount and when stock was still fairly low compared to today, so left life changing money. no ragrets lol.
Your total comp was ~1.2 mil/year?
This is incredibly annoying to see in the real world. People who pontificate values on LinkedIn but work for a company they disagree with, only to see them stay until they hit 4 years and leave. No idea how they think they have any moral high ground.
Alphabet dropped “don’t be evil” from its moto in 2015. This guy went in knowing how the sausage was being made.
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.
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".
The slogan originated in Eng, and was honest at the time, and for many years after.
It obviously got promoted by marketing for external consumption as well.
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.
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.
Post-deposit clarity
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.
>*"You cannot explain something to somebody whose livelihood depends upon [others] not understanding..."
Something. $omething. something. $teinbeck?
Upton Sinclair
Yes, that is correct:
>>"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." –Upton Sinclair
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 Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass
This needs a "2004" date.
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.
he resigned because of... "politics"? and not because of the path Google has chosen for Android security?
The actual reason is right at the top: he's a director who was "promoted" to IC.
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.
Go through enough pattern recognition and you'll realize it's often not someone sticking to their guns.
Would the author have left if they didn't have another job lined up? Definitely not. Then, how strong are their principles?
That's not remarkable to many.
right, I don't see the connection between being _forced_ to resign and his his pacifist principles + as EU academic he sees himself as target of likely mass surveillance
He has not been responsible for Android Security since 2019.
https://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/post/leaving-google/
i know right. i imagine they were other reasons and this one sounded nice to share on a public doc tbh.
They are one and the same.
> Then there were the people. Larry and Sergey were still answering some tough leadership questions every week, and “Don’t Be Evil” wasn’t just a slogan of often-referenced Googliness—it was a north star for teams making hard calls.
I'm sorry, but this is very hard to believe. I get 9 years is a lot of time, but Google has been awful for much longer thant that. In fact, 2018 was the year the motto was removed from the handbook, which certainly indicates it wasn't anything like a "North Star":
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-dont-be-evil/2540...
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.
This makes no sense. These priviledge souls going through the world as if they matter is weird. Go back to the dark room, stare at the screen and shut up please.
Translation: “My GSUs that I received at $35 and upwards for the last 10 years have made me enough money such that I can now finally make the “moral” decision that I’ve always wanted to do but was willing to swallow until I made enough money. Now I can pretend I was always the moral person that I purport to be, even though not much has actually changed except my financially-improved courage.”
This is needlessly cynical. Everyone has thresholds, and it may not be tied (at least exclusively) to money. Those that _assume_ that the morals of others are always at whim of financial gain are those that I trust the least.
He is worth well over $20M given his title and the skyrocketing of Google stock since 2017. He could have left years ago if he were really so morally outraged.
There’s nothing more useless than a multi-millionaire “finally” taking a moral stand on something. I guarantee that this same person without the money would not have posted this ridiculous manifesto declaring his moral piety.
If he donates all his wealth away because it was made “immorally” then I will change my stance. We both know he won’t and that’s how we know his courage is really just because he’s rich.
"Enough of my equity has vested, virtue signal engage."
That’s not really how RSUs work in that situation. The number outstanding and vested each year stays pretty steady.
Only if you are getting refreshes.
Yeah what he means is he got enough money over a decade and then waited until a vest day to decide it was immoral.
Oh, sure. But with monthly vesting it kind of a wash.
There is some weird psychology going where the most morality posting is from people quitting Google or being unemployed.
Au contraire, Googlers have always been strangely academic brained and stuck in niche moral echo chambers.
This is par for the course.
Biting the hand that fed you... on your way out.
> Google was a different company 9 years ago.
No it wasn’t.
I worked at Google for a similar span. It was different 9 years ago, in ways that are specifically described in the blog post you're ignoring, which I and many other Googlers would confirm are true.
Was it different or are the people who voluntarily started working for Google around that period unable to admit to themselves and others that it was always questionable to work for a entity like Google?
To certain observers this was obviously the direction tech monopolies were going to go.
What have those people always seen that you're only now beginning to admit is an inherently defective aspect of these organizations?
Holy cow dude, I am not personally answerable for all the faults of a megacorp, nor am I "only now beginning to admit" anything in your imaginary personal history about me that you made up now.
This entire thread makes me sad. A handful of people, the original writer and some other commenters, are saying "this corporation has changed for the worse in some ways" and the overwhelming majority of posts are these weirdos attacking them for why didn't you specifically say the opinion that I want, and why didn't you say it sooner than this post I just became aware of?
It's different now because his stocks have vested.
Yes but now they have a moral imperative to collect their ad money and aren’t a vested interest.
“I’m shocked shocked to find out my pay cheque and stock money came from selling ads.”
“here are your winnings sir”
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
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.
Except Google works with the Pentagon and the Israeli government so yes they are helping kill people.
...which is one of the changes that prompted the author to resign.
Project maven was 2017 which is when the author joined.
...and then they left that project because employees objected. Now employee objections just get the employees in trouble.
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.
Most people that one would describe as evil do not see themselves as evil, but rather see what they're doing as justified. Saying you're not going to be evil means literally nothing.
Don't be the bad guy, ok, but if you think your goals are noble enough then crossing lines becomes acceptable. Google sold everyone on the "we're going to change the world for good and improve everyone's lives and make all information accessible and free" line, and in doing so justified everything else they did - privacy invasion, monopolistic behavior, etc.
The fact that they said "don't be evil" should have been a massive red flag for everyone, not a green one.
Exactly. Everyone who posts here regularly believes themselves to be “not evil”. Working for Google, Facebook, burning resources to produce ai slop, etc.
Not me of course. I’m making the world a better place by introducing ai into your Facebook feed.
The villain in every James Bond film thinks they're the hero.
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.
That sounds pithy, but a person doesn't need to remind themselves of their own values; a company of 200,000 people does.
Which isn't to say cynicism for these sorts of company charters isn't warranted, just not for that reason.
At the beginning of Google it meant "we will not be like Microsoft" and it was good marketing.
It was purely self interest don't piss off people so that regulators break our monopoly. Once the monopoly was challenged it became less important.
They aren't cynical, just disingenuous.
Google was providing cloud computing to the DoD before 2017 - there's no real morale difference between providing lower level compute vs providing a higher level AI algo other than giving yourself an excuse by adding one layer of abstraction (obfuscating?).
Very convenient to suddenly decide it's enough after collecting a massive paycheck for 10 years.
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
"Google was a different company n years ago" where n is how long they've been there + ~6 to 12 months
Truer words have never be told. It truly wasn't. Google had been rotten for a very long time.
The article clearly lists at least two ways they are significantly different now.
It is worse now than it was 9 years ago, but it even then it was clearly moving in the wrong direction. And the current google is the result of trends that started long before 2017.
Great, two whole ways!! Totally a different company.
When one of those ways is supporting mass killing, I'd say even one way would be enough to make it a completely different company. Your post is asinine.
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...
I think a big difference is the majority of developers knew they could find employment relatively easily elsewhere, so they felt comfortable protesting things they didn't feel comfortable with, and google leadership had some level of accountability to employees. Now though, if you speak up you might get targeted for the next round of layoffs, and the current job market is a lot tougher, so you could end up unemployed for quite a while.
The employee experience was very different 9y ago.
Exactly. Google's "don't be evil policy" was never applied on Google itself. It was enforced on users, advertisers and publishers. Roughly 15 years ago, it no longer applied to advertisers. 50% of ads (if not more) are utter scams.
Noone cares, money talks.
16 years ago it was
Jup! From day 2, the moment when they discover that customer data (yours, mine, everyone's) is more valuable than gold. Also the interaction with government and defense and intelligence is well documented: from google docs to maps and clouds.
I wish people will read "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" by Yasha Levine and stop feigning ignorance. I even expect that minimal level of awareness about the real business culture and inherent nature of these internet mega-corps for people in top positions.
"Don't Be Evil" is a psychological machination for people working at google to ease their life in work related cognitive dissonance and marketing speak to the rest of us.
If I were an angel (actual, not fallen yet) I will not tell my self: "Don’t Be Evil". My motto will be "keep being holy" or "be holier" or something that keep me in my angelic state or better.
So even the “Don’t Be Evil” motto by itself already spill the beans!
Google's purchase and subsequent integration of Doubleclick, reviled industry-wide for their invasive, sleazy adtech, was 18 years ago.
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/
A typical case of false nostalgia for something that never existed .
"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.
While I can understand the concerns, I wouldn't use a google doc to air my grievances though
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.
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.
European companies aren’t much different so just be sure to check where you stand first before you’re SURE you’ve actually escaped.
I don't think there's a big risk the European startup I work for now is involved in bombing brown people in the Middle East, actively accelerating climate change or dividing society for engagement.
Seems like a much better bet for my values, at least.
Yeah, betting apps and niche fintech plays don't tend to do that, and that's about all most of Europe startups have to offer
You're not gonna like it when you find out where, exactly, America learned those values from.
Luckily, we've gone through that phase around ninety years ago in Europe. We've been trying to avoid it happening again ever since, though right now is a dangerous time here as well. But hey, at least Europe hasn't fallen yet.
If you think you've "gone through that phase", you're not paying much attention.
European companies exist to extract profit without regard to decency, same as American companies. BP filling up the Gulf of Mexico with oil? European. Wirecard's fraud? European. HSBC money laundering? European. Dieselgate? European.
I'm sure I could find more.
Hell, Sergey Brin was born in Moscow and raised by Soviet parents.
The US was founded mainly as an experiment in European mercantile colonialism. This is just a continuation of that.
The downside of there not being any American exceptionalism is that everything you see in America is not an exception.
Morally fallen? Sure, Europe hasn't fallen yet.
Systemically and structurally? Already on its way there.
Excessive moral policing results in strangling regulations, which is exactly what Europe is facing right now. The opposite of innovation.
Good luck in your endeavors.
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.
> It's not possible for a corporate entity to have one.
Is it really not possible? Lots of corps are controlled by one or two people. They can decide what the company espouses, no?
If you want profits, the market tells you what to do.
Surely, there is a spectrum between "founders doing whatever they want with the company" and "the market entirely dictating the company's every action."
I could see some of that in 2011 (I started before the ipo), but it was almost all from ads. People in other parts of the company had a very different experience.
Oh absolutely, I transferred out of ads as soon as I could and of course it all seemed different.
The reality is that ads was 95% of the company revenue though, so it was all fantasy.
For many years infra was delightfully oblivious, just finding interesting things to build. :)
Working on promo committee I could see how different ads was
Yeah I transferred through Access / Home / Hardware / Nest, with a foray through Fiber... it was a different world certainly.
But there's also something about a PA being disconnected from its revenue sources to create a sense of unreality and distorted incentives.
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.
[dupe] Discussion on website source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496396
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.
Thousands, maybe tens-of-thousands, leave tech companies everyday and never post anything. You just don’t hear about them.
Longtime Googler DannyBee mentioned on this very thread that he left Google several years ago, but he never posted anything.
Most people do mention it to a few friends, because they are friends.
Others post for a larger audience, but don’t really target the general public.
But sometimes people find a personal story and forward it around and it goes viral. Which means thousands of people find it interesting.
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.
>" 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.
> 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.
He's Australian. Taking the job meant moving to the US. To do so without considering Trump would have been insane.
> 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.
> So was being a concentration camp guard.
What the hell. We are talking about ads on the computer.
> We are talking about ads on the computer.
Not just ads on the computer. TFA also discusses AI for surveillance, weapons, etc.
Let me restate. There is no equivalence between killing people in camps and having an office job at Google.
Agreed that the comparison is extreme; I wouldn't have made it myself.
But it's also not harmless to work at a company which makes tools/components/software for killing people. It wouldn't be "just an office job". Sometimes it's hard to make the call, e.g. a spreadsheet can be used to tally inventory or prisoners at a work camp, but when your company is directly involved e.g. in enabling surveillance by a nation whose actions you consider immoral, then it's probably time to quit.
If the mention of the US or Trump as the motive for quitting makes anyone irritated, consider the same situation if it was a guy saying he won't work for a company which is developing AI to enable Putin to better identify dissenters or bomb Ukraine.
So we have established that "just a job" is not unpolitical?
It's just that you draw the line somewhere between enabling mass surveillance and being a concentration camp guard.
I actually think “just a job” is a justification in the following ways.
- Soldiers and police are a thing in society. They use violence in ways deemed just by society. I do not think their role is immoral.
- From experience I know that the number of people who can look at the incentive structure they are in and decide to operate outside it is basically 1%. Humans just aren’t wired that way.
- So I do not know in what ways a Nazi soldier could stop doing what they were doing - except in the same way you are free to escape industrial society and capitalism, by moving into a cabin in the woods in isolation.
This is why leadership is so essential. The leaders we choose and the systems we build around them determine what people will actually do.
Individual moral failure is self-inflicted not systematic.
Your comments are full of nonsense hyperbole. The comparison isn’t remotely close. I’m glad this guy left Google - dragging down his company and teammates with his insufferable leftist politics.
Not wanting to contribute to war crimes and other violations of international law is "leftist politics"?
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.
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
This dude only now thinks Google has lost its moral compass? In 2026?
Bruh.
"I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy"
tl;dr : Android head of security has quit on principl as he is a pacifist and Google are now working with USA department of war. And also as they scrapped the carbon neutral promise due to the AI Datacentre race.
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.
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.
Google: We're not evil.
Also, Google, later: No comment.
Like a slap in the face from a psychopath. It's not about "good", "bad", "honest", etc. It's literally the world EVIL that they no longer want to swear off. Astronomically monumentally fucked up psycho shit.
Dictionary:
Google: no comment.And I'm getting downvoted. Make of that what you will.
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.
>but no one gains anything from it
venting can be helpful mentally/emotionally.
readers can feel solidarity, comfort in a shared experience, etc.
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...
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.