From a correspondent in Mountain View comes a description of a company headed towards an unfortunate fate.
My employer is flirting with a left singularity.
Google is a left-wing organization, in two ways. First, its founders and executives support left-wing politicians, left-wing causes, left-wing fads.
But Google is also left-wing in another, non-political manner, in its style of internal speech and debate. The hallmarks of the left — holiness competition, the vanguard of the people, no one more extreme is an enemy — are present whenever anyone discusses a non-political subject that is relevant to the company.
As long as you advocate in favor of Google’s goals (“focus on the user” is a popular phrase, and can be used to justify pretty much anything), you can criticize any product, even call out executives by name.
Go on o’er and read his post and some of the others.
I keep thinking that left is just the direction water flows, and that cohesion, team-spirit, asabiya, you-name-it is what stops the water from flowing.
Until cohesion breaks down and the water starts to flow from the leaks.
The difference in the Google story is that people used to ignore the microagressions, but now they don’t. What changed, but team-spirit? They used to have enough not to rat on their colleagues; now they relish on the chance to kick scapegoats in the face. The accusation itself is immaterial.
They did get rid of the proxy IQ tests. It was either late 2013 or early 2014. I shall find the NYT article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big-data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html
>The difference in the Google story is that people
>used to ignore the microagressions, but now they
>don’t. What changed, but team-spirit?
Tactically, progressivism takes advantage of the white collar social contract, that one must be respectful of one’s coworkers. So progs say the most ridiculous things, and can’t be called on it, because hey we’re all one team here and how can you say Nancibald is on crack when xe says talking about the Super Bowl is an attack on the transgendered.
Strategically, if there are several ideologies of whom most take neutrality and courtesy seriously, and one proselytizes itself at every opportunity without shame, guess which one wins.
>They did get rid of the proxy IQ tests.
Do you mean asking for GPAs, or “How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane?” The latter type of question is complete garbage.
But of course Google is lower IQ than a decade ago. It was a lot easier to attract really elite talent before the IPO. The company has grown so much that it’s not possible to maintain very high standards.
[One more thing — thanks Mr. Dampier for the link, and thanks to both of you for your informative and interesting blogs.]
And thank you for the correction.
If you were shrunk to the size of a penny and found yourself trapped in a blender… and the blender was 3/8ths full of jellybeans… how would you get out before the 3:03 train from San Francisco to San Jose passed Redwood City?