Dieter Bohn Google tries to depoliticize

Happy Friday to you!

I was very relieved to read Samantha Nelson's review of Netflix's Dark Crystal series, which seems like it will not retroactively ruin my childhood in any way. I still find Hollywood trends to be fascinating: we went from sequel-itis to prequel-itis to remake-itis. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a combination of those last two, maybe, but it sounds like it works. 

In other words, a dark yet hopeful world has been artfully depicted by creators who have delicately balanced people's expectations and successfully made a lot of previously worried people happy.

If you'd like an example of the almost exact opposite thing, look no further than the new policies that were just rolled out to Google's employees. (Yes, that was a super bad transition, but just go with it because it's the biggest tech news of the day.)

Russell Brandom has the details on the section that has people most worried, quoted here:

“While sharing information and ideas with colleagues helps build community, disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news story does not,” the new guidelines read. “Our primary responsibility is to do the work we’ve each been hired to do, not to spend working time on debates about non-work topics.” 

Google employees have been in the vanguard of the trend of tech employees getting political — and sometimes veering into outright activism. It's hard not to see this policy as a crackdown on all of the above. I sort of don't believe it's because Google's executives don't agree with much of the politics. Instead, I see it as a sign that Google's executives are simply exhausted and want it all to stop. 

I'm sympathetic, but executives can't change a company's culture by fiat. They need to lead and foster the culture they want. That's what Google did for its entire history. This new policy doesn't strike me as particularly onerous for the average big corporation, but the way it's being rolled out certainly doesn't seem to jibe with Google's culture. Besides, isn't the whole point of Google that it's not your average big corporation?

-Dieter

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