[HN Gopher] The Cult Inside Google
___________________________________________________________________
The Cult Inside Google
Author : darrelld
Score : 307 points
Date : 2022-06-16 18:44 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| smartician wrote:
| So he thinks one of the Googlers he worked with convinced his
| employer to fire him, and now he's suing Google? Shouldn't he be
| suing his employer?
| abeppu wrote:
| So, if the author was fired for the reasons they believe, that's
| pretty bad behavior. But if he had not been fired, what was
| management supposed to have done about the cult members working
| for this department?
|
| Yes, the cult's leader sounds like a pretty awful person, but he
| wasn't working there. What were the cult members doing in their
| work in the department that was clearly wrong? It's suggested
| that there was favoritism and unfair promotion going on -- but
| it's not very well evidenced here. Were they using company money
| to fund their organization? It's also not clear from the article
| that the wine outfit is a cult subsidiary.
|
| And if the concern is primarily that the cult itself is a shady
| organization with some bad people, and that something should be
| done to stop Google from having a clique of staff that are even
| _affiliated_ with that organization ... well that seems like a
| really fraught policy. Are you supposed to then ask everyone in
| the department about their religious affiliations, or whether
| they've given money to a fringe religious organization? That also
| seems like a really unhealthy road for a company to go down.
| ineedasername wrote:
| At minimum Google could have investigated the odd clustering of
| employees that indicated some sort of nepotistic hiring
| practice. Of course they might be doing exactly that, but it's
| not the sort of thing they can really comment on.
|
| Edit: also the self-dealing on hundreds of thousands of dollars
| in wine.
| newbie2020 wrote:
| That is what DEI boards are for. Stamping out these natural
| clusters that form via social networks
| paxys wrote:
| Well if you expand that to a more generic "employees
| shouldn't be involved in hiring people who they know and
| associate with outside of work" then they'd have to fire half
| the company.
| throwaway86530 wrote:
| The author delayed his attempt to do something about the cult and
| got fired because he planned to do so. It would have been better
| to be fired after raising concerns to the HR. This would have
| been both more ethical and would also give a more solid ground
| for the trial, so that's a bit sad. Yet, that's so much better
| than the tons of people who knew and did nothing. Good luck to
| him!
| [deleted]
| m000 wrote:
| The author explains that he had TVC (temp/vendor/contractor)
| status, so he didn't reported to the same HR as the full-timers
| that were members of the cult. He also adds that his HR was
| notorious of their "not my problem" attitude.
| Melatonic wrote:
| There is also the little tidbit about him joining the Alphabet
| Union recently.....
|
| Surely not related and they could not have fired him for
| joining a union right.... right?!
|
| As far as I know however that would also be highly illegal -
| interesting story to follow for sure
| astrange wrote:
| It's not a real union and he wasn't an employee.
| [deleted]
| jsnell wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31765730
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| More info:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellowship_of_Friends
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/technology/google-fellows...
|
| https://nypost.com/2021/11/09/sex-rituals-and-fine-wines-ins...
|
| https://www.culteducation.com/group/927-fellowship-of-friend...
|
| https://robertearlburton.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-fellowship...
|
| https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,3315
|
| It makes sense that these are the type of people Google is forced
| hire what with the company's track record of ridiculously
| expensive unethical behaviour and all the over-the-top harassment
| claims. Consider also the most recent embarassment with the AI
| researcher who believed a computer performing pattern matching
| had feelings and sensations. It seems he is also apparently
| involved with some similar-sounding religious group.
| alanlammiman wrote:
| Well, if belonging to apocalyptic organized religions with
| tithing and well-documented cases of abuse is an issue, you've
| got a lot of people to fire...
|
| As long as the wine wasn't overpriced and they weren't personally
| abusing anyone, not much to see here.
| rendall wrote:
| Not really sure what the big deal is. Did the cult hurt this
| fellow? Abuse him? Discriminate against him? Mob him? No. The
| article really just talks about his own disapproval of the cult.
|
| It wasn't his business what these people got up to, frankly.
| LZ_Khan wrote:
| Did you read the article? They're funneling company funds into
| the cult. It's literally embezzlement.
| rendall wrote:
| First, questioning whether someone read the article is
| against the guidelines. Please don't do that.
|
| Secondly, according to the article, "everyone" at Google
| knew, and he was a contractor. Once he raised his concerns,
| he did his duty. At that point, it's Google's business, and
| it's up to them to do something about it. Or not, if they'd
| rather. Maybe they liked their work and so looked past the
| "embezzlement", but would have to do something if this guy
| kept making a stink. Or some other scenario.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > It's literally embezzlement
|
| No. What's been alleged (steering alcohol purchase contracts
| to their own winery) is unethical and potentially illegal,
| but embezzlement is a very different type of theft.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| What happens when it's time to decide who gets to be a full
| time Googley Googler and who doesn't? This guy is competing
| against a bunch of people in a literal cult, what are his odds
| like? Isn't that harm enough?
| amscanne wrote:
| Is hiring discrimination alleged to have happened? IIRC, the
| only decision that is noted in the blog post is the promotion
| of Dan (who is not in the cult), and the mysterious
| termination (for which we have no context or details, and the
| author feels it was orchestrated by the aforementioned Dan).
|
| While I'm sure there's lots of be concerned about with
| respect to the cult, I'm not sure it's Google's business to
| ask about and evaluate religious affiliations when hiring
| (I'm fairly certain this would be illegal?). There are plenty
| of ways that you can get a shop of closely related people
| that are more innocuous than hiring discrimination; for
| example, suppose the cult members worked together as a
| freelance group that Google used, and they decided to offer
| them jobs in order to bootstrap GDC. This exact situation
| would happen if Google acquires a company from a place with a
| relatively homogenous ethnic or religious makeup -- it is
| unfair to immediately assume that this is a result of a
| discriminatory hiring practice. (It's also possible that
| there _are_ questionable decisions, but I think it depends a
| lot on the specifics.)
| rl3 wrote:
| _> Not really sure what the big deal is. Did the cult hurt this
| fellow? Abuse him? Discriminate against him? Mob him? No. The
| article really just talks about his own disapproval of the
| cult._
|
| _> It wasn't his business what these people got up to,
| frankly._
|
| Quoting the article:
|
| _" The group is well-documented: There are allegations of
| child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape
| within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and
| makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse."_
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > Quoting the article:
|
| > "The group is well-documented: There are allegations of
| child abuse, human trafficking, forced abortions, and rape
| within the group, which has some 1,500 members worldwide and
| makes frequent prophecies of an imminent apocalypse."
|
| Those seem like issues for prosecutors to pursue, not for
| Google, unless the abuses were happening in Google offices or
| were sponsored by them.
| rl3 wrote:
| > _... or were sponsored by them._
|
| Quoting again from the article:
|
| _" The wine was our most consistent feature, and the
| invoices I've seen suggest we were buying hundreds of
| thousands of dollars worth every year, just from Grant
| Marie."_
| cpncrunch wrote:
| From what I can see, those allegations were from the 90s,
| but still nothing seems to have been substantiated. I'm not
| saying I condone this cult, but I don't see how it was
| having any effect on his work. It didn't become a problem
| until he himself complained to another manager.
|
| I mean: if you're going to get worked up about cults, why
| the fuck are we all watching Top Gun? Shouldn't we be
| protesting or something? They're a lot worse than this lot.
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| Should we forbid Catholics for the same reason?
| rl3 wrote:
| > _Should we forbid Catholics for the same reason?_
|
| Your answer lies in the distinction between cults and
| religion. In a nutshell, cults exert control over their
| members such that they compel them to behave contrary to
| their own interests.
| newbie2020 wrote:
| Religion does that too
| reissbaker wrote:
| Catholicism has certainly compelled people to behave
| "contrary to their own interests" -- e.g. preventing LGBT
| members from pursuing love, preventing unhappily-married
| people from divorcing, preventing women with dangerous or
| difficult pregnancies from seeking abortion; and that's
| without even referencing the many documented instances of
| child abuse -- so I'm not sure that distinction makes a
| huge difference.
| awsrocks wrote:
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I think a key point maybe getting missed here is that cults do
| _not_ want their members to leave. In Digital Vegan I wrote a
| short chapter about cults in tech, or rather the "cults _of_
| tech ". Facebook is one (for the users not employees). Emotional
| blackmail and tricks are used to keep people from leaving. Here
| it seems withdrawing membership is a threat to enforce
| behaviours, as in many secret/privileged societies, hence, as I
| said in a comment above, this is a _clique within Google_ (of
| cult members - and probably participants in all sorts of other
| unsavoury and disgraceful stuff)
|
| Edit: to distinguish membership of Google from membership of the
| "Fellowship" cult)
| threads2 wrote:
| Interesting. At first I thought this was a pedantic distinction
| but now I'm getting it:
|
| Cliques are exclusive and dispassionate - _your_ will keeps you
| in a clique. Cults are inclusive and coercive, _their_ will
| keeps you in the cult.
|
| Are there any books one can read about this distinction? Seems
| like you could arrive at some pretty interesting conclusions if
| you talk this out.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > cults do not want their members to leave
|
| It doesn't necessarily work this way. For example, some cults
| get rid of members after they stop being useful (able to pay
| money or work for the cult). If you get burned out or seriously
| sick, if you get unemployed, and if you already donated all
| your savings to the cult... then you become a burden. The group
| will kick you out under some pretext, e.g. accuse you of being
| an unrepentant sinner.
|
| Sometimes the members are psychologically unable to leave.
| Imagine being in a cult since early childhood (your parents
| joined the cult), having all your family in the cult, not
| having any friends outside the cult (because you are forbidden
| from associating with non-members). Imagine knowing that if you
| leave the cult for any reason, everyone you know will be
| forbidden to talk to you. In such case, kicking you out is a
| serious threat. Also, if the cult believes that members get to
| heaven and non-members get to hell, and you believe it too,
| then you are also afraid to be kicked out. You can keep
| threatening people, if you know there is a 99% chance they will
| get scared and obey.
|
| (I am not saying that this applies to the group described in
| the article. Just objecting against the general idea that if a
| group threatens to kick someone out, it is not a cult.)
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| So this is a video production department, which is kind of
| amazing when you think about it. The aesthetic of the modern
| corporate/tech video is cultish in character and it would make
| sense that these people know how to do this. And then it's also
| interesting because one could assume that these people could do
| so because the actual engineers in Alphabet probably aren't all
| that focused or interacting with this video team more than
| necessary. And they don't know much about video production
| anyways, not enough to scrutinize hiring decisions.
|
| This sounds like something that will take a little more organized
| effort to stamp out, probably internal investigation, evidence
| gathering etc. But if this guy figured it out, they didn't cover
| their tracks very well anyways -\\_(tsu)_/-
| 7952 wrote:
| Obviously it is wrong to influence hiring/firing or purchasing
| decisions. But do you think there are grounds for removing
| cults in a general sense from a company? Surely it is an aspect
| of people private lives in the same way that religion is.
| atty wrote:
| Any sane company does not want to be related to an
| organization where grooming, sex trafficking and rape are
| encouraged and practiced, I would think. That seems like more
| than enough reason to me.
| permo-w wrote:
| you wouldn't want another competing company operating within
| your company, would you?
|
| cults are pretty much corporations that aren't ashamed of
| their authoritarianism, with a few religious themes sprinkled
| in
| bombcar wrote:
| Companies don't like alternate or parallel authority
| structures inside the organization. This is why there are
| anti-fraternization rules, for example, because it can be
| abused.
| behringer wrote:
| Nepotism and special vendor contracts are most definitely
| negatives to google business. On top of that they're losing
| access to good talent.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _they didn't cover their tracks very well anyways -\\_(tsu)_
| /-_
|
| I mean they actually told him where they were from
| (geographically, if not organizationally), so clearly they
| didn't consider it something that needed to be secret.
|
| Which is interesting, because it gives us insight into their
| way of thinking [1]. They clearly don't consider themselves to
| be in any way toxic like the author thinks they are.
|
| Cults are interesting: they provide a sense of belonging and
| accomplishment to their members, in exchange for something
| (time, money/tithe, ...). In that respect, they're just another
| point on the spectrum of human social groups. Including some
| corporations. Frankly, I (and clearly other commenters here)
| have difficulty finding a clear ontological distinction between
| such a cult and, well, the Google corporation itself.
|
| [1] I'm already Othering them, which I'm sure they'd be
| surprised about
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Jesus Christ dude, they're led by a man who routinely
| sexually assaults people. Being permissive about that is
| pretty damning. Kooky beliefs are one thing, but cults
| combine those with oppressive social structures. It's not
| that hard unless you're stuck in the middle of one with all
| it's filtering.
| permo-w wrote:
| How different is a cult from a corporation, really?
| youessayyyaway wrote:
| The similarities keep piling up! Google was co-founded by
| Sergey Brin, who insisted it was okay to screw his
| employees in the company massage room because "they're my
| employees".
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/valley-of-genius-
| exc...
| pavlov wrote:
| So, like Tesla and SpaceX.
| thedailymail wrote:
| Actually interested - are there multiple allegations
| against EM other than the recently reported horse-for-
| handjob offer?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Only one accusation:
|
| https://www.dailyadvent.com/news/45a9223a5a878bd90c386109
| e55...
|
| There are also consistent allegations of an abusive
| culture at both SpaceX and Tesla:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/05/tesla-
| sex...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/former-spacex-engineer-
| inter...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/14/22835181/tesla-
| lawsuit-s...
| guelo wrote:
| Sexually assaulting people just like Catholic priests or
| Southern Baptists ministers.
| swatcoder wrote:
| The satanic and brainwashing/deprogramming scares of the 80's
| changed the way a lot of people use the word, but for the
| preceding several millennia cult simply suggested:
|
| A membership community with secrets and opportunities
| reserved for members.
|
| There are millions of these around us, and we're all probably
| members of several. It seems to be pretty normal throughout
| history. We just don't acknowledge it as such because the
| word was only fairly recently stigmatized.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > A membership community with secrets and opportunities
| reserved for members.
|
| That can also be a guild.
|
| "Cult" is a term from the study of religion (a particular
| field's jargon, if you will), and usually conveys intense
| devotion, a ritual or sacrificial dimension that goes
| beyond a master craftsman's level of devotion to a craft.
|
| Also, a guild can't entertain fanciful ideas about their
| craft for too long, if the ideas don't work in practice.
|
| The distinction is kind of like using Cobol to build a good
| solid system (guild), versus dropping some Lisp to reach
| enlightenment (cult), or using C to build a solid system
| (cult).
|
| In which case, I'm voting cult all the way.
| cs137 wrote:
| These days the preferred (I hate to call it "politically
| correct") term for what used to be called a "cult" is NRM:
| new religious movement. Cult is reserved for the minority
| that are actually deranged, coercive, and dangerous.
|
| Of course, part of the problem is that there are concentric
| rings, increasingly toxic as one goes higher/closer-in. The
| outer ring is full of gullible normies who do recruiting
| and PR, useful idiots who have no idea what's really going
| on.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| The dangerous organizations were called "destructive cults"
| (which suggested the existence of non-destructive ones) in
| the 80's, but people gradually stopped using the adjective,
| generalizing it too far.
|
| > A membership community with secrets and opportunities
| reserved for members.
|
| Yeah, but the exact type of "secrets and opportunities"
| matters. Sometimes (as mentioned in the article) the secret
| opportunity is a surprise nonconsensual sex with the group
| leader.
| ineedasername wrote:
| It's the nature of those secrets though, isn't it. A small
| professional organization that keeps a secret list of
| member reviews of different workplaces, managers, etc is
| not the same as an organization that keeps occult beliefs a
| secret, or hides sex trafficking.
| dendriti wrote:
| We call non-religious cults "cliques" now...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Yes, I think in this context the word "cult" is
| inappropriate. The word the author was looking for is
| "clique".
| happyopossum wrote:
| Umm, members of cliques don't ritually abuse each other -
| that's a cult thing.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Okay, more nuance: The shit this "Fellowship of Friends"
| actually does - that's a cult. I guess wanted to say
| they're a clique of cult members.
|
| The cult is real. The clique is the group within Google
| (as opposed to there being a cult within Google), I hope
| that distinction makes sense.
|
| I've seen this before. At the BBC. Everyone closed ranks
| around Jimmy Savile and an organisation called PIE
| (paedophile information exchange). You were literally
| told you couldn't say anything about it. But AFAIK the
| rotten group was small, but powerful. Many, many more
| decent people work at the BBC. As I'm sure applies to
| Google.
|
| Edit:
|
| I say this because the headline "Cult within Google" is
| misleading. (I bloody hate Google and everything they
| stand for - but there's an important distinction to be
| made)
| dcow wrote:
| Costco: a modern cult.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Partake in the Holy Communion of the Perpetual $1.50 Hot
| Dog Combo.
| behringer wrote:
| This explains so much about google
| lofatdairy wrote:
| Not really... I love to bash Google as much as anyone but a
| religious cult within a department within a massive
| corporation doesn't really mean much about the company as a
| whole. Especially when you could pretty clearly see the
| difference between cult's teachings and the public stances
| for women's rights and for same-sex marriages that many
| Google employees have taken.
| cs137 wrote:
| A modern religious ethnographer would distinguish between
| NRMs (new religious movements) and the minority thereof
| that are actually criminal, coercive, etc., as the term
| "cult" has come to imply. That said, NRMs aren't always
| free of toxicity. Pyramid schemes and actual cults often
| target them, exploiting a high-trust network of people
| considered to be gullible.
|
| The typical corporate "cult"--I don't think Google is any
| more or less toxic than any other company at this point,
| and the true cult is capitalism itself, not a specific
| company--is somewhere between NRMs and actual cults in
| terms of virulence. Companies have displaced communities in
| modern life and yet they frequently un-person people for
| economic or petty political reasons. That said, executives
| usually prefer to keep their child sex abuse and their
| economic exploitation in different buildings--and, if
| Epstein is any indicator, on different landmasses--so,
| there's that, at least.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| lofatdairy wrote:
| Excuse me if I'm mistaken, but it seems to me that the
| FoF falls under the more pejorative sense of cult, rather
| than NRM, given the central role of leadership and the
| abuses of power. It seems distinct from, say, neo-
| paganism in that sense.
|
| If you're referring to the parent comment's description
| of Google, then there's really no point in trying to make
| a distinction, since they were using it as a polemic
| anyways. That said, I don't think describing capitalism
| as the cult is necessarily useful either, in that it
| implies a reliance on _active_ belief and conscious
| performance of rituals which doesn't seem to be the case.
| It seems to me that the more useful framework is Fisher's
| capitalist realism, which more accurately describes this
| neoliberal end of history that inspires so much pessimism
| (and a more Foucaultian sense of power which is pervasive
| and defines the discursive space, rather than religious,
| which identifies a moral power within entities).
| Regardless, theorizing endlessly on capitalism is
| probably not going to solve actual issues of corporate
| overreach and abuses of power, so it's infinitely easier
| to just call Google a cult and hope it shifts public
| opinion and motivates political action lmao.
| [deleted]
| dboreham wrote:
| Came here thinking tfa was about protocol buffers.
| newbie2020 wrote:
| You have to be careful with the line of reasoning that just
| because these certain managers and team members are part of a
| cult that is known to engage in bad acts, doesn't mean you can
| cast the group's shortcomings upon the individuals (without
| proof). If that were the case, I can point out a few mainstream
| religions that condone reprehensible practices, many of whose
| members you probably work with daily
| whoopdeepoo wrote:
| At what point can you hold people accountable for the actions
| of the groups they voluntarily associate with?
| ineedasername wrote:
| When they're part of those actions, like giving themselves a
| contract for the wine they make.
| ineedasername wrote:
| You can certainly stop them paying themselves hundreds of
| thousands of dollars by giving themselves contracts as wine
| vendors.
| notacoward wrote:
| Then there's this bit toward the end.
|
| > I had recently joined the Alphabet Workers Union, the union of
| now almost 1,000 workers across all Alphabet companies
|
| Doesn't that seem _way_ more likely to explain the sudden firing?
| flakiness wrote:
| It was after the termination, if I read it correctly.
| notacoward wrote:
| Not clear. Author says "recently" but that also applies to
| the firing. AIUI somebody wouldn't even be eligible to join
| an Alphabet-employee union while not working at Alphabet.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I don't think you want the explanation for a termination to be
| "because they joined a union".
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Do they work for Google or are they some contracted firm?
|
| I can't imagine the cult was able to spread within Google itself.
| labrador wrote:
| This doesn't sound far fetched to me at all because I still
| remember Marshall Applewhite and his techie cult pictured dead
| from suicide in bunk beds wearing uniforms and Nike shoes
|
| If fact, it seems long overdue for another and I'm surprised the
| pace of these hasn't picked up. That's good news for the day.
| kradeelav wrote:
| Not going as far to say "anyone currently at Google is morally
| compromised" - but anyone who knows about this, and stays is ...
| not somebody who I'd want to associate with. Or hire for that
| matter.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| If I only worked at companies that weren't "basically evil", I
| would have to work for myself - and I'm sure if I looked hard
| enough (and definitely if someone else did), I wouldn't even be
| able to do that.
| kradeelav wrote:
| YMMV, but there seems to me a difference between "generic
| corporate sleaze" and "sex trafficking doom cult literally
| within the system".
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| YMMV, but when you have 100k+ employees - you're gonna have
| more than "generic corporate sleaze" somewhere in the
| system.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Not every company then eh?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Big companies aren't inherently evil. Because they're
| big, the probability that big actors sneek in is higher.
| happyopossum wrote:
| Not sure how black and white you'd have to see the world to
| immediately lump 150k Alphabet employees into the evil bucket
| due to a dozen people whom most of those employees never knew
| about or met.
| permo-w wrote:
| this reads like the plot of a Goosebumps novel
| t_mann wrote:
| Interesting that they didn't seem to try to conceal their
| association much at all. They all said they were from this place
| firmly associated with this group, even though they probably
| weren't even 'from' there in the typical sense of the word (grown
| up and raised there).
| [deleted]
| walkhour wrote:
| Favoritism is rampant in some teams at Google, but it's harder to
| detect when you are not hiring your fellow cult friends.
|
| Unconscious bias hiring training is there for a reason, but there
| are many situations when the bias is conscious.
|
| But it's clear that some directors/managers have overly favoured
| their race/caste/people from their hometown/area.
| abirch wrote:
| Here's the gift link to the referenced NYTimes Article
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/technology/google-fellows...
| indigodaddy wrote:
| What is "gift" link? It still makes me sign in to try to read
| it..
| abirch wrote:
| There should be a parameter in the back of the link that lets
| see this article for free, e.g., unlocked_article_code=AAAAAA
| AAAAAAAAAACEIPuomT1JKd6J17Vw1cRCfTTMQmqxCdw_PIxftm3iWka3DLDm8
| ciPgYCIiG_EPKarskaNw00DCWAdFMNLsoW-
| dyz_caOEIoRROpr52Ig9EeLi4p74KvW2d8l7T8YYcFyx64JG-
| oNLU4g7SloxONNDX3Wvba1yUnd1569Jc1c0Wt3SYM2vzHG-VqitZ5jfcjB5p-
| TWpWdzDK66ezc2h2MdWHbBjd7wkkCaoOCXyIw4nqu_9Xex5SCFnGUHp7_W44j
| dhfM9odN6z5RAUyLIu82f5CTzw1c_r6QsE5VIPWlL51sLDSqRPqy8K-xvQ-
| Fqg8r6pV3as5AVxCZ_IifY3WD6yB&smid=url-share
| dqpb wrote:
| Wow. Google is even more of a shit show than I realized.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I can totally see how this can fly under the radar. "Cults" are
| common in tech, though not of this type.
|
| I've received job offers where entire functions are all people
| who had worked together at a previous company and not hired
| through acquisitions. I've had teams where majority of the team
| is from the same university or class. More than 50% of the team
| having a common denominator is common and it usually starts with
| one person getting hired in a high enough position where their
| hiring decisions are not scrutinized.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Cliques (which is what you're referring to) in tech and
| corporate environment in general are common and not necessarily
| a bad thing. For example, a lot of early google engineers came
| from dec (sanjay, jeff) and ucsb where urs was a professor as
| well stanford (both founders and first employee). Seems like it
| worked out well for them. It only becomes toxic if they develop
| a hive mind and start to actively bash/drive away "outsiders"
| binbag wrote:
| In what way are cults common in tech?
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| Startups. Full of idols :-P
| carabiner wrote:
| "Cliques" I can see. Techies are often delayed adolescents in
| many ways.
| troutwine wrote:
| I'm curious about the definition as well. "Cult" generally
| has a very specific set of behaviors associated with it as a
| term, where the GP could easily be describing a close-knit,
| large friend group.
| txru wrote:
| I believe the parent is referring more to referral/promo
| networks.
|
| For a positive example, I knew one of my senior managers
| basically brought 15 people from his previous company, to the
| point where a comfortable majority of people under him were
| from the company.
|
| This can be nefarious when the network arises from abusive or
| unhealthy environments.
| chasd00 wrote:
| this happens a lot in consulting. Someone in leadership
| leaves for another firm and is tasked to start building.
| Then they call up all their old aces and bring them over
| fleshing out Sr positions and then the new guys fill in
| with their aces and so on. It's a small world in some ways.
| mtlguitarist wrote:
| Is this really a positive thing? It creates in-groups and
| decreases diversity. Sure, it makes hiring easier but this
| is exactly how you end up with old boys clubs.
| woah wrote:
| It's hard to hire. I can imagine that "someone in a high enough
| position" could have a pretty good competitive advantage being
| able to hire employees of known and consistent competence
| without having to slog through resumes and interviews. Once
| there were a few of this group already working, it would also
| be easier to close hires with the social pressure. I can
| imagine that higher ups might be inclined to look the other way
| about how the individual in question was able to hire so
| effectively, if anyone could even articulate a compelling
| argument against it.
| overkill28 wrote:
| The medium article omits it, but the per the NY Times all the
| employees were actually hired by a contractor:
|
| > He said ASG, not Google, hired contractors for the GDS
| team, adding that it was fine for him to "encourage people to
| apply for those roles." And he said that in recent years, the
| team has grown to more than 250 people, including part-time
| employees.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Here's how you articulate it: the odds that the best people
| for the job all came from the same class at the same
| university are slim to none.
| swatcoder wrote:
| "Best person for the job" is either a meaningless phrase or
| a myth, depending on how you choose to define best.
|
| In reality, there are many comparably adequate people for
| getting any job done, and no clairvoyance that lets us know
| who among them will deliver the best outcome.
|
| So we resort to picking among the comparably adequate
| candidates by either broadening "best" to include non-task
| factors like culture harmony, diversity of perspective, gut
| feeling, etc
|
| That a bunch of adequate people all came from the same
| class at the same university is actually pretty plausible,
| and (subject to tradeoffs) those people will probably even
| work pretty well as a group because of that shared
| experience.
|
| I'm not saying its the ideal strategy to only hire that
| way, but just that it's not nearly so straightforward as
| you suggest.
| closeparen wrote:
| The odds that you can better assess "best person for the
| job" from a resume and a few hours of interviews vs.
| several years of working together are also slim to none.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In most cases, it's sufficient to avoid the "people who are
| a bad fit for the job" rather than needing the "best people
| for the job". Deep knowledge acquired via years of
| working/schooling with them is a much better selector than
| a half-day of interviewing.
| cs137 wrote:
| Also, I know people in minority groups who are fantastic at
| their jobs and have had year-plus job searches.
|
| The "labor shortage" is bullshit. So many good people can't
| find decent jobs even today, and wages are still hilarious
| low compared to the outright robbery that capital gets away
| with.
|
| That being said, I don't think it's necessarily because of
| conscious racism, sexism, or ageism that companies tend to
| end up redlined. It has a lot more to do with the fact that
| managerial decisions are made based on motives that have
| little to do with business at all. Silicon Valley ageism,
| for example, doesn't exist because middle-aged men think
| young people are all geniuses. (Trust me, we don't.)
| Rather, it exists because the subordinate's job is to make
| the boss feel young again, to be the Jesse to their Walter
| White. It has nothing to do with the needs of the business,
| but it also doesn't get in the way of the business, so it's
| not likely to be changed.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The odds that a company truly needs the best ten instead of
| "anyone in the top 10%" are equally slim-to-none. A cohort
| of fraternity brothers may give up the theoretical maximum
| quality in favor of known competency (& weaknesses) here
| and now.
| nostromo wrote:
| It comes from risk aversion. Firing people is painful and
| expensive. And it's hard to know how good someone actually
| is just from interviewing.
|
| So if I've worked with someone previously and know they're
| not lazy or incompetent, that's worth a ton -- even if
| they're not the absolute best person for the job.
| eggsbenedict wrote:
| Interesting story.
|
| From the headline, I thought this was going to be a culture-war
| type of article. I wasn't expecting evidence of a real cult.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| My thought was it was gonna be about how their corporate-speak
| was cult-like with terms like "Googley" and "Googler" and
| "Noogler" but I figured that wouldn't really be worth an
| article.
| woah wrote:
| I thought it was going to be about Landmark Forum
| dexwiz wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised to learn this is a common occurrence
| across tech. Coming from the Midwest, the West Coast seems full
| of cults. Talking to people, it doesn't take long to find someone
| who was raised in a cult, or has family members in a cult.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I'm from the midwest of the us, have lived roughly 18 years in
| california, never met any cult person, except for opt-in cults
| like crossfit and other macho communities which are seemingly
| creepily (laughably) similar. "spiritual gangster" shirts i've
| seen many times, which i can't tell the humor level of.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > it doesn't take long to find someone who was raised in a
| cult, or has family members in a cult.
|
| I'm gonna make an assumption that you have a much more liberal
| definition of 'cult' than most of us are thinking of - I've
| lived and worked my entire life on the west coast, the last 2
| decades in Northern California, and I don't think I've ever met
| someone raised in a cult.
| zdragnar wrote:
| The Midwest is full of tiny communities that would look like
| cults to someone who hasn't lived here- Amish, Mennonites,
| Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses and more.
|
| A big part of the difference is that- aside from Jehovah's
| Witnesses, they tend to not be active in proselytizing, and
| members tend to stay within the groups for longer- their
| activities rarely make hollywood-style media news because
| they're not particularly interesting compared to what we more
| typically think of as cults (i.e. the doomsday cult" in the
| article).
| Beldin wrote:
| > _aside from Jehovah 's Witnesses, they tend to not be
| active in proselytizing_
|
| From [1]:
|
| _Members are expected to participate regularly in
| evangelizing work ..._
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses_pra
| cti...
| bseidensticker wrote:
| Yeah, that's literally what they said.
| [deleted]
| dexwiz wrote:
| Oh yeah the Midwest is full of cults. There are a ton of
| radical and fundamentalist Christian offshoots. The only
| difference between many religions and cults is time.
|
| West Coast cults have their own particular flavor though,
| like the Fellowship of Friends.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Just coincidentally, within a few minutes before your comment
| there was this thread posted alleging Maker Media of being a
| cult.
|
| https://twitter.com/ViolenceWorks/status/1537524983961767936
| whoopdeepoo wrote:
| Also coming from the Midwest, how is fanatical Christianity any
| better?
| swatcoder wrote:
| When thinking about other regions, you're probably discounting
| churches that turn to just one or a few charismatic pastors to
| help them understand Christian faith and history.
|
| These are ultimately as idiosyncratic and subject to community
| abuse as the 20th century belief communities that syncretize
| "Eastern" faiths, materialist philosophies, and various other
| post-globalization sources.
|
| They may look different to you because the front-door teachings
| superficially make more sense in one than the other from your
| perspective, but they're operationally pretty similar.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Having mostly worked for west coast companies, I'd be pretty
| surprised if this was common.
|
| Granted, I was raised mormon, which is like a half-cult, but
| within tech companies themselves I haven't really seen any of
| this behavior. Perhaps it's more common in other departments
| (I'm a SWE), I dunno.
| jancsika wrote:
| Just to clarify-- this article is about a modern religious cult.
|
| Modern religious cults are groups that use a whole host of well-
| known manipulative techniques to trap victims in insular groups
| which are then difficult to escape after the fact. Leaders of
| those groups directly abuse those victims physically and/or
| emotionally (and often drain their bank accounts as well).
|
| This isn't, "My parents are worried about my work/life
| imbalance."
|
| This is, "My parents are evil and only the leader can keep me
| from straying again."
|
| While it's mildly interesting that "cult" has a namespace clash
| with "clique" as well as whatever paranoia 80s moms had about
| D&D, those things aren't what this article is describing. If you
| have trouble discerning the difference, please go watch one of
| the myriad documentaries on Scientology.
|
| Edit: clarification
| aerovistae wrote:
| I'm not sure what this comment was meant to clarify - the
| article already made this clear. If anything, your comment's
| reference to parents adds confusion rather than clarification.
| xg15 wrote:
| I mean, we got comments like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31770714 so maybe some
| clarification is necessary.
| jancsika wrote:
| There are commenters below going on about tech cliques and
| the 80s D&D scare. This ain't that.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Almost like they didn't read the article... They're very
| clear about the allegations
| jancsika wrote:
| Frankly, I don't understand rule that prohibits barking
| at commenters who clearly didn't read the article. That's
| what I'm routing around here, and as a side-effect I'm
| annoying at least one bona fide reader.
| akomtu wrote:
| Suing a cult with hundreds of members is a dumb idea: they'll
| turn vindictive and will go after you. Instead, you appear mildly
| suppotive and friendly to them, gather information, give them
| publicity via media outlets, and give anonymous tips to FBI.
| nocturnial wrote:
| I hope nobody takes your idea seriously. Most people aren't
| super-spies who can go undercover and save society from a cult.
| Just go to law enforcement, report it and listen to what they
| have to say.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| There once was a professor doing research on cults who sent
| out his grad students to secretly embed themselves in various
| cults and report on them. Not all of them came back.. And now
| we get learn about why that was a bad idea in the ethics
| portion of psychology classes! Yay!
| burrows wrote:
| How are you defining "bad idea"?
|
| Professor sent out the grad students. Some of them didn't
| come back (died?).
|
| Those are all the facts. Any pontificating about whether it
| is Good or Bad is just nonsense.
| djcannabiz wrote:
| Do you know when/where this happened? Im not doubting you
| Im just very curious.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| The US and any time before the 2000s. Sorry I can't be of
| more help than that. It was only a brief but very
| memorable mention in a lecture many years ago. I did just
| try searching for it online but there is a ton of cult
| related content online. More than I ever imagined. Also
| it's not like the researchers were exposed and murdered
| dramatically, rather that some just ended up joining and
| staying with the cults.
| dubswithus wrote:
| Imagine working so hard to work at Google and then...
|
| > Members are typically required to give 10 percent of their
| monthly earnings to the organization.
|
| > one member described being fined $1,500 for having sex with a
| woman when they weren't married.
| itronitron wrote:
| fined $1500 or 'charged' $1500?
| swatcoder wrote:
| If you submitted some personal authority and you transgress
| that authority, and you can remedy that transgression with a
| payment, _fine_ is a suitable word.
|
| I see what you're getting at, but the word isn't really out
| of place there.
| re wrote:
| The referenced NYTimes article about the author's lawsuit:
| https://archive.ph/0dwuK
| anonGone73 wrote:
| The Fourth Way, Gurdjieff, and Ouspensky are worth looking into.
| The fallacies of man corrupt, especially when dogma serves one
| master.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Some of it is interesting.
|
| The idea that humans are (in general) machines and all our
| reactions are stimuli/response. With occasional glimpses of
| real consciousness that have potential to be developed. That is
| interesting to me anyway.
|
| However, a lot of it appears hooey. The numerology type stuff
| for instance.
| throwaway29303 wrote:
| I had recently joined the Alphabet Workers Union, the union of
| now almost 1,000 workers across all Alphabet companies, including
| Google. I told them my story and they advised that I get a
| lawyer.
|
| Wait, Unions in the USA don't have a legal office to help workers
| with this kind of legal problems? Or is this specific to AWU?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Specific to AWU, I'd imagine - as it's not a "real union"
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