Google, ethics, “real” journalism – and the reality of work. Ah, kids these days 🤷‍♂️

6 September 2022 – So I read a somewhat odd article about Google in the New York Times. That’s a newspaper. Not a “Harvard Business Review”. Sorry. Those “New York Times” types think they can write about business and commerce because they believe they are in the world of “real journalists”. But all they do is embrace the wonkiness of management gurus and Drukerism. They continually fail on so many levels (see: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, etc., etc., etc., etc.)

The article which caught my attention was named by someone – possibly a really busy editor –  “Google Employee Who Played Key Role in Protest of Contract with Israel Quits”.

I know. The idea that an individual who accepts pay in return for work does not like a corporation’s direction is becoming a thing, a trend. The idea is that a company pays a person and that person gets to alter the direction in which a decision is heading.

Yeah, okay. Kids these days. Several steps removed from the way the world works. 

From my point of view, the person who accepts money to work at a company, presumably eight or more hours a day, has several options:

1. Just quit. Hunt for a new job. This is a good solution.

2. Keep quiet. Do the work. Cash the check or look at the bank balance in an online only bank app.

3. Work harder, get promoted, and earn a position and responsibility so that one’s ideas can influence colleagues. This is a better solution.

The New York Times article skips these ideas and just focuses on the actions taken by the employee. The implicit idea is that the employee’s approach to a problem was just wonderful. The company’s response to these actions was inappropriate, ill advised, and stupid. Huh.  Maybe Google’s approach to management is different from what someone of my age (65) expects and has experienced? The one point in the article which struck me as significant was:

“… Google had tried to retaliate against her for her activism”.

The retaliation point is one that really warrants more development. The newspaper article could have been boiled down to 150 words. The “MBA-the-big-tech-outfit-is bad” angle could have been expanded, explained – analyzed the way any Harvard Business-Review-type of write up would do it, or a law review-type analysis. But it fails. 

What I perceive is the New York Times trying to do (yet again) something it’s is not geared up to do well. The same, horrendous pig’s breakfast it made with the Timing Gebru firing at Google.

Is the Google perfect? Hell, no. Is this situation revealing a facet of the online ad outfit which is troubling? Absolutely. But is Google primary on a profit-making mission. Ummm … oh, yeah.

Both the employee and the company could have been (should have been) a bit more old fashioned, a bit more “reality-in-the-workplace” – but then it would not have been “real news”. And that’s a problem because it doesn’t help social media metrics: for the New York Times or the Google employee. Because attention is the name of the game.