The Next Level Of Tech Activism: Google Employees Walk Out, Demand Changes From Management

Say That Again

from the time-for-some-changes dept

Over the summer we wrote about the increase in employees at big tech companies leading internal protests against business decisions made by those companies — mostly around providing tools to the government or military that might be used in ways that many people find to be immoral. It was interesting to see this play out (and stay tuned for next week’s podcast, where this will be discussed). More recently, there have been similar protests from within Google over its plans to reenter the Chinese market with a government-approved version of its search engine.

Yesterday, thousands of Google employees took this to another level. Following a recent (horrific) NY Times piece on massive failures by Google management in dealing with sexual misconduct at the company, Google employees all over the world participated in a walkout protest over management’s activity. They also put together what appears to be a fairly modest list of demands, including an end to forced arbitration over harassment and discrimination claims, further commitments to fight pay and opportunity inequality at the company, transparency on sexual harassment at the company, a better way for reporting sexual misconduct, an elevated role for a “Chief Diversity Officer,” and adding an “Employee Representative” to the Board of Directors.

I have a bunch of thoughts on this — some of which I may explore more deeply in future posts, but at a first pass, I think this kind of activism by employees is a very good thing. Remember, Silicon Valley has long promoted the idea that its workforce is much more closely aligned with management than traditional companies, in part because of the free flowing nature of stock options and grants. As someone who spent years studying traditional labor/management malfunctions, the more mutually aligned approach that Silicon Valley claimed to have had in the past was a huge part of its strength and a key reason why the industry as a whole has been so innovative. Unfortunately, in the past few years, it does seem that this alignment has diverged, and in too many cases, management has been pursuing growth and opportunities in ways that go against the interests and beliefs of the employees. There may be reasons for this, but they’re not good ones.

While Silicon Valley has long had an antagonistic view towards traditional labor organizing and unions (which I think is the right call for a whole host of structural reasons), it’s fascinating to watch employees at these companies gravitate toward these kinds of protest behaviors to make their voices heard.

As we’ve discussed for many years, the power of innovation in Silicon Valley is driven by its employees and their ability to continue to innovate and create wonderful new things — and to take their brainpower and move to other companies. Perhaps it’s no surprise that, as we’ve had a few companies become bigger and bigger over the past few years, there’s a center of gravity that has allowed management and an employee base to lose the alignment of interests. It’s an unfortunate trend and one that hopefully these actions can help correct.

On a related note, the idea of an employee representative on the board is a fascinating one. Other countries (most notably Germany) have done this under law (and we discussed a proposed law to do this in the US just a few months ago on our podcast). I think companies would be much better served in doing so, if only (again) to better align the incentives of the employees and the overall company, which should lead to better long term results.

My one quibble with the list of demands is with the focus on the “Chief Diversity Officer.” It is not that I’m opposed to companies focusing on diversity as a goal — I think that’s actually especially valuable in a company that seeks to serve nearly the entire globe with services. But, it reminds me of the rush a decade ago for companies to create Chief Digital Officers. As I said back then, a Chief Digital Officer made it look like you treated “thinking digitally” as just another silo, rather than something the entire company had to understand at a gut level. The same is true of diversity. Having it be a “role” in the company perhaps might make sense as a forcing function to make sure that someone is making sure that the company is moving in the right direction, but to achieve true diversity within a company, you need everyone to understand, deeply, the value of diversity in helping to push companies forward, to build truly innovative products, and to understand how those products and services could potentially impact millions or billions of people (in both good and bad ways). So nothing against placing an emphasis on diversity, but creating a Chief Diversity Officer feels a bit too limiting, and creates a situation where it’s too easy for people to pass the buck and assume that diversity is an issue for that role to focus on, rather than for everyone to focus on.

Filed Under: activism, diversity, management, sexual misconduct, silicon valley, tech activism, walkout
Companies: google