Thread by @alexfeinberg1, How I Worked Through the Social Justicization of Google without Going Insane [...]

How I Worked Through the Social Justicization of Google without Going Insane (Thread) :

I started working at Google in 2011, back when people thought it was weird that I was "switching from finance to tech"

At the time the company was assumed to be Libertarian leaning, as was I

My first team was mostly women, which was probably a good thing for me, and the company was not overtly political for my first few years

As Google morphed into a large company, there were many things that did frustrate me, but politics was not one of them

It was fairly clear the company wanted to make money & like other mega corporations, had fairly sophisticated schemes to keep wage growth throttled as revenues rose

Once I understood this, it was easy to depersonalize my relationship with my employer

Their job was to pay me

Amidst the dishonesty that was needed to maintain the narrative they used to suppress wages, their treatment of women & minorities at the time was actually coherent and if anything, ahead of the curve

And while their approach didn't "advantage" me, I couldn't say it was unfair

2014 was the cusp of the transition & marked the beginning of when the world really started going insane

Always ahead of the curve South Park put out a hilarious episode called "The Cissy" where Cartman pretends to be trans to get his own bathroom https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e03-the-cissy

The Cissy

According to Eric Cartman, Wendy Testaburger has become a lesbian.

https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s18e03-the-cissy

A few months later at work, on a trip to the men's bathroom, I noticed a full box of tampons

At first I thought it was a cleaning lady's mistake

Then I saw a box in a 2nd bathroom

I was fairly familiar w/ the people in my building & did not believe there to be any transpeople

So I put a small piece of paper on top of one to see if it would move

A week went by and the paper was still there

These were social justice props placed in the men's bathroom

Alongside these empty gestures were increased discussions of white and male privilege

It was all pretty absurd to me because living in San Francisco, I used to walk by homeless people all the time

They were almost all men

It was obvious this entire narrative was focused exclusively on the tale end of commercially successful people, where men outnumber women

At the beginning, I thought it was an honest oversight

I figured by sharing areas where men were disadvantaged (homelessness, suicide, and treatment in the criminal justice system) we could begin to have a more holistic understanding of gender in society

By the fall of 2016, the rhetoric was reaching what I thought was peak absurdity, which Trump capitalized on to get elected

I thought his election would mark a turning point in Google's approach. Perhaps an honest appraisal of their methods and a calculated retreat

Wrong

The office felt like a morgue the day after the election

Instantly the narrative of "fake news" started circulating, which I thought was a bit absurd given the timing

If it were actually an issue, why'd it only get brought up AFTER the election results were in? @Cernovich knows

I guess the peculiar timing raised a red flag only to me

I worked closely in the news department, and as these narratives started circulating, I began asking questions like:

If fake news inspired the Comet Pizza shooter, what about the NY Times role enabling the Iraq war?

I think I may have been the only member in or around the News department who was familiar with the Church Committee hearings of the 70s, where it was revealed that the CIA planted journalists across various publications to influence public thought

To me, the news was always fake

I never felt scared to voice my opinion, b/c I may have been paid well, but in my mind still felt underpaid

If I was going to be underpaid, I damn well wasn't going to become a mental slave too

I figured the worst that could happen was getting fired & I was okay with that risk

I also wasn't a dick about it. I just said the things I thought in an even tone

I never conveyed animosity, I just said what I thought and why

It was always okay

Then in 2017 I became addicted to watching the videos of a YouTube psychologist

I watched him for 20+ hours a week

At the time I thought he was the smartest person I had ever heard speak

It was @jordanbpeterson and he conveyed ideas that I had vaguely thought in my mind, but had yet to crystalize as well as he had

I assumed others had heard him as well

Then on one Sunday in August 2017, a colleague pinged me sharing a "Diversity Memo"

She asked me what I thought

I read it & could tell the author followed Jordan Peterson too; it was obvious in the memo's structure

I said I thought it was probably true & didn't think much more

I didn't expect it to be a big deal & was shocked that the office the following Monday felt like we just survived a terrorist attack

Person after person in my team of ~20 (whom I got along well with) struck down the memo, casting it as backward and ignorant

With my voice cracking and a tear in my eye, I was the only one who spoke up in support during the team meeting

I said it was true

Then I mentioned that I never thought there'd come a time where I'd be scared to bring up peer reviewed research at work https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-21-over-men-stem-faculty-positions

Women preferred 2:1 over men for STEM faculty positions | Cornell Chronicle

A new study by Cornell psychologists suggests that science and engineering faculty preferred women two-to-one over identically qualified male candidates for assistant professor positions.

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-21-over-men-stem-faculty-positions

I got along well with the women on my team

I spoke with almost all of them individually about it. After speaking to them (and sharing my honest opinion of the memo and the research that supported it) none of them hated me

I could tell their reaction to the memo was PTSD-like

They BELIEVED the news. They BELIEVED they were under attack by Trump

So anything remotely resembling these attacks was going to elicit a vicious pushback

But that didn't stop me from writing to our SVP of Diversity, sharing 25+ peer reviewed research papers aligned w/ the memo

My Director was NOT happy

And the tough thing was I respected him. He was one of two people in my life who has been right a clear majority of the time we disagreed

He tried to get me to shut up

He asked if this was how I wanted to be remembered

I told him the most offensive portion of the memo, the statement that women are more neurotic than men, was based on a self-reported study of 23,000 people across 40 countries

That Trait Neuroticism was a technical term

That I could literally pull the data tables

He said that I knew too much about this

If the facts are on my side, and I'm the one being pressured not to speak, doesn't that show you who is really in power and who really has privilege?

He conceded that maybe it did, still worried there was a risk I'd go nuclear

My girlfriend at the time was scared

Her family survived the Cultural Revolution in China and she'd spent that summer watching Jordan Peterson videos with me

She saw what was happening at her tech job as well

But after a few weeks passed, it seemed like all was back to normal

I kept telling my friends at work what I thought was real and what I thought was BS

I kept getting told I needed to be careful

And in the end, I never got fired

My performance review was even positive in my next and last review period before leaving to work in crypto

The moral of the story is, put yourself in a financial position to tell the truth

Then tell it

If your work won't have it

Fuck them

Go work with other people

But it'll probably be OK if you're able to convey your beliefs firmly yet calmly

It has always been that way for me

I should note I actually got a ~$10K raise in the next (and my last) review period

I forgot about this as I left 2 months later

If you have your shit together & are physically strong you will create a halo around you that makes free your speech

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