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How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment

(www.nytimes.com)
154 points tysone | 3 comments | 20 Nov 24 11:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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getpost ◴[20 Nov 24 23:05 UTC] No.42199072[source]▶
If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded.

There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication. Defining that, while allowing the collection of evidence of criminal activity, won't be easy, but the current state of affairs is unworkable.

I don't wish to facilitate corporate crime, and it's obvious that some of Google's anti-competitive behavior is unlawful. But, I don't see any realistic alternative to what Google is doing in the current legal environment.

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lancesells ◴[20 Nov 24 23:23 UTC] No.42199195[source]▶
> If anything you ever say during routine business operations can end up as evidence, clear and honest communication will suffer. The effectiveness of organizations, including the ability to act ethically, will be seriously degraded.

> There needs to be some kind of work product doctrine, which protects the privacy of routine business communication.

Wow. This is the opposite of how I feel. Mega-corporations should have their communications logged at a much higher level than a normal business. The things that have come out in court show how they manipulated their customers (advertisers). Regardless of how you feel about advertising a portion of those companies are small mom and pop shops trying to get by. If you have communications that can be used as evidence you're probably in the wrong.

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1. _DeadFred_ ◴[21 Nov 24 00:26 UTC] No.42199700[source]▶
Imagine you work as an aerospace engineer. Imagine having to couch/overthink everything your say in communication so that it can't be taken out of context later. You literally have yearly training on how you have to communicate and in hugely impacts how people work because one dumb one off comment in email can financially end the company when an accident occurs.

and that's before you get to the fact that you have to defer how your IT systems work to the lawyers from the big overseas insurance company that covers your company/products. It's a major pain to get them to sign off on collaboration systems because they are such a discovery risk not because you are hidings, but because of how people communicate especially around issues. As far as discovery goes with aerospace, if your engineers anywhere acknowledged any problems, you are hit. How can you have a good product/continuous improvement when you can't acknowledge issues in writing?

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2. whatshisface ◴[21 Nov 24 00:33 UTC] No.42199742[source]▶
I'd be surprised if you could find a single aerospace engineer with more than five years of experience who hadn't learned to couch everything they say in a way that made it difficult to misinterpret or change by taking out of context.
3. lxgr ◴[21 Nov 24 00:51 UTC] No.42199888[source]▶
> You literally have yearly training on how you have to communicate and in hugely impacts how people work because one dumb one off comment in email can financially end the company when an accident occurs.

Wow, that's a very sad contrast to the blameless failure analysis culture of aviation accidents/incidents I've heard so much about (and actually see as a model for what we should strive for in software).

I can't even begin to imagine what kind of organizational chilling effect this must have on the way problems are discussed.