Google has become a company where outrage mobs and witch hunts dominate its culture. These outrage mobs and witch hunts have become an existential threat not only to Google’s culture internally, but to Google’s trust and credibility externally.

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whether the target is external or internal, the goal of these outrage mobs and witch hunts is the same: to control who belongs at Google.

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In terms of controlling who belongs at Google, these outrage mobs and witch hunts have another tool at their disposal when they target an employee of Google: HR complaints. Few organizations have as much as power to control who belongs at Google as HR does, and if that power is abused, the consequences will be disastrous.

Standing up to an outrage mob or a witch hunt is hard enough when HR doesn’t get involved. It gets even harder when you start worrying about whether HR will discipline you, or even worse, when they actually do discipline you. A few months ago, the Lincoln Network released their 2019 Viewpoint Inclusion Survey Report, and one of the pull quotes from that survey directly captures this experience:

CONSERVATIVE — Employees will interpret your words in the most offensive way possible, then report you to HR based on that interpretation. It’s one big offendedness sweepstakes. When people get in trouble, it’s often based not on what they said, but on how others interpreted their words, regardless of how unreasonable that interpretation is. And there is some evidence HR does have a political agenda. I’ve even seen someone get reported to HR for sharing a National Review article.

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One Google employee, who gave me permission to share his story, was once hauled into a meeting with management and HR over some of his writings on company message boards. He was not directly punished in that meeting, but the meeting did carry a strong implied threat of future punishment. Here was one of the issues that was mentioned to him in writing after that meeting:

One Googler raised a concern that you that you appeared to be promoting and defending Jordan Peterson’s comments about transgender pronouns, and this made them feel unsafe at work.
Allegedly, Google is a company that supports a freedom of expression, but Google is also a company where you can get in trouble with HR for defending Jordan Peterson’s stance that the government cannot compel speech, including compelling the usage of preferred pronouns.