Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
This entire article is already engaging in political and ideological battle - René Mayrhofer is explicitly saying that he's unwilling to work at Google because he has a political problem with some of the decisions Google is making, namely abandoning earlier stated carbon-neutrality goals and being willing to make deals with the US military.
My contention is that if he considers this to constitute Google losing its moral compass but not the James Damore incident, which happened the same year he started working at Google; then there's no particular reason to think that his notion of a "moral compass" is any different from object-level agreement or disagreement (or simply not caring), about any particular decision that Google makes. Someone similar to Mayrhofer might well be willing to work for Google because they make a different judgement than he does about the political importance of AI model energy usage; and throwing terms like "moral compass" around is exactly equivalent to having an object-level disagreement about a political issue.
But let's be honest, the guy was kind of unhinged. I would not have fired him, but neither would I have kept him in my team.
Let’s be honest, though. That’s firing from your team.
In response to a "let a thousand flowers bloom and speak your mind" request from Google management snakes. The problem is that some tech people take these requests seriously.
Google of course has identified itself as Trump sycophants and hypocrites by now. Maybe they should invite Jordan Peterson, Gad Saad and Elon Musk to give keynote speeches.
Alas.
We had a mental health slack channel, and a racial politics one that rehashed Israel/Palestine daily.
One rarely stated thing I learned over time working there is that managers read eng-misc and will prevent you from transferring to their team if they didn't like what you said, or how you said it, or who you said it to.
Creating a distaste in people without like minds has been an intentional goal to cause exodus after exodus on various platforms, in companies and so on. If you let that get out of control, you can poison a culture almost unrecoverably. We can't let that happen to our critical tech companies for national security reasons.
The previous policies simply reflected the culture of employees and HR managers that had graduated from universities that openly practiced race-conscious admissions after Grutter v. Bollinger. The change in policy likely came not from the new administration, but the Supreme Court's SFFA decision in 2023 that reminded everyone the civil rights laws require race blindness.
The actual reason for the "corporate DEI" in tech was that since Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), EEOC could sue companies that had lower minority proportion than population norm for discrimination, and could could prove the discrimination in court using nothing but the racial makeup of the employees, and some policy at the company that could in theory have disparate impact. And under their standards, literally any policy has disparate impact.
This hit other sectors first, to which they responded by hiring more minorities. But tech had the problem that schools were consistently producing fewer minority engineering grads than the population proportion, and in a world where approximately every engineer got employed, some US tech companies would have to have lower minority representation than the population no matter what they did. And because the disparity between engineering grads and racial population proportion was so high, in fact most large companies would fail to meet the necessary minority proportions.
But EEOC would not instantly file suit against every offender, instead they would file ~40 such suits per year, targeting large companies that they considered particularly bad. And so companies that felt they might get hit soon started doing DEI programs, at first to attract more minority engineers (from other companies in the same sector, which would then fall under the limit, making it zero-sum), but then they realized that the EEOC didn't really sue the companies that were the loudest at touting their DEI credentials, and it all became extremely performative, no longer trying to attract minority talent but to be the loudest company talking about the subject. Iterate over that for a few decades and it got really weird.
It ended because Trump named 3 SC justices on his first term, and in a few important cases between 2023 and today, the new SC tore the whole thing down, and suing a company for disparate impact is now considered unconstitutional.
The support of war efforts is clearly a change in moral compass that is much more fascinating though.
I find it is a deeply cynical move, to be asked to place the James Damore "was it employer overreach-or-not?" episode in similar proportion to critiquing a company's actions regarding issues such as mass surveillance and/or assisting war efforts, especially when the accusations about those broader issues are tied to complicity in the 2020s resurgence in fascist politics. It is so cynical that I can't believe it isn't intentional.
They lost their moral compass a while ago, but it had nothing to do with Damore.
But that “critique” of gender diversity efforts said that the lack of women in CS was due to some innate difference in women (rather than a social division that is neither innate nor universal across time or cultures) While also decrying the lack of affirmative action for conservatives.
It’s neither the tipping point for Google, nor is it a hill worth dying on
https://web.archive.org/web/20170813080340/https://www.theat...
What statistical argument did Damore make?
Don't get me wrong. I hate war. And never-ending wars like the Iraq War anger me to no end (and for that matter, I think G.W. Bush and his cabinet were truly evil). Of course, the danger is real; a military built for defense can easily become an instrument of tyranny or empire if left unchecked. That is why we must maintain rigorous civilian oversight and strict checks and balances over its power. But that does not mean the military, by default, is always evil, right?
[1] As I get older, I'm more sympathetic to Colonel Jessup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk.
There hasn't been an existential threat to the United States since the Civil War, and that one was self-inflicted. Obviously we need to maintain a military but 99% of what the current military does is either for economic goals or hollow national pride.
The military preparations this fear leads to take a very special form though: investment in actual defence, commitment to stay behind and fight in case on an invasion, that sort of thing.
Obviously working on defence technology is part of this, but it also shapes the direction of the defence technology you work on. Sweden's forces have looked rather different from forces that intend to conduct offensive wars, especially historically. Tanks specifically designed for conducting ambushes are one example. Artillery emplacements designed to sink invasion fleets and to resist direct nuclear attack are another.
Each military operation has a cool story in advance and a different cool story afterwards. Neither is ever true and if someone finds out the "truth" it usually isn't even half the story.
Usually if you go back far enough there is some guy with an obviously stupid idea. It then takes effort to keep the stupid idea alive and side shows become the main act.
But with the US military, at least the years I was alive, it seemed to be never a real national security threat at the borders but very far away and for so not obvious reasons.
In the end however I agree with your "defense is necessary" and that's why NATO exists and should be developed further so its more strict and almost all nations worldwide join.
Incidentally, I'd feel the same way about killing someone in self-defense.
John 6:40 (KJV) 40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
This quote sums up the current situation:
Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
"Hard times eradicate most of the population and some survive with heavy PTSD and regrets, then after the destruction some peace agreement is reached and so after many years of rebuilding the good times do come."
> strictly defensive action is somewhat different
If you don't understand don't call it blindly.
If the country doesn't align with your world view at all there is no reason to fight for its military. Let those who like it the way it is do the fighting. If it is the complete opposite of what you would like you should fight against it. Aggression should scale with how offended you are.
Why would you blindly cooperate with some military?
Well, what if people had refused to lend their talents to Hitler or Genghis Khan?
Agree or disagree with particular foreign policy or military action, why do people forget that the bulk of military is staffed with their fellow citizens? Many of whom aren't terribly privileged to enjoy ample alternative choices to elevate themselves socially or financially. It is exactly this lot who benefits the most from DEI policies, cherished by "pacifists", is it not? It is them who are the first and most massive direct casualties, caused by not having access to the best, superior materiel, doctrine and training on and beyond the battlefield.
I'll be the first to point that military and paramilitary forces attract many with unchecked lust for violence. That "pride", "honor" and "patriotism" are often terribly misused, to uphold goals of those with impure, malicious ambitions. Who, I grant it, also disproportionately represented in the command echelons of military and beyond. But if we are honest, that scum won't be shaken or taught a lesson by SotA technology being withheld from their use or corporation refusing cooperation. It is their subordinates, who, maybe naively, subscribe to "ideal", unquoted interpretation of Pride, Honor and Patriotism, will bear the brunt of being crippled (by the consequences of the withholding and refusal) on the battlefield, and pay with their lives. Don't their lives matter?
I've developed an involuntary, muscle-level reflex that forces me to close the tab immediately when I read these "not just X -- it was Y" LLMisms.
I realize the author might be human and am sorry if that's the case, but I can't help it.
My low-confidence theory is that it's an artifact of making the LLMs better at coding.
My two cents: think carefully if that pattern is a really great way to say what you want to say in your book. If it is, leave it, if you could say it better, change it.
How LLMs write and how people feel about them is evolving and the current dynamic will pass...
20 some odd years ago I read zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, and it made the point that writing is hard when trying to decide what to say and how to say it at the same time. Just stuck with me. Brain dumping into an LLM is one way to get some momentum.
That said, the negation parallel pattern LLMs overuse drives me nuts and I'm always having to manually edit those out. I can't help but wonder if there is an advantage to thinking like that that helps with coding. E.g. defensive negation in coding probably improves code quality, but it dilutes good writing when over used.
But what happens when you no longer feel that you have a decent chance of being able to determine that something might have been created with LLM assistance? Do you not mind because you can't tell anyway, or do you refuse to read anything at all for fear of potentially consuming some LLM assisted work?
I'm fine with it as long as it's not full of the usual signals, because that's just bad writing that I don't enjoy.
It already is very hard to identify AI text, and we probably consume a lot of it unbeknownst to ourselves. Its like microplastics now -- you can find it everywhere (or so the propaganda goes).
I don't have a solution for when they fix that stupid idiom. I'm already reading less current things in general because of this, and might just do more of that. Even if its impossible to distinguish, I think people will pro-actively mark their stuff as LLM-free. There isn't a tech to support/prove that rn, but there might be in the future.
What changed was Google's motto, and it changed from "don't be evil" to "do the right thing". The given reason is that the prior motto also included inaction.
"Look what I did with Claude, LLMs are going to change our world!"
"Lame author, used an LLM to write a blog post."
All of my stock has finally vested, and I am independently wealthy enough to signal that I'm quitting purely based on my morals, since there's no way anyone could have known Google wasn't some ethical bastion of hope in 2017.
People who don't ever consider or speak of morals or ethics are beside the point.
However its the statement that "Google lost its moral compass" has never really been true.
Its pretty clear at this point that companies solely respond to economic tides, which are governed by what people truly want. And Id argue that people in general have lost their moral compass (in the sense of how they vote, in politics and with their wallet, not what they say)
It at least gets circulated and discussed. Even at Google I'd assume people who have the privilege, seriously thought of leaving or way better if someone knows something really shady is going on, whistleblowing.
The thing is sure you are right, but if I started living my life "I cant ever say or have principles and act based on them, because about 25 years ago I broke one so now its not allowed" then, that surely, would ruin my life and if everybody did society and wouldn't these companies love that? When we all give up so easy? Aren't the companies the first that go on sexual harassment allegations with "if this was going on for years, why you coming out now, huh? Ncncnc".
So my point is, its still appreciated. Lets work with reality and not that idealistic version of society where only the perfect people can decide our ethical directions because they dont exist and we will fall into the dark.
I quit my job working for oil and gas companies, and taught myself how to code and then worked at a company that actually made non-asshole software that went on to IPO so things worked out.
I didn't choose to help oil and gas companies, the company I worked for had them as customers so the work I did helped oil and gas. I chose to give up the money and do something else.
So I don't give a fuck about downvotes. I actually lived it, and I don't give a fuck anymore either to call people out.
This is not about "believing in anything" other than a stable job and money. I respect the author that he felt this moral tradeoff was enough.
I'm afraid, we cannot expect anything else from every publicly owned company, because sadly, it's in human nature to be selfish if you are not the one who suffers from your actions.
So if our enemies had no qualms at all about doing this, wouldn't it make sense that we have weapons that can at least counter, and potentially fight back? Would it be facilitating injury if the AI is used to stop an ISIS linked attack in our homeland?
> "Don't be evil"
Can evil also be interpreted as letting your government be impotent in protecting you?
He has, and has had, a specific moral philosophy he follows. When he took the job the public (and once he started, internal) words and actions of the company fit within that philosophy (or closely enough). Now the company has changed and they don’t fit. Further, the obvious changes happened without any real notice or explanation.
It seems reasonable in that situation to leave. FWIW; I was in the same situation, and left.
Do you fault him for his personal moral code? He is not telling you how you should act.
Describe that scenario to me. What precisely is the language model going to do? To defeat a _terrorist_ organization? I feel like this is way to asymmetric of a philosophy to actually work, but, I'm curious to know what your imagination holds on this one.
> Can evil also be interpreted as letting your government be impotent in protecting you?
The government _is_ impotent in protecting you. If they weren't we wouldn't need courts. Or a constitution. Or the revolution which started it.
Finally, there is an argument to be made, that our government, and it's imperious ways, were the primary force which led to the creation of ISIS in the first place. Perhaps if we weren't telling lies about yellow cake and mobile chemical labs while indiscriminately bombing innocent civilians we wouldn't be facing such a ridiculous world security posture.
Some things are just simple. ISIS is a terrorist organization you're carrying water for. Most of the mission of ISIS is simply spread Islam and kill infidels. Islam had that charter prior to the creation of America by the way.
Regarding this specifically:
> Would it be facilitating injury if the AI is used to stop an ISIS linked attack in our homeland?
it again depends on what exactly said AI does. If it's used to surveil most people most of the time, for example, then that probably does reduce the odds of an ISIS-linked attack on US, but the surveillance itself would be a greater injury at that scale.
*or this is an inter-capitalist war
When they rename "Department of Defense" to "Department of War", there can be no mistake about the intention of the government. They aren't "protecting" us, they are actively starting unnecessary wars, because cruelty has always been the point for them.
But claiming that google lost it's "moral compass" just now is a claim only rich people can make because they retire, not quit.
Google is literally the largest, most organized, tracking and profiling company in the world. Which they tend to grow even larger with the rise of LLMs.
Turning a blind eye of that for the opportunity or whatever, and than claim that _just now_ they lost their moral compass, is being a hypocrite.
The company is constantly changing, but also hasn't changed all that much. It always talked the talk and was eager to tell others how to behave, but was almost never willing to give up any real revenue to do the right thing. The usual justification was that if Google doesn't do it, someone else will (and that someone else is obviously not as moral as Googlers are).
If you're old enough, you might remember that they vocally opposed privacy-violating, disruptive display ads. That was their whole schtick. But that was before they realized there's a lot of money to be made by acquiring Doubleclick.
Its really hard to take such articles seriously. Its borderline gaslighting and says a lot more about the author than Google or US politics. In fact, even though I have no idea who this person is, I don't have a good opinion of them after reading this. And that ironically was the exact opposite of the intended effect of writing this for the author.
Google's moral compass was gone long before this man even joined. That doesn't make them particularly evil, but they have joined the ranks of ordinary, publicly traded corporations.
So if you decided to go in 2017 with all that happened since, your moral compass was already broken with google's. Snowden already revealed what all that data was used for with program like PRISM. You already seen the total lack of interest in preventing scams in their ads as long as it brings money. You've seen the antitrust fines. The tax avoidance schemes. The election influence concerns over youtube content.
What I read is "I know have made enough money from Google immorality, I can virtue signal by taking an early retirement and pretend I'm a great person".
These people who act like it's all suddenly gone down hill weren't there or weren't paying attention. If someone believes Goog's only turned to shit since about 2017, they were mislead, probably by the paychecks that kept them from looking too closely.
The military work came out in 2018
They are probably more moral than the average large US corporation.
Such a bizarre claim. EU academics seem under mass psychosis lately.
To be fair, US government was OK with Orban and tried to help him stay in power. It is OK with authoritarian far right movements and is trying to help them too. But, if you are pro-democracy European, US is a hostile country trying to destroy your democracy.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-adminis...
Currently, the few "pro-democracy" (left-liberal, I presume?) European governments are cracking down hard on freedom of speech. Your worldview is lacking coherence.
He is a top expert on a security topic. Running Android platform security gives him an opportunity to have incredible positive impact for many people---which he did for a decade.
People weigh trade-offs.
At the beginning, he may have had high ambitions to deploy interesting, research-forward ideas to Android; at this point, he has accomplished a lot of that. Maybe now, he is considering other factors.
Guessing that people are only money-driven or have made some decision because of threshold personal wealth is awful, especially if you do not know them.
Almost all academics I know (I am one also) are driven by personal curiosity, intellectual ambitions, a need to identify and solve problems, and a strong desire for positive contribution. I know Rene and believe this to be true of him.
Most of the commenters are experienced programmers, and like many experienced programmers have largely lost the ability to think about things in non-binary terms.
You see this on most threads that aren't about a mostly technical subject.
I think I can still think in a non-binary way despite decades of programming but I attribute that to to getting burned out about 10 years into my career and taking a break to go to law school. Looking back at my writing before taking that break I can see that I was thinking in a very binary way.
First year law school does a really good job of breaking that.
I seriously think that some of the things from first year law school should be moved into the standard bachelor's degree program for CS, and maybe for several other STEM degrees, taught exactly the same way they are taught in law school. Maybe contracts and torts. Those are both good at building up your non-binary thinking. Heck, maybe do nearly the whole first year of law school, spread out over the 4 years of your bachelor's degree.
If the guy made some money for his work, good on him.
Much harder than taking the money and blindly following management decisions.
> At the moment, my main focus is [...] fighting against (governmental or corporate) mass surveillance
While he always had "Ethics in Computer Science” as an interest, I wonder what blinds people into accepting offers at Google -- the advertising company. I want to take his words as sincere, but Google has been privacy violating for longer than his tenure with android. Money and prestige is a hell of a drug I suppose. He could very well work for grapheneos but no money or immediate persteige there (sadly).
If OP is only seeing the problems now, they must have been selectively blind.
> 3. Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.
Really?
Algorithms for ads and mass surveillance were always at the core of Google model.
And there is not really such thing as "internationally accepted norms", Google, as a pioneer, literally defined them at the time.
You may not have been around back then, but we had half a decade of Google before that model, and it was quite nice, nice enough to get us to leave our other search providers--and to hand them the keys to our inboxes.
Complete joke, do some introspection.
Pretty nice life if you ask me.
Is this the person I have to complain about for the removal of fulldisk encryption in Android 13?
Any statement to the idea of a moral compass is just a form of marketing when the politics of the day align with it.
The best we can to is have independent moralities, while balancing that with the need to eat.
They are now openly partnering with war industries and the government to assist them in doing things like bombing a school full of girls, killing hundreds in an entirely indefensible war of aggression.* This is a very dark red line to cross and despite Googlers being wealthy and privilaged, it is nonetheless a significant protest that deserves to be heard on its own terms. Ideally, a protest would change policy at the company.
Google management: Stop cooperating with the immoral and illegally operating War Department!
* I don't have evidence Google directly participated in the Minab school bombing, but this is the side they are supporting.
At first I thought they were exaggerating; now I think it truly is.
The slogans are on the walls because they are not in our hearts.
Google has not changed its moral compass in 20 years. You just didn't want to admit it
sorry not being a jerk but many of these kinds of posts just come off as performative and attention seeking. you could have just quit, literally everyone knows how FAANG operates.
These are the most successful companies in the history of the world. What do you expect? DO you need a PhD to figure this out?
Instead of monetising software sales, they monetised access to Free software performing an end run around the GPL by distributing access to it over the internet allowing them to make the public good proprietary google property. They threw out some crumbs at best.
Remember the un-publicised puzzles to paradoxically get media attention, hiring highschool kids with a demo that made the news because it made the news and all the rest of the BS. I guess it worked. Now they're big and bad and the Free software optimism is largely dead so they don't have to bother and now make killbots for the Pentagon.
Where else you gonna work? Go test the market, nerd.
I’d just like to add, as always: this person should give back all the money Google paid them. Of course, that has not once happened in the history of these pious pieces, and so the meme endures.
