alt Hacker NewsWhy I'm Forced to Say Farewell: Google Management Has Lost Its Moral Compass
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Google never had a moral compass. They went in, got their money, and left when it was easy and barely affected them. They still profited.
Isn't his just weird repost of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496396 ?
I came to Google via acquisition end of 2011 and left end of 2021. Google bought my employer so it could further cement its display ads monopoly. They never had a moral compass, they just wore one was a costume so that nobody would dig too closely into its business practices.
We got to wave pitchforks and ask tough questions at TGIF for a while, and march in pride parades under a Google banner, and get fed nice treats and the like but under it all was still just an old fashioned railway monopoly.
A huge fire hose of cash that let it play in all sorts of domains and espouse some vaguely California Ideology liberal/libertarian ideals while doing it.
But the moment that monopoly came under threat and the moment they felt they no longer needed the costume, it came off.
Google never had a moral compass. Anybody who thought it did was naive. It's not possible for a corporate entity to have one.
moral clarity usually sharpens the moment the last RSU hits the brokerage account
Whilst I appreciate the commitment to their values, I wonder where they stand on the 'safety' of their users as it relates to the Android Developer Verification update (currently top of HN, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48755965).
"Security" vs Openness
> “make things so secure that we ourselves can’t break them, whether the device costs $1000 or $100, or the user is a celebrity or a refugee“
That can mean different things to different people in different contexts. Could easily mean building a software platform with security features that banks will build their apps to require.
he resigned because of... "politics"? and not because of the path Google has chosen for Android security?
[dupe] Discussion on website source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48496396
These tech-bro public resignations are so tedious. Ostensibly he seems fine with the existence of AI mass surveillance and AI powered murderbots but he just never envisioned a scenario where they would get used that wasn't congruent with his politics.
Why is this a Google doc and not just an HTML page? I was super-confused when the links didn't behave like normal links. This is like when people post a screenshot of an Apple note.
This dude only now thinks Google has lost its moral compass? In 2026?
Bruh.
"Don't be evil" was just a diversion from a path that was laid out from the beginning.
And it worked --- for a while. Until the path became impossible to deny.
It's a systemic issue unfortunately. When some of these unethical CEOs say that they feel like they have no control and that if they didn't do it, someone else would, I believe them and it makes sense. That's why they should try to reform the system.
>" I still believe in Android as the (currently) best end-user facing operating system for mobile devices, with its balance between openness, flexibility, and security."
I do not give a shit whether it is the best. If one can be cut off instantly by whims of some algo with no recourse - thank you but I'll pass. Yes I still use Android phone but mostly as phone, GPS and camera all of which can be replaced.
I do not develop for Android or iOS exactly for the reason of not being in control. Stick to desktops, servers and browsers as deployment platforms
While I can understand the concerns, I wouldn't use a google doc to air my grievances though
This mirrors my own experience as a European that worked at FAANG in the Bay Area.
It used to be a dream job. Now I've relocated back to Europe and want nothing to do with American Big Tech. It's become toxic and completely counter to my values.
America has become a much darker place that has a very different place in the world. American tech companies have not just accepted, but actively embraced this transition. I am not interested in joining them and being complicit.
I stopped reading at "Yes, Trump was already president" 'cause I've read enough of such diatribes to know where this is going. As if things were better when Biden was president and 'Big Tech' was used as the censorship organ of the regime. Remember Biden's Ministry of Truth czar Nina Jankovicz? What about Katherine Maher, NPR's CEO who stated that Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction getting in the way of finding common ground & getting things done? Trump is not the cause of the decline in public trust, he is the result of that decline.
Ultimately it all probably goes back to the fall of the Soviet Union and with that the loss of the clear 'good vs. bad/us vs. them' distinction which could be used to distract people on both sides from the rot in their midst. Politicos have always been corrupt no matter their colours or stripes but when the world was a simpler place - the Free West versus the Evil Empire, before that the Allies against the Axis - there was a common enemy for the people to refer to. Yes, some "democrats" already tried to take the side of the Soviets but they were in a minority while most of the Democratic party considered the politics and culture of the USA and the western alliance to be preferable over those of the Soviet Union and its satellite states as well as Communist China. They preferred "our" corrupt politicians over "their" corrupting ideology, i.e. they might be assholes but they're OUR assholes. When the eastern bloc dissolved the western alliance was like the dog which had caught the car: clueless as to what to do next. Fukuyama thought we were at the end of history but as anyone who had read a bit of (real) history could then already see this was a nonsensical idea. We're now experiencing the effects of that lack of vision which led to a 'Free West' which has taken over a number of the bad habits "we" accused the eastern bloc countries of and with that the term 'Free West' deserves to be quoted.
It is up to us, those living in the western alliance countries to try to keep the authoritarians at bay and no, I'm not only talking about Trump. I'm talking about the Communists (who call themselves 'democratic socialists') taking over the "democratic" party, the the "woke right" (for lack of a better term, i.e. right-wingers who adopt progressive-style shaming, tribalism and purity tests to defend distorted conservative values [1]) attempting to make inroads, the authoritarians on all sides who see works like 1984 and Brave New World as instruction manuals, those who read Howard Zinn and believed all he wrote, etc.
[1] https://newdiscourses.com/2025/07/a-beginners-guide-to-the-w...
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Can anyone in this industry really say goodbye without posting it? We act like artists, believing our ideals will illuminate the world with our moral compass.
This is surreal.
The last time I worked for someone else was 1992 so one didn't really use personal sites like this where one would whine about why they left their job for all the world to see. We all have our reasons for quitting but something like this just gathers the "Yeah!!" crowd but no one gains anything from it and it's quickly forgotten.
You've already forgotten the content of his post now. Right?
Why post a Google docs copy of the original article?
https://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/post/leaving-google/