>1. Why do you say it is unrelated? The author is making a direct connection between the first two sentences and the claim in the parentheses.

Yes, but it isn't something I agree with and I'm not obligated to support all of his positions.

> 2. Are you saying you don't care to touch it because a) you don't feel comfortable making a nuanced argument in a hostile environment, or b) it is indefensible?

I don't know if it is exactly indefensible, but I do think it is stated quite poorly and loosely. It is more of a smear than anything else and I don't really care to argue for it. I make an attempt at a generous reading (more devil's advocate) of it in another comment in this thread. It was also tangential to the point I was trying to make.

>What I found crazy is that somewhat that high up at Google would interrupt the usual HR process and attempt to get an employee in line using a Nazi metaphor. Especially when the metaphor implies to ignore whether your colleagues are Nazis. And most especially given how badly it turned out for tech companies that literally ignored the consequences to humanity that came from working with Nazis.

Ah I see. So you don't really think it is inappropriate to bring politics into the workplace? I generally don't (bring politics into the workplace), not because I really feel I'd be persecuted for my opinions, but because it simply isn't the place to talk about politics. I have worked at places where there were some conversations about religion and politics. What I found most amazing about them, was even if you agreed 99% things could get very heated about the 1% you disagree on. Which is a total distraction of the task at hand. Your company pays you to get work done, not to talk politics. Now, if you want to go to a happy hour after hours and talk about politics, that's fine. If you want to quit because someone else has an opinion that you disagree with, that's fine too. I do think it is a really shitty thing to do to attempt to get someone fired for an opinion they have. If you can prove it affects their job in some way, or how they interact with others, that's job performance. Of course, it is within a company's power to fire that person. I just think it is an underhanded tactic and potentially incredibly damaging, without much of a positive side.

If you think the prevailing attitude at your company is Nazi-sympathy, you have to determine if you want to work there. Hell, maybe you can expose that to the public in some way too. But if it is the tiny minority of people that it really is in the real world, and you didn't have any reason to believe it affected their job performance, let them have their dumb opinions. I have spoken to an admitted racist who wants a fascist state, because individualism has led to too much prosperity, which made me laugh out loud. I asked him how he treated minorities at his job. Of course I have no way of knowing if it is the truth, but he said he was paid to treat them like anyone else, so he did his best to not show his personal feelings. I think that free markets and economics ultimately favor people who don't discriminate.

> To characterize the first quote-- I don't find that statement crazy, but I do find it sad and alarming. Sad because the loose reasoning and fallacious argument is easily avoidable by iterating over a list of names, which is presumably something everyone poster here knows how to do. Alarming because I'm starting to get the sense there is some kind of underground racism railroad in tech where people whisper and reinforce opinions with each other, but without subjecting them to the same rigor and potential public ridicule that, say, sloppy patches to the kernel would receive.

Well it depends on what you mean by "in tech". There are spaces online where that kind of thing happens, sure. I can't really speak for other people's experience, but I've never worked with anyone who showed the slightest hint of discriminatory behavior or attitudes. The closest thing I've seen are elitists who resent people who didn't go to college.

I hope that poor arguments see the light of day and people can do their best to disprove them. I agree with Urs in the sense that work is not the appropriate place to talk about these things. Google has backed themselves into a corner in this situation though. They constantly publicly champion diversity initiatives, so how could you not expect people to talk about it internally?