'Stop dissing Google or quit': OK, I quit, says Code Club co-founder A founder of the volunteer technology education group Code Club has resigned, claiming she was warned not to criticise the group’s sponsors – which include Google. User interface designer Linda Sandvik claims she was told to shut up or quit. “On Monday the 25th of August the Code Club board gave me an ultimatum: either I have …
a front operated by the US government to take over the world and to peer into everyone's private life so that they can then influence what you're thinking via targeted advertising and spam that are nothing more than subliminal messages. Google Glass is the ultimate in what the white house calls "crowdfunded" obligatory surveillance.
Or so one might reasonably suspect.
> "crowdfunded" obligatory surveillance
That sounds like Stewart Lee describing Twitter as a "state surveilance agency staffed by gullible volunteers. It's a Stasi for the Angry Birds generation."
I dislike Google and its influence as much as the next man. Much more than the next man, in fact. And I sympathise with Sandvik entirely. But, ultimately, if somebody is paying you, you can't publicly slag them off and expect the relationship to continue. Better if Google had not become involved in the first place.
Frustratingly, this story does not include any of the negative words Sandvik has said about Google, only the warning she received in return - basically they wanted to operate her as a glove puppet - so comment is kinda pointless.
Better for whom?
It's pretty much inevitable that Google and its ilk will shower money on any organisation that offers some support, or at least apathy, in return (see, e.g., http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/23/google_lobby_why/) but it's not clear it's always better for a charitable organisation to have no income than to have income with strings - and that's the choice they often have in the current climate.
Of course, if Google paid what many people would consider to be its fair share of taxation, then this could be used for the public good without corporate strings being attached. Perhaps that would be better still?
Thus you mean if a company buys ads on a newspaper, actually funding it, journalist should avoid to tell anything bad about that company?
There's a big differences saying something bad about Google actually being a Google employee (but you all plauded Snowden for speaking bad about the NSA while being an NSA employee...), and while working for another company/organization even if Google funds it someway - especially to promote its own products...
"ultimately, if somebody is paying you, you can't publicly slag them off and expect the relationship to continue" - well, there's the rub. Was she paid? I thought it was a volunteer job.
I'd be pretty annoyed if I volunteered my time for free only to discover that my work was basically providing cheap tax-dodge advertising for a megacorporation, even if it was an otherwise ethical megacorporation. And Google is a very long way from ethical. I'd imagine she's quite rightly pretty livid.
If Google want to employ someone of her calibre, then they should convince her to sign an employment contract and pay her a salary. Tax-dodging your way around employment law in the name of some horrible half-bred mutation of charity and marketing is not the right way to do it.
" ultimately, if somebody is paying you, you can't publicly slag them off and expect the relationship to continue"
Well, that's not what Code Club is saying though. Their blog post claims that they are free to say anything they want about their sponsors*. Someone is telling porkies.
*Of course their sponsors are equally free to withdraw their funding, so seeing what motivations are involved, my money is on Code Club being the party telling porkies
> And yes google glass is part of the 'bad'...
How is google glass any different from someone recording a video in a public place using a gopro or a cellphone camera ?
If you are so concerned for your privacy, simply don't do things in public that you don't want others to see! If you don't want to get recorded making a mess in public transit, just don't do it! If you've kids, book a private cabana on your beach vacation, it's safer! If you are ashamed to be recorded while eating food, maybe cook at home - it's healthier!
On one hand, you want a high-quality, free search engine, email, browser and an operating system and on the other hand you don't want them to make any money ? Something has to balance the books!!! If free open source software could've built it, you would be running firefox on your HURD device to visit mailpile. If paid software could've done it, you would be browsing hotmail on IE using windows. But they couldn't, so someone had to step in!
Luddites will never appreciate the new technology even when it stares directly at them. Now go buy an iShine to make you think you did something worthwhile with your life.
Makes me laugh at my childish naivete from the days when I sort of believed the "Don't be evil" thing had any credibility. I've long understood that the rules of the business game as defined by American laws are sadly twisted. Corporations are required to be evil, to grow like mindless and vicious cancers, just to survive.
Let me clarify. I'm NOT saying that most businesspeople are bad. It's just that the rules of the game are written by the most cheaply bribed politicians, who are being bribed by the least ethical and greediest businessmen. These businessmen have an insane problem. They think they don't have enough money, and they are insane because there is NO amount of money that could solve their problem. Unfortunately, in the end the cancer always kills its host, but like cancers, these super-rich super-greedy bastards can't think that far ahead.
Returning more specifically to the topic of the article, it was actually censorship by the google that gave me my first hints they were going EVIL. This was actually many years ago, but it took some years to convince me that the google actually was as EVIL as it has become. Just another flavor of company that I am sometimes forced to be involved with because of the lack of options. Freedom? In a flying pig's eye. Capitalism? Sure, like the sheep being polled about which wolf has the prettiest teeth. We're just a bunch of sheeple playing in the games of wolves.
TINY thread of hope in the case of the google. They don't actually control the entire Internet. They barely contribute to it at all, merely harvesting directions to the creative work of OTHER people. The google actually needs some credibility, and they are losing it quite rapidly. Maybe google will fall down and go boom.
Unfortunately, when you consider the sick game of business, maybe the replacement will be worse.
This post has been deleted by its author
As a Code Club volunteer, I am sorry to see Linda Sandvik's resignation. I disagree with her reasoning but respect her decision.
Volunteers may have been teaching coding long before the current media obsession, but so was the foundation of Code Club and I do not recognise it in the description as a "bureaucratic, centralised scheme". I have found the curriculum and material, much of which was written by Linda, extremely helpful but at no time have I felt that it in any way restrictive.
If what she's described is true then it suggests this was probably happening at the director level of the foundation, rather than at the group level. It's likely that corporate sponsors would react much more strongly to a director of the foundation voicing concerns about them, and that reaction would likely be fed back
Joseph Haig:
>> I do not recognise it in the description as a "bureaucratic, centralised scheme".<<
Neither do I. You're putting 2+2 together and getting 94, there.
We'll have a centralised scheme working in a few days in England and Wales, taught with reluctance, by exhausted non-experts. Any guesses how it'll turn out?
".....We'll have a centralised scheme working in a few days in England and Wales, taught with reluctance, by exhausted non-experts. Any guesses how it'll turn out?" Bit of a presumption. I learnt my (now very out of date) coding skills from one of your 'exhausted non-experts' (who was actually very enthusiastic and experienced, having twenty-plus years experience in the industry before he 'retired' to education), at a British state secondary school, decades before Ms Sandvik even came to the UK. Ms Sandvik is simply talking male bovine manure with her claim "Teaching kids how to program because the government isn't."
The essence of the issue seems to be Sandvik is not an industry big-hitter, has little to no experience of actually running an Internet business, and seems to have an obsession with 'digital art' rather than what companies (such as Google) actually want or expect from future coders. Her BSc in Philosophy (!) & Comp Sci does not seem to have included any modules on teaching, so if anyone is a 'non-expert' at teaching kids it would seem to be Ms Sandvik. Which begs the question of whether the articles is just Google-bashing.
Whilst Ms Sandvik may be the Einstein of 'interface development' (is that the new, posh name for 'web designer'?), I would suggest Google would rate a massive amount higher in actually knowing about building and running in-house coded business platforms.
Well things have changed considerably in the decades since you were in school. I left school in 2001 and I can assure you I didn't write a single line of code or have a single lesson on any kind of computer science until I went to college. The "curriculum" in the late 90s consisted of typing pages of text in Word and doing ask/yahoo searches (remember the days when Google was unheard of?)
I have a friend who works in the IT dept of a secondary school, who assures me things haven't changed since then. The kids admit to knowing "nothing about computers."
I had never heard of Sandvik before this, but I applaud her for what she tried to achieve and for standing up for herself.
/Me *Points Up to the Register Banner at the top of the page*
See that motto? Biting the hand is precisely what is required more often than not. Unquestioned obedience to authority figures leads to only one destination.
Noblesse oblige actually cuts two ways - it's not just about showering largesse around and basking in reflected glory - there is a certain humility expected as well. Unfortunately big corporate hasn't yet learned that full implications of the role they have stepped into since the demise of the autocracies.
The dictionary of the French Academy, (don't start - that's another nasty discussion entirely), puts it this way: "Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly". Accepting that, then it is up to every one of the new nobility's followers to remind their overlords when they are slipping below that high threshold.
This lady has done absolutely the right thing, and the rest of her Board should do the same...
Doing what she did means that if someone fancies hiring her, they know she'll stick to her principals in a manner that doesn't cause a massive shitstorm - even if it doesn't align with their eventual direction.
Had she taken the piss and done as you suggest, she'd be marked as trouble and had trouble working anywhere high profile again. No-one likes a stirrer.
I think she did the right thing (given her stance on the subject) in a fairly reasonable way, from what I have read.
> Should have kept up the criticism (where valid) and then waited for them to sack her - much more embarassing.
I don't know so much about that. Sometimes it can be a really small industry and future potential partners or employers will care as much about HOW she exited an organization as WHY she exited an organization. She was given reasonable choices and then she chose one.
Is entirely plausible though. They know full well how something like that would backfire.
Only a "manager" in one of these "non-profit" quangos could be stupid enough to openly suggest that one should not criticise¹ their sponsors.
¹ If you anticipate that your sponsors might be subject to criticism, maybe they are not the best match to your organisation's values in the first place?
It does seem to be that corporate donations seem to come with great big steel ropes attached, which should mean they are not donations as far as tax efficiency goes.
If you donate money as an individual, and get something in return such as a pin badge, you cannot giftaid it, as it is not considered a donation, but a purchase (Source: BT Mydonate Terms & Conditions).
So if corporate donations have direct or indirect influence on how the donor portrayed by in the media, and to other organisations/individuals, it is buying favour, and therefore not a donation, and should have due tax paid on it.
Sponsoring is different in that you are giving money in the expectation of a set of rewards, and should be taxed, as should partnering, with charitable organisations.
Those are very good points. But. Google is big business. Big business does not pay tax, so the effect of tax-offsetting is moot.
The CEO of the Weir Group said on Radio Scotland that a possible reduction in corporation tax post a yes vote would be of no interest, as only 5% of corporations paid basic taxes. He was more interested in the benefits that come from Westminster. He, along with the head of the Wood Group (also trying to persuade us to vote no) seemed more interested in getting hold of fracking licences than any taxation issues.
to take the same stance any reasonable business or organisation would take, which is if you're asked about something political you simply don't answer and stick to the party line.
The PR bods are the ones who talk to the press and give opinions, albeit company opinions. If she resigned over this piffling nonsense then she either has a cushy number to go to, or has shot herself in the foot.
Morals, I shit 'em.
The required party line is hardly a neutral no-comment:
" Nonetheless, it’s worth restating that the Code Club board believe X are a tremendous partner. As a member of the board I am completely aligned with that view'.""
And this is a public volunteer effort aimed at kids. Imagine it was an oil company funding the National Trust, you wouldn't expect to be able to get away with saying that about fracking in a national park.
Of course this story has nothing to do with dissing Google, but everything to do with internal PR bods going nuts. The lass resigned because she refused a new policy, not because she was asked to as a result of dissing anyone. Moreover, as I see it she was aiming squarely at UK.gov*, not Google**.
*recently caught in deliberate blanket surveillance
**not -or rather, less- recently caught in deliberate blanket surveillance
You can't herd volunteers, and organisations who make use of them should not try it.
Same happened to Scout Assoc when the Cub Leader who stood upto the Lee Rigby killers in the street advocated the death penalty in a TV interview. Something the Scout Assoc is against as an organisation. It chose, as I recall, to respect her views as an individual, but disagree with her on the principle.
Herding volunteers generates resentment and churn, neither of which most volunteer organisations need.
So: children still get people trying to tell them how to code.
Trendy IT "charities" still get money from government in the hope it will make them look "modern" and money from corporates in the hope it will make them look as if they're "giving back".
An organisation's director is informed that part of that role is showing solidarity with your benefactors
And someone's blog gets an upswing in the number of hits.
Surely the time to voice an objection, especially for a board member, is when the corporate sponsorship is being discussed. If you realise at that point that you are unable to square what that sponsor stands for with some personal opinions you are incapable of keeping to yourself, that's the time to quit.
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