Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation • Hacker News Board

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#81

Post by zelon88 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:09 AM UTC

drb91 wrote: post #34

zelon88 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2014 Demoulas Market Basket Protests [1]. 15,000 un-unionized employees in New England walked off their family-owned supermarket jobs after a board-flip and resulting capitulation of existing (family owned) leadership. Customers joined forces with the employees en-masse. The company is an icon and in many ways a prime mover in the area due to their intense real-estate investment strategy. This multi-billion dollar bu…

Just this past month Stop & Shop workers struck and the company lost a lot of money before negotiating an end favorable to workers. This is effective. Upper class professionals are less likely to strike even though proportionally they are giving away far more of their surplus labor.

I think a part of it too is how well the company is regarded by the employees. Market Basket is a really good company to work for. They pay well and offer decent benefits, and they have profit sharing and immense bonuses. I worked there, once in high school and again afterwards for a while. My ex was management and brought home $8,000 worth of bonuses one year at Christmas. And that was on-top of profit sharing, which they permit hardship withdrawals from.

Google pays well and is highly regarded in the industry. Those jobs are worth fighting for.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#82

Post by sjg007 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #66

sjg007 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

either way you've been swindled.

I actually appreciate the downvotes as it means there are 4 viewpoints and not just 2..

Sarcasm is apparently no longer taught in school.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#83

Post by stcredzero » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #65

leftyted wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fascism" is used today to refer to "bad thing I don't like". It's a mistake to interpret diction literally. Yes, it would be lovely if people used the word "fascism" to refer to right-wing, ultra-nationalist, authoritarian political movements. But that's not how people use words and the ship has long since sailed on that particular word. According to George Orwell "fascism" has a been a synonym for "bully" since 194…

Orwell fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and found his side being called fascist by the Stalinists. I suspect he was more hoping to return the word to meaning something (he quite passionately cared about fighting fascism) than encouraging its misuse.

Much of that time shaped George Orwell's later writings. All of the weird, anti-truth tendencies of The State were references to things done by Franco's Spain, the UK, and the Stalinists. The erasure and rewriting of the past. The use of blatant propaganda. Getting their own ranks to deny the simple truth before them. To George Orwell, the Fascists, the Stalinists, and the corrupt and Machiavellian parts of the British government were all part and parcel of the same evil and corruption.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#84

Post by 0815test » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

drunkonpappy wrote: post #80

belltaco wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does it sound like they're saying Google retaliated?

In exactly the sections I quoted. For example: "nip in the bud" We could have a big discussion about the definition of the word retaliation, and under a lot of very reasonable definitions it's fine to me if we don't call it "retaliation" The point is, Google is an organization that acts and reacts within a hugely complex system. I wish it was more acceptable for their employees to critique them, even if these critiqu…

"Nip in the bud" is not retaliation. You can ban politics at work in order to "nip in the bud" political bias, or ban some sorts of intimate relationships among employees and the pursuit thereof to "nip in the bud" allegations of sexual harrassment. It's ridiculous to consider these as retaliatory moves.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#85

Post by pg_is_a_butt » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

0815test wrote: post #70

ajross wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what happened, though. Google management was quite happy to completely ignore Damore. He was punished only once his screed became public and embarrassed the company. That's exactly the opposite of retaliation!

The "screed" [sic] became public through no fault of Damore's . Why focus on him then, if not as (late) retaliation?

If he didn't write it, no one could have leaked it. Claiming "no fault" is ignorant. You are ignorant.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#86

Post by stcredzero » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:17 AM UTC

cwperkins wrote: post #40

hunter23 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I guess I am out of the loop on the meaning of fascism. However, even if I substitute the word "bullying" the statement doesn't make sense to me: "Google employees protesting the makeup of the AI Ethics council appeared like the closest thing to bullying in the USA that I have ever witnessed" I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm splitting hairs, but I genuinely don't understand what the OP is trying to stay in that st…

Sorry I left for a few minutes. I don’t agree with Kay Cole James on any issue socially. My read on the situation though is that, by not recommending a viable alternative. I read that as Googlers saying they are not open to have conservative viewpoints on the council, hence them disbanding. That forcible suppression of an opposition viewpoint instead of coming to the table together to debate differences when crafting…

That forcible suppression of an opposition viewpoint instead of coming to the table together to debate differences when crafting policy, I see as having elements of Fascism.

It's certainly authoritarian.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#87

Post by wonnage » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:17 AM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #39

wonnage wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you're being willfully ignorant, but it's from this event: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/technology/google-walkout... Seems like they did a reasonably effective job of conveying their protest message across to the NYT, vague signs or not.

Your link says the "protests" were triggered by the NYT. It is not surprising they would cover the continuation of their own story: > "The backlash was prompted by an article in The New York Times last week" And I don't see a single sign in that story (actually I glimpsed one blurry one in the video), which is for the best because those signs make it difficult to take them seriously.

Well, they got their message across in a widely-published news article and you got your comment buried at the bottom on Hacker News

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#88

Post by skybrian » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

spyspy wrote: post #12

bradleyjg wrote: post #9

I don’t understand how a company where 5% of the workforce is responsible for the product that drives 95% of the revenue is so seemingly vulnerable to employee pressure. I can’t imagine Bell Lab employees had all that much leverage against Ma Bell.

I’ve often wondered this myself. Google has literally thousands of engineers working on search alone. I can’t even fathom what they’re all doing. And then what is everyone filling their time with?

Google builds a lot more of its own infrastructure than other companies can afford to do, all the way down to the hardware. They also change things more often internally than you will see with public-facing API's.

What I'm wondering, though, is about why headcount continues to expand. Besides the new buildings in Mountain View and NYC there's a whole new campus planned in San Jose, so there are apparently no plans to slow down. Where does it end?

https://medium.com/gabor/timeline-employee-count-growth-for-...

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#89

Post by fmajid » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #38

tyingq wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, okay. Nurses then. Though they haven't chosen to do much en masse yet.

Nurses are unionized and politically active: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2019/04/... https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/apr/02/washington-nur... Pretty much the only high-paying job that isn't unionized are doctors, but they use the American Medical Association to limit supply.

Thé AMA is more like a medieval guild than a union.

Re: Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation

#90

Post by f7aeb9 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

googthrow2019 wrote: post #18

Someone posted preliminary sit-in attendance numbers. Attendance ranges from 50-150 per office in the larger offices. Anecdotally, I've seen very little discussion and energy this time compared to the walkout. Back then, one couldn't walk 20 feet without hitting some kind of exhortation to join the walkout. This time, more people might find out about this sit-in through this HN story than through internal channels. T…

SF Googler here.

It may certainly be the case that people are experiencing "outrage fatigue" and that many have evaluated the claims of retaliation and found them unconvincing, but I don't think the evidence is sufficient to support these conclusions. The original walkout simply got way more publicity from the start, fuelled by a massive news story about Andy Rubin. But the biggest thing was it was officially sanctioned and promoted by the company, as far as I was concerned. Nearly everyone got an email from their manager and manager's manager in support of the walkout. Screensavers were changed en-masse to promote the walkout. Lots of people got up and tagged along. However, I didn't get the sense there was much awareness at that time of the specific demands, let alone the internal website that promoted it. Most people were just "along for the ride".

On the other hand, this sit-in wasn't planned as far in advance and details were not firmed up until the absolute last minute. Flyer designs were only sent out the day before for the retaliation event, so there wasn't much time to build awareness and momentum. And there wasn't a major news story about one of the company's execs to fuel conversation, just a few personal stories that trickled out in niche mailing lists. It had a very different feel, and I think it's hard to attribute that to one factor when there are so many in play.