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

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

#111

Post by jrochkind1 »

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…

Even 5 years ago if you had said there would be a protest kind of thing with even 50-150 people per Google office protesting... that would have seemed like an unlikely thing.

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

#112

Post by differentView »

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?

They're not working for the competition.

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

#113

Post by jrochkind1 »

f7aeb9 wrote: post #90
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 sanctio…

Interesting I did not realize that about the first one!

I can imagine a company thinking they could take the wind out of it by supporting it. An escalation of conflict was probably better for the protestors than the company at that point.

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

#114

Post by throwaway050119 »

Does anyone at google actually work? This is what happens when you pay people a ton of money to do intellectual work. Basic needs are met and they start getting uppety... /s

Honestly though, seems there are so many demonstrations at Google. More than say Facebook which is getting way more of a media thrashing for actual lapses. Whatever actual grievances there are, they’re buried amongst the chaff.

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

#115

Post by thucydidesofusa »

cjhopman wrote: post #96
notyourday wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I managed to interact with lots of people who work for Google daily. The culture "The Circle" illustrated is spot on but I guess making 4x or 5x federal median wage would do it.

4-5x federal median wage is new grad level at Google.

*new grad level software engineer, new grads in any operational role are earning half as much as an SWE in total compensation.

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

#116

Post by thucydidesofusa »

sanxiyn wrote: post #110
dmead wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe ads, but search core search stuff can't be that many people.

Why not? Search is an incredibly complex problem.

It probably has a healthy engineering staff, but as Wall St. sees it, Google could just cut out dev work, scale back to minimal ops and print money the whole way down the death spiral.

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

#117

Post by DannyBee »

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…

This literally makes no sense to me.

In your view, what action could they have taken other than "letting him do whatever he wanted" that would not have been retaliation?

Retaliation has the legal definition of a negative job action in response to a protected activity.

They explicitly found they did not do that.

Trying to redefine retaliation to include a negative job action in response to an unprotected activity makes the definition of retaliation include any negative job action in response to anything.

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

#118

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

LaserToy wrote: post #98
spyspy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Worked there, It might be that I was in a wrong place (and folks I know), but high quality standards, sometimes vague deadlines that can be moved desire to do the best thing result in a very slow dev process. I might be wrong, but there is a reason AWS is far ahead of GCP. And I feel gap is increasing

> I might be wrong, but there is a reason AWS is far ahead of GCP. And I feel gap is increasing

I disagree. I feel AWS definitely has more options, functionality, and better enterprise support, but in many areas GCP is much easier to manage for smaller teams. For example, if I were starting a startup, I would definitely favor GCP over AWS right now.

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

#119

Post by simple_phrases »

pm90 wrote: post #103
simple_phrases wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be easily fooled. Companies try as hard as they can to turn engineering talent into a commodity, and they're relatively successful. The High-Tech Employee Antitrust suit is an example of this. If you need to work for a living, employers will commodify your role to the best of their abilities.

Sure, but those are the competing forces at work, right? Employees: get the most money for their labor. Employers: get the labor for the least possible money. It may not be ethical in your viewpoint, but those are the natural forces at play. It follows that employers will commodify my role as part of their strategy to pay me less. So I take other actions to make myself more valuable. As long as those actions are stri…

Companies are vehicles for accumulated wealth and power for the ownership class.

Labor, on the other hand, has very few vehicles to accumulate their wealth and power. In fact one such vehicle, the union, is often legally neutered such that private contracts made between unions and employers can be nullified in favor of the ownership class (see: right-to-work laws and union security agreements).

There's an inherent asymmetry of power between labor and the ownership class enshrined in both law and contemporary markets. We live in a nation started by the wealthy merchant class, for the wealthy merchant class, and it shows in our labor history.

So, yes, there are competing forces that are very unequal. You as an individual engineer will have little clout against, say, an industry-wide anti-poaching agreement like we saw in the High-Tech Employee Antitrust case.

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

#120

Post by analognoise »

Aren't people worried that they'll all be fired for protesting?

People are within their rights to protest in public places, of course, but not on private property and certainly not on the clock.

I'm not sure how it works from the business's perspective, but couldn't Google just get rid of all those people at once? Is that legal to do?

From Google's perspective, if they just fired all these people, there would be some blowback but there would be no future walkouts/protests/disruptions at work. There are plenty of smart people who would take those jobs at Google in a heartbeat.

Can someone explain this to me? Like if I did this at any place I've ever worked, I'd be gone in an instant.

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