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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

#121

Post by jchw »

justin66 wrote: post #105
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…

> Posting through Tor for obvious reasons. Because the protest is such a matter of indifference at Google that... you need to take extreme measures not to be identified talking about it?

In fairness, they wrote something that could end up in the media. Who wants that kind of attention?

Googler in Bay Area here, non-throwaway account. Don't know enough about the situation to comment on any of the details or form an opinion, but I can attest to the fact that I didn't really notice the sit-in, for better or worse.

Not to detract from or endorse anyone's opinion, I'm just bothered by the weird conspiracy vibe in this thread. I signed the Dragonfly letter so it feels like posting a small anecdote to Hacker News is relatively benign, but maybe I'm naive :)

(My opinions here, not my employers. You know the drill.)

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

#123

Post by jerkstate »

leftyted wrote: post #30
hunter23 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism tends to have these attributes: * dictatorial power * totalitarian one party state * embrace of political violence as a means to silence opposition * strong opposition to Marxism, liberalism, conservatism * radical nationalism * nationalist economic policy through protectionist schemes See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Definitions What about a group of employees collectively organizing and protesting…

"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…

[flagged]

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

#124

Post by icelancer »

justin66 wrote: post #105
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…

> Posting through Tor for obvious reasons. Because the protest is such a matter of indifference at Google that... you need to take extreme measures not to be identified talking about it?

Social media is hardly rational on topics like this.

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

#125

Post by nonbel »

wonnage wrote: post #87
nonbel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As I said, no thanks to the signs. It looks like the NYT may have even purposefully left them out of their coverage due to how cringeworthy they are.

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

#126

Post by ma2rten »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #113
f7aeb9 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wasn't officially supported by the company. Note that f7aeb9 said "as far as I am concerned".

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

#127

Post by ma2rten »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #111
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.

It's still news worthy enough that's on techcrunch.

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

#128

Post by 345218435 »

analognoise wrote: post #120

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…

„sexual harassment!“ gets you a long way.

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

#129

Post by dx034 »

jchw wrote: post #121
justin66 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Posting through Tor for obvious reasons. Because the protest is such a matter of indifference at Google that... you need to take extreme measures not to be identified talking about it?

In fairness, they wrote something that could end up in the media. Who wants that kind of attention? Googler in Bay Area here, non-throwaway account. Don't know enough about the situation to comment on any of the details or form an opinion, but I can attest to the fact that I didn't really notice the sit-in, for better or worse. Not to detract from or endorse anyone's opinion, I'm just bothered by the weird conspiracy…

But no media article will be able to identify the poster through their IP address. So unless you re-use your username, Tor or not shouldn't make any difference.

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

#130

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

analognoise wrote: post #120

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…

Many Google employees are basically the most sought after people in their respective fields. Google spends obscene amounts to recruit and then retain the best possible workforce. Many of these engineers could barly raise their hand and would get hundreds of offers from competitors. As such they have much more leverage and get paid a lot more than employees at even other tech companies outside FAANG.

It is in Google‘s interest to generally retain a maximum possible number of employees. Because there‘s a limited supply and also because you don‘t want them working at your competitor. In the weirdest scenarios you might end up in some really kafkaesque situatuon where you earn like 300 to 500k a year for basically not doing that much. The main thing is that you stay put and don’t go work for someone else. Maybe you’ve seen HBO’s Silicon Valley. Kind of like Big Head on the roof.

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