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Google Protest Leader Leaves

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Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#91
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks good for Google to me. These protests were getting out of hand, and their demands were showing some major entitlement.

They're the people making Google work. Why shouldn't they be entitled?

Some people think the leaders of Google are entitled to unilaterally decide what people at Google work on, and if you resist that sense of entitlement, people call you entitled.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#92
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not clear why you needed to put 'female' in your statement. Are you implying Google's actions are a result of their gender?

Are you implying that their actions cannot be gender biased?

I mean, they can be, but is there any reason to believe they are? Have male leaders of similar protests been treated better? Surely it's not right to infer gender bias just because the victims are women.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#93

I don't really understand why it's surprising to anyone that they would face "internal retaliation" after exposing their employer as evil and boycott worthy to the entire world. By publicizing it to the degree that they did and attaching their name to it, they were putting their interests over the company. If my company started doing business practices that I didn't approve of, I would try my hardest to change the di…

It's literally illegal. There are laws against retaliation against whistleblowers. That is why it is surprising.

> I don't understand the desire to stay with a company and accept paychecks while simultaneously publicly denouncing and leading protests against them.

Because you don't want to see the thing you worked so hard to build misused to build killer robots and "war minds"? Seems reasonable to me. Google's got a different mission and sometimes the leadership forgets it, and needs to be reminded.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#94
post #82
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as long as you have good intentions you should be free to bring whatever politics to work? Regardless of how, as long as what your protesting the right things everything else doesn’t matter?

If by "politics" you mean "not being harassed" or "paid the same for the same work", yes, yes you should be free to bring that to work. Every damn day.

Harassment is a crime and plenty of workplace laws are in place for that.

If Google fired someone for speaking up against an incident of harassment that would be a huge story in the media.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#95

Google works like crazy to hire all of the smartest and the best people, but do they really need them? Billions and billions in shareholder value could be extracted by hiring a bunch of mid-tier Java programmers and having them farm Ad Words for the next decade, until the first competition shows up.

> until the first competition shows up Their worry is that competition will be started by the people they've not hired and kept on the bench. I'd imagine a large amount of their top-level hiring is driven by taking minds off of the market, more than optimising their output.

This couldn't ever work. Folks that smart want to do things that are real.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#96
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.wired.com/story/google-walkout-organizers-say-th... >In a message posted to many internal Google mailing lists Monday, Meredith Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after the company disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told that her role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was told that, in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon”…

> who leads Google’s Open Research The only trace I can find of that group/team/whatever is that she leads^Wled it. What does it do? > in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at New York University. So side gigs need approval, and if there's a conflict of interest (such as: preventing your employer from buildi…

"So side gigs need approval, and if there's a conflict of interest (such as: preventing your employer from building something that looks similar to your side gig) you'll be asked which side you're on. Sounds pretty normal to me."

The rhetoric in the article actually implies that this was an existing thing that only became a problem once she started protesting about google's generous severance package to an employee who was found to be sexually harassing co workers, and the lack of resources to the victims of sexual assault/harassment at the google workplace.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#97
post #18

I thought this story had already been reported a month ago. But no, I was wrong, that was the other organizer of the Google Protests, Claire Stapleton: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/google-wa... So to clarify, both of the female Google employees who lead/organized the protests have now left because they say they faced retaliation. That looks very bad for Google.

What retaliation have they faced from Google exactly?

IANAL, but nothing I've read in sibling comments and other threads fits the legal definition of retaliation. Realigning priorities in a way that the employee doesn't like, sure, but not technically retaliation from a legal perspective.

EDIT: To clarify, Google's reaction isn't the disqualifier, it's that the employee's action of staging a political walkout isn't legally protected since it conflicts with contractual duties and isn't a typical case of utilizing good faith channels for whistleblowing illegal activity. That type of channel is typically what's protected from retaliation. Not to mention working with someone accused of a crime isn't illegal. Association is a freedom and lobbying to change it is purely political.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#99

I don't really understand why it's surprising to anyone that they would face "internal retaliation" after exposing their employer as evil and boycott worthy to the entire world. By publicizing it to the degree that they did and attaching their name to it, they were putting their interests over the company. If my company started doing business practices that I didn't approve of, I would try my hardest to change the di…

I believe the strong term "evil" is only used because Google's motto is "don't be evil".

Not everyone has the freedom to instantly change jobs. The world might be a better place if employees had the right to whistle blow without being threatened with homelessness or fleeing to Russia.

Unions striking and protesting against their companies for better wages seems acceptable. Why is protesting for ethical reasons without quitting faux pas?

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#100
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're the people making Google work. Why shouldn't they be entitled?

Because Google gives them money in exchange for said work.

A sense of entitlement is part of Googler culture. The inside joke was that this was measured for interviewing candidates.
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