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Google Protest Leader Leaves

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Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#241
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be obvious to anyone, but people are for some reason having trouble understanding it. It's completely expected for a company to get rid of individuals on the payroll who are badmouthing the company they work for. Why would anyone willfully employ people to work against the company's interest?

Retaliating against whistleblowers is illegal. Therefore, I strongly advise you stop treating it as “obvious” and “expected”.

Are they whistleblowers? Or simply protesters? I'm honestly not sure where the line is.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand Google culture if you think this line would fly with anyone there. Entitlement for full time employees is baked into the charter, along with transparency. That's a good thing and a bad thing, in different ways. It gave bad actors a lot of autonomy, but it also exposed them to scrutiny and pushback from good actors. What's surprising is that now these reprisals are trying to push that back to make…

Everyone I know at Google hates these “protests” and can’t stand the entitlement. It sounds to me like they are a vocal minority. This has nothing to do with transparency and speaking out against your employer. The issue is not that they have a voice, it’s how they choose to use it.

There are several people from Google here speaking out in support and literally thousands of people stood with the walkout.

So it doesn't seem like a "small minority" unless you know a hell of a lot of people.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#243
post #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 withou…

Well the Unionization has received explicit protections in being fought for and even then it isn't liked in US companies at the corporate level to put it mildly - seen only as unmitigated downsides and something to avoid. But workers can all agree on wanting more wages or better working conditions even if they may argue on how they are distributed (fixed paygrades vs performancel.

Ethics protests aren't so enshrined for one. The views of ethics are often personal and ideologically entangled to some degree. Self selection has been more favored and the protests bring to mind the "obvious" but assailable objection "Why not just quit and associate with others more like-minded." It gets into messy areas of rights of association in ideal vs practice. Ideology isn't protected and is explicitly trumped by other areas like anti-discrimination laws.

Many can see "strawman" can of worms being opened (they may be reasonable in this case but what of successors) accepted as a norm without a sensible defined law or doctrine. There were the whole clerks refusing shall issue marriage licenses and nobody wants a situation disrupted by free rider "do nothing vegans in the slaughterhouse" or similar absurdities.

This isn't saying the current situation is ideal at all but that changes are non-trivial and there are reasons to suspect the precedent would be preferrable to most.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#244

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

I do not understand why it should be preferable to say "oh well, nothing to be done, time to quit" rather than be a force for change. The former is easy, but it does little to correct systemic problems that affect many of your peers.

Also, you make "accept paychecks" sound like you're accepting some sort of favor. Paychecks are not charity; they are compensation. You produce something of value, and you receive something of value in return.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What laws? Source for that please.

Are you perhaps forgetting that this person was involved in organizing the women's march? Do I actually need to find a source for US law suggesting that retaliation against women reporting sexism is in fact illegal? This is basic compliance training for any US employment, and the EU has similar laws. Where do you live and work that you don't know this?

Organizing the women's march is like reporting sexism? I don't think so.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does this look bad for Google? Organising protests takes management and leadership skill. Regardless of retaliation, multiple people, predominantly women, who publicly demonstrated this skill are opting not to put it to use at Google. When competent people leave, it’s worth asking why and what further effect those departures might have.

[flagged]

Given that your other posts are screeching about "stuck up women", perhaps one should surmise that your problem is not "democracy in the workplace." Which, while we're at it, is a misrepresentation of worker representation in company administration--a phenomenon that does work, as countries like Germany demonstrate.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#247
post #178

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.

Google's stock price would drop sharply if they went into maintenance mode right now. One of the main reasons they command the crazy high valuation they do today is because they remain on the cutting edge of the latest technology, which demonstrates an ability to adapt to the ever changing winds in their sector.

Google does not have a crazy high valuation. They trade at a forward PE of around 24 which is well within a normal valuation for a maturing growth company.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manager feedback was posted in an internal mailing list. It said no such thing. manager asked her to focus on her day to day job. Her ai ethics work was not aligned to the job she was hired for.

Do you have proof of this?

If you are a googler. View the ethics-discuss group. And search for Meredith's post where she discloses her managers performance review.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#249
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be obvious to anyone, but people are for some reason having trouble understanding it. It's completely expected for a company to get rid of individuals on the payroll who are badmouthing the company they work for. Why would anyone willfully employ people to work against the company's interest?

Retaliating against whistleblowers is illegal. Therefore, I strongly advise you stop treating it as “obvious” and “expected”.

Is really illegal? I think, at least in the US, you will be surprised by the answer if you look into what legal protections are available whistleblowers at private employers.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#250

Rowboat politics. If one of the rowers decides that she doesn't like the direction the coxswain is steering and starts to row in the other direction, it tends to annoy the other rowers. This is true whether she is right or not. If she can't change the coxswain's mind it's better for both her and the rest of the crew for her to find another rowboat.

Your analogy fails right away with a simple example: if the renegade rower realizes that the team is rowing towards a waterfall, then it is indeed not in the team’s best interest to push him or her out.

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