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Google Protest Leader Leaves

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Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#271

Post by floren »

KirinDave wrote: post #198
gizmo686 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real != profitable. Google can offer academic style oppurtunities at industry style salaries. Eg. Fuchsia OS might have been started because Google saw a bussines oppurtunity in writing an open source capabilities OS. Or, it might have been started to keep smart OS engineers from leaving the company.

It seems fairly ridiculous to suggest that Fuchsia is not a real project. It wouldn't be the first OS Google has built.

What are the others? Android and ChromeOS are both built on the Linux kernel.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#272

Post by wmeredith »

303space wrote: post #193
charliesharding wrote: post #47

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 think it’s actually a very savvy strategy to protest from within. It’s too easy for Google to shrug off or ignore public criticism. They’ve done this for decades with virtually no repercussions because they hold a monopoly on their core business - very few people are going to ‘delete Google’ no matter how much you disagree with their policies. They do not have a monopoly on talent and they are actually fearful of b…

It certainly helps that they've protected themselves from the ability to "delete Google" with an embrace, extend (or buy), extinguish[0] strategy when it comes to the technologies at the core of the modern web.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#273

Post by r3bl »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #214
r3bl wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, they can be, but is there any reason to believe they are? Yes, there is: women stepped forward. > Have male leaders of similar protests been treated better? Men either haven't experienced the same, or they are keeping their mouth shut. In both scenarios, women should be supported. If men step forward, so should they. They didn't so far (or at least, not in large enough numbers for such a protest to be repor…

I don’t really understand the response. Is your claim that, if something bad happens to a woman without simultaneously happening to a man, that automatically makes it a gender bias issue?

You do understand it, you just refuse to understand it.

But to answer your question, yes. If enough women were affected that they felt compelled to step out, and men didn't, that's clearly a gender bias issue.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#274

Post by pessimizer »

leftyted wrote: post #199

There are two narratives: 1. These people are rabble-rousers who will never be happy and are disrupting the work environment at Google. 2. These people are highlighting legitimate problems within the company and are trying to enact positive change. Take your pick. But be aware of both narratives. And be aware that neither of them is unreasonable.

> These people are rabble-rousers who will never be happy

No, this one is unreasonable. It's this weird narcissistic thing that people do where they define a person's identity by how that person feels about them.

Just because I hate you doesn't mean I'm a hater. I also like things, just not you. Just because I'm unhappy with you doesn't mean that I am not happy, it means I'm not happy with you.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#275

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ketzo wrote: post #260
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks very bad. On the other hand, if you're organizing a walkout, you're probably pretty fed up already. How far are you from quitting at that point? Probably not very. If you organize the walkout and nothing changes, even if there is zero retaliation, do you quit? At a minimum, this probably indicates that there was not enough improvement, fast enough, at Google. Note well: I am not saying that there was not r…

I actually think organizing a walkout is something you do if you don't want to leave. I mean, if they were really just fed up, they could have just left like you said. I think these people (as a couple have said publicly) really did want to help change Google for the better because they love at least some parts of it.

I agree that they don't want to leave, that they want to fix it. And yet, they have to be dissatisfied with current conditions, or they would not have organized the walkout in the first place.

How dissatisfied? I'd guess pretty bad. Dissatisfied to the point that you're willing to do something that has some possibility of costing you your job. So they want to stay, and yet they're not that far from being fed up enough to leave. (Or so it seems to me, someone who is not at all in that situation...)

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#276

Post by KirinDave »

repolfx wrote: post #252
KirinDave wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two women who claimed retaliation were organizers of the women's march. The common thread between them is that they were organizers of that event. The claims of retaliation fell shortly after that.

But nothing Google has done in these cases is illegal. The protestors just didn't like it, so that shouldn't be protected actions.

This is untrue. You're not actually reading the salient facts. Radical reduction in job responsibility and opportunity IS retaliation.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#277

Post by sverige »

pessimizer wrote: post #268
sverige wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not clear on what Whittaker's role was with regard to the Chinese project, but the final straw appears to have been her protest regarding the composition of the AI ethics panel. How is an outside ethics panel going to affect their working conditions? The people on the panel don't have any say on employees' pay, promotions, disciplinary actions, assignments, or anything else that might affect their working conditi…

Are you trying to make a fine distinction between "working conditions" and "work"? You just said that this panel that she was protesting the composition of would look at what the company was doing and plans for what the company wished to do, and have input into the ethics of developing and deploying them (and I'm assuming changing them or ending them, otherwise this panel's only job was to kiss paper.) The employees…

It's not a fine distinction at all.

'Working conditions' includes those things I mentioned: pay, promotions, hours, etc.

The AI ethics panel may or may not have led to a change in the scope of 'work.' We'll never know, because the panel was disbanded. Presumably Google is now making decisions about future AI work without the benefit of the ethics panel.

In any event, organizing a protest against the composition of this outside panel that had exactly zero power to change Google employees' working conditions does not fall under the NLRA. Apparently Meredith Whittaker was counseled along the same lines, which is why she resigned after trying to pressure Google into changing their decision by using publicity via the press, rather than suing under the NLRA.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#278

Post by fourthark »

cobookman wrote: post #263
fourthark wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More so: 7k replied, 64% against the censored search engine. Of those 7k a smaller number were Google employees (it does not say the number) and among them 65% approved of censored search.

The 64% against includes entire blind community. Of those working at Google who replied it was majority for it. Put another way, even though the macro blind community was against. Googlers in said group were for it. Showing googlers are more likely to be for than against

As the GGP said, it's a small sample, and self selected.

You could be right, but this evidence is not conclusive.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#279

Post by nvrspyx »

leftyted wrote: post #264
nvrspyx wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. is a bit presumptuous though if you’re going to jump to the conclusion that they’ll never be happy and that this would be a continuous issue after the enacted change that they were protesting for. It’s a rather baseless assumption if the only thing to go off of was an organized protest with well-defined ethical motivations. Unless there’s evidence of rabble rousing intention, it seems that 1. is unreasonable. With…

People who tend toward 1. would say that Google has bent over backwards to accomodate protesters and has acceded to their demands multiple times, e.g. canceling their project in China and dropping their contract with the US military. Seems reasonable to me.

That’s a very good point. As I mentioned in my previous comment, I haven’t followed the situation (or other Google situations like the ones you mentioned) closely. However, I feel a just-as-reasonable explanation is that Google did those things to save face because if they truly felt those were the right things to do, there would be no retaliation and there would be an implicit agreement that the intention was morally motivated and not intended rabble-rousery.

On the other hand if the situations you mentioned are unrelated to the Women’s March, which it seems they are, then I really don’t see them as being relevant to whether or not the people in question were rabble rousers. Protestors are not a constant set of people and each protest and the organizers of said protest have to be looked at individually, at least in terms of determining whether 1. or 2. is most reasonable.

Otherwise, it’s a broad generalization of “protestors”, which would inadvertently make 2. the more reasonable narrative as well because 1. would be moot to the specifics of the particular situation.

Re: Google Protest Leader Leaves

#280

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

r3bl wrote: post #273
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really understand the response. Is your claim that, if something bad happens to a woman without simultaneously happening to a man, that automatically makes it a gender bias issue?

You do understand it, you just refuse to understand it. But to answer your question, yes. If enough women were affected that they felt compelled to step out, and men didn't, that's clearly a gender bias issue.

I guess I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. It’s just an obviously toxic attitude that anything bad which happens to a woman is a women’s rights issue, so I’m not sure how to engage with an open endorsement of it.
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