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One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

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Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#171

Post by brnt »

big_chungus wrote: post #42
glitcher wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just weird that people demand that their job adheres to whatever weird thing they like What about "weird" things like not being comfortable with taking on a new project with the military that ultimately helps kill people, or amassing as much personal data on the entire population as the NSA? I mostly agree with your sentiment on the surface. Dont talk politics or religion at work, do your job, and things usually go…

If you're not comfortable doing that project, ask to be re-assigned; most good managers will make that accommodation for an excellent employee. If you're not comfortable working at a company that does that, don't work there. On the other hand, I have no issue working on a military project; your actions could cost me a job if the project gets cancelled. Don't force your views on others; let me keep showing up and doin…

Shut up and work, comrade!

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#172

Post by mindslight »

RangerScience wrote: post #135
mindslight wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you no longer have to be tolerated by anyone adhering to it. The point of tolerance is to tolerate . Just because you have managed to find an intolerant viewpoint that survives our current memetic filter, does not change the reality that you're the one preaching intolerance, right here . Hate movements throughout history have been supported by logical-sounding arguments for marginalizing some outgroup. I don't thin…

> The point of tolerance is to tolerate. I... don't think I agree? I would count un-inhibited self-expression if I were looking for a success metric of tolerance, not tolerance itself. (note: you'd need some other metrics lest THAT go off the rails, to be clear) The idea that you have to tolerate the intelorant makes the original concept self-defeating; if you instead treat tolerance as a treaty, it's self-reinforcin…

The problem is that you can turn around every generality you have said to be supportive of what I presume you're against. For example, why wouldn't "un-inhibited self-expression" include someone getting a tattoo of a swastika? (preemptively responding to an argument that said tattoo would diminish more self expression than it itself is: this depends on the makeup of society, tautologically).

> I will continue to practice the version where I tolerate you until you are intolerant, at which point we'll have a conversation, and at which point I am morally allowed to no longer tolerate you

Now apply that to my perspective here. I've judged that you're being intolerant. We're having that conversion, yet you're sticking to your intolerant viewpoint. So this means I no longer need to tolerate you, personally?

> if you instead treat tolerance as a treaty, it's self-reinforcing

Sure, but not in a good way. Framing it as a "treaty" implies a forceful ultimatum if it is broken. What you've actually created is a focal point of going after people that don't conform to your definition of tolerance.

> stop tolerating bigotry, but still extend the compassion and tolerance that I am able to to bigots.

This is another way of looking at it, closer to what I'm saying. Talking about "intolerance" in a vacuum doesn't really account for whether the magnitude is growing or diminishing - some tendency of de-escalation is required for things to settle out

The general consensus, at least around these parts, is that bigoted behavior is unacceptable. What's really under debate is when views (or even more tenuously, associations) are brought up by critics and reacted to as if they were actions. That tendency seems more akin to escalating aggression than resolving differences.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#173

Post by manfredo »

ahelwer wrote: post #162
manfredo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps in an non-standard understanding of what is and isn't political. An apolitical office is political in the same sense that secularism is a religious stance. It's not catering to any specific religion: it is equally exclusive of all religions. Similarly, an apolitical office doesn't prevent or directly influence the political activity of workers - it just relegates that political activity to spaces outside the…

This post was like watching a fish vigorously deny the existence of water. Look, functionally you're defining an "apolitical" office as unquestioning obedience. Which is fine, just own it instead of trying to dress it up.

I'm not sure where you're seeing "unquestioned obedience". Employees can go support the politicians, or hold rallies for whatever cause they choose on their own time.

An apolitical office is one where political activity isn't held in the office. That's it. I'm really not sure what is confusing about this.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#174

Post by [deleted] »

thundergolfer wrote: post #163
manfredo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps in an non-standard understanding of what is and isn't political. An apolitical office is political in the same sense that secularism is a religious stance. It's not catering to any specific religion: it is equally exclusive of all religions. Similarly, an apolitical office doesn't prevent or directly influence the political activity of workers - it just relegates that political activity to spaces outside the…

> Perhaps in an non-standard understanding of what is and isn't political. "Politics is a set of activities associated with the governance of a country or an area. It involves making decisions that apply to group of members" - Wikipedia > An apolitical office is political in the same sense that secularism is a religious stance. This sentence doesn't make any sense as Secularism is a political concept and not a "relig…

[deleted]

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#175

Post by usr1106 »

DeckOfSardines wrote: post #86
usr1106 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Installing an extension to monitor employee use of a company computer is legal and generally accepted behavior. Legal and generally accepted in US jurisdiction. In Germany that would require approval by employee representatives, unlikely to happen in any bigger company. In Finland a somewhat related and highly controversive law was introduced many years ago that it would be legal if registered with data protection…

Can you expand on this point? I wasn't sure if your point was that this might hinder Google expanding in other countries or if you were just taking issue with the phrasing.

My point was just to show that legal systems differ and the balance between employer and employee rights can vary.

Google has a big data center in Finland. IIRC they stopped their plans for a Berlin lab after visible anti-Google protests in the neighborhood, but I'm sure they have employees somewhere in Germany. International companies just follow local legislation and practices and there is no problem (most of the time at least, there are examples of failure like Walmart trying to expand to Germany with too much of an American management style and eventually giving up).

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#176

Post by cyborgx7 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #121
chongli wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not legal if employers specifically use it to disrupt employees’ attempts to organize. The NLRA specifically grants employees the right to organize and it prohibits employers from monitoring these organizing employees. The fact that Google employees, in this case, may not be considering forming a union at this time is irrelevant. The meetings they are having may prompt them to form one at a later time. Either wa…

Like it was a "safety hazard" to have too many people at once in the smoking area behind the textile mill. It is a slippery slope to try to tease apart what is, and what isn't, interference right? Google also has a clause in their employment agreement that says you agree to them putting surveillance software on your devices, company supplied and personal, as a condition of your employment. I asked about that one, got…

>Like it was a "safety hazard" to have too many people at once in the smoking area behind the textile mill. It is a slippery slope to try to tease apart what is, and what isn't, interference right?

No. It is a necessary thing to do and what a legal system ostensibly exists to do.

A slippery slope in what direction? In the direction of too many rules being illegal or too many things that could impede organizing being allowed?

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#177

Post by cyborgx7 »

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #74
mason55 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can believe X, I can believe Y, and both of us believe Z, but XYZ doesn’t have anything to do with doing our jobs so we shouldn’t let it prevent us from doing our jobs. It's easy to say this if your coworker likes football and you think sports are dumb. But what if your coworker likes attending KKK rallies and you're African-American? Or your co-worker is out there on the weekend holding signs that say "Death t…

>But what if your coworker likes attending KKK rallies and you're African-American? Or your co-worker is out there on the weekend holding signs that say "Death to Gays" and you just happen to be gay? Yes yes, we can all dream up the very worst case scenario and other outliers. As someone else pointed out, companies generally have contract clauses that even govern social media whereby if you represent the company poor…

> in this hyper-politicized era

People are still largely extremely de-politized. The fact that people are starting to have opinions that they care about again, and this is immediately viewed as extremism is very telling.

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#178

Post by meowface »

stiray wrote: post #158
robbya wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing an extension to monitor employee use of a company computer is legal and generally accepted behavior. If the Google calendar is for a personal gmail account, then accessing the calendar details server side is a huge privacy breach.

Just to add EU view on "legal". This is highly illegal and it is criminal offense in same manner as wiretapping. You (as employer, even if you own employee computer) can get jailtime for this although hefty fine is more plausable. Before employee leaves the company, its manager is responsible to get all the company data stored (by leaving employee) on another computer, then IT takes the computer and wipes all the dri…

It is funny how cultures and legal systems differ. In US corporate culture, it's very ingrained that things done with company property belong solely to the company, and that the company has a right to look at company property and data at any time, for any reason.

A big portion of one of my information security jobs involved looking at employees' browsing history and emails daily. Sometimes to investigate potential misconduct (something dumb like a manager wanting to see if someone's slacking off, or something serious like suspicion of stealing information), but usually to investigate potential security issues (like if we believed a computer visited a malware-associated web page, we wanted to see how the computer ended up there).

In the US, pretty much no one bats an eye that this is considered necessary and normal. Employees who don't want to be snooped on are free to use their personal devices at work, like their phones, which of course we have no access to. But it's considered very normal that if an employer gives you a computer to use for work, that they can inspect that computer and data to and from it. No one has a feeling of their privacy being violated, because there's no expectation of privacy when using someone else's (the company's) property.

For infosec operations people in European countries, how are these things handled? How do you investigate potential breaches which originate from endpoints? Do you have to ask the employee if you can look at their browsing history? What if it's a potential misconduct investigation, where tipping someone off may result in destruction of evidence?

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#179

Post by cyborgx7 »

big_chungus wrote: post #42
glitcher wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just weird that people demand that their job adheres to whatever weird thing they like What about "weird" things like not being comfortable with taking on a new project with the military that ultimately helps kill people, or amassing as much personal data on the entire population as the NSA? I mostly agree with your sentiment on the surface. Dont talk politics or religion at work, do your job, and things usually go…

If you're not comfortable doing that project, ask to be re-assigned; most good managers will make that accommodation for an excellent employee. If you're not comfortable working at a company that does that, don't work there. On the other hand, I have no issue working on a military project; your actions could cost me a job if the project gets cancelled. Don't force your views on others; let me keep showing up and doin…

>Don't force your views on others

That's funny, since that is all the military does. I think what you meant to say was: "Don't force the view that you shouldn't force your view on others onto others"

Re: One Google Staffer Fired, Two Others Put on Leave Amid Tensions

#180

Post by JenrHywy »

mason55 wrote: post #33
seibelj wrote: post #11

How about everyone goes to work and does their job and goes home. You can believe X, I can believe Y, and both of us believe Z, but XYZ doesn’t have anything to do with doing our jobs so we shouldn’t let it prevent us from doing our jobs. Super cool that everyone likes their own things though, I support liking things unrelated to job, just weird that people demand that their job adheres to whatever weird thing they l…

> You can believe X, I can believe Y, and both of us believe Z, but XYZ doesn’t have anything to do with doing our jobs so we shouldn’t let it prevent us from doing our jobs. It's easy to say this if your coworker likes football and you think sports are dumb. But what if your coworker likes attending KKK rallies and you're African-American? Or your co-worker is out there on the weekend holding signs that say "Death t…

> Or your co-worker is out there on the weekend holding signs that say "Death to Gays" and you just happen to be gay?

In the early social media days, I worked in a small team with a man and a woman for a couple of years. When FB came around we friended each other, and I found out that she was a very leftist lesbian and he was a conservative church leader. I was a libertarian-leaning atheist, so we made quite the trifecta.

It was never an issue, before or after, because we didn't bring any of the potentially contentious parts of ourselves into the work environment.

We can, and should, be able to present different personas depending on the company we are in. The inability to do so, rather than being a moral failing, is a sign of fanaticism.

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