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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

#181

Post by 3xblah »

skissane wrote: post #28

> The documents concerned a mandatory tool that was recently installed on the Google Chrome browser on workers’ computers, the employees said. In October, some Google employees raised concerns that the Chrome extension was an internal surveillance tool designed to monitor their attempts to organize protests. It would automatically report staffers who create a calendar event with more than 10 rooms or 100 participants…

Perhaps by doing the monitoring client-side they can get reports both on successful attempts to create a calendar event as well as unsuccessful attempts to create a calendar event. For example, even if the browser for some reason cannot connect to the server and no event is actually created, perhaps the extension still reports on the "attempt" to create an event.

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

#182

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

RickJWagner wrote: post #72
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…

Yes, this. Politics in America runs about 50-50. Religion is similarly every person's preference. Taking either of those to work is a formula for disaster. I'm just amazed that companies haven't done a better job of enforcing "Leave that at home" 'till now. It really wasn't a thing until a decade or so ago.

Politics is already at work. The larger the corporation, the more likely it is to be involved in politics in a very direct way.

As a minion, you're discouraged from holding an opinion on company time, and even more strongly discouraged from doing anything that might affect the natural corporate power balance.

Active political engagement is a privilege reserved for upper management, who certainly won't be leaving their opinions at home.

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

#184

Post by [deleted] »

beerandt wrote: post #82
thephyber wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just weird that people demand that their job adheres to whatever weird thing they like. This was literally a selling point at Google: > Larry Page and Sergey Brin ... had designed their company's famously open culture to facilitate free thinking. Employees were “obligated to dissent” if they saw something they disagreed with, and they were encouraged to “bring their whole selves” to work rather than check their pol…

It's been years now since "don't be evil" got deleted.

[deleted]

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

#185

Post by Thorrez »

lobotryas wrote: post #23
catalogia wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory behind managers soliciting anonymous comments from workers is that this cuts through preference falsification. Preference falsification is when somebody lies about their beliefs or opinions, often due to perceived social pressure or lack of trust. Preference falsification is a real problem, not just in business settings but throughout the broad domain of human interaction. Unfortunately soliciting anonymou…

I love getting “anonymous” quarterly employee surveys that have a unique ID embedded in the URL. That’s not even trying.

They generally want some way to make sure the same person isn't filling out the survey multiple times.

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

#186

Post by Thorrez »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #32
xwdv wrote: post #29

At our company if the HR goes through your social media, and finds any evidence you may be socially activist or virtue signaling or otherwise very loudly proclaiming your disapproval of something some entity is doing, you will not be hired. You will not even get a call back. You will be labeled as a potential troublemaker (not in the good way) and be placed on the blacklist.

And what if you do not give HR access to your social media?

Some people like having public Twitter accounts. Or public Hacker News accounts.

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

#187

Post by jeltz »

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.

Google already have expanded to plenty of countries, and presumably in some of them this kind of monitoring would be illegal.

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

#188

Post by normalnorm »

meowface wrote: post #178
stiray wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

> 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.

Excellent. Now you only have to remove the expectation of privacy in any situation from the social norms, and another big problem will be solved. You will be able to live under total surveillance without anyone feeling that their privacy is being violated, because there was no expectation of privacy to begin with.

An alternative hypothesis (crazy, I know...), is that the power imbalance in favor of the rich went very far in the US, which means that the poor have no safety net or ability to organize, so they are completely at the mercy of the whims of corporations for survival. And so, they will accept many indignities without bating an eye.

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

#189

Post by Nokinside »

Iv wrote: post #144
kjgkjhfkjf wrote: post #43

Although it's generally quite hard to get fired from Google, leakers have always been dealt with severely. Google once upon a time fired a member of the original Macintosh team for leaking information about the Christmas bonus. My guess is that the increased closing off of various documents is to do with the increased amount of confidential partner-related information as Google scales its cloud business. But, as is o…

> unrealistic expectations Basically thinking "Don't do evil" and being a profitable competitive corporation are compatible.

There is nothing evil in keeping company secrets secret.

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

#190

Post by mike00632 »

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…

You know, in most parts of the world and in many parts of the United States, being accepting to gay people is the outlier.

See TikTok's banning LGBT content and Facebook's banning HIV drug awareness ads.

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