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Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

nbcnews.com

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Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#111

Post by impalallama »

Touche wrote: post #86
ninly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly bold and perhaps ill-advised, but I would hardly characterize this as "injection" > Spiers told NBC News that she was inspired to create a digital notification because “a poster in the cafeteria is not the best way of reaching the majority of Googlers.” > The message included a link to a statement that the NLRB required the company to post for employees following the settlement of a complaint that was filed…

Prefixing this by saying I am not siding with Google (since people make assumptions). The standard approval process sounds like most merge review processes on any engineering team. There's a sort of assumed good-faith for this process. The fact that 2 coworkers were fine with your change doesn't mean it was made in good-faith and was within the bounds of normal types of changes. Any engineer with the freedom to make…

Yeah let's be real, if she programmed a popup to appear over twitter with a message like "Don't slack off dummy UwU" and or something equally ill informed she would have been rebuked at worst.

To say that it wasn't the union overtones that got her fired is naive.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#112

Post by kawfey »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #81
mytailorisrich wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a code review, which is not the same as project/management approval for the 'feature' at all.

Not sure why you're downvoted. This does sound like a code review. News sites most often either willfully or through ignorance prefer not to investigate the entire story to truly get to what broke or what didn't break. It's typically just for shock value. I remember a story where cell tower signals were blamed for decline in the North American honey bee population.

People agreeing with or rationalizing Google's response are not held in high regard on this thread.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#113

Post by danso »

kop316 wrote: post #75
danso wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but could you clarify what you would be fired for in your hypothetical situation? Presumably, it's not automatically against company policy to expense a trip to Hawaii.

I was implying I took the trip to vacation, not to do work. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

And your supervisor knew of your intent to deceive the company when they made the approval? And if so, why would they make the approval unless they too wanted to be fired?

Sorry to be pedantic about a hypothetical, but I think it's necessary to consider the specifics of the actual case. Assuming this process involves something akin to a codebase commit, where the contents of the approved change can be clearly seen by the approvers, it raises the question of what sanctions her colleagues faced if Spiers' violation was so severe as to result in near immediate termination.

(because obviously, in your hypothetical situation, your supervisor would be fired if they knowingly approved a deceptive work expense)

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#114

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

Maxion wrote: post #64
CodeMage wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read what the extension is for?

It feels like a lot of astro-turfing going on here. Why would any sane person be against unions?

I love unions but what she did was kinda crazy don’t you think?

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#115

Post by take_a_breath »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #82
Maxion wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like a lot of astro-turfing going on here. Why would any sane person be against unions?

> Why would any sane person be against unions? I have no horse in this race. But as a counterpoint, pretty much everything in New York is more expensive due to heavy unionisation, particularly around construction and public services.

Could also be because of its density and GDP. Are there “cheap” alpha cities?

https://financesonline.com/10-wealthiest-cities-in-the-world...

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#116

Post by scarejunba »

I'm glad not to be working with people like this. I think I really don't want to be working with people who want to push their pet topic on me via a security tool I consented to have installed on my work machine that's supposed to be helpful to me.

It would feel like a violation. Not "siding with Google" here. It just definitely would feel like a violation of my trust in the platform engineering team. At that point, I want them to promise not to do it in future, or get their software off my machine. And to be honest, relations are going to be strained between us anyway. I'm not going to be thrilled about any further software.

I don't even want reciprocal "I can push to you" powers. And I have no problem discussing these things where we agreed to discuss them.

But letting you install software on my machine comes with an obligation - you don't get to use that as a backdoor soapbox. Feels so very icky.

Like if a friend told me she would like to stay over and I gave her a key and she decided to plaster my home with posters. It doesn't matter if the posters are against the freaking Holocaust. I'm not pro-Holocaust and I'd want the friend to leave. Pronto.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#117

Post by ninly »

Touche wrote: post #23
cj wrote: post #5

> Kathryn Spiers, who worked as a security engineer, updated an internal Chrome browser extension so that each time Google employees visited the website of IRI Consultants — the Troy, Michigan, firm that Google hired this year amid a groundswell of labor activism at the company — they would see a pop-up message that read: “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.” So basically, the Go…

It's still worth discussing if their reaction warranted the offense. Would they have fired her had she added a pop-up on Earth Day encouraging employees to recycle? Or would she have received a slap on the wrist for that. In other words, how much of what she was advocating was part of the decision to fire?

> Or would she have received a slap on the wrist for that.

Or would she have received a pat on the back, given that she went through the Standard Procedure for adding a feature to the browser plug-in?

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#118

Post by hugi »

Touche wrote: post #86
ninly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly bold and perhaps ill-advised, but I would hardly characterize this as "injection" > Spiers told NBC News that she was inspired to create a digital notification because “a poster in the cafeteria is not the best way of reaching the majority of Googlers.” > The message included a link to a statement that the NLRB required the company to post for employees following the settlement of a complaint that was filed…

Prefixing this by saying I am not siding with Google (since people make assumptions). The standard approval process sounds like most merge review processes on any engineering team. There's a sort of assumed good-faith for this process. The fact that 2 coworkers were fine with your change doesn't mean it was made in good-faith and was within the bounds of normal types of changes. Any engineer with the freedom to make…

She went through the corporate approved process with her changes. Her only mistake here is being pro union while Google is decidedly anti-union and pro-worker-abuse.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#119

Post by kawfey »

krageon wrote: post #83
scarface74 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt thats the spirit of the rule. I would no more want that injected into my browser than any other political message.

This isn't political. It's about unionising.

Unionizing is inherently political. https://jacobinmag.com/2018/07/unions-collective-bargaining-...

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#120

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

raiyu wrote: post #96
sidcool wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spiers, 21, said she went through the standard approval process, which requires two co-workers to greenlight changes, before updating the Chrome browser extension.

Spiers wasn't fired for adding code, Spiers was fired for using a pop-up and that simply isn't the Google way.

Should have been an AMP page.
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