According to their linkedin, they graduated highschool in 2015.
The article mentions that the security engineer in this story is 21 years old.
Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
121–130 of 779 posts
Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
#122Bad headline. It should read "Engineer fired her for abusing privileged access to modify an internal security tool." That's a pretty dumb way to notify co-workers of their right to organize, but I guess it's a really good way to get fired and draw up a big media stink about it.
Did you not read the part where she did, where she followed the process by the book and it was approved? Or did you just have your mind made up to decide to side with Google instead?
I love that a site full of engineers is pretending that getting a pull request approved by colleagues is the same thing as getting management's approval for a new, most likely controversial feature. Google is clearly trying to squash union organizing at the company but let's not pretend this employee was correct in her actions. Google being evil and this employee being in the wrong are not mutually exclusive.
Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
#123Did no one read the article? > Spiers, 21, said she went through the standard approval process, which requires two co-workers to greenlight changes, before updating the Chrome browser extension. Another source at Google familiar with the update approval process confirmed to NBC news that those two approvals are standard practice for a browser extension update. She did it exactly according to internal policy. The exte…
And the popup message is one Google is required by law to make available to its employees.
Wait a second, are you saying the browser popup when you visit that specific page is required by law...
... or are you saying the content of the message in the popup is one Google has to make available in some form.
Because I'm fairly certain it's the latter, but this feels like an attempt to obfuscate the real issue with tricky language.
Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm honestly a little surprised (and worried) about all the commenters who argue Google is in the right here.
The paranoid part of me thinks it might be PR firms they’ve hired.
People can disagree with you in good faith without being shills.
I am totally against people pushing their political messages on me while at work, and dislike working with the sort of person depicted in this article. I think they're bad for morale and a distraction from the business.
You can quite easily convince yourself by reading through my comment history that I'm not part of any PR firm, just a guy who wastes too much time commenting on HN.
Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read what the extension is for?
For anyone else who didn't get that far the first time: > Spiers' pop-up message was inserted into a tool that notifies employees of privacy and security concerns about using non-Google tools and services, like warning employees not to upload proprietary information to Dropbox, Spiers said. The tool is managed by the platform security team, for which Spiers worked for almost two years as a security engineer. So, seem…
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Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
#126> 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…
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…
That just means the code was made to quality standards, not that the she had authority to make that kind of feature modification without approval. In a less technical analogy, just because you have a right to put up flyers doesn't mean you have the right to use the company paper and printers to make them.
Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
#127You can do all the things you want that are against the company, but it doesn't mean you have a right to continue to work there...
Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
#128Lot of people are confusing "following standard procedures" with "immune from consequences". To be honest, looks like the employee got a few sympathetic people to sign off on an inappropriate use of a tool. According to the Verge, there are two other people who are also being disciplined.
I'm starting to assume the two others are the two peer reviewers that approved the change.
Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
#129I see contradictory impressions about what this article is even saying. My contribution is that it’s foolish to react too quickly to a story like this. If the headline were accurate, it would be such an obvious own-goal on the part of Google HR, it beggars belief. I think the wise course is to wait until more details are made public before getting worked up about it.
If the headline were accurate, it would be such an obvious own-goal on the part of Google HR, it beggars belief.
I'm not sure about that. Outrage quickly passes and is forgotten.
Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
It feels like a lot of astro-turfing going on here. Why would any sane person be against unions?
No, it feels like wilful cognitive dissonance where you all seem to think having two coworkers of no real managerial importance signing off on your company-wide political statement is somehow 'by the book' and everyone else is just a shill, ignorant and somehow didn't read this press release for this poor, poor person who knew exactly what would happen. EDIT: Let's read the second paragraph of the article again: "eac…
It's an odd world we live in where factual information about legal rights is dismissed as a "political statement".
As others have said, if she'd abused her access to insert, say, a pithy pop-up about recycling on Earth Day, she would have received a slap on the wrist at the very worst. This isn't about changing the code without authorization. This is about a message Google doesn't want employees to hear.