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

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

#141

Post by mywittyname »

Maxion wrote: post #27
iwantagrinder wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm honestly a little surprised (and worried) about all the commenters who argue Google is in the right here.

This isn't a cut-and-dry issue. The internal tool was purportedly used to alert about privacy and security issues on external websites. But the message sent to users was not privacy or security related.

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

#142

Post by pfortuny »

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?

Exactly. What if the pop-up just said “not using disposable cups helps the environment”, or “the Holocaust happened”. Or even something like “Trump is a bigot”. Would she have got the sack? This is the true question. She was just stating a fact...

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

#143

Post by tjansen »

iwantagrinder wrote: post #19
kache_ wrote: post #7

>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.” You should get fired…

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?

If it was a code review, it would judge code quality and similar things. Not whether that change is in Google's interest. I guess if she was a product owner and added this feature, she would have been fired as well, despite following the process. She just acted against the company's interest.

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

#145

Post by the_narrator »

krisroadruck wrote: post #70
ct0 wrote: post #12

According to their linkedin, they graduated highschool in 2015.

I just don't get the internet anymore. You're avoiding using gendered pronouns but needlessly displaying ageism?

Based on the Google engineer's LinkedIn profile, it is obvious that using any gendered pronoun will be a touchy subject.

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

#146

Post by scarface74 »

ixtli wrote: post #95
scarface74 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course Google is right. She happened to get two coworkers to approve what she was doing. If I got a manager who I was friends with to approve my purchase of a fully decked out $53K Mac Pro so I could finally use Slack at a decent speed when I am working from home, wouldn’t you think there was something fishy?

Since you can’t spend 53000 dollars on a Mac laptop last I checked, yes! However the whole purpose of a managerial hierarchy is to establish a responsibility chain so at very least I would expect the manager to also get fired. Google doesn’t care about these antics. They, like all employers, don’t want their employees to have meaningful bargaining power.

Well, there have been plenty of stories about toxic managers in tech companies. If your manager said it was okay to hit on your coworker does that absolve your responsibility to have good judgement?

And as far as having “bargaining power” they are tech workers at Google. If they have even a modicum of skills they have the ultimate power - they can walk away and get another job.

Heck, I’ve worked at a bunch of no name companies over 20 years and even I can walk out of the office and have another job in two weeks and this is nowhere near the west coast.

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

#147

Post by workthrowaway »

Maxion wrote: post #27
iwantagrinder wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'm honestly a little surprised (and worried) about all the commenters who argue Google is in the right here.

> I'm honestly a little surprised (and worried) about all the commenters who argue Google is in the right here.

i, honestly, want to know why you think otherwise. what she did is wrong.

but assuming she didn't know and that's what the "by the book" process at Google truly is... that's even more concerning

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

#148

Post by objclxt »

School-Cotton wrote: post #92
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?

I'm sane, and don't want to join a union (I'm not against them in general ; there are certainly fields where they make sense). I don't know if your question was serious, but in case it was: I don't feel like my employer is a rival or an enemy; I feel like they are a partner in our mutual goal to make a lot of money. I've never worked at Google, but I've worked at similarly famous large companies, making several times…

> I don't feel like my employer is a rival or an enemy; I feel like they are a partner in our mutual goal to make a lot of money [...] it's not hard to understand why many of us feel no draw to unions.

It's hard for me to understand when you look at other similar industries. We're not talking about blue collar unions here: we're talking about white collar unions. They're very different.

Take Hollywood as an example. You have incredibly wealthy individuals who are all members of unions. Kevin Feige makes Disney billions of dollars, but he still pays his PGA dues.

The purpose of unions like the WGA, PGA, DGA, SAG, and Equity aren't to "make it harder to fire poor employees" - they're to provide equal protection to all members regardless of whether they're making millions upon millions of dollars or just getting started in the industry.

Sometimes I feel people in tech forget there is a highly skilled, highly unionized industry just a few hundred miles south of Silicon Valley that seems to be doing OK. Is it perfect? No, definitely not. Is the film industry better to work in with the unions than without? Almost certainly yes.

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

#149

Post by danso »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #101
Maxion wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly a little surprised (and worried) about all the commenters who argue Google is in the right here.

Why is that? You can't just get code review / deployment approval. You need to have approval that a certain feature or process is wanted / needed for the system. My guess is the sec engineer in this story did not get approval for this feature in the first place, she just went ahead and changed the code. What if this change allowed passwords to be captured in plain text? Browsing history? Surely those are fire-able of…

So if she escalated her privileges and bypassed the approval process, yes, of course that should merit severe punishment. But that's not what happened, according to Spiers.

Giving her the benefit of the doubt for the sake of argument, you'd agree there's a huge difference between adding malicious phishing code to a company tool, versus displaying a text notification that doesn't fit the tool's original intent?

The text in question read, “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.”, which is arguably different than the usual privacy/security warnings that the tool was intended for. But is it a fireable offense, versus an offense that warrants reprimand?

To put it another way, I think very few people would be bothered by Spiers being fired if the text notification she added were "Heil Hitler!". But that kind of content is fireable for a number of reasons. Whereas Spiers note about union rights, while inappropriate for the given plugin, is not patently against Google policy, and (again, assuming it's just a text notification) did not endanger the company.

If an employee tries to set fire to company equipment, they should be fired. If they draw a swastika on a bathroom stall, they should be fired. If they post up a pro-labor pamphlet in a bathroom stall, where it's against company policy to post any materials (regardless of content), should they be fired or reprimanded?

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

#150

Post by c0achmcguirk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #107
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…

> injecting javascript into an employer's internal chrome extension The purpose of the extension is to serve site-specific pop-ups. Spiers added a pop-up to an existing pop-up tool using existing, precedented processes. The analogy to a poster in a cafeteria, which is explicitly protected by federal law, passes a first-order smell test.

Is this a precedent that Google or any company wants to have, though? Engineers with access to company-wide tools or extensions can put political or divisive content into them?

This is more than just a "poster in the cafe" because of the reach and invasiveness of the approach.

Disclaimer: I work for Google, speaking for myself only.

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