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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

#201

Post by dmix »

zozbot234 wrote: post #187
dmix wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what does union activism have to do with security and privacy of potentially dangerous websites? I’m surprised how many people are jumping through hoops to defend this sort of thing.

That extension is not limited to privacy and security concerns. One of the sites the extension warns about is Dropbox, and few people would seriously describe Dropbox as inherently insecure or as violating privacy. What is true is that some interactions with Dropbox may be in breach of other existing policies that Googlers must follow, such as wrt. proprietary information and the like. Googlers are also required not…

Dropbox has total access to your unencrypted files. That 100% fits the criteria. Especially in regards to file-access between potentially competing megacorps.

Again with the jumping through hoops...

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

#202

Post by scarface74 »

danso wrote: post #198
scarface74 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Print out and post is not the same thing as injecting JS in the browser. Was she part of the legal or compliance team?

FTA: " The tool is managed by the platform security team, for which Spiers worked for almost two years as a security engineer. "

Is it part of the security teams mission to insure legal compliance to workplace laws?

I’m part of my company’s “architecture team” but that doesn’t mean I have the right (even though I do have the access) to spin up an X1 AWS instance at work with 2TB of RAM. If my immediate manager said it was okay, I would have sense enough to get it confirmed by my CTO.

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

#203

Post by debt »

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…

The concerning thing is she seems to call out that employees have the right to “concerted activities” which means Google sung only opposed to unionization efforts but to any “concerted action” by their employees.

Even so much as organizing could be viewed as a threat by Google’s management.

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

#204

Post by omegabravo »

FussyZeus wrote: post #63
kop316 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the process: "the standard approval process, which requires two co-workers to greenlight changes" In my company, I could put in travel orders to let me go to and from Hawaii on the company dime, have a vacation, and have my supervisor approve (which is following the standard process), but doing that should get me in a lot of trouble and/or fired.

Because adding harmless code and stealing plane tickets, hotel fare, and maybe a rental car are the same thing. How do you think old-school labor organizing went down? Do you think the bosses stood there smiling as employees handed out flyers at lunch? Google shouldn't have a say in how employees unionize. They have every reason, literally EVERY SINGLE REASON to sabotage it at every stage to make it as ineffective as…

They are merely pointing out that despite the action following one standard procedure, it is still possible to be against the rules.

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

#205

Post by BoorishBears »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #164
BoorishBears wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IIRC, an employer has to make the content available in some form in a place where employees will see it, not just anywhere. Traditionally it's a wall display of posters in a cafeteria or break room. Trying to fulfill the requirement by putting the posters up in a broom closet of the CEO's office would be forbidden. I think the employee has a point with the pop-up. Wall posters aren't a good way to reach technology wo…

The idea of the popup isn't the issue I have with this.

It's coopting an internal tool for political messages then implying "it passed PR" means you had permission from where it should come from.

It's not even the message itself, I don't want politics, even those I agree with, living in the codebase I use at work.

Sure the notice is required, but putting it so it shows up solely on the website for the legal firm hired by your employer is a political message before it is a helpful message.

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

#206

Post by shantly »

dmix wrote: post #175
idlewords wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's significant that she did this on her own. You need multiple people for protected concerted activity.

People are acting like higher ups essentially approved this because of a code review process. The logical leaps people are willing to take because they think the ends justify the means is interesting.

It's a multibillion dollar company. If some of the managers are annoyed/bothered, even greatly, by activities that eventually result in unionization, I'm entirely OK with that. If some of those activities are—oh no!—not nice or Officially Sanctioned, again, don't mind a bit. Given past behavior and the general tendencies of large corporations it'd be pretty surprising if they weren't getting away with breaking some employment laws here and there, so some incredibly mild poking at them is hardly anything to worry about.

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

#207

Post by [deleted] »

extropy wrote: post #139
Touche wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The particular popup looks pretty official and scary as security popups should. And portrays that Google management is endorsing this instead of a grassroots poster. IMHO this is at minimum a misrepresentation case. And I would be pretty pissed if it was used for Earth day. Don't mess around with crying wolf. Working for Google.

[deleted]

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

#208

Post by givinguflac »

gbronner wrote: post #170
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…

Almost irrespective of the website that it was triggered on, it represents a huge waste of her time, as well as that of the hapless employees forced to click through her automatically-created popups. It also weaponizes the internal browser to advocate for political causes. It shows such stunningly bad judgement that they are entirely justified in firing her.

IMHO its absurd to think stating a law/fact is advocating a political cause, unless you consider the law a political cause? In which case, wow.

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

#209

Post by GhettoMaestro »

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…

If all of them signed off then they all should be canned. Work is called work for a reason. Millennials struggle with this core concept.

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

#210

Post by School-Cotton »

objclxt wrote: post #148
School-Cotton wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Well, let me turn the question around. Imagine I was a generally happy mid-level software engineer, making $400k/yr at Google. How would a union help me?
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