Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by tharne » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

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?

A lot of "sane" folks are skeptical of unions. Well well-run unions can certainly have a positive impact, unions also have a long history of protecting incompetent workers at the expense of competent ones, and they are particularly harmful for younger workers. When I was in college, the unions on campus successfully pressured the school to cut back on student hiring because the students typically made less than older workers, which meant less for union dues. A lot of kids on financial aid had a harder time finding work on campus because of this, and work off campus was not plentiful.

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

#212

Post by Alex3917 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

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…

> The fact that 2 coworkers were fine with your change doesn't mean it was made in good-faith

The standard for whether a company is legally allowed to fire an employee for organizing isn't whether their action is in "good faith", but whether their action is concerted. The fact that it passed code review is therefore critical evidence.

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

#213

Post by panpanna » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #171

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.

It sounds like she went through a code review process for the change, would that count?

While this does not mean higher-ups approved her messages, it does show that she did it by the book.

If the higher ups felt this message was inappropriate and should be removed they could follow the same procedure instead of firing the engineer

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

#214

Post by throwaway2048 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

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.

So forming a union (which is absolutely legally protected) is like going on a vacation?

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

#215

Post by zasz » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

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.…

I'm very pro-labor union, but life as an actor or screenwriter is considerably more precarious. Each job you get lasts only as long as the movie you're currently working on does. Once the movie's done, you're out of a job again. A SWE doesn't experience the same level of chaos, unless they're freelancing.

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

#216

Post by givinguflac » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #163

ninly wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the popup message is one Google is required by law to make available to its employees.

The purpose of the extension within Google is to notify you of privacy and security risks for potentially dangerous websites. The comment she injected into a benign law website has nothing to do with that and whether there was some weak approval process that missed this glaring fact doesn’t make it okay.

“Benign law website”, “anti-union PR firm” tomato, potatoe.

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

#217

Post by PunchTornado » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #168

baud147258 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about you, but "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." seems pretty political to me. Personally I think that modifying a work tool to achieve political goals is wrong.

> I don't know about you, but "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." seems pretty political to me. It's about as political as informing someone they have a right to be paid the minimum wage.

rights are inherently political. they vary by state and country, they are proposed and opposed in elections by politicians. they are debatable etc.

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

#218

Post by sbochins » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

Maxion wrote: post #20

Did 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…

Sounds like a code review—which you should all be familiar with. Adding something like that to a security tool requires more approvals than two engineers sitting next to you giving a green light.

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

#219

Post by aaronm67 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

take_a_breath wrote: post #115

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

https://nypost.com/2018/08/25/why-nyc-is-priciest-city-in-th...

Construction in NYC is far more expensive than anywhere else in the world, largely because of union contracts.

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

#220

Post by throwaway2048 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #190

danso wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, labor/union messaging has protections that political campaigning does not. If you were a manager and you told your employee to throw away the pro-union pamphlet that you taped to your cubicle wall, your manager would be putting the company in legal trouble.

Taping it to your wall is acceptable. Posting it to my computer screen isn’t.

why, and more importantly, why is this an "immediately fire" level of offense, would this have been the result if the popup reminded you that its earth day?

Its naive to think her firing had nothing to do with the fact Google doesn't like unions.