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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

#231

Post by panpanna »

someonehere wrote: post #90

Does anyone have the code approval process? The chrome extension was modified but approved by two other people? Were these two other people on her side? Regardless of policy or no policy, having an internal tool modified to say, “we have the right to organize,” clearly sets off some trust concerns with me. If this extension was approved by two people who were on her side, then those two need to be removed as well and…

I believe this is an internal toy updated very frequently. It's by no means a "product":

> This kind of code change happens all the time. We frequently add things to make our jobs easier or even to just share hobbies or interests.

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

#232

Post by mytailorisrich »

kawfey wrote: post #112
gautamdivgi wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm doing neither, just pointing out that the 'approval' may not be what is implied in the article...

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

#233

Post by helen___keller »

From the engineer's medium post:

> For example, someone changed the default desktop wallpaper during the walkout last year so that the Linux penguin was holding a protest sign. The company has never reacted aggressively in response to a notification such as this in the past. It’s always been a celebrated part of the culture.

I suppose this was her mistake: ""It's always been a celebrated part of the culture"

Google clearly does not always operate in good faith with it's employees on labor relations issues. The correct approach for her to take would be to get written approval from her manager on the popup

Her job was supposedly to "write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web", and this was supposedly a notification of one such company policy, but it was naive to think she could just approach her job in good faith and be treated in good faith. BigCorp follows the law of the jungle, and workers are not unionized at google so every engineer has to cover his or her ass before treading into contentious waters.

For what it's worth, after reading both points of views I think her actions were highly reasonable. But I would never implement that kind of notification like she had done, not without written approval from my boss and maybe my bosses' boss to cover my ass.

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

#234

Post by scarmig »

I feel like, for consistency, if she committed a firable offense, so did her coworkers who LGTMed the CL, unless she intentionally deceived them about having gotten organizational approval.

My gut is that if she had spammed a bunch of internal mailing lists, she'd not be being fired or even getting a formal reprimand. But the fact that she hijacked an internal security tool for an unintended purpose is alarming. I am fine granting Google rights to run arbitrary code on my browser, but only because I know it has strict processes (including disciplining of employees who subvert the process) to manage submission and deployment of that code.

My preference here would have been for her to get a rebuke and an explanation of why this was bad behavior (unless these ad hoc non-security related messages are common), especially since she's young. But there is a core assumption and trust that is violated when someone abuses control of trusted client code to do something unapproved by organizational review processes.

Most of my anger is directed at the approving coworkers, since they should know better, assuming they are more senior than her.

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

#235

Post by hannasanarion »

makomk wrote: post #138
ramraj07 wrote: post #76

I was initially tempted to side with Google, a code review process is not just rigorous enough for catching features being sneaked in. However, it looks like the sole purpose of the extension is to warn employees about security issues in websites, and this engineer coopted that to show a union forming message. The final paragraph suggests that there's legal precedence for doing this: “You’re allowed to put posters up…

I don't buy this analogy. If there's one thing news reporting has demonstrated over the last few years, it's that Google is not lacking in actual digital equivalents of noticeboards where people can put up the equivalent of posters. This seems like she decided that wasn't aggressive enough and implemented the political equivalent of slipping adware into a browser extension instead.

Putting adware into a browser extension that is already just adware (pops up messages on sites the employer doesn't want you to visit) is not a security risk.

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

#236

Post by scarface74 »

mmcwilliams wrote: post #225
kawfey wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And firing workers for unionizing is political and illegal. https://www.nlrb.gov/how-we-work/national-labor-relations-ac...

She wasn’t being fired for “unionizing”. She was being fired for abusing her access.

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

#237

Post by dkersten »

qaq wrote: post #154
impalallama wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know 0 large companies who would tolerate what you just described from a security team member.

She’s young and probably a bit naive. I think it’s absolutely a reprimand-worthy offence, and I certainly understand that a security engineer maybe shouldn’t inject code like she did, but that’s why there are reviewers, but they ok’d it. I don’t think it’s something she should have been fired over. I made dumb mistakes early in my career too, after all.

Should she have done it? No, absolutely not. Not like that anyway. Should she have been reprimanded? Yes definitely. Should she have been fired? I don’t think so personally, not for a first time mistake at least (we don’t know if she did other things previously or not, of course)

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

#238

Post by zozbot234 »

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.

> The particular popup looks pretty official and scary

It's warning of a legal obligation. Is that not enough of an "endorsement"? And it only pops up if you visit the website of a consulting firm that some say has breached these obligations in the past. It's hard to think of a better way of targeting this warning.

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

#239

Post by CharlesColeman »

mindcrime wrote: post #195
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? Because they, like any other organization, tend to become corrupt and exercise their power to the benefit of the "party insiders", at the expense of the everyday member. And I, for one, don't feel any need to have my pay rate negotiated based on some group average or least common denominator. And union dues. I personally fully support the right of people to bargain collect…

>> Why would any sane person be against unions?

> Because they, like any other organization, tend to become corrupt and exercise their power to the benefit of the "party insiders", at the expense of the everyday member. And I, for one, don't feel any need to have my pay rate negotiated based on some group average or least common denominator. And union dues.

Going to work without a union is like going to court without a lawyer. Are there incompetent lawyers? Does it cost money to hire a lawyer? Of course, but that doesn't mean it isn't a stupid idea to try to represent yourself pro se.

I'd join a union if one were available to me, then I'd work in it to make sure it was well-run and effective.

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

#240

Post by michaelt »

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.…

Hollywood might not be the best example of unions' effectiveness, given the revelations of the Me Too movement.

Have you considered using the AMA or similar in your examples instead?

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