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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

#251

Post by saiya-jin »

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 those industries are not comparable. One random example - our flexibility to change jobs in IT is almost unheard-of. We can literally spin the globe and go work almost anywhere. The only hurdles are immigration rules and possible language barrier. Most of Hollywood jobs would struggle in most places.

Another personal view - as somebody from Europe, I really don't feel any need for any unions. I am not trembling from fear that I will get fired. If I will, there will be good reasons (my poor performance or employer getting into financial troubles). For me, that's a good trade-off for extra pay and interesting work. When I was consulting, I had nano-fraction of current job security, but again it was offset by salary. Again, fair deal for me and for employer too.

Another reason - anytime I even remotely interfered with Union people in my previous jobs, they literally reeked of internal politic games, keeping their comfy jobs as safe as possible. You get this kind of folks in any company, even in my current one, although we don't have unions. They try different ways (ie managing pension fund or other 'political' positions that require little work but add friction to firing process). Needless to say they are never stellar performance workers.

This all obviously doesn't say anything about Google or generally SV culture, my experience is local to 3 European states only, and cca 6 companies.

We in IT are vastly overpaid compared to any other engineering degree holders. Not complaining, but its a fact. Just talk to other engineering folks. High salaries and positions can be achieved quickly, not over 30 years of gradual rise of staying within same company.

If/once market saturates and salaries go down significantly, there might be more need for unions. But most folks are not there I think.

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

#252

Post by Frost1x »

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…

I have to agree. I'm all for unionization in our industry to improve employee leverage and even more open compensation sharing to help drive comp up... but this is a step too far. Pushing your message in this fashion is clearly irresponsible no matter how "by-the-book" it is.

With that said, the organization and orchestration problem for movements is a very real problem (finding the correct people and disseminating information). This is something businesses are well aware of and they use that to their advantage.

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

#253

Post by caseysoftware »

extropy wrote: post #179
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

These popups are security popups, the ones you would get from your antivirus/firewall and carry a certain Management endorsement weight. It's not a free for all space to put random messages into.

I think it's less about Management endorsement and more about notification blindness.

If you start adding wholly unrelated messages into the security warnings, people start ignoring them. We've seen the same with medical systems where doctors and nurses ignore the important pop ups because so many are just interruptions.

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

#254

Post by zozbot234 »

dmix wrote: post #201
zozbot234 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> Dropbox has total access to your unencrypted files.

The application maybe, depending on how you set it up. Not the website itself.

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

#256

Post by simion314 »

TravHatesMe wrote: post #135
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?

That is a good question. Is this a fireable offense regardless of the content? If not, what kind of content is fireable, subject matter that is political, religious, vulgar, or offensive? Putting this into an internal tool does seem unprofessional in my opinion. Why bite the hand that feeds you?

>Why bite the hand that feeds you?

I would say that better you would ask , was this the right time to bite the hand? Because there are good reasons to do it, like if uber self driving cars developers would have done something instead of disabling safety features and lick the hand that feeds them.

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

#257

Post by magduf »

raxxorrax wrote: post #169
thrower123 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like they need to rethink the book. I'm not sure a Googley culture of permissiveness can exist at the kind of scale that they have now, and with the competing activist factions that they have cultivated.

If they really fired her for just this bagatelle, it speaks more against Google. I don't know why there is this pervasive desire to strangle developers. This is a pretty recent phenomena in my opinion and certainly nothing close to a requirement to develop great software. If I were an employee at Google, actions such as this would let me seriously consider to look for other work. The requirement for the code review f…

>The requirement for the code review for internal tools already seems awefully restrictive.

How on earth is that restrictive? Having code review for any important code should be normal at any company. Just because the tool is internal doesn't mean it's trivial and any engineer (especially a 21-year-old: how is she even an employee and not an intern at that age?) should be able to merge anything in willy-nilly.

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

#259

Post by myalphabet »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #194
extropy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These popups are security popups, the ones you would get from your antivirus/firewall and carry a certain Management endorsement weight. It's not a free for all space to put random messages into.

> random messages into Federally-protected content isn’t random speech. There are reasonable arguments on both sides. Looking forward to seeing them play out at the NLRB and in the courts. The only solid takeaway at this time is, if you think this is black-and-white, you’re missing salient detail.

Random speech doesn't become any less random just because it is federally protected. On the contrary, it actually becomes less federally protected if it is random, because federal protection of speech requires specific time, place, and manner.

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

#260

Post by leadingthenet »

panpanna wrote: post #183
felideon wrote: post #100

Spiers' account of what happened: https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for...

Thanks for the link. This section caught my attention: > I was interrogated about separate other organizing activities, and asked (eight times) if I had an intention to disrupt the workplace. The interrogations were extremely aggressive and illegal. They wouldn’t let me consult with anyone, including a lawyer, and relentlessly pressured me to incriminate myself and any coworkers Sounds more foxconn than Google to me.…

Personally, this is exactly what I assumed Google to be like when it comes to unionising.
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