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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

#261

Post by gambiting »

hugi wrote: post #118
Touche wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

She went through the corporate approved process with her changes. Her only mistake here is being pro union while Google is decidedly anti-union and pro-worker-abuse.

I don't know how this works where you are, but when I'm asked to review code for someone, that's exactly what I do but also only what I do - I don't ask them if they have a design document for the change or approval from the features team. It's not my job to verify that.

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

#262

Post by ones_and_zeros »

dmix wrote: post #155
evrydayhustling wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone else who didn't get that far the first time: > Spiers' pop-up message was inserted into a tool that notifies employees of privacy and security concerns about using non-Google tools and services, like warning employees not to upload proprietary information to Dropbox, Spiers said. The tool is managed by the platform security team, for which Spiers worked for almost two years as a security engineer. So, seem…

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.

If the message was "I baked cookies, come by my office if you'd like to try some" do you think this person would similarly be fired? A person that was recently promoted, was designated as a high performer, (and I have nothing to back this up but seemed strategically recruited since they did not fit the google mould as a high school drop out?)

I think a reasonable reaction would be to remove the message from the extension, put in place a better review process, better training and possibly some minor negative comments at review time.

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

#263

Post by username90 »

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.

People do similar things quite often at Google and I haven't heard any of them getting fired before.

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

#264

Post by itronitron »

It seems to me that Google fired Ms. Spiers specifically to discourage future labor organizing activities within Google. Because it was a process-approved insignificant revision by both functional change and reach means that the inevitable Streisand effect actually plays in Google's favor. They will be perfectly happy with any slap on the wrist as long as it moves the eventual union further down the road.

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

#265

Post by helen___keller »

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…

I agreed with this at first, but according to her medium post ( https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for... )

"Part of my job was to write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web"

If this is true and her job is literally to create javascript notifications of company policy, then I think it's entirely reasonable what she did considering it IS company policy (well, law really) that you have a right to organize.

Link to the popup: https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/0*1BTVYLTvuHiJVvp_.jpg

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

#267

Post by bad_user »

SkyBelow wrote: post #59
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…

When a cop pulls speeders but strongly focuses on one demographic group, even though each pull is justified in that the one pulled was violating the law, the pattern that emerges shows a greater level of injustice and the actual reasoning used is quite different than the stated reasoning because the stated reasoning is not consistently being applied. In this particular case, does Google consistently apply the stated…

That justice isn't equally applied doesn't excuse the perpetrator.

If you're speeding over the limit and the cops pull you over, you still deserve the fine, simply because that's the law. This doesn't mean that the cops themselves are innocent of any wrongdoing, but the two issues are separate.

And of course civil disobedience can be justified if the law or its application are unjust, but using it as an excuse after the fact is lame.

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

#268

Post by andai »

> Google’s response to this was to suspend me immediately and without warning. This was the week of Thanksgiving, the same day they fired the Thanksgiving Four. They also dragged me into three separate interrogations with very little warning each time. 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 I had talked to about exercising my rights at work.

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

#269

Post by throwaway894345 »

impalallama wrote: post #111
Touche wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 agree that "Don't slack off dummy" would have earned a rebuke, but I wouldn't be surprised if any controversial political activist message would have been grounds for termination, especially with Google's new policy regarding political activism in the workplace. She would likely have been rebuked if she had just posted a flyer in the cafeteria, but she modified an internal tool.

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

#270

Post by maccard »

jpmontez wrote: post #34
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…

"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 alleges it was done by the book.

I'm pretty sure that if I stood up in my office, I could find one or two people who would rubber stamp a change for me, assuming it was in good faith/approved, and would discuss implementation details/issues with the code, rather than question the reason for the changes. Particularly if the changes were tagged with a Jira. If your only defence is "well, what I did wasn _technically_ allowed", you lose the benefit of the doubt.

Incidents like this are the reason why red tape ends up introduced on small teams, and are what turn projects into a nightmare to work on.

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