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

#391

Post by mindcrime » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #279

mindcrime wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem with your point of view is that it applies equally to the companies that hire you, and they have very little incentive to be on your side.

Sure, but why add one more variable to the equation? Eschew additional complexity. As long as I live in a "right to work" state and there is plenty of demand for the kind of work I do, I'd rather deal with companies on a one-to-one basis. If company treats me unfairly, I quit and go somewhere else.

And while the company may not be "on your side", companies are still bound by market forces, on both sides of the equation. You can't compete (for now!) without people, and if you constantly run your best people off by mistreating them, you aren't going to be very successful in the long run.

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

#392

Post by Eikon » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #341

qaq wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security team members modifying their tools that are deployed to a large number of employees for fun ?

Part of the job was writing precisely that sort of pop-ups.

No, part of the job was to write pop-ups related to _security_ not to random things.

This was absolutely off limits.

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

#393

Post by nonbirithm » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #292

username90 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Security team members modifying their tools that are deployed to a large number of employees for fun ?

Only sort of related, but one time some of the YouTube engineering team made a code change to kill off usage of Internet Explorer 6 by bypassing the usual code screening process to circumvent management. Their boss reprimanded them but eventually got in on it, without going through the appropriate channels. Then the Docs team saw the banner they showed YouTube users, thought they had actually received approval from management and used it as evidence to convince their managers to implement their own banner (who would have normally refused).

All they received was a small rebuke. In fact, management praised the team for the end result of decimating IE6 usage, as intended.

Then one of the architects of the scheme blogged about it in retrospect years later.

https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6

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

#394

Post by username90 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #292

username90 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Security team members modifying their tools that are deployed to a large number of employees for fun ?

It was a configuration change so there were no dangers adding it, so she being a security engineer isn't relevant. The right punishment would be to tell her what channels she can use to send union messages and tell her to just do security related popups in the future. If she continued sending messages like this then fire her, but it is dumb that she got fired over something that would take literally 5 minutes to fix.

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

#395

Post by ExtremePopcorn » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #197

GVIrish wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree, it sounds a lot like a code review, but at Google that was also the approval standard for deploying such an extension. I don't really see how Google could be in the right here though. If they have an internal program for creating alerts/extensions for specific websites, and Spiers followed the normal procedure for adding such an extension, there doesn't seem to be a problem. The only problem is Google bein…

You added your personal code to a browser extension.. I can't see how google is in the wrong. Unless google allows anyone to change this extension for personal reasons and they only flagged her. Could someone change it to let everyone know they are selling cookies or accepting donations to their church.

That's not how Google works. She mentions in the Gizmodo article that she had ownership over these files, which isn't given out casually. Creating these policy notifications would have been a core part of her work.

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

#396

Post by ddalex » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

debt wrote: post #366

jefftk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She did it exactly according to internal policy. I don't think this person or the other organizers should have been fired, but code review is not the same as organizational approval. (Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

“organizational approval” Is the literal problem, which necessitated the pop-up. The Organization Does Not Approve™ It’s like asking someone if you can kick them in the knee before doing so. What do you think they’ll say? Y’all seem confused: the organization, Google in this case, is antognizing it’s organizing employees. Google absolutely do not, will not, can not approve of unionization efforts. Ever.

how about not kicking them in the knee ?

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

#397

Post by kick » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

helen___keller wrote: post #373

settsu wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If this is something that goes through your mind, the organization you are at is broken and probably dangerously hostile.

No, this is just the truth of working at BigCorp. Most engineers can pretend office politics doesn't exist because they're working in primarily nonpolitical roles. But office politics exists, for any office. And unionization is political.

How is a big corporation exclusive from being "broken and probably dangerously hostile"? It seems likely that they all are.

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

#398

Post by lr4444lr » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #23

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…

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?

Does it matter? If she used Google resources in a manner not company-approved, and if labor law doesn't recognize using a resource like that as a protected communications channel, like they would a company break room announcement board, why should Google be subject to a neutrality test? I support unionization, but I don't see what legal ground she has to stand on here.

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

#399

Post by javajosh » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

txcwpalpha wrote: post #365

javajosh wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is its easy to see that someone stole your machine and take action to revoke credentials. Further, the damage a person can do with a dev machine is rather limited - probably the worst that might happen is exfiltrating code. Yes, devops machines can do more damage, but presumably all their remote access is 2FA protected (at least). But a devs main influence is pushing to a git remote, and triggering a build.…

>probably the worst that might happen is exfiltrating code This is far far from the worst that might (and does) happen. I think you severely underestimate the average dev's access to critical systems. >but presumably all their remote access is 2FA protected hahahahahaha You also severely overestimate the security of most companies. A lot of F500s don't even use 2FA at all , let alone on something like CI/CD. > unlike…

We're talking about Google.

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

#400

Post by lbeltrame » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 4:37 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?

If you live in a country where unions are very powerful, like mine, you realize that their power need to be kept in check along with every other power.

Unions at least in my country are all about political power, and little about workers' rights. The major ones are composed of mostly retirees from an era and a work modus operandi that is no longer the case there.

They argue for a model that is equal for everyone - yes, everyone equal at the bottom. They insist that every contract should be handled mostly at the national level (for political bargaining power) and discourage local agreements between unions and employers.

Also the public transportation seems to enjoy the "special" privilege of having a strike (not necessarily for workers' rights) at least once every month, "by chance" almost always on a Monday or a Friday.

Oh, and when an acquaintance of mine tried to get a union to help her file her retirement papers, they basically left her to her own devices (she was a retiree, no longer a worker, so "tough luck") and she had to fix the many problems that emerged by herself.

If we need unions, they need to be nothing like the one I hear about every day in the news.

EDIT: And for this reason I also refuse to take part in any union (last time someone wanted to do so, all I heard were "marches" and "strikes": people, it's not the 1970s anymore).