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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

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Configuration is code. Many an outage has been caused by a bad configuration push.

Configuration which consists of an url and a message to display on said url is not that kind of configuration push.

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

#422
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But you can’t follow me to the bathroom stall and keep telling me." "plaster it on everyone's screen" did you read the same article I did? The alert was triggered off a single consultancy's site. I really doubt it was a common hang out spot.

She was using a security tool to spread her message. Does that seem appropriate to you?

> She was using a security tool to spread her message. Does that seem appropriate to you?

Yes, of course.

Apparently this "security tool" exists to notify Googlers of policy, and the notification just linked to a Google policy notice with a warning not to violate it. This is apparently the actual notification that was displayed:

https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/0*1BTVYLTvuHiJVvp_.jpg

> Do not violate go/nlrbnotice. Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.

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

#423
post #330

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 feel like they are a partner in our mutual goal to make a lot of money. Your employer doesn’t feel that way.

So what?

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

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anywa…

Probably a bit naive? Security tools, and especially extensions that run with full browser access, are in an exceptionally trusted position. Employees who can inject code into arbitrary websites can in effect get administrator access to anything in the company, as Google is run almost entirely off of web apps of various kinds. It's actually hard to get more trusted than that: without a doubt this woman effectively ha…

This is reprimanding for the content of the message, not the scope of the code which would have actual security implications. Furthermore, it is a warning about not violating an actual company policy. This is not far off from the scope this pop-up tool is designed for. While it is clear that this was done as a response to google hiring this firm to dissuade folks from organizing, I could argue that it could be done to warn managers not to use the firms presence as permission to violate a specific policy + law. IANAL but this seems like extremely grey legal area. For example, this could be aimed at managers to remind them that even though this firm is hired, they cannot enforce a ban on organization according to that specific policy in the handbook. I think that's an appropriate use IMO, it would save the company some serious money and headache if it stopped a manager from illegally retaliating against organization.

I would not characterize this as evidence that this person is a security risk. It takes existing culture of google, including past incidents like changing the default desktop wallpaper for a protest that was happening, etc.

Also if this is true it is totally insane. Sounds like intimidation tactics to stop exactly what the pop-up warned against.

> 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

#425
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…

Sure, but the question is, would they react this way if the injected content was something else?

That's the most important question, and there's a pretty good case to be made for "yes". It's a severe error in judgment for a security engineer to co-opt an security notification system in order to spread personal messages. Not only is it spam, it desensitizes users to real warnings. (Imagine an email from Google where the subject is "SECURITY ISSUE WITH YOUR ACCOUNT" and the content is an ad for a Pixel). I probably would have given a strong warning rather than firing, but it's not unreasonable to be especially strict when dealing with security matters.

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

#426
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's extremely relevant I will reiterate I know literally 0 large companies where this would be tolerated from a security team member.

Google did tolerate exactly the same kind of behavior from the internal OS distribution team before, you could argue that security is even more important there than in a browser plugin.

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

#427
post #173

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…

The tool was for privacy and security, not advocacy right? Sounds like she abused her position as a security engineer.

If indeed the extensions were only for security/privacy notifications, I would categorize what Speier did more as off-topic. That would be maybe something deserving of a correction not outright termination.

The fact that the message was about employee labor rights means that Google might be in a precarious legal position

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

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being in charge of the infrastructure does not mean you are in charge of the content. Those are well defined roles. Specially in a company of that size. She didn’t just make a judgement call. She went way outside her role imo.

I don't really know enough to agree or disagree with you. She claims she's in a role to make judgment calls on adding content - and that this was reinforced by her previous stellar performance reviews, which made her confident in her judgment - but I don't personally have enough info to know if that's the truth. She very well could be stretching the truth that maybe every other addition she's made was under the direc…

Googlers are encouraged---well, in the past, have been encouraged---to consider themselves capable of making judgement calls like this one.

That having been said, this would still be considered an unusual call to have made. But had I been on the receiving end of this message, I suspect I'd have found it annoying unless she remembered to suppress it after first display---if she had, I wouldn't have been bothered by it.

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

#429
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but California is an at-will state. Again, IANAL, but my educated understanding is that you can fire someone for any reason as long as the reason is not illegal. Lastly, IANAL.

Organizing is protected by law. Firing for organizing is intimidation.

Yep, that's what's contested here and is unclear.

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

#430
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 entire…

IMO the problem was putting the pop up on the IRI consultants website. She wasn’t protecting anyone or informing anyone of policy, she was being inflammatory and I don’t see it as a stretch for G to say she abused her position to inject that message.
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