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

#481

Post by CharlesColeman » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #470

calcifer wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep moving the goalposts every time someone refutes one of your points. > Does that seem appropriate to you? Yes. It's a tool for showing notifications related to the page being visited. Not to mention the whole thing is appropriate on moral grounds, regardless of any technicality.

So that means she should be able to inject her opinion on any site that she doesn’t like?

> So that means she should be able to inject her opinion on any site that she doesn’t like?

Just to be clear: her "opinion" is "don't take actions that would cause the company to break federal labor law."

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

#482

Post by Alex3917 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #345

helen___keller wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't her thoughts it was company policy, or to be specific it's required by law that this notice to be posted in the workplace. It's was her personal judgment that it should be posted in a chrome add-on rather than only by poster like is typical in most workplaces. But assuming her job was to maintain an add-on that informs employees of company policy, and assuming her job typically lets her act with personal ju…

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.

> Being in charge of the infrastructure does not mean you are in charge of the content.

Whether or not it was her job has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it was protected activity.

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

#483

Post by magduf » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

kick wrote: post #390

magduf wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Why wouldn't she be an employee at 21? 21 is three years into legal adulthood. The idea of being an intern at 21 is degrading. They're adults. Treat them like adults, not children.

Maybe this is news to you, but engineers typically have to go to college and get a degree before they can work as a software engineer. That typically takes 4 years, starting at age 18, which is when most people graduate high school. A 21-year-old working as an "engineer" at a company is typically an intern.

So to answer your inane question, she wouldn't be an employee because she's not old enough to have graduated college yet. And that's just to get a BS degree; lots of engineers these days (esp. at top-tier companies like Google) get an MS degree before they enter the workforce full-time.

I'm rather appalled that I have to spell this out here on this forum.

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

#484

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

wetpaste wrote: post #424

thu2111 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I think you're assuming it's related to the message content, but that's not what Google are saying and it's not how corporations work in my experience. How you do something matters a great deal in any large bureaucracy. If Spiers wanted to remind people they could unionise there are communication systems that exist for people to talk to each other on their own initiative without approval, systems like email or even memegen.

Modifying the behaviour of people's web browsers isn't a channel intended for employees to push personal messages to each other and this should have been really obvious to her. She and her colleagues were trusted with a tremendous amount of power which could be readily abused (see my other comment on this thread), and the expectation was clear that it'd be used only within the bounds of what her management asked her to do, namely corporate security.

When she went outside those bounds and started using her immense technical privileges in ad-hoc ways, and (worse) making arguments like "I got a colleague to approve a code review so it was OK" she gave an extremely clear demonstration that management simply couldn't trust her. It's not about unionisation. It's about someone with the power to steal cookies from her own colleagues going rogue and deciding her own personal political priorities matter more than company policies she had agreed to follow.

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

#485

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

blackearl wrote: post #436

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little of the former and a little of the latter, most likely. However, that doesn't mean her judgment r.e. what is relevant is immune to review. And if it's sufficiently incorrect, consequences like what happened shouldn't be surprising.

I'd disagree. Another post shows stellar performance reviews, so if this is considered a mistake, it should be remedied and she should be reprimanded. Outright firing seems heavy handed

My take on this is that she was trying to ruffle feathers, and she succeeded. I suspect her firing took into account that intent. Putting myself in the shoes of whoever decided, I can only think that factor would have weighed heavily against her.

She might be naive enough to believe that this was actually protected concerted activity, but I don't think so. I'm not sure I think firing her was the right play, but I also don't have all the information. I will say that I don't think this outcome should surprise her. It should definitely been one of the likely outcomes she modeled when deciding to submit that code.

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

#486

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #475

shadowgovt wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Googler, it's not only her power to wield, it's her job description to make discerning calls.

> make discerning calls about stuff that will breach company security, not to alert people of dangerous opinions. The latter is not hers to decide.

Individual Googlers inadvertantly violating the law opens the company up to risk of legal discovery processes and is therefore a beach of company security.

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

#487

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

C14L wrote: post #329

ramblerman wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? So if I hire you to email out my monthly company statement it’s reasonable that you add some of your own thoughts to said email.

Was she hired to only add things other people told her to add? Or was she hired to add things she considered relevant?

As a level 3 software engineer, the latter (with oversight, which it would appear was in place here. A change like this one doesn't hit the live codebase without at least one other engineer signing off on it).

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

#488

Post by JimDabell » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

nonbirithm wrote: post #393

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 ?

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 m…

They got lucky with positive press before they were discovered. The article you link to notes:

> If this went at all wrong, a number of us would surely be fired.

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

#489

Post by icebraining » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #354

ramblerman wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? So if I hire you to email out my monthly company statement it’s reasonable that you add some of your own thoughts to said email.

Yes, really. How about the converse: what if Google used it's ability to control employees' email to send messages on their behalf arguing against unionization? Part of the right of free speech is correctness of attribution. Trying to speak as someone else, using someone else's communication channels isn't speech, it's fraud. And I say that as (at least within the spectrum of folks on this site) a full on pinko commi…

I don't get it. Who is that "someone else"?

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

#490

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #416

C14L wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was she hired to only add things other people told her to add? Or was she hired to add things she considered relevant?

A little of the former and a little of the latter, most likely. However, that doesn't mean her judgment r.e. what is relevant is immune to review. And if it's sufficiently incorrect, consequences like what happened shouldn't be surprising.

These are stiff consequences for the violation in question for Google.

Individual employees publicly embarrassing the company (https://mobile.twitter.com/jweise/status/491788092710199297?...) or accidentally disrupting the network fabric and costing the company $X in missed revenue don't get fired for first offense. The way this was handled seems unusual, suggesting either there's a piece of the puzzle we internet pundits aren't holding or Google has changed its tolerance policy for honest mistakes.