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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

#491
post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a Googler but I reiterate I know exactly 0 CSOs that would tolerate this. You providing an example outside of security team kindah reinforces my point.

The internal OS distribution team is a security team. They ensure that the OS everyone at Google works on and run their code on is secure.

They report to CSO ? Would be pretty unusual again not a googler but normally that would not be part of security team

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

#492
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…

The management is giving each other high fives now. As they no doubt strategize their plan from the comfort of their boardroom, they know this activist's personality will become the face of effort to collectively bargain.

Despite news articles mentioning walkouts themed on identity politics and out of court sexual assault allegations - those are narrow and not representative of the collective: a small, but vocal clique demanding VIP treatment at the expense of everything else. As for the feelings of those not fitting those characteristics? Do they not have their own personal and professional struggles, ambitions to cooperate and rise in the organization and live a happy life with a family?

It's a perfect distraction from the worker's struggle for union representation.

In order to form a union, you need votes. Google's management knows enduring the most radical and loud is a small price compared to having a union to ensure everyone is treated fair.

Cater to the whims of radicals rather than focusing on common ground == no plurality. Union busted, mission accomplished. https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats-law/employees/i...

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

#493
post #131
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…

> There's a sort of assumed good-faith for this process. I don't understand why two people sign off changes if they assume the person making the changes isn't going to make errors or be "malicious". And I'm not sure why two people sign off changes instead of just one. There's a well understood problem when you have more than one person inspecting product - they both assume the other person is competent and will catch…

If you need 2 approvals at Google, then usually 1 is for readability in a specific language. I.e. one of the reviewers is understood to mostly be looking at code style and not domain logic.

In my experience, you more often get the other phenomena where all reviewers (and some other people who get automatically CC'd) dogpile the review and you potentially have too many comments. Or someone ignores the review and it never gets approved. Cursory reviews were basically never a problem.

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

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, she insisted to the world (and presumably to Google as well) that she did nothing wrong here. This is a pretty minor thing to fire someone over - but what other option does a company have, when someone makes it clear that they refuse to behave properly?

> but what other option does a company have, when someone makes it clear that they refuse to behave properly? You could tell them to stop instead of firing them after the first offense.

How are you supposed to trust someone to follow the rules in the future if they won’t even acknowledge they broke them?

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know about you, but "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." seems pretty political to me. It's about as political as informing someone they have a right to be paid the minimum wage.

Sure you have the right to say it. But you can’t follow me to the bathroom stall and keep telling me. She didn’t post it to a common area. She took it upon herself to plaster it on everyone’s computer screen.

According to her Medium post it only appears on two websites.

> I created a little notification, only a few lines of code, that pops up in the corner of the browser whenever my coworkers visited the union busters’ website or the community guidelines policy. The notification said: “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.”

https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for...

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

#496
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.

Of course they do. They wouldn't hire you otherwise.

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

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is very reminiscent of laws regarding jury nullification, and how the practice may be legal, but in some jurisdictions / cases it can be illegal to inform a jury of that fact.

That's because it's not legal. It's a violation of the jury's duty to render a verdict based on the law and the facts presented. Stating an intention to vote a certain way without respect to the law and facts is grounds for removal from the jury. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/jury_nullification and the referenced court case.

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

#498
post #378

I'm constantly baffled by how anti-union many Americans are, how willing to give up their rights.

I’m constantly baffled how Europeans, who get paid 50-60% as much as Americans, and have almost no innovative companies of their own, think their system is somehow better.

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

#499

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.

Committing crimes, even just omitting required notices, falls outside of management discretion. At-will doesn't apply.

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

#500
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reviewers are supposed to review holistically, and in cases where something raises larger questions (do we actually have approval for this change?) they shouldn't approve until those questions are resolved. In this case I suspect the reviewers were supportive of the protest, and so approved it even though their authority didn't cover this kind of change. I don't think any of these people should have been fired, but "…

>Reviewers are supposed to review holistically That sounds about right. So why doesn't Google fire the reviewers? If they don't, then they are inconsistently applying the standard. If they do, then they are punishing a coordinated employee action.

Because reviewers aren't held to the same level of responsibility for the content of the change as the author. Making them responsible for back-door vulnerabilities slipped in by employees compromised by a nation-state would grind the company to a halt.
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