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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

#501

Post by michaelt »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #367
michaelt wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hollywood might not be the best example of unions' effectiveness, given the revelations of the Me Too movement. Have you considered using the AMA or similar in your examples instead?

What, the fact that Hollywood highlighted a society wide problem should be counted against it? Or do you honestly think that sexual harassment by exploiting power imbalance only happens in Los Angeles?

I'm saying protection against having to have sex with your boss to get work is MVP worker protection.

And so if someone wants to convince people how effective unions are at worker protection, Hollywood's unions aren't the most convincing example.

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

#502

Post by singron »

javajosh wrote: post #360
jefftk wrote: 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.

If Google just doesn't want unionized engineers, it could just fire all engineers. Obviously they need to balance their various objectives and firing productive people is costly to the business. I think they are hoping more to send a strong message to the whole company with as small a disturbance to the business as possible.

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

#503

Post by malvosenior »

drakonka wrote: post #409

It feels weird for me to read comments in this thread debating about and assuming a simple note about unionization or organization by an employee whose job it was to do exactly this kind of thing is "not in good faith" or a "violation". In my mind this kind of thing has the same sentiment as _any_ policy notice. The world in which notifying people that they have the right to organize is a "violation" is a really mess…

You can read her own words to see it wasn't in good faith:

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

> Recently Google was forced to post a list of rights that we have in the workplace. So when I heard that Google had hired a union busting firm and started illegally retaliating against my coworkers, I decided to make sure that my coworkers knew about the posting.

She was mad at her employer and used her role to retaliate.

> 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.

It only mentions the union busters' website in the OP but she also says it popped up a notification when people visited the community guidelines policy. That's pretty invasive, this is a notification everyone will see.

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

#504

Post by BoorishBears »

boomlinde wrote: post #435
BoorishBears wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, was that supposed to be a revelation? I work at a place full of xooglers and other ex-faangs, and get the benefits of working with talented people without these kinds of scandals.

> I know, was that supposed to be a revelation? No, more to point out that it's a weird concern to have about an internal tool used by a company that uses their code to exert huge, global political influence. It's a strangely specific grain of rice to make an issue of.

That is such a stretch I'd need a yogi to grasp it all.

There are plenty of ways to protest that are just as effective as a pop up that only appears on a specific site for a specific lawyer that don't involve messing with work code.

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

#505

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

yorwba wrote: post #431
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A union doesn't give me, personally, any control or direction or checks on executive power. Union leaders have those powers. And it's not obvious to me why the union leaders would be any more aligned with my interests than management is.

Those union leaders are hopefully elected by employees (otherwise, how do they get to be leaders?) so you can align the union leadership with your interests by voting for someone whom you trust to represent you. Of course you don't need that if management is also elected, but I don't know of any company that does that.

It's not about whether I trust the leaders. Even if they're trustworthy, their job is to work for what's best for the union as a whole, and that's often going to be different than what's best for me. As anyone who's worked in big companies can attest, there are all sorts of ways that facially universal policies can have disproportionate impact on specific people or teams.

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

#506

Post by username90 »

qaq wrote: post #491
username90 wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Google has a lot of security teams since they do all of their infra themselves. The people who push security patches to peoples OS's is a security team, and they used that channel to push a message similar to this.

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

#507

Post by workthrowaway »

drakonka wrote: post #409

It feels weird for me to read comments in this thread debating about and assuming a simple note about unionization or organization by an employee whose job it was to do exactly this kind of thing is "not in good faith" or a "violation". In my mind this kind of thing has the same sentiment as _any_ policy notice. The world in which notifying people that they have the right to organize is a "violation" is a really mess…

you forgot that some of us are debating the sign-off process as well. the most surprising aspect if you ask me...

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

#508

Post by hechang1997 »

tanilama wrote: post #446
helen___keller wrote: post #265

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…

> 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 She needs to understand this power isn't her own to wield. And the risk of people abusing power to advance their personal agenda is NOT something that would get passed easily once discovered.

It's so disingenuous to call out employees advancing their agenda when the corporations themselves are constantly abusing their power to advance their agenda.

> And the risk of people abusing power to advance their personal agenda is NOT something that would get passed easily once discovered.

Yes, it is. It get discovered all the time and no one gives a sh*t about it.

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

#509

Post by tnorthcutt »

vonmoltke wrote: post #497
TallGuyShort wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

However, jury verdicts of acquittal are unassailable even where the verdict is inconsistent with the weight of the evidence and instruction of the law.

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

#510

Post by TheFrizz »

chance_state wrote: post #443
thinkingemote wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She didn't weaponise a neutral extension. The extension was already weaponised. It already pushed notifications to users when they visited flagged URLs. She probably just changed a config file to add a new rule and message, 1 line.

>It already pushed notifications to users when they visited flagged URLs. Did it push notifications with a particular political message? I don't think it did.

If the employee had added a message,

"You have the constitutional right to keep and bear arms" when employees visited cabelas.com, would you call it a political message?

Both are simply informing people of their rights.

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