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

#521

Post by wolco » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

helen___keller wrote: post #265

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…

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…

I guess the question is did she add a company policy or guideline by adding what she added? I wouldn't classify a union drive as a company policy.

Some may think a union drive is a company function. From what I remember about my experience with unions is you are allowed to put up notices in the employee breakroom that is done by the union rep who is voted in within each shop.

I would say what she did was more along the lines of blasting the union notice over speakers to everyone who entered the cafe.

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

#522

Post by DanBC » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #227

DanBC wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>And I'm not sure why two people sign off changes instead of just one. Because more eyes catch more bugs. I work in a time like this where we have 2 or even 3 people review stuff; it's extremely common for one engineer to miss stuff that another one catches. It's particularly notable I think with junior vs. senior engineers: I think you really need at least one senior engineer reviewing everything before a merge, but…

> Because more eyes catch more bugs.

But for product inspection we have pretty good evidence, from millions of human hours of factory work, that it's a bit more complicated.

X makes a widget, and sends it for inspection by Y and Z. Y has a look, but assumes Z will catch anything that Y misses. But Z also assumes that Y will catch anything that Z misses.

You end up with two people doing a superficial inspection and missing problems.

Of course, that's only if they're doing the same inspection twice. If they have different and clearly defined inspection roles the two inspector problem doesn't apply.

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

#523

Post by helen___keller » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #521

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…

I guess the question is did she add a company policy or guideline by adding what she added? I wouldn't classify a union drive as a company policy. Some may think a union drive is a company function. From what I remember about my experience with unions is you are allowed to put up notices in the employee breakroom that is done by the union rep who is voted in within each shop. I would say what she did was more along t…

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/13/googles-settlement-on-speech...

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

#524

Post by mtnGoat » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

This as a whole just doesn't look good for Google/Alphabet, but then again the optics of a lot of their choices lately have looked very poor from the outside looking in.

Honest question for long term(4+ years) Google Engineers reading... has the change in culture and bad press lately had any effect on your feelings towards your employer? Do you think it is eroding their culture at G? Do you see any of this leading to a loss of talent?

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

#525

Post by domnomnom » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

TheFrizz wrote: post #510

chance_state wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yes I would call it a political message.

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

#526

Post by ggggtez » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

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…

The thing that gets me is that this isn't a "message board" or email, or forum... or anything like that. They needed 2 approvals to put this message out there.

It doesn't sound like just anyone could do this, but only people with specific privilege and approvals.

A company being "legally required" to do something doesn't mean that individual employees can decide for themselves to implement that policy... Otherwise you could ask random employees to Right-To-Be-Forgotten and delete you from Google...

I think the real questions are: 1) Was it part of their job? [no] 2) Was it a message board? [no] 3) Was it protected speech anyway? [unsure]

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

#527

Post by throwaway2048 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

pathseeker wrote: post #496

evan_ wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They hire you to make money off your labour, and pay you less than you make them, none of that involves "partnership".

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

#528

Post by TheFrizz » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

overgard wrote: post #289

I'm not anti-union, but come on, modifying an internal security tool to display a politically motivated message? That would get you in trouble anywhere. Also.. managers are humans. You can't provoke people in such a way and not expect a response. Speaking of provocation: I suspect she might have done this to intentionally get fired. It wouldn't be the dumbest play, she's super young (21), if she doesn't want to code…

Also the people arguing for giving the employee a "talking to" instead of firing I think are not considering the game theory aspect to this.

If the precedent is "a talking to" with future offenses resulting in a firing, then smart Google employees will realize that they can create an internal activist email list, get new hires to join it, and then when an opportunity for activism presents itself get an employee with a clean record to perform the activism, rinse repeat.

Of course the message in this case wasn't terribly harmful, so I'm sympathetic to the argument of "it's not such a big deal". But the problem is, Google doesn't want to wait for the big deal (for example a chrome extension change to search exec's TextAreas for keywords a "whistleblower" might want to report on) to actually happen and then fire them. They want to prevent employees from thinking they should ever try doing that in the first place which means putting the foot down before the inevitable happens.

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

#529

Post by abj » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

> 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. [1]

Why was this necessary by management? Regardless of what Kathryn did, this is a bad faith move by management.

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

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

#530

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

sebii wrote: post #495

scarface74 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

And how does that still not show that she over reached her responsibility?