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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

#691

Post by KirinDave »

ticmasta wrote: post #607
KirinDave wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those thoughts are factual and relevant to the topic at hand, it... does seem like it's reasonable? She's an engineer, not someone working a type pool.

Only because you brought it up, someone in the typing pool likely has more education and experience: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-spiers-1b3048a1/ By any measure she's not an engineer.

She's got a CompTia Security+ certification. That is not a trivial amount of specialist education. You certainly aren't expected to have a college degree to be an "engineer" if that's the thrust of your argument.

Tbh it sounds like other ulterior motives are clouding your judgement here. She seems like exactly the sort of engineer who would benefit from unionization and while I might need it less, I fully support her and I'm disappointed in Google for firing her.

As I've said elsewhere, these sham reasons for firing folks adjacent to union activity are opening up the company to massive liability and imo the board and shareholders should hold more people accountable.

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

#692

Post by geofft »

dmix wrote: post #688
scarmig wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the kind of code change she committed has never happened before. A change in desktop wallpaper is not the same as a change in a security extension. The fact that other employees have participated in pro-employee activism and not been disciplined speaks to that. Some things are fine, some things are not. Abusing security software is not.

Sharing a cute desktop background is inappropriate but it's only a picture on a background, misusing an internal security mechanism for your own pet activism when visiting a harmless website is a totally different tier of unprofessionalism. Do you activism in your personal time. Don't use important company resources used to protect employees from harm to push your slogans. Regardless if those slogans are legally legi…

She was protecting employees from harm. Illegally interfering with protected concerted activity hurts the company, and an employee doing so is likely to get fired quite legitimately.

(Furthermore, the laws about protected concerted activity specifically permit you to do your activism at work, not just on your own time.)

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

#693

Post by dang »

the_narrator wrote: post #637
ticmasta wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because you brought it up, someone in the typing pool likely has more education and experience: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-spiers-1b3048a1/ By any measure she's not an engineer.

By any measure she's not even a she.

We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop.

Doing this will get your main account banned as well, so please don't.

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

#694

Post by scarmig »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #690
dmix wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing a cute desktop background is inappropriate but it's only a picture on a background, misusing an internal security mechanism for your own pet activism when visiting a harmless website is a totally different tier of unprofessionalism. Do you activism in your personal time. Don't use important company resources used to protect employees from harm to push your slogans. Regardless if those slogans are legally legi…

> internal security mechanism Correction: an internal message display tool. > for your own pet activism > push your slogans Correction: a warning not to break federal labor law, which Google is actually required to provide. https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/0*1BTVYLTvuHiJVvp_.jpg > Do you activism in your personal time. This is about Google. Apparently their company culture has been the opposite, and they have commonl…

> Correction: an internal message display tool.

For the millionth time, it was not a general message display tool. It is a security tool to flag domains that run the risk of data leakage and malware. Trying to hijack a security extension to turn it into a general messaging platform is both stupid and bad for security.

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

#695

Post by dmix »

geofft wrote: post #692
dmix wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing a cute desktop background is inappropriate but it's only a picture on a background, misusing an internal security mechanism for your own pet activism when visiting a harmless website is a totally different tier of unprofessionalism. Do you activism in your personal time. Don't use important company resources used to protect employees from harm to push your slogans. Regardless if those slogans are legally legi…

She was protecting employees from harm. Illegally interfering with protected concerted activity hurts the company, and an employee doing so is likely to get fired quite legitimately. (Furthermore, the laws about protected concerted activity specifically permit you to do your activism at work, not just on your own time.)

The homepage of a law firm was harming employees requiring a security/privacy tool to be hijacked to have pro-union activism messaging?

Jeez, politics really does make people go funny in the head. As long as it's "their guy" everything is on the table to sidestep logic.

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

#696

Post by uwuhn »

nothal wrote: post #628

One thing this thread has made me realize is that the work culture (at least of Googlers on HN) seems to kowtow to the company over the employees. Really affects my view of the company.

Is there a major company, tech or otherwise, that breaks this convention?

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

#697

Post by throwaway2048 »

mindcrime wrote: post #391
throwaway2048 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your point of view is that it applies equally to the companies that hire you, and they have very little incentive to be on your side.

Sure, but why add one more variable to the equation? Eschew additional complexity. As long as I live in a "right to work" state and there is plenty of demand for the kind of work I do, I'd rather deal with companies on a one-to-one basis. If company treats me unfairly, I quit and go somewhere else. And while the company may not be "on your side", companies are still bound by market forces, on both sides of the equati…

If that was actually true, employee abuse would be essentially non existent, especially in large successful companies, and unions would have little reason to exist.

Its not true.

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

#698

Post by ummonk »

Miner49er wrote: post #26

I'm not a lawyer, but on the surface this seems clearly illegal on Google's part based on the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Does anyone know of any similar cases to this? EDIT: Found one in Purple Communications . It was ruled workers can use work email to organize. https://www.littler.com/nlrb-creates-right-use-corporate-e-m...

Unfortunately, Purple Communications seems to have just got overturned at Google's urging: https://gizmodo.com/disastrous-nlrb-ruling-adds-another-hurd...

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

#699

Post by overgard »

TheFrizz wrote: post #528
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…

Yeah, in terms of what she did I would agree it wasn't terribly harmful; and I applaud her for taking a principled stand. I just don't really blame management for saying: that was a step too far, you're out. I mean, unionizing is a super sensitive topic at any company, and by adding the message to the tool it added extra weight to the message by making it look like it was endorsed by the higher ups, rather than being a message from a 21 year old. There's no way management is going to be happy that someone is essentially acting as their voice on a topic that is very sensitive.

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

#700

Post by cc81 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #490
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.

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…

Depending on what the cause is it might be different. If someone makes a reasonable mistake, like pushes something to production that they should not, then you could argue that there are not enough checks and it is not something you should get fired for. You should change the process.

If someone deliberately goes around those checks to push something anyway then it could be a fire-able offense.

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