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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

#721

Post by fargle »

drewbug01 wrote: post #683
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 an engineer. Please explain why she's not an engineer; and please take care to include discussion of why anyone is an arbiter of the "engineer" title in a field which is largely unregulated and not credentialed. Otherwise the most charitable reading of your comment is something like "ticmasta thinks security engineers are not real engineers," and the less charitable reading is something lik…

> in a field which is largely unregulated and not credentialed.

That IS why (engineers are credentialed and regulated).

And where you got misogynistic is a mystery - simply using someones pronoun of choice in conjunction with something negative isn't implying anything.

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

#722

Post by _y5hn »

ddalex wrote: post #370
ninly wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or would she have received a slap on the wrist for that. Or would she have received a pat on the back, given that she went through the Standard Procedure for adding a feature to the browser plug-in?

Sounds like she went through standard procedure to add code, but the feature was not sanctioned by management.... i.e. if you work on a payment system, add you add code to siphon sub-cent rounding "errors" to a "settlement" account, said code may pass review (because it looks legit to code reviewers), but I bet management would be pissed at the change if not prior approved.

So do nothing until management orders it, is that how they want it now? This is what they'll get!

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

#723

Post by _y5hn »

crazygringo wrote: post #242
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…

Indeed. And there are a ton of comments here saying it's OK because "she went through the standard approval process, which requires two co-workers to greenlight changes." But that doesn't mean it was OK. It just means the co-workers might have greenlit it without taking a close look, or were misled as to what they were approving, or that they were approving it because the code was correct technically, and approval is…

Unless managers are authorizing all changes, employees must assume their own judgement. Thus not firing offence.

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

#724

Post by _y5hn »

orangecat wrote: post #425
skywhopper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the question is, would they react this way if the injected content was something else?

That's the most important question, and there's a pretty good case to be made for "yes". It's a severe error in judgment for a security engineer to co-opt an security notification system in order to spread personal messages. Not only is it spam, it desensitizes users to real warnings. (Imagine an email from Google where the subject is "SECURITY ISSUE WITH YOUR ACCOUNT" and the content is an ad for a Pixel). I probabl…

So Security isn't a career move and this wasn't to stifle unionization at all?

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

#725

Post by antpol »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #305
scarface74 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It’s just like religion. If your religion tells you not to drink, I will respect that. If your religion tells you that I’m not allowed to drink I will tell you to f’ off.

The irony being of course, Google's entire business is shoving ads into people's faces that approximately nobody wants to see.

But the owners of websites want to show these google ads to you. Who is in control of content: the viewers or creators/hosters?

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

#726

Post by drakonka »

freyr wrote: post #702
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…

Using access granted to you as a developer to alter work tools to spam controversial messages to your coworkers is wildly inappropriate and unprofessional. There's no rationalization that makes this acceptable behavior.

This is exactly what I'm talking about - that we consider a message about organising/unionising to be so controversial at all. To me that is some dystopian level weird.

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

#727

Post by antpol »

sgslo wrote: post #621
TechBro8615 wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m referring to unionization, since this is the topic of the post, but also the broader idea of top-down market regulation that includes provisions for workers rights and taxation of externalities, driven by generally left-leaning, anti-capitalist sentiment. In general, it seems Europeans expect more of their government than Americans do. Historically, Americans have tended to be more distrustful of their government…

No change to the American system is being proposed. They are instead advocating that workers use the rights they have already been assigned, the same rights that have been exercised in many other American industries (electrical, auto, steel, etc) to form unions.

In the long term American Auto industry workers benefited greatly as a result

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

#728

Post by antpol »

bluntfang wrote: post #603
chance_state wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression of these tech unionization efforts are that they're mostly about pushing a social/political agenda, with workers rights being an afterthought. Every single time I see these posts the involved employees are activist LGBT folks. Am I wrong here? Why do all these issues seem to stem from the same group of people?

That's a great question. Are you familiar with the historic treatment of LGBTQ+ folks?

Historically big tech companies are treating their LGBTQ+ folks the best in comparison with any other industry though

I guess it’s not enough

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

#729

Post by raxxorrax »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #498
gvx wrote: 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.

Perhaps the thought comes from the lack of that many homeless people on the streets.

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

#730

Post by dang »

Maxion wrote: post #64
CodeMage wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read what the extension is for?

It feels like a lot of astro-turfing going on here. Why would any sane person be against unions?

This comment breaks the site guidelines against insinuations of astroturfing. Would you please review them and stick to the rules when posting here?

Comments having divided opinions on a divisive topic is the most common thing on the internet. There's no need to torture Occam.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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