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Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

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Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#281

Post by judge2020 »

inerte wrote: post #279
qmarchi wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is that there's an auditable trail of things that she did. Notably, she bypassed restriction in our code change system which would've required review. The policy around bypassing that is explicitly to only be used in emergencies. Again, reasonable for her to be fired.

Is there anyone else that has every bypassed this step, but wasn't fired? What's the definition of an emergency? Also it seems reasonable to me her complaint that this hurt her reputation, after all you're a Google employee and here you are smearing her in a public board. I know you're gonna say "I don't speak for my company", to which I will reply: It seems you're a Google employee, and you're speaking as a Google e…

Not a Googler, but probably "to fix the json in case someone leaves out a comma causing the notification system to no longer work".

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#282

Post by throwaway667555 »

MereInterest wrote: post #277
throwaway667555 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person redlined a contract instead of spending +$2000/yr (out of a likely $250,000+ salary) on a second personal phone. Such short-sidedness is a bad trait in an employee. Second, their protest is laudable. But their decision was consciously: "the legal department of this $xxx billion company (that spends $xx million maintaining this employment contract template) will bend to my will, or I will {quit OR relent}".…

Honestly, that is the sort of solution I would expect the legal department to suggest as a counter-offer, with Google paying the difference. Having the legal department review contract changes is something I would expect to be standard for them, not a deal breaker. It is the reason for having the legal department there in the first place.

Some details of an offer & acceptance of employment are trivial and not worth spoiling good will.

Me: "Hey manager, can I make an expense report for this work phone?" No matter the response, I'm ok with it, because I make Google money, and that's policy. I should work towards becoming management if I want that to change. But I probably have better things to do than such a trivial disagreement.

I wish corporations were less psychopathic, too, but this is not the hill I'd die on. Or, I'd be damn sure ready to die if I redlined as a "nice to meet you" first act.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#283

Post by MereInterest »

llampx wrote: post #201
ChuckMcM wrote: post #191

True story, a person I know who was offered a job at Google got the employment agreement (prior to arriving which was pretty standard at the time) and read that bit about "allowing Google to protect it's IP by installing a rootkit" and they red lined it to change it "May only access Google related information and no personal information." When they showed up HR started with "But that isn't how we use it, we would nev…

Was this supposed to be on a work phone or a personal phone? If a personal phone, was it a requirement to use it for work purposes? Most times, I believe a change to the employment agreement made by the employee would result in the employer not going forward with the hire, unless it was agreed upon in the negotiation phase. So unfortunately I am not surprised at the outcome.

What surprises me is how common it is to not provide full contracts during the negotiation phase. How can you know if there is a clause that needs to be negotiated out without first seeing what clauses there are?

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#285

Post by nashashmi »

jefftk wrote: post #64
anonacct38 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Didn't she inject code into an unrelated internal extension? Depending on your definition of code, that's probably not the case. She added an entry to a config file that contained a mapping of urls to messages. Such as: dropbox.com/upload -> Friendly reminder: please don't upload internal documents to dropbox Also, Google generally trusts engineers and it's not that unusual to have an engineer writing and deploying…

> There's also an argument that she used some sort of "emergency" deployment mechanism, but that doesn't really hold water either. Honestly it's not that unusual to see people deploy some package when they need it rather than wait for a scheduled job to deploy it. I disagree. The emergency process was highly unusual, in that it had never been done before for this extension, and was very rarely done in general. Trigge…

You should read about the conspiracy to kill ie6.

The magical access to add stuff and just have fun was what made google a fun place to work at.

In this case adding stuff for your own corporate employees didn’t hurt the company’s customers and users. It shouldn’t have resulted in a termination. Had the person put a hate message they would have been terminated or penalized for hate but not for adding insecure code.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#286

Post by jefftk »

e40 wrote: post #232
ChuckMcM wrote: post #191

True story, a person I know who was offered a job at Google got the employment agreement (prior to arriving which was pretty standard at the time) and read that bit about "allowing Google to protect it's IP by installing a rootkit" and they red lined it to change it "May only access Google related information and no personal information." When they showed up HR started with "But that isn't how we use it, we would nev…

Does this mean you are required to have an Android phone? What if you have an iPhone? Rootkit required there, too?

You aren't required to have any phone. If you have a phone and want it to have access to corp resources, you need to agree to some conditions.

I have coworkers who choose to keep their phone personal only, and others who choose to have the company pay for them to have a separate work phone.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#287

Post by [deleted] »

e40 wrote: post #232
ChuckMcM wrote: post #191

True story, a person I know who was offered a job at Google got the employment agreement (prior to arriving which was pretty standard at the time) and read that bit about "allowing Google to protect it's IP by installing a rootkit" and they red lined it to change it "May only access Google related information and no personal information." When they showed up HR started with "But that isn't how we use it, we would nev…

Does this mean you are required to have an Android phone? What if you have an iPhone? Rootkit required there, too?

[deleted]

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#288

Post by renewiltord »

black_puppydog wrote: post #241
renewiltord wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got to be honest. If the security team is all like "Install this extension. It'll help you with security" and then it's gonna pop up all sorts of crap, I'm going to uninstall your shitty extension and after that I'm going to treat any software from this so-called 'security' team as some Bonzibuddy crap.

> Bonzibuddy crap funny name to give to something on the grounds of an engineer in the team pushing for unionization

It isn't about the topic. Like if you tell me it's going to give me computer security tips and instead it's advocating for peace in the middle east I genuinely don't give a fuck. It's bonzibuddy crap. It's getting blacklisted.

I'd prefer you don't get fired for doing dumb shit like that because whatever, it's not going to kill someone, but I'm not going to use that team's adware shit anymore.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#289

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway667555 wrote: post #266
MereInterest wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it great when even something as huge and life-changing as a job is subject to a contract of adhesion with no negotiation allowed? I'm sure glad to live in such a free country with great worker rights. (Sarcasm intended.)

The person redlined a contract instead of spending +$2000/yr (out of a likely $250,000+ salary) on a second personal phone. Such short-sidedness is a bad trait in an employee. Second, their protest is laudable. But their decision was consciously: "the legal department of this $xxx billion company (that spends $xx million maintaining this employment contract template) will bend to my will, or I will {quit OR relent}".…

[deleted]

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#290

Post by suifbwish »

VikingCoder wrote: post #154
suifbwish wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yea def. Used mobile devices that are most assuredly not rooted

Fascinating. Do you have examples where someone thinks they're factory resetting an Android phone, but it turns out the device is still capable of a) running a corporate profile, and b) performing man-in-the-middle or any other attacks that "rooting" would allow? Or is this just a hypothetical?

Yes. It’s called xhelper and it can survive factory resets.

https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/xhelper-malware...

Unless the factory image and firmware are completely immutable they can be infected. There have been other non phone malware that can survive on certain chips on computer motherboards which would exist independently of both RAM and hard disks. Even GPUs can be infected if they have memory that does not clear when the capacitors discharge.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/intel...

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