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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

#381

Post by MereInterest »

marricks wrote: post #362
willcipriano wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how those contracts are enforceable. Quit your job, move across the country and then on your first day here are nine contracts to sign, no you can't take them home we need them now. If you don't sign you are unemployed and we want that relocation money back. I used to ask potential employers when I got deep into interviews with them. "Is there any way I can see all the contracts I would need to sign on…

Sounds like a great time to consider the differences between positive and negative liberty. Negative liberty: no one can get in my way of doing whatever I want! Google has the right to rootkit my life and I have the right to ignore it and work at a bodega because all tech giants eventually agreed this is a good practice for them Positive liberty: corporations can't infringe on my right to a private life and must prot…

I've heard it phrased the other way around. Positive liberty is about things that are guaranteed (e.g. health care, food, human dignity). Negative liberty is about things that may not be done (e.g. no punishment for speech, no limitations on buying guns, no environmental regulations).

We are in agreement about which type is better, so this is solely a quibble about the names.

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

#382

Post by lokar »

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…

You don't have to put the corp stuff on your device. They will provide you with a company phone that you can then use for only company stuff.

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

#383

Post by whimsicalism »

knorker wrote: post #373

What exactly did Google do? I can't find it. Do note that one of the fired people installed an web interceptor onto all employee browsers, injecting content when certain websites were visited. Basically installed malware in the workplace. I cannot think of anything less ethical to do when gives such access. If they were my coworker I would never be able to trust them with access to anything ever again. To abuse such…

The story of what they did gets more ridiculous with every retelling.

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

#384

Post by kelnos »

throwaway667555 wrote: post #311
MereInterest wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'd agree that it is a weird spoiling of goodwill, but would put this one entirely as Google's fault. Requesting a minor change to a contract the first time you see it is the expected behavior, not an outlier. That's the entire point of contracts, in order to come to a meeting of the minds. This is the equivalent of haggling at a flea market, and being thrown out as a result.

I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million. Internal developers, internal security ops, legal, and C-suite coordinating these departments. Also Google is very special in that their employees are extremely sophisticated and curious, so they need ~complete~ control of any electronics that access their networks.

> I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million.

Straw man. If a small change like this costs a company any more than a thousand bucks, they are Doing it Wrong.

You might argue that $1k is also a lot to expect, but consider that the company has likely already spent north of $25k (and sometimes a lot more than that) on the recruiting process that brought them this new employee. If they're going to throw that away to avoid an internal approval process that costs another thousand, that sounds like a bad financial decision to me.

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

#385

Post by twblalock »

lucian1900 wrote: post #306
twblalock wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The days where "being in IT" made you a rockstar that could command a premium in individual negotiations are, best I can tell, way in the past. Are you kidding? Salaries have never been higher in tech. Senior engineers make more than $400k (sometimes way more) at Google and other large companies. It is likely that engineers at FAANG companies would make less money if they join a union, because the union would level…

Collective employment agreements mandate minimums, not maximums.

> Collective employment agreements mandate minimums, not maximums.

Collective employment agreements can mandate whatever is negotiated between the union and management, within the bounds of contract law and labor law. Of course they can include maximums.

What is likely to happen is that a salary range would be defined for each engineering level. The top of that range is likely to be lower than what many engineers at large companies currently earn, yet higher than what many engineers at startups currently earn. Therein is the leveling effect.

Leveling is good if you level up, but bad if you level down. Many engineers at large companies would level down, if they were to join a union. So why should they support unionization?

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

#386

Post by bigiain »

throwaway667555 wrote: post #311
MereInterest wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'd agree that it is a weird spoiling of goodwill, but would put this one entirely as Google's fault. Requesting a minor change to a contract the first time you see it is the expected behavior, not an outlier. That's the entire point of contracts, in order to come to a meeting of the minds. This is the equivalent of haggling at a flea market, and being thrown out as a result.

I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million. Internal developers, internal security ops, legal, and C-suite coordinating these departments. Also Google is very special in that their employees are extremely sophisticated and curious, so they need ~complete~ control of any electronics that access their networks.

So if your first paragraph is correct, what are we to make of the HR person saying "But that isn't how we use it, we would never access your personal data."? Were they lying? Or was there a real internal rule about "never" accessing personal data? A rule that was in disagreement with the $x million worth of coordinations of legal documentation?

And if your second paragraph is correct, then "Google HR lies to you on your first day as policy - if you ask certain questions" seems to be the only logical conclusion.

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

#387

Post by amscanne »

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…

I work at Google, but have no inside knowledge of these events.

I doubt that Google spontaneously published the reason for the firing. AFAICT, the former employees went to the press following their firing, and the "violation of security policies" explanation was the response to articles initiated by the former employees. It's not clear to me how the parent's comments are a smear, unless the statement that "she bypassed restriction in our code change system" is not factual (which I don't know, but I have no reason to doubt it).

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

#388

Post by username90 »

nashashmi wrote: post #285
jefftk wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Google is mostly run by sticklers for the rules and has been for a long time (just ask Googlers about their code review process...). In practice most of the time individuals overlook transgressions, but if there is a formal complaint they don't. In this case the manager who hired the anti union org certainly got noticed about this since the notice popped up on their site, I'm pretty sure that person filed a formal complaint. And as Googles employee handbook says that doing things like this will get you fired she got fired, even though it was pretty innocent.

Similarly if someone made anti union messages pop up when you visit union sites I am 100% sure they would get fired as well, for the same reasons. You can talk about almost anything internally, (People like Damore aren't uncommon at all, the outside world just got hung up on him for some reason), just take your job and company code seriously.

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

#389

Post by knorker »

whimsicalism wrote: post #107
manfredo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you have a right to participate in unionization and politics. But you don't have a right to alter company software to spread your political message. There's a big difference between holding a "Vote X" sign on a street corner on your own time, and using your position as a developer to put up "Vote X" signs on your company's website.

> using your position as a developer to put up "Vote X" signs on your company's website. To state the law* for internal users who visit one specific website

You're missing the point. Do you think Google engineers should be allowed to unilaterally, against the wishes of Google, be allowed to replace the www.google.com homepage by the US constitution?

No? Of-fucking-course not.

Just because something is true, and you have technical means to put up a true message, doesn't make it in any way non-fireable to do it.

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

#390

Post by xyzzyz »

YokoZar wrote: post #372
splaytreemap wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People bypass this step all the time. The difference is they all have a good faith belief their managers would approve the change if they were available. Spiers 100% knew her changes wouldn't be approved by project leadership, and she used an emergency push to bypass their review. Honestly, the fact that she has the gall to complain to the NLRB about this firing is pretty despicable. Google should be suing her for de…

> Honestly, the fact that she has the gall to complain to the NLRB about this firing is pretty despicable. Google should be suing her for defamation. This is such an ill-informed understanding of how labor law works I'm not sure where to even start. You have a legal right to assert your legal rights, as was done here. The NLRB is akin to a trial court that makes the determination and issues judgements. Winning a lega…

NRLB cases are not "legal cases", they are administrative proceedings from which one has pretty much no actual legal recourse.
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