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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

#421

Post by username90 »

throwaway667555 wrote: post #302
alacombe wrote: post #292

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. This isn't a solution, but a covert work-around.

Upon re-reading, I too wonder if Google means they'll rootkit any employee phone that comes onto company property. I hope they only rootkit phones with proprietary data on them. Also, super important context: Of all the companies in the world, which ones would have employees, say, designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun, or...? Google, certainly. So I get Google's position, as long as you're allow…

You have to root the phone to login to your corporate Google account. If you don't want to login to your corporate account you don't have to root the phone. If your manager wants you to have a phone with corp access then he will get you a corporate phone to do it. However many would rather root their phone than have a separate phone for their private life so Google provides that option. If that starts being a legal problem for Google I'm pretty sure they will stop rooting phones and just require people to get corp phones instead.

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

#422

Post by black_puppydog »

twblalock wrote: post #276
black_puppydog wrote: post #262

The whole thread here seems to revolve around whether or not Spiers should have been fired for what she did. And while I have a clear opinion on that and had fun sparring with y'all here about it, can we also talk about how unionization is actually something that we need to think about as a profession / group of professions? The days where "being in IT" made you a rockstar that could command a premium in individual n…

> 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…

I'm sorry, I should have been clearer: the times where simply being IT made you a rockstar are over.

These days you have to be employed by FAANG, or in a company in their direct vicinity with sufficient funds to keep up. Many companies, and many places, are not that, but they still need IT.

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

#423

Post by wpietri »

z6 wrote: post #398
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…

They have no shortage of people wanting to work for them. Why bother taking on a 'difficult' person?

Why take on a person who reads things closely, thinks about them carefully, values privacy, and has a sense of integrity?

There are a bunch of reasons. But the business one is that modern companies can't concentrate power at the top if they want to be successful in the long term. Innovation and adaptation don't happen because the SEVP of whatever has a brainstorm. They happen because people doing the work are intelligent, well informed, and care about the customers, their colleagues, and the company. If the most important characteristic in hiring is "agree instantly with all authority figures" that's a recipe for organizational rigidity and stagnation.

Some of the best hires I've made have been "difficult". Because some kinds of "difficult" are just taking values seriously.

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

#424

Post by mleonhard »

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…

I guess the person didn't really want the job. If they wanted it, they could have just gotten a company phone and laptop, used them only for work, and kept them in the office.

Company devices are occasionally stolen for their internal data: emails, docs, code, and config. This data can be useful to investors and competitors. Companies hire expensive people to limit the amount of data exposed in theft incidents. Understandably, they don't let individual employees opt-out of their expensive data security processes.

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

#425

Post by balena »

MereInterest wrote: post #203
jedberg wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not. Legal doesn't want to deal with everyone having a different employment contract. Google has always leaned towards being ok with a ton of false negatives to avoid false positives. They'd rather give up 10 good hires than make one bad one. This is just an extension of that. They don't want any exceptions and they aren't willing to make any.

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.)

From the standpoint of a European, this would have been totally fine some 200 years ago

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

#426

Post by iamdamian »

ditonal wrote: post #40

One thing that happens in SV is: * Employer says "hey, we have all these convenient corporate app, wouldn't it be nice to be able to check work messages and work docs on your mobile? Just install our app to "corp-ify" your phone" * Employer now views your mobile device as containing sensitive company IP and therefore they have the right to snoop on anything on your phone. If you install corp on your phone, Google vie…

Is this based on the article or is it speculation?

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

#427

Post by username90 »

alacombe wrote: post #331
throwaway667555 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upon re-reading, I too wonder if Google means they'll rootkit any employee phone that comes onto company property. I hope they only rootkit phones with proprietary data on them. Also, super important context: Of all the companies in the world, which ones would have employees, say, designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun, or...? Google, certainly. So I get Google's position, as long as you're allow…

> designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun Exfiltrating data is comically trivial, it wouldn't be any fun...

Problem is that if two anti Google activists joins the same team they could leak a huge amount of user data before stopped. Pretty sure a lot of people would find that "fun", and pretty sure their punishment would be very mild compared to for example Snowden even though their crime would be bigger.

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

#428

Post by nwsm »

ditonal wrote: post #40

One thing that happens in SV is: * Employer says "hey, we have all these convenient corporate app, wouldn't it be nice to be able to check work messages and work docs on your mobile? Just install our app to "corp-ify" your phone" * Employer now views your mobile device as containing sensitive company IP and therefore they have the right to snoop on anything on your phone. If you install corp on your phone, Google vie…

I have Teams installed on my iPhone. How does that give my company access to anything of mine?

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

#429

Post by vlovich123 »

ahelwer wrote: post #407
twblalock wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's a refutation: Microsoft spends $250k/employee/year on stock dividends and buybacks. That's quite a large slice of the pie the union could negotiate for. Those buybacks increase the stock price, and employees are compensated in stock, so stock buybacks benefit employees already. I find it hard to believe that the company would just give that money as salary instead -- and even if they did, that would mean tha…

As an employee I might have $100k in MSFT stock after five years. Those buybacks gave me what, a few hundred/thousand bucks at most? Come on. For such a supposed math-literate profession this objection is weirdly common. If you get cash you can turn around and buy company stock. Nobody is stopping you. Unions would also certainly see the value in employee ownership of stock, which broadly aligns with ideas of workers…

People also seem to think that RSU grants somehow appreciate in value before they vest. They do not. If you sign for 400k of RSUs over 4 years with a 1 year cliff and the stock rockets up 2x just before your first vest and then plateaus, you’re still getting only 400k.

There’s literally no difference to a regular salary except you get paid out twice and it makes taxes more annoying because you have to pay estimated taxes quarterly instead of doing it once like normal people.

Netflix has also proven this obsession with RSUs is unnecessary. You can have strong growth without it and in large public companies, the theory that this somehow incentivizes employees in any meaningful way has a severe lack of any evidence.

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

#430

Post by iamdamian »

bsanr2 wrote: post #67
ditonal wrote: post #40

One thing that happens in SV is: * Employer says "hey, we have all these convenient corporate app, wouldn't it be nice to be able to check work messages and work docs on your mobile? Just install our app to "corp-ify" your phone" * Employer now views your mobile device as containing sensitive company IP and therefore they have the right to snoop on anything on your phone. If you install corp on your phone, Google vie…

Best Buy did this when they released their employee app. In signing up for it, it said they had the ability to view everything on the phone, and to wipe it clean if need be. I used my employee discount to buy a cheap secondary phone with no SIM to use in the store, and eventually decided not to load the app even onto that. We need "permissions" for employment, a standardized listing of privileges you give up when you…

You may be interested in reading Private Government by Elizabeth Anderson. In it, she explores the scope and implications of employer power in the US and compares them with the power of governments.
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