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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

#651

Post by ipsum2 »

renewiltord wrote: post #162
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…

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.

Google or other tech companies don't allow you disable security extensions, otherwise that would defeat the purpose. It's installed by default.

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

#652

Post by vidarh »

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.)

Moving to the UK from Norway was a shock to me in the sheer length of employment contracts. Prior to that most of my contracts had been a single page: Norwegian law regulates default terms so strictly that long contracts are rarely needed. In fact, they are hard to make enforceable, because any additional concession to the employer needs to be justified, usually by extra consideration. But many rights are inalienable.

It's a recognition that few employer-employee relationship approaches a negotiation between equals.

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

#653

Post by buran77 »

philsnow wrote: post #394
gwillen wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was hired right out of school by Google in 2007. I was absolutely presented with various contract documents on day 1 to sign. In fact, I was not even given paper copies of them; I was supposed to click my agreement in an intranet signing tool. (I couldn't say what fraction of my employment paperwork was handled in this way, but things like IP assignment were definitely included.)

At one of my first jobs, one of the things I had to agree to was having read "the employee handbook".. but it was not a pdf or other document, it was part of an internal wiki or something, with in-links and out-links all over the place. I don't recall if I tried to figure out whether the strongly connected component that comprised the handbook was the same as "all pages on the wiki", but I was a little distressed at…

There's always a price to pay for all the innovation that happens in SV. It's just that it ends up being paid by the people rather than by the companies. Companies can afford to pay for the most exclusive of bodyguards, the government.

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

#654

Post by dodobirdlord »

bigiain wrote: post #386
throwaway667555 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Perfectly determining company data from personal data on a personal device is impossible. "We would never access your personal data" means "we would never access your personal data deliberately, only accidentally in the course of an investigation of your work-related activities". Obviously no company is ever going to sign an agreement promising to do something impossible like perfectly avoid inspecting any personal data during a device audit. The person from the story might as well have been asking for the moon.

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

#655

Post by nmfisher »

astura wrote: post #627
nmfisher wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does happen regularly, and employees should never do it (for precisely this reason). Don't quit your job, move cities, etc etc without a signed contract.

What good is that if you're an "at-will" employee? They can just change the rules at any time for any reason and fire you if you don't agree to them. I have enough experience to know absolutely nothing about me employer is guaranteed/permanent in the US. Relevant story for the HN crowd: I worked for a small company (~250 employees). Real chill place. Six months after I start they were suddenly bought out by a huge mu…

I mean, I completely agree with you. As a non-American, the concept of "at-will" employment is utterly bizarre to me.

But, as a matter of practicality, it's less likely that, after you've signed your contract, Google comes to you on your first day and says "I'm altering the terms of our deal, pray I don't alter it further".

This is all mostly about managing unexpected risks, and my point is that it's actually pretty common for contracts to contain/omit clauses that you really take issue with. I'm just saying it's prudent to know what you're getting yourself into before you up stakes and move cities.

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

#656

Post by phendrenad2 »

inetknght wrote: post #528
phendrenad2 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this apply to just having Slack on your phone?

Slack records a device id when you log in -- have you noticed that you get a notification saying that you've logged in from that device? And a lawyer won't care that it's your personal device. They'll want to see it because it shows up in an audit log from your employer. They'll want to check: have you saved any work content? Have you copy/pasted work messages elsewhere? Just about anything is fair game once the devi…

Well that settles it. Next time I switch companies, I'm getting a separate secondary slack device. Also probably important for keeping the company out of your side-projects.

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

#657

Post by renewiltord »

AshWolfy wrote: post #595
renewiltord wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing your position in any case. Historic anti-immigrant stances by America's biggest unions are close to why I feel this way.

What about unions like the UFW which were among the greatest champions of immigrant rights in the US. The accepted line in unions these days is anti immigration efforts divide workers

That's right. These days. Could change again. But they could demonstrate immutable faith by adopting a clause like what I mention here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25284296

If they are pro immigrant it shouldn't be much of a problem.

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

#658

Post by rtpg »

KvanteKat wrote: post #650
missedthecue wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why this is wrong but labor unions are encouraged. If the sellers of labor can cartelize to maximize income, why shouldn't the buyers of labor be able to cartelize to minimize expenses? There is no logically consistent excuse. Better yet, why isn't all cartelization prohibited?

I mean, isn't that (one of) the point(s) of the corporation as a legal entity: to allow people with capital assets and a joint enterprise in mind to coordinate their resources and act as a single entity for the purposes of pursuing that enterprise [edit: which of course includes purchasing labor in all but the smallest undertakings]. One of the original motivating theories behind the drive for labor unions organized…

I mean "anti-competitive behaviour" are words with meaning in the context of society. And no, unionisation is _not_ "anti-competitive behaviour" in any legal sense.

You don't have to write some sort of universal program that can take a textual description of a situation and spit out "guilty/not guilty". You can make laws stating a thing, which a bunch of motivating text, and then direct prosecution against things that are against the spirit of the thing, and get judges to follow it (either through rulings, or if that fails, adding extra laws to make it even clearer what is up).

It's a social thing, not a logical contradiction gotcha. "Corporations may not engage in anti-competitive behaviour. Corporations who act as such shall be liable under anti-trust statues as if they operated as one. Also, price-fixing is not allowed." Then society and the rest fills in the blanks

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

#659

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#660

Post by drstewart »

bichiliad wrote: post #344
drstewart wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, no. Nope. http://levels.fyi will prove you wrong.

The fact that google is suppressing wages today won't show up on levels.fyi today. It will show up 5 years from now, and by then it'll be a lot harder to unionize.

He says it's been happening for years so it should already be showing up. Care to prove it?
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