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Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

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Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#121

Post by Mountain_Skies »

nambit wrote: post #73
nostrademons wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the popular unrest facing both corporations & governments today is people learning that conflict gets results . The logic goes that "Well, Andy Rubin managed to exercise his threat to sue to get a $90M severance package, and he doesn't even work for the company anymore. We do work for the company, so we are going to exercise our power as employees to put pressure on the company to not do this again , so that…

That may be the appeal of the crypto world but the reality of the crypto world is that it is retarded. Crypto has no real world applications.

I've never bothered with crypto but I can think of a few situations where it would be useful. A few years ago I went on a vacation to Argentina which was suffering from high inflation, had instituted currency controls, and had an official bank exchange rate that was laughable compared to what you could get quite openly on most street corners. Being able to buy crypto in the US and then sell it in Argentina for local currency could have been useful. For locals, using it as a store of value might have been useful if not for the crazy amount of volatility. Another edge case is for purchasing things in legal gray areas. Obviously some use it to buy drugs, illegal services, and other things most wouldn't want to be involved in. Before streaming services became popular there was a Russian music ecommerce site called AllOfMP3. They sold MP3s for the local Russian price to customers around the world. As this was a large discount, it made the record companies unhappy so they pressured the credit card companies to stop allowing payment to AllOfMP3. In the age of crypto, they would have been able to chug along with little problem but back then it caused them to resort to trading in gift cards. I don't know how long they lasted once the credit card embargo was put in place but such a financial lockout would be more difficult for the record companies to accomplish today. Of course streaming services have made that business model mostly obsolete so we'll probably never know for sure.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#122

Post by roenxi »

geofft wrote: post #115
roenxi wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That paragraph you quote from the article is extremely vague though, is that what the protesters have actually said? 'Greater employee oversight into product decisions' is particularly .. what is that? The employees have veto power by majority vote? An individual employee can delay the project for a 3 month review? The project team chooses their own manager? If they want a measurable change they need an articulation…

> I don't like their chances either way, management will persist in making management decisions even if they need to fire people to do so I'm not sure this is true - Google's legendarily high salaries and retention incentives are high because management has high demand for good people and specifically for people who have been at the company for a while. They might fire people, yes, but they won't do so casually. They…

Anything is possible. But there is a world of difference between an employee getting a lot of compensation and an employee who won't work on something the company thinks is important.

This could be an existential challenge to the company's owners being in control. The reason employees don't get % share of the profits is literally because they don't control what the company does.

If employees seriously can control what the company does, like turning down military projects for moral reasons or circumstances around making hiring/firing decisions, they become something like shareholders and the question becomes why aren't they exposed to the financial implications of their decisions in the same way shareholders are. Ie, why are they being paid a wage if not to have their decisions subsumed by a management structure?

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#123

Post by jacquesm »

chewxy wrote: post #106
Ptyx wrote: post #89

Reminds me that Kierkegaard has written about Google: "A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. In the present age a rebellion is, of all things, the most unthinkable. Such an expression of strength would seem ridiculous to the calculating intelligence of our times. On the other hand a political virtuoso might bring off a feat almost as remarkable. He might write a mani…

Kierkegaard has been dead for 200 years....

All the more impressive.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#124

Post by geofft »

dragonwriter wrote: post #109
thaumaturgy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you think the mutual non-disparagement clause required Google to invest in Playground Global? > Rubin has also pulled together a group of high-rolling financiers; the endeavor is supported by a $300 million venture capital fund, whose investors include Google, HP, Foxconn, Redpoint Ventures, and Tencent, the Chinese Internet-services company. https://www.wired.com/2016/02/android-inventor-andy-rubin-pl...

> And you think the mutual non-disparagement clause required Google to invest in Playground Global? Not directly. It is a reason that he details of the separation would be tightly held, and thus may not have known to those in whatever of Google's investment subsidiaries was making the decision on that investment.

It would be surprising to me if a middle manager approved investing in a former highly visible executive's company without talking to folks involved with the separation agreement, precisely because there might be unknown legal details. The appropriate part of Google could have said "We cannot invest in this company because we have confidentially found reason to suspect future reputational risk, and you can't even tell him that's why you're not investing" or something.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#125

Post by jacquesm »

dragonwriter wrote: post #29
kerng wrote: post #18

Google could have given him the 90 million but at the same time still call out his behavior. But what happened was that Google only said how awesome everything is and hence in fact protected and worse, basically endorsed, his behavior. I find it good that Google employees stand up here. I'm already wondering what will Google do about that other guy who gives back rubs in interviews? He got similar support and is stil…

> Google could have given him the 90 million but at the same time still call out his behavior. Probably not; mutual non-disparagement clauses are extremely common in executive contracts. Breaking that would have been the same, in terms of kind of litigation risk, as not paying the $90 million.

> Breaking that would have been the same, in terms of kind of litigation risk, as not paying the $90 million.

Then maybe that's what they should have done. Not everything about running a company is about not taking risks that you can afford. Sometimes you just make a stand because you feel something is important enough to warrant the risk, even when you feel that calculus of the risk works out against you.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#126

Post by almost_usual »

smokeyj wrote: post #85
dcre wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they quit they don't have leverage at Google anymore. This is why unions exist: they can threaten to quit, extract concessions, and not quit.

Can you imagine a search engine developed by union labor? It’s actually funny if you think about it. Side note: Do you think police officers act with more accountability or less considering their unions status? As if anyone else can shoot innocent people and take paid leave.

Can you imagine a city built by Google engineers? It's kinda creepy when you think about it.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#127

Post by jacquesm »

leereeves wrote: post #52
inetknght wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The end result probably looks like us burning most of the modern world to the ground, literally The end does not justify the means. So what good is a society built on prejudice, harassment, and corruption? If you can sweep controversy under the rug until such time that it's convenient then good luck ever getting change to occur for the better. > by getting rid of the organization and making any people behind it ano…

What good is a society without due process or presumption of innocence, where a disputed allegation would be punished without proof?

That's not a court. It's a company. And just like they can decide to hand out golden parachutes to execs accused of misbehaving they could chose not to. That's not the same as punishment by a court of law after 'due process'.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#128

Post by kerng »

jeffdavis wrote: post #70
kerng wrote: post #18

Google could have given him the 90 million but at the same time still call out his behavior. But what happened was that Google only said how awesome everything is and hence in fact protected and worse, basically endorsed, his behavior. I find it good that Google employees stand up here. I'm already wondering what will Google do about that other guy who gives back rubs in interviews? He got similar support and is stil…

What was his actual (not "alleged") behavior? If you don't know, maybe google doesn't know either, in which case why would they "call it out"?

Was in the news, an internal Google investigation found it to be credible that Rubin coerced an employee to perform oral sex on him.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#129

Post by almost_usual »

danso wrote: post #62
cityzen wrote: post #38

a "walk out"... one in which people are so darn angry they walk out of work.. and then walk right back in and keep doing their job. I wish more people would quit these mega-corps over stuff like this. "Google engineers outraged...", "Facebook employees outraged..."... so quit. Go find work at a place that isn't an evil corporation. If you didn't get the memo, Facebook, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all pretty evil…

What if the employees genuinely believe the company's overall work is good, and that these flaws can be mitigated?

So you're saying if these corporations paid the same as other startups their employees wouldn't leave over this. I find that hard to believe.

Re: Google Engineers Organizing a Walk Out to Protest the Protection of Andy Rubin

#130

Post by jacquesm »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #55
manfredo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To sweep something under the rug means to ignore it and not deal with it. Google did deal with it, so it's incorrect to say that the accusation was swept under the rug. Sure, you may be displeased at how they handled it but there's no denial of the fact that they did take the accusations seriously and fired a high level exec. You're ignoring the damage cause by the optics of such a lawsuit. Google being known as the…

>You're ignoring the damage cause by the optics of such a lawsuit. Google being known as the company that used an allegation of harassment to try and cheat an exec out of his outstanding compensation would be atrocious for the company's image That's not the case with Matt Lauer at NBC. Lauer sued and NBC has continued to fight back. It's also not the case with Les Moonves at CBS (the CBS situation is much more compli…

Another example: the recent situation around a certain Supreme Court justice appointment.
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