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Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

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Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#141

Post by krapp »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #121
aaomidi wrote: post #111

When I was at Google, Google was systematically silencing Arabs and Palestinians. They had brought in a specific team to comb through memegen and silence any pro-Palestinian (literally pro the people, while anti Hamas) messaging. While I was there, multiple Googlers actively reached out to me and other Arabs and asked them "Do you support Hamas?" These also weren't just low-level employees either. I had these experie…

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Protesting Israel is not equivalent to supporting Hamas. Plenty of Jews are doing the same, how many Hamas supporters do you believe are among them?

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#142

Post by ghaff »

user_7832 wrote: post #107
ghaff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the alternative is the company going out of business? Yes? People can rightly protest the way layoffs are conducted but the idea that a company is "wrongful" to have a layoff sometimes is silly.

I'm not specifically saying layoffs are good or bad, I was giving an example of how something being common (layoffs) doesn't automatically make it good (it's of course not good for the fired people).

Of course, certainly not for many of the fired people (although depending on severance and situations--once I would have been happy to have been laid off). And layoff, and the way they're conducted, can certainly be conducted poorly and with less empathy than is called for. (Though, in reality empathy mostly=money in this context.)

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#143

Post by seneca »

salawat wrote: post #78
minimaxir wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't fired for taking a stance, they were fired for how they took the stance.

The go to excuse of every apologist ever, which will be applied to anyone that takes a stand in an effective manner. The being fired is an implicit sign that the people trying to control the collective narrative of the organization feel their grip slipping.

> The go to excuse of every apologist ever, which will be applied to anyone that takes a stand in an effective manner.

Nothing about screaming in the middle of a meeting is effective. It's just a selfish tantrum. It doesn't change anyone's mind.

> The being fired is an implicit sign that the people trying to control the collective narrative of the organization feel their grip slipping.

Fantasy thinking, pure and simple. Being fired is a sure sign that the employee did something dramatic and pointless, and suffered the consequences.

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#144

Post by themgt »

colechristensen wrote: post #68
Kapura wrote: post #8

>“This behavior is not okay, _regardless of the issue,_ and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.” There are some issues that are worth speaking up about. There are some issues that are worth being fired over.

How is this not just racist behavior? An Israeli presenter who is based in Israel is being protested. Was there any connection beyond that to the war?

It says he was protesting Project Nimbus which is Google cloud/AI for the Israeli government and military.

You can also see the conference he was attending itself hardly shies away from the political/military connections, e.g.

“The Israeli tech ecosystem is built on very strong foundations. We have the academia, we have the manpower, and we have the special military units,” said Dina Pasca-Raz, Partner and Head of Technology at KPMG Israel. “There are many, many areas of strength [0]

Israel's ambassador to the UN also gave an extremely emphatic "no ceasefire" speech at this totally apolitical Google-sponsored tech conference with no connection to the war.[1]

[0] https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjlvv676t

[1] https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/ryymzd7a6

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#145

Post by caput770 »

liampulles wrote: post #96

Its striking to me that there seems to be a segment of the population now that think that a company should behave like a democracy. I'd be very interested to see research about how this kind of viewpoint has changed over time, at what kind of companies it is more or less prevalent at, etc. I find this viewpoint astonishing personally, but that might have to do with my upbringing and cultural background.

In a way, public companies are democracies made up of their shareholders. Do you think it's astonishing that many people think workers should be able to participate as well?

Not that world politics should have much to do with company matters

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#146

Post by GordonS »

burkaman wrote: post #62
mise_en_place wrote: post #22

My old manager put it best: No politics and religion in the workplace. Seriously, it's as simple as that. We are here to work, not philosophize about politics and current events.

No religion is a good idea, but no politics is impossible unless you don't understand the definition of politics.

Especially given the importance of politics to corporations - they are allowed to politic, but employees aren't?

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#147

Post by 6510 »

mise_en_place wrote: post #22

My old manager put it best: No politics and religion in the workplace. Seriously, it's as simple as that. We are here to work, not philosophize about politics and current events.

At best he is simply wrong, everything is political, at worse he means only your politics. Picture it like this: Surely the owner of the company may be almost as political as they want? Your obedient acceptance would then be a political choice.

Its just a job they lost, its not like they are 5 years old, watched their parents slowly bleed out after bombardments while starving to death - mkay?

Its arguably a good way to get fired. Even said they want no part in it.

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#148

Post by DicIfTEx »

liampulles wrote: post #96

Its striking to me that there seems to be a segment of the population now that think that a company should behave like a democracy. I'd be very interested to see research about how this kind of viewpoint has changed over time, at what kind of companies it is more or less prevalent at, etc. I find this viewpoint astonishing personally, but that might have to do with my upbringing and cultural background.

From https://www.uk.coop/understanding-co-ops/what-co-op/quick-fa...

> There are 3 million co-ops around the world – with 1.2 billion members.

> That means 12% of the people on Earth are part of a co-op.

With co-ops being just one particularly prominent form of democratic business structure, workplace democracy is not quite as marginal a notion as you might think.

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#149

Post by wootland »

lordfrito wrote: post #125

Lately it seems that more and more rank-and-file employees believe that a company has some sort of moral obligation to take their political opinions into consideration. Corporations aren't democracies. Unless you're an executive or high ranking decision maker, you're along for the ride. I don't ask my kids for their opinion about my home budget, what house I should buy, etc. So it is at work. Expecting a company to k…

I don't think he's expecting anything, just protesting and drawing awareness. It worked too because we're now talking about it.

Re: Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

#150

Post by aaomidi »

fny wrote: post #128
aaomidi wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICJ was not asked to convict Israel of committing genocide. That was not in the initial ask. The ask was to force Israel to stop its military operation. The ICJ's provisional verdict was _actually pretty bad_ for Israel: "The aforementioned facts and circumstances are sufficient to conclude that at least some rights of the Palestinians to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts in Article 3 of…

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No, it again wasn't.

It was to __prevent genocide__, not to determine guilt of committing genocide. This is going to take years, and it's going to be ongoing into the future. It is not going to happen while an incident is happening.

The ICJ explicitly said that there's enough evidence to merit this case.

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