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Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

nbcnews.com

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Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#161

Post by wolco »

DanBC wrote: post #131
Touche wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prefixing this by saying I am not siding with Google (since people make assumptions). The standard approval process sounds like most merge review processes on any engineering team. There's a sort of assumed good-faith for this process. The fact that 2 coworkers were fine with your change doesn't mean it was made in good-faith and was within the bounds of normal types of changes. Any engineer with the freedom to make…

> There's a sort of assumed good-faith for this process. I don't understand why two people sign off changes if they assume the person making the changes isn't going to make errors or be "malicious". And I'm not sure why two people sign off changes instead of just one. There's a well understood problem when you have more than one person inspecting product - they both assume the other person is competent and will catch…

Technically it worked so the approvals would have gone through. These people would not have direct insight into her business objectives or intent.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#162

Post by dhimes »

whiddershins wrote: post #51

I see contradictory impressions about what this article is even saying. My contribution is that it’s foolish to react too quickly to a story like this. If the headline were accurate, it would be such an obvious own-goal on the part of Google HR, it beggars belief. I think the wise course is to wait until more details are made public before getting worked up about it.

What am I supposed to do with all of these torches then?

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#163

Post by dmix »

ninly wrote: post #49
Maxion wrote: post #20

Did no one read the article? > Spiers, 21, said she went through the standard approval process, which requires two co-workers to greenlight changes, before updating the Chrome browser extension. Another source at Google familiar with the update approval process confirmed to NBC news that those two approvals are standard practice for a browser extension update. She did it exactly according to internal policy. The exte…

And the popup message is one Google is required by law to make available to its employees.

The purpose of the extension within Google is to notify you of privacy and security risks for potentially dangerous websites.

The comment she injected into a benign law website has nothing to do with that and whether there was some weak approval process that missed this glaring fact doesn’t make it okay.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#164

Post by CharlesColeman »

BoorishBears wrote: post #123
ninly wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the popup message is one Google is required by law to make available to its employees.

Wait a second, are you saying the browser popup when you visit that specific page is required by law... ... or are you saying the content of the message in the popup is one Google has to make available in some form. Because I'm fairly certain it's the latter, but this feels like an attempt to obfuscate the real issue with tricky language.

IIRC, an employer has to make the content available in some form in a place where employees will see it, not just anywhere. Traditionally it's a wall display of posters in a cafeteria or break room. Trying to fulfill the requirement by putting the posters up in a broom closet of the CEO's office would be forbidden.

I think the employee has a point with the pop-up. Wall posters aren't a good way to reach technology workers. Some kind of digital notification like a pop-up or regular reminder email would be more sensible. Remote employees can't see a poster at the office, for instance.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#165

Post by rolltiide »

So are you guys seeing unionization efforts picking up any steam?

I've seen it reach the collective conscious more in the last two years in San Francisco, but I'm not at a FAANG to see if its really permeating. As in at a bar or courtyard it might not be the most outlandish topic of conversation, compared to an idea immediately scoffed at since all of us made conscious financial decisions to pursue high paying jobs without union dues. People are curious about the benefits.

My only observation is that multiple of the largest publicly listed companies in the world are right here, and that the high compensation has nothing to do with what's possible. If compensation reached ratios with housing that haven't been seen since the 1980s, then the compensation would still be substantially higher on average than it is today. For reference, it means fully owning your house in 5 years. Not the 8-11 year situation that even highly compensated FAANG workers experience. But compensation may or may not improve with unionization, with the reality that higher comp outliers might disappear. The employees may have more say in other perks such as the company towns their employers have created in south bay. Overall at this point I am seeing net benefits, distinct from the public sector blue-collar work that unions have become associated with.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#166

Post by danso »

scarface74 wrote: post #69
jpmontez wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Spiers, 21, said she went through the standard approval process, which requires two co-workers to greenlight changes, before updating the Chrome browser extension. Another source at Google familiar with the update approval process confirmed to NBC news that those two approvals are standard practice for a browser extension update." She alleges it was done by the book.

Does what she did even pass the sniff test? What if she got permission from her supervisor to inject $political_message_you_dont_agree_with in your browser. Would you be okay with that?

A pro-union statement may be a "political message", but it is also content that has special protections in labor law. As the article says, as part of a legal settlement over alleged labor violations, Google is required to print out and post a statement of employee rights [0] that begins, "FEDERAL LAW GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO: Form, join, or assist a union;...Act together with other employees for your benefit and protection;"

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/13/googles-settlement-on-speech...

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#167

Post by idlewords »

Miner49er wrote: post #26

I'm not a lawyer, but on the surface this seems clearly illegal on Google's part based on the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Does anyone know of any similar cases to this? EDIT: Found one in Purple Communications . It was ruled workers can use work email to organize. https://www.littler.com/nlrb-creates-right-use-corporate-e-m...

It's significant that she did this on her own. You need multiple people for protected concerted activity.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#168

Post by CharlesColeman »

baud147258 wrote: post #79
Maxion wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite a stretch to call this a political issue.

I don't know about you, but "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." seems pretty political to me. Personally I think that modifying a work tool to achieve political goals is wrong.

> I don't know about you, but "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities." seems pretty political to me.

It's about as political as informing someone they have a right to be paid the minimum wage.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#169

Post by raxxorrax »

thrower123 wrote: post #45
Maxion wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you further read the article, she went through the standard approval process for changes. She did it by the book. That's hardly "injecting code".

Seems like they need to rethink the book. I'm not sure a Googley culture of permissiveness can exist at the kind of scale that they have now, and with the competing activist factions that they have cultivated.

If they really fired her for just this bagatelle, it speaks more against Google.

I don't know why there is this pervasive desire to strangle developers. This is a pretty recent phenomena in my opinion and certainly nothing close to a requirement to develop great software.

If I were an employee at Google, actions such as this would let me seriously consider to look for other work. The requirement for the code review for internal tools already seems awefully restrictive.

Re: Engineer says Google fired her for notifying co-workers of right to organize

#170

Post by gbronner »

cj wrote: post #5

> Kathryn Spiers, who worked as a security engineer, updated an internal Chrome browser extension so that each time Google employees visited the website of IRI Consultants — the Troy, Michigan, firm that Google hired this year amid a groundswell of labor activism at the company — they would see a pop-up message that read: “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.” So basically, the Go…

Almost irrespective of the website that it was triggered on, it represents a huge waste of her time, as well as that of the hapless employees forced to click through her automatically-created popups.

It also weaponizes the internal browser to advocate for political causes.

It shows such stunningly bad judgement that they are entirely justified in firing her.

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