Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nbcnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 779 posts

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

#291

Post by vintermann »

GVIrish wrote: post #106
mytailorisrich wrote: post #29

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 That sounds like code review approvals, not actual project/management approval of the 'feature'. We have the same: Cannot commit any code change unless 2 other team members have reviewed it. That has nothing to do with having actual project/management app…

I'd agree, it sounds a lot like a code review, but at Google that was also the approval standard for deploying such an extension. I don't really see how Google could be in the right here though. If they have an internal program for creating alerts/extensions for specific websites, and Spiers followed the normal procedure for adding such an extension, there doesn't seem to be a problem. The only problem is Google bein…

It might help a lot if someone leaked the internal repository for this extension... sorry I meant, if Google voluntarily shared the repository for this extension, so that we could see what it was commonly used for.

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

#292

Post by qaq »

username90 wrote: post #263
qaq wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know 0 large companies who would tolerate what you just described from a security team member.

People do similar things quite often at Google and I haven't heard any of them getting fired before.

Security team members modifying their tools that are deployed to a large number of employees for fun ?

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

#293

Post by scarface74 »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #220
scarface74 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taping it to your wall is acceptable. Posting it to my computer screen isn’t.

why, and more importantly, why is this an "immediately fire" level of offense, would this have been the result if the popup reminded you that its earth day? Its naive to think her firing had nothing to do with the fact Google doesn't like unions.

Why? It’s just like religion. If your religion tells you not to drink, I will respect that. If your religion tells you that I’m not allowed to drink I will tell you to f’ off.

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

#294

Post by [deleted] »

dqv wrote: post #283
helen___keller wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agreed with this at first, but according to her medium post ( https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for... ) "Part of my job was to write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web" If this is true and her job is literally to create javascript notifications of company policy, then I think it's entire…

You're right. It literally links to (what appears to be) an internal company document. go/nlrbnotice

[deleted]

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

#296

Post by macspoofing »

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.

Legal compliance is handled by legal, HR, and OPs, not by random security engineers. Come on.

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

#297

Post by 40acres »

I interviewed at Google last week and asked 3 of my interviewers if the constant churn of bad news from the outside gets to them.

For the most part, no one seemed concerned and the biggest complaint was regarding leaks which make it harder to deal with issues internally and threaten transparency.

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

#298

Post by sct202 »

panpanna wrote: post #183
felideon wrote: post #100

Spiers' account of what happened: https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for...

Thanks for the link. This section caught my attention: > I was interrogated about separate other organizing activities, and asked (eight times) if I had an intention to disrupt the workplace. The interrogations were extremely aggressive and illegal. They wouldn’t let me consult with anyone, including a lawyer, and relentlessly pressured me to incriminate myself and any coworkers Sounds more foxconn than Google to me.…

Google seems to be using tactics used on factory floors to suppress organization. It doesn't seem like a good idea considering how individual googlers have a lot more resources at their disposable compared to a hourly factory line worker. Whoever these consultants are, they seem to be providing very bad advice for a white collar environment where the workers are pretty wealthy and have friends who are in the media.

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

#299

Post by foxyv »

makomk wrote: post #138
ramraj07 wrote: post #76

I was initially tempted to side with Google, a code review process is not just rigorous enough for catching features being sneaked in. However, it looks like the sole purpose of the extension is to warn employees about security issues in websites, and this engineer coopted that to show a union forming message. The final paragraph suggests that there's legal precedence for doing this: “You’re allowed to put posters up…

I don't buy this analogy. If there's one thing news reporting has demonstrated over the last few years, it's that Google is not lacking in actual digital equivalents of noticeboards where people can put up the equivalent of posters. This seems like she decided that wasn't aggressive enough and implemented the political equivalent of slipping adware into a browser extension instead.

Apparently Google was already doing this with other sites. Why is this one different? It wasn't like she put up something that was illegal or could increase Google's liability. It's one thing to say: "Hey we don't like that one, change it." It's another to fire someone when they engage in a protected activity.

If she had put it up and refused to take it down I could understand firing her. But this is suspect for sure.

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

#300

Post by ramblerman »

helen___keller wrote: post #265
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…

I agreed with this at first, but according to her medium post ( https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for... ) "Part of my job was to write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web" If this is true and her job is literally to create javascript notifications of company policy, then I think it's entire…

Really?

So if I hire you to email out my monthly company statement it’s reasonable that you add some of your own thoughts to said email.

Post reply on HN