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

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

#411

Post by quotemstr »

username90 wrote: post #394
qaq wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It was a configuration change so there were no dangers adding it, so she being a security engineer isn't relevant. The right punishment would be to tell her what channels she can use to send union messages and tell her to just do security related popups in the future. If she continued sending messages like this then fire her, but it is dumb that she got fired over something that would take literally 5 minutes to fix.

Configuration is code. Many an outage has been caused by a bad configuration push.

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

#412

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

xenophonf wrote: post #376
dahdum wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tool was for privacy and security, not advocacy right? Sounds like she abused her position as a security engineer.

How on earth is being notified of your legal rights "advocacy"?

So this individual could have posted the 2nd Amendment in there and it wouldn't be advocacy? /s

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

#413

Post by catalogia »

kawfey wrote: post #112
gautamdivgi wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're downvoted. This does sound like a code review. News sites most often either willfully or through ignorance prefer not to investigate the entire story to truly get to what broke or what didn't break. It's typically just for shock value. I remember a story where cell tower signals were blamed for decline in the North American honey bee population.

People agreeing with or rationalizing Google's response are not held in high regard on this thread.

The problem with approaching conversations like team sports is you inevitably end up pigeon holing people like this.

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

#414

Post by username90 »

lr4444lr wrote: post #398
Touche wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still worth discussing if their reaction warranted the offense. Would they have fired her had she added a pop-up on Earth Day encouraging employees to recycle? Or would she have received a slap on the wrist for that. In other words, how much of what she was advocating was part of the decision to fire?

Does it matter? If she used Google resources in a manner not company-approved, and if labor law doesn't recognize using a resource like that as a protected communications channel, like they would a company break room announcement board, why should Google be subject to a neutrality test? I support unionization, but I don't see what legal ground she has to stand on here.

The firing might hold in court, but to be frank there is no way she would get fired over something like this if it was not related to unionization or other anti corporate messages. Google is typically very lenient on harmless offences like this which is why the firing is a surprise.

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

#415

Post by SirYandi »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #384
dkersten wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She’s young and probably a bit naive. I think it’s absolutely a reprimand-worthy offence, and I certainly understand that a security engineer maybe shouldn’t inject code like she did, but that’s why there are reviewers, but they ok’d it. I don’t think it’s something she should have been fired over. I made dumb mistakes early in my career too, after all. Should she have done it? No, absolutely not. Not like that anywa…

The problem is, she insisted to the world (and presumably to Google as well) that she did nothing wrong here. This is a pretty minor thing to fire someone over - but what other option does a company have, when someone makes it clear that they refuse to behave properly?

Whether or not she behaved properly is what I assume to be contested here.

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

#416

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

C14L wrote: post #329
ramblerman wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was she hired to only add things other people told her to add? Or was she hired to add things she considered relevant?

A little of the former and a little of the latter, most likely. However, that doesn't mean her judgment r.e. what is relevant is immune to review. And if it's sufficiently incorrect, consequences like what happened shouldn't be surprising.

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

#417

Post by BoorishBears »

boomlinde wrote: post #401
BoorishBears wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of the popup isn't the issue I have with this. It's coopting an internal tool for political messages then implying "it passed PR" means you had permission from where it should come from. It's not even the message itself, I don't want politics, even those I agree with, living in the codebase I use at work. Sure the notice is required, but putting it so it shows up solely on the website for the legal firm hire…

> It's not even the message itself, I don't want politics, even those I agree with, living in the codebase I use at work. You should probably not work at Google.

I know, was that supposed to be a revelation?

I work at a place full of xooglers and other ex-faangs, and get the benefits of working with talented people without these kinds of scandals.

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

#418

Post by qaq »

username90 wrote: post #394
qaq wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It was a configuration change so there were no dangers adding it, so she being a security engineer isn't relevant. The right punishment would be to tell her what channels she can use to send union messages and tell her to just do security related popups in the future. If she continued sending messages like this then fire her, but it is dumb that she got fired over something that would take literally 5 minutes to fix.

It's extremely relevant I will reiterate I know literally 0 large companies where this would be tolerated from a security team member.

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

#419

Post by kllrnohj »

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…

> So basically, the Google employee added arbitrary javascript to an internal chrome extension used by Google employees that triggered a popup when employees visited a specific website.

No, the "so basically" is the employee added another URL & a string to a map of URLs & strings in an existing extension.

The extension already existed. It already showed notifications on various URLs. She didn't create that part.

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

#420

Post by jpmcglone »

I see no issue here. Business feels threatened and neutralizes threat.

There's nothing wrong with Unions, but there is something wrong with government-backed unions.

Let people collectivize if they'd like. Collective bargaining is fine, and you aren't living in a free country if you can't collectively bargain -- but collective bargaining shouldn't mean you automatically get government as an ally.

The battle between Union and Company should be between Union and Company.

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