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> 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…
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Of course Google is right. She happened to get two coworkers to approve what she was doing. If I got a manager who I was friends with to approve my purchase of a fully decked out $53K Mac Pro so I could finally use Slack at a decent speed when I am working from home, wouldn’t you think there was something fishy?
I think then the responsibility is on the manager?
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Random speech doesn't become any less random just because it is federally protected. On the contrary, it actually becomes less federally protected if it is random, because federal protection of speech requires specific time, place, and manner.
"federal protection of speech requires specific time, place, and manner." I'm actually ignorant on the specific time/place/manner of protection for organizing. Can you educate me?
Edit: oh no I’m being downvoted because your cognitive dissonance has got your tongue wah wah
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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.
IMHO its absurd to think stating a law/fact is advocating a political cause, unless you consider the law a political cause? In which case, wow.
Edit: I’m not expecting a response here but hopefully it’ll give some of y’all some self awareness.
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> 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 She needs to understand this power isn't her own to wield. And the risk of people abusing power to advance their personal agenda is NOT something that would get passed easily once discovered.
As a Googler, it's not only her power to wield, it's her job description to make discerning calls.
about stuff that will breach company security, not to alert people of dangerous opinions. The latter is not hers to decide.
If the message was, instead, a direct quotation of the 2nd amendment, 99% of y’all would be freaking out and asking her to be fired.
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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…
>her job is literally to create javascript notifications of company policy, I think there is a reasonable difference between security notifications and other corporate policies. Were non-security notifications in scope for their job or the tool used?
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Probably a bit naive? Security tools, and especially extensions that run with full browser access, are in an exceptionally trusted position. Employees who can inject code into arbitrary websites can in effect get administrator access to anything in the company, as Google is run almost entirely off of web apps of various kinds. It's actually hard to get more trusted than that: without a doubt this woman effectively ha…
This is reprimanding for the content of the message, not the scope of the code which would have actual security implications. Furthermore, it is a warning about not violating an actual company policy. This is not far off from the scope this pop-up tool is designed for. While it is clear that this was done as a response to google hiring this firm to dissuade folks from organizing, I could argue that it could be done t…
They water-boarded her?!
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Random speech doesn't become any less random just because it is federally protected. On the contrary, it actually becomes less federally protected if it is random, because federal protection of speech requires specific time, place, and manner.
"federal protection of speech requires specific time, place, and manner." I'm actually ignorant on the specific time/place/manner of protection for organizing. Can you educate me?
More specifically to unionizing, employees are allowed to discuss unions but employers are allowed to place some restrictions on when/where such discussions can take place. From the NLRB [2]:
> Working time is for work, so your employer may maintain and enforce non-discriminatory rules limiting solicitation and distribution, except that your employer cannot prohibit you from talking about or soliciting for a union during non-work time, such as before or after work or during break times; or from distributing union literature during non-work time, in non-work areas, such as parking lots or break rooms.
1: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf
2: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats-law/employees/i...