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Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

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Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#491

Post by lawnchair_larry »

madeofpalk wrote: post #474
ehsankia wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really a black box though? The majority of these companies have spreadsheets where people share their salaries, and from what I've seen, it's a fairly basic formula based on 3 factors: Level, rating and location. Yes, there's maybe a few % of wiggle in there, but generally it's fairly consistent from what I've seen. You could argue that the way you get a rating, or even the way you get promoted are a black box,…

> The majority of these companies have spreadsheets where people share their salaries You mean a group of employees collectively organized?

If you call that “collectively organizing”, I guess that proves we don’t need unions. The labor law was all that we needed and it worked as expected. Problem solved!

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#492

Post by renewiltord »

postingpals wrote: post #483
renewiltord wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People should be allowed to unionize but I'll oppose it at every front. Because mass power means mass power that can be turned against me. 2016 taught me something. There are a large contingent of anti-immigrants out there. Should you allow the creation of a mob, a day will come when the populists will take control of it. In moments, the mob can break generations of integration. The best defence against it is prevent…

I was planning to argue with this, but I only feel sorry that you see something as historically useful as unionising in such a light.

Thanks for sharing your position in any case. Historic anti-immigrant stances by America's biggest unions are close to why I feel this way.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#493

Post by lokar »

caconym_ wrote: post #322
twblalock wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The days where "being in IT" made you a rockstar that could command a premium in individual negotiations are, best I can tell, way in the past. Are you kidding? Salaries have never been higher in tech. Senior engineers make more than $400k (sometimes way more) at Google and other large companies. It is likely that engineers at FAANG companies would make less money if they join a union, because the union would level…

Those high salaries aren't the result of individual negotiations, though. FAANMG+ companies pay very well, but salaries for the vast majority of engineers are determined by black box formulas, and in cases where blocs of employees think there's something unfair about their compensation (for instance, people in one location being paid more than people in another) there's absolutely nothing they can do about it. The sc…

The higher salaries are the result of getting multiple offers and the companies bidding against each other.

They say they don't do it, and of course they all in fact do it (to some extent).

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#494

Post by jldugger »

dheera wrote: post #237
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: If a judge orders you to surrender your phone because it might contain evidence relating to a case, it doesn't matter how you've segregated data on your phone. Sometimes businesses literally put some services on different physical boxes in case a court sees fit to collect the entire machine. If you had a bunch of other VMs on it... shrug .

We need an OS that self-destructs all data if surrendered, and that should be a hardcoded feature of the OS. Something like a fingerprint scanner that needs to be scanned at least once every 24 hours or all data gets erased.

>We need an OS that self-destructs all data if surrendered, and that should be a hardcoded feature of the OS.

You want to automate the destruction of evidence? I understand thats typically treated as confirming whatever is the most damaging possibility.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#495

Post by pengaru »

Always maintain a strict separation of employer and non-employer related computing. That includes your smartphone, laptop, desktop, don't cross the streams.

You're just opening yourself up to all sorts of potential problems when you break this simple rule.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#496

Post by userbinator »

suifbwish wrote: post #290
VikingCoder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. Do you have examples where someone thinks they're factory resetting an Android phone, but it turns out the device is still capable of a) running a corporate profile, and b) performing man-in-the-middle or any other attacks that "rooting" would allow? Or is this just a hypothetical?

Yes. It’s called xhelper and it can survive factory resets. https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/topic/xhelper-malware... Unless the factory image and firmware are completely immutable they can be infected. There have been other non phone malware that can survive on certain chips on computer motherboards which would exist independently of both RAM and hard disks. Even GPUs can be infected if they have memory that d…

It's ironic that such things are made possible by the degree to which computers are being locked down --- a "factory reset" isn't really, if all it does is reinstall from a "recovery" on the device itself.

xhelper certainly won't survive a full reimage, which is an actual "factory reset" and only available to those with fully unlocked phones such as some of the Mediatek-based ones. That's done by holding down a button while plugging into USB with the battery disconnected, which causes it to go into BootROM mode (and this is really a ROM). Then SPFlashTool can be used to erase and rewrite the entire internal eMMC.

http://networkingathome.blogspot.com/2017/04/restoring-mtk-b...

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#497

Post by lawnchair_larry »

hiddencost wrote: post #301
twblalock wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The days where "being in IT" made you a rockstar that could command a premium in individual negotiations are, best I can tell, way in the past. Are you kidding? Salaries have never been higher in tech. Senior engineers make more than $400k (sometimes way more) at Google and other large companies. It is likely that engineers at FAANG companies would make less money if they join a union, because the union would level…

Uh, no. Nope. Google has been suppressing wages progressively for years. They made an illegal no poach agreement with their peers that led to one of the largest settlements in history. Just this past cycle they pushed down compensation for top performers. There was an internal slide deck someone found where they laid out plans to reduce pay by slowing down promo to senior levels. A union would mean the ability to neg…

> A union would mean the ability to negotiate as a group rather than just taking whatever Google decided to offer us.

One of the highest salaries on the planet, and they still have several competitors?

Yeah, this is very short sighted. The system works, and tech employees need unions for salary negotiations less than nearly everybody. This doesn’t end how you hope, and just reeks of unearned entitlement. If you don’t like the offer, don’t work there. Nobody owes you anything.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#498

Post by dannyw »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #361
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They assumed his assumption. Waltzing in and saying "Hey, I made this change", discussing it, and saying "okay, it seems we are aligned" is all part of the negotiation dance. G would have every right to ponder his suggestion for a few days, then respond to it. We don't reject candidates for asking for more compensation; this should've been treated the same way. G could've said, "Sorry, we don't wish to change that co…

Asking or negotiating is different: Crossing something out and handing it back isn't the same.

I think you’re unaware with the way contract negotiations are done, because crossing it out and handing it back is exactly how the business world negotiated contracts.

For small changes it’s more polite than wasting time with preambles and introductory emails.

Re: Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges

#500

Post by dannyw »

tareqak wrote: post #226
ChuckMcM wrote: post #191

True story, a person I know who was offered a job at Google got the employment agreement (prior to arriving which was pretty standard at the time) and read that bit about "allowing Google to protect it's IP by installing a rootkit" and they red lined it to change it "May only access Google related information and no personal information." When they showed up HR started with "But that isn't how we use it, we would nev…

I wonder if Google legal department's hires also have that clause in their contract.

I’m sure Google isn’t going to reject a legal department hire for negotiating their contract.

I’d be surprised if any lawyer hires DON’T redline their contract.

Fact is: at a BigCorp you are a “human resource”. You are barely different to a node in their datacentre.

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