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Google Walkout Organizers Say They're Facing Retaliation

333 points by longdefeat 8y ago

rmbryan 8y ago
I apologize if this is a naive question, but didn't they expect to get fired? I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer.
- compiler-guy 8y ago
  Protected activities are protected. You'll notice from the text of that article that some of the retaliation stopped once a lawyer got involved.
  - java-man 8y ago
    I am sure they'll be moved to a different project and then subsequently fired for "performance reasons".
    - Jasper_ 8y ago
      That is also against the law. From https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm > For example, depending on the facts, it could be retaliation if an employer acts because of the employee's EEO activity to: > * transfer the employee to a less desirable position;
      - malcolmgreaves 8y ago
        Thank goodness for the labor movement.
      - kolbe 8y ago
        The problem with that, like so many laws, is that you have to prove motive for the law to work. I'm sure the previous commenter is not so naive as to think companies give a formal, written demotion stating that their EEO activity was the reason.
        perfmode 8y ago
        Not anymore you don’t. It’s easy nowadays to conceal motive through indirection.
  - hnal943 8y ago
    There are lots of reasons the involvement of lawyers could slow things down. That doesn't mean that Google was behaving illegally.
- Jasper_ 8y ago
  Not only is it a terribly bad look, retaliation against workers organizing is against the law. EDIT: Since people don't believe me: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - turc1656 8y ago
    That law protects against retaliation only against certain protected actions by the employees. Nothing these Google employees did is even close to being on that list. The Google employees simply didn't like what their company was doing and decided to take a very public action against it. There is nothing protected about that at all, whatsoever. I don't even think it would be covered if they were unionized.
    - Jasper_ 8y ago
      The walkouts were organized to protest ongoing claims of sexual harassment and abuse. That is protected action. Namely, the second bulletpoint here: "communicating with a supervisor or manager about employment discrimination, including harassment"
      - bendbro 8y ago
        Next time they should communicate with their supervisor in binary encoded ASCII, 1s encoded in days they are in office and 0s in days they are out of office ;) Edit: Guys stop hating me im just trying to help the cause!1!!
      - turc1656 8y ago
        You are correct. I can't edit my original comment anymore but found this explanation - https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/11/01/when-a-walkout-hits-employees-and-employers-rights-during-a-protest/?slreturn=20190322161726 https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/11/01/when-a-walkout-hi...
    - 8y ago
- AntiTechTechie 8y ago
  They honestly don't expect to be fired which boggles the mind...they are that delusional...It's kind of a running joke here, we look at some of these activists/protesters and rarely are they L6+ working on anything remotely important...
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    They don’t expect to be fired because it would be against the law if they were.
    - AntiTechTechie 8y ago
      Sure, you don't think Google will find a way to identify these "problem" employees, transfer them to a pointless project or put them on something that will cause them to leave on their own accord? Their managers could easily give them CMEs for good reason (wasting time on activist bullshit instead of doing work, etc..), essentially forcing them to leave...
      - ravenstine 8y ago
        > transfer them to a pointless project or put them on something that will cause them to leave on their own accord? This could be the subject of a dystopia or a dark comedy where the free world has been taken over because could-be revolutionaries are placed on boring, pointless, mismanaged, tail-chasing projects so they have no time to think about the bigger picture or take any real action against the system.
        AntiTechTechie 8y ago
        > This could be the subject of a dystopia or a dark comedy where the free world has been taken over because could-be revolutionaries are placed on boring, pointless, mismanaged, tail-chasing projects so they have no time to think about the bigger picture or take any real action against the system. This sounds like the current world we all live and work in...basically we have a bunch of "bullshit jobs" to occupy our time during the day and endless trash entertainment to distract us and keep us from noticing how shitty modern industrial life really is...
- idlewords 8y ago
  Broadly speaking, it's illegal to fire or otherwise punish people for this kind of concerted workplace action, under the Wagner Act. This is the cornerstone of US labor law. It's important to point out that you can get fired for protesting alone. But once you start organizing, you unlock a lot of legal protections.
  - rmbryan 8y ago
    Thank you! TIL, etc...
  - ummonk 8y ago
    >It's important to point out that you can get fired for protesting alone. In California, where many of these workers are located, there are additional protections that might cover this.
- jseliger 8y ago
  This reminds me of a recent conversation with Tyler Cowen and Jordan Peterson: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-jordan-peterson-db9a718beebe https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-jord...: COWEN: If we turn to senior management of large American companies, as a class of people — and I know it’s hard to generalize — but what do you see them as just not getting? PETERSON: I would caution them not to underestimate the danger of their human resources departments. COWEN: Say more. PETERSON: Yeah, well, because I see that the social justice etiology that’s destroyed a huge swath of academia is on the march in a major way through corporate America. And if the corporate people think they’re immune to it, they’ve got another think coming. It’s not like they’re any smarter than the universities. COWEN: And who gave the HR department so much power? How did that happen? What myth did we follow that led us wrong? PETERSON: That’s a good question because they had virtually no power to begin with, right? HR departments have always been underpowered, so to speak. If Google is still mostly focused on writing software and building the future, rather than prosecuting culture wars, that strikes me as a slight but real positive sign.
  - jrochkind1 8y ago
    Firing people for organizing is in fact taking part in a war. It's just the wrong side of the battle, which you may prefer.
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    "If Google is still mostly focused on writing software and building the future, rather than prosecuting culture wars, that strikes me as a slight but real positive sign." In other words, if corporations stopped trying to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination, Jordan Peterson would consider it a positive sign. The more I learn about this guy, the more of a scum bag he appears.
    - reallydude 8y ago
      > if corporations stopped trying to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination, Jordan Peterson would consider it a positive sign. That's not the implication. He was speaking about the Damore issue, wherein the Google HR department focused on mandating equity. > The more I learn about this guy, the more of a scum bag he appears. Most everyone who criticizes him takes a bad faith approach and draws their own conclusions. This is typical. eg /r/enoughpetersonspam for endless interpretations of phrases as philosophical statements
- rmbryan 8y ago
  Okay, again, I'm uninformed: How is anyone supposed to establish WHY a company does something? The rule says, "For example, depending on the facts, it could be retaliation if an employer acts because of the employee's EEO activity to..." The word because bewilders me here. Who knows why anyone does anything? I don't know why I do 90% of what I do. If someone accused me of having tuna for lunch because of someone's EEO activity, how could I possibly prove they were wrong?
  - Jasper_ 8y ago
    When you run a multi-billion dollar company, you need to know why you do 90% of what you do. If you don't, you can talk about it with people called "lawyers" who can tell you whether it's a good idea or a bad one before you do it. They demoted two employees who were highly performing, weren't told otherwise, but coincidentally highly instrumental in organizing and staging protests. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why they were forcibly transferred.
    - throwawaysea 8y ago
      > Doesn't take a genius to figure out why they were forcibly transferred. This doesn't meet the standards for burden of proof.
      - azernik 8y ago
        As lmkg mentioned at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19721225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19721225 - the burden of proof in civil cases is "preponderance of the evidence". This kind of information can easily clear the bar.
  - tartuffe78 8y ago
    I would guess it would go like this: 1. Fired employee sues employer 2. During discovery, fire employees lawyer requests all documentation/emails/performance reviews for employee 3. Lawyer tries to show proof there was no other reason for the firing.
  - 8y ago
- mtgx 8y ago
  > I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer. I'm sure most Europeans here would agree that this is a very sad statement.
- neilv 8y ago
  I'd assume that most of them didn't expect much/any disfavor. Wild guess is that Google internal culture has more "we're the good guys" beliefs among employees than many other companies. And, at least in the past, Google officially supported Don't Be Evil. If so, that good-guy identification might be self-fulfilling to some degree, in the people who are attracted disproportionately, and in reinforcement from an atmosphere of many people identifying that way. Continuing the wild guessing, it's possible that people think Google is a safer place to speak up than many other places. And especially in the age of 'social media', we have blurred ideas of where the line is, between collegial dialogue and public performance. Also, a single person's blurred ideas about that can turn something that was internal for everyone else, into public for everyone else. Though, in general, if people feel they have to go public about an issue (assuming it's genuine by everyone, not a self-regulation/PR stunt, nor politician-style individual career-building by some)... that seems to suggest that they don't have sufficient influence and trust internally, without putting the organization on the spot publicly. If you don't trust your colleagues/management to do the right thing, or you still don't have influence, I'd say that's not a place you want to be. If the idea of walking away sounds bad, consider whether you actually can find influence and trust within the organization. (And let the rest of us know where you eventually find influence&trust, because that can be hard to find.)
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  They probably did expect Google to illegally fire them, but they would be morons not to publicize that Google illegally fired them.
- grecy 8y ago
  > but didn't they expect to get fired? I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer What a sad state of affairs when workers in the supposed 'greatest country on earth' feel that way.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  Of course they did. That's one of the points to doing it. They also expected to fight the consequences.
idlewords 8y ago
Retaliation, while miserable for the people experiencing it, would be a positive sign that this kind of protest is having an effect.
hnaccy 8y ago
>Google has a culture of retaliation, which too often works to silence women, people of color, and gender minorities Are there more stories on this?
- AntiTechTechie 8y ago
  Sounds like "grievance industry" nonsense...
  - sctb 8y ago
    You've been posting a flurry of unsubstantive and flamey comments. Could you please review the guidelines and stop? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- anon12345690 8y ago
  no because its not true.
sverige 8y ago
> Meredith Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after Google disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told that her role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was told that, in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at New York University. I don't understand why a person who organized the pressure group that led to Google disbanding their AI ethics group would expect her role not to change, since she's involved in AI ethics, the very thing she helped sink. She helped make it politically toxic and a PR disaster for her own employer. I'm no fan of Google, but they tried to organize something to satisfy a politically diverse group of stakeholders to at least have a discussion on this topic, only to have their efforts very publicly sabotaged by one of their own. Are they really obligated to continue to fund the work she's done to harm the company?
- ahelwer 8y ago
  They didn't try to do that, though. They tried to organize a group of people who largely (although not exclusively) knew nothing about AI, or ethics, to rubber-stamp their actions and assuage the concerns of regulators & watchdogs. Ethics laundering, basically.
  - sverige 8y ago
    That's a really huge assumption, considering they never met (afaict), let alone deliberated anything or issued recommendations. Google sought input from outside their bubble and those inside the bubble immediately protested based on identity politics. There are a lot more people outside the bubble than inside, and this action makes it seem like Google doesn't give a shit what they think. It's the sort of thing that makes heavy regulation appealing even for those who normally would oppose regulation on principle. How does that benefit Google?
    - ahelwer 8y ago
      There was widespread protest from outside the bubble, too. You'll be unsurprised to learn the entire AI ethics space is being enthusiastically colonized by Thought Leaders all too happy to hold "discussions" in service of whatever their corporate funders desire. Oh sure there'll be some token pearl-clutching, but you can't stop progress (toward ubiquitous facial recognition) right? Anyway, if you're interested in seeing all the ridiculous shenanigans these people try to pull I recommend following @farbandish on twitter.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Beyond being not remotely surprised at this, what constantly baffles me is: Why are they still there? And pending an answer to that: Why have they not walked out again? Presumably the Walkout was a "fix this or we walk out" type of situation... but after Google refused to do 6/7ths of anything they demanded... they're still working for Google and not actively protesting. I would argue that Google called their bluff here. A traditional protest against an employer, a strike, entails "give us this if you want us to return to work". Googlers walked out, made demands, and then walked right back in the door. Google said "we'll do one of the things you asked for because the rest of the industry was already going that way anyhow", and then refused the rest and everyone, for the moment, seems alright with this?
- MichaelGlass 8y ago
  Easy to say from the sidelines. Working at google means - getting better benefits & pay - being at one of the darling companies in the industry Walking out is daring. Leaving is even scarier. I remember leaving my last job thinking, "I'll never work with as talented people." I was wrong, but it was a legitimate fear.
  - jammygit 8y ago
    After my internship I certainly have that fear. It seems unreal that there could be a bunch of other companies out there that have the same calibre of people
  - geodel 8y ago
    If benefits/pay and intelligent colleagues is what really matters to protesters and they are not looking to cut down on luxe lifestyle that Google job affords them. In that case they are really bullshitting about ethical issues because they have no qualm in partaking money that Google generate by ethically dubious decisions.
- blihp 8y ago
  Because they expect to be able to have their cake and eat it too.
- 8y ago
ronilan 8y ago
If I was a strange doctor, in possession of a green stone, who watched fourteen million, six hundred and five possible outcomes - I’d choose the one where Claire Stapleton became the employee representative on the Alphabet board of directors. But I’m not.
- dekhn 8y ago
  that sounds like her old tgif fanfic.
  - ronilan 8y ago
    Can you explain for non-googlers?
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      IIRC (and it's been 5 years since I left Google, and I didn't save any of her e-mails since they weren't mine to save), Claire Stapleton used to write internal employee communications around TGIF (that's the weekly Q&A session with executives). Meeting logistics like when & where, videoconferencing links, but also things like the agenda and list of speakers. Her writing had a very distinctive, very whimsical feel to it that was quite popular with many Google employees.
KorematsuFred 8y ago
I am happy if they are being fired. Modern workplace should not have any place for misguided activism. These morons have mixed up their politics with issues of sexual harassment and workplace and deeply hurt their own cause. For example forcing Google to end arbitration is a bad idea for the victims and Google. Ending arbitration essentially means the senior VP will take all his severance package and leave the company. With arbitration high chance he wont get that.
- danielrhodes 8y ago
  > Ending arbitration essentially means the senior VP will take all his severance package and leave the company. With arbitration high chance he wont get that. I don't think this changes that much. If a lawsuit results in the company letting the VP go with cause, there will be no severance package. If the lawsuit fails but the company does not want the VP around anymore, they will let them go without cause, triggering the severance. With arbitration, it either lets the company sweep the incident under the rug, or if they let the VP go, it must be without cause, thus triggering the severance.
  - KorematsuFred 8y ago
    Yes. But the company does not want to go through the law-suite as it leads to brand damage. Arbitration in most cases works far better as the company can let the VP go without any severance. The activists have their political biases against arbitration and hurting the cause.
- sctb 8y ago
  That's more handwaving and name calling than we're here for. Could you please increase the information-to-inflammation ratio when commenting in threads like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
socrates1998 8y ago
This is just all so weird. If google is such a bad company, then quit working for them. It's not really a protest, it's a tactic to wrestle control over the company and win social points with their "victory". They want the social status of having protested something, yet with zero of the fallout. They still collect google paychecks, collect google 401k money, still have google health insurance AND want to be able to say they "stuck it to the man" It's just so odd all the way around. They had a google walkout, then google didn't change anything, then the protesters went back to work. It was all just a stunt.
- ahelwer 8y ago
  Why does this exact same objection come up again and again? Why do we have to leave our companies instead of trying to make positive change from within? Why is the only prescribed solution to take flight to new lands, like locusts, staying ahead of the flood? What do we do when there are no more companies to which to flee, and the effects of that which we are fleeing is harming society?
  - ska 8y ago
    It's a another version of the argument "If you don't like our country behaving the way I think it should behave, you should leave the country". Absolutely sometimes the best thing for an individual to do is take their marbles and go home. But equally, sometimes the best thing to do is put your shoulder to pushing the wheels in [what you perceive as] a better direction. Companies (and countries) after all are not stand-alone entities; they are an expression of their constituent parts. Some of this is history/momentum, but a lot of it is just people. [edit] of course I think the bar for "when should I leave my company" is an awful lot lower than "when should I leave my country".
    - alistairSH 8y ago
      I'm not sure I agree. At least not completely. A person is within their rights to try and change the company from within before leaving. But, that will likely come with personal costs (right or wrong). If those costs get to be too high, the correct action might be to leave. At a company, the impact of leaving could be much higher than the impact of moving to a different country on politics... Google very much relies on "smart people" to earn money. If enough leave in protest, Google will eventually suffer. It would take a LOT of people leaving the US for there to be any noticeable impact.
hprotagonist 8y ago
If you do not know that this sort of thing is coming when you chose to stand up for what you think is right, you should. Protest and civil disobedience come at an obligate personal cost. The only reasonable expectation you should have before doing it is that you're about to burn your world to the ground -- anything left standing you should count as a blessing and a relief. In this case, for example, walkout organizers should've just assumed that they're going to be retaliated against, and that their protest didn't end the day of the walkout but will continue through the whole process of having a labor lawyer, fighting this in court, documenting their work lives for the next 5+ years, etc. It's part of the same action and part of the same protest. In the long term and at a broader societal level, moral protests are usually worth it, but that does not mean that your shorter- and medium- term economic and personal social costs are going to be zero -- in fact, quite the opposite! edit: i assume that the walkout organizers knew all this, but the above can totally be read as "oh those silly babes-in-the-woods googlers", which was not what i meant. If anything, I understand the linked post as just the next phase of the game, in which illegal retribution is disclosed as part of an ongoing legal fight.
- ngcazz 8y ago
  It's pretty absurd to think the authors didn't expect any kind of reprisal. No kind of organizing against an entity this size, especially with the visibility the walkout had, comes without a cost. And not reporting on the consequences would be handing over the victory to Google.
  - lenticular 8y ago
    This retaliation in response to anti-harassment protests is actually illegal. It's pretty obvious these actions were done before legal got involved: When Claire Stapleton had a lawyer contact Google they walked back the demotion.
    - Aqua 8y ago
      It feels like Google eventually started disciplining disobedient employees. I mean, can you imagine Goldman Sachs bankers organising a protest to express their dissatisfaction with certain decisions their upper management makes? They would be fired on spot. Now, Google has been facing employee revolt for the last couple of years (military projects, James Damore, China search engine), and Google kept allowing that to happen without any consequences. Now that changed, and it makes sense, because employees don't own the company, employees work for the company in exchange for compensation and don't really have to grounds to constantly blackmail the management just because they don't like the direction the company is going. You have to be delusional to think acting like that won't jeopardise your career... Besides if you need to involve a lawyer you are most certainly unwelcome there and should probably just quit (however, finding a new role might prove difficult given the circumstances. Which company would employ someone that organised a revolt against their leadership in their previous workplace and eventually ran crying to the media about retaliation instead of handling the situation quietly).
mindcrime 8y ago
After escalating the issue to human resources, she said she faced further retaliation. “My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to other people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not sick,” Stapleton wrote. After she hired a lawyer; the company conducted an investigation and seemed to reverse her demotion. For the sake of argument, let's postulate that this is exactly what it sounds like: straight up retaliation. If so, here's the question in my mind: What flipping moron thought that: a. this was a good idea b. they could get away with this TBH, I'd say that IF Google management were that upset at this individual's actions, it would have made more sense to just straight up fire her, as opposed to this kind of childishness. NOT that I'm saying any of this justifies firing. Just saying that outright firing somebody you disagree with makes more sense than keeping them around and trying to fuck with them as, whatever, punishment I guess? That's braindead stupid as far as I can see. And actually, (a) is the more serious question in many ways. Seriously, what did they think they would gain from this retaliation? Who wins in this scenario? Nobody, as far as I can tell.
- ben_jones 8y ago
  There's also a certain kind of gluttony to it. She's presumably making what, 200k+, if not way more? Their solution is just have her take medical leave so they don't have to deal with the "awkwardness" of working with her, where she will presumably continue making that money while doing zero work. It's just like, damn, what a nice company you got there.
- azernik 8y ago
  Firing would have been even more provably retaliation; presumably they were hoping to reduce legal liability. Why they thought this would work is beyond me, since this kind of activity is also recognized by labor law as Totally Illegal. One possibility - the people with power to fire her actually talked to their lawyers, while the people with the power to initiate this kind of harassment did not.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Firing would have been even more provably retaliation; presumably they were hoping to reduce legal liability. Yes, but in some ways it would have been more honest. But the real question, still, is why do either? How does retaliating against this individual benefit Google? (Not that it would be justified even IF the answer was "Their stock will go up 3x as a result" or something). It's just dumb from what I can see. It's almost like some manager was butt-hurt that somebody expressed their opinion and decided to try and fuck them over for no real reason. That manager is the one who ought to be fired.
throwawaysea 8y ago
Employees that bring politics to work are making the workplace uncomfortable for everyone else who has a different (or perhaps a more nuanced-) opinion, but can't speak up. They are creating constant distractions that take away from the work at hand, especially when it forces others to drop their actual work and engage (either passively by reading/keeping-up or actively by spending effort getting involved). These disruptive outrages are largely irrelevant to the mission of the company except via generous stretches of logic. Those involved in workplace activism also often violate the confidentiality that is expected in the corporate context, leaking email threads and weaponizing manufactured outrage via social media or journalistic outlets against the company and dissenting employees. The dynamic that has been created is also often politically-biased (rather than neutral), particularly at large tech companies, because psychological safety is only afforded to those who align with a progressive far-left platform. Let's be clear, most of the justification (and claims of protection) for recent employee activism relies on mental gymnastics. There is no standing, for example, for random Google employees to expect to be involved in the selection of members of an AI ethics panel or in the acceptance criteria for clientele. There is no standing for employees to be involved in most of the company's decisions. This is especially true for the relatively-junior employees who are often driving these protests, since they lack the experience/skillset/visibility to have any useful/comprehensive perspective on complex corporate decisions. It is immature for them to expect involvement or transparency on-demand, and to protest decisions they disagree with that are beyond their horizon. If these activists were truly honest, they would conduct petitions via anonymous voting mechanisms (e.g. internal surveys) that let all employees vote for/against/indifferent, so that a broad voice is heard and not just a skewed vocal minority that faces no consequence. But these same activists won't do that, since these protests are not at all about making the best decisions or being inclusive, but rather about power dynamics and trying to get one's own way. Google has lots of standing to take action against these employees. If these employees don't want to work at Google, or don't display motivation around their core role/function, let them quit or fire them. If they are not performing their duties and are instead spending work time on personal agendas, fire them. If they are disrupting the workplace by constantly fomenting outrage on the Internet, fire them. If they are hurting the company's brand and working against the interests of the company (or shareholders) by engaging in self-serving political activism, fire them. If they disrespect and alienate most of their customer base by only advocating for their own worldview, fire them. All this should be uncontroversial - after all, many others will line up for those jobs and Google will be just fine.
yalogin 8y ago
This is a private company and more so the AI ethics and the context of the walkout is not really a criminal or civil violation in the eyes of the country. So the company is free to do anything it wants.
- olefoo 8y ago
  > This is a private company Alphabet is a publicly traded company. Which means it is expected to uphold certain standards of behavior.
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throw2016 8y ago
What these people are doing takes tremendous courage. Posts here over the last few months have many wondering why people in Facebook and Google are not speaking up and in this instance we have some genuine dissent, activism and protest at least on one issue. But history shows dissenters are always a tiny minority, from the initial struggles that secured labour rights to equality for women. Most people will conform and fall in line for whatever reason, and in these cases there is unfortunately always resentment against the dissenters from those who fall in line. In most other situations you would expect the early dissenters to get growing unequivocal support as more people find their compass and courage by example but there is a moral crisis in the software community and it looks these individuals may not get the widespread support they need. But these kind of incidents will make it increasingly difficult for Google leadership and others who work there to go to events, meets and publicly talk about ethics and others issues these protestors raised.
namesbc 8y ago
Time for tech to unionize
- rdtsc 8y ago
  There was just a story today about NPM employees trying that and getting fired. Tech companies are in this strange place where on the surface they are seemingly going above and beyond to be tolerant, and diverse. But it's mostly talk and gestures that doesn't involve making any hard decisions or spending much money. Try to mention "unionization" and that thin veneer drops and the ugliness come out immediately.
wnevets 8y ago
I'm surprised they weren't fired for publicly admitting they weren't doing their job.
AdamM12 8y ago
Maybe I missed it in the other comments but is anyone else uneasy about the idea of your coworkers having a town hall to tell their "stories"? Just seems ripe for unfounded accusations or cherry picked facts to basically defame a coworker.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  > is anyone else uneasy about the idea of your coworkers having a town hall to tell their "stories"? Sometimes, ironically, I think they specifically set those up to flush out non-conformists, the naive, and the trouble-makers. Invite them to "share their thoughts" then start building black lists. I am only half joking there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
  - AdamM12 8y ago
    You better explain this than I.
OrgNet 8y ago
They should all quit. Then donate six months to Mozilla and find a way to kill AMP.
- OrgNet 8y ago
  This definition is interesting: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spineless https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spineless .
dmh2000 8y ago
are employee 'walkouts' a protected class? Like a union on strike?
tomohawk 8y ago
Don't they teach people not to bring politics to work anymore? Rule #1 at work: don't talk or engage in politics
- KingMachiavelli 8y ago
  The current relization is that you often cannot work without being political because your work in some way is political. In this specific instance, organizing a walk out, does seem to go much farther than what you would expect your employer to tolerate. Typical people who work typical jobs are fired for far less so the real suprise in being told that your 'role' is changing is that you still have a job at all. Ultimently, I have little faith in these kinds of demonstrations - perhaps it will work for FAANGS since they have a pretty somewhat limitied supply of talent/employees. But for the majority of the tech industry, I expect the ability to choose where you work and the ability to organize unions will be a much more effective means of employee influence.
- consumer451 8y ago
  In this case it was Google who brought politics into the office. I don't understand why Google, or anyone with a choice, would have involved political hacks in the decision making process for ethics in their company's products. Oh.. [0] > Controversy followed almost immediately after the Heritage Foundation president was named to the eight-person council, with some speculating that her addition was Google's attempt to appease conservative lawmakers who have accused the tech giant of anti-conservative bias. Look, I am sick of being politically correct about this. In modern times America's GOP true-believers have become the party of "alternate facts" on a variety of issues. Do you want your AI driver/doctor/accountant/climatologist to use alternate facts, or actual facts? Aside from that particular argument, I don't think any dogmatic groups should be involved in AI in any way. People from political think tanks should be excluded by default, as they clearly have a bias. I don't care who they are, left/right/whatever. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board-2019-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-ai-ethics-boa...
zcw100 8y ago
Screw Google and every other tech company on this list https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
diebeforei485 8y ago
Meredith Whittaker has a clear conflict of interest. As evidenced by her campaigning against Google's AI ethics board (and the resulting fallout), her organization's agenda for AI ethics conflicts with Google's, so she has to choose one or the other.
RickJWagner 8y ago
About Kay Cole James, Ms. James served as Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources under then-Governor George Allen and was the dean of Regent University's government school. She is currently a member of the NASA Advisory Council. She is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training center for young African Americans. She is an African-American woman. In other words, she is eminently qualified. Yet Meredith Whittaker organized people against her because she disagrees with her politics. Ms. James has not one incident on record where she caused harm to anyone. She is merely the head of a conservative think-tank. Diversity of thought is very important. I feel little sympathy for the trouble-causers. Google looked idiotic when it disbanded the council.

333 points by longdefeat 8y ago

I apologize if this is a naive question, but didn't they expect to get fired? I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer.

compiler-guy 8y ago
Protected activities are protected. You'll notice from the text of that article that some of the retaliation stopped once a lawyer got involved.
- java-man 8y ago
  I am sure they'll be moved to a different project and then subsequently fired for "performance reasons".
  - Jasper_ 8y ago
    That is also against the law. From https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm > For example, depending on the facts, it could be retaliation if an employer acts because of the employee's EEO activity to: > * transfer the employee to a less desirable position;
    - malcolmgreaves 8y ago
      Thank goodness for the labor movement.
    - kolbe 8y ago
      The problem with that, like so many laws, is that you have to prove motive for the law to work. I'm sure the previous commenter is not so naive as to think companies give a formal, written demotion stating that their EEO activity was the reason.
      - perfmode 8y ago
        Not anymore you don’t. It’s easy nowadays to conceal motive through indirection.
- hnal943 8y ago
  There are lots of reasons the involvement of lawyers could slow things down. That doesn't mean that Google was behaving illegally.
Jasper_ 8y ago
Not only is it a terribly bad look, retaliation against workers organizing is against the law. EDIT: Since people don't believe me: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- turc1656 8y ago
  That law protects against retaliation only against certain protected actions by the employees. Nothing these Google employees did is even close to being on that list. The Google employees simply didn't like what their company was doing and decided to take a very public action against it. There is nothing protected about that at all, whatsoever. I don't even think it would be covered if they were unionized.
  - Jasper_ 8y ago
    The walkouts were organized to protest ongoing claims of sexual harassment and abuse. That is protected action. Namely, the second bulletpoint here: "communicating with a supervisor or manager about employment discrimination, including harassment"
    - bendbro 8y ago
      Next time they should communicate with their supervisor in binary encoded ASCII, 1s encoded in days they are in office and 0s in days they are out of office ;) Edit: Guys stop hating me im just trying to help the cause!1!!
    - turc1656 8y ago
      You are correct. I can't edit my original comment anymore but found this explanation - https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/11/01/when-a-walkout-hits-employees-and-employers-rights-during-a-protest/?slreturn=20190322161726 https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2018/11/01/when-a-walkout-hi...
  - 8y ago
AntiTechTechie 8y ago
They honestly don't expect to be fired which boggles the mind...they are that delusional...It's kind of a running joke here, we look at some of these activists/protesters and rarely are they L6+ working on anything remotely important...
- saagarjha 8y ago
  They don’t expect to be fired because it would be against the law if they were.
  - AntiTechTechie 8y ago
    Sure, you don't think Google will find a way to identify these "problem" employees, transfer them to a pointless project or put them on something that will cause them to leave on their own accord? Their managers could easily give them CMEs for good reason (wasting time on activist bullshit instead of doing work, etc..), essentially forcing them to leave...
    - ravenstine 8y ago
      > transfer them to a pointless project or put them on something that will cause them to leave on their own accord? This could be the subject of a dystopia or a dark comedy where the free world has been taken over because could-be revolutionaries are placed on boring, pointless, mismanaged, tail-chasing projects so they have no time to think about the bigger picture or take any real action against the system.
      - AntiTechTechie 8y ago
        > This could be the subject of a dystopia or a dark comedy where the free world has been taken over because could-be revolutionaries are placed on boring, pointless, mismanaged, tail-chasing projects so they have no time to think about the bigger picture or take any real action against the system. This sounds like the current world we all live and work in...basically we have a bunch of "bullshit jobs" to occupy our time during the day and endless trash entertainment to distract us and keep us from noticing how shitty modern industrial life really is...
idlewords 8y ago
Broadly speaking, it's illegal to fire or otherwise punish people for this kind of concerted workplace action, under the Wagner Act. This is the cornerstone of US labor law. It's important to point out that you can get fired for protesting alone. But once you start organizing, you unlock a lot of legal protections.
- rmbryan 8y ago
  Thank you! TIL, etc...
- ummonk 8y ago
  >It's important to point out that you can get fired for protesting alone. In California, where many of these workers are located, there are additional protections that might cover this.
jseliger 8y ago
This reminds me of a recent conversation with Tyler Cowen and Jordan Peterson: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-jordan-peterson-db9a718beebe https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-jord...: COWEN: If we turn to senior management of large American companies, as a class of people — and I know it’s hard to generalize — but what do you see them as just not getting? PETERSON: I would caution them not to underestimate the danger of their human resources departments. COWEN: Say more. PETERSON: Yeah, well, because I see that the social justice etiology that’s destroyed a huge swath of academia is on the march in a major way through corporate America. And if the corporate people think they’re immune to it, they’ve got another think coming. It’s not like they’re any smarter than the universities. COWEN: And who gave the HR department so much power? How did that happen? What myth did we follow that led us wrong? PETERSON: That’s a good question because they had virtually no power to begin with, right? HR departments have always been underpowered, so to speak. If Google is still mostly focused on writing software and building the future, rather than prosecuting culture wars, that strikes me as a slight but real positive sign.
- jrochkind1 8y ago
  Firing people for organizing is in fact taking part in a war. It's just the wrong side of the battle, which you may prefer.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  "If Google is still mostly focused on writing software and building the future, rather than prosecuting culture wars, that strikes me as a slight but real positive sign." In other words, if corporations stopped trying to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination, Jordan Peterson would consider it a positive sign. The more I learn about this guy, the more of a scum bag he appears.
  - reallydude 8y ago
    > if corporations stopped trying to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination, Jordan Peterson would consider it a positive sign. That's not the implication. He was speaking about the Damore issue, wherein the Google HR department focused on mandating equity. > The more I learn about this guy, the more of a scum bag he appears. Most everyone who criticizes him takes a bad faith approach and draws their own conclusions. This is typical. eg /r/enoughpetersonspam for endless interpretations of phrases as philosophical statements
rmbryan 8y ago
Okay, again, I'm uninformed: How is anyone supposed to establish WHY a company does something? The rule says, "For example, depending on the facts, it could be retaliation if an employer acts because of the employee's EEO activity to..." The word because bewilders me here. Who knows why anyone does anything? I don't know why I do 90% of what I do. If someone accused me of having tuna for lunch because of someone's EEO activity, how could I possibly prove they were wrong?
- Jasper_ 8y ago
  When you run a multi-billion dollar company, you need to know why you do 90% of what you do. If you don't, you can talk about it with people called "lawyers" who can tell you whether it's a good idea or a bad one before you do it. They demoted two employees who were highly performing, weren't told otherwise, but coincidentally highly instrumental in organizing and staging protests. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why they were forcibly transferred.
  - throwawaysea 8y ago
    > Doesn't take a genius to figure out why they were forcibly transferred. This doesn't meet the standards for burden of proof.
    - azernik 8y ago
      As lmkg mentioned at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19721225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19721225 - the burden of proof in civil cases is "preponderance of the evidence". This kind of information can easily clear the bar.
- tartuffe78 8y ago
  I would guess it would go like this: 1. Fired employee sues employer 2. During discovery, fire employees lawyer requests all documentation/emails/performance reviews for employee 3. Lawyer tries to show proof there was no other reason for the firing.
- 8y ago
mtgx 8y ago
> I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer. I'm sure most Europeans here would agree that this is a very sad statement.
neilv 8y ago
I'd assume that most of them didn't expect much/any disfavor. Wild guess is that Google internal culture has more "we're the good guys" beliefs among employees than many other companies. And, at least in the past, Google officially supported Don't Be Evil. If so, that good-guy identification might be self-fulfilling to some degree, in the people who are attracted disproportionately, and in reinforcement from an atmosphere of many people identifying that way. Continuing the wild guessing, it's possible that people think Google is a safer place to speak up than many other places. And especially in the age of 'social media', we have blurred ideas of where the line is, between collegial dialogue and public performance. Also, a single person's blurred ideas about that can turn something that was internal for everyone else, into public for everyone else. Though, in general, if people feel they have to go public about an issue (assuming it's genuine by everyone, not a self-regulation/PR stunt, nor politician-style individual career-building by some)... that seems to suggest that they don't have sufficient influence and trust internally, without putting the organization on the spot publicly. If you don't trust your colleagues/management to do the right thing, or you still don't have influence, I'd say that's not a place you want to be. If the idea of walking away sounds bad, consider whether you actually can find influence and trust within the organization. (And let the rest of us know where you eventually find influence&trust, because that can be hard to find.)
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
They probably did expect Google to illegally fire them, but they would be morons not to publicize that Google illegally fired them.
grecy 8y ago
> but didn't they expect to get fired? I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer What a sad state of affairs when workers in the supposed 'greatest country on earth' feel that way.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
Of course they did. That's one of the points to doing it. They also expected to fight the consequences.

idlewords 8y ago

Retaliation, while miserable for the people experiencing it, would be a positive sign that this kind of protest is having an effect.

hnaccy 8y ago

>Google has a culture of retaliation, which too often works to silence women, people of color, and gender minorities Are there more stories on this?

AntiTechTechie 8y ago
Sounds like "grievance industry" nonsense...
- sctb 8y ago
  You've been posting a flurry of unsubstantive and flamey comments. Could you please review the guidelines and stop? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
anon12345690 8y ago
no because its not true.

sverige 8y ago

> Meredith Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after Google disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told that her role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was told that, in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at New York University. I don't understand why a person who organized the pressure group that led to Google disbanding their AI ethics group would expect her role not to change, since she's involved in AI ethics, the very thing she helped sink. She helped make it politically toxic and a PR disaster for her own employer. I'm no fan of Google, but they tried to organize something to satisfy a politically diverse group of stakeholders to at least have a discussion on this topic, only to have their efforts very publicly sabotaged by one of their own. Are they really obligated to continue to fund the work she's done to harm the company?

ahelwer 8y ago
They didn't try to do that, though. They tried to organize a group of people who largely (although not exclusively) knew nothing about AI, or ethics, to rubber-stamp their actions and assuage the concerns of regulators & watchdogs. Ethics laundering, basically.
- sverige 8y ago
  That's a really huge assumption, considering they never met (afaict), let alone deliberated anything or issued recommendations. Google sought input from outside their bubble and those inside the bubble immediately protested based on identity politics. There are a lot more people outside the bubble than inside, and this action makes it seem like Google doesn't give a shit what they think. It's the sort of thing that makes heavy regulation appealing even for those who normally would oppose regulation on principle. How does that benefit Google?
  - ahelwer 8y ago
    There was widespread protest from outside the bubble, too. You'll be unsurprised to learn the entire AI ethics space is being enthusiastically colonized by Thought Leaders all too happy to hold "discussions" in service of whatever their corporate funders desire. Oh sure there'll be some token pearl-clutching, but you can't stop progress (toward ubiquitous facial recognition) right? Anyway, if you're interested in seeing all the ridiculous shenanigans these people try to pull I recommend following @farbandish on twitter.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Beyond being not remotely surprised at this, what constantly baffles me is: Why are they still there? And pending an answer to that: Why have they not walked out again? Presumably the Walkout was a "fix this or we walk out" type of situation... but after Google refused to do 6/7ths of anything they demanded... they're still working for Google and not actively protesting. I would argue that Google called their bluff here. A traditional protest against an employer, a strike, entails "give us this if you want us to return to work". Googlers walked out, made demands, and then walked right back in the door. Google said "we'll do one of the things you asked for because the rest of the industry was already going that way anyhow", and then refused the rest and everyone, for the moment, seems alright with this?

MichaelGlass 8y ago
Easy to say from the sidelines. Working at google means - getting better benefits & pay - being at one of the darling companies in the industry Walking out is daring. Leaving is even scarier. I remember leaving my last job thinking, "I'll never work with as talented people." I was wrong, but it was a legitimate fear.
- jammygit 8y ago
  After my internship I certainly have that fear. It seems unreal that there could be a bunch of other companies out there that have the same calibre of people
- geodel 8y ago
  If benefits/pay and intelligent colleagues is what really matters to protesters and they are not looking to cut down on luxe lifestyle that Google job affords them. In that case they are really bullshitting about ethical issues because they have no qualm in partaking money that Google generate by ethically dubious decisions.
blihp 8y ago
Because they expect to be able to have their cake and eat it too.
8y ago

ronilan 8y ago

If I was a strange doctor, in possession of a green stone, who watched fourteen million, six hundred and five possible outcomes - I’d choose the one where Claire Stapleton became the employee representative on the Alphabet board of directors. But I’m not.

dekhn 8y ago
that sounds like her old tgif fanfic.
- ronilan 8y ago
  Can you explain for non-googlers?
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    IIRC (and it's been 5 years since I left Google, and I didn't save any of her e-mails since they weren't mine to save), Claire Stapleton used to write internal employee communications around TGIF (that's the weekly Q&A session with executives). Meeting logistics like when & where, videoconferencing links, but also things like the agenda and list of speakers. Her writing had a very distinctive, very whimsical feel to it that was quite popular with many Google employees.

KorematsuFred 8y ago

I am happy if they are being fired. Modern workplace should not have any place for misguided activism. These morons have mixed up their politics with issues of sexual harassment and workplace and deeply hurt their own cause. For example forcing Google to end arbitration is a bad idea for the victims and Google. Ending arbitration essentially means the senior VP will take all his severance package and leave the company. With arbitration high chance he wont get that.

danielrhodes 8y ago
> Ending arbitration essentially means the senior VP will take all his severance package and leave the company. With arbitration high chance he wont get that. I don't think this changes that much. If a lawsuit results in the company letting the VP go with cause, there will be no severance package. If the lawsuit fails but the company does not want the VP around anymore, they will let them go without cause, triggering the severance. With arbitration, it either lets the company sweep the incident under the rug, or if they let the VP go, it must be without cause, thus triggering the severance.
- KorematsuFred 8y ago
  Yes. But the company does not want to go through the law-suite as it leads to brand damage. Arbitration in most cases works far better as the company can let the VP go without any severance. The activists have their political biases against arbitration and hurting the cause.
sctb 8y ago
That's more handwaving and name calling than we're here for. Could you please increase the information-to-inflammation ratio when commenting in threads like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

socrates1998 8y ago

This is just all so weird. If google is such a bad company, then quit working for them. It's not really a protest, it's a tactic to wrestle control over the company and win social points with their "victory". They want the social status of having protested something, yet with zero of the fallout. They still collect google paychecks, collect google 401k money, still have google health insurance AND want to be able to say they "stuck it to the man" It's just so odd all the way around. They had a google walkout, then google didn't change anything, then the protesters went back to work. It was all just a stunt.

ahelwer 8y ago
Why does this exact same objection come up again and again? Why do we have to leave our companies instead of trying to make positive change from within? Why is the only prescribed solution to take flight to new lands, like locusts, staying ahead of the flood? What do we do when there are no more companies to which to flee, and the effects of that which we are fleeing is harming society?
- ska 8y ago
  It's a another version of the argument "If you don't like our country behaving the way I think it should behave, you should leave the country". Absolutely sometimes the best thing for an individual to do is take their marbles and go home. But equally, sometimes the best thing to do is put your shoulder to pushing the wheels in [what you perceive as] a better direction. Companies (and countries) after all are not stand-alone entities; they are an expression of their constituent parts. Some of this is history/momentum, but a lot of it is just people. [edit] of course I think the bar for "when should I leave my company" is an awful lot lower than "when should I leave my country".
  - alistairSH 8y ago
    I'm not sure I agree. At least not completely. A person is within their rights to try and change the company from within before leaving. But, that will likely come with personal costs (right or wrong). If those costs get to be too high, the correct action might be to leave. At a company, the impact of leaving could be much higher than the impact of moving to a different country on politics... Google very much relies on "smart people" to earn money. If enough leave in protest, Google will eventually suffer. It would take a LOT of people leaving the US for there to be any noticeable impact.

hprotagonist 8y ago

If you do not know that this sort of thing is coming when you chose to stand up for what you think is right, you should. Protest and civil disobedience come at an obligate personal cost. The only reasonable expectation you should have before doing it is that you're about to burn your world to the ground -- anything left standing you should count as a blessing and a relief. In this case, for example, walkout organizers should've just assumed that they're going to be retaliated against, and that their protest didn't end the day of the walkout but will continue through the whole process of having a labor lawyer, fighting this in court, documenting their work lives for the next 5+ years, etc. It's part of the same action and part of the same protest. In the long term and at a broader societal level, moral protests are usually worth it, but that does not mean that your shorter- and medium- term economic and personal social costs are going to be zero -- in fact, quite the opposite! edit: i assume that the walkout organizers knew all this, but the above can totally be read as "oh those silly babes-in-the-woods googlers", which was not what i meant. If anything, I understand the linked post as just the next phase of the game, in which illegal retribution is disclosed as part of an ongoing legal fight.

ngcazz 8y ago
It's pretty absurd to think the authors didn't expect any kind of reprisal. No kind of organizing against an entity this size, especially with the visibility the walkout had, comes without a cost. And not reporting on the consequences would be handing over the victory to Google.
- lenticular 8y ago
  This retaliation in response to anti-harassment protests is actually illegal. It's pretty obvious these actions were done before legal got involved: When Claire Stapleton had a lawyer contact Google they walked back the demotion.
  - Aqua 8y ago
    It feels like Google eventually started disciplining disobedient employees. I mean, can you imagine Goldman Sachs bankers organising a protest to express their dissatisfaction with certain decisions their upper management makes? They would be fired on spot. Now, Google has been facing employee revolt for the last couple of years (military projects, James Damore, China search engine), and Google kept allowing that to happen without any consequences. Now that changed, and it makes sense, because employees don't own the company, employees work for the company in exchange for compensation and don't really have to grounds to constantly blackmail the management just because they don't like the direction the company is going. You have to be delusional to think acting like that won't jeopardise your career... Besides if you need to involve a lawyer you are most certainly unwelcome there and should probably just quit (however, finding a new role might prove difficult given the circumstances. Which company would employ someone that organised a revolt against their leadership in their previous workplace and eventually ran crying to the media about retaliation instead of handling the situation quietly).

mindcrime 8y ago

After escalating the issue to human resources, she said she faced further retaliation. “My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to other people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not sick,” Stapleton wrote. After she hired a lawyer; the company conducted an investigation and seemed to reverse her demotion. For the sake of argument, let's postulate that this is exactly what it sounds like: straight up retaliation. If so, here's the question in my mind: What flipping moron thought that: a. this was a good idea b. they could get away with this TBH, I'd say that IF Google management were that upset at this individual's actions, it would have made more sense to just straight up fire her, as opposed to this kind of childishness. NOT that I'm saying any of this justifies firing. Just saying that outright firing somebody you disagree with makes more sense than keeping them around and trying to fuck with them as, whatever, punishment I guess? That's braindead stupid as far as I can see. And actually, (a) is the more serious question in many ways. Seriously, what did they think they would gain from this retaliation? Who wins in this scenario? Nobody, as far as I can tell.

ben_jones 8y ago
There's also a certain kind of gluttony to it. She's presumably making what, 200k+, if not way more? Their solution is just have her take medical leave so they don't have to deal with the "awkwardness" of working with her, where she will presumably continue making that money while doing zero work. It's just like, damn, what a nice company you got there.
azernik 8y ago
Firing would have been even more provably retaliation; presumably they were hoping to reduce legal liability. Why they thought this would work is beyond me, since this kind of activity is also recognized by labor law as Totally Illegal. One possibility - the people with power to fire her actually talked to their lawyers, while the people with the power to initiate this kind of harassment did not.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Firing would have been even more provably retaliation; presumably they were hoping to reduce legal liability. Yes, but in some ways it would have been more honest. But the real question, still, is why do either? How does retaliating against this individual benefit Google? (Not that it would be justified even IF the answer was "Their stock will go up 3x as a result" or something). It's just dumb from what I can see. It's almost like some manager was butt-hurt that somebody expressed their opinion and decided to try and fuck them over for no real reason. That manager is the one who ought to be fired.

throwawaysea 8y ago

Employees that bring politics to work are making the workplace uncomfortable for everyone else who has a different (or perhaps a more nuanced-) opinion, but can't speak up. They are creating constant distractions that take away from the work at hand, especially when it forces others to drop their actual work and engage (either passively by reading/keeping-up or actively by spending effort getting involved). These disruptive outrages are largely irrelevant to the mission of the company except via generous stretches of logic. Those involved in workplace activism also often violate the confidentiality that is expected in the corporate context, leaking email threads and weaponizing manufactured outrage via social media or journalistic outlets against the company and dissenting employees. The dynamic that has been created is also often politically-biased (rather than neutral), particularly at large tech companies, because psychological safety is only afforded to those who align with a progressive far-left platform. Let's be clear, most of the justification (and claims of protection) for recent employee activism relies on mental gymnastics. There is no standing, for example, for random Google employees to expect to be involved in the selection of members of an AI ethics panel or in the acceptance criteria for clientele. There is no standing for employees to be involved in most of the company's decisions. This is especially true for the relatively-junior employees who are often driving these protests, since they lack the experience/skillset/visibility to have any useful/comprehensive perspective on complex corporate decisions. It is immature for them to expect involvement or transparency on-demand, and to protest decisions they disagree with that are beyond their horizon. If these activists were truly honest, they would conduct petitions via anonymous voting mechanisms (e.g. internal surveys) that let all employees vote for/against/indifferent, so that a broad voice is heard and not just a skewed vocal minority that faces no consequence. But these same activists won't do that, since these protests are not at all about making the best decisions or being inclusive, but rather about power dynamics and trying to get one's own way. Google has lots of standing to take action against these employees. If these employees don't want to work at Google, or don't display motivation around their core role/function, let them quit or fire them. If they are not performing their duties and are instead spending work time on personal agendas, fire them. If they are disrupting the workplace by constantly fomenting outrage on the Internet, fire them. If they are hurting the company's brand and working against the interests of the company (or shareholders) by engaging in self-serving political activism, fire them. If they disrespect and alienate most of their customer base by only advocating for their own worldview, fire them. All this should be uncontroversial - after all, many others will line up for those jobs and Google will be just fine.

yalogin 8y ago

This is a private company and more so the AI ethics and the context of the walkout is not really a criminal or civil violation in the eyes of the country. So the company is free to do anything it wants.

olefoo 8y ago
> This is a private company Alphabet is a publicly traded company. Which means it is expected to uphold certain standards of behavior.

deleted 8y ago

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throw2016 8y ago

What these people are doing takes tremendous courage. Posts here over the last few months have many wondering why people in Facebook and Google are not speaking up and in this instance we have some genuine dissent, activism and protest at least on one issue. But history shows dissenters are always a tiny minority, from the initial struggles that secured labour rights to equality for women. Most people will conform and fall in line for whatever reason, and in these cases there is unfortunately always resentment against the dissenters from those who fall in line. In most other situations you would expect the early dissenters to get growing unequivocal support as more people find their compass and courage by example but there is a moral crisis in the software community and it looks these individuals may not get the widespread support they need. But these kind of incidents will make it increasingly difficult for Google leadership and others who work there to go to events, meets and publicly talk about ethics and others issues these protestors raised.

namesbc 8y ago

Time for tech to unionize

rdtsc 8y ago
There was just a story today about NPM employees trying that and getting fired. Tech companies are in this strange place where on the surface they are seemingly going above and beyond to be tolerant, and diverse. But it's mostly talk and gestures that doesn't involve making any hard decisions or spending much money. Try to mention "unionization" and that thin veneer drops and the ugliness come out immediately.

wnevets 8y ago

I'm surprised they weren't fired for publicly admitting they weren't doing their job.

AdamM12 8y ago

Maybe I missed it in the other comments but is anyone else uneasy about the idea of your coworkers having a town hall to tell their "stories"? Just seems ripe for unfounded accusations or cherry picked facts to basically defame a coworker.

rdtsc 8y ago
> is anyone else uneasy about the idea of your coworkers having a town hall to tell their "stories"? Sometimes, ironically, I think they specifically set those up to flush out non-conformists, the naive, and the trouble-makers. Invite them to "share their thoughts" then start building black lists. I am only half joking there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
- AdamM12 8y ago
  You better explain this than I.

OrgNet 8y ago

They should all quit. Then donate six months to Mozilla and find a way to kill AMP.

OrgNet 8y ago
This definition is interesting: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spineless https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spineless .

dmh2000 8y ago

are employee 'walkouts' a protected class? Like a union on strike?

tomohawk 8y ago

Don't they teach people not to bring politics to work anymore? Rule #1 at work: don't talk or engage in politics

KingMachiavelli 8y ago
The current relization is that you often cannot work without being political because your work in some way is political. In this specific instance, organizing a walk out, does seem to go much farther than what you would expect your employer to tolerate. Typical people who work typical jobs are fired for far less so the real suprise in being told that your 'role' is changing is that you still have a job at all. Ultimently, I have little faith in these kinds of demonstrations - perhaps it will work for FAANGS since they have a pretty somewhat limitied supply of talent/employees. But for the majority of the tech industry, I expect the ability to choose where you work and the ability to organize unions will be a much more effective means of employee influence.
consumer451 8y ago
In this case it was Google who brought politics into the office. I don't understand why Google, or anyone with a choice, would have involved political hacks in the decision making process for ethics in their company's products. Oh.. [0] > Controversy followed almost immediately after the Heritage Foundation president was named to the eight-person council, with some speculating that her addition was Google's attempt to appease conservative lawmakers who have accused the tech giant of anti-conservative bias. Look, I am sick of being politically correct about this. In modern times America's GOP true-believers have become the party of "alternate facts" on a variety of issues. Do you want your AI driver/doctor/accountant/climatologist to use alternate facts, or actual facts? Aside from that particular argument, I don't think any dogmatic groups should be involved in AI in any way. People from political think tanks should be excluded by default, as they clearly have a bias. I don't care who they are, left/right/whatever. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board-2019-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cancels-ai-ethics-boa...

zcw100 8y ago

Screw Google and every other tech company on this list https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

diebeforei485 8y ago

Meredith Whittaker has a clear conflict of interest. As evidenced by her campaigning against Google's AI ethics board (and the resulting fallout), her organization's agenda for AI ethics conflicts with Google's, so she has to choose one or the other.

RickJWagner 8y ago

About Kay Cole James, Ms. James served as Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources under then-Governor George Allen and was the dean of Regent University's government school. She is currently a member of the NASA Advisory Council. She is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training center for young African Americans. She is an African-American woman. In other words, she is eminently qualified. Yet Meredith Whittaker organized people against her because she disagrees with her politics. Ms. James has not one incident on record where she caused harm to anyone. She is merely the head of a conservative think-tank. Diversity of thought is very important. I feel little sympathy for the trouble-causers. Google looked idiotic when it disbanded the council.