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I don't understand how someone can proudly be a nuisance to those who sign their paychecks nor how can an employer tolerate any of it, at the very least this si

I don't understand how someone can proudly be a nuisance to those who sign their paychecks nor how can an employer tolerate any of it, at the very least this situation is unfair to the majority of employees who are just "going to work". Not sure what's behind Google's inaction here, they really shouldn't be worried about the trouble makers defecting to somewhere else that most likely won't tolerate their bullshit.

dralley 7y ago
So what you're saying is, employees shouldn't complain about (censorship, bosses tolerating sexual harassment, etc.), they should either put up with it or leave quietly (possibly to their own financial detriment)? I can't say I agree with you. What you're suggesting is basically the Wall Street model where bad and unethical institutional behavior gets a suboptimal amount of pushback.
- herohamp 7y ago
  They should but they then also face the consequences
  - dralley 7y ago
    And many do. Are you suggesting otherwise? But I don't think they "should" do so if they're calling out legitimately poor behavior that has been unaddressed by any other avenue. That wording is quite strange to me. Would you say that Rosa Parks "should" have faced the consequences of stirring things up as she did? Accepting that it is possible is a necessary part of civil disobedience, but the imposition of those consequences by higher powers is not.
  - jpdb 7y ago
    Employees who can't voice their dissatisfaction for the status quo without fear of repercussion can't truly voice their dissatisfaction. There's an EXTREME amount of power imbalance between employer and employee; if employees have to fear retaliation for voicing their concerns it has a chilling effect. I'm okay with consequences, but voicing your concerns in public isn't grounds for consequences.
    - chii 7y ago
      This is where a platform for voicing anonymously is required.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      > Employees who can't voice their dissatisfaction for the status quo without fear of repercussion can't truly voice their dissatisfaction. Employees are signing up for a world where they don't wear significant risk in exchange for subordinating their decision making to a company. Companies are fundamentally an organised group of people working to a common goal. I can understand very well if individual employees want to assert their individuality. However, at any moment, they have only and exactly 3 choices: 1) Cooperate enthusiastically. 2) Cooperate with complaint 3) Quit Nobody is going to get sacked for quietly and politely voicing a concern. However, once employees start organising to influence management on business decisions they really need to pony up the capital and become shareholders. Deciding what management does is the privilege of shareholders, not employees.
      - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
        > However, once employees start organising to influence management on business decisions they really need to pony up the capital and become shareholders. Deciding what management does is the privilege of shareholders, not employees. Isn't this precisely describing why unions were originally generated, so that employees can also leverage power equal to the shareholders, and therefore have a say in their own working conditions?
        roenxi 7y ago
        There is a big difference between that and what is being discussed in this article though. Unions are dealing with pay and conditions - important, but ultimately just aggregating topics that employers and employees were going to negotiate around anyway. This article is talking about: * Amazon workers are demanding more action from the company on battling climate change * Microsoft, employees say they don’t want to build technology for warfare * Salesforce, a group has lobbied management to end its work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency * Google, [employees] want a say in and control over the products they build Those are issues going way beyond what an employee can reasonably expect to influence. Being employed by a tech company is an achievement, but the end of the day tech workers aren't that special. They don't formally get to decide how the world works. They absolutely can't take to social media to complain about these issues and expect to hold a job with the company they are complaining about. This type of activity isn't acceptable; they can't draw a wage and overrule strategic directions from people with capital at stake. The options are work or walk.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  That's how employment works. As an employee you are paid to execute the company's strategy. If you disagree you can of course, and even should, voice your disagreement but that should be done in a professional in diplomatic way, in private. If you cannot do that or cannot accept the company's strategy then yes, your alternative is to leave quietly. The new "red guards" of the left may not like it, but that's what professionalism (not to mention a free society) is. Tough.
  - eropple 7y ago
    This is an extremely...one-sided...view of things. Consider a more healthy one: capital and labor should be partners, and labor gets to have a say in the direction of the company, too. It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. A company that can't do that should have its charter revoked. And its labor force is part of that society.
    - AlexB138 7y ago
      > It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. I'm assuming you're talking about the US. We are not subjects of our government, or of some other sovereign, whether that be society or anything else. Our society is founded on individual pursuit of happiness, not collectivism. Put another way, corporations exist for whatever reason their creators decide. So long as they operate within the law and are able to sustain themselves, societal good is a side effect and a concern of the State, not the corporation itself.
      - nmcfarl 7y ago
        The state licenses corporations. Corporations exist for whatever reason their creators and the state decide on.
        nmcfarl 7y ago
wffurr 7y ago
Well, for one, retaliation against labor organizing is illegal under federal law. For another, Google is in fierce competition with the rest of the tech companies for talent.
- fyoving 7y ago
  For one, they are would be retaliating against employees who generate bad PR for them. For another the rest of the tech companies don't seem to enable let alone tolerate this shenanigans.
  - DFHippie 7y ago
    Retaliating against whistle blowers is a great way to generate bad PR for yourself. You may disagree that this is whistle blowing. You may view these employees as entitled troublemakers. I expect the googlers doing this view themselves as making personal sacrifices for the greater good. In any case, I doubt Google wants to lose talent to competitors because they are viewed as a hotbed of right-to-workers ideology in Silicon Valley.
    - fyoving 7y ago
      1. Any bad PR resulting from firing these types would be a one time thing instead of this ongoing situation. 2. Google shouldn't accommodate the delusional and entitled. 3. Labor unions are antithetical to sound economic theory and practice, and no other company in the business supports them.
      - pjc50 7y ago
        Ah yes, because dumping a bunch of people who will tell the "I was screwed over by google" story to all their friends into an economy where hiring is driven by personal recommendations can't possibly have any ongoing consequences?
        googthrow2019 7y ago
pjc50 7y ago
The whole point of somewhere like Google is that they don't want people who will do what they're told, because such people are only capable of doing what they're told. You can't order someone to innovate unless they have no other choice. Silicon Valley has spent years setting itself up as an inheritor of the counterculture, a place where it's possible to "think different". Employees are given a share of the business (via a complicated tax shelter of options). Startups want "contributors", people who buy into the idea that they're engaged in a positive-sum contribution to the world rather than just bringing home a paycheck. They provide all sorts of office features to encourage people to "bring their whole self to work". (I could go on, but I expect this thread to be buried) Edit: exhibit A, hollywood social justice warrior proudly being a nuisance, disrupting law abiding citizens with a hammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I ; the "1984" Macintosh commercial and its successor "Think Different" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs are as close to an official statement of SV founding ideology as you're going to get)
- neffy 7y ago
  I really think that's just darkly entertaining marketing. Silicon valley in reality is a ruthlessly corporate business world, where known to be worthless options are traded for people's lives and labour. (Look up "founder's shares") Startups require cheap labour, if their investors are going to make out like bandits - that's what's really going on. Google in particular, if they were looking for people capable of thinking outside the box, would not selecting very specifically from the box of people that are prepared to jump through the hoops of their ridiculous programming interviews. In fact, by this point in their history, they could just datamine the list of people who have repeatedly told their recruiters to take a running jump, and start sampling from there.
  - jkaplowitz 7y ago
    The equity grants awarded by publicly traded companies like Google/Alphabet are far from worthless, unlike for early stage startups where indeed most of those employee stock options end up as worthless as you say.
burtonator 7y ago
The BEST thing someone can do when you're they're friend is tell you when you're doing something wrong so you can correct your behavior. A real friend speaks out ...
- pacala 7y ago
  A friend tells you in private, and also cuts you a lot of slack. A jerk berates you in public at every opportunity.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Employer-employee relationships can never quite be ordinary human friendships because of the power relationship. In these kinds of situations, people are going public because handling it privately has failed and it involves questions of public interest and affects to third parties.
  - jeremysalwen 7y ago
    Do you have any idea of the volume of internal complaints that is going on? Obviously not, you only see the things that get leaked.
evrydayhustling 7y ago
To get an incredibly valuable lead in hiring, Google has led the market on entitlements: great pay, perks, lifestyle, transparency, and a promise of ethical and participatory governance. It might be fair to say that some of these employees have unrealistic expectations about their employer, but you can't say Google didn't ask for it. I personally agree it's kind of silly to expect your work to be a Utopia by your specific definition. On the other hand, if Google does learn to reconcile its business and competing employee cultures, they will have done something amazing that probably makes them a stronger institution.
lallysingh 7y ago
Because that's implicit in the contract Google signs with it's employees. People go (went, at least) because of the autonomy they're given. That autonomy isn't a perk; it's a prerequisite for innovation. Now Google's got reduced innovation and reduced autonomy for it's employees. They didn't scale the latter and subsequently, they're losing the former. If the employees leave, Google's another IBM. Another corpse.
conanbatt 7y ago
Google is not a company that has such hard lines against employees. Fostering a "culture of safety" is very important to tech companies, and if a protest of 100 employees was met with their dismissal, it would have ripple effects on all the rest of the employees. I personally never interviewed at Google, but the damore scandal was a pretty big dissuasive for me to attempt to get one. It does not look like a safe space to me.
Nullabillity 7y ago
> at the very least this situation is unfair to the majority of employees who are just "going to work". So people shouldn't have to take responsibility for their actions, just because they're paid for their troubles?
jccalhoun 7y ago
Clearly they value these employees and want them to be happy. I would guess that if the janitorial staff tried this there would a)be a lot less press about it and b) google wouldn't put up with it nearly as well. They also might have contracts with these people that require certain reasons for it. Certainly it would be very bad press for google if they fired all of the people who are involved in this.

dralley 7y ago

So what you're saying is, employees shouldn't complain about (censorship, bosses tolerating sexual harassment, etc.), they should either put up with it or leave quietly (possibly to their own financial detriment)? I can't say I agree with you. What you're suggesting is basically the Wall Street model where bad and unethical institutional behavior gets a suboptimal amount of pushback.

herohamp 7y ago
They should but they then also face the consequences
- dralley 7y ago
  And many do. Are you suggesting otherwise? But I don't think they "should" do so if they're calling out legitimately poor behavior that has been unaddressed by any other avenue. That wording is quite strange to me. Would you say that Rosa Parks "should" have faced the consequences of stirring things up as she did? Accepting that it is possible is a necessary part of civil disobedience, but the imposition of those consequences by higher powers is not.
- jpdb 7y ago
  Employees who can't voice their dissatisfaction for the status quo without fear of repercussion can't truly voice their dissatisfaction. There's an EXTREME amount of power imbalance between employer and employee; if employees have to fear retaliation for voicing their concerns it has a chilling effect. I'm okay with consequences, but voicing your concerns in public isn't grounds for consequences.
  - chii 7y ago
    This is where a platform for voicing anonymously is required.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    > Employees who can't voice their dissatisfaction for the status quo without fear of repercussion can't truly voice their dissatisfaction. Employees are signing up for a world where they don't wear significant risk in exchange for subordinating their decision making to a company. Companies are fundamentally an organised group of people working to a common goal. I can understand very well if individual employees want to assert their individuality. However, at any moment, they have only and exactly 3 choices: 1) Cooperate enthusiastically. 2) Cooperate with complaint 3) Quit Nobody is going to get sacked for quietly and politely voicing a concern. However, once employees start organising to influence management on business decisions they really need to pony up the capital and become shareholders. Deciding what management does is the privilege of shareholders, not employees.
    - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      > However, once employees start organising to influence management on business decisions they really need to pony up the capital and become shareholders. Deciding what management does is the privilege of shareholders, not employees. Isn't this precisely describing why unions were originally generated, so that employees can also leverage power equal to the shareholders, and therefore have a say in their own working conditions?
      - roenxi 7y ago
        There is a big difference between that and what is being discussed in this article though. Unions are dealing with pay and conditions - important, but ultimately just aggregating topics that employers and employees were going to negotiate around anyway. This article is talking about: * Amazon workers are demanding more action from the company on battling climate change * Microsoft, employees say they don’t want to build technology for warfare * Salesforce, a group has lobbied management to end its work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency * Google, [employees] want a say in and control over the products they build Those are issues going way beyond what an employee can reasonably expect to influence. Being employed by a tech company is an achievement, but the end of the day tech workers aren't that special. They don't formally get to decide how the world works. They absolutely can't take to social media to complain about these issues and expect to hold a job with the company they are complaining about. This type of activity isn't acceptable; they can't draw a wage and overrule strategic directions from people with capital at stake. The options are work or walk.
NotPaidToPost 7y ago
That's how employment works. As an employee you are paid to execute the company's strategy. If you disagree you can of course, and even should, voice your disagreement but that should be done in a professional in diplomatic way, in private. If you cannot do that or cannot accept the company's strategy then yes, your alternative is to leave quietly. The new "red guards" of the left may not like it, but that's what professionalism (not to mention a free society) is. Tough.
- eropple 7y ago
  This is an extremely...one-sided...view of things. Consider a more healthy one: capital and labor should be partners, and labor gets to have a say in the direction of the company, too. It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. A company that can't do that should have its charter revoked. And its labor force is part of that society.
  - AlexB138 7y ago
    > It must be said, again and again: corporations exist at the sufferance of the society that grants them their charter and only exist for the benefit of that society. I'm assuming you're talking about the US. We are not subjects of our government, or of some other sovereign, whether that be society or anything else. Our society is founded on individual pursuit of happiness, not collectivism. Put another way, corporations exist for whatever reason their creators decide. So long as they operate within the law and are able to sustain themselves, societal good is a side effect and a concern of the State, not the corporation itself.
    - nmcfarl 7y ago
      The state licenses corporations. Corporations exist for whatever reason their creators and the state decide on.
      - nmcfarl 7y ago

wffurr 7y ago

Well, for one, retaliation against labor organizing is illegal under federal law. For another, Google is in fierce competition with the rest of the tech companies for talent.

fyoving 7y ago
For one, they are would be retaliating against employees who generate bad PR for them. For another the rest of the tech companies don't seem to enable let alone tolerate this shenanigans.
- DFHippie 7y ago
  Retaliating against whistle blowers is a great way to generate bad PR for yourself. You may disagree that this is whistle blowing. You may view these employees as entitled troublemakers. I expect the googlers doing this view themselves as making personal sacrifices for the greater good. In any case, I doubt Google wants to lose talent to competitors because they are viewed as a hotbed of right-to-workers ideology in Silicon Valley.
  - fyoving 7y ago
    1. Any bad PR resulting from firing these types would be a one time thing instead of this ongoing situation. 2. Google shouldn't accommodate the delusional and entitled. 3. Labor unions are antithetical to sound economic theory and practice, and no other company in the business supports them.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Ah yes, because dumping a bunch of people who will tell the "I was screwed over by google" story to all their friends into an economy where hiring is driven by personal recommendations can't possibly have any ongoing consequences?
      - googthrow2019 7y ago

pjc50 7y ago

The whole point of somewhere like Google is that they don't want people who will do what they're told, because such people are only capable of doing what they're told. You can't order someone to innovate unless they have no other choice. Silicon Valley has spent years setting itself up as an inheritor of the counterculture, a place where it's possible to "think different". Employees are given a share of the business (via a complicated tax shelter of options). Startups want "contributors", people who buy into the idea that they're engaged in a positive-sum contribution to the world rather than just bringing home a paycheck. They provide all sorts of office features to encourage people to "bring their whole self to work". (I could go on, but I expect this thread to be buried) Edit: exhibit A, hollywood social justice warrior proudly being a nuisance, disrupting law abiding citizens with a hammer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I ; the "1984" Macintosh commercial and its successor "Think Different" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFEarBzelBs are as close to an official statement of SV founding ideology as you're going to get)

neffy 7y ago
I really think that's just darkly entertaining marketing. Silicon valley in reality is a ruthlessly corporate business world, where known to be worthless options are traded for people's lives and labour. (Look up "founder's shares") Startups require cheap labour, if their investors are going to make out like bandits - that's what's really going on. Google in particular, if they were looking for people capable of thinking outside the box, would not selecting very specifically from the box of people that are prepared to jump through the hoops of their ridiculous programming interviews. In fact, by this point in their history, they could just datamine the list of people who have repeatedly told their recruiters to take a running jump, and start sampling from there.
- jkaplowitz 7y ago
  The equity grants awarded by publicly traded companies like Google/Alphabet are far from worthless, unlike for early stage startups where indeed most of those employee stock options end up as worthless as you say.

burtonator 7y ago

The BEST thing someone can do when you're they're friend is tell you when you're doing something wrong so you can correct your behavior. A real friend speaks out ...

pacala 7y ago
A friend tells you in private, and also cuts you a lot of slack. A jerk berates you in public at every opportunity.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Employer-employee relationships can never quite be ordinary human friendships because of the power relationship. In these kinds of situations, people are going public because handling it privately has failed and it involves questions of public interest and affects to third parties.
- jeremysalwen 7y ago
  Do you have any idea of the volume of internal complaints that is going on? Obviously not, you only see the things that get leaked.

evrydayhustling 7y ago

To get an incredibly valuable lead in hiring, Google has led the market on entitlements: great pay, perks, lifestyle, transparency, and a promise of ethical and participatory governance. It might be fair to say that some of these employees have unrealistic expectations about their employer, but you can't say Google didn't ask for it. I personally agree it's kind of silly to expect your work to be a Utopia by your specific definition. On the other hand, if Google does learn to reconcile its business and competing employee cultures, they will have done something amazing that probably makes them a stronger institution.

lallysingh 7y ago

Because that's implicit in the contract Google signs with it's employees. People go (went, at least) because of the autonomy they're given. That autonomy isn't a perk; it's a prerequisite for innovation. Now Google's got reduced innovation and reduced autonomy for it's employees. They didn't scale the latter and subsequently, they're losing the former. If the employees leave, Google's another IBM. Another corpse.

conanbatt 7y ago

Google is not a company that has such hard lines against employees. Fostering a "culture of safety" is very important to tech companies, and if a protest of 100 employees was met with their dismissal, it would have ripple effects on all the rest of the employees. I personally never interviewed at Google, but the damore scandal was a pretty big dissuasive for me to attempt to get one. It does not look like a safe space to me.

Nullabillity 7y ago

> at the very least this situation is unfair to the majority of employees who are just "going to work". So people shouldn't have to take responsibility for their actions, just because they're paid for their troubles?

jccalhoun 7y ago

Clearly they value these employees and want them to be happy. I would guess that if the janitorial staff tried this there would a)be a lot less press about it and b) google wouldn't put up with it nearly as well. They also might have contracts with these people that require certain reasons for it. Certainly it would be very bad press for google if they fired all of the people who are involved in this.