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Four fired workers file charges against Google
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mc32 7y agoThis should be interesting. Maybe they’re both guilty of wrongdoing. In the end it’ll likely be difficult for them to prevail over Google. Plus, as many people have said over and over, leave your politics at home, despite this “bring your whole self to work”. It just opens you up to more scrutiny. Of course google is to blame for fostering this attitude. I’m sure they regret their initial idealism and realize you simply cannot mould people into your vision any more than a few societies have tried and failed at raising the perfect citizen. To be clear, there is a right to unionize. There isn’t a right to politicize work and bring your personal politics into the work realm. I don’t want to hear your take on 1A, 2A, reproductive rights, medical rights, whatever, at work unless it’s a conversation we volunteer to enjoin in.
- hprotagonist 7y ago“leave your politics at home” must remain explicitly disjoint from “workers have a right to self organization”. if it doesn’t, then workers don’t have a right to self organization , and that, uh, doesn’t end well.
- danharaj 7y ago"leave your politics at home" while working for a company that is shaping tomorrow's society. that is to say, adopt the politics of your boss at work. i don't like that.
- hprotagonist 7y ago“inaction is implicit support of the status quo” is, unfortunately, true.
- mc32 7y agoIsn’t that why people have a right to vote?
- t34543 7y agoYes, I would rather see Google accept/tolerate all political viewpoints. Google is mostly liberal but that doesn’t represent everyone. They have a significant influence. We should all be free to form our own opinions, whatever they may be, and not fear retribution from anyone.
- arkades 7y agoDon’t work there? Vote for policies that shape tomorrow? “Accept large sums of money for building your boss’ vision for tomorrow while complaining about it” has a lot going for it, but I have a hard time actually sympathizing for folks that think they’ve a right to that.
- mc32 7y agoI see your point but allowing workers to decide the politics of a company is populism. People feel confident because they have many like minded colleagues. What happens when the winds change? Are people going to be happy when the workers of Exxon decide that it’s in their best interest to extract from some wildlife refuge? It’s not a good idea. We have laws that should govern corporations and businesses . It should not be a referendum for everything.
- bluntfang 7y agoAre you suggesting that Exxon doesn't already lobby governments to make the laws that allow them to extract oil from places where they really probably shouldn't? And that the employee's opinions don't matter?
- bluntfang 7y agocan anyone help me with why this post got downvoted?
- pjc50 7y agoIf not the workers deciding what the politics of a company, then who? It's going to be a much smaller number of people from a much more privileged class; the managers and key shareholders. > Are people going to be happy when the workers of Exxon decide that it’s in their best interest to extract from some wildlife refuge? No, but that's because they're not happy when the managers of Exxon decide that either? Really the underlying problem is that giant companies and especially media companies like Google have a very large amount of political power. Almost more than the big parties, and certainly more than the average grassroots organisation. How google uses that power matters. If Google want to be apolitical, the very first step should be to end all their corporate political donations and PACs. A good second step would be to end all recommendations (ie free promotion) for political videos on youtube.
- zarkov99 7y agoWell, I don't like a bunch of activist techies trying to shape tomorrow's society using the assets of their host corporation. The answer, I believe, is to reduce the "shaping" impact of corporations in the first place.
- mc32 7y agoI think these things are distinct. You can advocate for unionization without being political. For example you can advocate for unions but you don’t have to conflate that with your personal politics.
- danharaj 7y agoIf you don't consider unions a political issue then what is your definition of politics? The organization of labor is one of the central pillars of civilization and has been political since time immemorial.
- goatinaboat 7y ago“We should have a Union to negotiate with management” is orthogonal to “we should cease all work for law enforcement”.
- danharaj 7y agoSo which politics are OK and which aren't? They're both politics even if they're "orthogonal".
- goatinaboat 7y agoThe first one is protected by law, which is what this case hinges on. But it’s not at all clear that everyone who wants a union at work also shares an identical opinion on open borders, drone strikes, facial recognition etc etc
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoThe kind of politics where you point at specific people or groups and say "ooh, they're nasty" isn't OK.
- shadowgovt 7y agoUnions have traditionally painted management as adversarial to employee best interests. Is agitating for unionization therefore the kind of politics that isn't okay?
- BickNowstrom 7y agoOk. Then bring your politics to work. But when you have to make a difficult decision (whether to ban a popular Youtuber for hate speech), make that decision based on precedent, the good of the company, and for the users. Don't view it as a personal attack to your political beliefs, and default to banning when the free speech happens to clash with your beliefs, while defaulting to complaining when people talking about LGBT+ rights get demonitized. Also, if you are allowed to take your politics to work, accept that others may bring their opposing politics to work too. The vocal conservative-right Googlers are in the minority, and are mistreated as such by the political power brokers. A union should be for all the workers.
- ummonk 7y agoThe NLRA protect's worker's rights to organize around labor conditions at the workplace. Labor conditions are only a subset of politics.
- Hokusai 7y ago>, leave your politics at home, If you accept sexual harassment, abuse of power, support of dictatorial regimes, etc. at the workplace you are going to live in a hell hole for the lest of your life. I will recommend being smart about politics and do it from inside a union or other protected group. But, to never just accept that things are bad without remedy. We have gotten really far as a society to give up now that things are easier to change than ever. > I’m sure they regret their initial idealism What great things Google have done since? Google is big enough and rich enough to not have to innovate or do anything interesting anymore. Google is just another part of the system. But, for any startup is impossible to succeed without people involved with strong believes and able to move and inspire others. Google change makes sense from an economic perspective. But, as a society hurts us and we need to fix their attitude individually and together through unions and other collective actions.
- cobbzilla 7y ago> In the end it’ll likely be difficult for them to prevail over Google Why do you believe this is true? CA has arguably the most employee-favorable laws in the country, particularly wrt workplace discrimination. I would withhold judgement until more facts come to light; an important one being which legal firm(s) they have chosen to represent them. If I had to bet now: Google settles before it goes to trial; plaintiffs walk away very rich in exchange for signing a non-disparagement agreement; no one else will know the full story.
- lightedman 7y ago"Maybe they’re both guilty of wrongdoing." If she had personal photos on the phone, she had copyright on those and Google flat-out violated that specific right by denying her access to her works. Remember, what's written in a contract cannot go against the law. Copyright is very firmly enshrined in our legal system.
- cameldrv 7y agoCopyright says that Google can't copy her photos without her permission. It creates no obligation for them to not delete them or provide any kind of access.
- wnoise 7y agoCopyright is not deleteright.
- ddalex 7y agoOr non delete right.
- nkrisc 7y agoThat's the strangest interpretation of copyright law I've ever seen.
- lightedman 7y agoYou're destroying property and work. Denying someone access to their work is just as bad as usurping control over it. Remember, copyright gives the owner of the work full control over it. For Google to remove that specific control without a court order means they're violating the law. Go read chapters 2 and 5 of Title 17. This makes it abundantly clear.
- shadowgovt 7y agoIf you store your copyrighted paintings in a storage unit, cease to pay for that unit, and fail to clear that unit, the owner of the storage company has the right to dispose of your personal belongings. It's understood in the contracts one signs when renting a storage unit. There is similar understanding about how de-corpification works if someone's phone gets de-corped (though I doubt most employees read the fine print).
- grumple 7y agoLife is political. "Leave your politics at home" has been a driver of injustice and war crimes for ages. "I don't think we should murder Jews" was political speech and verboden in the Reich. Work is the most significant part of our lives in terms of how much time it requires. It's a give and take - you can ask for concessions from your employer just as they can ask for concessions from you. It's not just "accept everyone and everything exactly as it was before", that's ludicrous. And unionizing has been made political by corporations - it's simply a smart and legally protected right to improve workers' negotiation power in the face of huge corporations. Hiring women and racial minorities at all, and then to particular positions, was a political issue for a long time. It still is, in many places and companies in the world (hiring a woman or minority to positions could get you killed). The idea that politics and people and corporations are not intimately intertwined is a reflection of privilege.
- mc32 7y agoSure life is political. We can have protests, vote for candidates, engage in civil disobedience and all that. What I don’t want is anyone making it a point to bring their personal politics to work. We have other forums for that. Don’t politicize every part of our existence. I wanna go to work and provide some productivity to my employer. If I don’t like their politics I can vote at the ballot box, donate to causes, volunteer etc. I don’t need to bring my POVs to work. You may not like mine, I may not like yours. We don’t need this kind of confrontation at work. Unionization is political but it’s on a different plane. It’s worker vs employer rather than potentially worker vs worker. Do we really want to approach a time when one group of workers takes one side, another takes another side and they protest against each other and cause disruption to the vast majority who have no interest in getting personally involved? Presumably both groups would have this “right” though be their opinions different.
- biztos 7y agoI share your preference for keeping politics out of the office, but: * In the US, and in Tech, I hardly think trying to organize a union is going to not have worker v. worker politics. "We should organize" involves all kinds of Why's and How's about which there are widely divergent opinions among today's workforce. * Employers routinely bring politics into the office, for starters by funding Political Action Committees and lobbying for what they perceive to be in "the company's" interest. I actually heard a COO in an all-hands once say "yeah I guess we don't support the Democrats <chuckle>" -- so if your employer is going to make their support of Candidate X part of the work culture, is there any reason other than job security why I'd want to keep my support for Candidate Y under wraps?
- threatofrain 7y ago"Leave your politics at home" is more stupid than ever as we think about unions. Politics is the negotiation of power, and unions are a counterbalancing act to power. Any conversation about minority outreach is a discussion of power. The talk around immigration and H1-B visas is a conversation about power.
- shadowgovt 7y agoUnions are political constructs, so by definition a right to unionize implies a right to politicize work (at least for a narrow wedge of "politicize"). And Google spans such a wide range of users' lives, that at Google at least, it's going to be hard to do one's job properly in a lot of areas of the company without having some political / philosophical conversations about free speech (YouTube bans and censorship), the right to bear arms (Google's block against firearm ads), etc. One can consider the decisions the company makes to be divorced from political issues, but politics ultimately rides atop philosophy, and companies are entities within societies, so the politics will inevitably come into play. If political strategic decisions are something Google is deciding is "above the pay grade" of swathes of engineers, that's a decision they can make but it is a shift for the company from its roots.
- goatinaboat 7y agoGoogle had wiped her personal phone when it suspended her Everyone take note: BYOD isn’t for your benefit.
- mc32 7y agoThis. BYOD is a very bad idea. It has no upside for the user. It’s all for the benefit of the employer in multiple ways. Don’t do it.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoAgreed. For a while my company allowed Office 365 access from my cell phone without installing anything but now they require inTune and reserve the right to wipe phones but promise to never do it. I guess I will stop using Outlook on my phone...
- adrr 7y agoI'd rather not have to carry two mobile phones around which would be the alternative to BYOD. BYOD is fine if the MDM software does profiles and allows the separation of company data and personal data. That way the company can only wipe its own data and not the personal data.
- ummonk 7y agoDon't carry your work phone around when you're off hours.
- alistairSH 7y agoDoes a remote wipe also wipe out cloud backups? Couldn't the employee simply restore from a backup (cloud or on-disk)?
- shadowgovt 7y agoA corp wipe shouldn't touch personal data, so that should hypothetically be possible. If they can't, my guess is it's because cloud backup was disabled (and corp wipe will conservatively blow away the local camera cache because there's no way to know if any photos contained corp-sensitive data). Worth keeping in mind the target use-case of corp wipe: a hostile agent has taken control of a corporate asset. Application of policy to minimize the risk to the corporation, i.e. blowing away all cache that could be reached without an additional private user credential into a personal account, should be expected.
- michaelt 7y ago> At a public protest just days before her firing, Rivers told the 200 Googlers who rallied in opposition to her suspension that Google had wiped her personal phone when it suspended her, erasing many months of photographs Ouch. Presumably this would have been MDM? I've never understood why phone makers make this possible for non-device-owners, as it seems like a gigantic foot-gun. To say nothing about the ethics involved.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoAll my stuff is backed up off my phone anyway, so I would only be mildly annoyed if my employer wiped it. I'm glad they have the capability, because otherwise they'd require me to carry a separate work phone, which would be super annoying. As to the ethical question, under some ethical systems, voluntary agreements without coercion are by-default ethical. My employer doesn't force me to install a work profile. They're happy to supply me with a separate phone if need be. But I voluntarily take on that risk for the convenience.
- rorykoehler 7y agoYou are glad your employer has deep access into your personal phone?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoYes, that is indeed what I said. I even explained the tradeoffs and why they are acceptable to me. Was something unclear?
- rorykoehler 7y agoI'm just trying to understand the world we live in. Your position is the opposite of mine. It's so far the opposite that I had trouble believing what I was reading but it's valid so sorry if you to feel like my question was a personal attack.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago> clear and repeated violations of our data security policies Who’s data did they access? What data was accessed? How was that data used? Google knows they’re in a bind, because if a few SJWs accessed internal Google data in a “bad way” (as viewed outside the Bay Area monoculture) then that’s going to be a really bad look, maybe even worse than a hacker.
- anonuser123456 7y agoWhy is this comment down voted? The three questions here are SUPER relevant to how Google operates. Everyone I know at Google says "The easiest way to get fired is to access user data in a non-permitted way." If they just subscribed to public calendars, it doesn't sound like such a big deal (after all... the data is public). But if they used an internal API or used their position to elevate their privilege, that's a big deal.
- tialaramex 7y agoMy understanding is that these employees were looking through people's calendars and documents to figure out who was negotiating for Google with outfits like the Border Patrol, so they could pressure these people to stop and so they could let outside press know the status of any discussions. So say Alice who is a Search Engine Data Analyst finds that Daryl over in Corporate Finance has a meeting "CBP update Washington". Alice reasons that CBP is US Customs & Border Patrol who she believes are inhumane and Google shoudn't work wit them - and she pulls up all Daryl's other meetings and sets an alert to tell her if Daryl books any other meetings with the word CBP in. Alice gets fired. The problem for this current plan is that sure it looks like Alice is being fired for _snooping on corporate plans_ which historically wasn't against Google's rules but is also not a legally protected activity. Sure, she was snooping on those plans for the same reason she was organizing (to stop Google working with CBP), but that doesn't make her fired for organizing. The most senior person I knew properly at Google left citing this sort of ethical problem as one reason, they felt that working on products that might be used by people who had beliefs they disagreed with was unacceptable. Weirdly they left to work for... a famous AAA video games vendor that specifically brought them on to add obviously unethical monetisation features to future games which prey on people with gambling addiction and other problems. We have agreed to disagree on whether this is outright hypocrisy.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoI figure others would be curious about Google's side of it. Who is right or wrong doesn't seem obvious to me. Apparently this is a memo about why these workers were fired[0]: > We’ve seen a recent increase in information being shared outside the company, including the names and details of our employees. Our teams are committed to investigating these issues, and today we’ve dismissed four employees for clear and repeated violations of our data security policies. > There’s been some misinformation circulating about this investigation, both internally and externally. We want to be clear that none of these individuals were fired for simply looking at documents or calendars during the ordinary course of their work. > To the contrary, our thorough investigation found the individuals were involved in systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work. This includes searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs — repeating this conduct even after they were met with and reminded about our data security policies. This information, along with details of internal emails and inaccurate descriptions about Googlers’ work, was subsequently shared externally. > In one case, among other information they accessed and copied, an individual subscribed to the calendars of a wide range of employees outside of their work group. The individual set up notifications so that they received emails detailing the work and whereabouts of those employees, including personal matters such as 1:1s, medical appointments and family activities — all without those employees’ knowledge or consent. When the affected Googlers discovered this, many reported that they felt scared or unsafe, and requested to work from another location. Screenshots of some of their calendars, including their names and details, subsequently made their way outside the company. > We have always taken information security very seriously, and will not tolerate efforts to intimidate Googlers or undermine their work, nor actions that lead to the leak of sensitive business or customer information. This is not how Google’s open culture works or was ever intended to work. We expect every member of our community to abide by our data security policies. > Fortunately, these types of activities are rare. Thank you to everyone who does the right thing every day — doing amazing work, while inspiring and maintaining the trust of our users, partners, and each other. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25/google-fires-four-employees-citing-data-security-violations https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25/google-fi...
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- jeanlou 7y agoThey are making it sound as if Google deleted the device because it was documenting the transformation. Whatever. Serves you for having your personal data on a company's phone.
- gregd 7y agoOver and above the policy that a Corporation has over your phone (personal or otherwise) when you access their stuff, nobody talks about the potential liability that can open up to your personal device during an e-discovery process. You could potentially have to hand your personal device over to lawyers where they can then put your personal device through an e-discovery process should your employer be sued . People need to really think hard before they relinquish that kind of control of a device that you own.
- pnathan 7y agoI have a policy of never allowing a MDM policy on my phone. I use the web portals for calendaring, email. Notifications for calendar events are usually parlayed into SMS notifications. There's also questions about "IP" law here. If you're developing interesting software at home, having separate hardware for that work is going to be critical for the legal analysis to get funding, etc.
- franczesko 7y ago"The fired workers said that they plan to continue their activism" Some people apparently forgot why they come to work.
- drdeadringer 7y agoWhy do they come to work? Why do you come to work? Is it something like "I shut up and sit down for money" or something else? Are there activists who earn money?
- franczesko 7y agoI think that work places should be a neutral ground for everyone to do what they were hired for - free of any personal ideologies or politics. If you think, that work is is for activism of your personal beliefs, you clearly got it all wrong my friend. Yes - you go to work for money for what you do. Nothing more, nothing less.
- netwanderer3 7y agoGoogle is facing a scaling problem. Scaling is not just limited to business functions such as marketing activities, but it's also about managing their employees as the number of staffs required will keep on increasing which surely would introduce a host of brand new problems. Google's management is having a hard time in dealing with this aspect, evidently by the scaling back of their weekly town halls, internally categorized as "TGIF meetings", mostly known by the public as those quick fire chat Q&A sessions with management. The recent cancellations of many Google products and services were probably an indirect result of this too, it was also an attempt of scaling back. Its huge size must have exceeded the current limitations of their operation structure, unless some of its core policies and missions must be altered significantly. A few of these changes may have already been carried out, the hiring of an anti-union organization and the installing of internal web browser monitoring tool. This begs the question though, when you have something that got scaled up to such an enormous size which inevitably would accompany with more unique and challenging chaotic scenarios, what are the possible approaches to resolve these situations in a harmony and effective way? The solutions are not easy and these problems are becoming increasingly common in our modern world. The same issues that were once very simple have upgraded themselves to become much more difficult to deal with and with many added layers of complexity. I attended a recent startup event in Vietnam in which Mr. Nguyen Thanh Nam, chairman of Endeavor Vietnam, told the story of his personal experience in facing a similar challenge in managing a large number of people. The numbers were probably not at the same crazy level at Google's but the effective solution for him in the end was to go and live in some rural villages for a while where thousands of people manage to participate daily in a very large but well-behaved community and all in harmony. The challenge facing with an increase of diversity is alignment. The greatest benefit of diversity is new innovations, but only if its chaotic nature can be managed by correct alignment. Without this anchoring element, things will quickly spiral out of control. To effectively aligning a massive group of people, this anchoring element must be based on basic core values or principles that naturally DO NOT or RARELY CHANGE over time. There won't be any consistent alignment if those values change too often or just cannot be applied effectively for long enough. I believe Google might be approaching it incorrectly. Some of the methods reported by the media seem very similar to censoring. That is not alignment, that is the equivalent of putting a dome structure over everyone. It would slowly create an environment that inhibits creativity limiting people's abilities. It's certainly an alternative method but just not a preferred one. Correct alignment is a much better and more efficient method for the long game. Talents and technical skills can all change very quickly in modern time, what binds people together are the common mindsets and personality attributes that are always considered good under any environments and withstanding any degrees of change. This alignment is applied even to the management themselves, and not just to the engineers whom they manage, it is actually more critical at the top level. What is the Google's personna? There should be a mechanism in place for the management to detect when they are deviating too much from the anchoring alignment as well. What we are seeing at Google is probably an early sign of this deviation, or perhaps the values being used in aligning everyone together just do not have as much longevity?
- whack 7y agoAs a programmer, it's interesting to view organizational structure and culture through the lens of software design. Specifically, how Google's culture and organization is so radically different from Amazon's. Amazon genuinely tries to embody the Unix philosophy. Two pizza teams that have ownership over their slice of the company, and get to decide how their team/org should operate. As a individual contributor at Amazon, there is zero expectation that you'll have unrestricted visibility into what other organizations are doing. Google in contrast, breaks every rule in software design. There is no information hiding - everyone can see everything else. Decisions aren't made locally by the team in question - they are made centrally by people you will never see. Or by a mob of random employees who have made it their hobby to lobby against your plans. As a team manager, you cannot even decide which members of your team can check in changes into the (mono) repository - you have to get approval from someone who has been certified by the "readability team", and they have almost year-long waits to get certified. Amazon is microservices and Google is the majestic monolith. The Google approach works great at smaller sizes, but as the organization grows in size and complexity, I don't think the monolith approach can still work. I'd wager that is exactly the growing pains they are now going through.
- ryanmercer 7y agoWhile everyone in this thread are arguing about using your corporate phone for personal or your personal phone for corporate I'm just sitting here thinking: "I wish I had a job where a corporate phone was a thing, but I certainly wouldn't give my employer access to my personal device, that's what the one they provide in this situation is for".
- jdkee 7y ago“ The firings were announced less than a week after the New York Times revealed that Google had hired an anti-union consulting firm.” Those at Google who undermine the power of labor to organize are evil people.