9 ms·

Really? So if I hire you to email out my monthly company statement it’s reasonable that you add some of your own thoughts to said email.

jagged-chisel 7y ago
I think GP is saying that since 'right to organize' is in the company policy, then adding this seems right in line with the job. If, indeed, this was not in the company policy, and it is indeed the employee's opinion, then yes, termination is apt.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
void445be54d48a 7y ago
Not sure that notifying people of the law is actually "your own thoughts".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ralusek 7y ago
  How? If I am instructed to email an update notifying our users about new terms of service whenever they are changed, and I add an addendum, "Don't forget, you have 3 days after the old terms of service expire on order to return old devices..." The company has every right to fire me.
helen___keller 7y ago
It wasn't her thoughts it was company policy, or to be specific it's required by law that this notice to be posted in the workplace. It's was her personal judgment that it should be posted in a chrome add-on rather than only by poster like is typical in most workplaces. But assuming her job was to maintain an add-on that informs employees of company policy, and assuming her job typically lets her act with personal judgment, yeah I think that's perfectly reasonable In fact, you can find further support of her action from the NLRB FAQ: https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/faq/elections/are-there-any-changes-requirements-post-notice-election https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/faq/elections/are-there-any-c... "The employer is also required to distribute the notice electronically to unit employees if it customarily communicates with employees in the unit electronically, either by email, by posting on an employer intranet site, or both" Again, it's her judgment to add the notification (which links to the Google intranet posting of the NLRB poster), but considering that Google customarily informs employees of policy via notifications in this add-on, and she is in charge of maintaining said add-on, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable judgment to add this notification
- ramblerman 7y ago
  Being in charge of the infrastructure does not mean you are in charge of the content. Those are well defined roles. Specially in a company of that size. She didn’t just make a judgement call. She went way outside her role imo.
  - helen___keller 7y ago
    I don't really know enough to agree or disagree with you. She claims she's in a role to make judgment calls on adding content - and that this was reinforced by her previous stellar performance reviews, which made her confident in her judgment - but I don't personally have enough info to know if that's the truth. She very well could be stretching the truth that maybe every other addition she's made was under the direction of HR or product, in which case she is definitely out of line here - it would take the input of a Googler on her team to know for sure.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      Googlers are encouraged---well, in the past, have been encouraged---to consider themselves capable of making judgement calls like this one. That having been said, this would still be considered an unusual call to have made. But had I been on the receiving end of this message, I suspect I'd have found it annoying unless she remembered to suppress it after first display---if she had, I wouldn't have been bothered by it.
      - dokein 7y ago
        Part of being encouraged to exercise personal judgment is being responsible enough to participate in the consequences. Judgment with no/few personal consequences is reserved for children and legislators.
        dlp211 7y ago
        The consequences to something like this should not to be fired. It is a CL rollback and a blameless postmortem.
KirinDave 7y ago
If those thoughts are factual and relevant to the topic at hand, it... does seem like it's reasonable? She's an engineer, not someone working a type pool.
- ticmasta 7y ago
  Only because you brought it up, someone in the typing pool likely has more education and experience: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-spiers-1b3048a1/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-spiers-1b3048a1/ By any measure she's not an engineer.
  - the_narrator 7y ago
    By any measure she's not even a she.
    - dang 7y ago
      We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop. Doing this will get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
  - drewbug01 7y ago
    > By any measure she's not an engineer. Please explain why she's not an engineer; and please take care to include discussion of why anyone is an arbiter of the "engineer" title in a field which is largely unregulated and not credentialed. Otherwise the most charitable reading of your comment is something like "ticmasta thinks security engineers are not real engineers," and the less charitable reading is something like "ticmasta claims this person is not an engineer because she is a woman," which is incredibly juvenile and misogynistic. It has no place on this forum.
    - fargle 7y ago
      > in a field which is largely unregulated and not credentialed. That IS why (engineers are credentialed and regulated). And where you got misogynistic is a mystery - simply using someones pronoun of choice in conjunction with something negative isn't implying anything.
C14L 7y ago
Was she hired to only add things other people told her to add? Or was she hired to add things she considered relevant?
- helen___keller 7y ago
  That's a good question, I don't know, but she claims the latter. In her Medium post she claims that "Part of what makes me a great fit for Google is that the company is always telling us to take initiative to deliver high impact work." and also that she received stellar (4/5, 4/5, 5/5, where 5/5 is apparently top 2%) performance reviews, which reinforced her view that she should act on her judgment.
  - mrandish 7y ago
    If she really was "a great fit for Google" then she'd have realized the obvious fact that her naive attempt to fulfill an NRLB regulatory requirement would be something that should be checked with Google's legal department so a lawyer specialized in labor regulation can confirm that doing what she planned would actually meet the regulatory requirement as well as confirm this requirement wasn't already met in another way. For example, did her design record sufficient analytics for regulatory compliance reporting? If a regulated company can't verify they did it correctly, it didn't happen. Did it distinguish between contractors, part-time and full-time employees? How did it handle employees outside the U.S.? By IP address or did it look up their country of residence in HR records? What about interns? Did it count these different populations correctly or was it at risk of over-reporting and getting the company fined? Did her design meet the requirements for Spanish-speaking ESL employees based in the U.S. Did her design read-out the text for blind and vision-impaired employees or did it initiate notification via an alternate channel? In my opinion, she's being extremely disingenuous with her claims.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  A little of the former and a little of the latter, most likely. However, that doesn't mean her judgment r.e. what is relevant is immune to review. And if it's sufficiently incorrect, consequences like what happened shouldn't be surprising.
hrktb 7y ago
It would be more like that employee emailing a company statement you didn’t want people to be aware of.
ajross 7y ago
Yes, really. How about the converse: what if Google used it's ability to control employees' email to send messages on their behalf arguing against unionization? Part of the right of free speech is correctness of attribution. Trying to speak as someone else, using someone else's communication channels isn't speech, it's fraud. And I say that as (at least within the spectrum of folks on this site) a full on pinko commie unionizer. If this is the truth of the story, this just wasn't OK, and was a very reasonable firing offense.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  Workers need to be willing to break the law in order to win victories against the people that make the laws. Employers aren't even the law, this is such a small thing and is defensible. I don't see a reason to side with Google at all, if they really vociferously disagreed, they could ask her to remove the notification.
  - ajross 7y ago
    > Workers need to be willing to break the law in order to win victories against the people that make the laws. Not if they want to win, they don't. Anarchism won nothing at the turn of the century. Organized (note the adjective!) Labor broke through when it became a political movement with representation in government.
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      Asserting rights you don't have means breaking the law by definition, and it has always been that way - from civil rights movement to the revolution.
      - ajross 7y ago
        Sorry, what? They have the right to unionize. The whole issue at hand is that the employee put a notice of that legal right into an employer tool. What rights do these people not have that you're thinking of? Look, the point here is that if you want to win a unionization fight (which is a legal victory, it will happen in courts and with contracts) you have to fight using legal tools. Pulling anarchist tricks like this just makes you feel better, it does nothing but make management's position stronger.

jagged-chisel 7y ago

I think GP is saying that since 'right to organize' is in the company policy, then adding this seems right in line with the job. If, indeed, this was not in the company policy, and it is indeed the employee's opinion, then yes, termination is apt.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

void445be54d48a 7y ago

Not sure that notifying people of the law is actually "your own thoughts".

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ralusek 7y ago
How? If I am instructed to email an update notifying our users about new terms of service whenever they are changed, and I add an addendum, "Don't forget, you have 3 days after the old terms of service expire on order to return old devices..." The company has every right to fire me.

helen___keller 7y ago

It wasn't her thoughts it was company policy, or to be specific it's required by law that this notice to be posted in the workplace. It's was her personal judgment that it should be posted in a chrome add-on rather than only by poster like is typical in most workplaces. But assuming her job was to maintain an add-on that informs employees of company policy, and assuming her job typically lets her act with personal judgment, yeah I think that's perfectly reasonable In fact, you can find further support of her action from the NLRB FAQ: https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/faq/elections/are-there-any-changes-requirements-post-notice-election https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/faq/elections/are-there-any-c... "The employer is also required to distribute the notice electronically to unit employees if it customarily communicates with employees in the unit electronically, either by email, by posting on an employer intranet site, or both" Again, it's her judgment to add the notification (which links to the Google intranet posting of the NLRB poster), but considering that Google customarily informs employees of policy via notifications in this add-on, and she is in charge of maintaining said add-on, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable judgment to add this notification

ramblerman 7y ago
Being in charge of the infrastructure does not mean you are in charge of the content. Those are well defined roles. Specially in a company of that size. She didn’t just make a judgement call. She went way outside her role imo.
- helen___keller 7y ago
  I don't really know enough to agree or disagree with you. She claims she's in a role to make judgment calls on adding content - and that this was reinforced by her previous stellar performance reviews, which made her confident in her judgment - but I don't personally have enough info to know if that's the truth. She very well could be stretching the truth that maybe every other addition she's made was under the direction of HR or product, in which case she is definitely out of line here - it would take the input of a Googler on her team to know for sure.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    Googlers are encouraged---well, in the past, have been encouraged---to consider themselves capable of making judgement calls like this one. That having been said, this would still be considered an unusual call to have made. But had I been on the receiving end of this message, I suspect I'd have found it annoying unless she remembered to suppress it after first display---if she had, I wouldn't have been bothered by it.
    - dokein 7y ago
      Part of being encouraged to exercise personal judgment is being responsible enough to participate in the consequences. Judgment with no/few personal consequences is reserved for children and legislators.
      - dlp211 7y ago
        The consequences to something like this should not to be fired. It is a CL rollback and a blameless postmortem.

KirinDave 7y ago

If those thoughts are factual and relevant to the topic at hand, it... does seem like it's reasonable? She's an engineer, not someone working a type pool.

ticmasta 7y ago
Only because you brought it up, someone in the typing pool likely has more education and experience: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-spiers-1b3048a1/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryn-spiers-1b3048a1/ By any measure she's not an engineer.
- the_narrator 7y ago
  By any measure she's not even a she.
  - dang 7y ago
    We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop. Doing this will get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
- drewbug01 7y ago
  > By any measure she's not an engineer. Please explain why she's not an engineer; and please take care to include discussion of why anyone is an arbiter of the "engineer" title in a field which is largely unregulated and not credentialed. Otherwise the most charitable reading of your comment is something like "ticmasta thinks security engineers are not real engineers," and the less charitable reading is something like "ticmasta claims this person is not an engineer because she is a woman," which is incredibly juvenile and misogynistic. It has no place on this forum.
  - fargle 7y ago
    > in a field which is largely unregulated and not credentialed. That IS why (engineers are credentialed and regulated). And where you got misogynistic is a mystery - simply using someones pronoun of choice in conjunction with something negative isn't implying anything.

C14L 7y ago

Was she hired to only add things other people told her to add? Or was she hired to add things she considered relevant?

helen___keller 7y ago
That's a good question, I don't know, but she claims the latter. In her Medium post she claims that "Part of what makes me a great fit for Google is that the company is always telling us to take initiative to deliver high impact work." and also that she received stellar (4/5, 4/5, 5/5, where 5/5 is apparently top 2%) performance reviews, which reinforced her view that she should act on her judgment.
- mrandish 7y ago
  If she really was "a great fit for Google" then she'd have realized the obvious fact that her naive attempt to fulfill an NRLB regulatory requirement would be something that should be checked with Google's legal department so a lawyer specialized in labor regulation can confirm that doing what she planned would actually meet the regulatory requirement as well as confirm this requirement wasn't already met in another way. For example, did her design record sufficient analytics for regulatory compliance reporting? If a regulated company can't verify they did it correctly, it didn't happen. Did it distinguish between contractors, part-time and full-time employees? How did it handle employees outside the U.S.? By IP address or did it look up their country of residence in HR records? What about interns? Did it count these different populations correctly or was it at risk of over-reporting and getting the company fined? Did her design meet the requirements for Spanish-speaking ESL employees based in the U.S. Did her design read-out the text for blind and vision-impaired employees or did it initiate notification via an alternate channel? In my opinion, she's being extremely disingenuous with her claims.
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
A little of the former and a little of the latter, most likely. However, that doesn't mean her judgment r.e. what is relevant is immune to review. And if it's sufficiently incorrect, consequences like what happened shouldn't be surprising.

hrktb 7y ago

It would be more like that employee emailing a company statement you didn’t want people to be aware of.

ajross 7y ago

Yes, really. How about the converse: what if Google used it's ability to control employees' email to send messages on their behalf arguing against unionization? Part of the right of free speech is correctness of attribution. Trying to speak as someone else, using someone else's communication channels isn't speech, it's fraud. And I say that as (at least within the spectrum of folks on this site) a full on pinko commie unionizer. If this is the truth of the story, this just wasn't OK, and was a very reasonable firing offense.

tehjoker 7y ago
Workers need to be willing to break the law in order to win victories against the people that make the laws. Employers aren't even the law, this is such a small thing and is defensible. I don't see a reason to side with Google at all, if they really vociferously disagreed, they could ask her to remove the notification.
- ajross 7y ago
  > Workers need to be willing to break the law in order to win victories against the people that make the laws. Not if they want to win, they don't. Anarchism won nothing at the turn of the century. Organized (note the adjective!) Labor broke through when it became a political movement with representation in government.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    Asserting rights you don't have means breaking the law by definition, and it has always been that way - from civil rights movement to the revolution.
    - ajross 7y ago
      Sorry, what? They have the right to unionize. The whole issue at hand is that the employee put a notice of that legal right into an employer tool. What rights do these people not have that you're thinking of? Look, the point here is that if you want to win a unionization fight (which is a legal victory, it will happen in courts and with contracts) you have to fight using legal tools. Pulling anarchist tricks like this just makes you feel better, it does nothing but make management's position stronger.