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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

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.
  - drewbug01 7y ago
    Not software/devops/security engineers in the US, as I’m sure you’re aware. You and I can claim to be software “engineers” in the US and no one can reasonably tell us we’re wrong. And the domain of conversation is restricted to the US, because that’s where she worked. The misogyny comes from the fact that this tends to only come up whenever a woman engineer is in the news. Nobody comments on HN threads saying “but he isn’t even an engineer”.
    - Terretta 7y ago
      These are not equivalents: Scripter -> Coder -> Developer -> Software Engineer
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    But she is a credentialed security engineer, so I guess you agree the criticism that she's not a qualified engineer is wrong.
KirinDave 7y ago
She's got a CompTia Security+ certification. That is not a trivial amount of specialist education. You certainly aren't expected to have a college degree to be an "engineer" if that's the thrust of your argument. Tbh it sounds like other ulterior motives are clouding your judgement here. She seems like exactly the sort of engineer who would benefit from unionization and while I might need it less, I fully support her and I'm disappointed in Google for firing her. As I've said elsewhere, these sham reasons for firing folks adjacent to union activity are opening up the company to massive liability and imo the board and shareholders should hold more people accountable.
- fargle 7y ago
  A CompTia Security+ cert is actually pretty trivial. It's complete regurgitation, and not even of industry standard best practices, but of CompTia defined "best" practices. It's the lowest and most basic tech cert you can get. It certainly isn't evidence of any engineering discipline. The board and shareholders will have to decide whether this action was, or was not, in their best interests. But history has shown that Wall Street would generally agree with this one. It's certainly not a "massive" liability. Should the employee prevail, years from now, in a wrongful termination suit the cost to google will be trivial compared to the employee. That's why other companies often flagrantly intentionally ignore NLRB protections. It's a very limited civil liability with a very high burden of proof on the employee.
  - KirinDave 7y ago
    > It's the lowest and most basic tech cert you can get. As opposed to... what? Do college degrees promise engineering discipline? Surely not. Many successful engineers have nothing more than a high school diploma and industry experience. This has clearly gone into sexist territory now. She's a she, and therefore her experience and education is going to be audited by arbitrary and increasingly vague standards to make sure she's considered valueless. > It certainly isn't evidence of any engineering discipline. There is literally no credential that does this. It's a ridiculous standard to offer forward. Engineering discipline is a property of teams and organizations. On an individual level there is no distinct standard of it. You are moving the goalposts outside the stadium. > It's certainly not a "massive" liability. Should the employee prevail, years from now, in a wrongful termination suit the cost to google will be trivial compared to the employee. I disagree. With the rash of these firings, we may start to see a collective lawsuit. Should systemic problems be found, Google is in genuine danger of both large fines (both the left and right in the US and other countries are eager to give Google a black eye for perceived wrongs) and of severe reputational damage putting it at a competitive hiring disadvantage. > It's a very limited civil liability with a very high burden of proof on the employee. Right up until you get enough claimants for various collective actions, I agree this is the sad case for American enforcement.

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.
- drewbug01 7y ago
  Not software/devops/security engineers in the US, as I’m sure you’re aware. You and I can claim to be software “engineers” in the US and no one can reasonably tell us we’re wrong. And the domain of conversation is restricted to the US, because that’s where she worked. The misogyny comes from the fact that this tends to only come up whenever a woman engineer is in the news. Nobody comments on HN threads saying “but he isn’t even an engineer”.
  - Terretta 7y ago
    These are not equivalents: Scripter -> Coder -> Developer -> Software Engineer
- KirinDave 7y ago
  But she is a credentialed security engineer, so I guess you agree the criticism that she's not a qualified engineer is wrong.

KirinDave 7y ago

She's got a CompTia Security+ certification. That is not a trivial amount of specialist education. You certainly aren't expected to have a college degree to be an "engineer" if that's the thrust of your argument. Tbh it sounds like other ulterior motives are clouding your judgement here. She seems like exactly the sort of engineer who would benefit from unionization and while I might need it less, I fully support her and I'm disappointed in Google for firing her. As I've said elsewhere, these sham reasons for firing folks adjacent to union activity are opening up the company to massive liability and imo the board and shareholders should hold more people accountable.

fargle 7y ago
A CompTia Security+ cert is actually pretty trivial. It's complete regurgitation, and not even of industry standard best practices, but of CompTia defined "best" practices. It's the lowest and most basic tech cert you can get. It certainly isn't evidence of any engineering discipline. The board and shareholders will have to decide whether this action was, or was not, in their best interests. But history has shown that Wall Street would generally agree with this one. It's certainly not a "massive" liability. Should the employee prevail, years from now, in a wrongful termination suit the cost to google will be trivial compared to the employee. That's why other companies often flagrantly intentionally ignore NLRB protections. It's a very limited civil liability with a very high burden of proof on the employee.
- KirinDave 7y ago
  > It's the lowest and most basic tech cert you can get. As opposed to... what? Do college degrees promise engineering discipline? Surely not. Many successful engineers have nothing more than a high school diploma and industry experience. This has clearly gone into sexist territory now. She's a she, and therefore her experience and education is going to be audited by arbitrary and increasingly vague standards to make sure she's considered valueless. > It certainly isn't evidence of any engineering discipline. There is literally no credential that does this. It's a ridiculous standard to offer forward. Engineering discipline is a property of teams and organizations. On an individual level there is no distinct standard of it. You are moving the goalposts outside the stadium. > It's certainly not a "massive" liability. Should the employee prevail, years from now, in a wrongful termination suit the cost to google will be trivial compared to the employee. I disagree. With the rash of these firings, we may start to see a collective lawsuit. Should systemic problems be found, Google is in genuine danger of both large fines (both the left and right in the US and other countries are eager to give Google a black eye for perceived wrongs) and of severe reputational damage putting it at a competitive hiring disadvantage. > It's a very limited civil liability with a very high burden of proof on the employee. Right up until you get enough claimants for various collective actions, I agree this is the sad case for American enforcement.