14 ms·
Workers Leaving the Googleplex
- Uhhrrr 15y agoNote to young videographers: When a company asks whether you're working on an expose, the phrase "I’m interested in issues of class, race, and labor" will not defuse the situation.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Sapient 15y agoWhen I read that phrase, I was thinking he MUST have known it was going to get him fired.
- pstack 15y agoOf course! What kind of traction would his insinuations have if he hadn't baited them for termination and he had to end the "expose" with "we had a sit down where I explained my intentions and we sorted it all out and had a beer and a laugh". The "and they fired me!" that is intended to add to the suspicion. It causes most viewers to ask "wait, if there was nothing to hide, then why'd they fire him?".
- motters 15y agoWhy would being interested in sociological issues get him fired?
- innes 15y agoYou can claim 'sociological issues' all you like, but when people see you're a fantasist with a laughable view of how the world works, and you're dealing in sly insinuation and race baiting... 'sociological issues' aint gonna cut it. Well, I say that, but with the naivety on show in this thread perhaps this guy is onto a winner with 'sociological issues'.
- joelangeway 15y agoI hope I never have to work for someone who'll fire me if I tell them I'm interested in issues of class or race.
- forensic 15y agoI think he just didn't care and preferred to tell the truth than be intimidated into lying.
- mruniverse 15y agoThat's hilarious. His letter to Ralph was so passive–aggressive. I would have left out these nuggets: 1)... now that I know it's so super-secret 2)... are mostly people of color and cannot eat Google meals 3)... I wasn’t approaching this as an act of muckraking 4)... nice way to meet people who work right next to me but are very clearly not the same class as me
- paganel 15y ago> 2)... are mostly people of color and cannot eat Google meals That's a bummer, because those were indeed people of color who were not allowed to eat Google meals. Well, at least I know why it took you guys in the States 100 years to actually give equal rights to your fellow black citizens: you were all too afraid of losing your jobs.
- illumen 15y agoThere are over 2 million african americans working for free in USA prisons. I'm not sure they've moved on all that much.
- AlexC04 15y agoAssume each "Google Meal" costs $5 in preparation labour, materials, plates & utensils (washing), fittings and fixtures, etc... 261 working days a year 1 employee $5 = $1305 per employee, per year How many workers in the 3.14 building? At 400 employees, that's half a million dollars. Does the board of director's fiduciary duty to their shareholders allow them to pay for the Scan Ops lunches? I don't know what minimum wage in the states is, but I'm pretty sure most of those workers would rather have that extra five dollars in their pockets and brown-bag it. It's also a lot easier to justify an extra dollar an hour above minimum wage. "Catered lunches" is a perk that (as far as I know) is very rare. Your company "not buying you lunch every day" is the norm. I can't see any outrage in their perfectly normal behavior.
- adaml_623 15y agoYou've presented some arithmetic and no information at all. If the story is that these employees are being employed at minimum wage then that's something that contradicts the "Don't be evil" ethos.
- mateuszb 15y agomind blown. where's the don't be evil thing ?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- latch 15y agoexploit? i'm sorry...not having access to free meals, shuttle buses, smartphones, etc isn't exploitation. There's nothing in this that says anything close to exploitation.
- guard-of-terra 15y agoThey are not allowed to communicate with other employees and are told to report such occurences. Screams exploitation to me.
- learc83 15y agoNo, it screams these employees are working on something confidential. Google keeps them from socializing with everyone else in order to keep them from talking about their work.
- latch 15y agoIANAL. I'll grant you that this is sketchy. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protects employees from engaging in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection. In the US you can't stop person A from talking to person B if the purpose is to make your job better (better benefits/working conditions/almost anything). IANAL (again)..but, yes, if they aren't allowed to talk to other employees about non-NDA stuff, I agree that maybe a line is slightly being crossed.
- codeographer 15y agoWe understand you're not a lawyer. (Thanks)
- paulrademacher 15y agoNo one was forbidden from communicating with other employees. In this case, it seems what happened was the woman correctly decided that the situation was unusual (some guy you don't know asking all kinds of questions about your work), and should be checked out by management.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago"the first girl I had spoken to had followed the instructions on the back of her yellow badge – which is to call a certain manager if anyone asks about the work of the yellow badge class" This scarely reminds of "Jedem das Seine" and "Arbeit macht frei" Both phrases actually match the described situation perfectly
- __bjoernd 15y agoActually, this comparison is way out of place. Not giving people benefits (but still paying them!) is completely different from imprisoning and torturing people for their race, opinions, or beliefs.
- guard-of-terra 15y agoI've heard that segregation is a big deal, and it's what is happening according to the article.
- Maro 15y agoAFAIK, segregation was physical separation, not forbidding people to talk to each other. On a large corporate campus, you can't just randomly walk around in the buildings. Your access card doesn't even work everywhere. So segregation (physical separation) is pretty standard.
- Uchikoma 15y agoSo not getting rides to Disney Land is the same as being worked to death? Way off doesn't begin to describe how screwed your comparison is.
- guard-of-terra 15y agoSo not being permitted to speak to other employees is the same as not getting rides to Disney Land? Way off doesn't begin to describe how screwed your comparison is.
- g123g 15y agoWow. This sounds like some kind of sweatshop operating within the Google campus and they are afraid of this getting exposed. Still not able to reconcile the public image of Google and what is described in this post.
- namank 15y agoTheres probably more to it than just that. Given Google's history, I have to account for other factors - maybe these are temporary employees being hired to a special program (as in a remedial or 'second chance' program). Or maybe this is Google's new way of boosting revenue! Lets not jump to conclusions, this will definitely get picked by major news outlets and then Google will have to respond
- bugsy 15y agoWow, so these yellow badges are sort of the plantation slave labor then? Amazing to hear that Google has a strict caste system. edit: wow, at 1:05PST dozens of people suddenly hit this thread and started attacking the premise.
- learc83 15y agoYes, if you classify slave labor as someone voluntarily doing work for which they get paid.
- exit 15y agothere's nothing voluntary about participation in capitalism.
- learc83 15y agoSo you want to change the scope of the argument to: all Google employees are plantation slave labor? Ask yourself this--if any plantation slaves were alive today, would they agree with your comparison?
- billswift 15y agoNo, he is attacking capitalism, he wants the World Soviet where we are all slaves of the, or at least of some, government.
- lubos 15y agothis made me sad. anyone still got illusion that google left china because of human rights?
- jrockway 15y agoGetting paid to go to lectures about books is a "human right" now?
- guard-of-terra 15y agoBeing treated equally to the people around you is a human right, should be anyway. Because being treated inequally, deprived of things people around you take for granted, can damage oneself seriously.
- jrockway 15y agoSo if I work at a company where the CEO gets a corporate jet, that jet becomes a "human right"?
- reubenyeah 15y agoNo, but if you work at a company where even the janitors get free lunch, you should get free lunch.
- jrockway 15y agoBut if the programmers that get free lunch are working for below-industry wages, and the data-entry people are getting industry wages, isn't it the people with the free lunch that are getting screwed over?
- guard-of-terra 15y agoThey are, so the only honest option is to pay industry wages as a rule and provide (or not provide) a reasonably comparable level of perks to everyone. Otherwise drama.
- garrettgillas 15y agoThis sounds an awful lot like the movie 'The Antitrust'.
- dangrossman 15y agoThere's no "the" in the movie title and I don't really see the parallel. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/
- tkahn6 15y agoThis is literally one of the craziest things I have ever seen. Google is doing absolutely nothing wrong or unethical at all. The guy got fired because he started accusing Google of racism. Wow. Just wow. The sense of entitlement and self-righteousness is just mind blowing.
- queensnake 15y agoYou have to admit it /could/ be like something out of Brave New World, so, it demands exploring. I mean they come in at 4 and leave at 2. It conflicts with Google's ethos (perhaps) to have truly 2nd class citizens, so they hide it. That's curiosity-provoking.
- tkahn6 15y ago> to have truly 2nd class citizens, How is this any different than having guards and janitors that work odd hours? You think they get all the Google perks that software engineers get?
- othermaciej 15y agoThe guy making the video implied that the security guards and janitors have "red badge" status, getting the same perks as any other contractor, but not the perks reserved only to full-time employees.
- tkahn6 15y agoOk? The point is that Google has tiered benefits. The outrage that guards have more benefits than other people in their building makes zero sense to me.
- othermaciej 15y agoThe fact that some employees have have lower benefits than others is not necessarily outrageous or even that unusual. The fact that Google apparently really wants to avoid having this documented is rather strange, though.
- quizbiz 15y agoHonestly, I'm not sure this is a big deal. They're hiring unskilled labor and giving them a role at an extraordinary company. A rational management team wanting to generate profits for risk taking investors and generate new growth, cuts costs by eliminating benefits when possible. They could easily get this done in India or China. If they are really doing book scanning, I'm shocked this isn't being done in the far east. With that perspective, this isn't far from "don't be evil". It's not the best practice in the world but this isn't exploitation. Perhaps it should inspire some investigative journalism. Perhaps Google could fund a program and give these data entry people the opportunity to innovate, rewarding them accordingly with a small scale founders' award? Despite the assumed background of these employees, they're at Google inspiring their kids. With so few benefits outside of their salary, they can always work elsewhere. But why would they take fast food or something of the sort over this? I imagine the cleaning crew that vacuum at Goldman Sachs at night get treated way worse.
- g123g 15y agoBut then how do you explain the overreaction from Google which led to the firing of this guy. There has to be something which Google was trying desperately to keep secret.
- pstack 15y agoIf I hire you to film some promotional company material for me and find that you're using the access we granted you and the time and resources we're paying you for to play documentary-film-maker/sociologist, I'll probably fire you, too.
- quizbiz 15y agoWe can all speculate and make up theories on a late friday night but the fact is Google has a lot going on. Some of which is probably currently unknown by their competitors. They want to keep it that way. Who knows what these guys are working on. Naturally, this isn't the best PR story ever. They could have handled it better. Clearly, from this guy's perspective, it was wrong for him to get fired but I'm sure the vendor that was providing him as contracted labor had to make a statement that they wouldn't tolerate this kind of thing. Would you hire a firm to video your office if they didn't fire a guy recording stuff you wanted confidential?
- n_are_q 15y agoSo if he handed off all the copies of the video he had to google, where did the video in the post come from? Is it a totally different video?
- nkassis 15y agoHe said tapes not copies. They wanted a the tapes from both days they only got the one day. He didn't say that they asked him to destroy all the copies.
- n_are_q 15y agoWell, except for this part of the post: Burt had a questionnaire to which my answers were : -I was given permission to use the camera by Carl, a superior. -The tape I used was mine. -I do not have possession of the footage I shot anymore and it does not exist in any other form. Anyway, i'm not looking for foul play, just curious what it is he posted.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- pstack 15y agoWas the voiceover being done in a closet in a Google lobby or is there another reason for the depressed monotone? I mean, I understand we're trying to be moody and ominous here, but the voiceover could have been retelling the story of the Human Centipede and I'd have probably fallen asleep (or wanted to shoot myself). I'm not defending Google, here, because I don't know anything about them beyond what everyone else knows from the outside. However, what do you expect the reaction to be when you are an employ for a company contracted to provide services to a client who grants you certain access and privileges which you then abuse to pursue your own interests and investigations outside of the scope of what you were employed to do? Hell, at the end of this video, I'm still unclear what point is trying to be conveyed. Is it just "the racial balance of the employees that I saw exiting the building for two days didn't meet some proper balance I had in my head, so I decided to start doing a socio-economic documentary on my employer's dime and after everything went to shit, because of how I was conducting myself, I put together a ten minute video to explain myself to future employers"? I saw a lot of smiling faces exiting the building and getting into nice cars. I don't see what the big deal is that people who are temporary or part of menial data-entry labor are not part of the greater events and benefits and festivities of the company. I'm sure it's that way at most companies. I'm on the development side of things and I don't get to go to the big sales-team getaways in Cancun or wherever else they go. And I doubt that the janitorial staff and security staff are sharing in the staff-bonus compensation that I am. And none of us are getting the several million dollar company loans to buy our mansion that CEOs have gotten. Perhaps this will be an unpopular sentiment, but I just got a strong vibe of "this is my chance to be a documentary film-maker".
- gradstudent 15y agoYou missed the point: the guy was fired for recording conversations with other employees. After being given permission from his supervisor to do exactly that. On his lunch break. Wtf is that all about?
- tkahn6 15y agoYou missed the part where he kept talking about race and unequal treatment and the ScanOps people of being mostly 'people of color'. He said these things explicitly in his letter that Google Legal reviewed. That is exactly why he was fired. Google did the absolutely correct thing. They don't want to deal with that shit. There's no conspiracy.
- latch 15y agoThe divide between people from different backgrounds was really obvious to me once I moved to Asia. There's an extreme class system at play. There are certainly places with this is exploited, but this isn't always the case. Often times they are just paid less, have less benefits, and work harder (at least, physically)...but they are still free, treated well, and seem generally happy. From the description given, there seems to be some parallels between yellow badges and what I've seen in Asia. I'm not sure that this is a bad thing. We can't all be PhDs earning high 6 figure salaries. There is a need for mundane labor, requiring little education/creativity. Maybe it's weird because it's google, and the juxtaposition is great. But what's the difference between doing in in the Valley and outsourcing it to China/India? If Google did outsource these jobs, people would just be QQing about that instead. As for the race angle, it's hardly Google's problem/responsibility. This is a fundamental cancer within the US that requires serious effort/rethinking required to even begin to address the situation.
- leon_ 15y ago> There is a need for mundane labor, requiring little education/creativity. Well actually there has not been any real need for that for years now. With automation we could replace all those "dull" work places. But the problem is: What do we do with the now unemployed masses? If we want to keep our capitalistic system that is.
- tkahn6 15y ago> Well actually there has not been any real need for that for years now. Really. You think OCR technology is at the point of sophistication or expense such that it would be economically beneficial for Google to deploy such technology over hiring humans but they don't do so to maintain our "capitalistic system"? You think there's some conspiracy of corporations to waste money on unskilled labor to maintain capitalism?
- leon_ 15y agoSee, economical benefit. There's the problem. I say it's possible but not with our current form of society. > You think there's some conspiracy of corporations to waste money on unskilled labor to maintain capitalism? Think about it and answer this question for yourself.
- mail2345 15y agoI'm pretty sure most companies reduce benefits for less skilled workers, just not as clear cut as this. I wonder what's with the confidentiality at book search. The first two things that pop to mind is keeping the yellow badges secret and preventing their enemies from messing around(publishers are pretty mad at the whole book scanning thing).
- mail2345 15y agoI'm pretty sure most companies reduce benefits for less skilled workers, just not as clear cut as this. I wonder what's with the confidentiality at book search. The first two things that pop to mind is keeping the yellow badges secret and preventing their enemies from messing around(publishers are pretty mad at the whole book scanning thing).
- kylec 15y agoThere's nothing surprising about a company having different classes of employees. If that was all that the article was about, it would be a minor curiosity. However, Google's extreme overreaction to someone trying to get some very basic information about the other set of employees is what's concerning. It's difficult to know how much of this story is speculation vs fact - whether or not the yellow badged employees are really data entry, whether there are really instructions on the back of the badge with a number to call if someone starts asking questions. If true, though, it's highly concerning coming from a company that flaunts the openness of their products, and whose corporate motto is "don't be evil".
- lionhearted 15y ago> Google's extreme overreaction to someone trying to get some very basic information about the other set of employees is what's concerning. Probably this is what set them off - "...Most of them are people of color and are supposedly involved in the labor of digitizing information. I’m interested in issues of class, race, and labor, and so out of general curiosity I wanted to ask these workers about their jobs. I am aware of internal mechanisms for discussing labor issues with Google, and had no intention of defaming the company..." A lot of times you can dig a hole for yourself that wasn't there by trying to explain things. Just a, "Was I breaking the rules? Okay, my bad, I didn't mean to. What was I doing? Eh, just screwing around with a video camera, exploring, I won't do it again if it's a problem" probably gets you out of there without hassle. I mean, his simple explanation covers mentions race, labor, labor issues, defamation, legal contracts... that would scare the hell out of anyone. If he'd just written, "Hi guys, I'm just learning about Google and I like the company. I didn't mean any harm - I'll make sure not to do that again if it's against policy" then that probably would have been the end of it.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- learc83 15y agoIt seems pretty obvious to me that the reason the yellow badge worker's aren't given those benefits is to keep them separate from the rest of the work force for security reasons (to keep them from talking about their work) They allow janitors and food service workers access to these perks, it seems kind of weirdly targeted if they are just doing it to save money. They're probably doing work that is so confidential that google doesn't want to give them the chance to socialize with other workers.
- yesbabyyes 15y agoIt sounds curious that people with a yellow badge are forbidden to speak to people with badges of another color. If that's true, Google has some explaining to do, methinks.
- learc83 15y agoWhy wouldn't Google want them talking to other employees? Could it be b/c they are working on a confidential project?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- geoffw8 15y agoAm I the only guy who thinks the guy (Andrew?) was way out of line here. You put yourself in the firing line for absolutely no reason relevant to you.
- guard-of-terra 15y agoI think that many commenters are missing the point. The question isn't whether Google is goind anything strictly illegal. The question is whether Google is doing something what would be considered shady by a big part of Google employees; If so, how would Google acknowlege the situation; And then, how would they live thru this, with Googlers knowing that their own standards are in a serious mismatch with the actual behavior of the business body, Google. Public reaction is another interesting thing. People's passion or neglect isn't regulated by law; instead it's regulated by their own feeling of right and wrong. It may be both legal and a PR disaster at the same time. Of course, it might turn out that people in general and Googlers dominantly don't see any problem and don't care. It doesn't seem to be this case yet.
- sgentle 15y agoYeah, I'm genuinely surprised by the tone here. I mean, clearly the things he wrote were a bit inflammatory, but it seems like most of the commenters have shockingly low standards for what constitutes a fair firing. Am I to expect that if you were working at a company and you brought an allegation of racism to your superiors, you should be fired because that allegation makes them uncomfortable or could lead to legal trouble? Would everyone here be jumping up and down to say how correct that is? I obviously only have one side of the story, but I can't think of a way that firing someone for talking to the wrong people or asking the wrong questions is right. Not even if it's Google doing it.
- benmccann 15y agoHe didn't get fired for raising an issue with his superiors. He never raised an issue with his superiors at all. Instead he went about creating an inflammatory recording with a video camera in which he attempted to frame his company's client in a negative light.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- g123g 15y agoLots of people are commenting that maybe the yellow badges might be working on something secretive that Google does not want them to share with others. But this does not make sense for 2 reasons - 1) I am pretty sure there will be some software engineers in Google who are currently working on something secretive but they will not be under these draconian restrictions of not to talk to others or call the security immediately if a fellow Googler approaches them. 2) These ppl can go home and can talk to their spouses, their friends etc. and let them know what they are working on. So making sure that they don't talk to anyone in Google during their office hours is not going to help keep their projects secretive. So there has to be some other angle to this story which does not involve secretiveness of their projects.
- systems 15y agoHey, first I am from Egypt. Second, I have to admit, I am kind of struct by most of the comments here. Most of the comment are pro google and think andrew here got it for himself. I believe this have to do a lot with cultural differences here. Most people in Egypt, would stand with the employee against the corporation. Most egyptians would definitely be pro andrew. I believe the reason here is that most Egyptians are either employees or owners of very small businesses, and would not perceive themselves as even potentially large business owners. Egypt being a poorer country and all. This is why most Egyptian would never try to put themselves in google's foot and try to see things from their perspective. I guess the opposite is true from most of the ppl commenting here, they must think if I was google, I would have done the same, and it's probably because they don't see it as too far fetched. Either that or the western population is becomming alarmingly submissive to authority and unwilling to question their action. Google are clearly being unfair, this should not be acceptable.
- andrewcooke 15y agoyeah - it's (some) americans. [edited] their response to power and its abuse depends on the source: they don't care about corporations, but go crazy with the government. it's as though they have been completely indoctrinated by massive corporate interests... welcome to the internet :o(
- MarkPNeyer 15y ago... their response to power and its abuse depends upon the source: they don't care about governments, who have the power to kill you, seize your wealth, or do anything they'd like, leaving you with no claims for redress, but go crazy with corporations, who at worst can offer people shitty jobs (!) or charge too much for shitty products.
- andrewcooke 15y agoqed
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- amadvance 15y agoDoes Google know that pi is 3.14159~ and not 3.1459~ ? :)
- Humourisok 15y agoEnough people on the planet would happily subscribe to Google 4th class (even 5th)
- matheusalmeida 15y agoI'm scared! Am I the only one that sees no big deal about scanning books? What is so secretive about it? I think they are doing an amazing job and I'd love to know how many books they can scan every day, etc... The second thing is that I don't understand why are you calling him racist. I believe that things in the USA are quite different from I'm used to.. You can get sued for anything. I heard that an employer can get sued for asking things like age, sex, height, color during an interview for a job.
- scotty79 15y agoIt's a funny thing when secret rules you have never agreed to and are not the part of the law get you fired despite you complete honesty and openness. It has very totalitaristic look&feel when you have to be careful all the time so you always obey unknown rules, breaking of which might lead to severe consequences.
- jcnnghm 15y agoThe secret rule that your employer may not want to pay you, allow you on-site, and provide you access to their resources while you film an exposé on their labor practices that could potentially open them to outside scrutiny, legal and otherwise. Especially as you try to paint them as racists when they ask what you're doing. They would have been justified for firing him for stupidity.
- scotty79 15y agoHe was fired for talking to other employees (he secretly not supposed to) and acquiring gear and permision to film some of them and actually doing it (what he secretly not supposed to) but mainly about being honest and transparent about reasons for his curiosity. You are right. He must have been a retard and as such he wasn't fit to do any job for Google contractor.
- jcnnghm 15y agoI'm pretty sure he was fired because the honest and transparent reasons he had were totally inappropriate, and he was condescending and argumentative while positing some rather harsh allegations. I did not say anything about him being a "retard", I said they should have fired him for stupidity. There is a difference.
- scotty79 15y agoI guess that I'm not that sensitive to racial issues as I was born and raised in all white country, to see more than just curiosity about what yellow badgers do why they are mostly people of color and why they don't have perks and why people generally don't know them. I also fail to see how him being perceived as argumentative and condescending makes him unfit for the job. I used "retard" as a synonym for "having the quality of stupidity" perhaps incorectly. I apologize.
- ck2 15y agoGetting them to write out a confession letter is classic detective-from-tv stuff. How naive are people not to realize you are being made to declare everything that will be used to terminate you (and in court)? Yellow badge Google sounds very much like a microfilm company I did computer work for.
- Xyic 15y agoWe do not know the conditions in the building. They probably have their own cafe there. Perhaps someone should investigate if they ever need to leave for lunch :)
- geuis 15y agoWhat first-world, over privileged bullshit. (Paraphrasing) "The yellow badges don't get the same fancy meals, backpacks, get to ride the multi-colored bicycles, or listen to authors talking for an hour". What utter non-sense bullshit. "Oh, its a good thing I got fired because I have to go back to grad school." "I'm going to talk in a post-adolescent semi-deep but monotonous tone for 11 minutes to talk about how Racist Google Is". I really want to buy this yuppie, preppie child a ticket to anywhere in America that isn't Google or Haaaaaarvard and let him see what its like to grow up on food stamps and welfare in the deep south, or better yet just drop him off anywhere that isn't a modern country.
- AlexC04 15y agoDespite the downvotes you've gotten (I know PG removed them, but I can still tell by color) I really think you've got a good point. I honestly felt at least some of the same vitrol that comes across in your post, but suppressed it for the purposes of discussion. In reading your response, I had quite a cathartic reaction. I actually felt myself relax. (I hadn't even realized I was holding tension - neat!) Regardless of any other votes you get, thanks for putting up an honest reaction.
- geuis 15y agoHey Alex, can't find any contact info for ya. Shoot me an email or find me on Twitter, geuis.teses@gmail.com or @geuis
- powertower 15y agoHigh Definition video link: http://vimeo.com/15852288 http://vimeo.com/15852288
- lennexz 15y agoI dont think he should have got fired, whats so secret about bookscanning?? Google feels it now has too much power and can walk over anyone.
- jcnnghm 15y agoThe mountain of pending litigation?
- blackRust 15y agoA lot of the discussion here is around what I would like the call the US/EU (not restricted to the EU but that is what I am more familiar with) divide in work ethics and what is expected from you. In the US (apparently from comments) they can terminate your contract for (almost) any reason. In the EU (and apparently Australia) they have to build a stronger case for firing you. Differences are also clear regarding overtime: usually paid in the EU and expected and unpaid in the US. There is a more than we realise that separates us (EU) from the US and if this happened in the EU I (hope) people would be in support of Andrew. I don't know enough about the US to say whether or not this is acceptable behaviour from Google. I would appreciate if you mention where you live/are from in your comments to enhance perspective to the discussion.
- DrJokepu 15y agoWhat this guy did (interviewing other employees with a camera without appropriate authorisation, that is, heavily breaching the security standards of his employer) is Gross Misconduct and that's an acceptable basis for immediate termination anywhere in Europe. If you don't believe me, give it a try at work on Monday and see what happens.
- darklajid 15y agoGermany (I'm blissfully unaware how that compares to the rest of Europe. It might be that we're on the more aggressive side of the 'protect the employee' scale) here: No way would that get me fired. They could try, but it would be very painful, I'd make sure that I get a good compensation at least (or sue them to rehire/keep me). You'd have a hard time fireing anybody for a _single_ offense. Ignoring the question of whether this really is a big deal anyway, unless I do something very, very stupid (strip in front of my coworkers. Grab some cash/remove the projector from a conference room and install it at home/physically threaten/engage someone) you've a hard time to send me home. For things that aren't valid reasons for immediate termination but still considered baaaad you'd need to reprimand me first. Maybe you got a case the second time I do the same thing or something similar. I understand that this is a different world and as others have pointed out: This view conflicts with the entrepreneurial 'I want to start a company and manage my team as I want to'. But it should be an interesting exercise to understand that this rules exist. And while I'm largely ignorant politically and cannot judge or compare this situation (I never experienced something else): It does seem to work without grinding the local business to a halt after all..
- worldvoyageur 15y agoMinor point of clarification, as the tone of many comments seems to presume that google fired the author of this blog. This could be, but seems unlikely based on the blog. The author was not employed by Google, but by a contracting firm hired by Google. The author's actions spooked the owner of the contracting firm, who did not want to risk his relationship and business with Google. The author even reports his direct phone conversation with the owner of the firm. "He told me the issue was very serious because it could jeopardize Transvideos contract with Google and potentially lead to 60 people losing their jobs." That is, if Google ended their relationship with Transvideo, then the sixty people Transvideo hired to work the Google contract would lose their jobs. Google security may or may not have asked the firm to fire the author. Most likely, however, I suspect the firm took the decision on its own as the simplest, cleanest and quickest way to end an issue before the lower level google security staff finished drafting a report that may have risked Transvideo's relationship with Google. So, as the owner of the firm what would you do? The choices are: a) support an employee who plans to quit in two months, but before he does wants to use his job to investigate "issues of class, race, and labor". The downside is that Google might decide to work with a different firm, thereby causing you to fire the 60 people you hired to support the contract and perhaps lose your entire business. b) Terminate the employee to protect your business and the sixty people who work to support it. Not a pleasant decision, to be sure, but the choice seems obvious even if Google says nothing.
- brown9-2 15y agoFrom the article: Marco then interjected into Burt’s official explanation to say that Google was actually putting pressure on Transvideo to fire me because of my investigations of the 3.1459~ building and the people who work there.
- illumen 15y agoc) fix the issue.
- eropple 15y agoThere is no issue to fix.
- EToS 15y agoSecurity in large corporations are often very tight fisted.. If you forget your access card where i work, even if the security personnel know you, they have to walk you up to your desk like a lost child! until some manager 'claims' you In this particular case i feel for this guy, but all security are going to see is a temp contractor who's making videos of google employees, and asking strange questions to interview them.. Their probably thinking either an undercover journalist (very likely at a company like google) or somebody who's just acting weird and would need future monitoring.. neither of which are really desirable! not to mention during lunch breaks any normal employee would have one thing on their mind.. stuffing their face!
- patrickgzill 15y agoAren't a lot of Microsoft'ies also contractors? If you are a contractor and rock the boat, you get fired; that is pretty much the way it is.
- jdp23 15y agoMicrosoft's contractors are "orange badges", and their email addresses start with a- or v- depending on what kind of contractor they are. They're very much treated as second-class people, ever since the 1990s class action suit (Vizcaino v. Microsoft, for those keeping score at home).
- Aloisius 15y agoI wonder why it is confidential. The only reason I can come up with is they don't want any more copyright infringement lawsuits and they're scanning Disney books...
- looper888 15y agothis is the most interesting read I've found on HN in a long time. Thank you for publishing it.
- ditojim 15y agohe was there to cause trouble and google got rid of him. smart.
- motters 15y agoI think someone from Google needs to explain what went on here. Why is what's going on in the 3.14159 building regarded as top secret? If they're just OCRing documents surely that's no big deal. People shouldn't be fired simply because they're interested in sociology.
- mikecane 15y agoIf Google is still scanning the contents of public and university libraries, the books are probably rare and valuable. Which is also why I doubt those workers are making minimum wage.
- Lewisham 15y agoOK, I'm an intern at Google, and I'm NDA'd, so I can only tell you what could be deduced from if you were a visitor at Google and walking through the halls. It's not that stuff is top secret, it's that information access is regulated to those who aren't full-time employees. Interns (green IDs) and contractors (red IDs) are given what they need to perform their job role, and little more than that. This guy was beginning to look at information he wasn't allowed to, and that should have been fairly clear to him. It's not that there is something to "hide", it's that information is limited for temporary employees, and that's just normal information security practice at any company of real size. In regards to the race claim he's fishing for, I think it's rubbish. Regardless of what the make up of the temporary workers at 3.14 are, I see lots of contractors who are non-white (and contractors get access to most perks), lots of full-time employees are Indian and Asian. He's trying to draw out some conclusion that Google has discriminatory hiring practices based on the lower-income, lower-skilled jobs being made up of non-white, but that's just the statistical make-up of that demographic in California.
- sundae79 15y agoYou would think an electronic badge would still prevent access no matter the color. But then it would be too difficult to feel special or discriminate.
- 15y ago
- sundae79 15y agoThankfully the fortune 500 company that I work for in Bay Area doesn't have color coded employees. I heard Yahoo does the color coded employees and actively discriminate as well.
- pnathan 15y agoWell. Either Andrew was not sufficiently informed of security policies or Google overreacted. IMO. I would presume training for on-site contractors includes the security policies about job knowledge and ability to talk about it. Likely a handbook or something... Or, if Andrew was within limits of the policy, Google overreacted. At any rate, certainly if someone I didn't know came up and wanted to ask me questions about my job (which by the way would be company confidential), I'd be suspicious; I'd likely call security, depending on if I'd seen him around before or not. I appreciate that it is interesting about the socio-economic divide. I would want to ask questions too, but, uh, I'd like try not to be utterly oblivious to the obvious security concerns.
- bane 15y agoI don't think he understands how contractors work (Google didn't hire you you git, Google contracted your company and your company placed you there to fill the contract) or hourly labor works (you don't get privileges or benefits), so he turns it into a ridiculous conspiracy. Breaking news! Google has hourly employees! - You don't say?! Google has contractors! - Really?! Let's explore the narcissistic exploration of self-hurting section by section: "In September 2007 I was hired jointly by Transvideo Studios and Google" No you weren't. You were hired by Transvideo Studios who filled a contractor slot on their video production contract with Google. "I had access to a personally unprecedented amount of privileges, but was not entitled to the ski trips, DisneyLand adventures, stock options, and holiday cash bonuses" That's because you weren't a Google employee. You were a Transvideo Studios employee. Do you expect to receive benefits from another company just because you happen to be walking around on their campus? "The workers wearing yellow badges are not allowed any of the privileges that I was allowed – ride the Google bikes, take the Google luxury limo shuttles home, eat free gourmet Google meals, attend Authors@Google talks and receive free, signed copies of the author’s books, or set foot anywhere else on campus except for the building they work in." So hourly employees aren't entitled to the benefits package of salaried exempt employees? And the way Google is setup is to pool employee benefits in and around their building, ergo the only way for hourly employees to not receive the benefits package is to work in a different facility?! Stop the presses! It's a conspiracy! I almost stopped reading there, hand stuck to my forehead, but then I saw this as I was closing the page and was hooked to the rest of this like watching a train wreck happen. "To Whom It May Concern, Yesterday I was outside the Google Book Search building, which is adjacent to the building I work in, and had the chance to talk to a few employees while they were leaving work. Most of them are people of color and are supposedly involved in the labor of digitizing information. I’m interested in issues of class, race, and labor, and so out of general curiosity I wanted to ask these workers about their jobs. I am aware of internal mechanisms for discussing labor issues with Google, and had no intention of defaming the company. I was not aware of how secretive the Book Search project is, but now understand how seriously my curiosity could jeopardize not only my own job and Transvideos’ relationship with Google, but also my legal situation because of the non-disclosure agreement I signed. I apologize for bothering you with this innocent mistake and can assure you that in the future I will be more cautious about respecting confidentiality at Google. Sincerely, Andrew Wilson" You're also a liar. Your intention was not to explore your passing interest in labor, class or race, but to feed your own self-importance by uncovering a made-up conspiracy of class warfare at Google, where the man is oppressing a silent minority of underclass poor people from enjoying the rights and privileges of the ruling overclasses. Did you mention that you were secretly video taping this? You wanted to document this in as dishonest a way as possible, "exposing" this "dark secret" to the world the way PETA exposes animal cruelty in meat processing plants, with hidden cameras, a blog post loaded with terms-and-phrases-of-controversy. "But Marco called back in a frenzy, saying that Google security had proof of me outside, filming yellow-badged workers leaving the 3.1459~ building on two separate occasions. I told him this was true and he said that Google legal was now involved, and they needed the video tapes immediately." So of course your immediate innocent reaction, which you didn't think was important to share with anybody, was to secretly videotape people coming and going from their place of work without their permission. "Burt then presented me with a document that would terminate my employment on the basis of me using __Google’s video equipment__ during working hours __(although it was during my lunchbreak)__" It's still Google's equipment you nitwit. "I told him I could take the shuttle home, as I’ve gotten on without my badge numerous times, but he insisted on driving me to the CalTrain station." Really? You don't understand why they wanted to escort you personally off campus? After you were abusing company equipment, violating security, secretly filming your coworkers and pretending not to find the film, then documenting your lie by putting the video you couldn't find up on your site, then lying to your managers about the entire thing? What are you 8? It boggles the mind. I wonder how many of the yellow badges got fired as a result of this asshole? Wake me when this guy grows up and starts seeing a psychiatrist. And yes, please keep this post up so other companies know not to hire you either.
- nutjob123 15y agoThis story is clearly one sided and the facts are not fully represented. It is possible that Google managers were very protective over information about people hired as contractors. This is a tax issue, Google must show that these contract workers are not "de-facto" employees. Looking at who sets working hours is part of a logical test used in some cases. Maybe they were scared of setting off red flags at the IRS. See the microsoft and fedex cases to learn more about this issue. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1153/is_n10_v120/ai_20198264/ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1153/is_n10_v120/ai_2... (EDIT) they also likely canned the guy for being an idiot and causing trouble
- StuffMaster 15y agoPage too wide, and paragraphs fixed at 134 columns...not good design.
- qeorge 15y agoI've heard Google accused of having a "caste system" before, always because contractors aren't allowed X Google perk. They may not realize that Google walks a fine line with the IRS here. Its cheaper to pay contractors (write off the fees vs. payroll tax, for instance), so many companies use contractors like employees. This is illegal, and if the IRS decides your contractor is really an employee, they will force you to pay taxes as such. So Google must be careful to maintain a clear distinction between employees and contractors. I suspect the badges and tiered privileges are just that. He did mention "red badge" contractors having more privilidges than "yellow badge." I can't speak to that, and perhaps Google does need to take a hard look at its hiring practices. But it seems more likely to me that the OP is encountering a feature of our tax system, not a deliberate attempt to underpay minorities.
- jcampbell1 15y agoI think your confusing two separate things. Independant contractors that receive a 1099, and "contractors" where a company pays another company for services. The IRS doesn't care if companies contract services from other companies. They don't like full time employees being treated as 1099 employees because tax collection is more difficult. 1099 employees, as independent business owners, can write off many expenses which are hard to audit and result in lower tax revenue.
- jrockway 15y agoSo Google must be careful to maintain a clear distinction between employees and contractors. I suspect the badges and tiered privileges are just that. This is not true. I have been a contractor at big companies before, and the only way anyone knows the difference is your badge and title in the corporate directory. Other than that, everything is the same. You get a W-2 and everything.
- jxcole 15y agoInteresting. My Dad once sued microsoft because they had many "temporary" workers who did not get the full benefit of full time workers. These workers were labelled as contract workers however, he was able to win his case because at the end of the day, they were working full time for Microsoft. Not only that, they were often employed by microsoft for many years, even though the claim was generally that these employees were fulfilling a short term need. He was able to get them damages for all sorts of things, including the fact that they were not entitled to store discounts while other employees were. Even though he won, many companies including Microsoft still do the exact same thing with their employees. The only difference is they are trying to keep it under wraps so they don't get sued again. Very likely, Google is trying to cover it's tracks in the same manner. They are probably less worried about racism than they are about this sort of permatemp law suit. Let's face it, if they were doing something legal they wouldn't care if they were getting videotaped. From my dad's firm's website: http://www.bs-s.com/cases/c-microsoft-vizcaino.html http://www.bs-s.com/cases/c-microsoft-vizcaino.html
- joshes 15y ago> Let's face it, if they were doing something legal they wouldn't care if they were getting videotaped. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." It was a preposterous statement assuming that the only value of privacy is to protect one's self when they do something morally, ethically or legally wrong. It was remarkably incorrect and offensive and everyone (rightly) lambasted him for it. Your statement is eerily similar. I'm not commenting on what Google has done here. But to say that they wouldn't care about being video taped if they were not doing something illegal does not make complete sense.
- joelangeway 15y agoI agree that people ought to be entitled to keep secrets. But Google is not a person, it is a publicly traded corporation which wields economic power on the same scale as state governments. I don't argue that they aren't entitled to secrets, but if they are, it is for different reasons and the comparison of those rights is misleading.
- kstenerud 15y agoLarge companies work by inertia. Google is actually more agile for its size, but it's still a big company and ruled by inertia. In a large company, the majority of people don't know each other, and don't communicate on a daily basis. This means that things of interest get passed from person to person, usually by email, and so the original intent of the message tends to get lost due to the 3rd or 4th reader having no idea what kind of person the original writer is, what his writing style is, whether he's being serious or joking, etc. As a result, you end up with lots of requests for clarification, especially where it's an event that falls outside of the normal routine. It takes a lot to rile up a company, but Andrew did it expertly, pushing all the buttons his background in sociology and politics gave him a solid understanding of. Notice how it went through three separate "request for clarification" requests, each more formal than the last. Each time, he responded in a passive-aggressive manner that re-pushed those same buttons. As it pushed its way through the various departments and echelons of the company, such a message would become more and more threatening as the person became less and less known. People go into CYA mode (better safe than sorry), the company momentum changes and things start rolling. Let's look at the course of events again: 1: Andrew is intercepted by someone who is probably a manager (notice his description "Agitated Chubby White Male", with the connotations of bourgeoisie). 2: The manager takes Andrew to explain the situation to security (pointing out that the security guard is a black man in a menial job, with "sedate" added for connotations of passively accepting his proletariat fate). 3: Security contacts Transvideo to get clarification from Andrew and find out his intentions (notice his description "so that the issue can be filtered and separated neatly into their bracketed accounts", with the connotations of the soulless bureocratic corporate machine). At this point, the security department is unsure of Andrew's intentions. Was it just harmless curiosity? Is he a plant, trying to dig up dirt to embarrass Google? They can't know for sure, so they ask him to clarify his position. What Andrew sends back is a passive-aggressive letter covering class, race, and labor, all hot button topics. His manager asks for even more clarification. People are getting very nervous at this point. Andrew's response is political dynamite, once again using passive-aggressive techniques to all but accuse Google of racist discriminatory labor practices. That someone with "backgrounds in sociology and political philosophy" wouldn't understand what panic his second letter would produce is incredibly hard to believe. In fact, Andrew's entire description is so slanted and colored that I'm inclined to suspect that he deliberately set about getting himself fired so that he could trumpet "Google is Evil!" from his blog, Michael Moore style.
- sscheper 15y agoWishes the voiceover was by Morgan Freeman.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rmrm 15y agoSeems to me there are two issues: 1.) Yellow badge worker treatment -- most of the comments here seem to accept his description of their work life (right or wrong) as fact, it is unsubstantiated to me. I see a video of people getting in their cars and going home, that is all. Considering he claims to have never spoken to any of them, except for a brief encounter before security grabbed him, it would seem even he is admitting he does not have first hand knowledge of anything he said. It is an entirely less than complete view (and possibly incorrect description) to which to draw any conclusion. For that reason most of the discussion seems premature to me. With that said, no luxury transport, no free meals, etc -- does in fact describe the working conditions of 99.9% of Americans. A company treating people normally is not substantially interesting, tho apparently juxtaposition makes it so -- because what is interesting, and has always been interesting about Google, is that they treat their employees extraordinarily well. 2.) Was Google "right" for wanting him off the campus? Sure -- they contracted with his employer to provide some service, not to film an expose about Google itself,made possible only by being on the Google campus with unfettered access to the grounds. I realize he says he did not film it with the idea it would be an expose, but film is shot to be shown, and in his letter he makes it fairly clear what his interest was in filming, the assumptions and/or understanding he had while filming -- which gives a fairly clear picture of why he was filming. And it resulted in just about the kind of film you would expect. That isn't what he was there for. There is nothing that even remotely rises to a whistleblower type defense, as there is nothing remotely illegal about what he claims to be the yellow badge worker treatment. If he had in fact been filming something illegal (or at least in some way out of the norm in a negative fashion, even), my opinion would be more substantially in his favor -- in relation to how egregious the treatment actually was.
- simon_weber 15y agoI also fail to find the treatment of the yellow badge employees surprising or unreasonable. Just like you said, the only reason people find it interesting is because the yellow badges work next to employees with some of the most well known perks in the industry. Why does this juxtaposition come about in the first place? It seems to me that the amount of effort an employer will want to go through to keep/attract a certain type of employee is proportional to how much effort they would have to expend to replace that employee. I would argue it is relatively more difficult to replace campus workers than ScanOps personnel (since campus workers are higher skilled and also must become acclimated to the campus on the terms of the employer, while ScanOps can just sign up and start scanning), Google doesn't expend the same effort to keep the employee. Nothing nefarious is at work; a large profitable company is trying to stay that way. That being said, the reaction Google had does seem a bit over the top, but I would agree that this is mostly the fault of Andrew's tone.
- avstraliitski 15y agoTwo words: fuck bureaucracy. This is why I'll never work for a large company.
- scarmig 15y agoAs far as sociology or expose goes, the article is uninteresting. What, a giant corporation uses every legal means at its disposal to make sure it gets only good PR? What, there exist serious race and class disparities in the United States that manifest themselves in the workplace? What, Google has a good PR department that doesn't reflect actual internal practices? Quelle horreur! What's more interesting from a sociological perspective is the range of most of the reactions here on Hacker News, which seem to vary between "he doesn't understand that this is just how things work" to brick shitting freak out ("passive aggressive", "nitwit", "see a psychologist"). If you find yourself immediately jumping into defense mechanisms, stop for a second and think about why that is.
- g123g 15y agoI agree that Google is within its right to deny them lunch, shuttle services or whatever fancy perks they dish out to their regular employees. But what I can't understand is the discrimination that Google is perpetrating against them by denying them the basic human privilege of talking to another human being. As employees Vic Gundotra or Marissa Mayer will be knowing more company secrets than these guys will know in their lifetime. Do they also have a phone number on the back of their badge to call if somebody unknown approaches them? Are they also prevented from talking to other employees so that they don't leak those secrets? Why is Google afraid that only the yellow badges cannot keep the company secrets? What if their supervisor simply tells them that what they are working on is a company secret. Like almost any other employees why Google thinks they can' keep it a secret? Why do they have to impose this almost draconian measure of human segregation only for them?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sudhirj 15y agoWhy is it such a surprise that different kinds of employees are treated differently and receive different perks? If I went to any factory in the US I wouldn't expect to see the janitors being picked up and dropped in limousines, or the housekeeping staff joining in on the company vacations. This isn't exactly the same thing, but it's like complaining that construction workers don't get paid as much as architects and investors.
- yanw 15y agoThere is a huuuuuuuuuuugly important distinction that has to be made here: The “Book Scanners” are NOT Google employees!!!!! They are the workers of a company that was hired by Google to do this monotonous physical labor, you know CONTRACT WORKERS! That’s why they don’t get any rocket-ships made of chocolate Lego bricks or whatever perks Google employees get. As for security getting involved that is procedure!! and exactly what happens when you go snooping around on company grounds. This this whole post is nothing but sensationalist rambling and delusional nonsense.
- grandalf 15y agoLet's not forget that Google's innovation in search has had (and will continue to have) the most profound impact on the world's poorest people... the people for whom information is least accessible via other means.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- HaroldHarpin 15y agoI take it the video was made from the tape "he couldn't find"
- CapitalistCartr 15y agoIf I call a plumber, I want my plumbing fixed. I don't care about the plumber's work benefits, problems, or anything else about his personal life; I want my plumbing fixed; that's why I called a plumber. I don't have plumbing problems enough to hire one personally; that's why plumbing contractors exist.
- gtirloni 15y agoThe reality is that in the IT world at least, lots of companies hire other companies in "body shop" fashion. People work for them as contractors for long periods of time (years) without the benefits of a full-time employee. I understand your point but it would only apply if these people were at Google doing their job for days or few months. We just don't know.. but the reality of most of other companies indicates they could probably be there really as 2nd class employees that are cheaper. Last IT companies provide this kind of labor to Fortune100 companies all the time. It's really not hard to find someone employed by $Big_IT_company that has worked at $Big_Financial_company for years and years.
- neilk 15y agoI used to work at Google and the "class system" was something that grated on me from time to time. I didn't know any yellow badge folks myself, and was ignorant of their existence, just as the article mentions. But red badges (contractors) are ubiquitous. In one case they fired all the QA contractors and made them reapply for their own jobs -- we're talking about people who had deep knowledge of certain projects, who'd been on certain teams for years, who were valued contributors, people who we didn't want to lose. But because they had a red badge, they were subject to petty whims of bureaucrats from on high, unlike white badges. At least on my team, almost all red badge QA contractors were of Indian origin, and often female. Now that's not very different from how a normal company works. But Google just made the distinction difficult to ignore since white badges had so many privileges, including, for engineers, the right to reallocate themselves, or to exploit the famous 20% time. Google's image is that they are pioneering a different way of working, with more workplace democracy, but the truth is that these privileges are limited to as few employees as they can get away with. And of course, the biggest class division has to do with the people who do physical labor and sanitation. I tend to work after hours and I also tend to talk to people even if they're supposed to be "invisible", so I've had conversations with some of the workers. (Ironically, one conversation conducted using Google Translate). That person emptying your wastebasket might be qualified to do nursing back in her home country. Oh, and it might amuse Yahoo employees to know that their recycling program is a complete sham -- everything is emptied into the same trash containers anyway, and the workers are forbidden from taking the cans away to cash in themselves.
- Unseelie 15y agoSlight point of interest, do you mean the recycling at Yahoo is a sham, or that it would amuse Yahoo employees to know that Google's recycling is a sham?
- neilk 15y agoI should explain, I've worked at both Yahoo and Google. Yahoo's recycling program is a sham, at least for Mission College circa 2007. I don't know about Google. I've told people about the qualified nurse working emptying wastepaper baskets, but the thing that always makes Silicon Valley nerds go apoplectic is learning that their hard work putting soda cans into the blue container was all for nothing.
- RandyHelzerman 15y ago"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able …"
- jarin 15y agoAs a minority myself, I think it's unfortunate that the proportion of people of color is apparently unbalanced between the "yellow badges" and the "red and white badges". However, I think this reflects more on the disparity in Ivy League schools (which Google prefers to hire its full-time workers from) and the computer science/manual labor fields in general than any inherent racial bias within Google itself.
- dataminer 15y agoI have worked in two different kind of companies during summers while I was in highschool, a Japanese auto parts manufacturing company had a very interesting structure, from the President to the temp assembly line associate, all wore white uniforms when they arrived at work. Management offices were in middle of the factory floor completely accessible to any employee. Everyone sat in same cafeterias and enjoyed similar company perks. There was absolutely no segregation and the flow of ideas were amazing, problems got reported and were acted upon fast, it was very agile company. I really enjoyed working there and so did other employees. The other company (auto parts manufacturer as well) had similar badge system as discussed in the article, employees with lowest ranking badge were considered the "lowest class", no one except their immediate supervisor talked to them and listened to them. This segregation meant they had no incentive to work intelligently or report problems. All they wanted to do was to do their jobs and get the hell out. It was quite educating to work under the two contrasting management structure. The first one was a breath of fresh air and the second was very suffocating.
- ajays 15y agoMeh, too much back-and-forth for me to jump in. There may be a perfectly good reason for Google to exclude contractors from the "Googly perks": the Microsoft lawsuit. If Google treats the contractors just like its employees, then the contractors can turn around and sue Google. Google needs to maintain a distinction between contractors and FTEs. Recall the Microsoft lawsuit filed by contractors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp
- DanielN 15y agoI'm sorry guys I must be missing something here. I figure that this video and transcript must have some deeper meaning than what I'm grokking from it as it is currently the top story with a whopping ~500 points. To my knowledge, cultural hierarchy is very standard within pretty much all companies regardless of size. Not everyone gets a company car, their own office, the same health benefits, or if you are privileged enough to work at a company that provides them, the same gourmet lunch as has been stated elsewhere in these comments. Furthermore, the existence of sub-hierarchy (contract and temporary) workers is very common in larger companies. To my understanding, these temp and contract workers usually enjoy few if any benefits provided by the company as they are rarely actually employed by the company they are working for but rather an agency. In addition to this, it is pretty standard procedure to ban all unauthorized taping on company campuses. If anything, to my uninformed mind the fact that an employee got as far as actually taking unauthorized video footage is if anything a credit to Google's openness (or whatever you want to call it). So, I guess my question is: Where is the interesting aspect of this? Is the popularity of this really just due to the "divulging" that Google employs workers that aren't provided the same benefits as some of its other workers? Is it the existence of a "class system" in Google to show worker's authority/hierarchy level? If it is one of these reasons, there must be something else I'm missing as without having seen this story I would have just assumed that these things existed at Google. I ask this as a sincere question as obviously this has gained the attention of a large portion of this community which I hold as very intelligent. I am driven to assume that whatever it is that is engaging about this story is simply going over my head.
- gtirloni 15y agoI guess the interesting aspect of it is that Google sells a image that the Googleplexes of the world are immense areas of joy and happiness where people have access to awesome benefits.. when in fact, what's the % of people that really that access to that? Perhaps Google shouldn't make such a big deal out of its workplace benefits when there is evidence that it's just a minority that has access to them. I understand even if Google wanted to keep its benefits private, it couldn't control how much the mainstream media gives attention to them. Anyway, I hope to have answered your question. You raised valid points and, IMHO, it's just a matter of perception... people think Google is something when it's not (there area varying degrees of gray here).
- asadotzler 15y agoWhat bothers me most about this is that these workers have a shift that essentially makes them invisible to the rest of Google employees. They come in many hours before the bulk of Googlers and they leave at a time when there is the least foot traffic on the campus. There's a clear intention to keep this group segregated and hidden from the rest of Google and that's a bit disturbing.
- sean12345 15y agoI think this is the job: http://us.randstad.com/content/findjobs/job-details/index.xml?id=76572¤tPage=1&__version=1&WT.mc_id=Indeed&utm_source=Indeed&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=Indeed http://us.randstad.com/content/findjobs/job-details/index.xm...
- gtirloni 15y ago"2 year FULL TIME TEMPORARY" ROFL. Someone has a pretty loose definition of "temporary".
- anatoli 15y agoA lot of people posting about how this is a 'blog' or 'complaint' or whatever seem to be completely missing the fact that this is an artist's portfolio and an actual art piece that has been previously exhibited. It's clearly meant to generate discussion regarding racial and human rights issues, as well as the clash of public/private space. I do not see a single hint that the artist is in any way unhappy or resentful, but IMO is rather opening up an issue for discussion. (See his CV: http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/resume http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/resume) I'm shocked at all the angry responses.
- dr_ 15y agoOn a side note, coming to read this now with over 350 comments, without the rating system I can't make heads or tails of which ones are or are not worth reading.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- yarian 15y agoThere's been a lot of comments saying something to the effect of "this guy does not understand the difference between full-time employees and contractors" or "people doing manual work should be paid less than employees." Yet the author mentions: "I found this social arrangement interesting, and ... decided to investigate the rationale behind Google’s decision to exclude the yellow badge class from most privileges the company has to offer, despite the fact that their labor ...[is] being contracted to Google by another company just like ... other informational laborers, the kitchen staff, the shuttle drivers, the custodians, and more." It seems like what piqued his interest was that there seemed to be a disparity between the benefits of this particular group of workers and other normally considered low-skill work like the others he mentions.