7 ms·
"Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities" is not a personal political opinion, it is the law.
by davidcbc 6y ago
"Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities" is not a personal political opinion, it is the law.
- skybrian 6y agoIf you want to play that game, you could spam people with the text of all sorts of interesting laws. It's still an abuse of authority. But I wonder if anyone would be have been fired if it were an April fools prank?
- pmiller2 6y agoWhere's the evidence of "spamming?" Is Google "spamming" its employees on a regular basis with their "approved" messages?
- scarmig 6y agoWhen a Googler visits particular domains, she gets a message from the internal security tool like "Do not upload user data to third-party services. Use secure alternatives instead." This is to prevent employees from inadvertently causing a PII incident or violating contractual obligations to external customers.
- pmiller2 6y agoAnd?
- remus 6y agoI think the point here is "...used internal security tools...", Not the particulars of the message she was pushing.
- ouid 6y agoIf that was the point, then why was the other bit included in such obvious service to the "point"?
- HopHazard 6y agoYeah we would wish that the mods sucked our crucks by any haphazardly generated comment. Such is the hacker news. Such is life. On Tracker, Danger, News.
- acituan 6y agoThat is the stated reason but we all know that is not the real reason. If they added an ascii art of a dinosaur or a message on another topic to that internal security tool, they wouldn't have been fired, probably not even a slap on the wrist, at most an annoyed "take that off" request.
- scarmig 6y ago> we all know that is not the real reason No, that is not true. Some of us take security seriously.
- acituan 6y agoCan you contextualize who you are, so that I can better understand “us”? You mention seriousness as an absolute virtue, but if it fires people for a harmless, easily correctable mistake in an internal tool, it is just misguided and an excuse especially if it “happens” to serve some ulterior motive.
- orangecat 6y agoIt's not harmless. Google is very concerned about internal security, and putting irrelevant messages in security notifications makes them more likely to be ignored in the future. Your ASCII dinosaur hypothetical is a good way to think about it, and I wouldn't be surprised or outraged if that also resulted in the offender being fired.
- zeckalpha 6y agoSecurity is a broad topic and can include avoiding legal liabilities.
- libria 6y agoSubstituting your equivalence: > She used an internal security tool to push the law Even for messages I agreed with, I would still find this a questionable activity and disruptive as an employee.
- black_puppydog 6y agoYou find it questionable and disruptive that someone would encourage people to know and enforce the law? How very peculiar. Seems like if that's the status quo, it should be disrupted.
- knorker 6y agoSo someone with technical access (if actively bypassing review) should be allowed to replace the www.google.com homepage with a copy of the US constitution and that's just fine and dandy? "Oh, I'm just informing people of their constitutional rights? What's the problem? I thought this was 'merica"
- zend 6y agoBy your logic, an employee should be protected if they decided to add a political statement to the homepage of google.com? No?
- tsdlts 6y agoSo if she instead put "Nobody has the right to enter this country illegally" it would be fine because she's just restating the law?
- muglug 6y agoThat would be appropriate (in this analogy) if the website was advising employees on how to jump over border walls.
- oh_sigh 6y agoWhat about a website for lawyers who defend illegally-entered immigrants? ICI consultants isn't a criminal organization as far as I know, and without really knowing anything about them, I would assume the consulting services they provide don't tell companies to perform illegal acts.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- marshray 6y ago"Entering the country illegally is illegal" is restating the law. Such a statement would likely take on more meaning given the context in which it was said. "Nobody has the right to ..." is your opinion.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoWell, "nobody has the legal right to..." is restating. And to me, the "legal" is rather obviously implied.
- marshray 6y agoI don't agree the implication is obvious at all. Interpreting it that way make it a total truism - nonsensical unless interpreted within a greater context. And it looks to me that's just what the GP poster was trying to do - challenge others to argue with a truism while pretending that the context in which it was stated isn't relevant.
- manfredo 6y agoYes, you have a right to participate in unionization and politics. But you don't have a right to alter company software to spread your political message. There's a big difference between holding a "Vote X" sign on a street corner on your own time, and using your position as a developer to put up "Vote X" signs on your company's website.
- izacus 6y agoI think apt comparison is - if some Apple or Google engineer would push a non-authorized OTA update to all Apple/Google phones which would add a permanent political banner to homescreen - would you consider this to be a firing offense or not? And to people who are trying to justify this by process being "technically possible" - there is a non empty set of Apple and Google employees who can technically push any code to your phone remotely. Is it still acceptable for them to use that to push their political agenda? Because it comes down to trust. You trust people who can push code to your devices to not abuse it.
- manfredo 6y agoPushing a banner to all phones with a political message would be a brazen abuse of one's engineering position. This developer's change was much more narrow, it modified an internal tool that only Google employees see. But it's still breaching professionalism. If the message instead was, "Unions are corrupt and deprive people of individual agency" would that be acceptable? Especially with the unique position Google is in as our gateway to information, it's prudent to avoid employees that cannot refrain from making changes to production software to further personal politics.
- whimsicalism 6y ago> using your position as a developer to put up "Vote X" signs on your company's website. To state the law* for internal users who visit one specific website
- knorker 6y agoYou're missing the point. Do you think Google engineers should be allowed to unilaterally, against the wishes of Google, be allowed to replace the www.google.com homepage by the US constitution? No? Of-fucking-course not. Just because something is true, and you have technical means to put up a true message, doesn't make it in any way non-fireable to do it.
- Veelox 6y agoIf she had used a company printer to print pro-union fliers and then shared them I'm 90% she could be fired for misuse of company resources. At to my intuition this feels like using the company printer without permission.
- whimsicalism 6y ago> If she had used a company printer to print pro-union fliers and then shared them I'm 90% she could be fired for misuse of company resources. At to my intuition this feels like using the company printer without permission. Until Trump's NLRB overturned the precedent late last year, workers had stronger protections than getting fired for a minor slip-up in the course of organizing. But today, your intuition would be correct.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago"Googlers have the right to participate in religious services. Click here to learn more about churches in your area" It's the law you know.
- claudeganon 6y agoFaulty analogy because it references a specific set of religions (those with churches) in the context of a workplace. If in some insane reality, Google was trying to prevent their employees from joining religions (as they were, in this case, with unions), than the first half would be fine and fully protected by law.
- giantg2 6y agoYep, and case law dictates what is acceptable participation. Generally, using company time and infrastructure to perform concerted activities is prohibited. That's why union voting and meetings are done off the clock and off-site. Once protected by union membership, the protections tend to increase since you're not acting alone.
- ckocagil 6y agoLaws are political.