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The person redlined a contract instead of spending +$2000/yr (out of a likely $250,000+ salary) on a second personal phone. Such short-sidedness is a bad trait

The person redlined a contract instead of spending +$2000/yr (out of a likely $250,000+ salary) on a second personal phone. Such short-sidedness is a bad trait in an employee. Second, their protest is laudable. But their decision was consciously: "the legal department of this $xxx billion company (that spends $xx million maintaining this employment contract template) will bend to my will, or I will {quit OR relent}". If they'd quit? Job well done. If they'd relent? Then why try? You're screaming into a void, and if you didn't recognize this prior to redlining, you have a bad trait for an employee. All scenarios point to a competent red-liner achieving their desired outcome -- an ethical win in whatever case. Only an incompetent/shortsighted/kneejerk/low-critical-thinking red-liner would achieve an undesired outcome, because they didn't consider the game before playing.

emteycz 6y ago
Agreed, this is not a factory job for a few dollars here and there.
MereInterest 6y ago
Honestly, that is the sort of solution I would expect the legal department to suggest as a counter-offer, with Google paying the difference. Having the legal department review contract changes is something I would expect to be standard for them, not a deal breaker. It is the reason for having the legal department there in the first place.
- throwaway667555 6y ago
  Some details of an offer & acceptance of employment are trivial and not worth spoiling good will. Me: "Hey manager, can I make an expense report for this work phone?" No matter the response, I'm ok with it, because I make Google money, and that's policy. I should work towards becoming management if I want that to change. But I probably have better things to do than such a trivial disagreement. I wish corporations were less psychopathic, too, but this is not the hill I'd die on. Or, I'd be damn sure ready to die if I redlined as a "nice to meet you" first act.
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    I think I'd agree that it is a weird spoiling of goodwill, but would put this one entirely as Google's fault. Requesting a minor change to a contract the first time you see it is the expected behavior, not an outlier. That's the entire point of contracts, in order to come to a meeting of the minds. This is the equivalent of haggling at a flea market, and being thrown out as a result.
    - throwaway667555 6y ago
      I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million. Internal developers, internal security ops, legal, and C-suite coordinating these departments. Also Google is very special in that their employees are extremely sophisticated and curious, so they need ~complete~ control of any electronics that access their networks.
      - waheoo 6y ago
        Just fill your personal device with dick pics. They'll stop looking pretty quick. Only partially joking.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        > I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million. Straw man. If a small change like this costs a company any more than a thousand bucks, they are Doing it Wrong. You might argue that $1k is also a lot to expect, but consider that the company has likely already spent north of $25k (and sometimes a lot more than that) on the recruiting process that brought them this new employee. If they're going to throw that away to avoid an internal approval process that costs another thousand, that sounds like a bad financial decision to me.
      - bigiain 6y ago
        So if your first paragraph is correct, what are we to make of the HR person saying "But that isn't how we use it, we would never access your personal data."? Were they lying? Or was there a real internal rule about "never" accessing personal data? A rule that was in disagreement with the $x million worth of coordinations of legal documentation? And if your second paragraph is correct, then "Google HR lies to you on your first day as policy - if you ask certain questions" seems to be the only logical conclusion.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  Google already will pay for you to have a separate corporate phone (the hardware and the data plan).
  - gowld 6y ago
    Not universally.
    - username90 6y ago
      They will pay for a phone if they expect you to use it for company purposes. If they don't then feel free to never use your phone for your job.
    - koolba 6y ago
      I’m sure they would. Bulk enterprise plans are on the order of $8-$10/month. That’s not even a rounding error compared to an employees compensation.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
alacombe 6y ago
> The person redlined a contract instead of spending +$2000/yr (out of a likely $250,000+ salary) on a second personal phone. Such short-sidedness is a bad trait in an employee. This isn't a solution, but a covert work-around.
- throwaway667555 6y ago
  Upon re-reading, I too wonder if Google means they'll rootkit any employee phone that comes onto company property. I hope they only rootkit phones with proprietary data on them. Also, super important context: Of all the companies in the world, which ones would have employees, say, designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun, or...? Google, certainly. So I get Google's position, as long as you're allowed a personal phone free of corporate intrusions.
  - alacombe 6y ago
    > designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun Exfiltrating data is comically trivial, it wouldn't be any fun...
    - username90 6y ago
      Problem is that if two anti Google activists joins the same team they could leak a huge amount of user data before stopped. Pretty sure a lot of people would find that "fun", and pretty sure their punishment would be very mild compared to for example Snowden even though their crime would be bigger.
  - username90 6y ago
    You have to root the phone to login to your corporate Google account. If you don't want to login to your corporate account you don't have to root the phone. If your manager wants you to have a phone with corp access then he will get you a corporate phone to do it. However many would rather root their phone than have a separate phone for their private life so Google provides that option. If that starts being a legal problem for Google I'm pretty sure they will stop rooting phones and just require people to get corp phones instead.
gentleman11 6y ago
This is just name calling and blaming the victim, which is almost every employee of every tech job in the world, while celebrating the power of the employer. Insisting that a contract be negotiable when it comes to complete and total spying on you, in the context of an article where the employer is illegally spying on you, is not the trait of a bad employee
- throwaway667555 6y ago
  Kathryn Spiers did a man-in-the-middle attack on company property, like how some ISPs used to insert their own popups into HTML crossing their wires. Google tracked Spiers down and fired her for it, 100% justified. Separately, Google's hiring of a union-busting firm is fair game for disagreement, absolutely. Also, I don't consider an employer having total visibility into its devices to be a power-trip. The onus is on the employee to keep their personal stuff out if they don't want it getting swept up. Of all companies, even Google couldn't design machine learning or quarantining sufficient to wall off personal data from company data inside someone's phone during their forensic prevention and investigation. So the legal department sure isn't going to promise they can unbake the cake that is your voluntarily mixed-use device.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    > Also, I don't consider an employer having total visibility into its devices to be a power-trip. That's fair, and I agree with that (as long as it's company-owned hardware and not personal hardware under a BYOD program). But I personally do not want to (and currently do not) work for a company that trusts me so little that it needs to spy on every activity I do on the hardware they give me to do my job. I get that some people are fine with that, and that's ok, but I'm not, and I don't think I'm alone in this.
wolco2 6y ago
Sounds like google is doing something bad if they need to enforce this. The power inbalance you speak of is why unions are probably needed. You were a special snowflake in the 90s/early 2000s now you are a cog.
- jason0597 6y ago
  A cog being paid $160k or more

emteycz 6y ago

Agreed, this is not a factory job for a few dollars here and there.

MereInterest 6y ago

Honestly, that is the sort of solution I would expect the legal department to suggest as a counter-offer, with Google paying the difference. Having the legal department review contract changes is something I would expect to be standard for them, not a deal breaker. It is the reason for having the legal department there in the first place.

throwaway667555 6y ago
Some details of an offer & acceptance of employment are trivial and not worth spoiling good will. Me: "Hey manager, can I make an expense report for this work phone?" No matter the response, I'm ok with it, because I make Google money, and that's policy. I should work towards becoming management if I want that to change. But I probably have better things to do than such a trivial disagreement. I wish corporations were less psychopathic, too, but this is not the hill I'd die on. Or, I'd be damn sure ready to die if I redlined as a "nice to meet you" first act.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  I think I'd agree that it is a weird spoiling of goodwill, but would put this one entirely as Google's fault. Requesting a minor change to a contract the first time you see it is the expected behavior, not an outlier. That's the entire point of contracts, in order to come to a meeting of the minds. This is the equivalent of haggling at a flea market, and being thrown out as a result.
  - throwaway667555 6y ago
    I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million. Internal developers, internal security ops, legal, and C-suite coordinating these departments. Also Google is very special in that their employees are extremely sophisticated and curious, so they need ~complete~ control of any electronics that access their networks.
    - waheoo 6y ago
      Just fill your personal device with dick pics. They'll stop looking pretty quick. Only partially joking.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      > I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million. Straw man. If a small change like this costs a company any more than a thousand bucks, they are Doing it Wrong. You might argue that $1k is also a lot to expect, but consider that the company has likely already spent north of $25k (and sometimes a lot more than that) on the recruiting process that brought them this new employee. If they're going to throw that away to avoid an internal approval process that costs another thousand, that sounds like a bad financial decision to me.
    - bigiain 6y ago
      So if your first paragraph is correct, what are we to make of the HR person saying "But that isn't how we use it, we would never access your personal data."? Were they lying? Or was there a real internal rule about "never" accessing personal data? A rule that was in disagreement with the $x million worth of coordinations of legal documentation? And if your second paragraph is correct, then "Google HR lies to you on your first day as policy - if you ask certain questions" seems to be the only logical conclusion.
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Google already will pay for you to have a separate corporate phone (the hardware and the data plan).
- gowld 6y ago
  Not universally.
  - username90 6y ago
    They will pay for a phone if they expect you to use it for company purposes. If they don't then feel free to never use your phone for your job.
  - koolba 6y ago
    I’m sure they would. Bulk enterprise plans are on the order of $8-$10/month. That’s not even a rounding error compared to an employees compensation.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

alacombe 6y ago

> The person redlined a contract instead of spending +$2000/yr (out of a likely $250,000+ salary) on a second personal phone. Such short-sidedness is a bad trait in an employee. This isn't a solution, but a covert work-around.

throwaway667555 6y ago
Upon re-reading, I too wonder if Google means they'll rootkit any employee phone that comes onto company property. I hope they only rootkit phones with proprietary data on them. Also, super important context: Of all the companies in the world, which ones would have employees, say, designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun, or...? Google, certainly. So I get Google's position, as long as you're allowed a personal phone free of corporate intrusions.
- alacombe 6y ago
  > designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun Exfiltrating data is comically trivial, it wouldn't be any fun...
  - username90 6y ago
    Problem is that if two anti Google activists joins the same team they could leak a huge amount of user data before stopped. Pretty sure a lot of people would find that "fun", and pretty sure their punishment would be very mild compared to for example Snowden even though their crime would be bigger.
- username90 6y ago
  You have to root the phone to login to your corporate Google account. If you don't want to login to your corporate account you don't have to root the phone. If your manager wants you to have a phone with corp access then he will get you a corporate phone to do it. However many would rather root their phone than have a separate phone for their private life so Google provides that option. If that starts being a legal problem for Google I'm pretty sure they will stop rooting phones and just require people to get corp phones instead.

gentleman11 6y ago

This is just name calling and blaming the victim, which is almost every employee of every tech job in the world, while celebrating the power of the employer. Insisting that a contract be negotiable when it comes to complete and total spying on you, in the context of an article where the employer is illegally spying on you, is not the trait of a bad employee

throwaway667555 6y ago
Kathryn Spiers did a man-in-the-middle attack on company property, like how some ISPs used to insert their own popups into HTML crossing their wires. Google tracked Spiers down and fired her for it, 100% justified. Separately, Google's hiring of a union-busting firm is fair game for disagreement, absolutely. Also, I don't consider an employer having total visibility into its devices to be a power-trip. The onus is on the employee to keep their personal stuff out if they don't want it getting swept up. Of all companies, even Google couldn't design machine learning or quarantining sufficient to wall off personal data from company data inside someone's phone during their forensic prevention and investigation. So the legal department sure isn't going to promise they can unbake the cake that is your voluntarily mixed-use device.
- kelnos 6y ago
  > Also, I don't consider an employer having total visibility into its devices to be a power-trip. That's fair, and I agree with that (as long as it's company-owned hardware and not personal hardware under a BYOD program). But I personally do not want to (and currently do not) work for a company that trusts me so little that it needs to spy on every activity I do on the hardware they give me to do my job. I get that some people are fine with that, and that's ok, but I'm not, and I don't think I'm alone in this.

wolco2 6y ago

Sounds like google is doing something bad if they need to enforce this. The power inbalance you speak of is why unions are probably needed. You were a special snowflake in the 90s/early 2000s now you are a cog.

jason0597 6y ago
A cog being paid $160k or more