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Google fires 28 workers in indiscriminate act of mass retaliation
- PixelPioneerZZ 3y ago[flagged]
- mtmail 3y agoCan you elaborate? What was Google is the past?
- mrfinn 3y agoI guess is about that outdated (?) catchphrase "Don't be evil" that once looked like was important for Google.
- reliablereason 3y agoA company that had “Don't be evil” as the motto. No it is a company that removed the text “Don't be evil” from their motto.
- quotemstr 3y agoWho gets to decide what's "evil"? You? Why?
- reliablereason 3y agoEvil definition: adjective - profoundly immoral and wicked. Society communally “decides” the definition of words.
- willvarfar 3y agoThe early Google was a small place where the brightest minds applied themselves to the most mundane problems, and the result was awesome. The company had a motto of "don't be evil" when the competition - Micro$oft and Oracle etc - were the epitome of evil, out to crush developers. That was the narrative back then, and the Googlers people knew believed it as much as the masses. There was a steady erosion of the moral high ground in the second decade of Google, especially around China and the purchasing of Doubleclick.
- nabla9 3y agoThese workers had no moral high-ground to start with. Google is ad sales business and monopolistic one. Apparently workers are not concerned about the ethics of the core business model. They just wanted to grandstand without any cost. Even without politics, if you work for Google, you are not making the world better place. Companies are fundamentally amoral money making entities. Do not cry for people being fired from an ad business.
- yreg 3y agoI for one don't believe working for Google is fundamentally unethical.
- nabla9 3y agoNeither do I. It's not very ethical, but its not fundamentally unethical. If you care about ethics, find something else than Google. If you want the money, put your head down and work.
- anotherhue 3y agoBecause they've done so much for the human experience? Nonsense, they're an ad company and you're signing away your ethical credibility however you enable them.
- gsky 3y agoExactly. 80% of the ads I see are downright scams.
- arethuza 3y agoOn YouTube I think maybe 50% are scams and 98% are just plain irrelevant - I've come to the conclusion its really just a way of harassing me to sign up for YouTube Premium.
- constantcrying 3y agoI recently reported an ad for an obvious "get rich quick scheme", apparently advertising scams is okay with Google though...
- ebaraka 3y ago[flagged]
- richthegeek 3y agoWhich parts of their actions should be protected by law? They stopped doing their job, interrupted the work of others, and were in parts of the building that they did not leave when asked. These would normally be completely normal to treat with disciplinary actions and in the last case, they are trespassing. Just adding in the 'but they were protesting something' doesn't change this by default. And even in Europe (where I'm from and still live) their actions would not be protected. They wouldn't get fired, but they would face some repercussions until they protest in a manner compatible with the law. I cannot simply say "I'm not going to do any work, because I don't like that my company makes software used by the Metropolitan Police" and expect my company to say "fine by us, we'll keep paying you".
- aestetix 3y agoThe messaging on this is not very well crafted. Google has fired people for protesting something called Project Nimbus. I read the tweet, the referenced tweet, and the Medium blog post that was supposed to give the information. I still do not know what Project Nimbus is. I just know that it has something vaguely to do with some kind of government intelligence.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nunez 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus TL;DR: Google Cloud (and AWS!) won a large contract to provide the Israeli government with cloud services. People are concerned that this can be used to further attack Palestine.
- constantcrying 3y agoHow is the surprising at all? You work for a company which provides IT services to the Israeli government. Of course protesting that project will get you fired.
- michaelt 3y agoAre there any jobs where you can publicly accuse your employer of "genocide for profit", hold a protest on company property and keep your job? I mean, I'm all for workers' right to protest about things like Andy Rubin's $128 million golden parachute when he was fired for sexism - that sort of thing directly impacts working conditions. Problems which might have to be aired publicly, lest they be swept under the rug. And I'm all for workers' right to engage in politics publicly outside of work, on their own time - I don't think anyone should face firing because their presence at a protest 'might reflect badly on the company' when they haven't brought the company into it. And I'm in favour of employees being allowed to move between projects when they object to certain work and there's other work available. If an engineer at Boeing wants to work on passenger planes and space rockets but not fighter jets or ICBMs I think that's reasonable. If a Muslim working at a supermarket doesn't want to stock the alcohol shelves, and there's enough shelf-stocking work they can just swap with someone else, accommodating them is only reasonable. But accusing your employer of genocide for profit? In public? That's several steps beyond what I'd expect to get away with.
- ebaraka 3y ago[flagged]
- dogleash 3y ago"Bring your whole self to work" meets "no, not like that" I just feel bad for the people entering the job market believing the lies. Yeah they're dummies if they thought anything else would happen. But all my scorn is reserved for the people who duped them.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40072295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40072295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40060532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40060532
- gjvc 3y ago[flagged]
- ta_9390 3y agoDon't be evil