7 ms·

> “There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night

by siva7 3y ago

> “There’s been a total change in the way Google responds to employees trying to have a voice in their workplace,” the fired software engineer said. “It’s night and day from the Google of even five, 10 years ago.” Having a political voice is different than having a voice against sexual harassment at the workplace. Please don't mix things that don't belong together. Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies. SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate.

tovej 3y ago
I feel like I have to push back against the idea that it is "radical" to object to your labor being used in a genocide. Am I the only one that feels like this is a fairly straightforward moral issue, and one I would expect to -- at the very least -- be allowed to express myself about. I also think the resolution of the moral issue is fairly straightforward, but I accept that there will be multiple opinions there. Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired, and supporting a genocide is -- in my mind -- a much more radical political position than objecting to one.
- trueismywork 3y ago
  Sexual harassment cases are much more black and white and actionable than genocide cases.
  - tovej 3y ago
    Acting on them also has less of an impact on the bottom line, and doesn't sour the company's connections to Israeli or US military and defense industries. Corporations tend to act morally only when doing so aligns with their profit motives.
    - 0xBDB 3y ago
      Google has explicitly denied that Project Nimbus has anything to do with defense or military use. You can disbelieve this, of course, and I assume the internal protesters did disbelieve it or at least thought the tech was dual-use (I don't know what Nimbus actually is). But assuming it's true, and also assuming for the sake of argument that Israel is guilty of genocide, I think it raises an interesting question: do otherwise genocidal governments still need and deserve the right to buy civilian infrastructure to support their own people? I think they do, and that depriving them of that infrastructure could itself rise to the level of a crime (if taken to an extreme).
      - racional 3y ago
        Google has explicitly denied that Project Nimbus has anything to do with defense or military use. And yet the IDF and other security agencies in Israel are proudly boasted of as clients in their own press releases.
- gedy 3y ago
  > Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired I've worked in past with people who were very passionate Gaza supporters. And they received nothing but praise, but their work may have supported people involved with Oct 7th massacres. Should they be fired too?
  - tovej 3y ago
    I don't see how that relates to my point. My point is that repercussions are happening to one side of the issue: those opposing genocide and apartheid. Two things I was sure of everyone could agree on are some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity you can commit. The genocide has been ongoing for multiple decades, Israel routinely bombs civilians in Gaza, and any Palestinians living in Israel have essentially no political rights and effectively fewer property rights than other people. They have color coded passports and car license plates, and are easy to target by Zionists. Zionists get tried in civil court for committing crimes, and Palestinians living on the e.g. West Bank get tried in criminal court for any offense. An offense can include walking on a certain off-limit street if you are a Palestinian (which is not off-limit to Israelis or tourists). Israel has killed so many more people than any Palestinian resistance forces that were engaged in October 7th (Hamas, communists, etc.), so trying to center the discussion on October 7th is fairly ridiculous. Look at these charts and tell me with a straight face that Palestinians are the violent ones: https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-casualties-by-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank/ https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-cas... https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5898581/chart-israel-palestine-conflict-deaths https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5898581/chart-israel-palestine... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-20/six-charts-that-show-the-scale-of-human-loss-in-israel-gaza-war/103074196 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-20/six-charts-that-show-... https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-ham...
    - gedy 3y ago
      Just pointing out your arguments could be applied to any war, e.g. Japan and USA in WW2: Japan lost magnitudes more people than the US, though it's really hard to sell that the US was committing genocide, especially given how aggressive and nasty Japan was when given free reign. Lots of parallels here.
- siva7 3y ago
  It strikes me wrong to call this a genocide as a survivor of an actual genocide. So i have maybe a narrower definition of the word but i feel obligated because of my experiences to remind to being very careful with this word
  - tovej 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - gataca 3y ago
      The ICJ did no such thing. Here is the president of the ICJ clarifying this misreporting: https://x.com/UKLFI/status/1785305902276301019 https://x.com/UKLFI/status/1785305902276301019
      - peteradio 3y ago
        Good thing the lawyer brigade is helping Israel stay just just just barely below the technical definition of a genocide. Google can rest easy knowing til this date one apparent body of justice has blessed the actions as not technically genocide. Certainly the employees should continue to keep their heads down and keep calm because so far its not technically genocide. Judgements based on evidence dated til Dec. 2023, new evidence dating prior could revise genocidal status - The above is a satire. But come on what are we arguing about?
        gataca 3y ago
        We are arguing about the meaning of words, especially words thrown around as libels to try and delegitimize justified self defense. I'm sorry if the facts don't agree with your desires for something to be true. War is terrible and civilians die in all wars, especially those in urban areas where one party tunnels underneath civilian infrastructure to protect themselves while leaving civilians exposed to fire.
        peteradio 3y ago
- bko 3y ago
  They're free to leave and should state their reasons. What they're not free to do is disrupt the mission of the company and feel entitled to do so without any consequences. These people weren't fired because they answered some question incorrectly on a mandatory survey. They laid on the floor, prevented people from doing their work and harassed people making many feel uncomfortable. When you see someone like that behaving at your business, do you stop and think "let me hear them out" It's not complicated.
  - lupire 3y ago
    Please reread the article, if only the first sentence, which is helpfully formatted in bold type. You missed some crucial details about who was doing what among the fired people.
    - crmd 3y ago
      Google disputes this, if you read past the first sentence: >[A]ll of the workers who were fired were “personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings."
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    Getting publicly fired and then using your labor rights and bureaucratic processes to draw out the issue seems like a much more effective form of protest than just quitting. Their tactics are good here.
    - neverokay 3y ago
      I doubt that was their plan, since if it was going to go down like this, then you might as well have the cops drag you out the building. Protests don’t work if they can disperse of you that easily or cordon you off to a small block. If only a few of you get arrested and the rest of you disperse, it won’t work. If one of you get arrested, all of you should try to get arrested since they can’t fill up the jails with everyone. If you are not going to go all the way then don’t bother with this shit. I don’t agree with the Jan 6 riots, but they mostly followed through lol. That’s pretty much how you have to do it, and if you have a really good cause (e.g something not retarded like defending trump), you’d have a lot of support. College protesters need to straight up super glue themselves to the campus honestly if they really want to do this. Yes, actually glue on bare skin to surface. Then America can watch as the fire departments remove students one by one off the walls of the campus live lol. Be sticky, protesters.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- troffo 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - tovej 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - troffo 2y ago
      [flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bjourne 3y ago
Who says that a totalitarian attitude is desirable?? Freedom of speech implies that expressing your opinions should not cost you your job.
- tekla 3y ago
  I was told that speech had consequences and anything but the Govt literally silencing you was ok for decades. Damn. I guess that NOW HN cares about free speech, after highly paid fellows get fired from their jobs for doing dumb shit
  - theossuary 3y ago
    You have it backwards. There's a huge backlash when somebody's fired for being racist, or homophobic, or transphobic. Now anti-authoritarian protestors are being doxxed, fired and arrested; yet I haven't heard a peep from those people who "believe in free speech."
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - themaninthedark 2y ago
      I don't know, bjourne has been pretty vocal and he keeps getting downvoted. I also believe they should be allowed to express their views at work and that is consistent with my views in the past.
- neverokay 3y ago
  The issue with free speech historically or currently worldwide is that governments can silence, jail or kill you. It’s a civic issue, not business one.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - DangitBobby 3y ago
linearrust 3y ago
> SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate. What's remarkable is that SV allowed protests against US, china, russia, anyone really. But protest against israeli war crimes is where they drew the line. SV, media, congress, everyone supported violent protests that burned down cities. But peaceful protests in college campuses against israeli genocide is where they send in the storm troopers. In china, they send in the storm troopers if you protest communist rule. It's interesting what we send the storm troopers for. Food for thought.
- shmatt 2y ago
  They and We are doing some extra leg work here They were fired for blocking a senior executives private office. Do that in the name of US, china, russia, sesame street, and you're getting fired.
  - linearrust 2y ago
    > They were fired for blocking a senior executives private office. That must be it. That must be why the media, congress, colleges, etc are all cracking down on protests. Where were they a few years ago when 'peaceful protests' were 'peacefully' burning down cities? It says something when both MSNBC and Fox News agree on cracking down on protests.
smsm42 2y ago
> Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies That very much depends on which political voice it is. If it's within approved voices, which lies very heavily to the left, then you'll be likely celebrated. But if you take it too far left - or, horrible dictu, a little to the right - then you'd get the boot. It's been like this 10 years ago and is now, it's just now the incessant push to the left is temporarily diverging from what Google approves, and also the tolerance for physically disruptive actions seems to thin out - while the left seems to get more and more bold, graduating from writing letters to physically disrupting work. The combination of non-approved cause and physical disruption is a sure recipe to get the boot, indeed.
- edmundsauto 2y ago
  What is the generalizable evidence you base this opinion on? Surely you must have access to a database of the real reasons someone was fired across all of tech?
  - joenot443 2y ago
    Is that a database you earnestly expect to be maintained? It sounds to me like you're just asking silly rhetoricals in bad faith, not a good look IMO.
Two4 2y ago
It seems quite strange to attribute the actions of a group individuals to some nebulous force - "the left". It's weird to see such reductionism to a binary axis for something as complex as the intersection of politics, commerce and personal values.

by siva7 3y ago

tovej 3y ago

I feel like I have to push back against the idea that it is "radical" to object to your labor being used in a genocide. Am I the only one that feels like this is a fairly straightforward moral issue, and one I would expect to -- at the very least -- be allowed to express myself about. I also think the resolution of the moral issue is fairly straightforward, but I accept that there will be multiple opinions there. Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired, and supporting a genocide is -- in my mind -- a much more radical political position than objecting to one.

trueismywork 3y ago
Sexual harassment cases are much more black and white and actionable than genocide cases.
- tovej 3y ago
  Acting on them also has less of an impact on the bottom line, and doesn't sour the company's connections to Israeli or US military and defense industries. Corporations tend to act morally only when doing so aligns with their profit motives.
  - 0xBDB 3y ago
    Google has explicitly denied that Project Nimbus has anything to do with defense or military use. You can disbelieve this, of course, and I assume the internal protesters did disbelieve it or at least thought the tech was dual-use (I don't know what Nimbus actually is). But assuming it's true, and also assuming for the sake of argument that Israel is guilty of genocide, I think it raises an interesting question: do otherwise genocidal governments still need and deserve the right to buy civilian infrastructure to support their own people? I think they do, and that depriving them of that infrastructure could itself rise to the level of a crime (if taken to an extreme).
    - racional 3y ago
      Google has explicitly denied that Project Nimbus has anything to do with defense or military use. And yet the IDF and other security agencies in Israel are proudly boasted of as clients in their own press releases.
gedy 3y ago
> Still, people supporting Israel have not been fired I've worked in past with people who were very passionate Gaza supporters. And they received nothing but praise, but their work may have supported people involved with Oct 7th massacres. Should they be fired too?
- tovej 3y ago
  I don't see how that relates to my point. My point is that repercussions are happening to one side of the issue: those opposing genocide and apartheid. Two things I was sure of everyone could agree on are some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity you can commit. The genocide has been ongoing for multiple decades, Israel routinely bombs civilians in Gaza, and any Palestinians living in Israel have essentially no political rights and effectively fewer property rights than other people. They have color coded passports and car license plates, and are easy to target by Zionists. Zionists get tried in civil court for committing crimes, and Palestinians living on the e.g. West Bank get tried in criminal court for any offense. An offense can include walking on a certain off-limit street if you are a Palestinian (which is not off-limit to Israelis or tourists). Israel has killed so many more people than any Palestinian resistance forces that were engaged in October 7th (Hamas, communists, etc.), so trying to center the discussion on October 7th is fairly ridiculous. Look at these charts and tell me with a straight face that Palestinians are the violent ones: https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-casualties-by-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank/ https://www.statista.com/chart/16516/israeli-palestinian-cas... https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5898581/chart-israel-palestine-conflict-deaths https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5898581/chart-israel-palestine... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-20/six-charts-that-show-the-scale-of-human-loss-in-israel-gaza-war/103074196 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-20/six-charts-that-show-... https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-ham...
  - gedy 3y ago
    Just pointing out your arguments could be applied to any war, e.g. Japan and USA in WW2: Japan lost magnitudes more people than the US, though it's really hard to sell that the US was committing genocide, especially given how aggressive and nasty Japan was when given free reign. Lots of parallels here.
siva7 3y ago
It strikes me wrong to call this a genocide as a survivor of an actual genocide. So i have maybe a narrower definition of the word but i feel obligated because of my experiences to remind to being very careful with this word
- tovej 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - gataca 3y ago
    The ICJ did no such thing. Here is the president of the ICJ clarifying this misreporting: https://x.com/UKLFI/status/1785305902276301019 https://x.com/UKLFI/status/1785305902276301019
    - peteradio 3y ago
      Good thing the lawyer brigade is helping Israel stay just just just barely below the technical definition of a genocide. Google can rest easy knowing til this date one apparent body of justice has blessed the actions as not technically genocide. Certainly the employees should continue to keep their heads down and keep calm because so far its not technically genocide. Judgements based on evidence dated til Dec. 2023, new evidence dating prior could revise genocidal status - The above is a satire. But come on what are we arguing about?
      - gataca 3y ago
        We are arguing about the meaning of words, especially words thrown around as libels to try and delegitimize justified self defense. I'm sorry if the facts don't agree with your desires for something to be true. War is terrible and civilians die in all wars, especially those in urban areas where one party tunnels underneath civilian infrastructure to protect themselves while leaving civilians exposed to fire.
        peteradio 3y ago
bko 3y ago
They're free to leave and should state their reasons. What they're not free to do is disrupt the mission of the company and feel entitled to do so without any consequences. These people weren't fired because they answered some question incorrectly on a mandatory survey. They laid on the floor, prevented people from doing their work and harassed people making many feel uncomfortable. When you see someone like that behaving at your business, do you stop and think "let me hear them out" It's not complicated.
- lupire 3y ago
  Please reread the article, if only the first sentence, which is helpfully formatted in bold type. You missed some crucial details about who was doing what among the fired people.
  - crmd 3y ago
    Google disputes this, if you read past the first sentence: >[A]ll of the workers who were fired were “personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings."
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  Getting publicly fired and then using your labor rights and bureaucratic processes to draw out the issue seems like a much more effective form of protest than just quitting. Their tactics are good here.
  - neverokay 3y ago
    I doubt that was their plan, since if it was going to go down like this, then you might as well have the cops drag you out the building. Protests don’t work if they can disperse of you that easily or cordon you off to a small block. If only a few of you get arrested and the rest of you disperse, it won’t work. If one of you get arrested, all of you should try to get arrested since they can’t fill up the jails with everyone. If you are not going to go all the way then don’t bother with this shit. I don’t agree with the Jan 6 riots, but they mostly followed through lol. That’s pretty much how you have to do it, and if you have a really good cause (e.g something not retarded like defending trump), you’d have a lot of support. College protesters need to straight up super glue themselves to the campus honestly if they really want to do this. Yes, actually glue on bare skin to surface. Then America can watch as the fire departments remove students one by one off the walls of the campus live lol. Be sticky, protesters.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
troffo 3y ago
[flagged]
- tovej 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - troffo 2y ago
    [flagged]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bjourne 3y ago

Who says that a totalitarian attitude is desirable?? Freedom of speech implies that expressing your opinions should not cost you your job.

tekla 3y ago
I was told that speech had consequences and anything but the Govt literally silencing you was ok for decades. Damn. I guess that NOW HN cares about free speech, after highly paid fellows get fired from their jobs for doing dumb shit
- theossuary 3y ago
  You have it backwards. There's a huge backlash when somebody's fired for being racist, or homophobic, or transphobic. Now anti-authoritarian protestors are being doxxed, fired and arrested; yet I haven't heard a peep from those people who "believe in free speech."
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - themaninthedark 2y ago
    I don't know, bjourne has been pretty vocal and he keeps getting downvoted. I also believe they should be allowed to express their views at work and that is consistent with my views in the past.
neverokay 3y ago
The issue with free speech historically or currently worldwide is that governments can silence, jail or kill you. It’s a civic issue, not business one.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- DangitBobby 3y ago

linearrust 3y ago

> SV was very lax with this in the past. They just adjusted to how it is normally handled in corporate. What's remarkable is that SV allowed protests against US, china, russia, anyone really. But protest against israeli war crimes is where they drew the line. SV, media, congress, everyone supported violent protests that burned down cities. But peaceful protests in college campuses against israeli genocide is where they send in the storm troopers. In china, they send in the storm troopers if you protest communist rule. It's interesting what we send the storm troopers for. Food for thought.

shmatt 2y ago
They and We are doing some extra leg work here They were fired for blocking a senior executives private office. Do that in the name of US, china, russia, sesame street, and you're getting fired.
- linearrust 2y ago
  > They were fired for blocking a senior executives private office. That must be it. That must be why the media, congress, colleges, etc are all cracking down on protests. Where were they a few years ago when 'peaceful protests' were 'peacefully' burning down cities? It says something when both MSNBC and Fox News agree on cracking down on protests.

smsm42 2y ago

> Radically expressing your political voice during your job duties will get you fired in almost all companies That very much depends on which political voice it is. If it's within approved voices, which lies very heavily to the left, then you'll be likely celebrated. But if you take it too far left - or, horrible dictu, a little to the right - then you'd get the boot. It's been like this 10 years ago and is now, it's just now the incessant push to the left is temporarily diverging from what Google approves, and also the tolerance for physically disruptive actions seems to thin out - while the left seems to get more and more bold, graduating from writing letters to physically disrupting work. The combination of non-approved cause and physical disruption is a sure recipe to get the boot, indeed.

edmundsauto 2y ago
What is the generalizable evidence you base this opinion on? Surely you must have access to a database of the real reasons someone was fired across all of tech?
- joenot443 2y ago
  Is that a database you earnestly expect to be maintained? It sounds to me like you're just asking silly rhetoricals in bad faith, not a good look IMO.

Two4 2y ago

It seems quite strange to attribute the actions of a group individuals to some nebulous force - "the left". It's weird to see such reductionism to a binary axis for something as complex as the intersection of politics, commerce and personal values.