Perhaps I'm still too naive and innocent, but I don't think this represents the overall reality of the company. A lot of people participated in the protests mentioned and only two statements of retaliations were given (edit: or at least leaked to the media), with "more than a dozen" shared during the meeting in question. Given the sheer size of the company, if there was "systemic" retaliation I'd expect these to be in the order of a few hundreds, or many dozens at the least.
In addition, we're only seeing this from the perspective of those who feel they were retaliated against because of those protests, with absolutely no additional context or perspective of the managers/execs/peers (which I think we will never obtain for rather obvious reasons).
Personally, I have found Google to have a really open culture of communication. You're generally free to give your opinion. I'd be much more afraid of retaliation from peers due to something I said being considered offensive by some of them, than by an executive or my manager due to speaking out against the way the company does things (which happens all the time and by large amounts of employees). Of course that's just one experience and I may have been lucky with my own team.
disclaimer: I recently joined Google but I'm only aware of these incidents from media publications such as this and everything above is just my personal opinion on the incident.
Edit: Added that "more than a dozen" other stories were shared in the meeting according to the article, as I had originally missed that.
For each reporter - how many people do you think did not report?
Do you honestly think ALL people reported?
If its not dozens unreported per one report (or more) I'd eat my hat.
In my history of corporations, almost all bad behavior goes unreported because those in power are doing the bad thing. It seems like Google is not different in this respect.
I don't know the specifics here but I wonder if this is a correlation/causation issue. If a bunch of people walked out, and afterwards some of them feel mistreated for whatever reason, it seems easy to assume it's retaliation. It could very well be some completely separate issue (reorg, change in priorities, etc..). Google management is really in a bind here.
How often does a reorganization or "change in priorities" cause management to force healthy and capable employees to take sick leave? Particularly at a company with an unlimited sick leave policy.
It seems to me they're trying to "encourage" these people to leave rather than fire them because that would look like retaliation. Google management isn't in bind, they're using the same playbook that has gotten them into trouble time and again.
A bunch of your employees walk out in protest because they don't want to do the work you want them to do. Isn't it totally normal and expected that you would then sanction or fire them?
I'm sure Google has never been perfect, but it used to sound like a great place to work free from much of the bullshit that goes on in other companies. I envied those that got to work there for that reason. I'm sure it's still a long way from turning into an Amazon or Microsoft, but I hope it takes some active measures to avoid sliding down that slope.
That’s what happens When Google hired Wall Street executives to manage their actual business: all sort of politics and purging. Reducing cost by most primitive capitalism means(just look at the quality downturn of google cafeteria)
Google's Cafe food has actually increased over last 4 years I've been at Google.
MK Snacks are better. Coffee Better.
Its less cost cutting and more about logistics. You can't buy Mom & Pop created chocolate for 60k Bay area employees spread across 100 offices. We'd be consuming > 100% their supply. Most of the changes are around streamlining our logistics in the bay area to single suppliers.
As for w-street's changes, its not all negative. E.g. When I First joined google I heard of a team spending 10mil on an experiment by buying custom hardware to test form factor...the same experiment could have been done with a 1000$ foam/clay/3d printed mockup. People like Ruth have tought many teams in google to be more frugal.
Or maybe that's just reality of growth - the larger the organization the harder it is to keep a specific culture as founders can't align culture with all managers anymore, but have to let people go their way.
Rank-and-file employees have strong legal protections against retaliation for unionization efforts. Employees in management roles do not.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for Google to attempt to transition union organizers out of a management role.
Of course, "management" is a term that is extremely vague inside Google; at least historically "Tech Leads" would not have been considered managers, so there could be an extremely low proportion of the company in a managerial role.
It's shocking to me that Googlers are using internal/workplace email to organize. These discussions should be moved to a place that is outside Google's reach—have them on Signal, Slack, ProtonMail, whatever. This in is the 0.1% of cases where it's really ill-advised to be using Google tools for organizing.
The problem is even if you use another service, you're probably still on their Wifi. Large buildings don't always have good cell coverage.
So even if they don't know what you're saying on Signal, they know who used it at what times.
Plus Signal groups are unwieldy with many participants, plus it's just a PITA to type on your phone vs a keyboard.
Also, does GOOG MITM employee connections? Many large banks and hospitals make you install a root cert to use the wifi.
In short, there are many nudges pushing employees to use "insecure" organizing methods.
Also from a legal perspective, if you have a history of allowing internal debate, you open yourself up to liability if you silence that debate when it touches on the workplace.
(It's protected speech in the states to discuss working conditions, and it can be considered retaliation to not allow discussing conditions if other non work talk is allowed)
I know this isn't a popular opinion here, but the reality is that Google has created a hotbed for activism, espoused very political opinions internally, hired Twitter activists, played with identity politics, fired people for right of center political discussion...
Now they are having their dirty laundry aired in the media (the same media that is aligned with the social activists they've been courting). This was the inevitable outcome of playing these games and they have absolutely reaped what they've sown. Hopefully this will be a lesson other companies can learn from and we'll start to see a return to "business" instead of "activism+business+social media outrage".
> the company’s lawyers urged the U.S. government to give companies more leeway to reign in rebellious employees from organizing over workplace email.
I'm all for tech workers organizing (or dare I say "unionizing"), but it seems like a no-brainer to use non-work email. There are plenty of other free options, including Gmail. If Google retaliated against an employee for something they sent from a personal Gmail account, they would be in a whole lot more trouble.
It's likely you're missing why they're using work email: It's a way to broadcast and promote the concerns to people who aren't already part of their organized action. From what I've read, there's an incredibly large number of not-work-related email lists internally at Google, they have somewhat of their own private little Internet world there.
So "organizing" with their work email wasn't about "the organizers talking to each other", it was about getting people to join the Walkout.
This is old news. Wasn't there a prominent case of a Google developer alleging that they were fired in retaliation for protected activity relating to political beliefs as well as work conditions? I'm happy that this kind of stuff is being taken more seriously this time around, but let's acknowledge priority and credit, where credit is due.
Having been involved in similar events in the US with unions, I would argue unions don't do NOT do good job at preventing retaliation outside of jobs with very specific and prescribed career paths and etc. Effectively they trade flexibility for super rigid job paths in order to "protect" the worker and that cuts off other opportunities.
If there is any room for an employer to make a judgment call then they can make it, and a union has limited ability to deal with that. US unions are often only concerned with the aspects of the job they can / have negotiated, or things that are already illegal (and you'd be surprised what comes out of the sausage factory when negotiations end). If the job allows for any judgment calls by the employer, they get to make them just the same as a non union job.
What is the answer then? You get the typical US union job where the job is hyper track driven as far as career path goes because the union feels that is the only way to control / have a say in those aspects. The employer doesn't have the flexibility to retaliate and hide it as a business decision.... but they also don't have the ability to promote someone over another for the same reasons (what is seen as retaliation by one person might be seen as a well earned promotion by someone else who got the job). Even then if your boss is a "jerk", often a union can't do anything.
The results are jobs where easy to identify things like seniority, some sort of certification system, and etc determine pay, progress and etc. That is a terrible trade off IMO.
This. I've been a software engineer for twenty years and a union member the whole way through. It's paid off, time and time again, not just for me but for colleagues as well. Solidarity forever.
Meh. If we had German style unions or even guild sure.
But unions otherwise would destroy the current advantage of paying highly productive workers their due share in favor of seniority and other bs.
Plus like this example:
>In the email, Stapleton said that she arranged a meeting with Google’s human resources division after flagging changes to her job. She was told to go on sick leave. When she replied that she wasn’t sick, Stapleton wrote, the HR director said: “We put people on it all the time.”
Just drop a line to your state DoL and they would be all over that instantly with nail filled baseball bats.
It sounds like the issue is people in some sort of management or leadership role who are also leading protests in the same area (AI ethics)? This isn't exactly a conflict of interest, but it sounds like a conflict of something?
I’m not sure this is a problem. Of course a company is going to retaliate against employees that are protesting instead of working. What did the protestors honestly expect? That they would get promoted?
If I ran a company, and my employees were protesting decisions that I thought were in the best interest of shareholders, I would first listen to them. If after listening I still believed the course of action was correct I would have no other choice but to punish/fire them. It’s not the protestors’ job or responsibility to go around the company again and again instead of proper channels.
At some point, your morality and the morality of corporations and capitalism will always conflict. Is Google going into China a decision I like. No, it’s not. Would I maybe be upset if I was a developer on a censored search engine? Of course.
But is it the right thing to do for the shareholders? Yes! Of course. China is a huge market and represents massive potential for Google. They have a moral responsibility to maximize profits for their investors and that should always be the primary mandate for companies (unless they are a B corp, like Etsy).
This will naturally conflict with personal morality, as it should, but cognitive dissonance is always a given. The only question is whether you recognize and accept or deny it’s constant presence in everything.
Aren't you engaging in identity politics yourself by pulling out this argument?
And that said, obviously retaliation is going to vary on the scenario. You're essentially saying that they deserve retaliation for reporting sexual harassment etc because of an entirely separate incident.
Retaliation is when someone experiences adverse consequences for doing the right thing. You wouldn't say, "Joe is a victim of retaliation. He didn't show up to work for two weeks and they retaliated by firing him!" The people who didn't like the Damore memo believed it demonstrated a fireable offense -- creating a hostile work environment by stating or implying that women are less suited to the job. They wouldn't view his firing as retaliation, because they view it as justified.
Of course, there are individuals like yourself who have a different perspective on that -- and for the purposes of keeping this discussion on topic I'll avoid sharing my views on that. Regardless, it is different from being fired or punished for reporting sexual harassment or racial discrimination. There is substantially no political group who, at least publicly, would espouse the view that such reports are wrong, or should be punishable in any way. Except I suppose if they are found to be baseless. So if someone suffers adverse consequences due to making such reports, assuming they are made in good faith, almost everyone would agree that that is retaliation.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19779093. It's no surprise that generic ideo-political flamebait (meant that way or not) gives us generic ideo-political flamewar.
Typically far-right uses SJW as a slur, with a straw man filling the role as a blue haired non-binary Berkeley student.
I'm curious to see it used here - what about the Google engineers not wanting to do military contracts strikes you as "sjw?" Do you perhaps not use the term as it is typically employed?
Could we do without the derogatory „SJW“ insult? It’s blatantly obvious that it never leads to any discussions of value.
And as far as insults go, it’s an incredibly lazy one. Because there is absolutely no defense against it: the mere advocacy of, for example, anti-discrimination or against AI arms trade will expose you to being called an „SJW“. It’s an insult of last resort, because actually engaging for discrimination or selling drones to child soldiers in Western Africa or whatever would make you look like a deranged crank. Therefore, you use precisely the fact that something is generally recognized as good as an argument against the speaker.
Theoretically, I guess there’s a „no-risk“ accusation included as well (see also: virtue signalling). But apparently, organizing a walk-out and risking your career (see: this article) doesn’t actually qualify as „risk“.
[+] [-] lfcc|6 years ago|reply
In addition, we're only seeing this from the perspective of those who feel they were retaliated against because of those protests, with absolutely no additional context or perspective of the managers/execs/peers (which I think we will never obtain for rather obvious reasons).
Personally, I have found Google to have a really open culture of communication. You're generally free to give your opinion. I'd be much more afraid of retaliation from peers due to something I said being considered offensive by some of them, than by an executive or my manager due to speaking out against the way the company does things (which happens all the time and by large amounts of employees). Of course that's just one experience and I may have been lucky with my own team.
disclaimer: I recently joined Google but I'm only aware of these incidents from media publications such as this and everything above is just my personal opinion on the incident.
Edit: Added that "more than a dozen" other stories were shared in the meeting according to the article, as I had originally missed that.
[+] [-] hobs|6 years ago|reply
In my history of corporations, almost all bad behavior goes unreported because those in power are doing the bad thing. It seems like Google is not different in this respect.
[+] [-] bsamuels|6 years ago|reply
So more than two accounts of retaliation
[+] [-] patrickg_zill|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] geodel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juanbyrge|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliekelly|6 years ago|reply
It seems to me they're trying to "encourage" these people to leave rather than fire them because that would look like retaliation. Google management isn't in bind, they're using the same playbook that has gotten them into trouble time and again.
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] C1sc0cat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erentz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whoevercares|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cobookman|6 years ago|reply
MK Snacks are better. Coffee Better.
Its less cost cutting and more about logistics. You can't buy Mom & Pop created chocolate for 60k Bay area employees spread across 100 offices. We'd be consuming > 100% their supply. Most of the changes are around streamlining our logistics in the bay area to single suppliers.
As for w-street's changes, its not all negative. E.g. When I First joined google I heard of a team spending 10mil on an experiment by buying custom hardware to test form factor...the same experiment could have been done with a 1000$ foam/clay/3d printed mockup. People like Ruth have tought many teams in google to be more frugal.
[+] [-] johannes1234321|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|6 years ago|reply
This is the most brutal takedown of working at GOOG I've seen in yonks. A legit reason to choose to work somewhere else, all else being equal.
[+] [-] steve76|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cubaia|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] powera|6 years ago|reply
Rank-and-file employees have strong legal protections against retaliation for unionization efforts. Employees in management roles do not.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for Google to attempt to transition union organizers out of a management role.
Of course, "management" is a term that is extremely vague inside Google; at least historically "Tech Leads" would not have been considered managers, so there could be an extremely low proportion of the company in a managerial role.
[+] [-] chrisseaton|6 years ago|reply
I wouldn't have thought managers would be welcome in a union in the first place? Doesn't a union represent workers against management?
[+] [-] idlewords|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clubm8|6 years ago|reply
So even if they don't know what you're saying on Signal, they know who used it at what times.
Plus Signal groups are unwieldy with many participants, plus it's just a PITA to type on your phone vs a keyboard.
Also, does GOOG MITM employee connections? Many large banks and hospitals make you install a root cert to use the wifi.
In short, there are many nudges pushing employees to use "insecure" organizing methods.
Also from a legal perspective, if you have a history of allowing internal debate, you open yourself up to liability if you silence that debate when it touches on the workplace.
(It's protected speech in the states to discuss working conditions, and it can be considered retaliation to not allow discussing conditions if other non work talk is allowed)
[+] [-] rmbryan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malvosenior|6 years ago|reply
Now they are having their dirty laundry aired in the media (the same media that is aligned with the social activists they've been courting). This was the inevitable outcome of playing these games and they have absolutely reaped what they've sown. Hopefully this will be a lesson other companies can learn from and we'll start to see a return to "business" instead of "activism+business+social media outrage".
[+] [-] username223|6 years ago|reply
I'm all for tech workers organizing (or dare I say "unionizing"), but it seems like a no-brainer to use non-work email. There are plenty of other free options, including Gmail. If Google retaliated against an employee for something they sent from a personal Gmail account, they would be in a whole lot more trouble.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|6 years ago|reply
So "organizing" with their work email wasn't about "the organizers talking to each other", it was about getting people to join the Walkout.
[+] [-] 0815test|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diddid|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manishsharan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
If there is any room for an employer to make a judgment call then they can make it, and a union has limited ability to deal with that. US unions are often only concerned with the aspects of the job they can / have negotiated, or things that are already illegal (and you'd be surprised what comes out of the sausage factory when negotiations end). If the job allows for any judgment calls by the employer, they get to make them just the same as a non union job.
What is the answer then? You get the typical US union job where the job is hyper track driven as far as career path goes because the union feels that is the only way to control / have a say in those aspects. The employer doesn't have the flexibility to retaliate and hide it as a business decision.... but they also don't have the ability to promote someone over another for the same reasons (what is seen as retaliation by one person might be seen as a well earned promotion by someone else who got the job). Even then if your boss is a "jerk", often a union can't do anything.
The results are jobs where easy to identify things like seniority, some sort of certification system, and etc determine pay, progress and etc. That is a terrible trade off IMO.
[+] [-] angrygoat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lr4444lr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delfinom|6 years ago|reply
Plus like this example:
>In the email, Stapleton said that she arranged a meeting with Google’s human resources division after flagging changes to her job. She was told to go on sick leave. When she replied that she wasn’t sick, Stapleton wrote, the HR director said: “We put people on it all the time.”
Just drop a line to your state DoL and they would be all over that instantly with nail filled baseball bats.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] iratewizard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] skybrian|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mruts|6 years ago|reply
If I ran a company, and my employees were protesting decisions that I thought were in the best interest of shareholders, I would first listen to them. If after listening I still believed the course of action was correct I would have no other choice but to punish/fire them. It’s not the protestors’ job or responsibility to go around the company again and again instead of proper channels.
At some point, your morality and the morality of corporations and capitalism will always conflict. Is Google going into China a decision I like. No, it’s not. Would I maybe be upset if I was a developer on a censored search engine? Of course.
But is it the right thing to do for the shareholders? Yes! Of course. China is a huge market and represents massive potential for Google. They have a moral responsibility to maximize profits for their investors and that should always be the primary mandate for companies (unless they are a B corp, like Etsy).
This will naturally conflict with personal morality, as it should, but cognitive dissonance is always a given. The only question is whether you recognize and accept or deny it’s constant presence in everything.
[+] [-] samantha_thomas|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pacala|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pjc50|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilikehurdles|6 years ago|reply
The “counterpoint”, that women were not as well suited toward engineering roles due to their biology, was “offered” on a company mailing list.
[+] [-] fzeroracer|6 years ago|reply
And that said, obviously retaliation is going to vary on the scenario. You're essentially saying that they deserve retaliation for reporting sexual harassment etc because of an entirely separate incident.
[+] [-] asdfasgasdgasdg|6 years ago|reply
Of course, there are individuals like yourself who have a different perspective on that -- and for the purposes of keeping this discussion on topic I'll avoid sharing my views on that. Regardless, it is different from being fired or punished for reporting sexual harassment or racial discrimination. There is substantially no political group who, at least publicly, would espouse the view that such reports are wrong, or should be punishable in any way. Except I suppose if they are found to be baseless. So if someone suffers adverse consequences due to making such reports, assuming they are made in good faith, almost everyone would agree that that is retaliation.
[+] [-] diminoten|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawhizkid|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sctb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Angostura|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] komali2|6 years ago|reply
I'm curious to see it used here - what about the Google engineers not wanting to do military contracts strikes you as "sjw?" Do you perhaps not use the term as it is typically employed?
[+] [-] shaki-dora|6 years ago|reply
And as far as insults go, it’s an incredibly lazy one. Because there is absolutely no defense against it: the mere advocacy of, for example, anti-discrimination or against AI arms trade will expose you to being called an „SJW“. It’s an insult of last resort, because actually engaging for discrimination or selling drones to child soldiers in Western Africa or whatever would make you look like a deranged crank. Therefore, you use precisely the fact that something is generally recognized as good as an argument against the speaker.
Theoretically, I guess there’s a „no-risk“ accusation included as well (see also: virtue signalling). But apparently, organizing a walk-out and risking your career (see: this article) doesn’t actually qualify as „risk“.