It's still worth discussing if their reaction warranted the offense. Would they have fired her had she added a pop-up on Earth Day encouraging employees to recycle? Or would she have received a slap on the wrist for that. In other words, how much of what she was advocating was part of the decision to fire?
> The particular popup looks pretty official and scary
It's warning of a legal obligation. Is that not enough of an "endorsement"? And it only pops up if you visit the website of a consulting firm that some say has breached these obligations in the past. It's hard to think of a better way of targeting this warning.
Based on what I'm reading here, firing somebody that early in their career is cold and Google deserves all the criticism it is getting lately for basically being a combination of tone deaf, insensitive, overreacting (or shall we call it panicking?), and biased to doing things most of their own people would simply characterize as "the wrong thing". In jurisdictions outside the US, this kind of random act of corporatism could end up being very expensive. Firing people without good reason is a not a thing that holds up in court and this looks like it doesn't stand much scrutiny.
Also, this seems like it is policy rather than an isolated incident. I'd suggest fixing it by maybe correcting people up the food chain. Google is a long way away from their don't be evil motto when they were young, naive, and producing lots of cool new products and services because they weren't held back by corporate idiotism and political correctness.
Does it matter? If she used Google resources in a manner not company-approved, and if labor law doesn't recognize using a resource like that as a protected communications channel, like they would a company break room announcement board, why should Google be subject to a neutrality test? I support unionization, but I don't see what legal ground she has to stand on here.
The firing might hold in court, but to be frank there is no way she would get fired over something like this if it was not related to unionization or other anti corporate messages. Google is typically very lenient on harmless offences like this which is why the firing is a surprise.
>Google is typically very lenient on harmless offences
I know somehow who got fired from Google for taking a half gallon on milk home, because it was late and he didn't feel like swinging by the grocery store.
That is a good question. Is this a fireable offense regardless of the content? If not, what kind of content is fireable, subject matter that is political, religious, vulgar, or offensive?
Putting this into an internal tool does seem unprofessional in my opinion. Why bite the hand that feeds you?
Why the struggle, why the strain?
Why make trouble, why make scenes?
Why go against the grain, why swim upstream?
It ain't, it ain't, it ain't no use
You're bound, you're bound, you're bound to lose
What's done, what's done, what's done is done
That's the way the river runs
So why get wet?
Why break a sweat?
Why waste your precious breath?
Why beat your handsome brow?
Nothing changes, nothing changes, nothing changes
Anyhow
I would say that better you would ask , was this the right time to bite the hand? Because there are good reasons to do it, like if uber self driving cars developers would have done something instead of disabling safety features and lick the hand that feeds them.
Sounds like she went through standard procedure to add code, but the feature was not sanctioned by management....
i.e. if you work on a payment system, add you add code to siphon sub-cent rounding "errors" to a "settlement" account, said code may pass review (because it looks legit to code reviewers), but I bet management would be pissed at the change if not prior approved.
Exactly. What if the pop-up just said “not using disposable cups helps the environment”, or “the Holocaust happened”. Or even something like “Trump is a bigot”. Would she have got the sack? This is the true question. She was just stating a fact...
