"Part of my job was to write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web"
If this is true and her job is literally to create javascript notifications of company policy, then I think it's entirely reasonable what she did considering it IS company policy (well, law really) that you have a right to organize.
The extension is intended to inform Googlers of applications that are not approved for corp data, not just generic "employee guidelines and company policies." This is so you don't e.g. upload PII into a random unsecured S3 bucket.
Yes, it's company policy, but this is more like running into a meeting and then interrupting it so you can start reciting NLRB policy than it is posting a flyer. Worse, it misappropriates a security tool in order to do that. And when it comes to intentional actions that violate or undermine security, Google, like most companies, takes a pretty hard line.
Disclosing that I'm a Googler, and speaking only on my own behalf, with no connection to anyone involved except the fact that the extension is running on my browser.
>Yes, it's company policy, but this is more like running into a meeting and then interrupting it so you can start reciting NLRB policy than it is posting a flyer.
True, but it seems kind of shady to come down harder on an employee based on the content of the interruption, and that content notifying of the right to organize.
Like, imagine there's a documentation page for http cookies. Consider two scenarios:
A) Rogue employee adds to the bottom of the page: "Cookies are also delicious treats given as a reward on the internet."
B) Rogue employee adds to the bottom of the page: "Employees reading this are reminded of their right to organize under NLRA."
Let's say that in scenario A, an employee would typically get a written warning, and in B, you always got fired. In that case, I think it would be fair for B to say -- at least in common speech -- "I got fired for notifying employees of their right to organize."
This is true, even though there is a general policy of not adding non-topical messages to doc pages, because the punishment never escalates to firing unless it's something like scenario B. (In a legal context rather than common speech I don't know enough to say whether it would be legal.)
I'm sympathetic to this. But the fact that it's a security tool being misused is what I think made for the very harsh reaction. Two scenarios:
A) Rogue employee messages a bunch of internal email lists about having the right to organize
B) Rogue employee configures a security extension to issue a popup saying "Happy Birthday Sundar!" every time an employee visits google.com on June 10.
I am confident that A) wouldn't result in any formal adverse action (they'd mostly get a pile of nasty responses about spamming internal lists), and I am confident that B) would at the least earn the employee a reprimand and plausibly get them fired.
It's incredible watching tech people in this thread assert that she wasn't fired for union agitation but if she was, that's okay too because she should have known not to be "inflammatory."
> I am confident that B) would at the least earn the employee a reprimand and plausibly get them fired.
Yikes! That sounds like a dangerous place to work. If an employee with legitimate, assigned access to such a tool makes a change through normal procedures (not bypassing required code review or anything) and it's still a fireable mistake - well, I'm glad I don't work there.
Data is simultaneously Google's greatest strength and its biggest liability. If an employee uploads data to a not-known-to-be-secure third party, it can literally cost Google billions of dollars depending on the data locality. Or, it could plausibly cause a severe security breach (if e.g. an employee uploads a security token into a third party decoder).
And so the security team builds an extension in order to very loudly alert employees when they're on one of these known-to-be dangerous domains. And, as it happens, the implementation of the loud popups could make it a general browser notification platform whenever an employee visits a particular domain.
Is it a good idea for teams to start using it as a general notification platform?
No, not on any level. On top of being annoying for employees, it breaks the security UX. When someone sees one of these popups, they know they're important and that they should be very wary of whatever they're doing. But if it starts being a popup that can be triggered by anyone in the company who can convince themselves that they're providing value by sending out the popup, people start ignoring it. And there's no going back at that point, because employees have been trained to ignore the popup because of it staying stupid shit like "Happy Birthday Sundar!" and "Read these NLRB rights!" and "You can go grab a burger at the cafe today!" Everyone's been made worse off, and the original security problem has come back.
I'm not disputing that, but that still really doesn't seem like a fireable offense. I'm objecting to the fact that she got fired for it after (presumably) making the change through appropriate channels. There are always appropriate channels to roll back a good-faith change, too.
If you could concisely and cogently explain why this change is a bad idea in an HN comment, surely someone can do that in response to the change, revert it, and move on. If it's SOP for Google to fire people who make well-intentioned changes that have the side effect of alert fatigue, then one, I don't want to work there, and two, I would expect to see a lot more firings.
And surely they could explain the problem, revert it, and move on without calling her into a conference room and grilling her about who else she's organizing with. That makes it seem like it's about the content of the notification, not the alert fatigue.
Even in california, it's the companies choice what a "fireable" offense is, not the employee, nor what social media thinks "seems fireable". If you violate any company policy, or even if google does not think you are performing, you can quite legally be fired. There is very little chance of any recourse.
Don't misunderstand, it's not that I'm really trying to defend google. This is to serve as a reality check and warning to those who don't understand the rules of employment. And I'm guessing the Engineer in question understood the risk full well.
> Even in california, it's the companies choice what a "fireable" offense is, not the employee, nor what social media thinks "seems fireable". If you violate any company policy, or even if google does not think you are performing, you can quite legally be fired. There is very little chance of any recourse.
I don't disagree with that either. I'm just saying that, if this is the company's choice of fireable offense if the company actually considers it normal to exercise the right to dismiss an employee (which they legally do have) for this sort of mistake, I'm glad I don't work there.
As I mentioned in another comment, I recently did something at work that you could spin in an equally sinister way, if you want. My company would be within its rights to fire me for it. My employer would be within its rights to fire me for sneezing at the wrong time, or even for no reason at all. I choose to continue working at this company because I trust that, despite their legal ability, they have no intention of actually doing so. If I ever lost that trust, I would leave.
(In fact, my employer and Google's also have very similar employment agreements about ownership of outside IP / personal open source, but I had reasons to trust my employer to act more reasonably than Google, which was part of why I chose my current employer when deciding about it and Google. In practice that trust has turned out to be well-placed, and there's now a thread on the front page about how Google loves to follow the letter of the employment agreement and arbitrarily deny IARC requests.)
You obviously didn't read her blog post where she stated the following:
"This kind of code change happens all the time. We frequently add things to make our jobs easier or even to just share hobbies or interests. For example, someone changed the default desktop wallpaper during the walkout last year so that the Linux penguin was holding a protest sign. The company has never reacted aggressively in response to a notification such as this in the past. It’s always been a celebrated part of the culture."
No, the kind of code change she committed has never happened before. A change in desktop wallpaper is not the same as a change in a security extension.
The fact that other employees have participated in pro-employee activism and not been disciplined speaks to that. Some things are fine, some things are not. Abusing security software is not.
Sharing a cute desktop background is inappropriate but it's only a picture on a background, misusing an internal security mechanism for your own pet activism when visiting a harmless website is a totally different tier of unprofessionalism.
Do you activism in your personal time. Don't use important company resources used to protect employees from harm to push your slogans. Regardless if those slogans are legally legitimate statements in a normal context, like handing out a leaflet on the edge of the property.
This is about Google. Apparently their company culture has been the opposite, and they have commonly had lots of political discussions on company time using company resources.
For the millionth time, it was not a general message display tool. It is a security tool to flag domains that run the risk of data leakage and malware. Trying to hijack a security extension to turn it into a general messaging platform is both stupid and bad for security.
>Correction: a warning not to break federal labor law, which Google is actually required to provide.
Labor law requires that those notices be posted somewhere in a prominent place employees are likely to see. They definitely don't require them to be posted in arbitrary places at any employee's choice.
She was protecting employees from harm. Illegally interfering with protected concerted activity hurts the company, and an employee doing so is likely to get fired quite legitimately.
(Furthermore, the laws about protected concerted activity specifically permit you to do your activism at work, not just on your own time.)
Agreed -- so under my rubric, if Google were consistently firing people for all off-topic messages slipped into the security UX, then that would be a non-political firing. But if they came down harder on "oh don't forget NLRB" than "Happy Birthday, Sundar", then that seems political and "fired for notifying co-workers..." seems accurate.
(I don't know enough of the history of Google's firings and this kind of violation to know either way.)
Slipping off-topic messages into a security system just seems like such a ridiculously stupid thing to do that I'd be surprised if it's ever happened before at Google before.
It doesn't matter if it's "political" or not. It's completely 100% google management's choice whether the punishment for a serious (or tiny) rule infraction is anything from no action at all to firing. There is no rule that says it has to be consistent either.
You can't fire a worker for organizing, or on the basis of sex, race, etc. But you CAN fire whoever you want for breaking even the most minor rules or even just poor performance. And the choice can be as politically motivated as google likes, doesn't change a thing.
It's not a pretense when she broke a serious rule. Whether or not she claims she didn't, google has determined she did. So therefore it's clearly not retaliation. That's the default position. Now, there would be a high burden of proof for her to claim it was a conspiracy and it really was related to union organizing. That she did not in fact violate a rule (based on googles own interpretation). Good luck! Unless she finds some incriminating emails or gets an executive to give extremely damaging testimony, she's toast.
No, history has shown about 95% of the time employers prevail in actions like this. The burden of proof is really high for the employee, and the company has plenty of money for lawyers. It can simply run out the clock too. So yeah, 23 years from now after the ex-engineer spends 2.6 million on legal fees, she might win her job back and lost wages.
Furthermore, google has a really easy time with "selective enforcement" They can show that people violating security rules and abusing administrative rights are always fired. Now, she can argue she didn't do this, but because of the nature of our legal system, it will be extremely hard to explain. I main, disgruntled employee abusing security? Whoever heard of such a thing. The civil judge will probably help google refer her to the FBI!
Saying that selective enforcement is hard to prove is different from saying it doesn't matter, which you were originally claiming, and which is what I was disputing.
>They can show that people violating security rules and abusing administrative rights are always fired.
Yes, that agrees with what I was saying: if every message thusly inserted resulted in a firing, then it would not be fair to say she got fired "for notifying employees of their right to organize".
I could see something like (B) happening because Google used to have a lot of April Fools jokes. But it would go through code review, so the team would know about it. Doing it through hacking would be something else.
This is what I suspected and thanks for confirming this. The fact that she wrote that her job is to notify the employees "of employee guidelines and company policies" and chose to withhold the critical bit that it was specifically security policies she was responsible for looks like a deliberate attempt to mislead.
I totally support googlers' right to unionize but it seems that some employees are in an all-out war with the company and think that all is fair in that war. I can't say I support that.
> For example, someone changed the default desktop wallpaper during the walkout last year so that the Linux penguin was holding a protest sign. The company has never reacted aggressively in response to a notification such as this in the past. It’s always been a celebrated part of the culture.
Is this accurate? If it's culturally acceptable to change everyone's desktop wallpaper (including of those who were anti-protest) to a pro-protest image, it seems reasonable that this falls in the lines of culturally acceptable too.
"this is more like running into a meeting and then interrupting it so you can start reciting NLRB policy than it is posting a flyer"
How is this like "running into a meeting"?? Do Googlers visit the IRI website every day? Is this pop-up really a distraction to core work for engineering?
Your party line here makes the change sound like Nest shutting down the house [1] but according to the evidence it looks more like that recruiting thing that gives you a pop-up for google.com/foobar when you enter certain search queries.
It sounds like you are saying SilasX was misinterpreting the policy or taking it a step too far.
That was my question, her job literally to make extensions to inform employees on policies but I was doubting that it was to make any and all notifications but only a specific set of policies like, limit personal browsing activities, or that the computer is the property of google and you consent to blah blah by it’s use.
It’s clear to me that this employee knew this was more of a political notification and took matters into their own hands.
It wasn't her thoughts it was company policy, or to be specific it's required by law that this notice to be posted in the workplace.
It's was her personal judgment that it should be posted in a chrome add-on rather than only by poster like is typical in most workplaces. But assuming her job was to maintain an add-on that informs employees of company policy, and assuming her job typically lets her act with personal judgment, yeah I think that's perfectly reasonable
In fact, you can find further support of her action from the NLRB FAQ:
"The employer is also required to distribute the notice electronically to unit employees if it customarily communicates with employees in the unit electronically, either by email, by posting on an employer intranet site, or both"
Again, it's her judgment to add the notification (which links to the Google intranet posting of the NLRB poster), but considering that Google customarily informs employees of policy via notifications in this add-on, and she is in charge of maintaining said add-on, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable judgment to add this notification
I don't really know enough to agree or disagree with you.
She claims she's in a role to make judgment calls on adding content - and that this was reinforced by her previous stellar performance reviews, which made her confident in her judgment - but I don't personally have enough info to know if that's the truth. She very well could be stretching the truth that maybe every other addition she's made was under the direction of HR or product, in which case she is definitely out of line here - it would take the input of a Googler on her team to know for sure.
Googlers are encouraged---well, in the past, have been encouraged---to consider themselves capable of making judgement calls like this one.
That having been said, this would still be considered an unusual call to have made. But had I been on the receiving end of this message, I suspect I'd have found it annoying unless she remembered to suppress it after first display---if she had, I wouldn't have been bothered by it.
Part of being encouraged to exercise personal judgment is being responsible enough to participate in the consequences. Judgment with no/few personal consequences is reserved for children and legislators.
Getting fired is encouragement to you? Why would anyone input any value if having no platform to excercise judgement calls? 2/3 of typical decisions are either wrong or neutral..
The article says she's a security engineer. It would be pretty unlikely for a security engineer's job to include messaging employees about HR rules. It sounds more like this engineer modified a security tool to spam a bunch of coworkers with pro-union popups.
True, but the optics are terrible on this one. They should have seen this one coming and promoted her instead. They also should stop trying to prevent googlers from unionizing. The google of today is not the google of 15 years ago that's for sure.
While they're at it, they should stop bending (and probably breaking) export controls regarding China, and stop doing immoral DoD and ICE projects.
And heck, why not implement a process by which all private contracts are approved by a company-wide vote? Including the guy that sweeps the floor. Oh, afraid that employees will leak the details of the project? There's always NDAs, but if you are so concerned about leaks, maybe that's not a project you should be doing then.
Um, there's already a process whereby private contracts, as well as all other company business is approved by a vote. It's called the shareholder meeting.
Now understandably the janitor has provided a lot less capital than deeply invested shareholder, so their votes are uniformly weighted according to their share of ownership.
I'm guessing the engineer might own about 1/10,000,000th or so of the company if she has a healthy 401K. So as long as she can convince 10,000 or so other employees and 49.91% of the rest of shareholders to go along...
| And heck, why not implement a process by which all private contracts are approved by a company-wide vote?
Wait, what? How would this work? Who would take a Google bid seriously if, after awarding them the contract, they turn around and have to ask the employee population for permission to proceed?
The big issue I see with a lot of discussion around this issue is not a lot of thought is put into the practicality of running a large business concern. Stuff that works when it's two guys and a server does not (can not) fly when you have a large group of people to manage.
> It wasn't her thoughts it was company policy, or to be specific it's required by law that this notice to be posted in the workplace.
Unless she was asked to do it by management, it was her thoughts. As much as the title makes this seem like David v Goliath this is really just employer v disgruntled former employee.
No matter your thoughts on "its required by law... Blah blah blah" it's not up to her to enforce the law on behalf of an employer. Google has the right to post or not, statements of its choosing. In fact it's absolutely within Google's right to ignore this law, doesn't mean there won't be consequences but it they can do it.
This is so cut and dry I'm surprised she found a lawyer willing to take the case. It's staggering there's even a discussion ok HN about this.
Engineers at Google are not drones. They do not exist to only do exactly what their boss asks. If engineers did do that, they'd never get promoted there. Google's management can't have it both ways.
FTA, your personal assertion is quite wrong. Her line of work was security and at most she was tasked with posting content regarding privacy and security concerns regarding non-Google tools and services.
Her personal political views and opinions don't pass off as InfoSec topics.
How? If I am instructed to email an update notifying our users about new terms of service whenever they are changed, and I add an addendum, "Don't forget, you have 3 days after the old terms of service expire on order to return old devices..." The company has every right to fire me.
She's got a CompTia Security+ certification. That is not a trivial amount of specialist education. You certainly aren't expected to have a college degree to be an "engineer" if that's the thrust of your argument.
Tbh it sounds like other ulterior motives are clouding your judgement here. She seems like exactly the sort of engineer who would benefit from unionization and while I might need it less, I fully support her and I'm disappointed in Google for firing her.
As I've said elsewhere, these sham reasons for firing folks adjacent to union activity are opening up the company to massive liability and imo the board and shareholders should hold more people accountable.
A CompTia Security+ cert is actually pretty trivial. It's complete regurgitation, and not even of industry standard best practices, but of CompTia defined "best" practices. It's the lowest and most basic tech cert you can get. It certainly isn't evidence of any engineering discipline.
The board and shareholders will have to decide whether this action was, or was not, in their best interests. But history has shown that Wall Street would generally agree with this one. It's certainly not a "massive" liability. Should the employee prevail, years from now, in a wrongful termination suit the cost to google will be trivial compared to the employee.
That's why other companies often flagrantly intentionally ignore NLRB protections. It's a very limited civil liability with a very high burden of proof on the employee.
> It's the lowest and most basic tech cert you can get.
As opposed to... what? Do college degrees promise engineering discipline? Surely not. Many successful engineers have nothing more than a high school diploma and industry experience.
This has clearly gone into sexist territory now. She's a she, and therefore her experience and education is going to be audited by arbitrary and increasingly vague standards to make sure she's considered valueless.
> It certainly isn't evidence of any engineering discipline.
There is literally no credential that does this. It's a ridiculous standard to offer forward. Engineering discipline is a property of teams and organizations. On an individual level there is no distinct standard of it.
You are moving the goalposts outside the stadium.
> It's certainly not a "massive" liability. Should the employee prevail, years from now, in a wrongful termination suit the cost to google will be trivial compared to the employee.
I disagree. With the rash of these firings, we may start to see a collective lawsuit. Should systemic problems be found, Google is in genuine danger of both large fines (both the left and right in the US and other countries are eager to give Google a black eye for perceived wrongs) and of severe reputational damage putting it at a competitive hiring disadvantage.
> It's a very limited civil liability with a very high burden of proof on the employee.
Right up until you get enough claimants for various collective actions, I agree this is the sad case for American enforcement.
OK, I have to rebut some of this. I have no axe to grind about whether the engineer is male, female, trans, white, black, whatever. Fact is that when I wrote this I didn't know she was a female. Don't care.
How insane to claim that simple negativity toward a member of a protected group is an -ism. I'm not saying she isn't an engineer because of ANYTHING related to her sex.
She's getting raked over the coals because what she did was stupid and shows incredibly bad judgement. To imply that this is less bad, or maybe we shouldn't discuss it, or maybe we'd have a different opinion if she was not female is itself far more sexist.
I fully support non-degreed engineers. Yes, I agree there is no litmus test for "Engineer".
I'm clearly stating that a CompTIA+ is not sufficient to call someone an engineer. Regurgitating questionable facts does not make you an engineer. I didn't move the goalpost. But I can recognize something that isn't one.
She screwed up bad, because if there is ever any collective action, her case won't be in on it. She gave google an ironclad excuse to be fired. I'm not even arguing right vs. wrong but the way employment lawsuits work, she has zero chance.
> How insane to claim that simple negativity toward a member of a protected group is an -ism. I'm not saying she isn't an engineer because of ANYTHING related to her sex.
If the only way we can distinguish your actions from sexism is via your internal state, you have a problem larger than this conversation and you should expect pushback.
> I'm clearly stating that a CompTIA+ is not sufficient to call someone an engineer. Regurgitating questionable facts does not make you an engineer. I didn't move the goalpost. But I can recognize something that isn't one.
But just before this you said there isn't a clear test. So really, it's just your feelings.
> Yes, I agree there is no litmus test for "Engineer".
This is more arbitrary goal setting to gatekeep a word. The debate is not if she is somehow an amazing engineer or a mediocre engineer, a well trained engineer or a rushed training job, well paid or not. No, that's not the debate.
The debate is, "was she given an engineering position in which she had autonomy to make changes and when she made changes a union buster didn't like, she was fired in retaliation.
If her job was strictly to type things that were handed to her in a field, this might technically evade the law. But that's obviously not her job.
You're obviously eager to categorize her as a not-engineer because (despite protestations) you're obviously eager to shut down any pro-unionization messages, even legally protected ones.
> She screwed up bad, because if there is ever any collective action, her case won't be in on it. She gave google an ironclad excuse to be fired.
I don't think this is true. She acted within her job capacity. She wrote a true and (importantly) legally protected statement. It was in a system that was specifically mean to advise workers about rights, options and obligations.
And unless she was already being evaluated for poor performance, even a single infraction is an extremely rare circumstance for dismissal in modern corporate America.
I think you're missing the larger point. It's mostly the large companies and those in power that create these rules. I'm not siding with either side here, but simply saying that "the rules are the rules" is not enough if the rules themselves are wrong.
If we want to make it harder for unions to organize, then she was rightly fired. But ff she was fired for union organizing and we want to protect that activity, then she was wrongfully fired.
I don't disagree, but you're talking about right/wrong from a moral standpoint, one that many people probably agree with, but it's not an absolute.
The right and wrong I was talking about was with respect to the existing rules, policies, and ethics. And if you do believe these rules are morally wrong, then you change them from within the system.
The upside is there are multiple opportunities to do this without also getting fired. There are also opportunities to do as much union organizing as you like without getting fired. The Thanksgiving four played a very dangerous game, as did this individual, and they got the expected result.
Unfortunately, the other result is that if you want to find examples of blatantly illegal union busting, I'm sure they are out there but these are not them. This smacks of agitation and activism for it's own sake.
> you have a problem larger than this conversation and you should expect pushback
Why is that? Please give an example of what I said that is sexist or any other -ist.
> So really, it's just your feelings.
No, it's perfectly reasonable to object to points that were made that don't support the argument. I'm only stating that CompTIA+ does not provide evidence that you are an engineer because of the nature of the certification.
> You're obviously eager to categorize her as a not-engineer
I didn't categorize here as either way. Someone else did, I just object to assuming that a job title or a cert makes you one. It doesn't. I don't think it even matters to the argument at hand either.
> you're obviously eager to shut down any pro-unionization messages, even legally protected ones
I'm not. I'm neutral to whether googler's want a union or not since I don't have to work there and have no interest at all in google's future direction. I'm eager to inject some reality into some very dangerous idealism before more people think they will stand up to the man without understanding the not-so-nice realities.
It's well and good, from the safety of the narrative of her supporters to say things like "she had autonomy to make changes". But engineer or not, she doesn't have that kind of autonomy. No employee really does, including directors. And it's up to her to prove she did. For example: can she show her manager approved this specific action in writing? Who asked her to do this? It looks a lot different when google shows up to a hearing with logs, rules, job descriptions, and her manager's manager having not approved the labor message, corporate security policies, and on and on. Then she shows up with, "but I thought it was OK because I did other stuff similar before, but it didn't involve labor notices. Yes, I had no actual authorization, but I was trusted as an engineer". People need to think adversarially, not just "Oh the NLRB will magically protect me". Because it can't if they don't follow the rules to the letter, and even then only partially.
A company in google's position is just waiting for people to do what she did: combine legal organizing with breaking a verifiable rule. Something with proof, like security logs. Great! now they have plausible reason to make someone an example. Now - do you see why I think it was stoopid?
> Why is that? Please give an example of what I said that is sexist or any other -ist.
Because you are specifically supporting a narrative that declines to grant an arbitrary status to a woman even as you argue that there is no clear delineation of that status. You "know it when you see it" is a hell of a thing to say as you make a pronouncement about someone's termination from a job.
What's more, looking over the history of this thread, you've substantially changed your message depending on how forcefully people reply to you. You've gone from saying that she cannot be an engineer because she has no credentials (which you first try to claim is required, "That IS why (engineers are credentialed and regulated)." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21822286); and eventually move to saying you're a fiat arbiter of: "[I] can recognize something that isn't one." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21832089)
It's crystal clear you're not having a discussion. You're trying to push a narrative. You're writing anything you think you can get away with, and trusting the thread depth cutoffs of HN to hide that part of the thread.
> No, it's perfectly reasonable to object to points that were made that don't support the argument. I'm only stating that CompTIA+ does not provide evidence that you are an engineer because of the nature of the certification.
The assertion earlier was that she was untrained. She is clearly not.
> I'm not. I'm neutral to whether googler's want a union or not since I don't have to work there and have no interest at all in google's future direction.
This isn't really the question and I don't know why you think this statement is relevant. The question is "should people be fired for talking about unionization." Clearly, you now that some Googlers are friendly to unionization in at least some aspects of the workplace. You're reading a story about one right now.
> I'm eager to inject some reality into some very dangerous idealism before more people think they will stand up to the man without understanding the not-so-nice realities.
Oh? And those not-so-nice realities seem to be that you'll cheerfully throw in with discrediting a woman.
> But engineer or not, she doesn't have that kind of autonomy. No employee really does, including directors.
No technical organization I've ever encountered has to go and get every action stamped and filed by their manager to avoid being fired. That's so far beyond the norm I'm wondering if you've ever been a manager or run your own company.
Quite the contrary, Management has to constantly document directives in writing and carefully apply messages to employees because there is substantial legal risk in just letting managers do whatever they feel like.
> and her manager's manager having not approved the labor message, corporate security policies, and on and on. Then she shows up with, "but I thought it was OK because I did other stuff similar before, but it didn't involve labor notices. Yes, I had no actual authorization, but I was trusted as an engineer". People need to think adversarially, not just "Oh the NLRB will magically protect me". Because it can't if they don't follow the rules to the letter, and even then only partially.
"Thinking adversarially" is at this point collective action. As I've said, Google is making a stronger and stronger case for all its employees that they need to consider a defensive unionization strategy.
> A company in google's position is just waiting for people to do what she did: combine legal organizing with breaking a verifiable rule
If she goes to court, they're going to have to prove there was a rule in place and that it was communicated to her. We'll see then.
> Because you are specifically supporting a narrative that declines to grant an arbitrary status to a woman
I'm supporting a narrative that declines to grant an arbitrary status to a PERSON based on a tech certification.
It is NOT sexist to say that CompTIA+ is insufficient evidence to be called an engineer. Not even CompTIA+ would say that. And I'm not pushing a narrative - you are pushing the narrative that if someone starts questioning a position, they must be sexist.
I don't think I'm changing my message - it's based on replying to the conversation. I'm not even saying she's not an engineer, just that people need to stop conflating tech certs with engineering. In many of these comments I'm still referring to her as an engineer, so now I'm not a sexist right? Good. Got it.
> technical organization I've ever encountered has to go and get every action stamped and filed by their manager to avoid being fired.
Yep, no engineer can or will get every action stamped and approved by management. They are expected to work independently. However, if you ABUSE that independence to bite the hand of your employer, you have absolutely no expectation of top cover. So if you are planning to do something dangerous like this, you better make sure you have it in writing that it was authorized. Because the burden of proof is now on you to show it was. Furthermore, if you go into a legal setting with your argument that engineers always act autonomously, you just sound like a bunch of cowboys to the bureaucrats that get to decide this.
If and when this goes to court, I agree we will see. But it won't. Of course that will be months and years from now either way.
Until then, if the goal was to inform her co-workers that it was safe to discuss union organizing without fear of reprisal, how's she doing at that?
> I don't think I'm changing my message - it's based on replying to the conversation. I'm not even saying she's not an engineer, just that people need to stop conflating tech certs with engineering. In many of these comments I'm still referring to her as an engineer, so now I'm not a sexist right? Good.
You're definitely still saying and have been saying you believe she's not an engineer.
> However, if you ABUSE that independence to bite the hand of your employer, you have absolutely no expectation of top cover.
Again, your bias shows. If your employer is treating you well, why would talking about unionization be threatening? These conversations are happening precisely because people claim to be seeing abusive parts of the system and are looking for recourse.
Is that biting the hand of your employer? You clearly think so. Would that folks like you were more active in demanding action the collective action by corporate CEOs to illegally fix wages. Sadly, folks seem content to shrug and smile and pretend that's the right of their minders.
> Furthermore, if you go into a legal setting with your argument that engineers always act autonomously, you just sound like a bunch of cowboys to the bureaucrats that get to decide this.
No, but the idea that summary dismissal is normal for a simple message not approved by management on a legally protected subject is hogwash. I think you know this, but you'd prefer it's not so.
> You're definitely still saying and have been saying you believe she's not an engineer.
I never said that, nor do I necessarily believe that. I replied to someone else in a one-liner which was to put forward a possible reason other people were questioning it.
> Again, your bias shows. If your employer is treating you well, why would talking about unionization be threatening?
Talking about unionizing is not threatening to me, or my company (which has a union), but it's pretty clearly very threatening to your company. You should be cognizant and careful about that.
> Is that biting the hand of your employer? You clearly think so.
What I think is that google and every other sufficiently large company will think so. It would be naive to think because your company has some zippy slogan like "don't be evil" (now retired) that they are somehow different.
It's interesting, btw., how you believe to know what I think based on not at all what I say. Novel way to run an argument.
> Would that folks like you were more active in demanding action the collective action by corporate CEOs to illegally fix wages. Sadly, folks seem content to shrug and smile and pretend that's the right of their minders.
There's a right and a wrong way to take action. Getting youself fired doesn't seem smart, but it could be a nice martyr move if you don't need the income.
If you are engineers, then you are not just wage slaves. You are independent people and can take - or leave - your employment at will. If you don't like company X, I'd suggest it's far better to simply leave.
Your problem is a bad employer, so you add a union, now you have two problems: a still bad employer and a union full of politicians.
So, I've enjoyed your interesting thought processes, and I leave you with this advice:
- read, carefully, the rights granted by the NLRB. Stick strictly and safely within them.
- for example, do you notice that it gives you the right to talk and distribute literature outside working areas (such as breakrooms or parking lots)? Do you notice how modifying a browser security extension isn't on that list? Nor is doxing your co-workers?
- don't use company time or resources to do it! A) it could easily be construed as not-protected and B) obvious opsec reasons
- martyrs for the cause might energize the base but they scare off those with mortgages.
Please explain why she's not an engineer; and please take care to include discussion of why anyone is an arbiter of the "engineer" title in a field which is largely unregulated and not credentialed.
Otherwise the most charitable reading of your comment is something like "ticmasta thinks security engineers are not real engineers," and the less charitable reading is something like "ticmasta claims this person is not an engineer because she is a woman," which is incredibly juvenile and misogynistic. It has no place on this forum.
Not software/devops/security engineers in the US, as I’m sure you’re aware. You and I can claim to be software “engineers” in the US and no one can reasonably tell us we’re wrong. And the domain of conversation is restricted to the US, because that’s where she worked.
The misogyny comes from the fact that this tends to only come up whenever a woman engineer is in the news. Nobody comments on HN threads saying “but he isn’t even an engineer”.
That's a good question, I don't know, but she claims the latter.
In her Medium post she claims that "Part of what makes me a great fit for Google is that the company is always telling us to take initiative to deliver high impact work." and also that she received stellar (4/5, 4/5, 5/5, where 5/5 is apparently top 2%) performance reviews, which reinforced her view that she should act on her judgment.
If she really was "a great fit for Google" then she'd have realized the obvious fact that her naive attempt to fulfill an NRLB regulatory requirement would be something that should be checked with Google's legal department so a lawyer specialized in labor regulation can confirm that doing what she planned would actually meet the regulatory requirement as well as confirm this requirement wasn't already met in another way.
For example, did her design record sufficient analytics for regulatory compliance reporting? If a regulated company can't verify they did it correctly, it didn't happen. Did it distinguish between contractors, part-time and full-time employees? How did it handle employees outside the U.S.? By IP address or did it look up their country of residence in HR records? What about interns? Did it count these different populations correctly or was it at risk of over-reporting and getting the company fined? Did her design meet the requirements for Spanish-speaking ESL employees based in the U.S. Did her design read-out the text for blind and vision-impaired employees or did it initiate notification via an alternate channel?
In my opinion, she's being extremely disingenuous with her claims.
A little of the former and a little of the latter, most likely. However, that doesn't mean her judgment r.e. what is relevant is immune to review. And if it's sufficiently incorrect, consequences like what happened shouldn't be surprising.
These are stiff consequences for the violation in question for Google.
Individual employees publicly embarrassing the company (https://mobile.twitter.com/jweise/status/491788092710199297?...) or accidentally disrupting the network fabric and costing the company $X in missed revenue don't get fired for first offense. The way this was handled seems unusual, suggesting either there's a piece of the puzzle we internet pundits aren't holding or Google has changed its tolerance policy for honest mistakes.
Depending on what the cause is it might be different. If someone makes a reasonable mistake, like pushes something to production that they should not, then you could argue that there are not enough checks and it is not something you should get fired for. You should change the process.
If someone deliberately goes around those checks to push something anyway then it could be a fire-able offense.
I'd disagree. Another post shows stellar performance reviews, so if this is considered a mistake, it should be remedied and she should be reprimanded. Outright firing seems heavy handed
My take on this is that she was trying to ruffle feathers, and she succeeded. I suspect her firing took into account that intent. Putting myself in the shoes of whoever decided, I can only think that factor would have weighed heavily against her.
She might be naive enough to believe that this was actually protected concerted activity, but I don't think so. I'm not sure I think firing her was the right play, but I also don't have all the information. I will say that I don't think this outcome should surprise her. It should definitely been one of the likely outcomes she modeled when deciding to submit that code.
This firing has created a small storm of bad PR for Google, and I'd be willing to bet it's created a large storm of bad feeling among Google employees. (Although a smaller matter, using "security violation" as a spurious reasoning for the firing probably also slightly downgrades the credibility of the company's internal security efforts.)
So if her goal was to cause disruption at Google, it sounds like management just gave her a major assist. Like a Falcon Heavy's worth of assist.
The analogy Prof. Dubal uses is not apt. They seem to believe that the extension was some kind of public notice board where anybody could post something, but that is not what it is. Since they did not have sufficient context, I would be disinclined to trust their judgment on this issue.
As a level 3 software engineer, the latter (with oversight, which it would appear was in place here. A change like this one doesn't hit the live codebase without at least one other engineer signing off on it).
Yes, really. How about the converse: what if Google used it's ability to control employees' email to send messages on their behalf arguing against unionization?
Part of the right of free speech is correctness of attribution. Trying to speak as someone else, using someone else's communication channels isn't speech, it's fraud.
And I say that as (at least within the spectrum of folks on this site) a full on pinko commie unionizer. If this is the truth of the story, this just wasn't OK, and was a very reasonable firing offense.
Workers need to be willing to break the law in order to win victories against the people that make the laws. Employers aren't even the law, this is such a small thing and is defensible. I don't see a reason to side with Google at all, if they really vociferously disagreed, they could ask her to remove the notification.
> "Workers need to be willing to break the law in order to win victories against the people that make the laws..."
Like most of the general public, I have no desire to associate with criminals. If you build your union on a foundation of illegal acts, there's no reason for anyone to believe you'll stop once it gets fully established. Existing unions in the United States provide ample proof of that.
When workers organize and attempt to make demands greater than than the bosses are willing accede to, the bosses call in the police, private security, and depending on the political climate, right wing street fighters to start cracking heads. For a famous example of a dual power situation consider the 1934 Minneapolis teamsters' strike.
Even setting aside the obvious "Two wrongs do not make a right" response, if you have to cite history from 3/4 of a century ago, well...good luck persuading people with that. On the other hand, the public can easily find news stories of major corruption and criminal involvement by unions for each of the past few decades.
(Oh, and by the way, the Teamsters, whose site you linked to, figure prominently in quite a number of those news stories. There really isn't a better example I can think of of why "Workers need to be willing to break the law in order to win victories against the people that make the laws..." goes down a bad path than them. The Wikipedia article for them contains the word "corrupt" 31 times.)
> Workers need to be willing to break the law in order to win victories against the people that make the laws.
Not if they want to win, they don't. Anarchism won nothing at the turn of the century. Organized (note the adjective!) Labor broke through when it became a political movement with representation in government.
Sorry, what? They have the right to unionize. The whole issue at hand is that the employee put a notice of that legal right into an employer tool. What rights do these people not have that you're thinking of?
Look, the point here is that if you want to win a unionization fight (which is a legal victory, it will happen in courts and with contracts) you have to fight using legal tools. Pulling anarchist tricks like this just makes you feel better, it does nothing but make management's position stronger.
I mean sure, my comment was far too pompous, but calling this anarchism is silly.
If we leave rhetoric aside, what she's done is the equivalent of sending a leaflet or putting up a poster on company property. That's not strictly 'proper', but life does not happen in courtrooms. You actually have talk to people, let them know what's happening, organise, etc. Courtroom is where the fight is settled in it's last stages.
You should comply with laws that are justifiable and not with laws that are unjustifiable and represent petty authoritarianism. The working class can tell the difference. I 100% agree that organized resistance is key. Individualized resistance just earns a beat down.
I disagree that only rights granted by courts are effective in winning labor struggles. Strikes, legal or not, are required for advancing labor's cause.
This worker was attempting to organize her colleagues in an extremely tame way. There was no property damage. We should show our unadulterated support to embolden the working class.
Just because it's a go link doesn't make it an internal document. A go link is just a shortened url. You can make a go link point to a non-internal web page.
>It also included a link to a list of employee rights and protections that Google agreed to post as part of a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board this year.[0]
But in this case it appears to be a link to an internal notice.
She said "So when I heard that Google had hired a union busting firm and started illegally retaliating against my coworkers, I decided to make sure that my coworkers knew about the posting."
This was purely a Moral decision on her part and not reasonable in my opinion to tag it as part of her job. She was not happy with how google was retaliating against her co-workers (right or wrong) and she took action using her own judgement. She did this not because this was part of her job but because she wanted to get back at google for their behavior (again right or wrong, thats not the point here).
I guess the question is did she add a company policy or guideline by adding what she added? I wouldn't classify a union drive as a company policy.
Some may think a union drive is a company function. From what I remember about my experience with unions is you are allowed to put up notices in the employee breakroom that is done by the union rep who is voted in within each shop.
I would say what she did was more along the lines of blasting the union notice over speakers to everyone who entered the cafe.
Her job was to notify people of company policy. Injecting messages based on her personal politics raises red flags. This time she sent a benign message, but what might she do when googlers ultimately don't unionize? What might she do the next time there's a policy she disagrees with?
Google has provided places for people to discuss things. When she didn't think that was good enough she chose to make unapproved code changes that went against corporate direction.
Personally, I'm against unionizing any software company, especially google. Unions were created to prevent systemic abuse of people that were seen as easily replaceable. If you think a recent college graduate making 120k+ that has been provided almost ridiculous perks and freedom unheard of in most of the industry is being abused when they could easily leave Google and expect to receive a similarly paid position virtually anywhere purely because they used to work at Google, then there's no helping you.
Google employees have more rights than at most companies, they can even spend up to 20% of their day working on personal projects and Google won't claim ownership. If they think they need a union when dealing with such a reasonable employer,then those fresh out of college lottery winners need a serious reality check. Let's talk about unionizing Amazon fulfillment centers where they frequently let people go because taking a bathroom break means missing your quota. Let's talk about unionizing virtually any company before we demand labor unions for the most highly privileged group of people in the world.
After reading both of these statements, idk I feel the grey area is large enough that it didn't necessarily justify firing but also I don't blame Google for doing so. Ugh.
This is very reminiscent of laws regarding jury nullification, and how the practice may be legal, but in some jurisdictions / cases it can be illegal to inform a jury of that fact.
That's because it's not legal. It's a violation of the jury's duty to render a verdict based on the law and the facts presented. Stating an intention to vote a certain way without respect to the law and facts is grounds for removal from the jury. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/jury_nullification and the referenced court case.
It's a violation of the jury's duty to render a verdict based on the law and the facts presented.
Who assigned the jury that duty? And when did that happen?
Per http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/zenger/nullifi... and other sources that I have seen, the understanding of the law when the Constitution was written was that juries should judge both the law and the facts. The view that they should not judge the law only arose decades later in the late 1800s. The fact that the legal profession today sees jurors as having a duty to NOT judge the law I see as undermining the intent of having jury trials in the first place.
The understanding of jury trials when the Constitution was written was that juries had a right and obligation to judge both the law and the facts. The first laws
However, jury verdicts of acquittal are unassailable even where the verdict is inconsistent with the weight of the evidence and instruction of the law.
IMO the problem was putting the pop up on the IRI consultants website. She wasn’t protecting anyone or informing anyone of policy, she was being inflammatory and I don’t see it as a stretch for G to say she abused her position to inject that message.
> Part of my job was to write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web
She needs to understand this power isn't her own to wield.
And the risk of people abusing power to advance their personal agenda is NOT something that would get passed easily once discovered.
It's so disingenuous to call out employees advancing their agenda when the corporations themselves are constantly abusing their power to advance their agenda.
> And the risk of people abusing power to advance their personal agenda is NOT something that would get passed easily once discovered.
Yes, it is. It get discovered all the time and no one gives a sh*t about it.
Um, not disingenuous. See, the company isn't funded nor owned nor managed by its employees. So it's not "abuse" and it is completely legitimate, even a mandate, and a fiduciary duty that compels companies advance their agenda. A corporation MUST take these kinds of actions, it isn't even legal for them not to, let alone abuse.
Conversely, an employee's agenda can be left at home, please, if they agree to be employed. The "Engineer" is lucky she isn't brought up on misuse of computing system charges.
I don't like companies that invade employees and customers outside-of-work freedoms. Just as I don't like employees that abuse and undermine the relationship that they freely entered with their employers. If you don't like it - quit and go work somewhere else. Then become activist.
Individual Googlers inadvertantly violating the law opens the company up to risk of legal discovery processes and is therefore a beach of company security.
In my mind this is the hinge or the crux of the issue. If it was her job to create and inject JavaScript notifications of company policy and they fired her for doing that then shame on Google. Actually, it would be more than just shame on Google. If this is true, then I would say Google is not a safe place to work for anybody. Which is why I find it hard to believe that this was actually in her job description and or that there is more context that we are missing; that the premise of the argument is misleading.
"Part of my job was to write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web."
-With regard to what exactly? Context matters, if the browser notifications she was creating were only supposed to pertain to surfing the web then I think we can safely say she overstepped her bounds.
"So when I heard that Google had hired a union busting firm and started illegally retaliating against my coworkers, I decided to make sure that my coworkers knew about the posting."
-Again, it depends on what exactly her job was, but this seems to suggest she had motivation outside the bounds of her job description for doing what she did.
I don’t disagree with what she did. In fact, I think it’s kind of great. However, that doesn’t mean Google didn’t have a right to fire her for it.
Unfortunately, I'm leaning toward the other interpretation these days: Google management does not want their software engineers unionized but doesn't have experience to know how to deal with it legally, so they've hired strikebreaking lawyers and given them a lot of leeway on firing calls.
"Part of my job was to write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web"
If this is true and her job is literally to create javascript notifications of company policy, then I think it's entirely reasonable what she did considering it IS company policy (well, law really) that you have a right to organize.
Link to the popup: https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/0*1BTVYLTvuHiJVvp_.jpg