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Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm
- sunstone 7y agoSo Google really has hit the nadir of the wall that Microsoft hit when Gates testified before the Justice department. It's a tough day for all of us Google fan boys but it's time to look in the mirror and carefully consider the current reality.
- me_me_me 7y agoWhat always baffles me is the term fanboy, how in this day and age do we still have people believing/having faith in a company. They all did something abhorrent or yet to be caught doing it. And yet we have people who would seemingly jump into fire for a brand (even in face of damning facts). Is this a form of ancient tribalism still at play?
- pjmlp 7y agoIndeed, I don't get how people can get into "don't be evil" and other kind of corporate propaganda.
- michaelcampbell 7y agoHow many years now has that NOT been a thing?
- pjmlp 7y agoIt was never a thing to begin with. Anyone that believed it was only deluding themselves.
- EnderMB 7y agoThis kind of stuff is everywhere. It's very common with celebrities (Chris Brown being a shining example), and you see it a lot on HN with companies that are raising the bar of expectation, like Tesla. The key similarities between the two fan bases are that they all want to be a part of something with other people, whether it's being a female fan that follows an artist with a history of abuse against women, or being a fan of a company that offers cheap perks in favour of treating employees like humans with basic needs outside of a ping pong table. The other similarity, and it's a very cynical one that you may or may not agree with, is that many people simply don't care if it doesn't affect them - which is funny in the age of the "cancel culture".
- Ensorceled 7y agoNot sure why you are getting downvotes but, yes, it's tribalism. If you self identify as an "iPhone guy" or "Android gal" and invest a significant amount of money and energy into that decision, it's hard not to "tribe up" and feel obligated to defend the company you have identified with.
- kmlx 7y agopeople are inherently driven by feelings. rational decisions are few and far between. if you want to objectively analyse a company all you need to do is check their 10-Q each quarter. but that means studying and analysing their actual performance and their peers' stats. > how in this day and age do we still have people believing/having faith in a company. the same can be said for people that still believe in politicians/governments. even thou we have all the evidence in the world that these forms of control are pretty much obsolete especially compared to our current modern way of life, you will still get millions of fanboys/girls that dismiss all the evidence.
- goatinaboat 7y agoIt’s vicarious living, there is so little real conflict in modern society, people enjoy participating in artificial conflicts such as sports teams, etc. Or inventing new categories to feel oppressed over.
- friendlybus 7y agoThe brand alone is just a symbol for a company doing something valuable. People pay ridiculous fees to see cars go around in circles that they'll never drive themselves. For better or worse google is doing something valuable to some people, they are fans of that.
- wdr1 7y ago> What always baffles me is the term fanboy, how in this day and age do we still have people believing/having faith in a company. "in this day and age" Where things different at some point? Or where you simply less familiar with other times?
- idlewords 7y agoWhat is the nadir of a wall? The baseboard?
- richthegeek 7y agoWhat is the point of pedantry? The base instinct?
- idlewords 7y agoPureed metaphors usually mean someone is writing without thinking. There's a whole nice Orwell essay on it!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- close04 7y ago> Around the same time Google redrafted its policies, making it a fireable offense to even look at certain documents. And let’s be clear, looking at such documents is a big part of Google culture; the company describes it as a benefit in recruiting, and even encourages new hires to read docs from projects all across the company. Which documents were off limits after this policy change? The policy was unclear, even explicitly stating the documents didn’t have to be labeled to be off limits. Is such a policy legally enforceable or is it relying on the fact that Google can outspend them in a litigation?
- brown9-2 7y agoWith at-will employment, almost any reason is justifiable.
- mikojan 7y agoExpropriate Google.
- m4r35n357 7y agoIs everyone here OK that we have such a thing as a "union busting firm"? Do we all know how the SA in Nazi Germany was designed to "enforce" just this?
- thundergolfer 7y agoIs the SA acronym that commonly known? I had to search it, and for those also not in the know it's the Sturmabteilung, more commonly known as Storm Troopers. Also I'm pro-union and not averse to laying out links between fascism and corporate capitalism, but I think you'd need to add a bit more argument here beyond 'the Nazis also did this so it's definitely bad'.
- goto11 7y agoTangential clarification: SA was not "storm troopers" in the sense of military specialist unit as used in the world wars. SA was basically street gangs which beat up political opponents of the Nazi party.
- duncanawoods 7y agoYes? It's mentioned in most "rise of Nazis" documentary of which there are 1000s and everyone has seen a few. I'd consider most educated people to know it. More than SD, less than SS. It's fair to say that union busting was a specific part of the brown-shirt agenda but beyond that it's probably not a very useful historical analogy. There was a much more direct link between worker organisations and nascent revolutionary socialism. IMHO Nazi antipathy to unions was more about political competition than preventing increased worker's rights. It would be more analagous if it was a republican allied political group working to disrupt unions because they were organising to support democrats.
- m4r35n357 7y agoThe whole Nazi party was bankrolled by anti-worker business interests.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoComparing everything with nazis and Hitler is old and tiresome. Waiting for people who don't believe in unions respond you with nazi labor org German Labour Front and how they were socialists and you're back at beginning.
- leqnl 7y agoThis is probably a nuanced and impartial take. Surely.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rocqua 7y agoWhat has made google look at the facts and think this is the right way to proceed? Do they think this won't blow up? Do they fear unions so much that this is worth the bad PR? Or is this just a corporate process that no-one took a big picture view on? Because from where I am standing, this just seems like a dumb move.
- otalp 7y agoPeople will forget about this in a few weeks
- Fordec 7y ago"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel"
- netcan 7y agoWho knows, but plausibly, yes. The game, as I understand it,^ is a "yes or no" game. Either Google unionisers get a union or they don't. If they do, what that means will be be worked out later. So yes, Google plausibly don't want a union (or a big union discussion) enough to take chances with bad PR, or labour court. Totally different scales of threat. ^not well.
- brown9-2 7y agoI think it’s obvious they’ve concluded they have little to fear from the government or the NLRB with the current administration.
- sjdycucudn3 7y agoSo google expects employees to behave like professionals?
- Ensorceled 7y agoI don't think unionizing is "unprofessional". Also, until recently, Google encouraged people to "bring their whole selves to work", so Google kind of changed the rules.
- thundergolfer 7y agoThis comment seems in bad-faith, but in case it's not, what is unprofessional about the behaviour described in the article, exactly?
- scarface74 7y agoThe article is one sided. Other commenters have said that the fired employees were actually doing some creepy stuff according to other articles.
- PunchTornado 7y ago> One of the workers set up notifications to receive emails detailing the work and whereabouts of other employees without their knowledge or consent. This is shady/creepy. There is no need to know when and where a colleague is every hour, every day. You shouldn’t be allowed to do this. I’m glad an employee who does this is getting fired because I wouldn’t feel safe around them. My calendar is public, but that doesn’t mean you should be alerted every time I go somewhere.
- thundergolfer 7y agoWhere are you quoting that from? I just string searched it in the article and got nothing.
- cowsandmilk 7y agoThe Bloomberg article doesn’t have that exact quote, but has the google memo with the allegations https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25/google-fires-four-employees-citing-data-security-violations https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25/google-fi...
- Fiadliel 7y agoHN link for that article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583
- PunchTornado 7y ago>> In one case, among other information they accessed and copied, an individual subscribed to the calendars of a wide range of employees outside of their work group. The individual set up notifications so that they received emails detailing the work and whereabouts of those employees, including personal matters such as 1:1s, medical appointments and family activities — all without those employees’ knowledge or consent. When the affected Googlers discovered this, many reported that they felt scared or unsafe, and requested to work from another location. Screenshots of some of their calendars, including their names and details, subsequently made their way outside the company.
- erlag 7y agoSeems there is still hope for Google. Few more actions like that and maybe they will start behaving like a company and not like an ideological echo chamber.
- dabbernaught420 7y agoDid you ever really think that they'd let ideology get in the way of profit?
- erlag 7y agoI hoped not, but could based on what I've seen in the past it seemed like they can somehow utilise the crazies for their benefit. Now it seems things start to balance out a bit. I hope this will get more intensive in the next months and Google will be forced to really act.
- throwawaylolx 7y agoThis article is ranked 16th on HN first page right now, and it has 80 points, was posted 4 hours ago, and has 16 comments. A different article [1] is ranked 8th on HN right now, and it has 31 points, was also posted 4 hours ago and it has 18 comments. They were both posted about the same time, they have the same number of comments, but the article that has significantly more points is ranked significantly lower. If I understand the HN ranking algorithm, this means this submission is heavily reported. This is not the first time I observe this behavior for anti-Google submissions. Is there a different explanation for this phenomenon other than heavy reporting? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636093
- ljf 7y agoTrue but you will find that there are a bunch of sites and sources that don't rank as highly as others. The Guardian needs more up votes to get to the same position as a non newspaper site, plus there is the matter of the ranking of the person that posted it, the ranking of the voters, the time scale of the voting patterns, and interactions with comments. There are loads of things that affect weighting and ranking here. Not that I mind, I largely support the way this community is run, pretty hard thing to keep the site down te as valuable and as interesting as it is.
- 9HZZRfNlpR 7y agoWell before going full conspiracy, I believe a lot of tech people are anti union themselves compared to some other fields. I'm not one of them but as long as there is demand like right now for programmers, the conditions and pay is good.
- goatinaboat 7y agoas long as there is demand like right now for programmers, the conditions and pay is good. The time to assert your rights is when you have leverage, if you wait until you need those rights because you have no leverage it’s too late.
- 7y ago
- dataduck 7y agoThere has been quite a lot of noise on HN about this, and many of the other posts have disappeared, perhaps in an attempt to stop the whole front page getting swamped by this story. You can find the other links here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=false&query=Google%20four&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal... I wouldn't normally bother, but the medium article is about the least balanced of the lot. As far as I can tell, the protesters weren't fired for unionizing, in fact they never attempted to push for better pay or conditions; they were fired for harassing other employees in order to further private political agendas. This changes the story somewhat.
- DSingularity 7y agoHow did you reach this conclusion?
- dataduck 7y agoReading the other articles.
- yoelo 7y agoCare to tell us which articles?
- hu3 7y agoHave you even searched for them? Took me 30 seconds to find this on a mobile phone while commuting to work: Four Google Employees fired for violating co-worker's data privacy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21635286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21635286 Top-level comment has a link with a list of articles.
- iofiiiiiiiii 7y agoThe article in the linked post says nothing beyond repeating an obvious corporate soundbite and there is no list of articles in the comments. What list are you referring to?
- netcan 7y agoCurrently, with the way labour organising works... it seems to either go nowhere, or go into a (belligerent) dichotomy. Professional organizers themselves often see it as an entirely dichotomous, zero-sum game, an inevitable conflict between opposite interests. Overall I'm curious about unions. I haven't had much/any direct experience for >20 years. Most of the Union examples we have today are either public-ish sector or some old status quo union inherited from an old generation. It's just hard for me to picture an old-school unionised version of Google or (more to the point) Amazon. What is the end game or success case, for a Google union?
- pas 7y agoLabor should try to change regulation/policy to better help people live while trying to find a new job and/or simply unemployed. Forcing companies to employ someone they don't want is not a winning strategy on the long term. (Though worrying about poor poor companies is a bit premature considering how abysmal worker protections are in the US.)
- netcan 7y agoUltimately unions are representing an interest group, somewhat separate from the company and itself. ...it arguably make sense to go for job security. Security is valuable... to their members. If it's also popular with members, why not put it on the table? Even if it does hurt long term profits/success, profits are the primary interest of the other party to the negotiation... the firm/employer/shareholder interest. If the firm value (to take the other extreme) employment with n demand then they can negotiate for that, and compromise elsewhere. The real reason (imo) that infirable employees, unsustainable pensions and other "union problems" happen is specifically because short term takes precedent in a negotiation. Looking 15 years ahead is the privelage of someone who isn't making hard compromises today. Pension and job security promises are cheap now, expensive later.
- koheripbal 7y agoProgrammers need job security? That does not seem to correlate with reality.
- Sangama34 7y agoThis move is laudable. Google is a great employer, perhaps one of the best on planet earth. If anyone is trying to form a labour union with special powers to disrupt normal work these people must be seen as real evil scums.
- intarga 7y agoI honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm... If it's not, consider this: If an employer really is fair and unexploitative to their employees, the employees have nothing to gain by unionising.
- blankety445566 7y agoXoogler. Several people who were involved in organizing protests have also quit over the past year or so, after posting stories of the retaliation they faced, including being reassigned, getting bad performance reviews and such. I jumped ship for these kinds of reasons, but looking ahead a couple years. You simply cannot scale culture, especially when culture that prevents it from going full balls-to-the-wall profit. Google is growing at such a rate that it surpassed organic trajectory; it's discarding and digesting its own culture as it swallows up the tech industry and doubles down on surveillance. The technical capabilities of the panopticon it has already built should be the subject of (world) government oversight. Sadly, tech giants have outpaced democracy's ability to recognize and rein in threats to human freedom. Google's play to be everyone's digital assistant should be recognized for what it nakedly is: a play to absolutely dominate every single person's life and sell those lives to the highest bidder.
- mc32 7y agoYou don’t get to organize and sabotage billions of dollars of revenues and get to keep your job. Google set up this attitude they fostered that worked in attracting talent and productivity. It worked for a time to improve internal issues. But as it creeps and threatens the corporation itself, it cannot continue for management. But as history has borne out, you have to know when to regain control. It’s the struggle of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, PLA and red guards.
- imvetri 7y agoTech - Past - Leaders were science lovers, humanity saviours, Going past limits of intelligence. Tech - Present - Contaminated with Human management science, economics and anything that gets touched by money. Science based on top of money, is it a real science at all? Nope.