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Google fires employee who protested Israel tech event, shuts forum

171 points by cbHXBY1D 3y ago

golf_mike 3y ago
Another big tech, big money, little conscience problem. So disappointing that there is so much willingness to make money regardless of what it supports but that that courtesy is not extended to those who do the actual money making.
siva7 3y ago
> Google fired an employee who disrupted an Israel executive’s conference keynote this week, CNBC has learned. Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who wouldn't fire such an employee instantly.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  Why would a big tech company be hosting an event with a state committing genocide? That (and working with said regime) is the problem, not people protesting. It's not possible to be a consumer brand and support Israel. The world is too divided and it's not getting any less so.
  - c0mbonat0r 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - bluefishinit 3y ago
      I don't agree with you and I'm actively boycotting all companies that work with Israel. This is why consumer brands can't support Israel, I'm not alone.
      - c0mbonat0r 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      Both side in that war are behaving badly and nobody should take either side. I look forward to the day when allying with any theocracy is recognized as an ethical mistake.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        There is Hamas, there is the Israeli government and there are the Palestinians, and before, Israelis who did nothing that suffer. I take the side of those loosong their homes, families and lives in Gaza deapite doing nothing at all.
      - goethes_kind 3y ago
        Both sides have resorted to terrorism. In fact that seems to be the modus operandi for both sides. What Israel does every day is also terrorism. The random bombings on civilians, the targeted bombings on key entities (doctors, journalists, authors, peace activists, ....), the detention without judicial recourse of Palestinians, the torture and rape, beating and murder, that happens during those detentions. The stealing of homes in the west bank, the evictions, the harassment of non-Jews (and even some non-Zionist Jewish sects) in Jerusalem and the west bank. The illegal settlement and the constant bullying and taunting of the armed settlers with their rifles and their IDF body guards. The destruction of all Palestinian means of production, whether it be shops or olive orchards. That is all terrorism and that has been happening for decades. But that the end of the day, Israel IS the oppressor and the Palestinians are their victims. That is a very important distinction.
    - PheonixPharts 3y ago
      > propaganda news outlets. Most major news outlets are still wildly pro-Israel. My and most people's opinions on the subject tend to not to drive from main stream media accounts, but research and journalistic investigations into the situation there. I don't personally know anyone who has walked down the path of doing real research into the issue and not come out of it horrified with Isreal's actions and this has been long before Oct, 7 2023. Most people who are "fine" with the situation are the ones getting their opinions from the news.
      - c0mbonat0r 3y ago
        [flagged]
      - GordonS 3y ago
        > I don't personally know anyone who has walked down the path of doing real research into the issue and not come out of it horrified with Isreal's actions and this has been long before Oct, 7 2023. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that until Israel's propaganda and genocidal response to the Al Aqsa Flood attack, I believed Israel were basically The Good Guys doing their best against terrorist neighbours. I feel like most people in the UK thought like that, and I rarely saw any negatively portrayals of Israel in the MSM. From what I've learned since, I've been... horrified - and like you said, by their actions going way back.
    - izietto 3y ago
      > propaganda news outlets Is ONU considered a propaganda news outlet nowadays? https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-146 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-i...
      - dekhn 3y ago
        I would say that the UN uses propaganda but in this case the page you linked to is a fairly factual description of the current situation.
  - fny 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - bluefishinit 3y ago
      The ICJ didn't rule on whether or not Israel was committing genocide. It said Israel needed to take the steps to not commit genocide. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-world-court-decision-israei-genocide-case-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-worl...
      - fny 3y ago
        The case against Israel brought forth by South Africa states quite clearly South Africa asserts Israel is violating the Genocide Convention [0]. The ICJ never corroborated this claim meaning there was not enough evidence to substantiate it. [0]: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
      - egberts1 3y ago
        But it remains a court order in which carries the full weight of the ICJ. https://global.upenn.edu/perryworldhouse/news/explaining-international-court-justices-ruling-israel-and-gaza#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20Israel%20must%20conduct%20the,does%20not%20commit%20%5Bgenocide%5D%3B%E2%80%9D https://global.upenn.edu/perryworldhouse/news/explaining-int...
    - aaomidi 3y ago
      ICJ was not asked to convict Israel of committing genocide. That was not in the initial ask. The ask was to force Israel to stop its military operation. The ICJ's provisional verdict was _actually pretty bad_ for Israel: "The aforementioned facts and circumstances are sufficient to conclude that at least some rights of the Palestinians to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts in Article 3 of the Genocide Convention, and the rights of South Africa to seek protection of these rights." Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/icj-president-cites-inflammatory-comments-by-gallant-herzog-in-genocide-case-ruling/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/icj-president-c...
  - 7thaccount 3y ago
    I think the problem is that folks look at things in a bizarre black and white manner and see it as either 1.) Israel has every right to defend itself from further terrorist attacks and isn't doing anything wrong, or 2.) Israel has no right to retaliate at all. I think the more moderate view is that Israel suffered a heinous terrorist attack perpetrated by a terrorist group in power. Israel has a right to defend their people from such attacks and a military response shouldn't be surprising given the extent of the crimes. However, the people in Gaza (non terrorists) are also human beings who should be treated that way. Not everyone supports the terrorist actions (apparently Hamas is incredibly unpopular amongst the people, but they have little discourse if they don't want to disappear) and the military response from Israel seems to have gotten to a point where children being blown up and starving to death somehow comes with the territory. Surely there is a way to reduce the casualties of innocent bystanders. Surely Israel should provide food and aid to the people after bombing all their infrastructure into the stone age. I admit not being as informed as I should be, but just how many times are we going to have genocide before we learn to stop? Just since the Holocaust we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, Rwanda, China, and now Gaza. In the more distant past it was even more common (e.g. trail of tears).
    - C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
      > we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, [...] Just to correct you, the genocide was in Bosnia, not Serbia, as a culmination of years of ethnic cleansing of the muslim (and to a smaller extent the ethnic Croat) population of Bosnia by the Serbian ethnic group during the period of 1992-1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide
      - 7thaccount 3y ago
        Thank you! It's been awhile since I went over that.
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  This is why we need tech unions. We should be able to take an ethical stance without getting fired.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    tech unions are unlikely to support random employees disrupting company events like this. they would instead provide an internal system for routing complaints in a consistent way.
  - minimaxir 3y ago
    They weren't fired for taking a stance, they were fired for how they took the stance.
    - reactordev 3y ago
      This needs to be emphasized more. It's not that they took a stance, it's definitely how they did it that warranted being fired over it.
      - hayst4ck 3y ago
        What's a good way to take a stance?
        user_7832 3y ago
        In a quiet email to the CEO which will promptly get deleted, and will never hit any big media or HN's frontpage is what a lot of commenters here would argue for. Being "polite" is nice if the person you're talking to is also nice. If the guy wanted to bring attention to the fact he did it very well.
        sanderjd 3y ago
        I mean, this may be a good way to take a stance, for someone who deeply cares about a particular issue. But it's also definitely going to result in being fired, from any company. The two things aren't incompatible. Lots of good ways to take a stance have deprived lots of people taking those stances of far more than just their jobs, like their freedom, temporarily in many cases (like Dr. King) and permanently in many others (like Navalny). Making a stand is often laudable, but also often personally consequential.
- user_7832 3y ago
  > Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who wouldn't fire such an employee instantly. Just because something is done by most companies doesn't make it okay. Are mass layoffs "rightful" in any sense of that word?
  - swman 3y ago
    Cringe. Mass layoffs are part of the Faustian bargain you accept when you sign the offer letter to work at the behemoths of capitalism. These are the biggest like top 10 companies in the whole world. It’s just business. But then again even those making 400k plus TC make appeals to emotion instead of rational thinking. There are plenty of jobs for these people where they can make 200k TC and not risk getting fired, which is still a good salary. If you want more and more, you must play with the devil. It’s really not that complicated.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    If the alternative is the company going out of business? Yes? People can rightly protest the way layoffs are conducted but the idea that a company is "wrongful" to have a layoff sometimes is silly.
    - user_7832 3y ago
      I'm not specifically saying layoffs are good or bad, I was giving an example of how something being common (layoffs) doesn't automatically make it good (it's of course not good for the fired people).
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Of course, certainly not for many of the fired people (although depending on severance and situations--once I would have been happy to have been laid off). And layoff, and the way they're conducted, can certainly be conducted poorly and with less empathy than is called for. (Though, in reality empathy mostly=money in this context.)
  - wilg 3y ago
    It's not immoral to fire multiple people from a company.
- PheonixPharts 3y ago
  I'm confused by your logic here, the fact that all other big tech companies would do something is hardly grounds for considering an action "right" in any moral framework I know of. "Unsurprisingly so" I can get behind. But "rightfully" is a stretch I wouldn't agree with.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    Saying "rightfully so" does not imply the rightness derives from morality.
    - drewbug01 3y ago
      The most common, plain meanings of the phrase “rightfully so” do imply a basis in morality. It’s fair to say that it can mean that the “rightness” is derived from other sources, but pretending that the primary meaning of the phrase doesn’t imply morality is just being intentionally obtuse.
- godelski 3y ago
  Lotta people reading this comment as if it is taking a moral stance (siding with Google). I didn't read it that way but rather as a comment on the state of the current environment. Did I misread?
  - happytoexplain 3y ago
    The wording and tone are common for broad agreement, both practical and moral (curtness, appeal to popularity, etc). Otherwise, one would normally use a wording that expresses the scope of one's tone, e.g. "Regardless of the issue, I think it's the right call to resort to firing to enforce this rule." (It's hard to come up with a good example that demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about, because the topic is highly subjective, highly emotional, and has a few different angles. There are a million different things the parent could have said to communicate an attitude that doesn't imply an emotional, moral, or political distaste for the context of the protest itself. My example isn't necessarily "correct" for the parent.)
    - godelski 3y ago
      Yeah that's fair. I could see it going either way. But I think when ambiguous it doesn't hurt to ask. And there's a lot of fighting and arguing so I'd rather ask than escalate conflict if there is a misunderstanding. I think we all know how easy it can be to miscommunicate.
- fny 3y ago
  The employee clearly wanted to be fired, wanted to vilify the company, and wanted the news to broadcast the matter. Who in their right mind who says “I refuse to build technology that ____” wouldn’t already be planning to quit barring outrageous hypocrisy? Who in their right mind screams it out in the middle of a presentation without expecting to be dragged out?
  - user_7832 3y ago
    Quite possible, in which case he's likely achieved his goal. Personally I don't think firing him helps Google's PR, rather it makes them look even more "evil". (To clarify, I am NOT saying that it is unexpected for a company to fire such a person. Expectations != what's the morally correct != reality, I'm just commenting on a part of the equation.)
- mc32 3y ago
  It used to be, at work one would not talk about politics or religion. And, to some degree, salaries... but that was thrown out the window and companies encouraged activism, bring your pets to work, bring your freakishness to work, let it all hang out. You didn't just keep it to yourself and best friends anymore --the company was "your family and friend". The chickens are coming home to roost and they don't like it so much anymore.
dekhn 3y ago
It seems unlikely that Google could do anything but fire a person who called his company out during an external PR event.
- name_nick_sex_m 3y ago
  I don't think that consequence would have happened 10 years ago. But I guess I'm that guy who still resents that since then Google has fully evolved into yet another mindless corporate greed machine.
jimbob45 3y ago
During a keynote speech, an employee in the company’s cloud division protested publicly, proclaiming “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide.” The Google Cloud engineer was subsequently fired, CNBC has learned, marking another dark moment for Google In grade school, it was universally known that if you use violence before attempting to run away, you're getting in trouble. I don't know why companies haven't made an equally clear universal rule that "if you say something publicly before running it by us, you're getting fired".
- prepend 3y ago
  Don’t they though? People pretty consistently get fired over this. I had to go through training that said what happens if I do something like this.
- user_7832 3y ago
  There's a difference between standing up in the middle of a PR session and violence, much like there's a difference between whatever might happen in a school and what Google is doing.
blueflow 3y ago
Why is employee dissent such a problem in google and not a problem in other companies?
- dekhn 3y ago
  because the company pitched itself as "socially responsible" and attracted a large number of people who believed they could work there and change the world to look like what they wanted it, and then google sort of changed directions for business purposes that aren't compatible.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Also, because lots of people work there. And also, it isn't true that it's unique to them.
  - pvarangot 3y ago
    Also I think the "we are all Google" borg/hivemind thing plays a part, other companies like Amazon or Apple are organized more like a lot of smaller companies so when people join they have different expectations towards corporate and feedback up and down and internal dissent work different.
  - anon-sre-srm 3y ago
    [flagged]
- oluwie 3y ago
  "Do no evil" went out the backdoor a long time ago
  - thinkingemote 3y ago
    For the record they changed it to (paraphrasing) "googlers shouldn't do evil" without much commentary at the time but significantly shifting the emphasis away from the corporation to individual employees. From a mission statement to HR guideline.
- 3y ago
prepend 3y ago
This seems pretty reasonable as falling under the “unprofessional behavior” intelligent behavior. In my org, if I disrupted someone’s presentation over any topic I’d be fired. Or maybe severely reprimanded. This behavior surprises me because these are private orgs. So doing unprofessional things will result in firings or whatnot. It seems odd to me that people think it’s appropriate to protest within a company. If you don’t want to “build technology that powers genocide” (kind of comical considering how huge and pervasive google is) then quit. Similarly if I don’t want to make bombs, I shouldn’t work for a bomb company. Finally, it just seems stupid to think this would change corporate decision making. What kind of reasoning and logic ends up with “disrupt a meeting -> google changes business policy regarding Israel?”
- dekhn 3y ago
  Regarding your last question: we just went through a period where shaming people publicly had huge effects. However, partially as a result of that, and other important factors, people changed their tolerance and rage parameters in a way that is less likely to call for change in the progressive direction.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  It's appropriate to protest within a company, because human beings are free to choose what is important enough to their own personal values to be worth taking actions that will have consequences, and to choose which actions they believe are worth doing. But certainly the base case expectation people should have is that such actions will result in being fired. And personally I also agree with you that this does not turn out to be a very effective form of protest. But people get to make their own choices!
Kapura 3y ago
>“This behavior is not okay, _regardless of the issue,_ and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.” There are some issues that are worth speaking up about. There are some issues that are worth being fired over.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- colechristensen 3y ago
  How is this not just racist behavior? An Israeli presenter who is based in Israel is being protested. Was there any connection beyond that to the war?
  - unstyledcontent 3y ago
    I don't know the opinions of this particular speaker but my feelings towards the actions of the Israeli government make me opposed to any business relationship with that country until they end their genocide against Gaza.
    - colechristensen 3y ago
      Then don't work at Google or plenty of other large companies who have offices in Israel and do business with Israel. I'm not saying your opinion is wrong, you do you.
  - themgt 3y ago
    It says he was protesting Project Nimbus which is Google cloud/AI for the Israeli government and military. You can also see the conference he was attending itself hardly shies away from the political/military connections, e.g. “The Israeli tech ecosystem is built on very strong foundations. We have the academia, we have the manpower, and we have the special military units,” said Dina Pasca-Raz, Partner and Head of Technology at KPMG Israel. “There are many, many areas of strength [0] Israel's ambassador to the UN also gave an extremely emphatic "no ceasefire" speech at this totally apolitical Google-sponsored tech conference with no connection to the war.[1] [0] https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjlvv676t https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjlvv676t [1] https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/ryymzd7a6 https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/ryymzd7a6
CommanderData 3y ago
The engineer refused to be directly complicit in Genocide and we punish him? Irony is we applaud those whom resisted Nazism. Rightly. I invite everyone to read Norman Finelstein whos father was a resistor to Nazism explain the similarities to concentration camps and Gaza. https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/norman-finkelstein-gaza-iran-israel-jerusalem-embassy/ https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/norman-finkelstein-gaza-...
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - CommanderData 3y ago
    Zionist hate him especially. Like salt on slugs.
rehitman 3y ago
I think it completely make sense. Google is private company and it was private event. No matter how important your message, you cannot go to any event stop people from doing business.
jackfrodo 3y ago
All power to that engineer. From an HR standpoint, Google might be right, in the same way that VW would have been right to fire an employee who disrupted meetings when they built cars for the Nazi regime.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
efrank02 3y ago
I’m sure he expected to be fired over this. If he didn’t he’s a coward.
mise_en_place 3y ago
My old manager put it best: No politics and religion in the workplace. Seriously, it's as simple as that. We are here to work, not philosophize about politics and current events.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  Hosting an event with Israel is politics.
  - phlakaton 3y ago
    Israel is not a person. And this wasn't even a member of the government IIUC.
  - CommanderData 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Luckily, this changes.
- pixl97 3y ago
  This doesn't exactly work when companies themselves make political stances. When companies grow larger than nationstates they are inherently political.
- mden 3y ago
  A lot of work can be inherently political. If your company pivots into mass surveillance is it unreasonable to speak up if it's against your ethics framework?
  - mise_en_place 3y ago
    That's the beauty of the free market, you have the freedom of choice. You can vote with your wallet or your feet. You can leave if your personal ethics and morality no longer align with the organization you're working for. A business doesn't owe you a paycheck simply because you think you're on the moral high ground.
seneca 3y ago
Google did this to themselves by spending years encouraging radical politics at work. They harmed themselves, maybe irrevocably, and the entire industry by normalizing this behavior. Now it's politics they don't like and they want to close Pandora's box. I feel no pity for them or the fired employee. This is why we have social norms to keep politics private.
smashah 3y ago
So being anti-Genocide is a fireable offense at Google?
- dekhn 3y ago
  No, of course not, and I don't even think you meant that question in good faith. More explicitly: you can be (and are encouraged to be) anti-genocide at google. However, disrupting a public company meeting is definitely a fireable offense.
  - smashah 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dekhn 3y ago
      I don't work for Google (anymore). I did work in cloud and supported their efforts to work with the US military and the militaries of our allies. I'm going to stop responding to this thread because comparing the IEF to the SS is not a worthwhile thing to do in an internet thread about protests.
      - smashah 3y ago
        Why not? Palestinian children are exploded into a million pieces and scattered throughout the road and rubble by US-funded munitions signed with pithy 3000 year old history lessons, the least we can do is accept the wanton disregard for human life by America's most important ally is akin to others in our modern history.
        shrimp_emoji 3y ago
        So everyone who kills civilians is like the Nazis? Wow, I guess everyone who has ever fought in war is like the Nazis. What a wild worldview.
        3y ago
rvz 3y ago
This just shows that employees have 0 power and companies like Google are more than ready to fire you if you get in their way. Businesses that live and breathe billions do not care and any attempt to cave into employee demands, then the investors will move in and force it through their changes. (Especially public companies)
- orangecat 3y ago
  You can't have employees disrupting company events to promote their political causes. This guy absolutely should be fired, and I'd be saying the same thing if his message had been pro-Israel.
- khazhoux 3y ago
  > Google are more than ready to fire you if you get in their way If a person disagrees with Google's policies, and are not in a position (as VP) to change them, they should simply quit the company. If instead, they decide to take deliberate actions which hurt the business (and thereby their peers), then the company should quit them.
- gretch 3y ago
  The employees collectively have a lot of power. A single employee has almost no power at all, which is rightful.
ReptileMan 3y ago
>“I refuse to build technology that powers genocide.” The Google Cloud engineer was subsequently fired Well google cloud can't power genocide, so what is your problem?
- GordonS 3y ago
  I'm not saying it is, but technically, yes, it could play a role. For example, US-backed Israel has used an AI system to decide where to drop bombs. They likely need lots of storage for videos of their drones killing people. They likely used databases with the locations of journalists so they could murder them. Just a few examples, but compute and storage can definitely play a part.
  - ReptileMan 3y ago
    And those types of data will be stored om Google cloud? Can't we just assume that the person is bored, overly political and naive?
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      As an unrepentant racist who's bored enough to post about your racist beliefs on Hacker News, you're overly political and naive, so who are you to talk? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39605689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39605689
      - ReptileMan 3y ago
        I am the one that didn't get fired because of performance
- Qem 3y ago
  > Well google cloud can't power genocide, so what is your problem? There is a book every technologist should read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust As the proverb says, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
godelski 3y ago
Wouldn't this be expected? He announced himself as a Google employee and this "represented." I do think it is dumb we act as if some random employee acts as a representative for their company, but here we are with all our social media taglines "my views are that of my own and not of my sugar daddy." I'll totally stand by these peoples' rights to make such protests. You gotta ruffle some feathers for what you believe in. But ruffling feathers has consequences. (This is regardless of my views on the situation, which is that there are no good/righteous sides in a war). Works at Google and says he *refuses to build technology that enables surveillance*!? Who do you think you've been working for?
- ghaff 3y ago
  I've been acutely aware for a very long time that anything I post on the Internet or say at a conference, whether explicitly public or to people who are all trusted to keep it private (and good luck with that as they repeat it to one or two people), could be attributed to me as a company employee in print. Maybe you get far enough away from your professional context or have a pseudonymous personal social media account but it's pretty risky to believe there is any hard separation between personal and professional sphere. And this is not a new thing.
  - godelski 3y ago
    I'm not saying it is a new thing or even a weird thing. I just think this it is odd that anyone would assume an employee of a company is a meaningful representative of a company and its values unless that employee is explicitly speaking on the company's behalf in their specialized role. Like a company spokes person, or an engineer giving a presentation at an event the company sent them as a representative to (and even then I'd only see them as a technical representative). It was more side commentary on how any large organizational structure is non-homogeneous. I mean we can say the same about countries: America, Israel, Palestine, China, Russia, <insert whatever here>. I believe we have words for aggregating (pigeon holing) the views of diverse nonhomogeneous groups based on a shared physical attribute of said group that has no causal relationship to said views. A person is not their {company,country,race,religion,political group} or many other things. I thought that was the point of our cultural progression: to recognize that a tree is not a forest. Even if it can help to talk about a forest at times, it would be absurd to think all the trees are the same. Must be pretty dense ;)
duxup 3y ago
I'm all for some good old civil disobedience as far as every day choices go in the outside world. However, I also think if you're employed somewhere there are reasonable expectations as far as workplace behavior goes that would prohibit the same "protest" or "civil disobedience" type behavior. It is interesting that the protestor immediately declares that they don't wan to work for such a company. It sorta begs the question of "Then why do you?". It seems like their choice is obvious.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - duxup 3y ago
    I'm thinking someone does some sit in at city hall or such. Things along those lines. Some folks do a sit in one day, they make themselves heard, there ya go. There are of course limits.
    - user_7832 3y ago
      I partially agree, depending on the topic being protested. I was writing a reply to the above commenter before it got killed, but it is an open question to all who oppose such demonstrations. > Would you have any suggestions of what else could the guy have done, that would've brought similar media attention to the topic? > The line between "annoying/childish protestors" and "folks legitimately raising awareness" is ill defined for me, perhaps if anyone else has better suggestions I would be happy to hear them.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Not "prohibit the same ... behavior", just "lead to consequences, like being fired, for the same behavior".
- PheonixPharts 3y ago
TheCaptain4815 3y ago
This the same company that called for a company wide feels meeting after Trump won in 2016?
colechristensen 3y ago
I have no problem with this. Write an open letter with signatures of many of your colleagues, or in extreme cases organize a walk-out or a strike in protest. Don't disrupt a meeting by yelling that you refuse to do your job, especially when it seems the meeting had nothing at all to do with the war and it was just that the presenter was Israeli and working in Israel... that's not so much a protest and more just racist. You work in tech, probably in silicon valley. It was created by the department of defense.
segasaturn 3y ago
Unfortunately lost in the debate over free speech & how private companies have a "right" to suppress people with certain viewpoints is the amount of power these tech companies have over us - I would argue that Google has more power over us now than King George III had over his subjects in 1773, and certainly has more power in stifling information and suppressing speech. Americans can tut-tut Russia and China for suppressing dissent, but American corporations are doing the same thing, just with a different coat of paint. New boss, same as the old boss.
- ameister14 3y ago
  >I would argue that Google has more power over us now than King George III had over his subjects in 1773 This is not the first time I have seen bizarre hyperbole like this - it's quite strange. Russia, China, and King George III all have and had people killed for dissent. Google didn't murder this engineer, imprison him, or anything of the sort. They just stopped paying his salary.
  - segasaturn 3y ago
    No, you're right. In Russia, China and 18th century England, suppression of speech is done either out the barrel of a gun or whisking people off to jail. In America it's done by sending the speaker to the unemployment line, or the food bank, or the homeless shelter - it's very likely that this employee will be blacklisted by the industry and never have the opportunity to live a stable life again. Apparently this outcome is fair & just, because the government wasn't involved.
    - ameister14 3y ago
      I really doubt that Google has the power to blacklist someone from the industry, or that they would take steps to do so in this instance even if they did have such power. I have yet to see an example of Google doing so or anything that makes me believe they have such power. Even if they did - it would be a significantly lesser power than the ability to execute people, and would belong to the 'low justice' in a feudal era, not 'high justice' which the King possessed. So rather than the power of King George, Google would have the power of a Manorial Court.
hd4 3y ago
really hoping dang doesn't let this get flagged off the front page like similar threads on this subject, even though it's obviously contentious. this is a conversation that needs to be had and also recorded for posterity.
- CommanderData 3y ago
  Israel has a professional misinformation and cyber warfare arm. It isn't even denied. Professional as in AC office's and salaried. I have no doubt they actively work in forums like these and try their best at applying pressure for which works sometimes and other times does not.
  - hd4 3y ago
    You summed it up nicely.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    Paul Graham himself was a target of their work, he disclosed on twitter.
    - Qem 3y ago
      For the record: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465
wilg 3y ago
If this guy thinks what Google is doing is "powering genocide", and Google is not going to change what it does, then he is just saying he's not going to do his job, right? So this move allows him to not work on powering genocide. I mean I’m sure he was hoping that it would change somebody’s mind, but you’ve got to know that’s a long shot.
smashah 3y ago
Is there a word for the "If I don't get paid for building a baby-killing-machine someone else will" type of regressive attitude that many self-deluded contrarians exhibit in the tech industry? Many such people would be diligent VW/Mercedes/Tesch and Stabenow/Degesch employees during WW2.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - smashah 3y ago
    Imagine being such a pseudo-contrarian that you say you'd be an employee of the makers of Zyklon B (Tesch and Stabenow/Degesch) with the words "I would, with no regrets". This is "Professionalism" to you, jfc.
    - user_7832 3y ago
      It's simply that the anonymity of the internet lets anyone become contrarian easily to prove a point.
    - surgical_fire 3y ago
      There's nothing pseudo, nor contrarian, about my position. You mistake conformism with a moral position about something.
      - smashah 3y ago
        You mistake manufacturing Zyklon B like a good little wagie for professionalism. You also mistake a moral position as conformism, which enables you to make immoral (by your own standards) statements.
        surgical_fire 3y ago
        > You mistake manufacturing Zyklon B like a good little wagie for professionalism You either don't know the meaning of professionalism, or are arguing in bad faith. I will presume cognitive limitations instead of malice. > You also mistake a moral position as conformism, which enables you to make immoral (by your own standards) statements There is nothing moral or immoral to conforming to society. I don't make the rules. I just follow.
wwweston 3y ago
Israel is an inherently inequitable and therefore likely terminally conflict-ridden ethnostate. Israel is a reasonable reaction to a long and terrible history of ethnic persecution. What's going on in Gaza is an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. There are players on both "sides" of this conflict that are driving it because they actually want the conflict, people who never wanted it and desperately want it to stop, and most are caught like bits of air in this conflict hurricane that even the head of state in a world hegemonic power can do scarcely more to dictate terms to than an actual hurricane. I don't know what the answer is, and I appreciate the urgency of feeling that causes people to protest, but at this point I'm pretty sure most protest gestures do little other than feed the tribal vortex at the heart of the hurricane, especially the farther away from any actual leverage points on the dynamic that they are. And an Israeli tech exec existing and doing tech exec things is probably not close to a leverage point, nor is protesting them doing tech exec things doing anything worth levering.
- smashah 3y ago
  Yeah, the Google employee should've done this in front of Biden or Bibi. Nevermind feeling as though they had no choice but to protest in whatever way they could against a plausible-genocide.
- godelski 3y ago
  > an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. I think this is important to reiterate. Because forces us to pay close attention to the details. There are extremely reasonable justifications for both sides because both sides have committed atrocities. This conflict goes a long way back and I'm in no position to claim who started it. But I can recognize that one atrocity does not justify another. I can recognize that justifying or dismissing the committing of an atrocity only further enables the conflict. Whichever side you land on, if you do not take a highly nuanced approach you are only further enabling conflict. For that's a key reason the conflict continues today. War always includes psychological warfare because you have to convince humans to do the inhumane. There is no such thing as a righteous war. War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander. - [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc
egberts1 3y ago
You did did read the employment contract before you signed for your very own personalized but infernal handcuffs, didn't you? Bet you will find that clause, a clause often with no title but commonly referred to as the "moral clause" (or behavior code or morality clause or even "bad boy clause") that is embedded (often claimed by so-call-victims as "hidden") somewhere in the middle of your lengthy employment contract. At any rate, you cannot say you weren't warned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals_clause https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals_clause
- CydeWeys 3y ago
  Employment contracts don't really matter in the US. They can fire you for just about any reason they want at any time, regardless of whether or not it's mentioned in your so-called employment contract.
  - egberts1 3y ago
    This is where your weekly status becomes a gold mine for your defense labor lawyers.
surgical_fire 3y ago
> “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide!” he yelled, referring to Google’s Project Nimbus contract Well, then Google did him a favor by firing him. Saved him from hypocrisy, since he could have quit long before that.
- secondary_op 3y ago
  The spice must flow. > Under a $1.2 billion contract, technology companies Google (Google Cloud Platform) and Amazon (Amazon Web Services) were selected to provide Israeli government agencies with cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. > A Republican plan, approved by the United States House of Representatives, allocates $14.5 billion in military aid for Israel. > Julian Assange speaking in 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war" https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1581698912447975424 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1581698912447975424 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war#:~:text=A%20Republican%20plan%2C%20approved%20by,with%20aid%20exceeding%20%24124%20billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Isra....
liampulles 3y ago
Its striking to me that there seems to be a segment of the population now that think that a company should behave like a democracy. I'd be very interested to see research about how this kind of viewpoint has changed over time, at what kind of companies it is more or less prevalent at, etc. I find this viewpoint astonishing personally, but that might have to do with my upbringing and cultural background.
- caput770 3y ago
  In a way, public companies are democracies made up of their shareholders. Do you think it's astonishing that many people think workers should be able to participate as well? Not that world politics should have much to do with company matters
- DicIfTEx 3y ago
  From https://www.uk.coop/understanding-co-ops/what-co-op/quick-facts-about-co-ops https://www.uk.coop/understanding-co-ops/what-co-op/quick-fa... > There are 3 million co-ops around the world – with 1.2 billion members. > That means 12% of the people on Earth are part of a co-op. With co-ops being just one particularly prominent form of democratic business structure, workplace democracy is not quite as marginal a notion as you might think.
  - fasthands9 3y ago
    I don't disagree with this - but work at a co-op if you prefer that system of management? I actually like working at a corporation because I don't have to play politics or worry about parts of the business I'm not involved in. It would be hell if I had to spend my evenings in meetings about foreign policy issues or disciplinary hearings for employees in other departments.
- archagon 3y ago
  The fact that we tolerate these pseudo-feudal corporate silos within our nominally democratic systems is what's bizarre to me. I live in a democracy and yet most of my day-to-day decisions are governed by an unapproachable billionaire C-suite. Why?
aaomidi 3y ago
When I was at Google, Google was systematically silencing Arabs and Palestinians. They had brought in a specific team to comb through memegen and silence any pro-Palestinian (literally pro the people, while anti Hamas) messaging. While I was there, multiple Googlers actively reached out to me and other Arabs and asked them "Do you support Hamas?" These also weren't just low-level employees either. I had these experiences from software developers all the way to managers and HR people. These employees that did that are still employed at Google despite the complaints. Multiple Arab and Palestianian coworkers of mine have also left Google since then.
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    No one was supporting Hamas. Again, read the initial message. (I'm just going to flag anyone who keeps actively misreading this at this point.)
  - krapp 3y ago
    Protesting Israel is not equivalent to supporting Hamas. Plenty of Jews are doing the same, how many Hamas supporters do you believe are among them?
- smashah 3y ago
  [flagged]
- bingleboy 3y ago
  For anyone else interested in the facts here is one small source: https://respondcrisistranslation.org/en/newsb/20231102-mistranslating-the-movement https://respondcrisistranslation.org/en/newsb/20231102-mistr...
lordfrito 3y ago
Lately it seems that more and more rank-and-file employees believe that a company has some sort of moral obligation to take their political opinions into consideration. Corporations aren't democracies. Unless you're an executive or high ranking decision maker, you're along for the ride. I don't ask my kids for their opinion about my home budget, what house I should buy, etc. So it is at work. Expecting a company to kowtow to your belief system betrays a conceited/pretentious view of the world around you. If you don't like the job, leave it.
- wootland 3y ago
  I don't think he's expecting anything, just protesting and drawing awareness. It worked too because we're now talking about it.
  - lordfrito 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - reanimus 3y ago
      And yet here we are. :)
- surfpel 3y ago
  > If you don't like the job, leave it. Meanwhile in your bio: "I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" So which is it? Defend those who speak up or demand they leave and berate them as "conceited/pretentious"?
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    The right applies to government involvement, not social.
    - surfpel 3y ago
      Check again, nobody said anything about the American Bill of Rights here. And the natural right is meaningless if your life is destroyed one way or another. That's "Cancel Culture".
ericfrazier 3y ago
[flagged]
highmastdon 3y ago
So hypocritical to say this and not resign yourself. Leave Google it’s choice and leave the company, don’t start destroying it from the inside, or stay and don’t speak your individual opinion
- jstarfish 3y ago
  [dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RickJWagner 3y ago
The workplace is better when people avoid conversations about religion and politics. It's more friendly for a wider variety of people.
C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
From the article: > One employee asked about Gemini's bias. Specifically, the person wrote that when asking Gemini, "Do women in Gaza deserve human rights?" the chatbot didn't have a response and directed the user to try Google search. But when the employee asked the same question of women in France, Gemini answered "Absolutely," followed by multiple bullet points backing up the assertion. > CNBC replicated the search Thursday afternoon and found the same results. Dreadful.
- peddling-brink 3y ago
  Probably because the chat bot has been instructed to avoid topics surrounding Gaza because it’s such a hot button issue.
- smsm42 3y ago
  What would you expect to achieve asking a question like that? If you try to use an LLM as your moral guide in figuring out whether women deserve human rights, you just may be too dumb to be allowed to connect to the internet (though I'm not sure how it relates to possibility of employment with Google). But I don't think any living human being is actually this dumb and still can figure out how to submit a question to Gemini. So we have to move on to the other alternative - asking this question is just trying to mine the outrage and procure a weapon in pushing some kind of agenda (probably not a big secret which one) and waging culture war (and in this case, also real killing war, unfortunately). I am not a manager of Google, but if I found out that enabling people like that is not a priority for Google managers, I would not find it dreadful at all, I'd find it completely normal and even - with all my reluctance of applying this word to Google managers - commendable.
  - hotelcoder 3y ago
    This question is just a simple and straightforward way to get at the agent's viewpoint bias; there are a million other ways that you might think are legitimate questions. Just in general, the goal of understanding the biases of a source of information is clearly a worthwhile one; at least in the human case, a person's bias will color everything they think and say about a topic.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
Most peculiar, the "diversity of thought" crowd seems to be absent from this conversation.
majikaja 3y ago
Maybe the US will just go ahead and formally declare the region as American territory (maybe include other countries like Egypt too) to make the situation clear to protestors?
franczesko 3y ago
Not supporting Google (and other companies) financially when they are involved in or profiting from military conflicts, especially when they support states that commit genocide and war crimes, is modern civil disobedience. What a brave person. He probably knew consequences. He can look in the mirror without shame.
sam_goody 3y ago
Whether you feel the employee should have been fired or not, whether you feel Israel is right or wrong - That article could have been written much more fairly. Sometimes I get so frustrated by the one-sidedness of so much of our news. I try to read at least one article a day which opposes my worldview with an open mind, just to keep myself balanced. Lately I feel like it's color war, with more details omitted on both sides than are written. I feel like I'm standing in the supermarket isle reading the tabloids, and that is all there is to read. /endrant Could anyone point me to a site that offers relatively short articles, lots of facts and minimal hyperbole, and which represents all sides of an issue - not necessarily the middle [since I don't think it is possible to truly be impartial], but something that will give fair representation to both sides [you could have a staff that includes, say, liberals and conservatives]?
aiauthoritydev2 3y ago
[flagged]

171 points by cbHXBY1D 3y ago

Another big tech, big money, little conscience problem. So disappointing that there is so much willingness to make money regardless of what it supports but that that courtesy is not extended to those who do the actual money making.

siva7 3y ago

> Google fired an employee who disrupted an Israel executive’s conference keynote this week, CNBC has learned. Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who wouldn't fire such an employee instantly.

bluefishinit 3y ago
Why would a big tech company be hosting an event with a state committing genocide? That (and working with said regime) is the problem, not people protesting. It's not possible to be a consumer brand and support Israel. The world is too divided and it's not getting any less so.
- c0mbonat0r 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    I don't agree with you and I'm actively boycotting all companies that work with Israel. This is why consumer brands can't support Israel, I'm not alone.
    - c0mbonat0r 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    Both side in that war are behaving badly and nobody should take either side. I look forward to the day when allying with any theocracy is recognized as an ethical mistake.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      There is Hamas, there is the Israeli government and there are the Palestinians, and before, Israelis who did nothing that suffer. I take the side of those loosong their homes, families and lives in Gaza deapite doing nothing at all.
    - goethes_kind 3y ago
      Both sides have resorted to terrorism. In fact that seems to be the modus operandi for both sides. What Israel does every day is also terrorism. The random bombings on civilians, the targeted bombings on key entities (doctors, journalists, authors, peace activists, ....), the detention without judicial recourse of Palestinians, the torture and rape, beating and murder, that happens during those detentions. The stealing of homes in the west bank, the evictions, the harassment of non-Jews (and even some non-Zionist Jewish sects) in Jerusalem and the west bank. The illegal settlement and the constant bullying and taunting of the armed settlers with their rifles and their IDF body guards. The destruction of all Palestinian means of production, whether it be shops or olive orchards. That is all terrorism and that has been happening for decades. But that the end of the day, Israel IS the oppressor and the Palestinians are their victims. That is a very important distinction.
  - PheonixPharts 3y ago
    > propaganda news outlets. Most major news outlets are still wildly pro-Israel. My and most people's opinions on the subject tend to not to drive from main stream media accounts, but research and journalistic investigations into the situation there. I don't personally know anyone who has walked down the path of doing real research into the issue and not come out of it horrified with Isreal's actions and this has been long before Oct, 7 2023. Most people who are "fine" with the situation are the ones getting their opinions from the news.
    - c0mbonat0r 3y ago
      [flagged]
    - GordonS 3y ago
      > I don't personally know anyone who has walked down the path of doing real research into the issue and not come out of it horrified with Isreal's actions and this has been long before Oct, 7 2023. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that until Israel's propaganda and genocidal response to the Al Aqsa Flood attack, I believed Israel were basically The Good Guys doing their best against terrorist neighbours. I feel like most people in the UK thought like that, and I rarely saw any negatively portrayals of Israel in the MSM. From what I've learned since, I've been... horrified - and like you said, by their actions going way back.
  - izietto 3y ago
    > propaganda news outlets Is ONU considered a propaganda news outlet nowadays? https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-146 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-i...
    - dekhn 3y ago
      I would say that the UN uses propaganda but in this case the page you linked to is a fairly factual description of the current situation.
- fny 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    The ICJ didn't rule on whether or not Israel was committing genocide. It said Israel needed to take the steps to not commit genocide. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-world-court-decision-israei-genocide-case-2024-01-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-worl...
    - fny 3y ago
      The case against Israel brought forth by South Africa states quite clearly South Africa asserts Israel is violating the Genocide Convention [0]. The ICJ never corroborated this claim meaning there was not enough evidence to substantiate it. [0]: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192...
    - egberts1 3y ago
      But it remains a court order in which carries the full weight of the ICJ. https://global.upenn.edu/perryworldhouse/news/explaining-international-court-justices-ruling-israel-and-gaza#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20Israel%20must%20conduct%20the,does%20not%20commit%20%5Bgenocide%5D%3B%E2%80%9D https://global.upenn.edu/perryworldhouse/news/explaining-int...
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    ICJ was not asked to convict Israel of committing genocide. That was not in the initial ask. The ask was to force Israel to stop its military operation. The ICJ's provisional verdict was _actually pretty bad_ for Israel: "The aforementioned facts and circumstances are sufficient to conclude that at least some rights of the Palestinians to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts in Article 3 of the Genocide Convention, and the rights of South Africa to seek protection of these rights." Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/icj-president-cites-inflammatory-comments-by-gallant-herzog-in-genocide-case-ruling/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/icj-president-c...
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  I think the problem is that folks look at things in a bizarre black and white manner and see it as either 1.) Israel has every right to defend itself from further terrorist attacks and isn't doing anything wrong, or 2.) Israel has no right to retaliate at all. I think the more moderate view is that Israel suffered a heinous terrorist attack perpetrated by a terrorist group in power. Israel has a right to defend their people from such attacks and a military response shouldn't be surprising given the extent of the crimes. However, the people in Gaza (non terrorists) are also human beings who should be treated that way. Not everyone supports the terrorist actions (apparently Hamas is incredibly unpopular amongst the people, but they have little discourse if they don't want to disappear) and the military response from Israel seems to have gotten to a point where children being blown up and starving to death somehow comes with the territory. Surely there is a way to reduce the casualties of innocent bystanders. Surely Israel should provide food and aid to the people after bombing all their infrastructure into the stone age. I admit not being as informed as I should be, but just how many times are we going to have genocide before we learn to stop? Just since the Holocaust we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, Rwanda, China, and now Gaza. In the more distant past it was even more common (e.g. trail of tears).
  - C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago
    > we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, [...] Just to correct you, the genocide was in Bosnia, not Serbia, as a culmination of years of ethnic cleansing of the muslim (and to a smaller extent the ethnic Croat) population of Bosnia by the Serbian ethnic group during the period of 1992-1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide
    - 7thaccount 3y ago
      Thank you! It's been awhile since I went over that.
hayst4ck 3y ago
This is why we need tech unions. We should be able to take an ethical stance without getting fired.
- dekhn 3y ago
  tech unions are unlikely to support random employees disrupting company events like this. they would instead provide an internal system for routing complaints in a consistent way.
- minimaxir 3y ago
  They weren't fired for taking a stance, they were fired for how they took the stance.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    This needs to be emphasized more. It's not that they took a stance, it's definitely how they did it that warranted being fired over it.
    - hayst4ck 3y ago
      What's a good way to take a stance?
      - user_7832 3y ago
        In a quiet email to the CEO which will promptly get deleted, and will never hit any big media or HN's frontpage is what a lot of commenters here would argue for. Being "polite" is nice if the person you're talking to is also nice. If the guy wanted to bring attention to the fact he did it very well.
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        I mean, this may be a good way to take a stance, for someone who deeply cares about a particular issue. But it's also definitely going to result in being fired, from any company. The two things aren't incompatible. Lots of good ways to take a stance have deprived lots of people taking those stances of far more than just their jobs, like their freedom, temporarily in many cases (like Dr. King) and permanently in many others (like Navalny). Making a stand is often laudable, but also often personally consequential.
user_7832 3y ago
> Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who wouldn't fire such an employee instantly. Just because something is done by most companies doesn't make it okay. Are mass layoffs "rightful" in any sense of that word?
- swman 3y ago
  Cringe. Mass layoffs are part of the Faustian bargain you accept when you sign the offer letter to work at the behemoths of capitalism. These are the biggest like top 10 companies in the whole world. It’s just business. But then again even those making 400k plus TC make appeals to emotion instead of rational thinking. There are plenty of jobs for these people where they can make 200k TC and not risk getting fired, which is still a good salary. If you want more and more, you must play with the devil. It’s really not that complicated.
- ghaff 3y ago
  If the alternative is the company going out of business? Yes? People can rightly protest the way layoffs are conducted but the idea that a company is "wrongful" to have a layoff sometimes is silly.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    I'm not specifically saying layoffs are good or bad, I was giving an example of how something being common (layoffs) doesn't automatically make it good (it's of course not good for the fired people).
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Of course, certainly not for many of the fired people (although depending on severance and situations--once I would have been happy to have been laid off). And layoff, and the way they're conducted, can certainly be conducted poorly and with less empathy than is called for. (Though, in reality empathy mostly=money in this context.)
- wilg 3y ago
  It's not immoral to fire multiple people from a company.
PheonixPharts 3y ago
I'm confused by your logic here, the fact that all other big tech companies would do something is hardly grounds for considering an action "right" in any moral framework I know of. "Unsurprisingly so" I can get behind. But "rightfully" is a stretch I wouldn't agree with.
- dekhn 3y ago
  Saying "rightfully so" does not imply the rightness derives from morality.
  - drewbug01 3y ago
    The most common, plain meanings of the phrase “rightfully so” do imply a basis in morality. It’s fair to say that it can mean that the “rightness” is derived from other sources, but pretending that the primary meaning of the phrase doesn’t imply morality is just being intentionally obtuse.
godelski 3y ago
Lotta people reading this comment as if it is taking a moral stance (siding with Google). I didn't read it that way but rather as a comment on the state of the current environment. Did I misread?
- happytoexplain 3y ago
  The wording and tone are common for broad agreement, both practical and moral (curtness, appeal to popularity, etc). Otherwise, one would normally use a wording that expresses the scope of one's tone, e.g. "Regardless of the issue, I think it's the right call to resort to firing to enforce this rule." (It's hard to come up with a good example that demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about, because the topic is highly subjective, highly emotional, and has a few different angles. There are a million different things the parent could have said to communicate an attitude that doesn't imply an emotional, moral, or political distaste for the context of the protest itself. My example isn't necessarily "correct" for the parent.)
  - godelski 3y ago
    Yeah that's fair. I could see it going either way. But I think when ambiguous it doesn't hurt to ask. And there's a lot of fighting and arguing so I'd rather ask than escalate conflict if there is a misunderstanding. I think we all know how easy it can be to miscommunicate.
fny 3y ago
The employee clearly wanted to be fired, wanted to vilify the company, and wanted the news to broadcast the matter. Who in their right mind who says “I refuse to build technology that ____” wouldn’t already be planning to quit barring outrageous hypocrisy? Who in their right mind screams it out in the middle of a presentation without expecting to be dragged out?
- user_7832 3y ago
  Quite possible, in which case he's likely achieved his goal. Personally I don't think firing him helps Google's PR, rather it makes them look even more "evil". (To clarify, I am NOT saying that it is unexpected for a company to fire such a person. Expectations != what's the morally correct != reality, I'm just commenting on a part of the equation.)
mc32 3y ago
It used to be, at work one would not talk about politics or religion. And, to some degree, salaries... but that was thrown out the window and companies encouraged activism, bring your pets to work, bring your freakishness to work, let it all hang out. You didn't just keep it to yourself and best friends anymore --the company was "your family and friend". The chickens are coming home to roost and they don't like it so much anymore.

dekhn 3y ago

It seems unlikely that Google could do anything but fire a person who called his company out during an external PR event.

name_nick_sex_m 3y ago
I don't think that consequence would have happened 10 years ago. But I guess I'm that guy who still resents that since then Google has fully evolved into yet another mindless corporate greed machine.

jimbob45 3y ago

During a keynote speech, an employee in the company’s cloud division protested publicly, proclaiming “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide.” The Google Cloud engineer was subsequently fired, CNBC has learned, marking another dark moment for Google In grade school, it was universally known that if you use violence before attempting to run away, you're getting in trouble. I don't know why companies haven't made an equally clear universal rule that "if you say something publicly before running it by us, you're getting fired".

prepend 3y ago
Don’t they though? People pretty consistently get fired over this. I had to go through training that said what happens if I do something like this.
user_7832 3y ago
There's a difference between standing up in the middle of a PR session and violence, much like there's a difference between whatever might happen in a school and what Google is doing.

blueflow 3y ago

Why is employee dissent such a problem in google and not a problem in other companies?

dekhn 3y ago
because the company pitched itself as "socially responsible" and attracted a large number of people who believed they could work there and change the world to look like what they wanted it, and then google sort of changed directions for business purposes that aren't compatible.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Also, because lots of people work there. And also, it isn't true that it's unique to them.
- pvarangot 3y ago
  Also I think the "we are all Google" borg/hivemind thing plays a part, other companies like Amazon or Apple are organized more like a lot of smaller companies so when people join they have different expectations towards corporate and feedback up and down and internal dissent work different.
- anon-sre-srm 3y ago
  [flagged]
oluwie 3y ago
"Do no evil" went out the backdoor a long time ago
- thinkingemote 3y ago
  For the record they changed it to (paraphrasing) "googlers shouldn't do evil" without much commentary at the time but significantly shifting the emphasis away from the corporation to individual employees. From a mission statement to HR guideline.
3y ago

prepend 3y ago

This seems pretty reasonable as falling under the “unprofessional behavior” intelligent behavior. In my org, if I disrupted someone’s presentation over any topic I’d be fired. Or maybe severely reprimanded. This behavior surprises me because these are private orgs. So doing unprofessional things will result in firings or whatnot. It seems odd to me that people think it’s appropriate to protest within a company. If you don’t want to “build technology that powers genocide” (kind of comical considering how huge and pervasive google is) then quit. Similarly if I don’t want to make bombs, I shouldn’t work for a bomb company. Finally, it just seems stupid to think this would change corporate decision making. What kind of reasoning and logic ends up with “disrupt a meeting -> google changes business policy regarding Israel?”

dekhn 3y ago
Regarding your last question: we just went through a period where shaming people publicly had huge effects. However, partially as a result of that, and other important factors, people changed their tolerance and rage parameters in a way that is less likely to call for change in the progressive direction.
sanderjd 3y ago
It's appropriate to protest within a company, because human beings are free to choose what is important enough to their own personal values to be worth taking actions that will have consequences, and to choose which actions they believe are worth doing. But certainly the base case expectation people should have is that such actions will result in being fired. And personally I also agree with you that this does not turn out to be a very effective form of protest. But people get to make their own choices!

Kapura 3y ago

>“This behavior is not okay, _regardless of the issue,_ and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.” There are some issues that are worth speaking up about. There are some issues that are worth being fired over.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
colechristensen 3y ago
How is this not just racist behavior? An Israeli presenter who is based in Israel is being protested. Was there any connection beyond that to the war?
- unstyledcontent 3y ago
  I don't know the opinions of this particular speaker but my feelings towards the actions of the Israeli government make me opposed to any business relationship with that country until they end their genocide against Gaza.
  - colechristensen 3y ago
    Then don't work at Google or plenty of other large companies who have offices in Israel and do business with Israel. I'm not saying your opinion is wrong, you do you.
- themgt 3y ago
  It says he was protesting Project Nimbus which is Google cloud/AI for the Israeli government and military. You can also see the conference he was attending itself hardly shies away from the political/military connections, e.g. “The Israeli tech ecosystem is built on very strong foundations. We have the academia, we have the manpower, and we have the special military units,” said Dina Pasca-Raz, Partner and Head of Technology at KPMG Israel. “There are many, many areas of strength [0] Israel's ambassador to the UN also gave an extremely emphatic "no ceasefire" speech at this totally apolitical Google-sponsored tech conference with no connection to the war.[1] [0] https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjlvv676t https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/sjlvv676t [1] https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/ryymzd7a6 https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/ryymzd7a6

CommanderData 3y ago

The engineer refused to be directly complicit in Genocide and we punish him? Irony is we applaud those whom resisted Nazism. Rightly. I invite everyone to read Norman Finelstein whos father was a resistor to Nazism explain the similarities to concentration camps and Gaza. https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/norman-finkelstein-gaza-iran-israel-jerusalem-embassy/ https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/norman-finkelstein-gaza-...

shrimp_emoji 3y ago
[flagged]
- CommanderData 3y ago
  Zionist hate him especially. Like salt on slugs.

rehitman 3y ago

I think it completely make sense. Google is private company and it was private event. No matter how important your message, you cannot go to any event stop people from doing business.

jackfrodo 3y ago

All power to that engineer. From an HR standpoint, Google might be right, in the same way that VW would have been right to fire an employee who disrupted meetings when they built cars for the Nazi regime.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

efrank02 3y ago

I’m sure he expected to be fired over this. If he didn’t he’s a coward.

mise_en_place 3y ago

My old manager put it best: No politics and religion in the workplace. Seriously, it's as simple as that. We are here to work, not philosophize about politics and current events.

bluefishinit 3y ago
Hosting an event with Israel is politics.
- phlakaton 3y ago
  Israel is not a person. And this wasn't even a member of the government IIUC.
- CommanderData 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Luckily, this changes.
pixl97 3y ago
This doesn't exactly work when companies themselves make political stances. When companies grow larger than nationstates they are inherently political.
mden 3y ago
A lot of work can be inherently political. If your company pivots into mass surveillance is it unreasonable to speak up if it's against your ethics framework?
- mise_en_place 3y ago
  That's the beauty of the free market, you have the freedom of choice. You can vote with your wallet or your feet. You can leave if your personal ethics and morality no longer align with the organization you're working for. A business doesn't owe you a paycheck simply because you think you're on the moral high ground.

seneca 3y ago

Google did this to themselves by spending years encouraging radical politics at work. They harmed themselves, maybe irrevocably, and the entire industry by normalizing this behavior. Now it's politics they don't like and they want to close Pandora's box. I feel no pity for them or the fired employee. This is why we have social norms to keep politics private.

smashah 3y ago

So being anti-Genocide is a fireable offense at Google?

dekhn 3y ago
No, of course not, and I don't even think you meant that question in good faith. More explicitly: you can be (and are encouraged to be) anti-genocide at google. However, disrupting a public company meeting is definitely a fireable offense.
- smashah 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I don't work for Google (anymore). I did work in cloud and supported their efforts to work with the US military and the militaries of our allies. I'm going to stop responding to this thread because comparing the IEF to the SS is not a worthwhile thing to do in an internet thread about protests.
    - smashah 3y ago
      Why not? Palestinian children are exploded into a million pieces and scattered throughout the road and rubble by US-funded munitions signed with pithy 3000 year old history lessons, the least we can do is accept the wanton disregard for human life by America's most important ally is akin to others in our modern history.
      - shrimp_emoji 3y ago
        So everyone who kills civilians is like the Nazis? Wow, I guess everyone who has ever fought in war is like the Nazis. What a wild worldview.
        3y ago

rvz 3y ago

This just shows that employees have 0 power and companies like Google are more than ready to fire you if you get in their way. Businesses that live and breathe billions do not care and any attempt to cave into employee demands, then the investors will move in and force it through their changes. (Especially public companies)

orangecat 3y ago
You can't have employees disrupting company events to promote their political causes. This guy absolutely should be fired, and I'd be saying the same thing if his message had been pro-Israel.
khazhoux 3y ago
> Google are more than ready to fire you if you get in their way If a person disagrees with Google's policies, and are not in a position (as VP) to change them, they should simply quit the company. If instead, they decide to take deliberate actions which hurt the business (and thereby their peers), then the company should quit them.
gretch 3y ago
The employees collectively have a lot of power. A single employee has almost no power at all, which is rightful.

ReptileMan 3y ago

>“I refuse to build technology that powers genocide.” The Google Cloud engineer was subsequently fired Well google cloud can't power genocide, so what is your problem?

GordonS 3y ago
I'm not saying it is, but technically, yes, it could play a role. For example, US-backed Israel has used an AI system to decide where to drop bombs. They likely need lots of storage for videos of their drones killing people. They likely used databases with the locations of journalists so they could murder them. Just a few examples, but compute and storage can definitely play a part.
- ReptileMan 3y ago
  And those types of data will be stored om Google cloud? Can't we just assume that the person is bored, overly political and naive?
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    As an unrepentant racist who's bored enough to post about your racist beliefs on Hacker News, you're overly political and naive, so who are you to talk? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39605689 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39605689
    - ReptileMan 3y ago
      I am the one that didn't get fired because of performance
Qem 3y ago
> Well google cloud can't power genocide, so what is your problem? There is a book every technologist should read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust As the proverb says, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

godelski 3y ago

Wouldn't this be expected? He announced himself as a Google employee and this "represented." I do think it is dumb we act as if some random employee acts as a representative for their company, but here we are with all our social media taglines "my views are that of my own and not of my sugar daddy." I'll totally stand by these peoples' rights to make such protests. You gotta ruffle some feathers for what you believe in. But ruffling feathers has consequences. (This is regardless of my views on the situation, which is that there are no good/righteous sides in a war). Works at Google and says he *refuses to build technology that enables surveillance*!? Who do you think you've been working for?

ghaff 3y ago
I've been acutely aware for a very long time that anything I post on the Internet or say at a conference, whether explicitly public or to people who are all trusted to keep it private (and good luck with that as they repeat it to one or two people), could be attributed to me as a company employee in print. Maybe you get far enough away from your professional context or have a pseudonymous personal social media account but it's pretty risky to believe there is any hard separation between personal and professional sphere. And this is not a new thing.
- godelski 3y ago
  I'm not saying it is a new thing or even a weird thing. I just think this it is odd that anyone would assume an employee of a company is a meaningful representative of a company and its values unless that employee is explicitly speaking on the company's behalf in their specialized role. Like a company spokes person, or an engineer giving a presentation at an event the company sent them as a representative to (and even then I'd only see them as a technical representative). It was more side commentary on how any large organizational structure is non-homogeneous. I mean we can say the same about countries: America, Israel, Palestine, China, Russia, <insert whatever here>. I believe we have words for aggregating (pigeon holing) the views of diverse nonhomogeneous groups based on a shared physical attribute of said group that has no causal relationship to said views. A person is not their {company,country,race,religion,political group} or many other things. I thought that was the point of our cultural progression: to recognize that a tree is not a forest. Even if it can help to talk about a forest at times, it would be absurd to think all the trees are the same. Must be pretty dense ;)

duxup 3y ago

I'm all for some good old civil disobedience as far as every day choices go in the outside world. However, I also think if you're employed somewhere there are reasonable expectations as far as workplace behavior goes that would prohibit the same "protest" or "civil disobedience" type behavior. It is interesting that the protestor immediately declares that they don't wan to work for such a company. It sorta begs the question of "Then why do you?". It seems like their choice is obvious.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 3y ago
[flagged]
- duxup 3y ago
  I'm thinking someone does some sit in at city hall or such. Things along those lines. Some folks do a sit in one day, they make themselves heard, there ya go. There are of course limits.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    I partially agree, depending on the topic being protested. I was writing a reply to the above commenter before it got killed, but it is an open question to all who oppose such demonstrations. > Would you have any suggestions of what else could the guy have done, that would've brought similar media attention to the topic? > The line between "annoying/childish protestors" and "folks legitimately raising awareness" is ill defined for me, perhaps if anyone else has better suggestions I would be happy to hear them.
sanderjd 3y ago
Not "prohibit the same ... behavior", just "lead to consequences, like being fired, for the same behavior".
PheonixPharts 3y ago

TheCaptain4815 3y ago

This the same company that called for a company wide feels meeting after Trump won in 2016?

colechristensen 3y ago

I have no problem with this. Write an open letter with signatures of many of your colleagues, or in extreme cases organize a walk-out or a strike in protest. Don't disrupt a meeting by yelling that you refuse to do your job, especially when it seems the meeting had nothing at all to do with the war and it was just that the presenter was Israeli and working in Israel... that's not so much a protest and more just racist. You work in tech, probably in silicon valley. It was created by the department of defense.

segasaturn 3y ago

Unfortunately lost in the debate over free speech & how private companies have a "right" to suppress people with certain viewpoints is the amount of power these tech companies have over us - I would argue that Google has more power over us now than King George III had over his subjects in 1773, and certainly has more power in stifling information and suppressing speech. Americans can tut-tut Russia and China for suppressing dissent, but American corporations are doing the same thing, just with a different coat of paint. New boss, same as the old boss.

ameister14 3y ago
>I would argue that Google has more power over us now than King George III had over his subjects in 1773 This is not the first time I have seen bizarre hyperbole like this - it's quite strange. Russia, China, and King George III all have and had people killed for dissent. Google didn't murder this engineer, imprison him, or anything of the sort. They just stopped paying his salary.
- segasaturn 3y ago
  No, you're right. In Russia, China and 18th century England, suppression of speech is done either out the barrel of a gun or whisking people off to jail. In America it's done by sending the speaker to the unemployment line, or the food bank, or the homeless shelter - it's very likely that this employee will be blacklisted by the industry and never have the opportunity to live a stable life again. Apparently this outcome is fair & just, because the government wasn't involved.
  - ameister14 3y ago
    I really doubt that Google has the power to blacklist someone from the industry, or that they would take steps to do so in this instance even if they did have such power. I have yet to see an example of Google doing so or anything that makes me believe they have such power. Even if they did - it would be a significantly lesser power than the ability to execute people, and would belong to the 'low justice' in a feudal era, not 'high justice' which the King possessed. So rather than the power of King George, Google would have the power of a Manorial Court.

hd4 3y ago

really hoping dang doesn't let this get flagged off the front page like similar threads on this subject, even though it's obviously contentious. this is a conversation that needs to be had and also recorded for posterity.

CommanderData 3y ago
Israel has a professional misinformation and cyber warfare arm. It isn't even denied. Professional as in AC office's and salaried. I have no doubt they actively work in forums like these and try their best at applying pressure for which works sometimes and other times does not.
- hd4 3y ago
  You summed it up nicely.
- user_7832 3y ago
  Paul Graham himself was a target of their work, he disclosed on twitter.
  - Qem 3y ago
    For the record: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1733146138226614465

wilg 3y ago

If this guy thinks what Google is doing is "powering genocide", and Google is not going to change what it does, then he is just saying he's not going to do his job, right? So this move allows him to not work on powering genocide. I mean I’m sure he was hoping that it would change somebody’s mind, but you’ve got to know that’s a long shot.

smashah 3y ago

Is there a word for the "If I don't get paid for building a baby-killing-machine someone else will" type of regressive attitude that many self-deluded contrarians exhibit in the tech industry? Many such people would be diligent VW/Mercedes/Tesch and Stabenow/Degesch employees during WW2.

surgical_fire 3y ago
[flagged]
- smashah 3y ago
  Imagine being such a pseudo-contrarian that you say you'd be an employee of the makers of Zyklon B (Tesch and Stabenow/Degesch) with the words "I would, with no regrets". This is "Professionalism" to you, jfc.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    It's simply that the anonymity of the internet lets anyone become contrarian easily to prove a point.
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    There's nothing pseudo, nor contrarian, about my position. You mistake conformism with a moral position about something.
    - smashah 3y ago
      You mistake manufacturing Zyklon B like a good little wagie for professionalism. You also mistake a moral position as conformism, which enables you to make immoral (by your own standards) statements.
      - surgical_fire 3y ago
        > You mistake manufacturing Zyklon B like a good little wagie for professionalism You either don't know the meaning of professionalism, or are arguing in bad faith. I will presume cognitive limitations instead of malice. > You also mistake a moral position as conformism, which enables you to make immoral (by your own standards) statements There is nothing moral or immoral to conforming to society. I don't make the rules. I just follow.

wwweston 3y ago

Israel is an inherently inequitable and therefore likely terminally conflict-ridden ethnostate. Israel is a reasonable reaction to a long and terrible history of ethnic persecution. What's going on in Gaza is an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. There are players on both "sides" of this conflict that are driving it because they actually want the conflict, people who never wanted it and desperately want it to stop, and most are caught like bits of air in this conflict hurricane that even the head of state in a world hegemonic power can do scarcely more to dictate terms to than an actual hurricane. I don't know what the answer is, and I appreciate the urgency of feeling that causes people to protest, but at this point I'm pretty sure most protest gestures do little other than feed the tribal vortex at the heart of the hurricane, especially the farther away from any actual leverage points on the dynamic that they are. And an Israeli tech exec existing and doing tech exec things is probably not close to a leverage point, nor is protesting them doing tech exec things doing anything worth levering.

smashah 3y ago
Yeah, the Google employee should've done this in front of Biden or Bibi. Nevermind feeling as though they had no choice but to protest in whatever way they could against a plausible-genocide.
godelski 3y ago
> an unacceptable humanitarian tragedy that is a reaction to an unacceptable attack. I think this is important to reiterate. Because forces us to pay close attention to the details. There are extremely reasonable justifications for both sides because both sides have committed atrocities. This conflict goes a long way back and I'm in no position to claim who started it. But I can recognize that one atrocity does not justify another. I can recognize that justifying or dismissing the committing of an atrocity only further enables the conflict. Whichever side you land on, if you do not take a highly nuanced approach you are only further enabling conflict. For that's a key reason the conflict continues today. War always includes psychological warfare because you have to convince humans to do the inhumane. There is no such thing as a righteous war. War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander. - [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc

egberts1 3y ago

You did did read the employment contract before you signed for your very own personalized but infernal handcuffs, didn't you? Bet you will find that clause, a clause often with no title but commonly referred to as the "moral clause" (or behavior code or morality clause or even "bad boy clause") that is embedded (often claimed by so-call-victims as "hidden") somewhere in the middle of your lengthy employment contract. At any rate, you cannot say you weren't warned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals_clause https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals_clause

CydeWeys 3y ago
Employment contracts don't really matter in the US. They can fire you for just about any reason they want at any time, regardless of whether or not it's mentioned in your so-called employment contract.
- egberts1 3y ago
  This is where your weekly status becomes a gold mine for your defense labor lawyers.

surgical_fire 3y ago

> “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide!” he yelled, referring to Google’s Project Nimbus contract Well, then Google did him a favor by firing him. Saved him from hypocrisy, since he could have quit long before that.

secondary_op 3y ago
The spice must flow. > Under a $1.2 billion contract, technology companies Google (Google Cloud Platform) and Amazon (Amazon Web Services) were selected to provide Israeli government agencies with cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. > A Republican plan, approved by the United States House of Representatives, allocates $14.5 billion in military aid for Israel. > Julian Assange speaking in 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war" https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1581698912447975424 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1581698912447975424 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel–Hamas_war#:~:text=A%20Republican%20plan%2C%20approved%20by,with%20aid%20exceeding%20%24124%20billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Isra....

liampulles 3y ago

Its striking to me that there seems to be a segment of the population now that think that a company should behave like a democracy. I'd be very interested to see research about how this kind of viewpoint has changed over time, at what kind of companies it is more or less prevalent at, etc. I find this viewpoint astonishing personally, but that might have to do with my upbringing and cultural background.

caput770 3y ago
In a way, public companies are democracies made up of their shareholders. Do you think it's astonishing that many people think workers should be able to participate as well? Not that world politics should have much to do with company matters
DicIfTEx 3y ago
From https://www.uk.coop/understanding-co-ops/what-co-op/quick-facts-about-co-ops https://www.uk.coop/understanding-co-ops/what-co-op/quick-fa... > There are 3 million co-ops around the world – with 1.2 billion members. > That means 12% of the people on Earth are part of a co-op. With co-ops being just one particularly prominent form of democratic business structure, workplace democracy is not quite as marginal a notion as you might think.
- fasthands9 3y ago
  I don't disagree with this - but work at a co-op if you prefer that system of management? I actually like working at a corporation because I don't have to play politics or worry about parts of the business I'm not involved in. It would be hell if I had to spend my evenings in meetings about foreign policy issues or disciplinary hearings for employees in other departments.
archagon 3y ago
The fact that we tolerate these pseudo-feudal corporate silos within our nominally democratic systems is what's bizarre to me. I live in a democracy and yet most of my day-to-day decisions are governed by an unapproachable billionaire C-suite. Why?

aaomidi 3y ago

When I was at Google, Google was systematically silencing Arabs and Palestinians. They had brought in a specific team to comb through memegen and silence any pro-Palestinian (literally pro the people, while anti Hamas) messaging. While I was there, multiple Googlers actively reached out to me and other Arabs and asked them "Do you support Hamas?" These also weren't just low-level employees either. I had these experiences from software developers all the way to managers and HR people. These employees that did that are still employed at Google despite the complaints. Multiple Arab and Palestianian coworkers of mine have also left Google since then.

Workaccount2 3y ago
[flagged]
- aaomidi 3y ago
  No one was supporting Hamas. Again, read the initial message. (I'm just going to flag anyone who keeps actively misreading this at this point.)
- krapp 3y ago
  Protesting Israel is not equivalent to supporting Hamas. Plenty of Jews are doing the same, how many Hamas supporters do you believe are among them?
smashah 3y ago
[flagged]
bingleboy 3y ago
For anyone else interested in the facts here is one small source: https://respondcrisistranslation.org/en/newsb/20231102-mistranslating-the-movement https://respondcrisistranslation.org/en/newsb/20231102-mistr...

lordfrito 3y ago

Lately it seems that more and more rank-and-file employees believe that a company has some sort of moral obligation to take their political opinions into consideration. Corporations aren't democracies. Unless you're an executive or high ranking decision maker, you're along for the ride. I don't ask my kids for their opinion about my home budget, what house I should buy, etc. So it is at work. Expecting a company to kowtow to your belief system betrays a conceited/pretentious view of the world around you. If you don't like the job, leave it.

wootland 3y ago
I don't think he's expecting anything, just protesting and drawing awareness. It worked too because we're now talking about it.
- lordfrito 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - reanimus 3y ago
    And yet here we are. :)
surfpel 3y ago
> If you don't like the job, leave it. Meanwhile in your bio: "I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" So which is it? Defend those who speak up or demand they leave and berate them as "conceited/pretentious"?
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  The right applies to government involvement, not social.
  - surfpel 3y ago
    Check again, nobody said anything about the American Bill of Rights here. And the natural right is meaningless if your life is destroyed one way or another. That's "Cancel Culture".

ericfrazier 3y ago

[flagged]

highmastdon 3y ago

So hypocritical to say this and not resign yourself. Leave Google it’s choice and leave the company, don’t start destroying it from the inside, or stay and don’t speak your individual opinion

jstarfish 3y ago
[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

RickJWagner 3y ago

The workplace is better when people avoid conversations about religion and politics. It's more friendly for a wider variety of people.

C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 3y ago

From the article: > One employee asked about Gemini's bias. Specifically, the person wrote that when asking Gemini, "Do women in Gaza deserve human rights?" the chatbot didn't have a response and directed the user to try Google search. But when the employee asked the same question of women in France, Gemini answered "Absolutely," followed by multiple bullet points backing up the assertion. > CNBC replicated the search Thursday afternoon and found the same results. Dreadful.

peddling-brink 3y ago
Probably because the chat bot has been instructed to avoid topics surrounding Gaza because it’s such a hot button issue.
smsm42 3y ago
What would you expect to achieve asking a question like that? If you try to use an LLM as your moral guide in figuring out whether women deserve human rights, you just may be too dumb to be allowed to connect to the internet (though I'm not sure how it relates to possibility of employment with Google). But I don't think any living human being is actually this dumb and still can figure out how to submit a question to Gemini. So we have to move on to the other alternative - asking this question is just trying to mine the outrage and procure a weapon in pushing some kind of agenda (probably not a big secret which one) and waging culture war (and in this case, also real killing war, unfortunately). I am not a manager of Google, but if I found out that enabling people like that is not a priority for Google managers, I would not find it dreadful at all, I'd find it completely normal and even - with all my reluctance of applying this word to Google managers - commendable.
- hotelcoder 3y ago
  This question is just a simple and straightforward way to get at the agent's viewpoint bias; there are a million other ways that you might think are legitimate questions. Just in general, the goal of understanding the biases of a source of information is clearly a worthwhile one; at least in the human case, a person's bias will color everything they think and say about a topic.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

GaryNumanVevo 3y ago

Most peculiar, the "diversity of thought" crowd seems to be absent from this conversation.

majikaja 3y ago

Maybe the US will just go ahead and formally declare the region as American territory (maybe include other countries like Egypt too) to make the situation clear to protestors?

franczesko 3y ago

Not supporting Google (and other companies) financially when they are involved in or profiting from military conflicts, especially when they support states that commit genocide and war crimes, is modern civil disobedience. What a brave person. He probably knew consequences. He can look in the mirror without shame.

sam_goody 3y ago

Whether you feel the employee should have been fired or not, whether you feel Israel is right or wrong - That article could have been written much more fairly. Sometimes I get so frustrated by the one-sidedness of so much of our news. I try to read at least one article a day which opposes my worldview with an open mind, just to keep myself balanced. Lately I feel like it's color war, with more details omitted on both sides than are written. I feel like I'm standing in the supermarket isle reading the tabloids, and that is all there is to read. /endrant Could anyone point me to a site that offers relatively short articles, lots of facts and minimal hyperbole, and which represents all sides of an issue - not necessarily the middle [since I don't think it is possible to truly be impartial], but something that will give fair representation to both sides [you could have a staff that includes, say, liberals and conservatives]?

aiauthoritydev2 3y ago

[flagged]