- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Google fired 28 employees in connection with sit-in protests at two of its offices this week, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge. The firings come after 9 employees were suspended and then arrested in New York and California on Tuesday.
In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, said that “behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it.”
He also warned that the company would take more action if needed: “The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior — up to and including termination.”
The memo looks like it comes straight out of dystopian novel
How did we get here
What’s dystopian about it? Employees violated company policy and they were fired because of it. There are acceptable and unacceptable ways to handle it, and those employees chose to handle it unprofessionally.
If they want to protest on their own time and on public property, they should have every right. But protesting on company property shouldn’t have any special protections.
I’m no fan of Google and I think their business choices are despicable, but that doesn’t change the fact that first amendment protections do not apply in a typical workplace, they only serve to restrict government action. So it’s completely unsurprising that Google fired employees who destroyed company property and disrupted the work environment.
🤓 Employees violated company policy
Goddamn, the boot licking and cock sucking action here could generate a whole new PornHub category
dumbasses should’ve just sabotaged the project, or stolen as much as they could get away with. maybe leaked it.
I agree.
Google PRIDES itself on progressivism and diversity. From transgender visibility to veganism. Google showered Ukrainian and Israeli employees with support and gave them a platform, but Palestinian supporters were left out. Say Ukrainians are dying and google will support you and even donate for you. Protest Google’s military contract that kills Palestinian civilians and violates the company ethics policies and you get fired?
This will blemish google’s reputation for a long time to come. IBM is still in the history books as helping the Nazis.
Google prides itself on making money and attracting top talent. Destructive and disruptive protests negatively impacts both. So AFAICT, they weren’t fired for the content of their speech, but the manner in which they chose to express it (i.e. disrupting business).
I doubt they wouldn’t can fired for taking time off to protest outside company property, it was likely due to their choice to damage and disrupt work in the buildings.
We all know that’s inconsistent. If employees wanted to take time off to grieve for the LGBT deaths at the Pulse nightclub shooting, the company would have supported them. Would they have done the same for people grieving over dead Palestinian children, or fire them for not meeting their work requirements or ‘disrupting business’? Would Google fire employees who staged a sit-in over anti-Semitism in the workplace?
Google broke their corporate ethics by allying with a military for a lucrative contract; employees SHOULD be calling them out on it.
google needs to stop being a thing.
I think it’s the part where they are ready to go to the extent of hiring a T800 from the future to kill your mother before you were born
I thought they were talking about the firing.
I totally agree with Google’s partnership with Israel being dystopic.
Being apolitical is a political stance.
Capitalism.
True
“don’t be evil”
Looking for more ideas how to boycott Google.
No longer using Chrome No longer using google search.
Somehow get off Gmail? Android gapps? Delete reviews?
There’s FOSS apps from fdroid, fairemail or protonmail or something of the sort, CalyxOS or GrapheneOS (ironically targets the Pixel series primarily, though they sometimes sell these at a loss around the holiday season).
Unpopular opinion but boycotting Google doesn’t work.
Instead, get real inside the house.
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Be such a great Contributor to Google Maps.
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Be a manager of a team.
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Work on critical systems.
Then casually start breaking shit. Woops, didn’t mean to add all this spam to Google maps. Didn’t mean to cancel another service. Didn’t mean to make search shittyer.
And if you do it correctly, you’ll get paid AND nobody will be the wiser since they’re already doing all those things.
LOL
Poor dude doesn’t know google already did this themselves by killing their project teams and bringing a team of summer interns every year to decrease the cloud cost of each app.
They don’t have to worry because they already own the market on all these apps so any competitor can be bought out or is doomed to fail.
That way they can spend all their allocated budget on new ventures like Gemini.
For example Google Maps has sucked total ******* **** for a whole ass decade now, and the people who made Android Auto have a special place for them in FOSS hell.
Poor dude doesn’t know google already did this themselves
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The Proton suite of apps have 1:1 replacements for the entire Gsuite. Some things are locked behind a subscription (email is fully free), so if you’re not into that there’s NextCloud if you can/want to self-host. Tuta is also a decent Gmail replacement. As for Gapps, there isn’t really any good replacements; MicroG breaks a lot of things and sandboxed google play services is the only other alternative (which is only available on GrapheneOS afaik).
The Proton suite of apps have 1:1 replacements for the entire Gsuite
That’s just not true, they don’t have office applications or video chat. I wish they did though. Also, their storage is pretty expensive.
Their email is pretty good though, and they have a decent VPN service as well.
they don’t have office applications or video chat
Oh right, true. I forget Google has those.
Google Sheets is the last thing really holding my back from abandoning Google. It’s just so convenient, and I’m more comfortable with it than LibreOffice. I like that I can edit things on my phone, which I haven’t found an alternative for.
OnlyOffice
I am curious about how hard is the Boycot Divest Sanction movement is going to go down on google knowing that Google is the Internet. they seem to focus on Starbucks and McDonald.
McDonald’s and Starbucks are grassroots boycotts. On the BDS webpage they state that HP, Siemens, AXA and Puma are primary targets, as well as fruits & vegetables.
Regarding these boycott lists that exist in the internet they write
The global nature of today’s economy means that there are thousands of companies that have links to Israel and are complicit to various degrees in Israel’s violations of international law. However, for our movement to have real impact we need our consumer boycotts to be easy to explain, have wide appeal and the potential for success. That’s why globally, while we call for divestment from all companies implicated in Israel’s human rights violations, we focus our boycott campaigns on a select few strategic targets. We also encourage the principle of context sensitivity, whereby activists in any given context decide what best to target and how, in line with BDS guidelines. There is a lot of information online claiming that some large companies give money to Israel, some of which turns out to be false. BDS has built a reputation for strictly adhering to established facts and producing the most accurate information.
Google would obviously seem like a relevant target given this explanation and their current targets. At the same time, I can also only imagine that it would be more about pressurizing companies to move away from GCP and pressurizing Google to stop the collaboration with the occupation.
There’s a whole lotta shit on the net outside the claws of google.
One more reason to degoogle.
Not that I am a fan of google, but those people signed a contract that prohibits certain behavior, so I cant really blame the company this time.
Not everything is legal to prohibit
Protesting on company time is certainly one of those things that’s legal to prohibit.
Google had a “don’t be evil” clause as well.
I wonder if after 2018 when they removed that line, people went, “Finally!” And twirled their evil mustache.
That’ll fix it.
I think it will.
Depends what they see as the issue though.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement.
Last month, Google fired another employee for protesting the contract during a company presentation in Israel.
In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, said that “behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it.” You can read the full memo at the bottom of this story.
He also warned that the company would take more action if needed: “The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing.
In a response statement, the “No Tech for Apartheid” group behind the protests called Google’s firings a “flagrant act of retaliation.”
“In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns,” the group wrote in a post on Medium.
The original article contains 303 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 49%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
“How dare you protest genocide. The majority of our employees shut the fuck up about us supporting genocide, get in line or get cut.”
“but some are more equal than others”
– George OrwellDidn’t expected Google to fire so many of the protesters :(
Here’s your place Google, good riddance! : https://killedbygoogle.com/
Does the US still have a Fortune 500-wide hiring blacklist for those who publicly criticise Israeli military operations? If so, they may have a hard time finding other employment.
Happy to be almost degoogled when I read such things.
If only it was easy to get rid of YouTube…
At least you can use things like NewPipe, or FreeTube (for now).
Or GrayJay
We have revance too for android.
Revanced Extended (ReX) user here :)
I might start trying that just to avoid giving money/data to Google. I just wonder if there is an app and if the creators would still get paid. Would someone know?
Nebula is one app I hear yt creators mention often. Specifically FD Signifier and Foreign Man in A Foreign Land, but there are many other creators who use it too. There is also Greyjay, which I think is built specifically for what you are asking.
only fired 28 employees ? it is insignificant comparing to 12000 layoff last years.
That’s because this was targeted.
Well…if you believe Blind they are doing more layoffs today.
Every employee is bound by the Software Engineering code of ethics.
So does this mean Google has abandoned this.
and at this point open protests are quixotic AF. sabotage or steal.