Yikes - this seems to go beyond labor organizing within the company.
> received emails detailing the work and whereabouts of those employees, including personal matters such as 1:1s, medical appointments and family activities — all without those employees’ knowledge or consent.
Except that that is how Google has designed its calendar system. If you put your medical appointments into your calendar without marking them private then yes, they're going to be public.
So basically, Google seems to have managed to take a feature in its own Calendar App, and the default behaviour of meetings on Google and dressed it up like stalking.
Google designed their calendar this way to support work. It doesn’t sound like these people were using resources for work purposes. That’s almost certainly a violation of the work rules. Pushing blame on the employee being tracked is ridiculous.
Companies are not democracies, and unless you are an executive with a contract or are in a collective bargaining agreement, you serve at the pleasure of your management. If you’re irritating your management for reasons and want to stick around, you need to work in the rules.
Signing up for email alerts about somebody else's calendar is definitely weird. But the information you'd get is the same as someone would get if they checked your calendar manually, which is an expected and normal part of Google's culture.
The fact that you can do it doesn't mean it is proper for you to do it other than as reasonable for legitimate job duties.
There is no system in place physically preventing me from doing lots of illegitimate things in my workplace, but that doesn't mean that if I do them I get a free pass merely because it was possible to do them.
A window on your friend’s house can be used to peek in to see if they’re home when you’ve popped by to visit.
It can also be used to stare into all day to monitor what someone you don’t know is doing.
What the terminated employees are accused of doing is a lot more like the second example.
These people were using the notion of unions to further their desire to push their POLITICS. They didnt care about safety or pay. They wanted to force the company to stop working with the US government on various contracts.
Gee I wonder if there is any self-reflection that they work for a company whose primary purpose is to gather this information about everyone...yet when its their information in the hands of employees working for their own company they feel "scared or unsafe".
Additionally they're publicly traded so statements on the matter that could be construed as market-relevant must not be false or the SEC starts to take a hard look.
Not really if they do something wrong they will get a fine of tens of millions but thats a tiny percentage of their profit, its an operating cost not a punishment.
> Lying and retaliating by big companies tends to be rare because it can affect the bottom line much, much more than a bit of internal dissent.
Not really again because they have so much money if anything affects their bottom line they create a pr campaign to change public opinion, its super effective even for something thats very easy to prove is dangerous like smoking.
I don't want to give too much details but my company allow you to subscribe to people's PTO calendar. By default, you can see your teammates but you can search other people and add their calendar to your dashboard.
To me it seemed like a logical thing to do to add all those people who I interact with to my dashboard. Also I added some of my friends and some higher ups. Just to help me with planning my vacations and sure a bit of curiosity.
Now I wonder if my company can use this against me.
This is a revisionist explanation.
> Screenshots of some of their calendars, including their names and details, subsequently made their way outside the company.
They disclosed other people's internal calendars publicly. That's a clear violation of employer policy and not intended employer use.
Anything you can do with that is how our internal Gmail and calendar works. With lots of use of Groups.
Just don't put your personal activities in your work calendar, I guess? Whenever I had a personal appointment (e.g. doctor), I'd just book a block of "Busy" or "Gabriel OOO" in my work calendar.
Yeah, the policy should be "employees are not allowed to stalk other employees". Sounds like that's what the policy actually was; I don't see any incompetency.
The calendar doesn't distinguish between medical work or a meeting with union Busters. Google is deliberately muddying waters. Slimy
To extend your analogy, the screenshots would be someone taking photos of you in the shower or sleeping, and distributing them. While they might not have been able to avoid glacing in your open door, they could certainly have avoided taking a photo of the room and sending it to someone else.
- Someone (possibly a group of people) is trying to organize a time for maximum attendance for some meeting or protest.
- They are checking peoples "public for internal" calendars, maybe sharing between themselves.
- "Screenshots of some of their calendars, including their names and details, __subsequently__ made their way outside the company." This means they are not leaking the screenshots to outside from my understanding.
As google has access to all data, reason why this calendar screenshots shared etc, and never mentioned here, making me suspect google is at fault here.
In a company with thousands of employees, what are the odds.
Including personal information on your work calendar without using privacy controls is pretty bad practice, though obviously some people occasionally did it. There is no indication that this information was a target of the fired employees. There is also no indication that these personal events were included in screenshots “outside the company”. And that phrase encompasses a wide range of possibilities, I suspect that Google made it so general because the specifics would have sounded more benign.
The statement in general is designed to cast the four in the worst possible light.
Likewise, if you saw me put "Get kidney transplant" on my calendar and decided to subscribe to my calendar, then that's pretty fucking weird. I wouldn't buy "that's bad practice so I was allowed to stalk you". I'd be like "this dude is a fucking weirdo, can I go work elsewhere?".
My calendar at every place I've worked has been public with private events for sensitive stuff but any time I put some private stuff public I'd expect someone to ask me if I meant to do that if they noticed.
So this information on sharing was provided to particular people, and they were asked, "do you feel scared?". Presentation is everything, and if presented in terms of how their personal information was included, it can feel different compared to when shown in neutral terms. In addition, if these people were told that the four employees were dangerous or a threat, this will also colour their viewpoints.
Bluetooth and kidney transplant arguments are about two hypothetical stories, and pointing out that if these had happened, it would be weird (well, yes it would, but that's not this story, they are very different).
Example of employees feeling targeted:
This bit?
"The individual set up notifications so that they received emails detailing the work and whereabouts of those employees, including personal matters such as 1:1s, medical appointments and family activities"
There isn’t a way to separate out personal events — which shouldn’t be there, or at least should be marked private.
That this information was included, does not indicate that it was a target; it does indicate that it was a useful way for Google to attack their actions.
Which could mean simply:
1) individual subscribed to other employee's work calendars, which are visible to everyone within Google,
2) individual had calendar notifications turned on, and
3) other employees posted personal matters on their work calendars.
Details around medical, family etc. are only visible if the employee adds that information to their work calendar.
Given the attitude Google itself has towards privacy in general, I'm not at all surprised by this... if I remember correctly, employees are even expected (obliged?) to use their personal Google account for work.
I'd never work for Google, one of the reasons being this "work-life mixing". I personally maintain a very strict "firewall" between personal and employee matters.
You remember completely incorrectly.
While others have rightly pointed out that Google's statements about stalking and harassment are vague enough that they could refer to reasonable activities, I have no doubt that people engaging in this kind of political intrigue would have to resort to some kind of harassment at some point.
I'm not saying that Google is right here. But the fired protesters are definitely in the wrong.
[0] https://twitter.com/Tri_Becca90/status/1187460338784055296
It really does come off as if they are using unionizing as a veil for their political activism.
Shitting all over your employer on social media tends to be symptomatic for a certain character style who was long welcomed at Google, and probably felt empowered to take it further and further, to a point of actively damaging the company's interest. It takes someone pretty tone-deaf to do that and not expect to be fired.
There are lot of people in Google deluding themselves that this is not true, while taking decisions that effect millions of people. Who elected them? That contradiction will always create political tensions.
If they don't want to be political they should stick to tech like phones and browsers and sell off Search and YouTube. Until that happens don't call polical objections and resistance wrong.
In what universe should a company let workers organize against fellow employees apart from simply having those workers complain to HR? This is particularly specious when organizing for 'political' reasons.
This is the issue: were they organizing for the purposes of 'resisting' the company or were other employees also apart of what they were 'resisting'? If the former, then what Google did seems questionable. If more like the latter, then the people rightfully were fired.
It is crazy you don't understand that.
I think such a housecleaning is understandable. I don't force my politics on others, I wouldn't want theirs forced on me. My colleagues do not speak for me in this regard.
I think our attitude should be cautiously skeptical of any Google provided reason for firing these individuals. It could very well be that their alleged behavior was technically against company policy but in line with typical Google employee behavior. It might just be a convenient reason to fire them given their unionizing efforts.
I really wish a jury of peers is used to fire people in this age of disproportionate corporate power.
The power lies with the corporation because that’s where the risk and responsibility is. You don’t risk much driving to your job at a big company and collecting your check every two weeks. You risk everything and take on responsibility for a lot of people when you’re the one who starts the company or who has to lead it or a large portion of it.
That doesn't change that they can easily misrepresent the facts in a way that any person subjected to similar treatment would view it as lying. And given the power differential, they will likely be unable to use the court system to protect themselves against such attacks.
This is a weakness in our current system the strong use to exploit the weak. Isn't that something we should look down upon and punish?
There's just one way to prevent the "disproportionate corporate power", its called unions. Wait! Maybe you'll be fired if you try to create one.
People effectively reviewed the cases, hopefully discussed in details and came to a conclusion.
There was a decision process, it's not outlandish to have a review process coupled with an appeal process as needed. That's what happens for performance evaluations in a lot of companies.
You're forgetting one obvious option that's been repeatedly and successfully used: unionize.
In the grand scheme of things you don't risk much, true. But you do risk the majority of the things that are most important to you. Like your place to live, your spouse, your kids, your stuff, your pets... And if the industry goes under, your community. For some people that would be 'risking everything'.
There's no requirement in the Business Rule Book that says you actually have to give a shit about the welfare of the employees you laid off. Yes, there are people who care a lot, but it's not a requirement, and plenty of companies get along just fine without it.
What is important is that your remaining employees believe that you care about them. And even a sociopath can manage the illusion of that without too much effort. But the people we got rid of? They're not as cool as you are, my friends. Now get back to work or you're next.
Workers aren't stupid. They see the bullshit and want protection. And the bullshit is so pervasive it's everywhere, so it's not like changing jobs is really going to change anything.
So you can lie to yourself and say 'no this is how it is,' but you're not going to convince anyone by just asserting that your ideas are how reality work, especially when trying to convince people who are already aware of your ideas and rejected them because they do not match reality.
You mean like a union?
(Or at least how I imagine unions could work, by policing under/non-performing members.)
If a person puts a personal event in a calendar and leaves the event as public, it's their fault, not mine if I access it.
If I leave the door of my house open, and someone enters and steals my tv, it's my fault.
So, unless these four people hacked the calendars, i.e. systematically searched for and found weaknesses in the software, exploited them to get access to private calendars, they are not guilty of anything.
It's obvious that Google is really scared of unionizing and their moves were done to scare the shit out of the rest of the employees.
EDIT:
Yes, stealing another person's belongings is theft (morally and legally wrong). The 'it's my fault' part goes to the act of getting access to something: if I leave my door open and someone walks in, it's my fault. If they steal my TV, it's their fault as well, but this does not erase my fault of leaving the door open.
Seeing a public calendar is equivalent to seeing into your neighbours house because they left the front door open. Not stealing your damn tv. Stealing the tv is clearly theft. Only your overlords at the insurance company would ever try to claim it’s your fault for someone stealing your stuff.
Then sharing a screenshot of that calendar outside the company is like posting a video of you secretly filming them as you follow them around all day.
No reasonable person would not consider that incredibly creepy behavior.
I don't think so. In fact, I don't know any jurisdiction where taking a TV from someone's house wouldn't be a crime, even if the door had been left wide open.
After a while, the American workers start to unionize. Some of them wait outside to hand out fliers/info in favor of unionizing, and they called that 'stalking'. While some of the internal union fighting employees said they were not safe because people were watching when they were leaving. The organizing workers were fired.
This seems to be a pretty common tactic to prevent unionization, calling pretty basic human communication even a stalking or scary action, then firing them, mostly as a message to other employees.
An employee gathering information off of company-wide public calendars and then leaking that information outside the company can certainly be held accountable for privacy violations (morally and per company policy, at least).
Still illegal to enter my house, eat my food, etc.
And, at the absolute least, it violates basic notions of decency and autonomy.
But if you did this, Id still call you a creep stalker, and if you did this to a co-worker, I think that you should be fired for it.
But I'm absolutely sure there's an element of "rules for thee but not for me".
Now let's look at the people on the other side: a nobody who has been describing her own employer as literally evil in public, to anyone who will listen, but who mysteriously failed to leave of her own accord. Google isn't actually evil or even close to it, only someone seriously mentally unstable could believe that, and would such a person harass political opponents by leaking their private lives onto the internet (presumably to somewhere they hoped would cause those employees problems?). Absolutely they would. Googlers already have form in leaking screenshots of internal sites to highlight political disagreements.
Some people have integrity and have earned their credibility. This exact kind of situation is when that matters.
Not ironic at all. I remember seeing a Googler commenting that misusing personal data was one of the most serious violation there.
And it makes sense because of all the data they collect. For now, they have been no significant leaks or incidents of that kind. And people trust them with their data for that reason. A leak would have disastrous effects, with loss of trust and lawsuits costing billions. Considering Google scale, it may even affect politics.
I wonder how it's like working there now a days.
Workers LEAVING a company is a sign of worker discontent, especially when they could get a job elsewhere.
My experience is that Google hasn't really changed much over the last 10 years, beyond a few superficial details (mailing lists -> memegen) and growing in size, with the expected difficulties that brings.
I thought their ml cloud offerings were superior
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
'Thanksgiving Four' say Google is punishing them: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50554931
Yes, it might be "simpler" to just leave whenever you meet resistance on the job -- but it's also less rewarding.
Finally, I'd add that there are no perfect workplaces. There are also shared problems across entire industries.
Company culture changes. Companies change. The fact that you were told one thing or a company had a particular reputation when you joined doesn’t mean that thing will always hold true.
Union busting and discrimination are illegal. Terminating someone’s at-will employment because they are acting against the company’s interest isn’t.
From what I have read thus far, this situation sounds a lot more like the latter than the former despite some of the people involved claiming it’s the former.
Perhaps more facts will come out to support that position, but in the meantime I am with the grandparent post. These people want to have their cake (i.e. some of the largest total compensation packages in the industry) and eat it too (force policy by protesting management choices expecting no consequences).
Some people resign in protest, and some people stay and challenge the problem. It depends on the person.
Most likely, you aren't agreeing with all what your company does. There has to be some decision, either in management, or in product direction, or anything, that you disagree with and you tried, or will try, to change that. Is the solution simply to quit and get another job? Do you simply quit because improving that part is too complex? Or do you persevere because you believe in the company and think it can become so much better?
I do agree with the right to organize. Troubling times ahead.
First it was tech conferences, then open source communities, now it's IT businesses themselves that need to be in the service of that ideology. These people are trying to turn IT into the same ideological shithole they turned academia into...
It's hard to tell from the outside how many people actually there agree with, disagree with, or are indifferent to, the efforts of the people who have been fired.
Or people aren't fooled by the positive coverage for fired workers and political agitators and know what's really going on, and this has absolutely nothing to do with union busting, just individuals who can't tell a workplace from a culture war battlefield.
It is "don't be evil". It was in their code of conduct, not mission statement. It is not removed from their code of conduct, in fact, it is the final conclusion of the document:
> And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!
https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
The last edit is from 2018, not several years ago. And its updated cousin motto "Do the right thing" became more prominent.
I suspect a journalist had a diff bot running on the code of conduct, created a story around it about removal, because that would actually constitute a story worth paying journalist wages for, and then the media ran with it, without doing checks of their own. And now, here you are. And I am ignoring the fact that an evil company announcing its future plans by removing references to "evil" in their mission statements is downright James Bond-level of ridiculous.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/25/google-...
Hard to muster much sympathy for anyone here--whether it be the machine, or its acolytes. These bastards all loved that sweet, sweet institutional power back when it was advancing their own agenda.
People who were idealists, now are turning Machiavellian.
My gut tells me that when the machine went their way, they were obedient little soldiers. When it didn't, they took matters into their own hands.
Making documents and calendars accessible is one example of Google’s “open culture.” When these features are abused in an attempt to strong arm a company or coworkers into kowtowing to each of your demands, that’s sabotage of the company’s culture at the expense of tens of thousands of your coworkers who may not share your political views on every issue. Say your piece, keep saying it if you feel so compelled, but don’t cross the line into unethical behavior and cry “retaliation!” when you’re caught.
https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/googles-next-moonshot-unio...
