Read Google's memo warning employees to 'think again' (opens in new tab)

I recently watched the HBO show Enlightened (co-created/written by Mike White, of White Lotus fame), which is largely about an overly idealistic employee trying to steer her big evil corporate employer towards social change. Lots of parallels here re: naivety/surprise/outrage when this doesn't work out quite how she envisioned.

Interestingly, that show is from 2011!

While the whole "activist employee during business hours" thing feels like a far more recent phenomenon to me, apparently it's been happening for a while? Maybe it's just becoming more widespread lately.

This protest did have a cost for them - they were fired.

as someone pointed out in one of the other threads, they may have been acting like it was a college protest

"Back in my day..." Labor disputes have been around since the beginnings of capitalism. Look at the Luddites or the Battle of Blair Mountain.

Discussion about it has been constantly flagged and removed (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40087063)

"heavy user"? Hundreds of comments on multiple posts that made the front page. They've been there for people to see, and direction to the main posts via dupes. The discussion continues on flagged posts.

It was.

https://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news+google+protest+s...

It was plastered all over Twitter and elsewhere. I think it's good that there's a platform that is mostly unmoderated, you can go there (like I do) for news and social/politics issues or whatever. Make your own conclusions. But I prefer the tighter moderation here, interesting techy stuff, that's what makes me come back here, not random drama and flamewars.

The points to comments ratio on the first few on the list are out of whack.

I’m pretty sure if # of comments exceeds the number of upvotes, the story is down-weighted automatically.

Flagging stories also automatically downweights if enough people flag, I believe

That’s not the only variable though.

Email the mods and ask them to correct the issues you’re seeing. @dang doesn’t work at HN, and you’ll need to send that email to get his attention and reply here.

It was on every major news network I follow. Maybe most people on HN thought it was already old news.

I suspect for many of the employees this was an intentional way of leaving. Personally I could never work for a company that profits from war like Lockheed or Raytheon. Few people think of Google in that light, so bringing attention to it on your way out seems reasonable. That's not how I'd handle it, but it seems understandable to me.

Google's motto used to be "don't be evil." If someone is looking for a company that aligns with their values, Google might've seemed like a good fit. They work hard and become invested in their workplace. It's not absurd to see how several people would be disenchanted with Google's stances on a very controversial and deadly war. And in an effort to live up to the motto "don't be evil," the workers took a stand to change Google's actions. That's a good thing to do.

If people think that workers should just keep their heads down and politely obey, well, I don't know what to say. That's bleak. That's a sad society. It's like the American propaganda representations of sad, dreary authoritarian communist countries. Stay quiet and work, or face the consequences.

Exactly. Don't support the side that doesn't wear uniforms, hides among civilians and targets mainly civilians.

Who?

...to our shareholders and nation-state partners.

I'm struggling to find any accounts of jews in 1930s germany raping and kidnapping and murdering a bunch of germans people and then hiding in tunnels under hospitals and schools.

Has anyone asked the palestinians if they consent to being used as human shields? If they do, then well they're getting what they asked for but if not, then the only bad guy here is hamas.

It was tolerated because such groups had a lot of political power within the company and outside. As little as 5 years ago Google would have been crucified for daring to silence employees and taking action against them for protesting at the office. Today people are generally in support of the action.

What is? It's a workplace. You don't like what the company does? You're free to quit, and/or to say whatever you want. Post online, go to the park and have a march. Stop using their products. Put a big banner in front of HQ. Or even...do a sit-in of the CEO, if you like. Just don't be surprised when you get arrested. If you work there, don't be surprised if you get fired. Your right to free speech does not extend to private property, and Google does not have to respect your opinions.

But it is the pinnacle of entitlement to think that you can storm into a private place and not suffer consequences for your actions. Even more extreme, to do so as an employee of a company and believe you will not get fired for doing so...I don't know where people get these ideas.

a better example of the banality of evil:

denying the holocaust through comparing it to other dissimilar events in order to minimize the catastrophe and reduce cultural complicity

"The office" is also where other people work. If people were waving flags, chanting, giving speeches, barricading doors and blocking entry/exit, resisting security and police...I wouldn't exactly feel safe as a regular employee.

>Like we had no reason to suspect that someone who wasn't affiliated with us or wasn't even wearing a shirt or anything related to our sit-in—we had no reason to think that they would be retaliated against.

This is from one of the organizers of the sit-in/protest. I'd want to get third party confirmation and/or google's side of the story before confidently claiming "This is incorrect; every uninvolved worker who spoke to them was also terminated".

There are people who think Israel is committing war crimes. There are also people who think that HAMAS/Houthis/anti-Israel Arab states are the ones committing these crimes. There are people who strongly feel that AI will destroy humanity. There are people who are pro nuclear power and people who are vehemently anti nuclear power. There are people who feel that advertising and social media are a cancer to society.

Google is involved in all of these causes (and lots more) one way or another. If they accommodated every employee protest and shut down projects as and when a random group of 20 was opposed to it, there would be no company left.

So no, they are under no obligation to stop selling cloud computing to Israel or the US DoD or anyone else. Whether they are judged to be the same as IBM during the holocaust or as the saviors of humanity will be decided by historians 50 years from now.

The holocaust cost 6 million lives before counting homosexuals, roma people, soviet pows and others.

The Gaza war amount of casualties according to hamas numbers, is currently 6% of the casualties in the syrian civil war, which happens 400km away from gaza and no one calls a genocide.

by comparing that war to real genocides or the holocaust you simply minimize the word which refers to systematic murder of a people.

by minimizing that word you deprive the real people that are being murdered all around the world from political protection as all war is now 'genocide'

Read the interview of one of the fired engineers – https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/google-worker-fired-protest-i.... He was genuinely shocked that the company would take action against him, and compared it to fascism.

I'd wager that most/all of them expected to keep their jobs, as has happened before with similar protests at Google and other tech companies.

not at all related