The pendulum is swinging back hard. Let’s just hope we don’t end up way deep into the danger since zone just because woke idiots couldn’t leave “good enough” alone.
Good enough alone… Please elaborate on that.
If you are a woman, do you think society was in better shape in 2012 or today? Standing Confederate monuments, hostility to trans people, and all?
that’s nice. it’s nice that we care about the fate of employees at the company that destroyed the internet and made search useless because they preferred prostitution, and is now supporting genocide for financial reasons (Don’t Be Evil!) but, how do we fire google?
If the internet were the sun and google the moon, then we’ve been under an eclipse since the day of their IPO. I wanna see the fucking sun again. I’m so sick of enshittification and “corporate behaviour” in general
“The workplace isn’t for politics” says company that exerts coercive political power to expel its (ex-)workers for disagreeing.
@theluddite@lemmy.ml @jeffw@lemmy.world Since most people spend most of their best hours at the workplace, what this person is really saying is that there shouldn’t be any politics at all. I.e., this is a confession: “I am an authoritarian”.
Every boss is an authoratarian. Places of employment under capitalism are top down totalitarian structures. What the guy above you says is what goes.
I would argue that firing them seems like a pretty strong political statement.
Insightful 👍
My god they really hit the home run with a brand new excuse just to fire a few more people huh?
Never worked for one of the big tech firms, but I have been in the working world for ~16 years and one of the few things anyone that has been around for awhile can and will agree on is you don’t talk about salary within earshot of the boss, you don’t badmouth company decisions within earshot of the boss, you don’t talk about politically charged topics, and you certainly don’t combine 2 of those 3 and protest company decisions on politically charged issues literally in the office.
You also don’t do those things on company provided equipment, software, or services. If you want to bitch about something the company is doing, you go out to lunch or do it after hours, preferably without written or video evidence.
While I think it is gross that Google fired them for this, given the history of the company almost encouraging such things, I can say these people just got a hard lesson that most of us learn about the corporate world long before we make it to working for the likes of Google.
Rightly or wrongly freedom of speech, assembly, etc protects you from the Government, not your boss. And your boss is a petty little ego maniac that controls your livelihood, so best to stay out of his gaze on matters you know he/she would view negatively where at all possible.
They weren’t just making a random protest. It was intended to show leadership their dissatisfaction. When your company is the size of tens of thousands of employees, your only real way to get within earshot is something like a protest.
Rightly or wrongly freedom of speech, assembly, etc protects you from the Government, not your boss.
Tired of this. The 1st amendment protects you from the government, but the idea of “freedom of speech” is much broader than that. We are allowed to be dissatisfied with how speech is suppressed even if a government is not involved.
And like it or not they are allowed to fire you for voicing that dissatisfaction. Don’t like it? Protesting the company is the wrong seat of power to point your dissatisfaction at. “Freedom of speech” says you can say what you want, but does not mean you are free from the consequences of that speech either when it comes to your dealings with non-government bodies.
All of which is a problem, not something we should passively accept as the status quo. These employees were advocating for change to fix exactly those sorts of problems.
Weird how all the right wingers that constantly yell about how silencing nazis is censorship are suddenly very quiet when a ceo comes out and explicitly says you will be fired for your speech.
It is on course for conservatives. It’s all about their freedom of speech not anyone else’s freedom of speech.
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Not silent. They change the tactic to “what were they expecting?” or “of course they got fired for that, everyone knows you’ll get fired for that”. The phrase “don’t reveal your power level” exists among them for a reason.
Because Sundar Pichai is woke. Nice try at gashlighting though.
“I share that feeling and especially regret that this happened during Pride month when we should be celebrating the incredible LGBTQ+ community you all have built at Google.” https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/12/18663017/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-lgbtq-employees-letter-harassment
Based Google
I don’t get the comment here, they didn’t ‘express their opinion’ about Israel. They behaved like a bunch of lunatics within Google’s offices. If you want to protest Google’s actions send a signed letter of resignation stating the reason, send it to the press and form a union of techies that won’t work for companies that work with Israel recursively.
On a side note, I like how none of them mind building mass surveillance tools, pushing ads, Google-China relations, etc… But Israel’s genocide is trending, so they jump on that. What a bunch of shallow fucks.
On a side note, I like how none of them mind building mass surveillance tools, pushing ads, Google-China relations, etc… But Israel’s genocide is trending, so they jump on that. What a bunch of shallow fucks.
Billions of Google users will not comment to your comment nor be critical about Google but will continue
sleepingwatching their YouTube videos, use Google Gmail and do the most horrible things which we will never know about. Meanwhile the planet is burning by climate crisis and ridiculous wars in the so called civilized world. Yes, let’s be silent about Google and instead point fingers to those who dare to be critical for a few moments.Your comment is unrelated what-so-ever to what I wrote.
Being a reactionary is not a substitute for an actual personality mate.
Protests are meant to disrupt, block, and inconvenience.
Where did I say they shouldn’t?
When you suggested that they should have resigned instead, which causes far less inconvenience to the company.
I don’t get the comment here, they didn’t ‘express their opinion’ about Israel. They behaved like a bunch of lunatics within Google’s offices.
Yes, they did express their opinion on the ongoing genocide. They did that in a fashion that disturbed the workplace - which some comments seem to deem holy ground that should never be disturbed by anything - but they did express their opinion.
If you want to protest Google’s actions send a signed letter of resignation stating the reason, send it to the press and form a union of techies that won’t work for companies that work with Israel recursively.
Iirc they tried some regular stuff before resorting to this method. Also, it’s always funny how when people try to change things, they never seem to do it the right way.
On a side note, I like how none of them mind building mass surveillance tools, pushing ads, Google-China relations, etc… But Israel’s genocide is trending, so they jump on that. What a bunch of shallow fucks.
Well congrats on being less of a hyprocrite than the rest of us.
The world is shit, nothing goes in the right direction, and some of us are more sensitive to some issues than others.
I mean I despise alphabet and their business model, but I also understand than people are less horrified by their work being used to serve ads than it being used in a genocide. And again, I hate that ads exist.Protestation and strike are supposed to inconvenience the higher ups, please stop advising to use methods that don’t disturb anything.
Iirc they tried some regular stuff before resorting to this method. Also, it’s always funny how when people try to change things, they never seem to do it the right way.
Did they resign though?
If you’re an employee protesting your own company you’re surprised they’d fire you?
Shouldn’t they have resigned first? Or did they really expect random employees with posters would make Google change their mind?
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
No way them resigning would have gotten this level of publicity, but you know that.
You just want to prevent people from doing things that annoy you by pretending they are ineffective.
They got a blip in the newsfeed, woohoo. Google’s gonna continue to be evil, a few employees short. The world keeps turning.
They could resign and throw out an open letter, that would’ve netted them the same level of publicity. They probably new they’d be fired and opted for that instead.
It is ineffective regardless of whether it annoys me or not. (FYI - not that i give two shits about your opinion on me, i don’t - randos protesting amuses me at best, Israel killing people with the blessing of the world for over 70 years does annoy me).
This protest achieved nothing so far.
If you want to actually make a difference, leave Google, go do bioinformatics (am biased here), exact agriculture or any other shit that actually solves real problem.
All I see in those rallies a bunch of people that work at Google to maximize their earnings that are mad when Google does the same.
It’s achieved a lot of people talking about it and has achieved damage to the Brand.
Which is better than nothing.
Oh wow, people are talking about it.
In the real world, not enough techies are willing to work on solving problems related food shortages (for example), while people are starving to death.
What is your strongest example of a problem related to starvation that can be solved with technology?
Green revolution?
The newest solution I know of is using optimization algorithms to vastly reduce the cost of experiments on vegetables storage. They not only showed how to optimize storage, they also showed how to store certain types cheaply for 4 times long.
One of the issues is food distribution, and that will help there.
Except that the issues with distribution have nothing to do with efficiency, they have to do with politics, economics, and corruption. Last I checked, we had or could produce enough food for everyone on the planet, but getting it to the right places was impossible for reasons that can’t be fixed with technology.
Improvements in storing vegetables can reduce waste, which is a good thing in and of itself, but aren’t going to feed people in famine-stricken areas that have no vegetables to store.
You’re referring to the people in Gaza starving to death because of food shortages, right ?
Ten percent of humans suffer from hunger. This is much bigger than just Gaza.
That’s because in the real world we’re all fighting to escape the threat of homelessness and starvation which is a constant spectre haunting any “techie” who is paying attention enough to see what’s going on.
Personally speaking: when me and mine are safe I’ll be dedicating 100% of my remaining life to outreach, teaching and non-profit work.
But as long as you’re dependant on another man to feed you every week you’re not safe: you’re helpless. That’s true regardless of if that man is a non-profit or if it’s a megacorp.
I’m not rich, I chose to earn less money and live a lower quality apartment.
We don’t have many years to work on solutions. You may never have enough for you and yours.
That’s bullshit the damage will be recovered within a week.
And some people lost their jobs. then again, if they’re against their employer’s policy maybe they should’ve resigned in the first place.
if they’re against their employer’s policy maybe they should’ve resigned in the first place.
If they want effective change they should retain their job and tear down the org from the inside.
Then donate to causes they care about using their income.
If you want to actually make a difference, leave Google, go do bioinformatics (am biased here), exact agriculture or any other shit that actually solves real problem
People get to decide what is a “real problem”.
I don’t see how finding out your labor supports genocide isn’t a real problem.
My message comes within a context.
This protest achieved nothing so far.
I’m not saying the protest solved the issue, I was merely explaining why I disagreed with your arguments. Please don’t try and make me say things I didn’t.
As for the protest achieving nothing, I’m not sure how you back up that claim. It definitely changed how google is perceived by a few people who care a lot more about the genocide than they do about online privacy and ads. It also, sadly, probably made more employees afraid to express themselves on their workplace.If you want to actually make a difference, leave Google, go do bioinformatics (am biased here), exact agriculture or any other shit that actually solves real problem.
There are countless ways to try and make a difference. I could argue that your work in bioinformatics is meaningless in a capitalist world and that you should either take up arms and organize raids to execute CEOs or do nothing (I actually disagree with this point, it’s just an extreme example).
Let’s not discourage the people who try and do things. Maybe they make mistakes, maybe they could be more efficient… but at least they try.All I see in those rallies a bunch of people that work at Google to maximize their earnings that are mad when Google does the same.
Of course they’re mad. They went to work at Google, not Lockheed Martin or “insert other weapons manufacturer here”. And it’s a good thing ! Of course they still sold their time and skills to a shitty company and had an overall negative impact on the world, but they still care about human suffering when they are aware of it, and I prefer that to people who don’t care at all.
Pegasus, and probably other tools, can infect phones through ads. Google’s ads network is a weapon.
Everything is politics, especially the mega corpos that lobbies the governments of the world.
The only problem is that many people can’t afford to be fired because of them.
Didn’t read the article. But what I take from the title is that Google is going to stop paying lobbyists…
No politics in the workplace ftw!
Sounds to me like these tech workers could really use a good union to protect them…
Sounds like political talk
Why do you need to bring politics into it?
/s
Sounds like political talk
Is it really that surprising? Since when profit isnt the highest value?
The workplace, or at least career progression, is like 50% politics lol. Google is no different.
In fact, I’ve heard Google is especially bad here. You only get ahead by shipping a product, and getting a project approved is largely politicking. It’s one of the more political business environments around.
My company seems a lot better. We don’t have aggressive ladder climbing like the big tech firms, we instead value consistency.
You only get ahead by shipping a product, and getting a project approved is largely politicking
Yep - I had a friend who worked for three years at Google, none of the products he worked on ever shipped and eventually he gave up on ever receiving a good salary (bonuses/stock options/etc are supposed to be most of the pay, but you only get that by working on a successful product)
They have ten major campuses worldwide that focus on product development, but only one of those actually ships products regularly.
And working on stuff that never gets shipped/used is demoralising too. No product to be proud of making/maintaining etc.
Oh good, so Google has stopped all political donations and canceled all government contracts so they can stay out politics?
No? Ok fuck you.
