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.
It's the digital equivalent of working in a coalmine.
I would argue that firing them seems like a pretty strong political statement.
Insightful 👍
Oh good, so Google has stopped all political donations and canceled all government contracts so they can stay out politics?
No? Ok fuck you.
"THE WORKPLACE IS NOT FOR POLITICS"
— With love, your employer who is investing amounts of money beyond your comprehension in a government of a country now being tried for genocide with undenial and ongoing human rights violations.
But you see, Google isn't doing it for political reasons.
They're doing it for money.
They don't care who wins or loses, what's right or left, good or bad as long as they get that cheddar.
Ok, so if I find out I work for Nazi contractor and object to that, it is politics?
Clearly
Yes. What about that do you think is non-political? Abhorrent politics are still politics.
Really great point that adds a ton to the conversation. Clearly the semantics of the word "political" are what's important here.
Discussing politics at the work place has been an HR violation for some time, but speaking against the company policy or its customers has always been a fireable ofense. I’m not sure why this surprises anyone.
Sure, google is an evil corporation and there’s lots of reasons to hate them, but why are we focusing on this specific thing which is common across all workplaces?
And yes, if you find out your employer is constructing concentration camps and you openly speak against that, you’re probably going to lose your job. Why is this even a question?
Lol you're getting tossed in jail doing this in a communist society...this isn't about capitalism at all. It's about keeping people from creating a hostile work environment, look how polarized politics is online, shit gets heated in a work setting? It's a no go for any sane company wanting to keep the peace between employees.
Just because communism also sucks does not mean that capitalism has not ruined our lives.
No one said it hasn't helped it some, but until you have magical replicators like in star trek, people will still be people. You cannot stop human nature to want more.
Seems to me that the problem is bankers. Not the average Joe
If the employees owned the firm, then no they are not.
Authoritarian Communism? Yup, it sucks too and I'd call that out.
There isn't anything stopping workers now from creating employee own companies. They exist today.
I think maybe you're conflating capitalism and politics.
The need for workers to voice out against company policies and actions often necessary for safety of workers, customers, etc. This is required for capitalism to work to any standard.
Its not hard to see how firing employees for noting safety problems can cause problems. The obvious case for this is Boeing where they started punishing people for doing basic quality control work.
Where did I say people aren't allowed to speak out against company policies and practices?
Discussing politics at the work place has been an HR violation for some time,
but speaking against the company policy or its customers has always been a
fireable ofense. I’m not sure why this surprises anyone.
Looks like a navel-gazing USA thing. Here in Europe I cannot imagine that there's many companies who'd fire workers for protesting or tells them to shut up forever.
Here in Sweden, firing an employee for giving an opinion on company policy is illegal. Just look at the Tesla union wars.
That's not actually true. Even in Sweden, employees can be fired for misconduct and what constitutes misconduct is a complex matter. But more importantly, in the Tesla case, those employees are on strike which is a different issue.
They can be fired for misconduct, yes, What makes you think protests or giving opinons on work related mtter, possibly supoorted by a union, would be interpreted as "misconduct"? Can you give an example of a case like that where misconduct was having an issue with selling products to war criminals or similar?
Publicly labeling customers as "war criminals" is misconduct and will get you fired anywhere in the world, yes. Stop pretending you misunderstand this simple fact.
Can you show that in Sweden?
If not maybe you could stop pretending to misunderstand a simple fact.
That's stupid. How can I show you an instance of someone talking against a customer publicly is Sweden? Calming that employees cannot get fired for damaging the business in any country is completely false. Thinking that the situation in Sweden with Tesla is similar to what happened in Google is completely ignorant.
I understand simple facts extremely well. The problem is that you're trying to make this situation into something it isn't
Can you give me the exact law that says this would be the case in Sweden?
You should be more careful on how you let information reach you. You have to be pretty ignorant to think that there exists a country which doesn’t allow business to fire employees.
Fair grounds for dismissal means that an employee is behaving in an undesirable way and is aware that the behaviour is not acceptable. As an employer, you are therefore obliged to make the employee aware that you consider their behaviour to be improper.
Misconduct, such as failure to cooperate, incompetence and poor work performance, can be fair grounds for dismissal on grounds of misconduct.
So yes, again we agree, there is a law of misconduct. Can you demonstrate any reasonable example where an employer in Sweden was fired on such grounds because they protest peacefully against their own company making an unethical deal with a questionable government or the like?
You should be aware of the fact that Google & the others have offices in Europe and they have the same policy here too. These type of policies fit well within the legal framework in most EU countries. And I guarantee that people would get fired over protests disrupting the workplace if found unwarranted.
Oh, please, enlighten me. In what country do you think you're allowed to violate company policy?
Even if we ignore what @prole wrote, in civilized countries you're allowed to break company policy if it infringes your rights, regardless of what a contract says.
you’re allowed to break company policy if it infringes your rights
No country guarantees you the right to openly discuss politics in the workplace though.
In what country do you think you’re allowed to violate company policy?
Lol did you already forget what you said? Or did your original comment actually say, "Violating company policy at the work place has been an HR violation for some time..." Because yeah, no shit. Somehow I don't think that's what you were going for...
Did you purposefully completely change the topic, or was that some kind of "sly" attempt to pivot? Shit is real weird.
Maybe you were about to ask the actual logical follow-up question of, "In what country do you think you're allowed to discuss politics at work?" before doing a quick google search and realizing you'd make yourself look even stupider.
As if the entire conversation wasn't about whether or not something should be allowed to be a company's policy. Not whether or not employees should be able to break their work's HR policy. Do you not see the distinction here?
You must be very confused. I did not forget anything. I'm simply making the claim that your impression that this happens only in my "shitty" country is wrong and if you tell me what country you live in, I can give you multiple examples of it happening there too. You're probably misinformed or ignorant of the law if you think it doesn't.
"A company should not be able to make X part of their policy."
In what country is an employee allowed to violate their company's policy?
That's you. If only there was a word for this... Shmallacy?
The actual question would be,
In what country is an employer barred from firing a person for talking about politics?
Maybe I'm giving you too much credit, but I feel like you knew this and realize how stupid you sounded. The better thing to do would probably just have been to quietly exit the conversation.
By the way, check usernames, I just entered this thread.
Wow, you're one of those annoying idiots who think being aggressive makes them right. Good thing this platform has an "block" feature
Aggressive? Uh what?
Not being able to discuss politics at work is not really the case for everyone though, it's worker politics that aren't allowed, if the politics agree with the owner class they'll set up a PAC for it. Whoever heard of an executive or board member fired for discussing politics that paint the organization in a positive light? I also think it's worth pointing out most companies would fire for this and are authoritative in structure and don't allow for democratic practices like elections, petitioning, protesting, etc. Just because it's that way now doesn't mean it always will be with good labor protections.
Why is this a surprise to us? We had faith in humanity.
Sounds to me like these tech workers could really use a good union to protect them.....
Why do you need to bring politics into it?
/s
There was a subset of Google contractors trying to unionize but while the group was campaigning at city hall. Google executives decided to not renew the contract and all of them were jobless.
"The workplace isn't for politics" is about social etiquette, not criticizing what your own company is taking part in you stupid fuck.
"Google isnt the place for your politics. It is only a place for my politics. So get in line with my thinking or get the fuck out!" - Googles Chief Cunt.
@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.
google the company needs to be garroted with their old "don't be evil" line.
Don’t be evil tell me your opinions
Don’t ask don’t tell in corporate form!
Well maybe Google shouldn’t take political contracts.
Again the excuse of 'no politics'
YOU CAN'T AVOID POLITICS
Accepting contracts from Israel is just as political as denying contracts from Israel. You just stated your political stance by accepting. Why do people think it's a free copout?
"Workplace is not for politics" is just doublespeak for "We don't value ethics here"
The little-known genocide assistance exception to “don’t be evil.” You have to read the fine print these days.
They dropped that line some time ago
If I'm not mistaken there's a more long winded watered down version at the end of a bunch of bs now. I may be misremembering or out of the loop on subsequent updates and changes though
Yes it's still there, it was just moved, albeit from a very noticeable position to quite an obscure one.
Gotcha. Yeah thats more or less how I remembered it... 🙃
Its a bummer, I used to consider myself a fan of Google's direction. But lesson learned I suppose, money is power and power corrupts.
I feel like the turnaround was somewhere around 2008-2010. Before that they seemed a lot more amicable.
Twenty hard years of spinning on this planet has shown us the truth.
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.
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.
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.
It's about making money for executives and shitting on the employees that do the actual work.
Ah so Google has gone from NapRoom to full Mainstream now.
My god they really hit the home run with a brand new excuse just to fire a few more people huh?
I'm honestly somewhat surprised that these firings haven't triggered a mass walkout or something at Google offices yet. They're being very cavalier with employees they spend so much effort (at least historically) on keeping in the office to work "free" hours.
Some of the protesting workers have said the company has a double standard when it comes to which employees it disciplines. Other Google workers have posted the names and photos of pro-Palestinian workers online, “doxing” them and opening them up to harassment from people on social media, the workers have said.
Seems like it's not an entirely unpopular action with the staff.
The labour situation is one that people don't want to risk it. Even 150k jobs are fucking good right now.
My BSc+MSc+BEng degree-holder buddy with a rich resume laden with FAANGs is still challenged to land a permanent role after a year. He'd DEFINITELY not give a fuck while he can feed his family.
Would you walk out of your 250,000/year software engineer gig over this? Most people won't and don't. Go to work, get paid, and live your life how you want.
Is 250k the average wage or just the superstars?
Average total comp for a software engineer at Google. The principals can make close to a million a year total comp
When my co-workers get terminated for political criticism? Yeah, I would. Lots of tech workers would and do — remember the Blizzard walkout several years ago? At the very least, this is the type of thing that spurs white collars to form unions.
Riiight... the fact that corporations are petty dictatorships isn't political at all.
Right.
Massive respect to the workers who sacrificed their jobs to highlight Google's scummy behaviour.
Is it really that surprising? Since when profit isnt the highest value?
I'm shocked that people are only just now finding out that massive companies like Google are evil. Google replaced don't be evil with be evil.
yay
Still more correct to not call it "work" but "slavery" in that country.
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.
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.
Unless the goal is to make a political statement with your departure.
exactly, which is what those workers did, they could've just resigned but they wanted to make a political statement and they did so
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.
you don’t talk about salary within earshot of the boss, you don’t badmouth company decisions within earshot of the boss
Or, do these things all the time if you can base your working hours around making your company more money.
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
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.
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.
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.
Laudable, but highly ineffective when the org is Google. A few people rallying in the street against Google are not gonna change it, from inside or out.
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.
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.
You're referring to the people in Gaza starving to death because of food shortages, right ?
Starvation is not the same as Hunger, it's a significantly more advanced stage of the thing.
I believe there's even a 5-level UN scale for it and Gaza is at the worst level.
PS: Not seeing why it's not valid to worry and act on both, by the way: doing something about World Hunger is not in any way incompatible with doing something about the Gaza Genocide.
Your whole point is grounded on the Falacy called a False Dilemma Falacy that you used a few posts ago, hence why it's not logical - it's really not an EITHER-OR choice, especially for people working at Google which is a company that does absolutelly nothing at all when it comes to reduce World Hunger.
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.
Improvements in storage allow for longer transportation. This is but one example.
There are many other improvements, from more efficient water usage to reducing the need for other costly interventions.
Some may be possible to allow richer agriculture in poorer areas, reducing the need for distribution.
The point is, the main problems in most places with serious hunger issues are food being confiscated by government or militias, turned back at borders, or left to rot in port warehouses because no one's sure what set of palms need to be greased before distribution will be permitted. Tech can't fix those problems. As for improvements in local agriculture, that helps when the cause of the famine is natural, but not so much when the issue is farmers getting shot at in the fields or having their produce stolen at gunpoint.
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.
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.
Bringing protest signs = ABSOLUTE LUNATICS!!!
Proceeds to whataboutism questions far less impactful than the Genocide of Gaza which is by far the worst human rights violation worldwide right now.
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.
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 sleeping watching 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.
Based Google
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.
Edit: wow leddit big mad
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 kind of a word salad there. In 2012 things may have been generally better for women in the USA due to Roe v. Wade standing, and there were more Confederate monuments than there are standing now, and trans people were generally not accepted by society as well as they are now. So I'm not sure what your point was.
The mixture is my point. Some things are better. Some things are worse. I specified for women because the backlash against woke has already hurt women badly.
The republiclowns taking away womens rights and blaming trans and gay people for their problems is much worse now than in 2012. This country lacks education which would solve all these problems, but educated people won't blindly follow fox "news" and as a result there wouldn't be many republicans in office which is why they're doing everything they can along with help from Russia to hurt the education system and keep people ignorant. The result of better education would likely mean we'd step out of third world territory and get healthcare for all, including mental health which would increase the blue votes even more all the while decreasing mass shootings.
That doesn't fly with the rich. Why do you pay more taxes than the rich? Trickle down? How's that working out? They piss in your face and tell you it's a trans persons fault, or an immigrant and the cult gets their pitchforks. It's silly. It's almost as silly as the gop backing a fucking domestic terrorist with 91 FELONIES.
Lol I can't help but laugh at the disparity between the left vs. the right, when it comes to just general ability to speak coherently. Like is this even a coherent thought?
Like this is the best they've got. I guess it's no wonder then that charlatans like Jordan Peterson can sink their hooks in so easily.
If it wasn't for politics then they shouldn't take government contracts
Or lobby.
Or fire people because of politics.
I'm just hearing Google advocating for a strict ban on lobbyism.
I mean, otherwise it's discrimination, no?
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.
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.
It's the digital equivalent of working in a coalmine.
I would argue that firing them seems like a pretty strong political statement.
Insightful 👍
Oh good, so Google has stopped all political donations and canceled all government contracts so they can stay out politics?
No? Ok fuck you.
"THE WORKPLACE IS NOT FOR POLITICS"
— With love, your employer who is investing amounts of money beyond your comprehension in a government of a country now being tried for genocide with undenial and ongoing human rights violations.
But you see, Google isn't doing it for political reasons.
They're doing it for money.
They don't care who wins or loses, what's right or left, good or bad as long as they get that cheddar.
Ok, so if I find out I work for Nazi contractor and object to that, it is politics?
Clearly
Yes. What about that do you think is non-political? Abhorrent politics are still politics.
Really great point that adds a ton to the conversation. Clearly the semantics of the word "political" are what's important here.
Discussing politics at the work place has been an HR violation for some time, but speaking against the company policy or its customers has always been a fireable ofense. I’m not sure why this surprises anyone.
Sure, google is an evil corporation and there’s lots of reasons to hate them, but why are we focusing on this specific thing which is common across all workplaces?
And yes, if you find out your employer is constructing concentration camps and you openly speak against that, you’re probably going to lose your job. Why is this even a question?
It's just a Tuesday in the Capitalist Hellscape © of U.S.A.™
Lol you're getting tossed in jail doing this in a communist society...this isn't about capitalism at all. It's about keeping people from creating a hostile work environment, look how polarized politics is online, shit gets heated in a work setting? It's a no go for any sane company wanting to keep the peace between employees.
Just because communism also sucks does not mean that capitalism has not ruined our lives.
No one said it hasn't helped it some, but until you have magical replicators like in star trek, people will still be people. You cannot stop human nature to want more.
Seems to me that the problem is bankers. Not the average Joe
If the employees owned the firm, then no they are not.
Authoritarian Communism? Yup, it sucks too and I'd call that out.
There isn't anything stopping workers now from creating employee own companies. They exist today.
I think maybe you're conflating capitalism and politics.
The need for workers to voice out against company policies and actions often necessary for safety of workers, customers, etc. This is required for capitalism to work to any standard.
Its not hard to see how firing employees for noting safety problems can cause problems. The obvious case for this is Boeing where they started punishing people for doing basic quality control work.
Where did I say people aren't allowed to speak out against company policies and practices?
Looks like a navel-gazing USA thing. Here in Europe I cannot imagine that there's many companies who'd fire workers for protesting or tells them to shut up forever.
Here in Sweden, firing an employee for giving an opinion on company policy is illegal. Just look at the Tesla union wars.
That's not actually true. Even in Sweden, employees can be fired for misconduct and what constitutes misconduct is a complex matter. But more importantly, in the Tesla case, those employees are on strike which is a different issue.
They can be fired for misconduct, yes, What makes you think protests or giving opinons on work related mtter, possibly supoorted by a union, would be interpreted as "misconduct"? Can you give an example of a case like that where misconduct was having an issue with selling products to war criminals or similar?
Publicly labeling customers as "war criminals" is misconduct and will get you fired anywhere in the world, yes. Stop pretending you misunderstand this simple fact.
Can you show that in Sweden?
If not maybe you could stop pretending to misunderstand a simple fact.
That's stupid. How can I show you an instance of someone talking against a customer publicly is Sweden? Calming that employees cannot get fired for damaging the business in any country is completely false. Thinking that the situation in Sweden with Tesla is similar to what happened in Google is completely ignorant.
I understand simple facts extremely well. The problem is that you're trying to make this situation into something it isn't
Can you give me the exact law that says this would be the case in Sweden?
These are the government guidelines.
You should be more careful on how you let information reach you. You have to be pretty ignorant to think that there exists a country which doesn’t allow business to fire employees.
So yes, again we agree, there is a law of misconduct. Can you demonstrate any reasonable example where an employer in Sweden was fired on such grounds because they protest peacefully against their own company making an unethical deal with a questionable government or the like?
Also your tone is just shit.
You should be aware of the fact that Google & the others have offices in Europe and they have the same policy here too. These type of policies fit well within the legal framework in most EU countries. And I guarantee that people would get fired over protests disrupting the workplace if found unwarranted.
In your shithole country, maybe.
Oh, please, enlighten me. In what country do you think you're allowed to violate company policy?
Even if we ignore what @prole wrote, in civilized countries you're allowed to break company policy if it infringes your rights, regardless of what a contract says.
No country guarantees you the right to openly discuss politics in the workplace though.
Lol did you already forget what you said? Or did your original comment actually say, "Violating company policy at the work place has been an HR violation for some time..." Because yeah, no shit. Somehow I don't think that's what you were going for...
Did you purposefully completely change the topic, or was that some kind of "sly" attempt to pivot? Shit is real weird.
Maybe you were about to ask the actual logical follow-up question of, "In what country do you think you're allowed to discuss politics at work?" before doing a quick google search and realizing you'd make yourself look even stupider.
As if the entire conversation wasn't about whether or not something should be allowed to be a company's policy. Not whether or not employees should be able to break their work's HR policy. Do you not see the distinction here?
You must be very confused. I did not forget anything. I'm simply making the claim that your impression that this happens only in my "shitty" country is wrong and if you tell me what country you live in, I can give you multiple examples of it happening there too. You're probably misinformed or ignorant of the law if you think it doesn't.
"A company should not be able to make X part of their policy."
That's you. If only there was a word for this... Shmallacy?
The actual question would be,
Maybe I'm giving you too much credit, but I feel like you knew this and realize how stupid you sounded. The better thing to do would probably just have been to quietly exit the conversation.
By the way, check usernames, I just entered this thread.
Wow, you're one of those annoying idiots who think being aggressive makes them right. Good thing this platform has an "block" feature
Aggressive? Uh what?
Not being able to discuss politics at work is not really the case for everyone though, it's worker politics that aren't allowed, if the politics agree with the owner class they'll set up a PAC for it. Whoever heard of an executive or board member fired for discussing politics that paint the organization in a positive light? I also think it's worth pointing out most companies would fire for this and are authoritative in structure and don't allow for democratic practices like elections, petitioning, protesting, etc. Just because it's that way now doesn't mean it always will be with good labor protections.
Why is this a surprise to us? We had faith in humanity.
And is it really common in all workplaces?
Sounds to me like these tech workers could really use a good union to protect them.....
Why do you need to bring politics into it?
/s
There was a subset of Google contractors trying to unionize but while the group was campaigning at city hall. Google executives decided to not renew the contract and all of them were jobless.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/01/youtube-union-contractor-layoffs/
Sounds like political talk
"The workplace isn't for politics" is about social etiquette, not criticizing what your own company is taking part in you stupid fuck.
"Google isnt the place for your politics. It is only a place for my politics. So get in line with my thinking or get the fuck out!" - Googles Chief Cunt.
"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.
google the company needs to be garroted with their old "don't be evil" line.
Don’t ask don’t tell in corporate form!
Well maybe Google shouldn’t take political contracts.
Again the excuse of 'no politics'
YOU CAN'T AVOID POLITICS
Accepting contracts from Israel is just as political as denying contracts from Israel. You just stated your political stance by accepting. Why do people think it's a free copout?
"Workplace is not for politics" is just doublespeak for "We don't value ethics here"
"Swallow all your morals they are a Poor Man's quality"
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
"Swallow all your morals they are a Poor Man's qualityy"
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
more like "SHUT THE FUCK UP, I WANT THAT MONEY"
"Politics is everything I disagree with"
The little-known genocide assistance exception to “don’t be evil.” You have to read the fine print these days.
They dropped that line some time ago
If I'm not mistaken there's a more long winded watered down version at the end of a bunch of bs now. I may be misremembering or out of the loop on subsequent updates and changes though
Yes it's still there, it was just moved, albeit from a very noticeable position to quite an obscure one.
Gotcha. Yeah thats more or less how I remembered it... 🙃
Its a bummer, I used to consider myself a fan of Google's direction. But lesson learned I suppose, money is power and power corrupts.
I feel like the turnaround was somewhere around 2008-2010. Before that they seemed a lot more amicable.
Twenty hard years of spinning on this planet has shown us the truth.
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.
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.
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
It's about making money for executives and shitting on the employees that do the actual work.
Ah so Google has gone from NapRoom to full Mainstream now.
My god they really hit the home run with a brand new excuse just to fire a few more people huh?
I'm honestly somewhat surprised that these firings haven't triggered a mass walkout or something at Google offices yet. They're being very cavalier with employees they spend so much effort (at least historically) on keeping in the office to work "free" hours.
Seems like it's not an entirely unpopular action with the staff.
The labour situation is one that people don't want to risk it. Even 150k jobs are fucking good right now.
My BSc+MSc+BEng degree-holder buddy with a rich resume laden with FAANGs is still challenged to land a permanent role after a year. He'd DEFINITELY not give a fuck while he can feed his family.
Would you walk out of your 250,000/year software engineer gig over this? Most people won't and don't. Go to work, get paid, and live your life how you want.
Is 250k the average wage or just the superstars?
Average total comp for a software engineer at Google. The principals can make close to a million a year total comp
When my co-workers get terminated for political criticism? Yeah, I would. Lots of tech workers would and do — remember the Blizzard walkout several years ago? At the very least, this is the type of thing that spurs white collars to form unions.
“Officially, of course, I have no opinion.”
I see the alt-right is out of school early today!
Still waiting for first period to start
Damn that sucks. May slurs provide entertainment.
Riiight... the fact that corporations are petty dictatorships isn't political at all.
Right.
Massive respect to the workers who sacrificed their jobs to highlight Google's scummy behaviour.
Is it really that surprising? Since when profit isnt the highest value?
I'm shocked that people are only just now finding out that massive companies like Google are evil. Google replaced don't be evil with be evil.
yay
Still more correct to not call it "work" but "slavery" in that country.
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.
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.
Unless the goal is to make a political statement with your departure.
exactly, which is what those workers did, they could've just resigned but they wanted to make a political statement and they did so
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.
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.
Or, do these things all the time if you can base your working hours around making your company more money.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Laudable, but highly ineffective when the org is Google. A few people rallying in the street against Google are not gonna change it, from inside or out.
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.
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.
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.
Starvation is not the same as Hunger, it's a significantly more advanced stage of the thing.
I believe there's even a 5-level UN scale for it and Gaza is at the worst level.
PS: Not seeing why it's not valid to worry and act on both, by the way: doing something about World Hunger is not in any way incompatible with doing something about the Gaza Genocide.
Your whole point is grounded on the Falacy called a False Dilemma Falacy that you used a few posts ago, hence why it's not logical - it's really not an EITHER-OR choice, especially for people working at Google which is a company that does absolutelly nothing at all when it comes to reduce World Hunger.
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.
Improvements in storage allow for longer transportation. This is but one example.
There are many other improvements, from more efficient water usage to reducing the need for other costly interventions.
Some may be possible to allow richer agriculture in poorer areas, reducing the need for distribution.
The point is, the main problems in most places with serious hunger issues are food being confiscated by government or militias, turned back at borders, or left to rot in port warehouses because no one's sure what set of palms need to be greased before distribution will be permitted. Tech can't fix those problems. As for improvements in local agriculture, that helps when the cause of the famine is natural, but not so much when the issue is farmers getting shot at in the fields or having their produce stolen at gunpoint.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bringing protest signs = ABSOLUTE LUNATICS!!!
Proceeds to whataboutism questions far less impactful than the Genocide of Gaza which is by far the worst human rights violation worldwide right now.
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.
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.
Based Google
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.
Edit: wow leddit big mad
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 kind of a word salad there. In 2012 things may have been generally better for women in the USA due to Roe v. Wade standing, and there were more Confederate monuments than there are standing now, and trans people were generally not accepted by society as well as they are now. So I'm not sure what your point was.
The mixture is my point. Some things are better. Some things are worse. I specified for women because the backlash against woke has already hurt women badly.
The republiclowns taking away womens rights and blaming trans and gay people for their problems is much worse now than in 2012. This country lacks education which would solve all these problems, but educated people won't blindly follow fox "news" and as a result there wouldn't be many republicans in office which is why they're doing everything they can along with help from Russia to hurt the education system and keep people ignorant. The result of better education would likely mean we'd step out of third world territory and get healthcare for all, including mental health which would increase the blue votes even more all the while decreasing mass shootings.
That doesn't fly with the rich. Why do you pay more taxes than the rich? Trickle down? How's that working out? They piss in your face and tell you it's a trans persons fault, or an immigrant and the cult gets their pitchforks. It's silly. It's almost as silly as the gop backing a fucking domestic terrorist with 91 FELONIES.
Lol I can't help but laugh at the disparity between the left vs. the right, when it comes to just general ability to speak coherently. Like is this even a coherent thought?
Like this is the best they've got. I guess it's no wonder then that charlatans like Jordan Peterson can sink their hooks in so easily.