If it wasn’t for politics then they shouldn’t take government contracts
Or lobby.
Indeed ! This Would be much easier to take seriously if Sundar hadn’t meet with Sunak, Modi, Biden et al. In the first year or so since getting the job.
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?
I would argue that firing them seems like a pretty strong political statement.
“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.
“The workplace isn’t for politics” is about social etiquette, not criticizing what your own company is taking part in you stupid fuck.
Ok, so if I find out I work for Nazi contractor and object to that, it is politics?
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?
which is common across all workplaces?
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.
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.
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?
“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.
Well maybe Google shouldn’t take political contracts.
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.
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.
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.
My god they really hit the home run with a brand new excuse just to fire a few more people huh?
It’s about making money for executives and shitting on the employees that do the actual work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
