I'd agree, it sounds a lot like a code review, but at Google that was also the approval standard for deploying such an extension.
I don't really see how Google could be in the right here though. If they have an internal program for creating alerts/extensions for specific websites, and Spiers followed the normal procedure for adding such an extension, there doesn't seem to be a problem. The only problem is Google being anti-union, and retaliating against someone for quietly promoting unions in line with existing policies seems a lot like illegal retaliation.
You added your personal code to a browser extension..
I can't see how google is in the wrong. Unless google allows anyone to change this extension for personal reasons and they only flagged her. Could someone change it to let everyone know they are selling cookies or accepting donations to their church.
From what I understand this is actually how google communicates policies and the like via their employees, for which it is legally required to notify such employees via electronic medium if electronic medium is the primary communiation factor. This is based off of the engineer's medium article though.
That's not how Google works. She mentions in the Gizmodo article that she had ownership over these files, which isn't given out casually. Creating these policy notifications would have been a core part of her work.
If indeed the extensions were only for security/privacy notifications, I would categorize what Speier did more as off-topic. That would be maybe something deserving of a correction not outright termination.
The fact that the message was about employee labor rights means that Google might be in a precarious legal position
I think the difference is that Google is a lot less likely to infringe on employees' right to bear arms than they are their right to organize, especially given that this message literally appeared on a website of a firm Google hired specifically to suppress organization
I have a poster here in my home office that was mailed to me by my employer's HR department. It advises me of all my rights under state and federal labor laws: equal opportunity, workplace safety, minimum wage, etc. In my mind, it is not at all inappropriate to advise employees of their rights. In fact, the only reason I have this poster is because state and federal labor laws require such notices. Those laws and those requirements are written in the blood of all the serfs, children, and laborers who couldn't earn living wages or who were forced to work at a tender age or who were injured due to corporate malfeasance. The freedom of association is likewise recognized as a right inherent to all people, and its protections were likewise bought with blood. We should all be reminded of our rights and the reasons we safeguard them. An employer who tries to interfere with its employees' freedom of association only seeks to exploit them. If it treated its employees well, it wouldn't need to worry about organized labor—and its employees wouldn't need to organize in the first place.
It might help a lot if someone leaked the internal repository for this extension... sorry I meant, if Google voluntarily shared the repository for this extension, so that we could see what it was commonly used for.
> but at Google that was also the approval standard for deploying such an extension.
If Google allows any team member to freely push changes without formal change request, it has to be implied that changes must comply with the scope of the project, company policies, professional standards, etc.
In any case, my point would stand: It does not sound like she had actual project/management approval.
To play devil's advocate, the 'approval' she got does not absolve her (if we suppose that she did something wrong), it just means that the coworkers who approved the change are also in hot water.
>but at Google that was also the approval standard for deploying such an extension...I don't really see how Google could be in the right here though.
I don't see how Google isn't in the right here. The approval process for this security tool was designed to minimize red-tape and maximize contributions because the goal was security, and the assumption was that the lax process wouldn't be abused. The clear intent of the tool is not to push the political agenda. It was there to warn about security-related issues while browsing. She abused the process and deserved to be reprimanded.
Here's an example .. like most companies we have a wiki that anybody can edit. The intent is to get contributions from everybody around product-related issues (e.g. debugging a particular problem, how to configure the product for a specific use-case). Nobody polices usage of this wiki, and the wiki has no specific access controls to bar any individual from editing any page. Certainly though if someone started putting in notes at the top of some of the pages to push a political agenda that would be an abuse of the process, wouldn't you say?
> Certainly though if someone started putting in notes at the top of some of the pages to push a political agenda that would be an abuse of the process, wouldn't you say?
Just to be clear: the message she communicated wasn't about some divisive social issue, it was warning employees to not break federal labor law.
Then be clear. We both know what she was doing, why be obtuse?
This was an activist power-play. Every article that is written about this lists the action as activism. Again, why pretend otherwise?
But if you want more clarification: it's not her job as a SECURITY ENGINEER to send warnings about federal statue compliance through a security tool. I also have yet to have anybody demonstrate that Google was breaking any federal law, and I highly doubt they would. They have entire departments that deal with legal complience.
And you linked to a labour consulting company website, which I take is where this actvist decided to helpfully issue threats to senior management through the security tool she was tasked with maintaining so they think twice about contracting them.
This is a such a clear violation on her part that I am flabbergasted that you would actually defend the move. She deserved to be fired for her arrogant stunt. You don't get to dictate compliance policy (as an early 20-something tech-sister, who knows nothing) to a company employing 50,000 people.
> This was an activist power-play. Every article that is written about this lists the action as activism. Again, why pretend otherwise?
When you use the words like activist and activism you evoke images of people pushing for new things that are politically decisive in some way.
The message she got fired over was expressed pretty settled interpretation of federal labor law that Google recently agreed to disseminate. It's like calling it an "activist power play" to remind the government of the First Amendment when if it tried to censor something or other. It's a stretch.
If anyone's being activist, it's the people who are trying to treat the expression of those rights as some kind of inappropriate activism.
> I also have yet to have anybody demonstrate that Google was breaking any federal law, and I highly doubt they would. They have entire departments that deal with legal complience.
Why do you "highly doubt" Google would break the law? In the past they've broken federal law in pretty obvious ways over labor practices.
Apparently that list is what the notification in question linked to.
> And you linked to a labour consulting company website, which I take is where this actvist decided to helpfully issue threats to senior management through the security tool she was tasked with maintaining so they think twice about contracting them.
I linked to a screenshot of the message we're actually discussing. You can see the so-called "threat" yourself:
> go/nlrbnotice Policy
> Do not violate go/nlrbnotice. Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.
> View Policy
> This is a such a clear violation on her part that I am flabbergasted that you would actually defend the move.
Black people sitting at lunch counters was once "such a clear violation" of corporate policy, too, but it was pretty defensible, no? Sometimes you have to take a broader view of something than whether it violated policy or not.
I'm not saying this action is fully equivalent to a lunch-counter sit-in, however I do think Google's reaction here was unsupportably harsh. The worst they should have done was issue a reprimand. I'm also "flabbergasted" by the over-the-top condemnation of this engineer's actions.
>When you use the words like activist and activism you evoke images of people pushing for new things that are politically decisive in some way.
Because that's what you are when you co-opt an internal tool to put up messaging over the web page of the consulting group that works with your employer. She knew what she was doing. She knew it was a political statement. She may even have even wanted to be martyred.
>The message she got fired over was expressed pretty settled interpretation of federal labor law.
She didn't get fired for her message even though you're trying to spin it that way. The medium matters here. You don't get to co-opt internal tools to post your interpretation of federal labor law, or to send a message to the management team, or whatever else her motivations were. That's why she got fired.
>What are you talking about? I linked to a screenshot of the message we're actually discussing. You can see the so called "threat" yourself:
I know exactly what she did. She made a political statement about a labour consulting group (that they can or do infringe on federal law) and that was directed at least partly at executive management (who else is going to work with IRI Consultants and browse their page). This was a purposeful activist power-play.
The gaslighting that you're engaging in is offputting. This kind of thing would have gotten her fired from pretty much every company in the country and for good reason - she's untrustworthy and cannot seperate her job as a Security Engineer from her activism, and I'm sorry you can't see that.
>Black people sitting at lunch counters was once "such a clear violation" of corporate policy, too, but it was pretty defensible, no?
She's not a black person during Jim Crow era. She's not oppressed, and it's offputing that you would even make that comparison. She's a bay-area engineer who was making a very good salary and betrayed the trust that her position entitled her to.
>I'm not saying this action is fully equivalent to a lunch-counter sit-in,
I hope not because that would be insane.
>The worst they should have done was issue a reprimand.
That's your opinion. I think she deserved termination. You don't want this kind of person on your security team. You cannot trust her to seperate activism from work.
And it is interesting that you can claim that she did nothing wrong, and at the same time understand why she should be reprimended.
> You don't get to co-opt internal tools to post your interpretation of federal labor law, or to send a message to the management team, or whatever else her motivations were. That's why she got fired.
> This kind of thing would have gotten her fired from pretty much every company in the country and for good reason - she's untrustworthy and cannot seperate her job as a Security Engineer from her activism, and I'm sorry you can't see that.
What Google-specific support do you have for this, than post-hoc rationalizations based on her firing? Every indication I've seen has told me that Google has developed a very unique corporate culture, which makes inferences from "every company in the country" suspect.
I can definitely see your position (which approximately seems to be: a worker's primary moral obligation is to serve his employers to their satisfaction during his employment. Assertion of his own rights on work time with work resources is a severe moral violation as it puts the workers' interest above the employers'.), I just disagree.
> She's not a black person during Jim Crow era. She's not oppressed, and it's offputing that you would even make that comparison. She's a bay-area engineer who was making a very good salary and betrayed the trust that her position entitled her to.
I'd say she is oppressed, just in a different, less-severe way than black people during the Jim Crow era.
> And it is interesting that you can claim that she did nothing wrong, and at the same time understand why she should be reprimended.
Really? I thought it was pretty widely understood that morality and law are not the same. You can have immoral things that are legal, and moral things that are illegal. Corporate policy is a weak kind of law that has even less claim to respect than federal and state law.
>What Google-specific support do you have for this, than post-hoc rationalizations based on her firing?
That's not post-hoc rationalization. That's the stated reason. That's also clearly the reason if you take an inventory of the facts on hand.
>Every indication I've seen has told me that Google has developed a very unique corporate culture
Yes, "unique" just like every snowflake is unique. And "Unique corporate culture" doesn't mean you can do whatever you want, as James Damore found out. And yes, her actions (not anybody elses) led to her termination, as would have been the case in every other company.
>I can definitely see your position (which approximately seems to be: a worker's primary moral obligation is to serve his employers to their satisfaction during his employment. Assertion of his own rights on work time with work resources is a severe moral violation as it puts the workers' interest above the employers'.)
That's not my position and I don't appreciate this distortion.
And no, she's not a moral arbiter of Google. She doesn't have the right to assert her interpretation of law and morality on the entire corporation. Maybe she thinks she was doing a moral action (though I would argue her action is narcissim and attention-seeking), but Google employs tens of thousands of people across the world, with different religions and politics and beliefs. You don't get to co-opt internal tools to advocate for Jesus Christ as your saviour (and what could be more moral than saving people from eternal damnation) just because you think that's the moral action.
>I'd say she is oppressed, just in a different, less-severe way than black people during the Jim Crow era.
Talk about an understatement of the century. She's as much oppressed as a grounded teenager, which, you're right, on the oppression scale is "less-severe way than black people during the Jim Crow era".
> That's not post-hoc rationalization. That's the stated reason. That's also clearly the reason if you take an inventory of the facts on hand.
The stated reason can obviously be a post-hoc rationalization. It's entirely possible that she crossed a line her employer drew after the fact.
> That's not my position and I don't appreciate this distortion.
Well, if you could clarify, that would be great. It's clear to me that there's some moral component to your position, given your language:
>>> she's untrustworthy
>>> [she] betrayed the trust that her position entitled her to.
> She doesn't have the right to assert her interpretation of law and morality on the entire corporation.
(I should note that it's not her interpretation, it is the law.)
> I would argue her action is narcissim and attention-seeking
I does sound like you feel that her overriding moral obligation was to serve her employers to their satisfaction, and that it was a strong moral violation to take a fairly anodyne action that caused her employers some discomfort. No money was lost, no security systems breached, no confidential data exposed. The only thing that happened was a few people saw a required legal notice that her employers would rather have people forget about.
I don't really see how Google could be in the right here though. If they have an internal program for creating alerts/extensions for specific websites, and Spiers followed the normal procedure for adding such an extension, there doesn't seem to be a problem. The only problem is Google being anti-union, and retaliating against someone for quietly promoting unions in line with existing policies seems a lot like illegal retaliation.