https://wapo.st/3WdPCIG
Some employees protested the tech giant’s contract with the Israeli government. They’ve been let go.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Why is this a surprise to us? We had faith in humanity.
And is it really common in all workplaces?
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.
Sounds to me like these tech workers could really use a good union to protect them.....
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/
"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.
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?
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.
The little-known genocide assistance exception to “don’t be evil.” You have to read the fine print these days.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Average total comp for a software engineer at Google. The principals can make close to a million a year total comp