Google’s fires four organizers after hiring union-busting firm
medium.comThis article is ranked 16th on HN first page right now, and it has 80 points, was posted 4 hours ago, and has 16 comments. A different article [1] is ranked 8th on HN right now, and it has 31 points, was also posted 4 hours ago and it has 18 comments. They were both posted about the same time, they have the same number of comments, but the article that has significantly more points is ranked significantly lower.
If I understand the HN ranking algorithm, this means this submission is heavily reported. This is not the first time I observe this behavior for anti-Google submissions. Is there a different explanation for this phenomenon other than heavy reporting?
I don't know what you mean by heavy reporting? There were tons of submissions of this story, most of which were flagged by users.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583 is the main discussion now. That's a better article than this one from the point of view of the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because pure advocacy posts aren't as supportive of intellectually curious conversation. They're much more likely to start off on a polarized footing and degenerate from there. Also, they don't contain much information. In that way they fall in a category of related things like online petitions, event announcements, etc., that we tend to moderate as off topic for HN.
Certainly there have been plenty of stories on HN that are critical of Google, and they're not off topic, as long as they meet the site guidelines by being intellectually interesting. Note that word 'intellectually' though, because there are plenty of other kinds of interesting, which are fine, but not what this site is for.
Well before going full conspiracy, I believe a lot of tech people are anti union themselves compared to some other fields. I'm not one of them but as long as there is demand like right now for programmers, the conditions and pay is good.
> for programmers, the conditions and pay is good.
Whatever happened with that anti-poaching agreement the big SV companies had? Because it seems to me the pay and conditions would be a lot better in a truly free market.
Do you mean the High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
as long as there is demand like right now for programmers, the conditions and pay is good.
The time to assert your rights is when you have leverage, if you wait until you need those rights because you have no leverage it’s too late.
Unionization could very plausibly weaken the US tech sector. It's happened before (US Steel, the US passenger rail service, high-volume manufacturing, the Big Three auto makers).
Yeah, just remember what those pesky unions did to german automakers
(copy-pasting)
Germany seems to have strong unions and a strong auto industry, but the German economy as a whole has suffered decades of wage stagnation. One outperforming industry alone doesn't negate the broader correlation between restrictive labor laws, and degraded economic performance.
Also, Germany has many advantages in manufacturing that are independent of its labor laws, like a strong work ethic and tradition of engineering, good trade schools, etc. So an argument can be made that it has a strong tendency to be a manufacturing power that is capable of counter-acting the harmful effects of bad policies.
One possible indication that unionization has had a harmful impact on German economic development is if you look at Germany's past compared to its present you see that it developed more rapidly relative to its contemporaries before embracing the social-democratic/unionized-workforce model.
Every country developed more rapidly at some point in time. What's your correlation coefficient?
Is the optimal social order defined near ancient Euphrates or in the industrial revolution era UK?
I don't have an answer to that, but economists have largely found the effect of unionization and labor laws on industrial and labor market efficiency to be negative, and that's a predictable finding according the economic theory.
From what I remember, the percentage of programmers/tech-workers who have libertarian/free-market views is much higher than percentage found in the general population.
Its almost like... Coders live lives of privilege even before they learn to code.
Imagine trusting the "Market" to make wise decisions.
>>Imagine trusting the "Market" to make wise decisions.
The market just means other people, free to act without compulsion.
It works because information is transmitted through local decisions, as the changes local decisions make to supply/demand impact the prices that are communicated to the economy at large.
The resulting price system is a result of more economic calculations than any central economic planner could perform, which is why more market-based economies outperform more centrally-planned ones, as the empirical evidence shows.
Anyway, libertarians as a group are the most educated:
https://www.people-press.org/typology/quiz/?pass&src=typolog...
The above shows they do also have the highest incomes, which would support your "they're trying to protect their privilege" theory.
And libertarians are the most rational:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Libertarian views are more consistent with those of economists:
I think this is far more likely because software engineers are drawn to arguments based on first principles over ones based on empiricism.
And the majority of libertarians arguments are both based on first principles and appeal to people who like this type of argument.
I once posted a story about Google and privacy violations and it reached #1 spot on HN but after about 30 min at the top spot it suddenly moved to page 2. I got the impression that Google somehow has power over ranking here. It could be through reporting by Google employees. But the title of the post was edited too, along with the demotion.
It's almost as if the HN ranking algo should be open sourced, or at least viewable, with the ability for users to see who is flagging articles. Maybe even allowing a marketplace for drop in algo rankings/sorting.
There was a recent post showing the version control history of HN article tiles. That's one step in the right direction.
I think it was just not an "intellectually curious conversation"
HN weights stories by novelty to avoid having the front page just being round #4643 of never ending social arguments.
If something appears to be just a minor amendment to an event that's already been represented on HN, it gets penalised. Dang has a comment about it somewhere.
I've already seen posts on here about both Google firing organizers and hiring the union busting firm. It doesn't appear novel and deserves the penalty.
True but you will find that there are a bunch of sites and sources that don't rank as highly as others. The Guardian needs more up votes to get to the same position as a non newspaper site, plus there is the matter of the ranking of the person that posted it, the ranking of the voters, the time scale of the voting patterns, and interactions with comments.
There are loads of things that affect weighting and ranking here. Not that I mind, I largely support the way this community is run, pretty hard thing to keep the site down te as valuable and as interesting as it is.
Because the article title is extremely clickbaity and wrong. They fired four people because they were repeatedly breaking privacy policies and leaking documents.
> “They fired four people because they were repeatedly breaking privacy policies and leaking documents.”
I just heard the news about the firing and allegation google hired a firm with expertise to bust unions.
If you’ve ever worked an entry-level job at any firm with high turnover (retail, food service) you will know first hand managers excel who can manufacture write-ups, which become the basis for just-cause firing.
It’s a thing!
They fired four people, who allege they were fired for union activity. Google claim they were fired for privacy violations. It's not clear at this point who is correct. Either party might be correct, or both might be to some degree. I'm interested in HN's perspective.
Are you suggesting anti-union actions from a US corporation on a news site run by venture capitalist?
I mean... I hope this is not a new revelation to anyone.
There's definitely a thumb on the scales. I've found that controversial comments of mine that go up and down a lot in point totals are much more likely to trigger the mysterious "you're posting too fast" message even hours after my last comment.
There has been quite a lot of noise on HN about this, and many of the other posts have disappeared, perhaps in an attempt to stop the whole front page getting swamped by this story.
You can find the other links here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal...
I wouldn't normally bother, but the medium article is about the least balanced of the lot. As far as I can tell, the protesters weren't fired for unionizing, in fact they never attempted to push for better pay or conditions; they were fired for harassing other employees in order to further private political agendas. This changes the story somewhat.
Private political agendas? Who are they, the oxymoron party?
That's funny. ...but I believe the notion is that it was a political agenda not shared by the company or the employee's peers.
It’s a violation of the NLRA to fire employees for organizing, so it makes a lot of sense that the reasons given for their termination would be something other than “you’re fired for unionizing”. I’ve read the other articles linked in this thread and there’s not much by way of evidence on either side besides Google’s statements but it’s naive to think that the company would outright say that they were violating federal labor laws even if they were.
How did you reach this conclusion?
Reading the other articles.
Care to tell us which articles?
The HN discussion has converged on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583.
You can find others here:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru...
Have you even searched for them?
Took me 30 seconds to find this on a mobile phone while commuting to work:
Four Google Employees fired for violating co-worker's data privacy
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21635286
Top-level comment has a link with a list of articles.
The article in the linked post says nothing beyond repeating an obvious corporate soundbite and there is no list of articles in the comments. What list are you referring to?
Read again. I said "link with a list of articles". Try clicking the link.
And the linked article clearly states why they were fired:
"The latest development occurred Monday when Google (GOOG) sent an email to all staff members describing its decision to fire four employees for allegedly violating its data-security policies. Google confirmed the contents of the email titled "Securing our data," which was first obtained and reported on by Bloomberg. The email described some of the actions allegedly taken by the fired employees, including accessing other employees' calendars and sharing information about their whereabouts with outside sources. It was sent out on behalf of Google's Security and Investigations Team."
So Google really has hit the nadir of the wall that Microsoft hit when Gates testified before the Justice department. It's a tough day for all of us Google fan boys but it's time to look in the mirror and carefully consider the current reality.
What always baffles me is the term fanboy, how in this day and age do we still have people believing/having faith in a company.
They all did something abhorrent or yet to be caught doing it. And yet we have people who would seemingly jump into fire for a brand (even in face of damning facts).
Is this a form of ancient tribalism still at play?
Not sure why you are getting downvotes but, yes, it's tribalism. If you self identify as an "iPhone guy" or "Android gal" and invest a significant amount of money and energy into that decision, it's hard not to "tribe up" and feel obligated to defend the company you have identified with.
Indeed, I don't get how people can get into "don't be evil" and other kind of corporate propaganda.
How many years now has that NOT been a thing?
It was never a thing to begin with.
Anyone that believed it was only deluding themselves.
Ah, I wouldn't be so cynical.
Most people start with good intention. Then they get power and power corrupts.
That is the thing, companies aren't people.
They are composed by a group of people, each with their own set of goals and morals, which isn't the same thing.
This kind of stuff is everywhere. It's very common with celebrities (Chris Brown being a shining example), and you see it a lot on HN with companies that are raising the bar of expectation, like Tesla.
The key similarities between the two fan bases are that they all want to be a part of something with other people, whether it's being a female fan that follows an artist with a history of abuse against women, or being a fan of a company that offers cheap perks in favour of treating employees like humans with basic needs outside of a ping pong table.
The other similarity, and it's a very cynical one that you may or may not agree with, is that many people simply don't care if it doesn't affect them - which is funny in the age of the "cancel culture".
It’s vicarious living, there is so little real conflict in modern society, people enjoy participating in artificial conflicts such as sports teams, etc. Or inventing new categories to feel oppressed over.
The brand alone is just a symbol for a company doing something valuable. People pay ridiculous fees to see cars go around in circles that they'll never drive themselves. For better or worse google is doing something valuable to some people, they are fans of that.
people are inherently driven by feelings. rational decisions are few and far between.
if you want to objectively analyse a company all you need to do is check their 10-Q each quarter. but that means studying and analysing their actual performance and their peers' stats.
> how in this day and age do we still have people believing/having faith in a company.
the same can be said for people that still believe in politicians/governments. even thou we have all the evidence in the world that these forms of control are pretty much obsolete especially compared to our current modern way of life, you will still get millions of fanboys/girls that dismiss all the evidence.
> What always baffles me is the term fanboy, how in this day and age do we still have people believing/having faith in a company.
"in this day and age"
Where things different at some point? Or where you simply less familiar with other times?
What is the nadir of a wall? The baseboard?
What is the point of pedantry? The base instinct?
Pureed metaphors usually mean someone is writing without thinking. There's a whole nice Orwell essay on it!
You don’t get to organize and sabotage billions of dollars of revenues and get to keep your job.
Google set up this attitude they fostered that worked in attracting talent and productivity. It worked for a time to improve internal issues. But as it creeps and threatens the corporation itself, it cannot continue for management.
But as history has borne out, you have to know when to regain control. It’s the struggle of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, PLA and red guards.
What has made google look at the facts and think this is the right way to proceed? Do they think this won't blow up? Do they fear unions so much that this is worth the bad PR?
Or is this just a corporate process that no-one took a big picture view on? Because from where I am standing, this just seems like a dumb move.
People will forget about this in a few weeks
"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel"
I think it’s obvious they’ve concluded they have little to fear from the government or the NLRB with the current administration.
Who knows, but plausibly, yes.
The game, as I understand it,^ is a "yes or no" game. Either Google unionisers get a union or they don't. If they do, what that means will be be worked out later.
So yes, Google plausibly don't want a union (or a big union discussion) enough to take chances with bad PR, or labour court. Totally different scales of threat.
^not well.
Currently, with the way labour organising works... it seems to either go nowhere, or go into a (belligerent) dichotomy. Professional organizers themselves often see it as an entirely dichotomous, zero-sum game, an inevitable conflict between opposite interests.
Overall I'm curious about unions. I haven't had much/any direct experience for >20 years. Most of the Union examples we have today are either public-ish sector or some old status quo union inherited from an old generation.
It's just hard for me to picture an old-school unionised version of Google or (more to the point) Amazon.
What is the end game or success case, for a Google union?
Labor should try to change regulation/policy to better help people live while trying to find a new job and/or simply unemployed. Forcing companies to employ someone they don't want is not a winning strategy on the long term. (Though worrying about poor poor companies is a bit premature considering how abysmal worker protections are in the US.)
Ultimately unions are representing an interest group, somewhat separate from the company and itself.
...it arguably make sense to go for job security. Security is valuable... to their members. If it's also popular with members, why not put it on the table? Even if it does hurt long term profits/success, profits are the primary interest of the other party to the negotiation... the firm/employer/shareholder interest. If the firm value (to take the other extreme) employment with n demand then they can negotiate for that, and compromise elsewhere.
The real reason (imo) that infirable employees, unsustainable pensions and other "union problems" happen is specifically because short term takes precedent in a negotiation. Looking 15 years ahead is the privelage of someone who isn't making hard compromises today.
Pension and job security promises are cheap now, expensive later.
Programmers need job security? That does not seem to correlate with reality.
That's just not effective. You don't really have the same leverage when unemployed or looking for a new job.
Just to put some practical meat on it... salaries.
Iirc, unions typically insist on a strict payscale/structure combining legible factors like seniority, position, etc. Would they want this.
A google union, or any tech union, can arrange whatever compensation scale it wants. Every union is a democratic organization, structured however its members want it to be structured.
There is no reason a tech union would have a strict seniority-based pay scale.
A tech union could do things like insist on better work/life balance, a seat at the board representing worker interests, you name it. A google-specific union could insist on bringing the 20% "work on your own thing" scheme back, for example.
Iirc, unions typically insist on a strict payscale/structure combining legible factors like seniority, position, etc. Would they want this.
People keep saying this but it doesn’t have to be true e.g. Hollywood unions cover everyone from extras to stars.
Agreed, that's why I ask. Industrial and administrative unions do usually seek legibility in payscales. What would the h unions demand?
I'm trying to see past the nonspecific of "unions" to a specific union movement and what it could want (other than the union itself).
No anti-compete agreements.
Access to highly-skilled negotiators for your next review/salary negotiation.
No "crunch time", or at least limit it and require reasonable levels of overtime for it.
Protection for various kinds of paid leave.
Protection from being fired for political reasons—and, more generally, access to highly-competent employment lawyers in the case of legal conflicts between you and the company.
That's just off the top of my head.
Google, I’m also not sure, from the outside things seem pretty good for employees. We can see the union end game and how it would work for the minimum wage Amazon warehouse workers who had to fight about not being paid for the 30 minute security screening so these are entirely different.
> One of the workers set up notifications to receive emails detailing the work and whereabouts of other employees without their knowledge or consent.
This is shady/creepy. There is no need to know when and where a colleague is every hour, every day. You shouldn’t be allowed to do this.
I’m glad an employee who does this is getting fired because I wouldn’t feel safe around them.
My calendar is public, but that doesn’t mean you should be alerted every time I go somewhere.
Google is a company based on surveillance. It crawls the entire world‘s data. It makes money by delivering messages to people you’ve never met based on the intelligence they’ve gathered about the people. They give you free tools for instrumenting websites to gather more intel about people, which is then stored on their servers. And the calendar notification claim relates to using a google product in the exact way it was designed to be used (and reads like lawyers grasping for a safe technicality.) It’s a bit unsavoury imo.
Google is a company based on surveillance. It crawls the entire world‘s data
You make it sound more nefarious that it is. If you don't want your data to be crawled, there's an easy solution. Even Rupert Murdoch, who complains about google all the time, won't take the simple step necessary to stop google from crawling the WSJ website.
It is nefarious. Just because the elephant in the room hasn't stepped in you yet doesn't mean it isn't there.
Where are you quoting that from? I just string searched it in the article and got nothing.
The Bloomberg article doesn’t have that exact quote, but has the google memo with the allegations https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-25/google-fi...
HN link for that article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21636583
>> In one case, among other information they accessed and copied, an individual subscribed to the calendars of a wide range of employees outside of their work group. The individual set up notifications so that they received emails detailing the work and whereabouts of those employees, including personal matters such as 1:1s, medical appointments and family activities — all without those employees’ knowledge or consent. When the affected Googlers discovered this, many reported that they felt scared or unsafe, and requested to work from another location. Screenshots of some of their calendars, including their names and details, subsequently made their way outside the company.
Xoogler. Several people who were involved in organizing protests have also quit over the past year or so, after posting stories of the retaliation they faced, including being reassigned, getting bad performance reviews and such.
I jumped ship for these kinds of reasons, but looking ahead a couple years. You simply cannot scale culture, especially when culture that prevents it from going full balls-to-the-wall profit. Google is growing at such a rate that it surpassed organic trajectory; it's discarding and digesting its own culture as it swallows up the tech industry and doubles down on surveillance. The technical capabilities of the panopticon it has already built should be the subject of (world) government oversight. Sadly, tech giants have outpaced democracy's ability to recognize and rein in threats to human freedom.
Google's play to be everyone's digital assistant should be recognized for what it nakedly is: a play to absolutely dominate every single person's life and sell those lives to the highest bidder.
> Around the same time Google redrafted its policies, making it a fireable offense to even look at certain documents. And let’s be clear, looking at such documents is a big part of Google culture; the company describes it as a benefit in recruiting, and even encourages new hires to read docs from projects all across the company. Which documents were off limits after this policy change? The policy was unclear, even explicitly stating the documents didn’t have to be labeled to be off limits.
Is such a policy legally enforceable or is it relying on the fact that Google can outspend them in a litigation?
With at-will employment, almost any reason is justifiable.
Tech - Past - Leaders were science lovers, humanity saviours, Going past limits of intelligence. Tech - Present - Contaminated with Human management science, economics and anything that gets touched by money. Science based on top of money, is it a real science at all?
Nope.
Expropriate Google.
Seems there is still hope for Google. Few more actions like that and maybe they will start behaving like a company and not like an ideological echo chamber.
Did you ever really think that they'd let ideology get in the way of profit?
I hoped not, but could based on what I've seen in the past it seemed like they can somehow utilise the crazies for their benefit. Now it seems things start to balance out a bit. I hope this will get more intensive in the next months and Google will be forced to really act.