And if the employees placed thier values over profits, why are they still there?
I wonder if they are going to refuse their stock based compensation?
I wonder if they are going to refuse their stock based compensation?
That said, having worked at Google there are many folks who were there prior to this shift (and unwittingly assisted by doing nothing previously). I don't blame them for trying to correct course and actually hope they can do so while remaining at a workplace they have spent so much time and effort developing and integrating within.
A more fair comparison would be asking if employees would be willing to have their stock decrease in value 10% in exchange for their company being more moral. I expect many employees would take such an exchange, although not all.
Or is it "all privilege, no responsibility"?
It's another thing to work at a company which has decided to aid a government on the other side of the world that's forcibly relocating a million religious minorities to re-education camps.
(Cue the China apologists!)
To be honest, Google might even prefer they quit. They could then just be sure to hire more amenable people in the future.
If anything, you should be urging your moral friends and coworkers to go to Google.
Suggestions that those who think that Google is going down a dark path should leave will just result in moral evaporative cooling, which leaves everybody off worse.
Signing a piece of paper knowing that it is of no personal risk to you is virtue signaling.
Why should that get a company to change? What will be the consequences if they go ahead with thier plan? A more harshly written letter?
The clear implication is that these people will quit the company if Google goes forward with Dragonfly.
There is probably more than one kind of profit. I think that if you've got a mortgage on a SV condo or house, and made plans for your financial life based on your income without knowing what the company you work for was or would be up to, you may be in a pretty good position to say that it's okay for you to accept a salary as you protest the action or actions of the company. Not to mention, strikes or other means of civil (commercial) disobedience might have more of an impact than simply leaving. By placing the onus on Google to fire you, you have PR and legal leverage (wrongful termination, if your moves are careful (IANAL)) to change the situation, whereas if you leave, you just go quietly into that good night, and the situation is guaranteed to continue. Complicity isn't always a black and white matter.
> I wonder if they are going to refuse their stock based compensation?
Stock-based compensation, I imagine, is on a vesting schedule. The same discussion as above applies, except that some of that compensation represents value that may be notionally "clean," having been earned outside the scope of the bad acts, either temporally or organizationally. It also represents earned compensation. Finally, its refusal would only serve to enrich Google, the ostensible bad actor in this instance.
However, what sickens me most about the OP's drive-by rhetoric is its reflexive turn toward reactionary complacency. It seems to say that those without sin only are allowed to cast the first stone, but really universalizes something like original sin to justify complete complacency. Further, it ignores the power imbalance between employer and employee, and minimizes the bravery of those who are speaking and acting out against injustice. It's despicable.
I bet you anything if people at Google who are protesting were really afraid of losing thier jobs, not as many would be protesting.