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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

Beyond being not remotely surprised at this, what constantly baffles me is: Why are they still there? And pending an answer to that: Why have they not walked out again?

Presumably the Walkout was a "fix this or we walk out" type of situation... but after Google refused to do 6/7ths of anything they demanded... they're still working for Google and not actively protesting. I would argue that Google called their bluff here.

A traditional protest against an employer, a strike, entails "give us this if you want us to return to work". Googlers walked out, made demands, and then walked right back in the door. Google said "we'll do one of the things you asked for because the rest of the industry was already going that way anyhow", and then refused the rest and everyone, for the moment, seems alright with this?

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This (my) generation has been culturally conditioned against the idea of quitting a job... peers in struggling circumstances create a feeling of looming "economic uncertainty", there's a perception that forcing issues against employers means getting blacklisted, and social media placing wealth over values.

It's also a disseminate problem. Striking against long working hours is easy. Striking against corporate values that enable seemingly distant problems (surveillance states) while working on a friendly low-stress high-pay team... that's hard. Unless you actually care.

Maybe some people are learning they don't actually care... that their "values" were just shallow social posturing, worth less than their stable high-income...

Hopefully, though, some also realize tech is one of the few areas where workers still truly have the freedom to actually demand an ethical employer - which may involve looking elsewhere. Follow-through is always scary, but no worse than uprooting our lives moving to college and then again moving to big-tech cities.

Sure, but I mean, if you have Google on your resume, you can work pretty close to anywhere, and a lot of other tech companies will pay competitively for you, right down the street. People should never just... quit without a plan, but six months later, it's hard to imagine that anyone who wanted to leave couldn't have found a new job by now if they were actively looking.

I wonder how participating in a walkout affects that reputation with hiring managers. Actually curious

For the named people organizing it, it probably does reduce their options a fair bit, though there are also companies who would hire for these kind of employees: As long as your company is on the straight and narrow, they're very engaged, enthusiastic, and public people.

Enough unnamed Googlers walked out that most probably would see no ill effects in their options due to having walked out.

This reads very strangely to me.

> This (my) generation has been culturally conditioned against the idea of quitting a job

This is a super bizarre claim. Wealthy Googlers are afraid to quit their job because of their peers who make a fraction of their pay? We're talking about Silicon Valley workers and somehow they are more afraid to quit their job than the previous generations? A common job strategy is to change jobs every two to three years.

Yes, exactly - it is bizarre. Tech pays very well with no culture of corporate allegiance, yet this generation of skilled in-demand labor with (hopefully) sizable bank accounts does not exercise their economic freedom.

Why?

Maybe fear of radical change and lacking support from peers, or maybe unawareness of what labor resistance actually entails... or, cynically, that their beliefs are spineless social posturing... but I couldn't think of any flattering reasons to walk-out then stay.

Easy to say from the sidelines. Working at google means

- getting better benefits & pay

- being at one of the darling companies in the industry

Walking out is daring. Leaving is even scarier. I remember leaving my last job thinking, "I'll never work with as talented people." I was wrong, but it was a legitimate fear.

After my internship I certainly have that fear. It seems unreal that there could be a bunch of other companies out there that have the same calibre of people

If benefits/pay and intelligent colleagues is what really matters to protesters and they are not looking to cut down on luxe lifestyle that Google job affords them. In that case they are really bullshitting about ethical issues because they have no qualm in partaking money that Google generate by ethically dubious decisions.

There's little to no conviction behind most of these types of protests and employers know it. People have too much to lose. Especially Google employees who make a lot of money and likely have lifestyles that depend on said money.

And it's harder to get a job elsewhere, if your name is plastered all over the media, which say that you were organizing against your employer.

Because they expect to be able to have their cake and eat it too.

I'm wondering this too. A walkout might make sense if google was the only game in now. Clearly that's not the case - these are "smart" people with loads of options. Just quit if you actually mean business. Strange to expect to keep a FAANG salary and not do the "dirty" work.

It's called "protected concerted activity". It is protected under the national labor relations act. These laws were passed in the context of mine owners hiring armed mecenaries (the pinkertons for example) to break up strikes.

Microsoft employees tried to stand up against military contracts but got nowhere. If google does listen at all, eg with dragonfly, that's not nothing.

Seems unlikely that they would, or even would think they would be able to, go on strike as that requires resources beyond what most tech workers have access to.

>>what constantly baffles me is: Why are they still there?

Money. But if you ask them..."we're trying to chance the system from inside blah blah blah..." Google is not gonna forget all the bad press.

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