There are lot of people in Google deluding themselves that this is not true, while taking decisions that effect millions of people. Who elected them? That contradiction will always create political tensions.
If they don't want to be political they should stick to tech like phones and browsers and sell off Search and YouTube. Until that happens don't call polical objections and resistance wrong.
In what universe should a company let workers organize against fellow employees apart from simply having those workers complain to HR? This is particularly specious when organizing for 'political' reasons.
This is the issue: were they organizing for the purposes of 'resisting' the company or were other employees also apart of what they were 'resisting'? If the former, then what Google did seems questionable. If more like the latter, then the people rightfully were fired.
It is crazy you don't understand that.
I have a hard time respecting these people for that reason. Hard not to view someone as entitled, or having some form of delusional idealism, when they trash their company on Twitter. Every tweet was made either shortly before or after one their exceptionally large Google paychecks was direct deposited into their account.
Further highlighting this obscure world view, they thought they wouldn’t be fired for these things? Maybe they did know they’d be fired - that would at least be a credible signal of rational thought and motivation.
The fact that you were disagreeing with their ethics or politics doesn't change a single thing.
It's also completely useless and hurt the conversation to do personal attacks like saying it's "crazy" to not share your opinion.
Having not read any of the tweets in question, I can not say what the content is about.
However, according to https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/can-you-fire-someone-for-t..., speech about working conditions and union organising is protected.
I suspect none of us armchair lawyers will come up with a simple way to analyse these tweets with a lot of context that isn't available.
We aren't talking about termination on that ground though. We wouldn't have this discussion here if it was, I would actually agree with it (though I would still find it sad that the company wouldn't try to improve what an employee see as an issue).
> HR stops you from doing that.
Here's the exact quote from the comment I was answering to:
> You cannot accept a paycheck from a company, while also be trying to subvert it internally.
We weren't talking about "Publicly bad mouthing" but about "subvert it internally", or in a less threatening way "changing how the company works internally". I believe you have all the rights to do this even on its paycheck, it's about improving what the company does, which is pretty much what employees are paid for.
Putting aside the contract law side of this, philosophically what you're saying doesn't make sense to me. If Google were to direct some of its employees tomorrow to restrict the flow of information relating to a hot-button political issue, right in the middle of an election cycle, would it be crazy for some of the employees to attempt to "subvert" the company to prevent that from happening?
Yes, it would be. What they should do in that case is resign. Google isn't the military — you can leave any time you want to.
And while it may not be easy for a black janitor to leave Billy Bob's House of Cars if Billy Bob starts airing racist commercials, given Google salaries and Google's technical reputation, I think it's probably incredibly easy for a Googler to leave at any time.
If you cannot support your employer's decisions, you leave. Think what an impact that would make!