Hacker News Reader

Comment by siva7 | Hacker News Reader

> Google fired an employee who disrupted an Israel executive’s conference keynote this week, CNBC has learned.

Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who wouldn't fire such an employee instantly.

I'm confused by your logic here, the fact that all other big tech companies would do something is hardly grounds for considering an action "right" in any moral framework I know of.

"Unsurprisingly so" I can get behind. But "rightfully" is a stretch I wouldn't agree with.

Saying "rightfully so" does not imply the rightness derives from morality.

The most common, plain meanings of the phrase “rightfully so” do imply a basis in morality.

It’s fair to say that it can mean that the “rightness” is derived from other sources, but pretending that the primary meaning of the phrase doesn’t imply morality is just being intentionally obtuse.

The employee clearly wanted to be fired, wanted to vilify the company, and wanted the news to broadcast the matter.

Who in their right mind who says “I refuse to build technology that ____” wouldn’t already be planning to quit barring outrageous hypocrisy? Who in their right mind screams it out in the middle of a presentation without expecting to be dragged out?

Quite possible, in which case he's likely achieved his goal.

Personally I don't think firing him helps Google's PR, rather it makes them look even more "evil". (To clarify, I am NOT saying that it is unexpected for a company to fire such a person. Expectations != what's the morally correct != reality, I'm just commenting on a part of the equation.)

It used to be, at work one would not talk about politics or religion. And, to some degree, salaries... but that was thrown out the window and companies encouraged activism, bring your pets to work, bring your freakishness to work, let it all hang out. You didn't just keep it to yourself and best friends anymore --the company was "your family and friend".

The chickens are coming home to roost and they don't like it so much anymore.

> Rightfully so. Name me the big tech company who wouldn't fire such an employee instantly.

Just because something is done by most companies doesn't make it okay. Are mass layoffs "rightful" in any sense of that word?

>Are mass layoffs "rightful" in any sense of that word?

I don't see those as inherently right or wrong.

Sure, I'm not in favor of them but neither do I consider them right or wrong for all parties. But the parent comment seemed to imply that firing him was justified, because any company would do the same. I disagree with the part about it being justifiable just because it is a common practice.

If the alternative is the company going out of business? Yes?

People can rightly protest the way layoffs are conducted but the idea that a company is "wrongful" to have a layoff sometimes is silly.

I'm not specifically saying layoffs are good or bad, I was giving an example of how something being common (layoffs) doesn't automatically make it good (it's of course not good for the fired people).

Of course, certainly not for many of the fired people (although depending on severance and situations--once I would have been happy to have been laid off). And layoff, and the way they're conducted, can certainly be conducted poorly and with less empathy than is called for. (Though, in reality empathy mostly=money in this context.)

It's not immoral to fire multiple people from a company.

My argument is that it's not automatically right either to fire people, just because it is a common practice.

Maybe I should've used another example like lobbying or politicians' insider trading as a practice that's common but not necessarily right.

Sure, common practice doesn’t mean it’s automatically right but it is an indication that it’s generally accepted for reasons that may be valid. So it’s reasonable evidence to cite, and is a method of explaining that your argument now has to account for the general case.

I partially/mostly agree, I think it's more of "it's good enough because it's either good or it's close enough to not bother speaking/complaining/doing anything about it". Eg targeted ads are accepted, but banning them takes massive effort and "people can use ublock anyway". But yeah that's splitting hairs.

Cringe.

Mass layoffs are part of the Faustian bargain you accept when you sign the offer letter to work at the behemoths of capitalism. These are the biggest like top 10 companies in the whole world.

It’s just business.

But then again even those making 400k plus TC make appeals to emotion instead of rational thinking.

There are plenty of jobs for these people where they can make 200k TC and not risk getting fired, which is still a good salary.

If you want more and more, you must play with the devil. It’s really not that complicated.

Lotta people reading this comment as if it is taking a moral stance (siding with Google). I didn't read it that way but rather as a comment on the state of the current environment. Did I misread?

The wording and tone are common for broad agreement, both practical and moral (curtness, appeal to popularity, etc). Otherwise, one would normally use a wording that expresses the scope of one's tone, e.g. "Regardless of the issue, I think it's the right call to resort to firing to enforce this rule."

(It's hard to come up with a good example that demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about, because the topic is highly subjective, highly emotional, and has a few different angles. There are a million different things the parent could have said to communicate an attitude that doesn't imply an emotional, moral, or political distaste for the context of the protest itself. My example isn't necessarily "correct" for the parent.)

Yeah that's fair. I could see it going either way. But I think when ambiguous it doesn't hurt to ask. And there's a lot of fighting and arguing so I'd rather ask than escalate conflict if there is a misunderstanding. I think we all know how easy it can be to miscommunicate.

This is why we need tech unions. We should be able to take an ethical stance without getting fired.

Unions are to defend employees rights, not to defend ethical stance on random topic. For political issues there exists normal democratic process, where you can take your stance to the streets, boycott, vote, be elected etc. You must understand that stable and successful democracy is a sophisticated mix of checks and balances, including what powers are given to unions and worker councils. Give them too much power beyond the original scope and the consequences can be disastrous for society. Imagine pro- and anti-immigrant activists halting operations of a big business and you can do nothing to them, because taking one side will result in the protest from another side. What value does that bring? Don’t they have other venues?

I love the built in assumption there that generating value is more important than a stable polity.

Generation of value comes after people have settled themselves into a stable, working equilibrium. Prioritizing value creation above that is just adding a bias meant as a mechanism of control wirlded by those who have already "escaped" that control.

Look back at 1940's for indications of the attitudes when "Unions" were considered too powerful. Shipyard workers were striking for better working conditions at a time when much of the country were worried about the existential threat represented by the Axis Powers.

That war effort generated negative value by any sane definition. Yet the stability of the populace was so prioritized that we fairly effectively neutered the network effects of collective bargaining as a result. To a degree that any European union member would find befuddling. (And never had a concommitant restoration force after the existential pressure was dealt with. Funny how that ratchet works).

The 70's with the ATC strikes and the Administrative response were another example.

Stable and consenting polity > value creation. As evidenced by the fact we will destroy value to achieve a new working equilibrium to build from.

They weren't fired for taking a stance, they were fired for how they took the stance.

This needs to be emphasized more. It's not that they took a stance, it's definitely how they did it that warranted being fired over it.

What's a good way to take a stance?

Others have commented on different avenues and the consequence of it. I will introduce you to another way. Organizing. If you dislike a stance your company or community has, organize others that feel this way and plead your case to the company or community. Unions do this. Student Orgs do this. Political dissent does this. It's probably the most effective method for getting the unheard, heard.

The guy should have started a movement, or a group, using the points from the guest speaker on why they shouldn't have had that speaker, etc etc... This organization of people holds more weight than an individual. This is the way.

Almost every state now has at-will employment laws. The company doesn't need a reason to get rid of you.

In a quiet email to the CEO which will promptly get deleted, and will never hit any big media or HN's frontpage is what a lot of commenters here would argue for.

Being "polite" is nice if the person you're talking to is also nice. If the guy wanted to bring attention to the fact he did it very well.

I mean, this may be a good way to take a stance, for someone who deeply cares about a particular issue. But it's also definitely going to result in being fired, from any company. The two things aren't incompatible. Lots of good ways to take a stance have deprived lots of people taking those stances of far more than just their jobs, like their freedom, temporarily in many cases (like Dr. King) and permanently in many others (like Navalny). Making a stand is often laudable, but also often personally consequential.

I'm with you on this.

What US-backed Israel is doing is utterly abhorrent, and protesting makes sense; I can understand why an employee wouldn't want to aid them in any way - but with oil and gas off the coast of Northern Gaza, the US about to build a port for it, and the US, UK, France and Germany govs supporting Israel to the hilt, real sanctions are not going to happen. Hell, the west is still supplying Israel with weapons, and Israel hasn't even been kicked out of EuroVision!

But... one person disrupting a meeting will have limited effect, and is guaranteed to result in a firing.

IMO a better plan would have been a petition, signed by as many employees as possible. Failing that, looking at strike action through union(s) could be a good idea. A single employee has very little power - but if a significant number banded together, their power is much greater.

The manager's preferred way is with them in private so they can keep their thumb on the network effects and optics, or just bury it altogether.

Any means of generating substantive resonance within an org is jealously reserved by those at the top of an organizational hierarchy.

It's a Catch-22, but part of Activist 101. If you aren't drawing ire, getting retaliated against, or getting surveilled by someone, odds are you aren't being a terribly effective Activist.

As with any real way to take a stance. You will get fired/jailed.

Which is why we all continue to support our corporate overlords.

I suppose he knew he was out either way, at least this way it's harder to cover up.

Google is known to retaliate in backhanded ways when people take a stance in a way that is allowed, such as Ms Koren in 2022

> Agree to move to São Paulo, Brazil, within 17 business days or lose your job.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240226163002/https://www.nytim...

Internally Google has a super pro-isreal constituency (i.e. jewglers), and seems to viciously retaliate against alternate viewpoints.

https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001460684#ut...

But how he did it is the important part.

I mean Aaron Bushnell could have written angry letters to his representatives, but he didn't. He lit himself on fire outside of the Israel embassy after declaring he would not take part in genocide and screamed "free Palestine" with his dying breath. And because of that, today I am writing about what he had to say.

If you think the correct response to genocide is politically discussing it with management then I don't think you really understand the gravity of the situation.

The go to excuse of every apologist ever, which will be applied to anyone that takes a stand in an effective manner.

The being fired is an implicit sign that the people trying to control the collective narrative of the organization feel their grip slipping.

> The go to excuse of every apologist ever, which will be applied to anyone that takes a stand in an effective manner.

Nothing about screaming in the middle of a meeting is effective. It's just a selfish tantrum. It doesn't change anyone's mind.

> The being fired is an implicit sign that the people trying to control the collective narrative of the organization feel their grip slipping.

Fantasy thinking, pure and simple. Being fired is a sure sign that the employee did something dramatic and pointless, and suffered the consequences.

tech unions are unlikely to support random employees disrupting company events like this. they would instead provide an internal system for routing complaints in a consistent way.

Honest question: Is this a common function of a union? For instance, I don't seem to recall hearing much about auto-workers taking ethical stances and being protected from termination by their union. But it's also not something I've paid much attention to, so maybe this is indeed something unions do. I'm genuinely curious.

Historically yes it is a massive part of what unions have done and continue to do. For example there have been many examples of dock workers refusing to transport South African or Israeli goods. That this is done as a collective action organised by union is what protects workers from individual retaliation.

Ok, that makes sense, but are there examples of individual action, where the union then protects that individual from the consequences of that action?

The UAW recently called for a ceasefire:

https://uaw.org/uaw-statement-israel-palestine/

That is not the same as what I asked about.

Their stance wasn't the issue. Their actions were.

I don't think such behavior would be tolerated most anywhere.

Of course, one person's ethical stance is another person's inane diversion. Imagine someone started disrupting a PR event by calling Biden a pedophile or whatever the outrage du jour is. Do they deserve protections?

Sometimes people use the phrase "adults in the room" and I think anyone who is not capable of separating a specific issue from a specific policy or not adults. Clearly, as you said, it would be chaos if exceptions for not following rules were given at the discretion of how popular a political issue is.

If the person thinks the cause is worthy of being fired of that's completely their choice, but that doesn't mean the rule itself is immoral.

I am pro unions.

Your argument gives me pause. Maybe it's not that good of an idea.

Why would a big tech company be hosting an event with a state committing genocide? That (and working with said regime) is the problem, not people protesting.

It's not possible to be a consumer brand and support Israel. The world is too divided and it's not getting any less so.

I think the problem is that folks look at things in a bizarre black and white manner and see it as either 1.) Israel has every right to defend itself from further terrorist attacks and isn't doing anything wrong, or 2.) Israel has no right to retaliate at all.

I think the more moderate view is that Israel suffered a heinous terrorist attack perpetrated by a terrorist group in power. Israel has a right to defend their people from such attacks and a military response shouldn't be surprising given the extent of the crimes. However, the people in Gaza (non terrorists) are also human beings who should be treated that way. Not everyone supports the terrorist actions (apparently Hamas is incredibly unpopular amongst the people, but they have little discourse if they don't want to disappear) and the military response from Israel seems to have gotten to a point where children being blown up and starving to death somehow comes with the territory. Surely there is a way to reduce the casualties of innocent bystanders. Surely Israel should provide food and aid to the people after bombing all their infrastructure into the stone age.

I admit not being as informed as I should be, but just how many times are we going to have genocide before we learn to stop? Just since the Holocaust we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, Rwanda, China, and now Gaza. In the more distant past it was even more common (e.g. trail of tears).

> we've had genocide in Cambodia, Serbia, [...]

Just to correct you, the genocide was in Bosnia, not Serbia, as a culmination of years of ethnic cleansing of the muslim (and to a smaller extent the ethnic Croat) population of Bosnia by the Serbian ethnic group during the period of 1992-1995.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide

Thank you! It's been awhile since I went over that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com