Google confirmed it 'terminated' an employee who staged a protest against Israel
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
US companies are going to be weird about this for the next few years. They want to do the profitable thing, but have spent the last decade making workers feel like they have a say. In the end, management and shareholders are in charge, the rest is an illusion.
then let’s skip a few pages and wrap this one up so we can move on to the next book. or maybe write a new one.
HN takes the former model and it seems to have worked out pretty well.
Despite what those who claim politics can or should be kept out of work want to claim.
For those who claim the protester was an idiot, consider their goal wasnt keeping their job and instead living their values.
That doesn't make them an idiot.
But in reality, there is profits to be made, and in our economy we are encouraged to stand with democracy and human rights but only as long as it doesn’t affect the profits for our shareholders.
However, directly assisting live-streamed mass murder with AI systems is quite another.
Do you have a source on google doing this?
Can you actually provide a source for your spurious claims?
https://theintercept.com/2022/07/24/google-israel-artificial...
Took two clicks to get there from tfa... Seems like you could do a little more research before insisting it's "spurious" that Google tech is helping Israel do atrocities.
Probably worth mentioning Habsora, in case you think Israel would never use AI to kill Palestinian children. Try searching it yourself though, I'm fresh out of free basic research tokens. I'd suggest you use DuckDuckGo.
Now, to be clear, Google didn't work on that thing directly. However, the whole point of Project Nimbus is to provide cloud infrastructure to Israeli military and intelligence agencies, and it specifically includes AI/ML. Given all this, it would be very surprising indeed if HaBsora did not run on the infrastructure that is tailor made for just such tasks.
Getting himself fired was something he knew would be part of this protest.
companies pay for everything, it's just that they pay it indirectly. income tax, corporation tax, vat, the taxes just keep on piling.
Where do they get the money from ?
from heavily taxed sales.
People should do it the old fashioned way and inherit their money.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Neither of us do. That doesnt make their protest or our views invalid.
> Be the change you want to see in the world.
I am :)
In reality, “diversity” is not binary, but is a continuum. And any time you have a continuum, you will have a threshold beyond which a given person cannot tolerate the level of that thing.
Hire enough people and you are bound to come upon someone with incompatible values to your own.
Having said that, Google is entirely right here. The speaker was not some right wing political wingnut from Israel. He was just another employee of Google who happened to be from Israel. And from all the reports I've read, the talk had nothing to do with Middle East politics.
Heckling a fellow employee giving a speech just because they're from a country whose government you have policy differences with is like picketing a Chinese restaurant in New York to protest China's aggressive posturing in the South China Sea.
It used to be you’d keep politics and religion at home and would not bring them into the workplace. On the other hand these companies encouraged activism over the years and they shouldn’t be surprised when it goes off the rails.
Shouting down others is not speech - it’s censorship, even a company with broad internal speech protections/policy is likely to enforce discourse standards.
Google would be better off taking a hard stance here - their culture from the outside seems pretty messed up, they’re going to need to fire a lot more to fix it (starting with their CEO imo).
This is independent of the specific views the employee held, though I think those views in this case are also wrong and the company can (and arguably should) fire people who hold views in conflict with the mission, especially when they act to cause problems internally.
> I think . . . the company can (and arguably should) fire people who hold views in conflict with the mission
Obviously, in the US, a company is allowed to fire employees for any non-prohibited reason or for no reason at all. But I strongly disagree that a company should fire people who hold views in conflict with the mission of the company. They should only fire them if they act on those views or otherwise do not work to support the company's mission.
It's not a fine distinction. It's totally OK to hold your nose and work to support a mission that you don't necessarily personally agree with. I don't think that should be cause for termination.
Edit:
This is even brought up in the second bullet of the linked page.
> The worker stood and shouted during a presentation by Google Israel's managing director.
If you have an issue with being protested, maybe don't directly assist the world's most live-streamed set of daily atrocities.
Nah this person wasn’t working productively any more, as far as I can tell. Worse, they were reducing productivity of others. Possibly making an unsafe work environment.
It’s not about being sensitive or even agreeing. It’s about making product. If we were chopping wood and someone stopped chopping to complain about inner city transit systems. You’d fire them.
If they kept chopping wood it would be fine though.
Why do they not keep chopping wood in your example?
Hecklers only cause is heckling.
It would be a different matter if they were simply attending pro-Palestine protests on their own time.
Doesn't mean I agree with the law, but at least its more fair
Many of us Americans do as well, but America's rich love it.
Uh ... since when?
Some European states also ban left-wing political symbols: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bans_on_communist_symbols
Even then, Nazi salute is being used on my country's parties and everyone shrugs.
You have XE protestors shutting down infrastructure. You have Pro-Palestinian/Pro-Hamas marchers chanting extremist stuff like "From London to Gaza, Victory to the intifada", "We will honour all our martyrs", "Praise the martyrs" and "From the river to the sea".
The whole hate speech/free speech thing, and at what point is calling for and glorifying terrorism, and do we as a society allow that?
It's not helped by our incompetent and corrupt government whose primary base is the worst stereotype little Englander. Our police whose handling of protestors ranges from ineffective to Orwellian.
I'm generally pro-Civ-Lib and hands-off, but at this point, it's difficult.
We need to have an adult conversation as a country about where we draw lines, lest we allow extremism to fester or allow authoritarianism to raise its ugly head.
But we're utterly incapable of having an adult conversation about anything. This may change after the general election later in the year, but... It's a hope rather than a certainty.
You're not allowed to bring your political beliefs at work, which IMHO is best for everyone. Keep them at home/your private time. Same for religion, sexuality, etc. Your workplace is not your market square for your personal beliefs and activism.
The publicly listed company must do what its shareholders want, it has no obligation to do what its employees want, and as long as the company doesn't break any local government laws and employment laws, then it's in the green. You disagreeing with the company's direction is your own matter to deal with, as in, you are free to walk since the company isn't forcing you to work there against your will.
You have no idea what authoritarianism actually means.
Even if you dont talk about politics you are subject to the forces of it.
I realize you don't want to encourage people discussing politics in the workspace and it being 100% ineffective would improve your arguments.
And no, not all of those discussions end with "keep politics out of f work" and instead focus on how googlers are or arent complicit in powering genocide in t he e project presentation interrupted.
Yes, and Googlers who are against that can put a stop that by quitting their jobs in protest. You can't go around and publicly slander your company calling them genocidal, while still being employed there, just because they don't do what you'd want them to do, without expecting repercussions when you don't follow your contractual agreement.
You are free to do that after you resign and no longer have the responsibility to follow your contract, which probably stated your job is to be a coding cog, not a PR public speaker for the company policies.
Even in Europe(the German speaking countries), if you publicly accuse your employer of causing genocide, you'd better bring some hard proof to back that up(other than your emotional feelings), otherwise you can not only get fired on the spot but also sued for libel/slander and have to pay defamation damages.
Regulatory capture and monopoly are both things shareholders might want but are bad for society.
‘Just doing your job’ doesn’t cut it, we’re are part of a community and should feel a civic duty. That’s what i mean
Everybody does bring their political beliefs to work, and it manifests in things like how they interact with their colleagues and customers.
Choosing whether or not to provide equal benefits to same-sex couples is a political decision. Providing goods or services to an authoritarian regime is a political act. Your maternity policy is a political act. Even your dress code can be a political act.
What you really mean is that people shouldn’t be bringing to work views outside of a small range you deem uncontroversial.
Not it doesn't. How people interact with others at work is a function of their personality and professionalism at their job, not a function of their political color.
If someone at work is being a dick, it only shows that he's a dick, but political junkies will try to justify that it must be because he's of the opposite political beliefs they have, because in their head "all those people behave like that".
I don’t understand how anyone could even think a company—or any enterprise—is morally required to pay people that publicly work against its chosen strategy.