Every 2 weeks your employer settles their debt to you. This is a transactional relationship. If you choose to accept a paycheck, you have to accept the rules and regulations that come with working at that place.
If the company is doing something illegal, you are welcome to file a whistleblower complaint and take it up with the authorities.
Most people are not fully free to quit, having rent to pay, a work visa to maintain, or other circumstances.
Most software jobs are not paying their workers a salary for them to become soulless robots. They are paying you to produce code, and to have expertise on the matters at hand.
In a sense, you're getting paid so that you can tell your employer "No, this feature isn't quite right, it's easier to code this way".
This black-and-white "if you accept a salary to code, you also must turn off your brain and become a mindless automaton for your owners, or else quit" is ridiculous, and reality will always have more complexity.
You're of course welcome to willingly turn yourself into a robot slave in exchange for money, but I will remain a free opinionated human, regardless of whether I am taking a paycheck or not, and if the company does not want a human, they can fire me and try to replace me with someone like you, or with an AI.
So people who are not willing to make sacrifice for a cause are asking others to make one. How principled!
disagree, strongly. you present a false dichotomy. you can be a human with a soul and disagree (strongly) with your employer and still take their salary to do your job. it's not your job to decide how the software you build is used - there's several democratic governments, shareholders, company officers, etc. that get to decide that. when you are an employee that is the deal you made when you decided to work for them.
> Most software jobs are not paying their workers a salary for them to become soulless robots. They are paying you to produce code, and to have expertise on the matters at hand.
agree. totally true. notice how they are specifically not paying you to protest global political issues in their executive offices.
> I will remain a free opinionated human, regardless of whether I am taking a paycheck or not, and if the company does not want a human, they can fire me and try to replace me with someone like you, or with an AI.
again, totally understandable and fine.
however, these people are not just "opinionated". they decided to stage a "protest". that is NOT what they were being paid to do. and they decided to protest their own employer. on that employer's property. you are free to have your own opinion about your employer, his politics, his customers, etc. you are not free to stage a takeover and make a public protest about it on his property. you are not free to disagree publicly and embarrass or harass him and then expect he will not hire someone else next week instead of you. if you don't like it: buy a majority position or run for office. if you really can't stomach it, then the only ethical thing to do is quit - you can demonstrate your conviction by sacrificing yourself. but you have no right to injure/annoy/bother anyone else about your political ideas at work.
from a pragmatic standpoint, that was stupid. from a practical standpoint, it will do nothing to help their cause, quite likely damage it instead. it doesn't demonstrate good ethics, "having a soul" or anything like that. it demonstrates incredible immaturity, entitlement, and naivete.
I mean, that's the conceit of your argument. It's the rhetoric of political belief which is why "check your beliefs at the door" is a completely disingenous argument. The very argument you and others offer is foundationally a political belief - a belief about what are freedoms - masquerading as something everyone should uncritically accept as given. That's the lie that you are telling to yourself and others.
and checking your beliefs are the door is a strawman. you're allowed to have beliefs. you're even allowed to voice them, discuss them in a professional way. they do not have to be hidden. but you cannot harass/annoy/intimidate/etc. but if you still do not like those rules, that's fine too! don't sign up for them - leave.
if you were really principled in your beliefs, you would NOT "check them at the door" - you would not work there nor participate. but you can't have it both ways AND then claim moral high ground too.
Read MLK's letter from the Birmingham Jail[0], and his opinions on white moderates telling black protestors where and when and how they should conduct themselves. You're backing the wrong side, here. It may be correct in a purely legal sense that American companies can fire anyone for any reason, but it isn't necessarily just when they do so to punish nonviolent political protest.
[0]https://www.denverpost.com/2023/01/16/martin-luther-king-leg...
in this case they were: - not-peaceful. damaging property. antagonizing people. - in a private space. in a private office in a private space. - in the employ of the very people they were protesting. OK, even if they had the right to be there (which they did not), the company still has the right (moral and legal), actually imperative, to fire them.
i don't agree that you need to "check your opinions at the door" at work. you can put up a poster or a flag. you can wear a t-shirt. within reason. you CANNOT harass your employer or other employees.
would you say the same: "it isn't necessarily just" [to be fired] if it were 24 KKK members protesting hiring H1Bs in otherwise exactly the same manner? if you can't, it isn't a protest, it's thuggery.
Google is a company. They are lawfully transacting with a US ally. The employees violated the terms of their employment and Google has no legal obligation to keep those employees.
If the employees want to change the law to add Israel to a sanctioned blacklist they can go protest the US government and they won't be arrested or fired. Their rights to political protest are protected.
If I went to my boss's office, refused to leave ... for ten minutes let alone ten hours ... and harangued him with my opinions of how he is completely unethical in choosing to do business with some very lucrative customers, it couldn't be confused with anything other than quitting. I wonder if there was a different expectation among the Googlers sitting in.
The basic argument that you are presenting here would also oppose unions fighting for better pay and conditions for workers.
By enforcing a policy you have to accept that you can't hire from the unions that disqualify you as an employer based on it.
I am part of a union where a few people showed up to a meeting to endorse a resolution on IP. The resolution passed at the meeting, and they then set an email message to the rest of the union (thousands of people) saying they wanted to hear from more people than just those that could show up on the weeknight meeting. Presumably the resolution failed because I never heard about it again.
The union made no message of any kind on the issue, which is good by me since I do not work for a company that has any business making international political endorsements.
I have no idea what the polling would be if you asked all Google employees, but it doesn't mean much to me that 28 people out of 25,000 in SF have this opinion.
The fact that those people didn’t feel like they had any other way of voicing their disagreements with the company’s direction (and having them heard), does not bode well for the long term future of Google. Loosing passionate people that care deeply enough about your company to criticize it is seldom a good thing.
Did you know, that's actually a political belief. I'm happiest when my coworkers who agree with you practice what you're preaching. That is, I'm glad if you're able to keep that drek to yourself on the job.
You can easily blame the company for bullshitting the employees, too. :)
Why? How? It’s unreasonable to suddenly flip a switch and turn off your beliefs when you walk through a gate.
> Every 2 weeks your employer settles their debt to you. This is a transactional relationship.
Agreed but this doesn’t mean…
> If you choose to accept a paycheck, you have to accept the rules and regulations that come with working at that place.
…that you don’t have a say in your company. A company is the sum of the individuals that contribute to it. Some have more sway, especially in leadership, but that doesn’t mean folks can’t band together and influence their work place.
> If the company is doing something illegal, you are welcome to file a whistleblower complaint and take it up with the authorities.
Individual contributors have moral obligation that they are conscious of their contributions. Some groups drill this in: Doctors enforce this through the Hippocratic oath, Canadian engineers have the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer.
However, I believe the obligation applies to everyone. Otherwise, imagine all the atrocities individuals can contribute to by just following orders[0].
Don’t walk through the gate if you’re unable. Welcome to adulthood.