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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

I have to say that HR describing the sit-in as violating their policy on retaliation is kind of darkly hilarious. Not sure I’d want to have those people in charge of actual retaliation cases if they’re this confused…

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It’s similar to Amazon applying the “Disagree but commit” leadership principle to their RTO policy. It suggests that leadership, from the seclusion of their private offices, does not trust employees and prefers to dictate the optimal working conditions without considering individual feedback.

HR was being kind calling it a sit in. From the article: "They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers".

Defacing property is not part of a sit-in.

Sounds like they wrote on TK's whiteboard and put up some signs?

Writing on a whiteboard is not defacing property unless they didn't use the correct markers and stained the board. It seems like there is something more to it than that.

That's begging the question, unless you have evidence that they did something else that falls under defacing or vandalism.

My evidence is the quote I copied from the article. Writing, with the proper markers, on a whiteboard is not defacing property.

Your mistake is assuming what that means rather than inferring it from what's actually described as the actions. It's not your fault, but it's wrong to assume that the article writer is unbiased in this situation given that it likely got a corporate spokesperson to comment on it. I don't know that the article writer is incentivized to change much as part of that.

The quote I quoted is literally from Google. The author just repeated the quote. It has nothing to do with the author's potential bias.

If HR/PR lied about defacing property it would open them up to a defamation lawsuit. The entire purpose of HR is to protect the company from lawsuits which is why they don't usually make up fake reasons for firing people. They just won't give specifics instead of defaming a person publicly.

> If HR/PR lied about defacing property it would open them up to a defamation lawsuit. The entire purpose of HR is to protect the company from lawsuits which is why they don't usually make up fake reasons for firing people. They just won't give specifics instead of defaming a person publicly.

"Defacing property" doesn't have as strict a definition as you think it does, as an example: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/morrisonco/latest/morr... <- Writing on a whiteboard wall would qualify under that definition even if it's not what you think it is.

The fact that it comes from Google directly should make you more suspicious not less.

From blind apparently most googlers in the building were not aware of this incident until the cops showed up.

Just because most people aren't aware of anything doesn't mean something inappropriate didn't happen.

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