Realistically, how badly does it harm your career when this shows up under your name and you are looking for another tech job? What's the play? Pivot to working in a more activist/NGO style job?
Are the names of these people even public?
I don't think that many companies really do the kind of due diligence for IC positions that would discover someones involvement in a stunt like this, beyond maybe a couple of employee provided reference checks.
Besides, there are plenty of ideologically sympathetic hiring managers in the industry.
You want to have a position on Israel vs. Palestine? That's fine; I think most of us do. You want to advocate for your position? Go for it.
You want to advocate for your position at work, in a way that disrupts work for others? No. Hard pass. I'm running a business, not a platform for your soapbox. And if you did it at your previous place, you're likely to do it at mine.
These employees succeeded in identifying the best way to raise awareness, achieving large media coverage and reaching a wider audience than if they had protested outside the workplace. They stuck to their values, even though it meant sacrificing their (I'm assuming) generous compensation.
I think there's some merit to that which would translate to success in other parts of your business, if you were to hire them.
</End devil's advocate>
EDIT: Huh--I guess I'm wrong then. I thought this was more well-known than it was.
Not saying I agree or disagree. Just saying that the protest succeeded in raising awareness.
Israel or the IDF can buy this anywhere, or even just build it in-house (and there's a huge cost to spending a long time on procurement if someone can get Google to cancel this, but unfortunately it doesn't matter for anyone in Gaza right now)
and while there are a lot of objections to this (why not spend it on something a lot more useful, feeding Google is bad, etc), awareness of this, or even cancelling this does nothing to move the needle on the actual very high-prio issue :/
so all this has a huge cost to them (they lost their jobs, emotional distress) and in the end ends up as performative as Twitter/Mastodon threads :(
California for example has special laws about employment discrimination based on political activity.
Some hiring managers might like their tweets and show support in their personal time but when it comes down to actually hiring them they'll wonder if this person will be disruptive and constantly bring their personal activist life into the workplace, making other employees lives difficult, lack self control and say the wrong thing to customers, etc.
> they'll wonder if this person will be disruptive and constantly bring their personal activist life into the workplace
Corporations very often take stance on political issues, also when interacting with their own employees. For example all the pride events, which Google is known for. So it's not like these employees started bringing politics to the office, but rather they dared to have their own opinion that the system didn't like.
If you went to Google campuses and protested gay marriage rights then you probably would be fired too.
I dont care about X why do I have to deal with your 'protest'?
If the protesters camped in an execs office for pride and refused to leave, they'd likely also get arrested. It's just that there wouldn't be such a protest in the first place.