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Comment by worried4future | Hacker News Reader

> Google apparently fired some 20+ employees who either weren't involved the protest at all, or whose alleged participation remains unclear

Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but there is deep information asymmetry here and google has all the advantage and must have anticipated that this would end up in discovery and litigation and that the records of the terminated people's employment would be subject to it. That means their chat history, their email history and office surveillance footage.

I have a hard time believing that google would have fired people where the sum of their recorded actions couldn't be reasonably construed to be disruptive.

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I have a hard time believing that google would have fired people where the sum of their recorded actions couldn't be reasonably construed to be disruptive.

From the article:

“When I got there, there were probably 20-ish people sitting on the floor. I didn’t talk to any of them, I talked to folks who were standing up, passing out flyers, doing other roles,” he said, adding that the protesters were wearing matching T-shirts.

The worker then went back to his desk before returning to the protest around 5PM. “I chatted with them for maybe four minutes, like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re still sitting here! How’s it going?’” he said. Then, he finished the workday from a nearby couch. The worker says he returned to Google the following day without incident. That night, while at dinner, he got an email from Google saying he had been terminated.

Maybe that what's happened. Or maybe this person forgot to mention some details about something else they did at that day, due to a random lapse of memory without doubt. The point is we have no way to know, based on the words of one, very non-disinterested, side.

And, as I pointed out in my original comment, google has massive information asymmetry here.

They have video and email and message history and badge access times and maybe audio recording and maybe more, who knows.

So far we only have this one person's recollection of the events, where he has a huge bias towards trying to minimize his involvement.

I wish we had a HN equivalent for the HR crowd because I find situations like this fascinating. HR is going to have to come up with a policy for how coworkers interact with protesters without getting fired because some level of interaction is necessary. If someone is in your office, you're going to need a "Hey, what's going on?", "Can you move over a bit so I can sit at my desk?", and "So what are you guys protesting?". A blanket ban on all interaction won't work because guys like this will get canned but by the same token, you can't have people toeing the line going in and out and pretending to interact so they can stay in the area without having their jobs threatened.

Nonsense.

If you read the original article it specifically says he sought out the protestors.

> he went to the lounge on the 10th floor of Google’s New York City office around lunchtime to check out the protest.

Is a single google cafeteria/lounge employee being terminated for happening to be in the lounge when the protest happened? Of course not because that would be nonsense.

How is "checking out a protest" while on one's lunch break disruptive?

If you read the original article it specifically says he sought out the protestors

He was being "Googley" and curious, in other words. And got whacked for it.

From some random snippet attempting to define that nonsense term:

Googleyness is about embracing the unknown. Not just tolerating the unfamiliar, but really appreciating it. Celebrating finding yourself in a place you didn’t expect. Finding the joy in being surprised and dealing with unforeseen circumstances instead of resisting the reality you now occupy

His commentary isn't the exonerating statement you seem to think it is.

By his own admission he sought to join the protestors (he went to the lounge on the 10th floor of Google’s New York City office around lunchtime to check out the protest) and spent an indeterminate amount of time talking with protestors the first time around (I talked to folks who were standing up, passing out flyers, doing other roles)

Anyway it doesn't matter if he spent 40 minutes talking to them, four hours talking to them or 4 minutes talking to them

He sought to join the protestors

He went to "check out", and for a fraction of that time "talk with" the protestors, by the words you are quoting.

To "join the protestors" (implying some sort of direct participation) would of course be something entirely different, and in no way grounded in the description we have.

It doesn't matter 4 hours v. 4 min

An impartial observer of the situation would most likely strongly disagree with that take. In any case it certainly doesn't sound (from the description we have) that the net duration was anywhere near the former value. More likely it was around 20 min max.

So far we only have this one person's recollection of the events, where he has a huge bias towards trying to minimize his involvement.

Could be, who knows.

But from the weird semantic distortions you're attempting to lay over the words we do have from this guy -- it seems you're basically assuming he must be guilty of something awful, and therefore to be lying in some major way, also.

> assuming he must be guilty of something awful

He is. He is guilty of doing something his employer didn't like and they fired him for it.

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