Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

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Almost every time you comment, there's immediately a comment from an active Googler telling everyone how you see things in a completely different way.

Google has almost 50,000 employees. Not all of them are intelligent, well-adjusted people.

For example, you casually mention here how you must be black listed because you have seen career problems since.

I don't think I'm "blacklisted". I've definitely caught inappropriate communications behind my back, to the point that I've had to pursue litigation and have collected a couple of (small) tortious interference settlements. "Blacklisted" implies inability to get jobs, and it hasn't been nearly that bad for me because I'm ostensibly good at what I do. I've just had to deal with annoyances, like inappropriate questions on job interviews.

Yet this is nothing to do with unions, and all about anti poaching agreements.

The original purpose of shared blacklists was to shut out union risks ("troublemakers"). No-poach agreements are a similar, illegal, collusion among employers who are supposed to be competing. There are also HR departments in tech companies who share salary and performance reviews down to the level of the individual, and that's also (if not illegal) extremely immoral. Three heads of the same beast (no-poach lists, blacklists, salary databases) but the infrastructure of collusion is the same.

I just find it extremely hard to believe anything you say isn't delivered with an agenda.

I'd like to fix technology. That's an agenda. What's wrong with having "an agenda"? The alternative would be not having one. I wouldn't post on this forum if I didn't care about the future of this industry.

I've definitely caught inappropriate communications behind my back, to the point that I've had to pursue litigation and have collected a couple of (small) tortious interference settlements.

This is much much bigger issue to any employer than any union-forming issue. An employee who sues is a giant nightmare. (Which I will say right now can be unfair, because it's hard for an outsider to distinguish between the bogus lawsuit and the legit lawsuit, and there are plenty of both in the workplace.)

Lawsuits are just about as bad as comments about how you would declare war on your employer if they cross a line you have set. I've seen you make that comment at least twice.

A union agitator would need to get a critical mass of coworkers to go along with him to cause real trouble. A guy who sues or self-describes as declaring war can cause real trouble all by himself.

EDIT: I have some specific posts I could refer to, but I don't think linking to them follow the "Please add comments that make things better" rule. I'm not 100% positive that this comment so far follows the rule, so I'm quitting before I get too far behind.

An employee willing to sue when the employer steps out of line, seems like exactly the sort of thing that should be protected. Employers should not be allowed to do wrong things. Employers should especially not be allowed to penalize, nor work together to be aware of or penalize, employees that "tend to sue".

You could make inquiry about lawsuits illegal. I have heard of companies that explicitly ask if you have ever sued a former employer, which crosses a line for me, because it's sometimes necessary to sue to secure your rights.

However, even without deliberately asking, a company could learn, and it's not hard to imagine why an employer would be very wary of hiring someone who has sued a former employer. Being sued is an extremely stressful thing and lots of people go to great, even possibly irrational, lengths to avoid it.

Ask how you would feel working for a company that had sued former employees.

There are no good answers.

> Google has almost 50,000 employees. Not all of them are intelligent, well-adjusted people.

Their responses to you that I have seen show no indication of underlying issues. Indeed they almost all seem to indict you as being overly obsessed with showing your infallibility with regards to you leaving Google. This conversation has started off in a similar manner.

> "Blacklisted" implies inability to get jobs, and it hasn't been nearly that bad for me because I'm ostensibly good at what I do. I've just had to deal with annoyances, like inappropriate questions on job interviews.

This is incredibly vague and you use it to imply that Google employees have emailed potential employers of yours and 'poisoned the well'. Lets make this clear. Have you collected any tortious intereference settlements against Google relating to potential employers you have interviewed for?

> The original purpose of shared blacklists was to shut out union risks

That is utterly irrelevant. This is not about union problems in any way, this is about a different illegal agreement.

> I'd like to fix technology. That's an agenda. What's wrong with having "an agenda"

This is pretty deliberately obtuse, you know exactly what I am stating, that you appear to have an anti-Google agenda in your comments, regardless of the actual topic of discussion.

This discussion is curious to me. I've heard the sentiment “fire your employee when they show attitude”, and no doubt that an attitude coupled with mental instability (hinted at by another commenter) would make an employee troublesome in the eyes of the employer.

However, I can't see how at all this is relevant and why it's taken into account in evaluating michaelochurch's comment.

For example, one of his statements is:

> The Valley is fucking terrified of unions. So terrified that if you even seem like you might be leaning that way, executive-level people in major companies will go out of their way to fuck up your career. A lot of the back-channel reference checking that goes on in the Valley is to avoid taking on a potential unionist. No one cares if you were a mediocre performer 3 jobs ago.

We surely could question the anecdotal nature of OP's experience and call for more evidence, yet commenters start implying that the person is writing this out of mental instability or evil agenda.

> you appear to have an anti-Google agenda in your comments

IMHO it seems natural that pro-Google comments from other employees of the company, which you mention as answering to OP elsewhere, too might likely have an agenda of their own.

larry?

I wish! I doubt Google will even buy my IP :(

I just think the whole 'Google fired me' angle Michael always brings to the discussion irrelevant.

These anti poaching agreements were seriously immoral and they have literally nothing to do with Unions.

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