I further suspect that that story didn't get very much attention in the last submission because there isn't much of a story here:
> Just over a dozen people gathered outside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale on Tuesday. Among those in New York was Google cloud software engineer Eddie Hatfield, who was fired days after disrupting Google Israel’s managing director at March’s Mind The Tech, a company-sponsored conference focused on the Israeli tech industry, in early March.
The most interesting thing about this is that someone who was recently fired was able to get into the Google Cloud CEO's office. I've been in much lower-profile buildings where security checked everyone in in the lobby and even with an escort you wouldn't be able to just go into the CEO's office.
The Google Cloud CEO's office is in SVL, not NYC (just fyi), so he wasn't there. Additionally, in Google's SVL offices, you can't operate the elevators without a badge (or even get into the elevator lobby without first badging in [or being escorted].
That said, unlike in a lot of companies, the executive office area (for Cloud) is not separated in any way from the offices in the rest of the building. This is not exactly the same as for Alphabet execs (dating back to when Larry & Sergey were running things), with separate private parking, private elevator and partly inaccessible office spaces.
It said that he was one of the protestors that gathered outside the offices. It said that there are groups protesting outside and inside the offices. I imagine the latter group are all current employees.
It depends. If everyone leaves whenever there's a problem, then problems will never get fixed. Or if Google is a good employer except for this, leaving over this one thing instead of trying to fix it is like leaving a house instead of fixing that broken window.
Except... the problem is: this is not a problem that needs fixing. If Google was doing something illegal, then the employees would have every moral (and legal) right to protest and demand a change of policy.
Google has protocols for appeals and complaints that employees can use. Even if those are just for show, the right course of action would be to use the advertised protocols, then, if they don't work, the employees would have a legitimate claim against the company.
It's labor-intensive, time-consuming and expensive to follow such protocols. And, I can "understand" the protesters in the sense that I would, too, be discouraged by the prospects of doing things the right way... But, realistically... all these protests are going to accomplish is the workplace ethics violation on the part of the protesters, and, probably a boot.
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As an aside: for someone living the events it feels surreal that people who are completely out of touch with the reality of the events become so enthused about the subject. Often times it's actually nice / conscientious people who get trapped by the most brazen lies about political / humanitarian issues far, far away...
> Except... the problem is: this is not a problem that needs fixing. If Google was doing something illegal
Every law changes something, making it legal or illegal. If changes weren't allowed we'd be stuck in one situation forever. Things become legal or illegal all the time so they don't and shouldn't change just when they're illegal. Usage of encryption could be illegal, and consuming drugs could be legal. And at some point it was legal/normal to decide people's rights based on gender, color, or sexual orientation.
"Fixing" these problems is down to the morality of the observer. In a free society the law usually follows the morality of society or majority but with some significant inertia.
Picketing Google's CEO is not the way to change the law.
If you don't like the law, there's a category of people generally known as "lawmakers" -- typically elected representatives of wider groups of people who are then endowed with the power to change the laws. You should either try to influence the lawmakers directly, or indirectly through electing other lawmakers.
In other words, there's nothing really new to what I wrote: if you don't like what Google is doing, there's a way to appeal, contest, you name it. The legal ways to do this are designed the way they are in order to take into account the freedoms and convenience of people involved in the process.
> "Fixing" these problems is down to the morality of the observer.
No, it's not. Laws are designed to regulate relationships between many people for the benefit of many people in most cases. And in the case in point, that's exactly what they are meant to do. The morality of individual observer is not and should not be the authority to fix these laws. Pretty much the same reason why individuals in most but the very trivial cases are not allowed to prosecute the law: this creates anarchy, and, in practice, leads to something like what's happening in Haiti today -- gang violence, failed economy, failed medical system etc.
Because the sensation of being part of a subversive mission fulfills the need of purpose for the revolutionary mind. Good follow up questions are how long did that mindset took to become so influential and from who and where did it came from?
For them, this will be like a trophy among their revolutionary peers.
For the same reason this post was flagged. Israel. Did you really have to ask? Hard to imagine google workers protesting russia, china or saudi arabia being flagged.
I really feel like, regardless of where you fall on the particular war, we really should not like the idea of supplying resources like this to an active war.
It also concerns me that given the nature of this war, that the idea of protesting this is not ok.
Is this a principle you apply universally? For example, do you oppose U.S. companies providing technical support for Ukraine's justified war aims, such as Starlink?
I've seen no indication that simply protesting is seen as "not ok". But trespassing on private property, or worse blocking bridges, goes quite beyond "protest" and freedom of speech.
It's called civil disobedience, and you opt into the inconvenience when your government acts truly in a truly odious manner to the sensibilities of the governed.
Google isn't really a government... so, civil disobedience doesn't really work here.
Google, as well as any other employer is required by many different regulations to both comply with government rulings and to give certain means for its employees to appeal / protest whatever the company is doing. Staging a protest inside CEO office isn't a legal way to protest.
It makes sense to protest in such way against an overstepping government because there's no other means to call upon the government to change its course (similar to how there's no way to deal with ethics violations of the supreme court, since there's no court that can judge them). When it comes to a company, things are different because there's a higher power that regulates what companies can do.
The protesters come across as annoying and arrogant for wanting to cut corners in the process of appealing their company decisions and for putting themselves on display rather than trying to use the proper channels and working towards the benefit of those affected / involved.
It's kind of like as if I had a dispute with my landlord over who has to fix the plumbing, and instead of reporting them to the proper authority, I'd block traffic on a busy highway demanding "justice" for the broken plumbing.
>Google isn't really a government... so, civil disobedience doesn't really work here.
Google is a multi-national corporation, which based on jurisdiction, essentially makes it an arm of the local government.
>Google, as well as any other employer is required by many different regulations to both comply with government rulings and to give certain means for its employees to appeal / protest whatever the company is doing. Staging a protest inside CEO office isn't a legal way to protest.
You feel compelled to constrain things to the bounds of legality in a game that has already breached the boundaries of illegality (Genocide and territory annexation, boundary redrawing is illegal by all contemporary standards). Finite thinking in an infinite context.
>The protesters come across as annoying and arrogant for wanting to cut corners in the process of appealing their company decisions and for putting themselves on display rather than trying to use the proper channels and working towards the benefit of those affected / involved.
Quote "proper channels" result in memory holing or ignoring doing anything. Hierarchical power structures ensure this. Arrogance is a subjective eval on your part. Annoying is accurate, but rather the point. I'd call it "pointedly and unambiguously escalating".
>It's kind of like as if I had a dispute with my landlord over who has to fix the plumbing, and instead of reporting them to the proper authority, I'd block traffic on a busy highway demanding "justice" for the broken plumbing.
Landlord disputes have a pre-defined process. War crimes, and ongoing facilitation thereof does not until long after the critical period wherein continued or amplified loss of life can be prevented has already passed.
People called a spade a spade and more importantly, did something about it. The fact we're trying to convince one another of the illegitimacy of their means just demonstrates that to a degree, their act is having the desired effect. People are questioning the status quo.
You need to remember, "the Government" is just a nominative signpost for the set of entities through which a collective projects power. In that sense, a corporation is even more "the Government" than any one of us could ever be.
I do think there is a big difference between an invasion and the war that is happening here. Yes I realize both are a war, but there is a big distinction.
That being said, if we need to apply it universally and avoid situations like this that may be the better situation. Once we start making special cases we open it up to this exact situation.
It's also interesting that this is where they draw the line for some reason. While I agree that the entire situation in Gaza is a catastrophe, some people seem to react "violently" (Not with violence, they just have a lot of feeling tied up in the conflict). I know of companies where people got professional help and had to take time off work due to the war, but most of them don't know anyone in the area, nor are they themselves neither Jewish nor Palestinian.
Anyway, I think it's weird that Google employees will react like this over the sale of a service. In it self GCP is pretty harmless and its sold to a democratic government. It's also the Israel government, not just the IDF, so most of the services would presumably be used for peaceful purposes. At the same time these employees are apparently completely fine with Googles invasion of peoples privacy, manipulation, sale of data to shady advertisers with little oversight, collaboration with the US military, collaboration with China and a number of other issues... But no, this is apparently where Google crosses the line.
If Google employees where constantly applying internal pressure to management and shareholders to do better it would make more sense, but right now it seems pretty random.
Not at all - but the fact is and will always be that most people will not have fuck-you money and those people will always be at the 'mercy' of their employers to a point. My employer would have to cross a serious line for me to think about leaving on moral grounds. It's a business, as long as they're selling their wares legally, more power to them if they can make more money.
Google Workers Protest Cloud Contract with Israel's Government 16 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40056994
I further suspect that that story didn't get very much attention in the last submission because there isn't much of a story here:
> Just over a dozen people gathered outside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale on Tuesday. Among those in New York was Google cloud software engineer Eddie Hatfield, who was fired days after disrupting Google Israel’s managing director at March’s Mind The Tech, a company-sponsored conference focused on the Israeli tech industry, in early March.