
Google Walkout Organizers Say They're Facing Retaliation - longdefeat
https://www.wired.com/story/google-walkout-organizers-say-theyre-facing-retaliation/
======
sverige
> Meredith Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after Google
> disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told that her
> role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was told that, in
> order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI
> ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at
> New York University.

I don't understand why a person who organized the pressure group that led to
Google disbanding their AI ethics group would expect her role not to change,
since she's involved in AI ethics, the very thing she helped sink. She helped
make it politically toxic and a PR disaster for her own employer.

I'm no fan of Google, but they tried to organize something to satisfy a
politically diverse group of stakeholders to at least have a discussion on
this topic, only to have their efforts very publicly sabotaged by one of their
own. Are they really obligated to continue to fund the work she's done to harm
the company?

~~~
ahelwer
They didn't try to do that, though. They tried to organize a group of people
who largely (although not exclusively) knew nothing about AI, or ethics, to
rubber-stamp their actions and assuage the concerns of regulators & watchdogs.
Ethics laundering, basically.

~~~
sverige
That's a really huge assumption, considering they never met (afaict), let
alone deliberated anything or issued recommendations. Google sought input from
outside their bubble and those inside the bubble immediately protested based
on identity politics.

There are a lot more people outside the bubble than inside, and this action
makes it seem like Google doesn't give a shit what they think. It's the sort
of thing that makes heavy regulation appealing even for those who normally
would oppose regulation on principle.

How does that benefit Google?

~~~
ahelwer
There was widespread protest from outside the bubble, too. You'll be
unsurprised to learn the entire AI ethics space is being enthusiastically
colonized by Thought Leaders all too happy to hold "discussions" in service of
whatever their corporate funders desire. Oh sure there'll be some token pearl-
clutching, but you can't stop progress (toward ubiquitous facial recognition)
right?

Anyway, if you're interested in seeing all the ridiculous shenanigans these
people try to pull I recommend following @farbandish on twitter.

~~~
ehsankia
I thought it was only 1 or 2 people out of 8 who were problematic; How is that
"colonizing"? It also stills feels disingenuous to judge all 8 people's intent
and position without them meeting a single time or making any deliberation.

~~~
notbob
_> I thought it was only 1 or 2 people out of 8 who were problematic_

I think ahelwer meant the AI ethics space in general, not just this panel.

As a researcher who has been working in ML and also software engineering
ethics since long before "AI ethics" became a thing, I've definitely noticed a
massive infusion of self-promoting "thought leaders" who have zero expertise
in either of those things.

Most of those people are MBAs with little or no actual business experience and
zero software knowledge (let alone ML or AI research experience). Their ethics
background usually amounts to a few undergraduate philosophy courses that,
ironically, failed to teach them the one thing that a philosophy course should
teach: a modicum intellectual humility.

And yes, those folks tend to care mostly about their paychecks.

------
hprotagonist
If you do not know that this sort of thing is coming when you chose to stand
up for what you think is right, you should.

Protest and civil disobedience come at an obligate personal cost. The only
reasonable expectation you should have before doing it is that you're about to
burn your world to the ground -- anything left standing you should count as a
blessing and a relief.

In this case, for example, walkout organizers should've just assumed that
they're going to be retaliated against, and that their protest didn't end the
day of the walkout but will continue through the whole process of having a
labor lawyer, fighting this in court, documenting their work lives for the
next 5+ years, etc. It's part of the same action and part of the same protest.

In the long term and at a broader societal level, moral protests are usually
worth it, but that does not mean that your shorter- and medium- term economic
and personal social costs are going to be zero -- in fact, quite the opposite!

edit: i assume that the walkout organizers knew all this, but the above can
totally be read as "oh those silly babes-in-the-woods googlers", which was not
what i meant. If anything, I understand the linked post as just the next phase
of the game, in which illegal retribution is disclosed as part of an ongoing
legal fight.

~~~
ngcazz
It's pretty absurd to think the authors didn't expect any kind of reprisal. No
kind of organizing against an entity this size, especially with the visibility
the walkout had, comes without a cost. And not reporting on the consequences
would be handing over the victory to Google.

~~~
lenticular
This retaliation in response to anti-harassment protests is actually illegal.
It's pretty obvious these actions were done before legal got involved: When
Claire Stapleton had a lawyer contact Google they walked back the demotion.

~~~
Aqua
It feels like Google eventually started disciplining disobedient employees. I
mean, can you imagine Goldman Sachs bankers organising a protest to express
their dissatisfaction with certain decisions their upper management makes?
They would be fired on spot. Now, Google has been facing employee revolt for
the last couple of years (military projects, James Damore, China search
engine), and Google kept allowing that to happen without any consequences. Now
that changed, and it makes sense, because employees don't own the company,
employees work for the company in exchange for compensation and don't really
have to grounds to constantly blackmail the management just because they don't
like the direction the company is going. You have to be delusional to think
acting like that won't jeopardise your career... Besides if you need to
involve a lawyer you are most certainly unwelcome there and should probably
just quit (however, finding a new role might prove difficult given the
circumstances. Which company would employ someone that organised a revolt
against their leadership in their previous workplace and eventually ran crying
to the media about retaliation instead of handling the situation quietly).

~~~
closetohome
Good lord. What kind of terrible person thinks Goldman Sachs is some kind of
role model?

~~~
_cs2017_
For better or worse, a lot of people admire and respect success. Goldman Sachs
is very successful, so unless it does something really bad, it will be
respected by many.

I don't think you should refer to people as terrible just because they don't
admire the same qualities that you do.

~~~
pmiller2
You do realize you’re talking about the same people who nearly took down the
entire US banking system 10 years ago, right? The only thing they’ve been
“successful” at recently is getting the government to bail them out of the
mess they created.

~~~
_cs2017_
I didn't say they made the world a better place. They weren't trying to.

They had one clear goal: make a lot of money for themselves. And they have,
for many years, achieved this goal splendidly, through hard work, financial
and business skills, reputation, innovation, connections, lies, market
manipulation, government bailouts, etc.

This is considered success, and earns respect, in both Western and Eastern
cultures. There are people who hate the way Goldman makes money, but they are
not the majority even in the general population. For example, take a look at
this: [https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-reputation-
sco...](https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-reputation-score-has-
improved-since-the-financial-crisis-2018-9) or [http://www.vault.com/company-
rankings/banking/vault-banking-...](http://www.vault.com/company-
rankings/banking/vault-banking-50/)

~~~
pmiller2
Where I come from, that’s considered sociopathic (and, yes, I know it applies
to all corporations, not just GS or investment banks).

~~~
_cs2017_
Do you mind if I ask you which country you're referring to?

Does it mean people in your country would hate for their kids to get a job at
Goldman Sachs, organizations would hesitate to take Goldman Sachs donations,
etc?

------
mindcrime
_After escalating the issue to human resources, she said she faced further
retaliation. “My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to other
people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not sick,”
Stapleton wrote. After she hired a lawyer; the company conducted an
investigation and seemed to reverse her demotion._

For the sake of argument, let's postulate that this is exactly what it sounds
like: straight up retaliation. If so, here's the question in my mind:

What flipping moron thought that:

a. this was a good idea

b. they could get away with this

TBH, I'd say that IF Google management were that upset at this individual's
actions, it would have made more sense to just straight up fire her, as
opposed to this kind of childishness. NOT that I'm saying any of this
justifies firing. Just saying that outright firing somebody you disagree with
makes more sense than keeping them around and trying to fuck with them as,
whatever, punishment I guess? That's braindead stupid as far as I can see.

And actually, (a) is the more serious question in many ways. Seriously, what
did they think they would _gain_ from this retaliation? Who wins in this
scenario? Nobody, as far as I can tell.

~~~
azernik
Firing would have been even more provably retaliation; presumably they were
hoping to reduce legal liability. Why they thought this would _work_ is beyond
me, since this kind of activity is also recognized by labor law as Totally
Illegal.

One possibility - the people with power to fire her actually talked to their
lawyers, while the people with the power to initiate this kind of harassment
did not.

~~~
mindcrime
_Firing would have been even more provably retaliation; presumably they were
hoping to reduce legal liability._

Yes, but in some ways it would have been more honest. But the real question,
still, is why do either? How does retaliating against this individual benefit
Google? (Not that it would be justified even IF the answer was "Their stock
will go up 3x as a result" or something).

It's just dumb from what I can see. It's almost like some manager was butt-
hurt that somebody expressed their opinion and decided to try and fuck them
over for no real reason. That manager is the one who ought to be fired.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
They might believe it would act as a visible deterrent to other employees. If
employees at Google see activism go un-retaliated-against, then it may become
so rampant that it actually does pose an existential threat to Google.

This way, even if she sues them and wins, it will scare a lot of other
employees and make them second guess if they want to be put in a position to
have to hire a lawyer, be dragged to court, risk losing, etc.

~~~
mindcrime
_If employees at Google see activism go un-retaliated-against, then it may
become so rampant that it actually does pose an existential threat to Google._

That's fair. I guess the question, then, is whether or not this kind of
activism can _actually_ represent a real threat to the company. I lean towards
"I doubt it", at least in any realistic scenario. But I'd be interested to
hear the arguments for that position.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
You may be right, but a company the size of Google may view the legal costs +
bad press that they have to hire PR people to expunge from the minds of the
community as a fairly trivial overall cost relative to sending a damning
authoritarian style message that they will hit back hard. With nearly infinite
money & power, it is hard to speculate what their ethical calculus is in a
situation like this.

------
rmbryan
I apologize if this is a naive question, but didn't they _expect_ to get
fired? I certainly would, if I started publicly protesting my employer.

~~~
rmbryan
Okay, again, I'm uninformed: How is anyone supposed to establish WHY a company
does something? The rule says, "For example, depending on the facts, it could
be retaliation if an employer acts because of the employee's EEO activity
to..."

The word _because_ bewilders me here. Who knows why anyone does anything? I
don't know why I do 90% of what I do. If someone accused me of having tuna for
lunch because of someone's EEO activity, how could I possibly prove they were
wrong?

~~~
lmkg
The same way that you "prove" anything in the legal system: Present your case
in front of a jury, while your opponent has the chance to rebut your claims.
Keep in mind that the legal standard for civil claims is "more likely than
not," as opposed to the more famous "beyond a shadow of a doubt" standard that
is used for criminal cases.

So, you'll go up at trail and present a bunch of data points, and build a
narrative around those data points. Look, you say, I had good reviews from my
managers and glowing recommendations from my co-workers. Despite this, I was
fired shortly after I Did A Thing. Is this a coincidence or retaliatory? Your
employer would attempt to provide evidence that your work quality actually
dropped off, you would attempt to present evidence that either the quality
stayed the same, or else that goalposts were moved for no good reason.

Note that both parties have the ability to compel various types of evidence to
be produced. You would be able to subpeona the employer for emails between
bosses, or manager notes, or reviews and such. You could be able to compel
people to testify around a variety of facts.

... if this process sounds rather onerous, now you know why trials take a long
time and many parties prefer to settle privately rather than engage in the
full court process.

~~~
FireBeyond
> as opposed to the more famous "beyond a shadow of a doubt" standard that is
> used for criminal cases.

Curiously, this is a standard that isn't well understood. It's "beyond a
reasonable doubt", not "any doubt whatsoever". You saw it a lot in some of the
Bitcoin cases (Silk Road)... "Well, they can't prove that he wasn't set up or
that the wallet matching his wasn't entirely a coincidence, (crypto signatures
be damned), so there's doubt, and he should be acquitted".

------
socrates1998
This is just all so weird.

If google is such a bad company, then quit working for them.

It's not really a protest, it's a tactic to wrestle control over the company
and win social points with their "victory".

They want the social status of having protested something, yet with zero of
the fallout.

They still collect google paychecks, collect google 401k money, still have
google health insurance AND want to be able to say they "stuck it to the man"

It's just so odd all the way around.

They had a google walkout, then google didn't change anything, then the
protesters went back to work.

It was all just a stunt.

~~~
ahelwer
Why does this exact same objection come up again and again? Why do we have to
leave our companies instead of trying to make positive change from within? Why
is the only prescribed solution to take flight to new lands, like locusts,
staying ahead of the flood? What do we do when there are no more companies to
which to flee, and the effects of that which we are fleeing is harming
society?

~~~
ska
It's a another version of the argument "If you don't like our country behaving
the way I think it should behave, you should leave the country".

Absolutely sometimes the best thing for an individual to do is take their
marbles and go home. But equally, sometimes the best thing to do is put your
shoulder to pushing the wheels in [what you perceive as] a better direction.
Companies (and countries) after all are not stand-alone entities; they are an
expression of their constituent parts. Some of this is history/momentum, but a
lot of it is just people.

[edit] of course I think the bar for "when should I leave my company" is an
awful lot lower than "when should I leave my country".

~~~
alistairSH
I'm not sure I agree. At least not completely.

A person is within their rights to try and change the company from within
before leaving. But, that will likely come with personal costs (right or
wrong).

If those costs get to be too high, the correct action might be to leave. At a
company, the impact of leaving could be much higher than the impact of moving
to a different country on politics...

Google very much relies on "smart people" to earn money. If enough leave in
protest, Google will eventually suffer. It would take a LOT of people leaving
the US for there to be any noticeable impact.

~~~
throwaway2048
Google will suffer a lot more if it continually takes big PR hits over crap
like this.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I don’t see people stop using Gmail, Maps, and Search over little PR problems
only a small minority care about.

~~~
cloakandswagger
Because those products are unrelated to AI.

Big players will not (and are not) touching GCP's AI solutions for this exact
reason: it's only a matter of time before the virtue signalers are no longer
content with policing the decisions of their own company and start targeting
customer workloads.

------
AdamM12
Maybe I missed it in the other comments but is anyone else uneasy about the
idea of your coworkers having a town hall to tell their "stories"? Just seems
ripe for unfounded accusations or cherry picked facts to basically defame a
coworker.

~~~
rdtsc
> is anyone else uneasy about the idea of your coworkers having a town hall to
> tell their "stories"?

Sometimes, ironically, I think they specifically set those up to flush out
non-conformists, the naive, and the trouble-makers. Invite them to "share
their thoughts" then start building black lists. I am only half joking there
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign)

~~~
AdamM12
You better explain this than I.

------
diebeforei485
Meredith Whittaker has a clear conflict of interest. As evidenced by her
campaigning against Google's AI ethics board (and the resulting fallout), her
organization's agenda for AI ethics conflicts with Google's, so she has to
choose one or the other.

------
RickJWagner
About Kay Cole James, Ms. James served as Virginia Secretary of Health and
Human Resources under then-Governor George Allen and was the dean of Regent
University's government school. She is currently a member of the NASA Advisory
Council. She is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a
leadership training center for young African Americans. She is an African-
American woman.

In other words, she is eminently qualified. Yet Meredith Whittaker organized
people against her because she disagrees with her politics.

Ms. James has not one incident on record where she caused harm to anyone. She
is merely the head of a conservative think-tank.

Diversity of thought is very important. I feel little sympathy for the
trouble-causers. Google looked idiotic when it disbanded the council.

------
wnevets
I'm surprised they weren't fired for publicly admitting they weren't doing
their job.

------
throwawaysea
Employees that bring politics to work are making the workplace uncomfortable
for everyone else who has a different (or perhaps a more nuanced-) opinion,
but can't speak up. They are creating constant distractions that take away
from the work at hand, especially when it forces others to drop their actual
work and engage (either passively by reading/keeping-up or actively by
spending effort getting involved). These disruptive outrages are largely
irrelevant to the mission of the company except via generous stretches of
logic. Those involved in workplace activism also often violate the
confidentiality that is expected in the corporate context, leaking email
threads and weaponizing manufactured outrage via social media or journalistic
outlets against the company and dissenting employees. The dynamic that has
been created is also often politically-biased (rather than neutral),
particularly at large tech companies, because psychological safety is only
afforded to those who align with a progressive far-left platform.

Let's be clear, most of the justification (and claims of protection) for
recent employee activism relies on mental gymnastics. There is no standing,
for example, for random Google employees to expect to be involved in the
selection of members of an AI ethics panel or in the acceptance criteria for
clientele. There is no standing for employees to be involved in most of the
company's decisions. This is especially true for the relatively-junior
employees who are often driving these protests, since they lack the
experience/skillset/visibility to have any useful/comprehensive perspective on
complex corporate decisions. It is immature for them to expect involvement or
transparency on-demand, and to protest decisions they disagree with that are
beyond their horizon. If these activists were truly honest, they would conduct
petitions via anonymous voting mechanisms (e.g. internal surveys) that let all
employees vote for/against/indifferent, so that a broad voice is heard and not
just a skewed vocal minority that faces no consequence. But these same
activists won't do that, since these protests are not at all about making the
best decisions or being inclusive, but rather about power dynamics and trying
to get one's own way.

Google has lots of standing to take action against these employees. If these
employees don't want to work at Google, or don't display motivation around
their core role/function, let them quit or fire them. If they are not
performing their duties and are instead spending work time on personal
agendas, fire them. If they are disrupting the workplace by constantly
fomenting outrage on the Internet, fire them. If they are hurting the
company's brand and working against the interests of the company (or
shareholders) by engaging in self-serving political activism, fire them. If
they disrespect and alienate most of their customer base by only advocating
for their own worldview, fire them. All this should be uncontroversial - after
all, many others will line up for those jobs and Google will be just fine.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
You're entirely mistaken if you think your work is apolitical. These people
aren't bringing politics to work; their work is bring politics to them.

~~~
throwawaysea
Work has a mission, which is to create value for customers and charge a price
that creates income for the company (and transitively for shareholders,
employees, etc.). The justification for saying "all work is political" is
basically the same as saying "all actions have impacts". Sure, all actions do
have direct and indirect impacts, but then we don't need a word like
"politics" to exist in our dictionary do we? After all, if anything is
political, what differentiates this word from other language we already have
available to us? As such, I reject this notion that tries to position employee
activism as being somehow similar to otherwise everyday corporate operation.

Expanding on this further: I think colloquially, most people would agree that
certain actions are explicitly political and certain ones are not. I do not
view Google taking on a military contract as a political action, but rather a
normal, expected action for an entity that tries to create value for others.
The neutral-most stance, if any, is for them to accept all willing clients. On
the other hand, employees protesting because they disagree with the
actions/impacts of one of Google's clients, or employees who disagree with a
specific application of a technology (which others unrelated to them see value
in), are bringing personal judgment, personal opinions, personal values,
personal morality, and personal politics into the workplace.

The reason I label these as 'personal' is because these employees are imposing
their worldview on the company's decision-making, and overriding the
democratic/distributed nature of transactions taking place freely in the
market between two consenting entities (the corporation and its clients).
Those transactions are better and more-neutral measures of value than the
voice of a small but vocal minority acting within the company. Effectively,
such employee activism is a corruption of the notion of creating value for
others (or others recognizing value in your products), and therefore not
aligned to what the corporate mission is. Since it is not aligned to the
corporate mission or the job the employees are paid to do, it is personal or
political but definitely not normal or acceptable, which is why disciplinary
action is justified.

~~~
zorpner
_The neutral-most stance, if any, is for them to accept all willing clients._

This is not neutrality; it is capitalism without ethics, which is a moral
stance that you are taking.

 _these employees are imposing their worldview on the company 's decision-
making_

Your alternative is that the company should be able to impose their decision-
making on the employees, and e.g. ask them to work on things which violate
their personal principles, with their only alternative being to leave the
company. In a world with a universal basic income without health care being
tied to employment, where individuals were free to choose how to allocate
their labor in a non-coercive environment, you might be able to argue this,
but instead you are arguing that corporations have the right to freely
transact in the market but employees (many of whom cannot pick and choose
their employment or tolerate underemployment) do not have that right.
Capitalism without ethics.

Corporations are simply groups of people. And those people are responsible for
what the corporation does. They have not only a right, but an obligation to
oppose actions by the corporation inimical to their worldview.

~~~
throwawaysea
> This is not neutrality; it is capitalism without ethics, which is a moral
> stance that you are taking.

I disagree. It is neutrality, because it is recognizing that different parties
and individuals have different ideas of what is acceptable to them (morally or
otherwise), and that they can decide that for themselves. If there aren't
enough customers to sustain some product/service, then that business would
fail. If it finds product-market fit, then that business will continue to
operate. It is a distributed method of taking measure of what people value and
don't value, which includes a distributed notion of morality.

> Your alternative is that the company should be able to impose their
> decision-making on the employees, and e.g. ask them to work on things which
> violate their personal principles, with their only alternative being to
> leave the company.

Yes that is my alternative, and I don't see anything wrong with it. Those
employees can choose to do the work that is asked of them or leave. The
company is not imposing anything on the employees - they are compensating the
employees for their time/labor, and get to specify in what capacity those
employees can contribute. If you were an employee in the IT side of some
company, and you saw the R&D side acquiring some other company, would you
think "well I disagree and this makes me want to leave, but it is unfair that
I was not consulted or don't have a voice in this matter or that my only
choice is to leave"? Of course not. Why would it be any different on other
matters?

Another example: If you hire a plumber to fix your toilet and that plumber
took the opportunity to deliver a religious sermon at your home, would you
find it acceptable? What if they lecture you on how you are parenting your kid
or your relationship with your spouse? A lot of the recent employee activism
is similar to these hypothetical situations, except at a larger scale.

> you are arguing that corporations have the right to freely transact in the
> market but employees (many of whom cannot pick and choose their employment
> or tolerate underemployment) do not have that right

Employees have the right to pick and choose their place of employment. They
have that freedom, and tech workers drawing large salaries are especially
employable today. If someone cannot tolerate unemployment, they can invest in
making themselves more-valuable to would-be employers. And yes, that means
that in the interim they need to choose between putting their head
down/getting their work done and engaging in workplace activism. I don't think
it is reasonable to feel entitled to everything all the time, which is how
this comes off to me.

> They have not only a right, but an obligation to oppose actions by the
> corporation inimical to their worldview.

Employees have limited rights at work. They are being compensated to perform a
limited role and the measure of their success/failure is up to the company
compensating them. Corporations also have a right to oppose actions by
employees that are inimical to their worldview or interests. They can do so by
terminating that relationship.

~~~
zorpner
Again, this is moral stance that you have, which I disagree with. As
assumptions, yours include that the market captures incentives efficiently,
that what people value and don't value is accurately represented by flow of
money (and thus, of course, that those with more wealth available have more
valuable values), and that people do not have the right to speak out against
what they perceive as injustice if the market has decided that said injustice
is efficient.

Again, corporations are made of people, and those people make decisions.
Nothing is "up to the company" because the company is a group of people.
People make the decisions.

------
namesbc
Time for tech to unionize

~~~
rdtsc
There was just a story today about NPM employees trying that and getting
fired. Tech companies are in this strange place where on the surface they are
seemingly going above and beyond to be tolerant, and diverse. But it's mostly
talk and gestures that doesn't involve making any hard decisions or spending
much money. Try to mention "unionization" and that thin veneer drops and the
ugliness come out immediately.

------
ocdtrekkie
Beyond being not remotely surprised at this, what constantly baffles me is:
Why are they still there? And pending an answer to that: Why have they not
walked out again?

Presumably the Walkout was a "fix this or we walk out" type of situation...
but after Google refused to do 6/7ths of anything they demanded... they're
still working for Google and not actively protesting. I would argue that
Google called their bluff here.

A traditional protest against an employer, a strike, entails "give us this if
you want us to return to work". Googlers walked out, made demands, and then
walked right back in the door. Google said "we'll do one of the things you
asked for because the rest of the industry was already going that way anyhow",
and then refused the rest and everyone, for the moment, seems alright with
this?

~~~
losteric
This (my) generation has been culturally conditioned against the idea of
quitting a job... peers in struggling circumstances create a feeling of
looming "economic uncertainty", there's a perception that forcing issues
against employers means getting blacklisted, and social media placing wealth
over values.

It's also a disseminate problem. Striking against long working hours is easy.
Striking against corporate values that enable seemingly distant problems
(surveillance states) while working on a friendly low-stress high-pay team...
that's hard. Unless you _actually_ care.

Maybe some people are learning they don't actually care... that their "values"
were just shallow social posturing, worth less than their stable high-
income...

Hopefully, though, some also realize tech is one of the few areas where
workers still truly have the freedom to actually demand an ethical employer -
which may involve looking elsewhere. Follow-through is always scary, but no
worse than uprooting our lives moving to college and then again moving to big-
tech cities.

~~~
ambulancechaser
This reads very strangely to me.

> This (my) generation has been culturally conditioned against the idea of
> quitting a job

This is a super bizarre claim. Wealthy Googlers are afraid to quit their job
because of their peers who make a fraction of their pay? We're talking about
Silicon Valley workers and somehow they are more afraid to quit their job than
the previous generations? A common job strategy is to change jobs every two to
three years.

~~~
losteric
Yes, exactly - it _is_ bizarre. Tech pays very well with no culture of
corporate allegiance, yet this generation of skilled in-demand labor with
(hopefully) sizable bank accounts does not exercise their economic freedom.

Why?

Maybe fear of radical change and lacking support from peers, or maybe
unawareness of what labor resistance actually entails... or, cynically, that
their beliefs are spineless social posturing... but I couldn't think of any
flattering reasons to walk-out then stay.

------
tomohawk
Don't they teach people not to bring politics to work anymore?

Rule #1 at work: don't talk or engage in politics

~~~
KingMachiavelli
The current relization is that you often cannot work without being political
because your work in some way is political.

In this specific instance, organizing a walk out, does seem to go much farther
than what you would expect your employer to tolerate. Typical people who work
typical jobs are fired for far less so the real suprise in being told that
your 'role' is changing is that you still have a job at all.

Ultimently, I have little faith in these kinds of demonstrations - perhaps it
will work for FAANGS since they have a pretty somewhat limitied supply of
talent/employees. But for the majority of the tech industry, I expect the
ability to choose where you work and the ability to organize unions will be a
much more effective means of employee influence.

------
OrgNet
They should all quit. Then donate six months to Mozilla and find a way to kill
AMP.

~~~
OrgNet
This definition is interesting:
[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spineless](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Spineless)
.

------
dmh2000
are employee 'walkouts' a protected class? Like a union on strike?

------
idlewords
Retaliation, while miserable for the people experiencing it, would be a
positive sign that this kind of protest is having an effect.

------
hnaccy
>Google has a culture of retaliation, which too often works to silence women,
people of color, and gender minorities

Are there more stories on this?

~~~
anon12345690
no because its not true.

------
yalogin
This is a private company and more so the AI ethics and the context of the
walkout is not really a criminal or civil violation in the eyes of the
country. So the company is free to do anything it wants.

~~~
olefoo
> This is a private company

Alphabet is a publicly traded company. Which means it is expected to uphold
certain standards of behavior.

------
zcw100
Screw Google and every other tech company on this list

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

------
throw2016
What these people are doing takes tremendous courage. Posts here over the last
few months have many wondering why people in Facebook and Google are not
speaking up and in this instance we have some genuine dissent, activism and
protest at least on one issue.

But history shows dissenters are always a tiny minority, from the initial
struggles that secured labour rights to equality for women. Most people will
conform and fall in line for whatever reason, and in these cases there is
unfortunately always resentment against the dissenters from those who fall in
line.

In most other situations you would expect the early dissenters to get growing
unequivocal support as more people find their compass and courage by example
but there is a moral crisis in the software community and it looks these
individuals may not get the widespread support they need.

But these kind of incidents will make it increasingly difficult for Google
leadership and others who work there to go to events, meets and publicly talk
about ethics and others issues these protestors raised.

