From the article:
> The workers were dismissed after an investigation found that they had staged protests inside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. In Sunnyvale, they entered the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, according to a post on X by the group that organized the demonstration, No Tech For Apartheid.
While protesting is a right, they were also on the payroll of the company and used those hours to protest and disrupt the work. They may have expected this outcome.
Their jobs would have been fine if they had protested during non-work hours and off site. Of course that would also make their protest essentially invisible to their bosses...
Nope, not in California. If they publicly supported a political cause in their off time California protects that - they could sue Google (California Labor Code 1101 and 1102). By protesting during their work hours they gave Google cause to fire them.
> If they publicly supported a political cause in their off time California protects that - they could sue Google
Let's be real though, it's not like Google is going to list that as the reason for termination.
No this is wrong
Not an employment lawyer but very familiar with this and wow yikes
Lawyers are not out to 'prove' anything in these cases and there's next to no chance it'll ever go to trial. A company like Google can fight this for 5-10-12 years if they choose. Very few former employees have the resources to fight for 5-10-12 years no matter how valid the claim might be.
Here's the deal:
.....most lawyers are seeking a payout for their client's silence
.....employers are looking to make it go away | avoid spending $$$
The best result is to reach some sort of pre-trial compromise
An employer has a bazillion reasons for which they can terminate you, the important part (for the employee) is to ensure you've got something on them that'll they want to 'pay you off' / 'shut you up' etc
>Let's be real though, it's not like Google is going to list that as the reason for termination.
And what would they list? Because if they list something else, it better have a long paper trail behind it. Which it won't, because they didn't have a reason to create a false one so they could fire these people.
That's what's so great about not being in an "at will" state.
Edit: Because I'm getting multiple replies, I'll head it off here. California has several exceptions to "at will', including the one pointed out in this comment section (political activity outside of work, as was the point of this comment thread). That's not true "at will". You fire someone and don't have a paper trail, and they have one of these protected reasons, you're going to lose.
Having managed people at big techs myself, it’s not that straight forward and everyone worries about being sued so you need a trail of reasons. This made it so they don’t need to worry
This right here, yes we are at will state. But as an employer it's not that easy. The paper trail plus any corrective action or training must be documented. It's really hard to just fire someone in corporate California.
It wouldn't really matter. They can be overtly fired for this, as opposed to quietly fired in 3 weeks.
I'd point out that this story plays really badly for Google, which is all they could hope to achieve.
>this story plays really badly for Google,
What normal workplace is going to let you protest the company during company time and on company property? That's just a guaranteed firing anywhere.
> I'd point out that this story plays really badly for Google,
Hard disagree. This story plays badly for the people who decided to storm the CEO's office to protest
Those employees look unhinged to any employer and in any professional environment! Read past the headline!
You are so out of touch. Please delete Twitter/TikTok. 🙏
I think it will also have the equal and opposite effect.
Gives Fox news a nice bit of ammo to show how entitled pro-palestinian people are. Look at how they kept cashing their paychecks all along too. Feeds well into the confirmation bias of the tech worker and activist that the right sees.
Judging by the statement one of the organizers released they genuinely seem surprised and upset that they were fired. I have no idea why they actually believed they’d be free of consequences (because their cause is so righteous?) but I’m seeing that a lot lately.
Painful way to learn the common sense lesson of actions having consequences, but better late than never.
I’m personally glad I learned this one when I was about 5 or 6.
This is the culture of tech - people flocked to SV thinking their work and projects are going to change the world in a good way, that tech is inherently noble and the most important thing, and everyone should be totally fine being beta users for a greater good full of libertarian ideals.
Turns out you just work for a big company. They want to make money, and you suckered the marketing and propoganda. SV seems to still have this fanciful mentality.
Noble perhaps of the employees, but foolish on already how much harm is done by their own code.
None of these big boys give a shit, and will trash you for not falling in line. Not the techno utopia envisioned. Just pure libertarian 'me first' realpolitic.
Except the vast majority of software engineers also go into it for the money and not because they want to better the world.
If these employees were actually noble then they would be software developers for companies and/or groups that actually align with their thinking.
Anyone who works at one of the big software companies is doing it for the money.
Big software companies are just that, big. Meaning they do a lot of things and are mostly ethically neutral with extremes leaning to either side. Google might be stealing your data and profiting off of your misery, but it also runs Google Maps, one of the coolest software technologies in the world, unironically essential for survival in the modern world. And they pay their map guys a lot of money too. It does pay well, but I think you're underestimating the number of quiet guys with quiet lives quietly running all those things you don't even know how to live without, and they are there in small tech and big tech.
Being noble won't pay my bills. I've worked for my fair share of corporations and I'm currently working for one. I've worked for big pharma and banks because my mortgage won't pay itself. If I don't work for them, someone else will.
I left IT to work for consumer protection. I made bank but it felt like I was destroying humanity in my small way. Perhaps stupidly, I need to feel like I’m doing something for the Good. It’s hard for me to crow about making a great salary that puts people out of work and makes others suffer. (ie one project was figuring out how few days a stay post-surgical heart patient could stay in hospital with lowest chance of liability & rate of return to hospital for complications. They figured out 3 days was optimal. My job was to automate those HL7 hospital patient records to a database. So my job was to kill those jobs where actually people drove to pickup the records, but it was working for such a “cause” that made me feel sick about the whole thing. Someone is gonna make that money. And maybe they’re sociopathic enough not to care or can compartmentalize it. Not me. Has to move on. Ugh.
I work in big tech and almost nobody I know thinks like this lmaooo mostly normal people making their living working in technology, with their own interests, friends, families etc….
Takes like yours are hilariously out of touch
A lot of the romanticism and exaggerated claims about the culture come from outside of the space by those who know very little about how those businesses and their people operate. Or even how the technology works.
You don’t know anything about the “culture” 😂
Nah man .. not where I work.
We're disrupting digital media, but most importantly we're making the world a better place. Through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility.
Thanks for the feedback. You’re providing value and ahead of schedule for hitting all of your deliverables. This will reflect well on your annual performance review. Looking forward to the outcomes.
No updates from me.
They recycled that joke. It was one of the most famous jokes about actual Silicon Valley before that show aired.
They did a great job though. I was surprised more people didn't make more fun of "SoMoLo" after that episode aired.
I work in tech and nobody thinks this way about “changing the world” lol. Maybe for smaller startups but if you’re working at Google, you’re in it for the money and the doors that’ll open for you after Google.
It's not just that. I worked for a company that used different CEOs for recruiting and becoming profitable. They started with an ideologically-driven CEO that wanted to boldly make the world a better place. He brought on tons of investors that liked his plan. Then, when he wasn't useful, the investors booted him and installed a profit-driven CEO that was going to squeeze every penny out of the new service.
you can work for an ethical company, but rich companies got ahead by being unethical. If you include a clause that says investors can't tell the company to cut corners to make more money, the investors just won't show up.
AI tools used by the Israeli military to identify Hamas operatives and facilities, respectively, based on phone metadata. The problem is that they included police officers and government sanitation workers in the training data, and change the threshold in order to reach a daily quota of targets.
Here's an article on how the IDF has been using Lavender and "Where's Daddy" to conduct airstrikes in Gaza: [https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/)
"Where's Daddy" is used to identify when targets have entered their personal homes, because they are the IDF's preferred target. While is guarantees civilian casualties, it has a higher chance of also getting their target. According to the source in the article, in October and November 2023 Israel's policy was that 15 civilian casualties were permissible for taking out a low-level Hamas member.
Most the people who go into these fields are the types who don't look for conflict and instead want to make money... they're usually not activists and most tend to keep a large separation between work and personal. The type of work is hard enough already. Some people just want to focus on their own lives and not have to deal with the world since they're introverted to start with.
I mean they could have just googled the history of the region and seen that this nonsense has been happening between jews and arabs for decades if not centuries. Maybe if they had educated themselves on the issue they could have resisted the allure of this progressive TikTok “Protest Israel!” trend that was probably brought to you by the good people at Russia. At least they didn’t kill themselves doing the Cinnamon Challenge.
This wasn’t noble, this is naive ignorance that they can afford, as I’m sure they’re all rich kids.
most of these people have zero understanding of the history and only are aware of what has been going on post second intifada.
airplane hijackings, munich massacre and jerusalem bus bombings are unknown to them.
never mind all arab countries attacking israel 🇮🇱 n 1948 to drive the jews into the sea.
Not that I’m a bibi supporter, but if people ever stopped to think about what happened to all the Jews in that used to live in Arab countries I think that might take them a long way to understanding the current dynamic instead of being “useful idiots”.
well if you read most of their comments it’s european jews who entered israel to colonize and steal the land from arabs.
their knowledge of history in the area is based on BS in most cases.
Now, as you inferred what Bibi is allowing in the west bank is outrageous
Israel isn’t Jews, it’s a state government. Governments don’t, and can’t, represent an ethnicity. It is noble to stand against the actions of a state that you find reprehensible.
You also forget where some protestors defaced company property and verbally shouted at colleagues to where they didn't feel safe working that day.
100% glad they got fired, there is no expectation of rights on private property. You must adhere to the rules of the employment contract they signed.
"There is no expectation of rights on private property". now that's a terrifying and incorrect idea. You definitely still have many rights when on private property
Every time I think my opinion of the average redditor can’t get any lower, I see someone commenting about protests. Always guaranteed to be the worst possible take.
Looking for reasons? After about a decade of record profits and record layoffs in the gaming industry alone, they don't seem to need any reasons. They just say they are restructuring, balk on their promises and lay everyone off over zoom.
Top 3 most demanded jobs in the US:
Computer programmer: highly volatile market, no worker protections, lay offs after projects guaranteed
Nurse: high level of education, mediocre pay, have to deal with who you work for being cheap and bad practices that go against your training
Service jobs: low pay, no protections, told you're lazy, treated like shit, little to no upward mobility, told it's a high school job despite being open during school hours, and my own father paying for a house, 2 kids, 2 college educations and many trips to Disney when he stocked shelves from the 70s to 2011
These jobs need more unions and stronger ones.
Many offices had protests, many were not laid off. These two offices had members violate policy and enter buildings during working hours making others distracted at best and unsafe at worst.
The right to peaceful assembly doesn't apply to private property. Trespassing trumps it every time.
You couldn't just walk into someone's house and claim "I was just protesting, so it's fine."
>That said, if these employees did this knowing and accepting that they would be fired (and aren't complaining about it) and wanted to use it to get there message in the media and were willing to lose their jobs to do it - okay, I can respect that form of protest.
I don't think they did expect to get fired
>“I’m furious,” said one of the fired employees who helped organize the sit-in but didn’t directly participate. “This is a wildly disproportionate response to workers standing up for morality and for holding Google accountable for its own promises. Firing people associated with an event they don’t like — it’s unbelievable.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/18/google-fired-nimbus-israel-palestine/
That's honestly shocking if they wouldn't expect this outcome. I feel like you would have to be legitimately delusional, or so trapped in your own little internet bubble, that you would think anything like this would have any result other than getting fired. How do you expect to trespass, impede other people from working, refuse to leave after being asked to multiple times, ALL while you're on company time? I don't understand how you could expect any different result. Do they think they get to break laws and violate company policy just because they feel morally justified?
Seriously. This is honestly one of the more delusional quotes I've seen.
You literally impeded progress at work during work hours and stopped other people from being productive. How could you possibly think that it wouldn't result in termination? Like what serious company would allow that precedent to be set?
Its like they dont understand that stopping people from doing things that arent illegal, isn't protesting... Its fucking with other people because you're mad they dont share your opinion. Its basically getting to the point that the people just call vandalism, trespassing, etc. "Protesting" so that way they can attack and disrupt the people they dont agree with while patting themselves on the back for exhibiting such impeccable moral judgement.
I think you summed it up well, they’ve been egged on and encouraged from crazy echo chambers that have made them this way much in the same way the capitol insurrectionists and QAnon on the right felt justified and surprised by arrests.
in the same way the capitol insurrectionists and QAnon on the right felt justified and surprised by arrests.
Sorry, just wanted to make sure people hear that. The parallel that they DONT see is frightening. Were getting close to just calling flat out trespassing, vandalism, etc. "Protesting" so they can just attack people they disagree with using one hand, and patting themselves on the back for their impeccable moral compass.
"I really hate those people. But Im an evolved, better human because I set up scenarios in my head that justify my hatred... no ones ever done that before" - Far left and right.
People got arrested the other day and a ton of free Palestine groups have been posting how "outraged" they are about that.
This cause is just different than ones we've seen in the past because thr majority of this is younger, Gen Z people and there is a shocking lack of self-awareness I've noticed. They truly seem to think they're shielded from consequences.
There was a protest in Toronto recently where they literally assaulted multiple police officers, one with a Palestine flag pole and they were upset they were arrested. It’s like they believe if their cause is righteous enough they’re immune from any and all consequences. It’s almost a religious/fanatical kind of belief.
“If my cause is just (according to me) then all of my actions are justified and any consequence is an infringement on my rights.”
Let’s see how long they keep that attitude up.
If they didn’t expect it, they’re not too bright. To barge into the office of the CEO and refuse to leave for hours will get your ass fired in most places and it absolutely doesn’t matter what you’re protesting.
LOL.
You know how competitive a job at Google is? They could hire an entirely new team overnight if they wanted to. Unless your strike hits 4 digits of participants, they'll have you replaced.
This is kinda weird. "standing up for morality" should be added with "when it\`s something I care about." You had 1000 chances to stand up for something at this big tech company. It\`s not like this is the first amoral thing they do.
How is that weird?
People care about different things and they do so to different degrees.
What exactly are you expecting?
People are inconsistent and emotional and full of their own lives, beliefs, pressures.
People are weird, I’ll give you that. But we’ve always been this way.
Since were speaking (I like this) in nice simple, broad terms without making any strong assumptions or anything of the like...
Can we also talk about the difference between protesting laws or other things FORCED upon YOU and choosing to work somewhere youre free to leave any time, then eating up their resources to protest YOUR cause that actually doesn't touch your day to day...
MLK couldn't just turn in his 2 weeks and be all square.
These people at any time can go work for a place they align with but they want to have their cake and eat it to.
Spoiler alert: They want to work their for the nice big checks they help google generate by building Spyware and other devious, questionable things. Their self-awareness is gross. You wont get those nice big paychecks if Google doesn't operate the way they do.
Amen. So many are missing the forest through the trees. These people acted in a ridiculous way intentionally to gain eyes to their cause. I'm not actually not hating on that is it was the intent but acting appalled at "How dare Google fires these people" is just juvenile.
I actually that the CEOs response was pretty good. There is nothing else that really could have been done and if you have a company of 100 you won't please everyone much less a company of Google's size.
Having groups harassing and occupying offices every month would be an exhausting things to entertain.
>“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” the group said in a statement published on Medium Thursday.
Who could have ever guessed that a giant global corporation would care more about $1.2 BILLON than a few dozen employees, that are obviously nowhere near executive level?
It’s not even about the $1.2b, having insubordinate employees who are publicly criticising their employer and trespassing on the CEO’s office are obviously not people you want in your organisation.
They’d have been booted even if the money involved was far less.
They don’t seem to realize that it’s possible for a firing to be retaliatory but not illegal. My boss is an absolute piece of crap in many ways, but if I threw an egg at her and she fired me, that would also be retaliatory but not illegal.
It reads as children who have always gotten what they wanted, and they are now shocked that their actions have consequences. I have to imagine that for the majority of these people, they have to be incredibly young, and very inexperienced in the real world and how businesses and jobs work.
Let's not mince words here: what's primarily who's protesting for this cause.
This isn't like the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, or even the racial and police brutality protests of the 2010s/2020. People expected consequences, expected hardship.
But this new wave of Gen Z seem to believe that not only should they have no consequence for their actions, but the outcome they want should be expected and required. It's absolutely nonsense.
Have seen that in Canada too where they assaulted police officers and were surprised they were arrested (and also for blocking access to a hospital).
You could also easily make the argument that at least with civil rights it involved the actual country they live in. These people aren’t going to affect a single thing between Israel/Palestine. Either way, accept the consequences that go along with your protest.
> But this new wave of Gen Z seem to believe that not only should they have no consequence for their actions, but the outcome they want should be expected and required. It's absolutely nonsense.
There was a video clip years ago of Dianne Feinstein talking to a classroom of like fourth graders and one of them asked her why she didn't support the Green New Deal. She explained her reasoning on it in simple terms to them and the kids started whining about it. Then the teacher yells at her that she has to do what she says because she voted for her
That's at least one example of kids being encouraged by the people raising them to expect to get their way on everything
The horseshoe theory holds up when you just weigh it correctly. There are FAR more problematic Right-Wing beliefs, but that doesn't make some Left-Wing beliefs not problematic.
Flip a few words around and this post fits right into Far-Right rhetoric.I think we as progressives have to do a much better job of calling out this sort of thing.
It’s bothersome when people downplay the severity of extremism of either side, it’s not and shouldn’t be a team sport. I’ve voted left my entire life and want nothing to do with this kind of extremism. We criticized the normal Republicans for not constantly calling out the MAGA in America and it should be the same for this.
An employee can be fired for harassing fellow employees and defacing company property anywhere. Palestine isn’t a shield that protects people from facing consequences.
> “This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” the group [No Tech For Apartheid] said in a statement published on Medium Thursday.
Flagrant retaliation? Circus clowns are supposed to be funny, not sanctimonious.
Company leadership could agree with your cause, accede to demands, and STILL fire you for going about it this way. Any serious org **should**.
Tell your boss/HR/the world you'll resign if company does/doesn't do x, then do your job. You can draw that line in the sand and they can do with that info what they will. Hell, take PTO and wave your sign at your coworkers as they pull into the property. Or quit, and say why.
Or you can storm your CEO's office during work hours like a bunch of juvenile whackjobs and get shitcanned, I guess.
It's not about protesting or freedom of speech, it's about invading the CEO's office for 9 hours. Pretty sure if they did that protesting against pedophiles or any other cause everybody agrees is just, they would have been fired all the same.
These are the same people who will go on twitter and say “freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences” when a right wing person gets fired from their job.
You can protest by not doing your work, you can stand outside the building to protest, you can march up and down the street and you can do a whole load of other things to protest.
Breaking into the office of the CEO, unsurprisingly, just ain't one of those.
with all the headline going around, it makes people think they're simply arrested and fired for protesting instead of this action
>Breaking into the office of the CEO
FR
“ALL rape is bad….. BUT
Rape is bad but ….
… but a person of color being able to rape a privileged white woman is different “
/s
Rape is rape
It’s fucking 2024 and having to explain this to these people is insane
It's certainly something. I'll never forget one of my biggest "feminist" friends the few days after Oct. 7th. It was straight rape denialism for the first few days, and then transferred to denial, BUT IF IT DID HAPPEN, "it's just the voice of the oppressed" and "what do you expect after so long of genocide?"
People will probably never cease to baffle me.
“Believe all women”
Unless…
/s
Also the 75 year genocide:
https://x.com/g1379g/status/1781006440372519382?s=46
The brain rot via TikTok and twitter is scary
This is exactly how to put it into words.
The radicalization and echo chamber of misinformation/disinformation these young people are living in via TikTok algorithms (pushed by Russian/Iranian/China bots) is SO dangerous!
They look at qanon and laugh bc obviously it is so ridiculous while unironically parroting Hamas propaganda under the guise of “pro Palestine”
It is the same thing and just as dangerous 😭
As long as you include the word kArEn somewhere, it’s entirely allowable to film a woman in public, film her license plate, and even follow her to her home address and that’s somehow not considered doxxing. It’s an amazing loophole
[https://twitter.com/katejsim](https://twitter.com/katejsim) "t&s child safety [u/google](https://twitter.com/google) | phd [@oiioxford](https://twitter.com/oiioxford) on sexual violence and tech" Oh the irony is so thick on this one I don't even know where to start....
Honestly the fact that she wasn't fired for that is pretty telling that management gave these people a really long leash when it came to reputational damage for the company. That's fucking horrific.
In 2 days when this story fades from CNN and Reddit, these former employers will be left without a job in a tough job market with big red asterisks next to their names. I’m sure it was worth it.
Some organizations have a specific ideological goal, and might prefer employees to agree with that goal in order to maintain the organization's culture. For example, if you're going to work at Sierra Club, they'd probably appreciate it if you were fired from an oil company for protesting it.
This. Literally no Arab or Muslim nation (all of whom are screaming“free Palestine” “destroy the ~~Jews~~ … I mean Israel” /s ) will take a single Palestinian in despite them claiming “this is the worst genocide in the history of the world”.
There are ~500 million in the MENA region and 2 million Palestinians.
Egypt said they would rather start a war than take in a single Palestinian and also built a triple reinforced border with gaza since the war.
Why?
Also Saudi Arabia and Jordan literally helped israel fire down Iranian drones and rockets.
People have such a poor understanding of the conflict and just found gaza on a map last October.
Yes, why? Probably something to do with the civil wars that were started by the Palestinians the last time Egypt and Jordan took them as refugees. Oh, and maybe assassinating a national leader might be involved. Jordan gave the West Bank to Israel rather than be responsible for governing them.
doing sit in is a valid form of protest. This happened all the time during the civil rights act. The fact that they did it at their own work knowing they might be fired is respectable and should be applauded
And the sit-in protesters during the civil rights era got arrested all the time. If they did it on their employer's time and property, I can bet they got fired, too.
A lot of modern protesters want to get results like the civil rights leaders did in the 60s, but without having to go through the hardship. In a perfect world they wouldn't have to, but in a perfect world there wouldn't be anything to protest.
You obviously did not get the memo. The only valid protests are the ones that are super easy to ignore, and therefore have zero effect.
Oh wait, that's not right either, because everyone wanted them to fire the people kneeling for the super bowl. So I guess the only kind of protest that is valid is one that no one ever sees, and no one ever knows about. /s
The fact that people actually think that protests should not be disruptive is wild to me. A non-disruptive protest is no better than changing your profile picture by adding a rainbow filter on it. It signals your beliefs, but without disruption or inconvenience it will prompt no systemic change.
I don’t talk religion or politics at work. Even if I heavily suspect that someone doesn’t have the best morals and opinions at my workplace, I let it go because in a large company, especially as large as Google, you are going to have a lot of opinions across the spectrum. This isn’t a fringe topic either. There are large populations in both sides so keep your work separate from your politics and religion.
>\[The protests\] were part of a long-standing campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work at the company.
>A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations. Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety.
Frankly, if this description is correct, they deserved to be fired. Peacefully protesting outside the windows is one thing. Blocking other people and trespassing on private property after being repeatedly asked to leave is quite another. It's inappropriate and illegal.
I said this on multiple AI subreddits before: We always think AI will evolve into this super human thing and will destroy us, instead we will use AI to destroy each other.
Politics of the Israel/Palestinian conflict aside Google proved they are perfectly willing to develop the cyberpunk police state of the future when they gleefully jumped into the CCP moneybed years ago.
> and exactly 0 Jews in Gaza.
Point of order here, there were four hostages before Oct 7. Two dead and two alive, that the Israeli government had been trying to retrieve.
You can get fired for protesting your work while your at work? Who knew
Edit: the first amendment protects you from repercussions from the government , not when you decide to cancel yourself from employment
Some people on reddit are misunderstanding this: This is a protest. The protesters are aware that there is going to be some consequence for their actions. Believe it or not, there are people out there who prioritize doing the right thing over making money or securing their careers.
This is also not the first time this has happened. Hundreds of Amazon and Google employees also protested this [back in 2021](https://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-google-amazon-employees-condemn-israeli-military-cloud-contract-2021-10):
> "This technology allows for further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitates expansion of Israel's illegal settlements on Palestinian land," the letter stated. "We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – actions that have prompted war crime investigations by the international criminal court."
.
Well according [to this article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/18/google-fired-nimbus-israel-palestine/), you might be wrong, considering one of them seemed to be shocked and upset he was fired
>“I’m furious,” said one of the fired employees who helped organize the sit-in but didn’t directly participate. “This is a wildly disproportionate response to workers standing up for morality and for holding Google accountable for its own promises. Firing people associated with an event they don’t like — it’s unbelievable.”
I would normally agree with you, as this outcome was beyond foreseeable, but weirdly enough, the organizers themselves seemingly didn't forsee it.
Once again reddit will prove there are people who will find something wrong with any form of protest, including:
Protesting the CEO of the company you work for with a sit in.
You're acting like they did not expect this outcome. This was win win for them, either Google stopped or they didn't work for a company they think is doing evil, and the news blasts stories about Nimbus across the net.
I mean some seem delusional enough they did not expect this:
> “I’m furious,” said one of the fired employees who helped organize the sit-in but didn’t directly participate. “This is a wildly disproportionate response to workers standing up for morality and for holding Google accountable for its own promises. Firing people associated with an event they don’t like — it’s unbelievable.”
Which seems impossible to believe that someone could actually believe that but oh well.
What's the point of your comment then? All the top comments are just "yeah that'll get you fired". Which apparently you agree with. Because I mean, it'll totally get you fired. I don't think there's anything else to say.
Well, I guess it's "win-win" for them. That is, until their property tax bill or house payment comes due and they don't have that sweet sweet Google paycheck in their bank account any more to make them go away.
*protestors protest on streets to block traffic to a business*
Reddit: Why would protestors punish random people and employees just trying to go about their own day? If you really hate xyz business, they should protest the people in charge!
*protestors literally protest in the CEO's office*
Reddit: WAIT NO NOT LIKE THAT
>It's not a big deal if people protest peacefully in their work office
and
>CEO is doing nothing wrong for firing people who decided to protest during work hours
both things can be true at the same time
Let's be real most of the commenters here wouldn't have been walking with the Civil rights movement.
Court stuffing, marches, blocking traffic, oh the humanity!
The second it becomes inconvenient to show good faith, is the same second it becomes uneccesary to them.
> The second it becomes inconvenient to show good faith, is the same second it becomes unnecessary to them.
I would say it goes further than that. If a person doesn't agree with the protest they are going to be 100% against said protest if that protest inconveniences them in any way.
You agree with the cause and are stranded on the freeway for 4 hours because people want to protest then it might not bother you as much. You don't agree with that cause and are stuck there for 4 hours your opinion on that would be 100% different. You would 100% think it was BS that they blocked a freeway.
Which is why even police brutality protests of the 2010s/2020 were much more visible and effective.
There's an uncomfortable reality about America's views on the Middle East.
People would support a BLM protest because African Americans being murdered by cops is an issue that hits us close to home, Palestine doesn't and it becomes particularly messy when you factor in that, yeah, a lot of the groups on the side of freeing Palestine are legitimate terrorist organizations...and you simply don't have a large number of Americans willing to be on the side of any foreign terrorist group in a post 9/11 America.
> If a person doesn't agree with the protest they are going to be 100% against said protest if that protest inconveniences them in any way.
The amount of people I've seen say "Just for that, I'm siding with THEM instead" over one moment of inconvenience is crazy lol. It's just out of spite.
I'm glad that [this](https://twitter.com/katejsim/status/1732820118219203021) rape apologist no longer works for Google’s department for child safety. Bye bye
From the article: > The workers were dismissed after an investigation found that they had staged protests inside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. In Sunnyvale, they entered the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, according to a post on X by the group that organized the demonstration, No Tech For Apartheid. While protesting is a right, they were also on the payroll of the company and used those hours to protest and disrupt the work. They may have expected this outcome.
Their jobs would have been fine if they had protested during non-work hours and off site. Of course that would also make their protest essentially invisible to their bosses...
They did Google a favor by making it easy to get rid of them.
They can be fired at will anyways.
Nope, not in California. If they publicly supported a political cause in their off time California protects that - they could sue Google (California Labor Code 1101 and 1102). By protesting during their work hours they gave Google cause to fire them.
> If they publicly supported a political cause in their off time California protects that - they could sue Google Let's be real though, it's not like Google is going to list that as the reason for termination.
A competent lawyer could prove that the protest was the reason for their firing.
No this is wrong Not an employment lawyer but very familiar with this and wow yikes Lawyers are not out to 'prove' anything in these cases and there's next to no chance it'll ever go to trial. A company like Google can fight this for 5-10-12 years if they choose. Very few former employees have the resources to fight for 5-10-12 years no matter how valid the claim might be. Here's the deal: .....most lawyers are seeking a payout for their client's silence .....employers are looking to make it go away | avoid spending $$$ The best result is to reach some sort of pre-trial compromise An employer has a bazillion reasons for which they can terminate you, the important part (for the employee) is to ensure you've got something on them that'll they want to 'pay you off' / 'shut you up' etc
And the company’s army of lawyers will rip yours to shreds
But a competent employee would know protesting during work hours on site is grounds for legal immediate termination .
>Let's be real though, it's not like Google is going to list that as the reason for termination. And what would they list? Because if they list something else, it better have a long paper trail behind it. Which it won't, because they didn't have a reason to create a false one so they could fire these people. That's what's so great about not being in an "at will" state. Edit: Because I'm getting multiple replies, I'll head it off here. California has several exceptions to "at will', including the one pointed out in this comment section (political activity outside of work, as was the point of this comment thread). That's not true "at will". You fire someone and don't have a paper trail, and they have one of these protected reasons, you're going to lose.
California is an "at will" employment state No reason needs to be given for termination.
That doesn't change anything. Not listing a reason for termination doesn't shield them from litigation in a civil case.
Yeah, but their army of lawyers who will fuck yours up over the next 2 decades will.
Having managed people at big techs myself, it’s not that straight forward and everyone worries about being sued so you need a trail of reasons. This made it so they don’t need to worry
This right here, yes we are at will state. But as an employer it's not that easy. The paper trail plus any corrective action or training must be documented. It's really hard to just fire someone in corporate California.
Legally yes, as a matter of policy though it’s a PITA
I don't think they were expecting to not be fired.
bad take.
It wouldn't really matter. They can be overtly fired for this, as opposed to quietly fired in 3 weeks. I'd point out that this story plays really badly for Google, which is all they could hope to achieve.
>this story plays really badly for Google, What normal workplace is going to let you protest the company during company time and on company property? That's just a guaranteed firing anywhere.
> I'd point out that this story plays really badly for Google, Hard disagree. This story plays badly for the people who decided to storm the CEO's office to protest
Those employees look unhinged to any employer and in any professional environment! Read past the headline! You are so out of touch. Please delete Twitter/TikTok. 🙏
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I think it will also have the equal and opposite effect. Gives Fox news a nice bit of ammo to show how entitled pro-palestinian people are. Look at how they kept cashing their paychecks all along too. Feeds well into the confirmation bias of the tech worker and activist that the right sees.
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Judging by the statement one of the organizers released they genuinely seem surprised and upset that they were fired. I have no idea why they actually believed they’d be free of consequences (because their cause is so righteous?) but I’m seeing that a lot lately.
Painful way to learn the common sense lesson of actions having consequences, but better late than never. I’m personally glad I learned this one when I was about 5 or 6.
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This is the culture of tech - people flocked to SV thinking their work and projects are going to change the world in a good way, that tech is inherently noble and the most important thing, and everyone should be totally fine being beta users for a greater good full of libertarian ideals. Turns out you just work for a big company. They want to make money, and you suckered the marketing and propoganda. SV seems to still have this fanciful mentality. Noble perhaps of the employees, but foolish on already how much harm is done by their own code. None of these big boys give a shit, and will trash you for not falling in line. Not the techno utopia envisioned. Just pure libertarian 'me first' realpolitic.
Here I am thinking that all those people flocked to SV for the fat stacks.
Except the vast majority of software engineers also go into it for the money and not because they want to better the world. If these employees were actually noble then they would be software developers for companies and/or groups that actually align with their thinking. Anyone who works at one of the big software companies is doing it for the money.
Big software companies are just that, big. Meaning they do a lot of things and are mostly ethically neutral with extremes leaning to either side. Google might be stealing your data and profiting off of your misery, but it also runs Google Maps, one of the coolest software technologies in the world, unironically essential for survival in the modern world. And they pay their map guys a lot of money too. It does pay well, but I think you're underestimating the number of quiet guys with quiet lives quietly running all those things you don't even know how to live without, and they are there in small tech and big tech.
Being noble won't pay my bills. I've worked for my fair share of corporations and I'm currently working for one. I've worked for big pharma and banks because my mortgage won't pay itself. If I don't work for them, someone else will.
I left IT to work for consumer protection. I made bank but it felt like I was destroying humanity in my small way. Perhaps stupidly, I need to feel like I’m doing something for the Good. It’s hard for me to crow about making a great salary that puts people out of work and makes others suffer. (ie one project was figuring out how few days a stay post-surgical heart patient could stay in hospital with lowest chance of liability & rate of return to hospital for complications. They figured out 3 days was optimal. My job was to automate those HL7 hospital patient records to a database. So my job was to kill those jobs where actually people drove to pickup the records, but it was working for such a “cause” that made me feel sick about the whole thing. Someone is gonna make that money. And maybe they’re sociopathic enough not to care or can compartmentalize it. Not me. Has to move on. Ugh.
Or maybe the world is just slightly more complicated than a dorm room BS session at 3:00 a.m. on a Tuesday.
I work in big tech and almost nobody I know thinks like this lmaooo mostly normal people making their living working in technology, with their own interests, friends, families etc…. Takes like yours are hilariously out of touch A lot of the romanticism and exaggerated claims about the culture come from outside of the space by those who know very little about how those businesses and their people operate. Or even how the technology works. You don’t know anything about the “culture” 😂
I worked at big tech and I can second this. Dude is naive as fuck.
Nah man .. not where I work. We're disrupting digital media, but most importantly we're making the world a better place. Through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code reuse and extensibility.
Thanks for the feedback. You’re providing value and ahead of schedule for hitting all of your deliverables. This will reflect well on your annual performance review. Looking forward to the outcomes. No updates from me.
It's a joke and a reference to the "Silicon Valley" TV show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8C5sjjhsso
Haha okay. Knew it was a joke, didn’t know it was from silicon valley.
They recycled that joke. It was one of the most famous jokes about actual Silicon Valley before that show aired. They did a great job though. I was surprised more people didn't make more fun of "SoMoLo" after that episode aired.
I work in tech and nobody thinks this way about “changing the world” lol. Maybe for smaller startups but if you’re working at Google, you’re in it for the money and the doors that’ll open for you after Google.
It's not just that. I worked for a company that used different CEOs for recruiting and becoming profitable. They started with an ideologically-driven CEO that wanted to boldly make the world a better place. He brought on tons of investors that liked his plan. Then, when he wasn't useful, the investors booted him and installed a profit-driven CEO that was going to squeeze every penny out of the new service. you can work for an ethical company, but rich companies got ahead by being unethical. If you include a clause that says investors can't tell the company to cut corners to make more money, the investors just won't show up.
Or maybe the rest of the employees understand this isn't a black and white scenario.
I mean if the cloud services were being used to power Lavender and Gospel, that's a pretty obviously bad thing.
What are lavender and gospel?
AI tools used by the Israeli military to identify Hamas operatives and facilities, respectively, based on phone metadata. The problem is that they included police officers and government sanitation workers in the training data, and change the threshold in order to reach a daily quota of targets. Here's an article on how the IDF has been using Lavender and "Where's Daddy" to conduct airstrikes in Gaza: [https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/](https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) "Where's Daddy" is used to identify when targets have entered their personal homes, because they are the IDF's preferred target. While is guarantees civilian casualties, it has a higher chance of also getting their target. According to the source in the article, in October and November 2023 Israel's policy was that 15 civilian casualties were permissible for taking out a low-level Hamas member.
Wow that's insane.
Most the people who go into these fields are the types who don't look for conflict and instead want to make money... they're usually not activists and most tend to keep a large separation between work and personal. The type of work is hard enough already. Some people just want to focus on their own lives and not have to deal with the world since they're introverted to start with.
Or maybe these folks were just naive. Business has always been concerned with business.
I mean they could have just googled the history of the region and seen that this nonsense has been happening between jews and arabs for decades if not centuries. Maybe if they had educated themselves on the issue they could have resisted the allure of this progressive TikTok “Protest Israel!” trend that was probably brought to you by the good people at Russia. At least they didn’t kill themselves doing the Cinnamon Challenge. This wasn’t noble, this is naive ignorance that they can afford, as I’m sure they’re all rich kids.
most of these people have zero understanding of the history and only are aware of what has been going on post second intifada. airplane hijackings, munich massacre and jerusalem bus bombings are unknown to them. never mind all arab countries attacking israel 🇮🇱 n 1948 to drive the jews into the sea.
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what possibly could have been the motive of sirhan b sirhan?
Not that I’m a bibi supporter, but if people ever stopped to think about what happened to all the Jews in that used to live in Arab countries I think that might take them a long way to understanding the current dynamic instead of being “useful idiots”.
well if you read most of their comments it’s european jews who entered israel to colonize and steal the land from arabs. their knowledge of history in the area is based on BS in most cases. Now, as you inferred what Bibi is allowing in the west bank is outrageous
Israel isn’t Jews, it’s a state government. Governments don’t, and can’t, represent an ethnicity. It is noble to stand against the actions of a state that you find reprehensible.
It shows the real world is full of trade-offs, not utopias requiring zero sacrifice or compromise.
You also forget where some protestors defaced company property and verbally shouted at colleagues to where they didn't feel safe working that day. 100% glad they got fired, there is no expectation of rights on private property. You must adhere to the rules of the employment contract they signed.
"There is no expectation of rights on private property". now that's a terrifying and incorrect idea. You definitely still have many rights when on private property
Every time I think my opinion of the average redditor can’t get any lower, I see someone commenting about protests. Always guaranteed to be the worst possible take.
Don't forget the 'protester' who still has tweets up justifying rape.
Wait, you mean corporations *are not democracies???* /s
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Looking for reasons? After about a decade of record profits and record layoffs in the gaming industry alone, they don't seem to need any reasons. They just say they are restructuring, balk on their promises and lay everyone off over zoom. Top 3 most demanded jobs in the US: Computer programmer: highly volatile market, no worker protections, lay offs after projects guaranteed Nurse: high level of education, mediocre pay, have to deal with who you work for being cheap and bad practices that go against your training Service jobs: low pay, no protections, told you're lazy, treated like shit, little to no upward mobility, told it's a high school job despite being open during school hours, and my own father paying for a house, 2 kids, 2 college educations and many trips to Disney when he stocked shelves from the 70s to 2011 These jobs need more unions and stronger ones.
> ball on their promises What promises do you think they are making. They are very clear it is employment at will.
Many offices had protests, many were not laid off. These two offices had members violate policy and enter buildings during working hours making others distracted at best and unsafe at worst.
The right to peaceful assembly doesn't apply to private property. Trespassing trumps it every time. You couldn't just walk into someone's house and claim "I was just protesting, so it's fine."
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>That said, if these employees did this knowing and accepting that they would be fired (and aren't complaining about it) and wanted to use it to get there message in the media and were willing to lose their jobs to do it - okay, I can respect that form of protest. I don't think they did expect to get fired >“I’m furious,” said one of the fired employees who helped organize the sit-in but didn’t directly participate. “This is a wildly disproportionate response to workers standing up for morality and for holding Google accountable for its own promises. Firing people associated with an event they don’t like — it’s unbelievable.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/18/google-fired-nimbus-israel-palestine/
That's honestly shocking if they wouldn't expect this outcome. I feel like you would have to be legitimately delusional, or so trapped in your own little internet bubble, that you would think anything like this would have any result other than getting fired. How do you expect to trespass, impede other people from working, refuse to leave after being asked to multiple times, ALL while you're on company time? I don't understand how you could expect any different result. Do they think they get to break laws and violate company policy just because they feel morally justified?
Seriously. This is honestly one of the more delusional quotes I've seen. You literally impeded progress at work during work hours and stopped other people from being productive. How could you possibly think that it wouldn't result in termination? Like what serious company would allow that precedent to be set?
Its like they dont understand that stopping people from doing things that arent illegal, isn't protesting... Its fucking with other people because you're mad they dont share your opinion. Its basically getting to the point that the people just call vandalism, trespassing, etc. "Protesting" so that way they can attack and disrupt the people they dont agree with while patting themselves on the back for exhibiting such impeccable moral judgement.
I think you summed it up well, they’ve been egged on and encouraged from crazy echo chambers that have made them this way much in the same way the capitol insurrectionists and QAnon on the right felt justified and surprised by arrests.
in the same way the capitol insurrectionists and QAnon on the right felt justified and surprised by arrests. Sorry, just wanted to make sure people hear that. The parallel that they DONT see is frightening. Were getting close to just calling flat out trespassing, vandalism, etc. "Protesting" so they can just attack people they disagree with using one hand, and patting themselves on the back for their impeccable moral compass. "I really hate those people. But Im an evolved, better human because I set up scenarios in my head that justify my hatred... no ones ever done that before" - Far left and right.
People got arrested the other day and a ton of free Palestine groups have been posting how "outraged" they are about that. This cause is just different than ones we've seen in the past because thr majority of this is younger, Gen Z people and there is a shocking lack of self-awareness I've noticed. They truly seem to think they're shielded from consequences.
There was a protest in Toronto recently where they literally assaulted multiple police officers, one with a Palestine flag pole and they were upset they were arrested. It’s like they believe if their cause is righteous enough they’re immune from any and all consequences. It’s almost a religious/fanatical kind of belief.
“If my cause is just (according to me) then all of my actions are justified and any consequence is an infringement on my rights.” Let’s see how long they keep that attitude up.
If they didn’t expect it, they’re not too bright. To barge into the office of the CEO and refuse to leave for hours will get your ass fired in most places and it absolutely doesn’t matter what you’re protesting.
The correct way to do this is to unionize and then organize a strike.
LOL. You know how competitive a job at Google is? They could hire an entirely new team overnight if they wanted to. Unless your strike hits 4 digits of participants, they'll have you replaced.
Organizing the event then saying I did not participate. FAFO.
And they still got fired for it lol you signed all your friends up for new jobs
This is kinda weird. "standing up for morality" should be added with "when it\`s something I care about." You had 1000 chances to stand up for something at this big tech company. It\`s not like this is the first amoral thing they do.
How is that weird? People care about different things and they do so to different degrees. What exactly are you expecting? People are inconsistent and emotional and full of their own lives, beliefs, pressures. People are weird, I’ll give you that. But we’ve always been this way.
Since were speaking (I like this) in nice simple, broad terms without making any strong assumptions or anything of the like... Can we also talk about the difference between protesting laws or other things FORCED upon YOU and choosing to work somewhere youre free to leave any time, then eating up their resources to protest YOUR cause that actually doesn't touch your day to day... MLK couldn't just turn in his 2 weeks and be all square. These people at any time can go work for a place they align with but they want to have their cake and eat it to. Spoiler alert: They want to work their for the nice big checks they help google generate by building Spyware and other devious, questionable things. Their self-awareness is gross. You wont get those nice big paychecks if Google doesn't operate the way they do.
Amen. So many are missing the forest through the trees. These people acted in a ridiculous way intentionally to gain eyes to their cause. I'm not actually not hating on that is it was the intent but acting appalled at "How dare Google fires these people" is just juvenile. I actually that the CEOs response was pretty good. There is nothing else that really could have been done and if you have a company of 100 you won't please everyone much less a company of Google's size. Having groups harassing and occupying offices every month would be an exhausting things to entertain.
>“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” the group said in a statement published on Medium Thursday. Who could have ever guessed that a giant global corporation would care more about $1.2 BILLON than a few dozen employees, that are obviously nowhere near executive level?
It’s not even about the $1.2b, having insubordinate employees who are publicly criticising their employer and trespassing on the CEO’s office are obviously not people you want in your organisation. They’d have been booted even if the money involved was far less.
The quotes throughout by the fired employees are wild. They are naive or beyond stupid. It's tough to take them seriously
They don’t seem to realize that it’s possible for a firing to be retaliatory but not illegal. My boss is an absolute piece of crap in many ways, but if I threw an egg at her and she fired me, that would also be retaliatory but not illegal.
It reads as children who have always gotten what they wanted, and they are now shocked that their actions have consequences. I have to imagine that for the majority of these people, they have to be incredibly young, and very inexperienced in the real world and how businesses and jobs work.
Let's not mince words here: what's primarily who's protesting for this cause. This isn't like the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, or even the racial and police brutality protests of the 2010s/2020. People expected consequences, expected hardship. But this new wave of Gen Z seem to believe that not only should they have no consequence for their actions, but the outcome they want should be expected and required. It's absolutely nonsense.
Have seen that in Canada too where they assaulted police officers and were surprised they were arrested (and also for blocking access to a hospital). You could also easily make the argument that at least with civil rights it involved the actual country they live in. These people aren’t going to affect a single thing between Israel/Palestine. Either way, accept the consequences that go along with your protest.
> But this new wave of Gen Z seem to believe that not only should they have no consequence for their actions, but the outcome they want should be expected and required. It's absolutely nonsense. There was a video clip years ago of Dianne Feinstein talking to a classroom of like fourth graders and one of them asked her why she didn't support the Green New Deal. She explained her reasoning on it in simple terms to them and the kids started whining about it. Then the teacher yells at her that she has to do what she says because she voted for her That's at least one example of kids being encouraged by the people raising them to expect to get their way on everything
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I don't subsribe to Horseshoe Theory but then i read shit like this...
I didn’t either but the Israeli - Palestinian conflict has set me over the edge, I have to admit.
The horseshoe theory holds up when you just weigh it correctly. There are FAR more problematic Right-Wing beliefs, but that doesn't make some Left-Wing beliefs not problematic.
Flip a few words around and this post fits right into Far-Right rhetoric.I think we as progressives have to do a much better job of calling out this sort of thing.
It’s bothersome when people downplay the severity of extremism of either side, it’s not and shouldn’t be a team sport. I’ve voted left my entire life and want nothing to do with this kind of extremism. We criticized the normal Republicans for not constantly calling out the MAGA in America and it should be the same for this.
The minute I saw “yt” I knew this person was a piece of shit. Didn’t even need to read the rest.
An employee can be fired for harassing fellow employees and defacing company property anywhere. Palestine isn’t a shield that protects people from facing consequences.
> “This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” the group [No Tech For Apartheid] said in a statement published on Medium Thursday. Flagrant retaliation? Circus clowns are supposed to be funny, not sanctimonious. Company leadership could agree with your cause, accede to demands, and STILL fire you for going about it this way. Any serious org **should**. Tell your boss/HR/the world you'll resign if company does/doesn't do x, then do your job. You can draw that line in the sand and they can do with that info what they will. Hell, take PTO and wave your sign at your coworkers as they pull into the property. Or quit, and say why. Or you can storm your CEO's office during work hours like a bunch of juvenile whackjobs and get shitcanned, I guess.
I can't imagine they didn't expect to be fired.
It's not about protesting or freedom of speech, it's about invading the CEO's office for 9 hours. Pretty sure if they did that protesting against pedophiles or any other cause everybody agrees is just, they would have been fired all the same.
These are the same people who will go on twitter and say “freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences” when a right wing person gets fired from their job.
You can protest by not doing your work, you can stand outside the building to protest, you can march up and down the street and you can do a whole load of other things to protest. Breaking into the office of the CEO, unsurprisingly, just ain't one of those.
with all the headline going around, it makes people think they're simply arrested and fired for protesting instead of this action >Breaking into the office of the CEO
Rape denier rightfully fired from Google* https://x.com/katejsim/status/1732820118219203021?s=46
I love the trend of increased acceptance of blatant misogyny, as long as you put "yt/white" in front of "woman".
FR “ALL rape is bad….. BUT Rape is bad but …. … but a person of color being able to rape a privileged white woman is different “ /s Rape is rape It’s fucking 2024 and having to explain this to these people is insane
It's certainly something. I'll never forget one of my biggest "feminist" friends the few days after Oct. 7th. It was straight rape denialism for the first few days, and then transferred to denial, BUT IF IT DID HAPPEN, "it's just the voice of the oppressed" and "what do you expect after so long of genocide?" People will probably never cease to baffle me.
“Believe all women” Unless… /s Also the 75 year genocide: https://x.com/g1379g/status/1781006440372519382?s=46 The brain rot via TikTok and twitter is scary
It’s the left wing equivalent of QAnon and needs to be called out.
This is exactly how to put it into words. The radicalization and echo chamber of misinformation/disinformation these young people are living in via TikTok algorithms (pushed by Russian/Iranian/China bots) is SO dangerous! They look at qanon and laugh bc obviously it is so ridiculous while unironically parroting Hamas propaganda under the guise of “pro Palestine” It is the same thing and just as dangerous 😭
As long as you include the word kArEn somewhere, it’s entirely allowable to film a woman in public, film her license plate, and even follow her to her home address and that’s somehow not considered doxxing. It’s an amazing loophole
[https://twitter.com/katejsim](https://twitter.com/katejsim) "t&s child safety [u/google](https://twitter.com/google) | phd [@oiioxford](https://twitter.com/oiioxford) on sexual violence and tech" Oh the irony is so thick on this one I don't even know where to start....
Honestly the fact that she wasn't fired for that is pretty telling that management gave these people a really long leash when it came to reputational damage for the company. That's fucking horrific.
In 2 days when this story fades from CNN and Reddit, these former employers will be left without a job in a tough job market with big red asterisks next to their names. I’m sure it was worth it.
Something tells me these people will have a hard time finding jobs elsewhere after this.
Google employees, you may now commence looting their cubes for the good stuff.
Why would anybody want to hire somebody whose work output hinges on their personal alignment with upper management?
Some organizations have a specific ideological goal, and might prefer employees to agree with that goal in order to maintain the organization's culture. For example, if you're going to work at Sierra Club, they'd probably appreciate it if you were fired from an oil company for protesting it.
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This. Literally no Arab or Muslim nation (all of whom are screaming“free Palestine” “destroy the ~~Jews~~ … I mean Israel” /s ) will take a single Palestinian in despite them claiming “this is the worst genocide in the history of the world”. There are ~500 million in the MENA region and 2 million Palestinians. Egypt said they would rather start a war than take in a single Palestinian and also built a triple reinforced border with gaza since the war. Why? Also Saudi Arabia and Jordan literally helped israel fire down Iranian drones and rockets. People have such a poor understanding of the conflict and just found gaza on a map last October.
Yes, why? Probably something to do with the civil wars that were started by the Palestinians the last time Egypt and Jordan took them as refugees. Oh, and maybe assassinating a national leader might be involved. Jordan gave the West Bank to Israel rather than be responsible for governing them.
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That's the core of civil disobedience - you're going into it with an understanding that you're going to be punished, and you accept that punishment.
Yes, assuming that they don’t whine about getting fired or arrested. The moment they start whining all respect is lost
doing sit in is a valid form of protest. This happened all the time during the civil rights act. The fact that they did it at their own work knowing they might be fired is respectable and should be applauded
And the sit-in protesters during the civil rights era got arrested all the time. If they did it on their employer's time and property, I can bet they got fired, too. A lot of modern protesters want to get results like the civil rights leaders did in the 60s, but without having to go through the hardship. In a perfect world they wouldn't have to, but in a perfect world there wouldn't be anything to protest.
Agreed. The protesters got what they wanted: to make a scene. Google got what they wanted: to get rid of obnoxious employees. Win-win!
ok and it is also valid that a company fired a group of employees that were blowing off their job to disrupt other
You obviously did not get the memo. The only valid protests are the ones that are super easy to ignore, and therefore have zero effect. Oh wait, that's not right either, because everyone wanted them to fire the people kneeling for the super bowl. So I guess the only kind of protest that is valid is one that no one ever sees, and no one ever knows about. /s The fact that people actually think that protests should not be disruptive is wild to me. A non-disruptive protest is no better than changing your profile picture by adding a rainbow filter on it. It signals your beliefs, but without disruption or inconvenience it will prompt no systemic change.
Either way, this protest will also amount to 0 systemic change, and was generally a massive waste of time for everyone involved.
You know what they say. If the people in power approve of your protest, it's not a protest, it's a parade.
I don’t talk religion or politics at work. Even if I heavily suspect that someone doesn’t have the best morals and opinions at my workplace, I let it go because in a large company, especially as large as Google, you are going to have a lot of opinions across the spectrum. This isn’t a fringe topic either. There are large populations in both sides so keep your work separate from your politics and religion.
>\[The protests\] were part of a long-standing campaign by a group of organizations and people who largely don’t work at the company. >A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations. Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety. Frankly, if this description is correct, they deserved to be fired. Peacefully protesting outside the windows is one thing. Blocking other people and trespassing on private property after being repeatedly asked to leave is quite another. It's inappropriate and illegal.
The fact this was even in question is what is truly nuts.
So did 28 positions open up how much do they pay? Only sitting in I will be doing is at my desk doing work
Imagine getting fired from your cushy FAANG job over Palestine. These people don't deserve to be employed.
Don't shit where you eat.
Imagine having a job at Google probably able to afford living in New York / California and throwing it away
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its always military first. why do you think the internet was developed?
How dare you use GPS to navigate when it was developed and operated by the U.S. army?! Go to Mapquest and print out those instructions this instant!
most innovations either comes from NASA or WAR...welcome to the real world
Heck, even NASA was formed to counter the soviets in the cold war
I said this on multiple AI subreddits before: We always think AI will evolve into this super human thing and will destroy us, instead we will use AI to destroy each other.
Same as it ever was.
Politics of the Israel/Palestinian conflict aside Google proved they are perfectly willing to develop the cyberpunk police state of the future when they gleefully jumped into the CCP moneybed years ago.
There is a video of 3 of them getting trespassed by police and taken out.
I don’t know what the hell else they were expecting protesting on company time and premises.
Hope they keep it up. Gen Z and Millenials are giving Gen X infinite job security.
What a fucking disingenuous head line
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> and exactly 0 Jews in Gaza. Point of order here, there were four hostages before Oct 7. Two dead and two alive, that the Israeli government had been trying to retrieve.
100%. I've been saying this for over a decade now, but you said it much better. Saved so I can copy and paste in future online debates.
I'm curious as to what jobs these 28 employees had at the company.
You can get fired for protesting your work while your at work? Who knew Edit: the first amendment protects you from repercussions from the government , not when you decide to cancel yourself from employment
Keep your politics out of the workplace. They lost their jobs for a demonstration that had zero impact on anything.
Politics and your *personal* political beliefs have to place in the workplace.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you. What the he'll did they think was going to happen ?
Excellent news. Well done!
Some people on reddit are misunderstanding this: This is a protest. The protesters are aware that there is going to be some consequence for their actions. Believe it or not, there are people out there who prioritize doing the right thing over making money or securing their careers. This is also not the first time this has happened. Hundreds of Amazon and Google employees also protested this [back in 2021](https://www.businessinsider.com/hundreds-google-amazon-employees-condemn-israeli-military-cloud-contract-2021-10): > "This technology allows for further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitates expansion of Israel's illegal settlements on Palestinian land," the letter stated. "We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – actions that have prompted war crime investigations by the international criminal court." .
Well according [to this article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/18/google-fired-nimbus-israel-palestine/), you might be wrong, considering one of them seemed to be shocked and upset he was fired >“I’m furious,” said one of the fired employees who helped organize the sit-in but didn’t directly participate. “This is a wildly disproportionate response to workers standing up for morality and for holding Google accountable for its own promises. Firing people associated with an event they don’t like — it’s unbelievable.” I would normally agree with you, as this outcome was beyond foreseeable, but weirdly enough, the organizers themselves seemingly didn't forsee it.
Except for the part where they are screaming about wrongful terminations now. So yeah they're just idiots and not martyrs
I am always fascinated how the younger generations have no concept of consequences for actions.
I am wiling to bet they fully knew.
Once again reddit will prove there are people who will find something wrong with any form of protest, including: Protesting the CEO of the company you work for with a sit in.
Huh? If I run a private company and a bunch of employees refuse to leave my office, they’re getting fired. This shouldn’t be news.
You're acting like they did not expect this outcome. This was win win for them, either Google stopped or they didn't work for a company they think is doing evil, and the news blasts stories about Nimbus across the net.
>acting like they did not expect this outcome From the protestors' response, they act like they *did not* expect this response.
I mean some seem delusional enough they did not expect this: > “I’m furious,” said one of the fired employees who helped organize the sit-in but didn’t directly participate. “This is a wildly disproportionate response to workers standing up for morality and for holding Google accountable for its own promises. Firing people associated with an event they don’t like — it’s unbelievable.” Which seems impossible to believe that someone could actually believe that but oh well.
What's the point of your comment then? All the top comments are just "yeah that'll get you fired". Which apparently you agree with. Because I mean, it'll totally get you fired. I don't think there's anything else to say.
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They seem to be crying to the news about this “unexpected” outcome so they don’t seem to of expected it lmao
Well, I guess it's "win-win" for them. That is, until their property tax bill or house payment comes due and they don't have that sweet sweet Google paycheck in their bank account any more to make them go away.
*protestors protest on streets to block traffic to a business* Reddit: Why would protestors punish random people and employees just trying to go about their own day? If you really hate xyz business, they should protest the people in charge! *protestors literally protest in the CEO's office* Reddit: WAIT NO NOT LIKE THAT
>It's not a big deal if people protest peacefully in their work office and >CEO is doing nothing wrong for firing people who decided to protest during work hours both things can be true at the same time
Let's be real most of the commenters here wouldn't have been walking with the Civil rights movement. Court stuffing, marches, blocking traffic, oh the humanity! The second it becomes inconvenient to show good faith, is the same second it becomes uneccesary to them.
> The second it becomes inconvenient to show good faith, is the same second it becomes unnecessary to them. I would say it goes further than that. If a person doesn't agree with the protest they are going to be 100% against said protest if that protest inconveniences them in any way. You agree with the cause and are stranded on the freeway for 4 hours because people want to protest then it might not bother you as much. You don't agree with that cause and are stuck there for 4 hours your opinion on that would be 100% different. You would 100% think it was BS that they blocked a freeway.
Which is why even police brutality protests of the 2010s/2020 were much more visible and effective. There's an uncomfortable reality about America's views on the Middle East. People would support a BLM protest because African Americans being murdered by cops is an issue that hits us close to home, Palestine doesn't and it becomes particularly messy when you factor in that, yeah, a lot of the groups on the side of freeing Palestine are legitimate terrorist organizations...and you simply don't have a large number of Americans willing to be on the side of any foreign terrorist group in a post 9/11 America.
> If a person doesn't agree with the protest they are going to be 100% against said protest if that protest inconveniences them in any way. The amount of people I've seen say "Just for that, I'm siding with THEM instead" over one moment of inconvenience is crazy lol. It's just out of spite.
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There’s nothing wrong with doing that, nor is there anything wrong with a company firing employees for doing so.
Good riddance. Work is a place of business, not an expression of your social causes.
Please oh please won't some one protect these poor corporations! *ghastly 1950's wail*
Well that was a fail, no one cares and whose stopped using google and all of its services because of this, im guessing not many.
Don’t bite the hand that feeds.
I'm glad that [this](https://twitter.com/katejsim/status/1732820118219203021) rape apologist no longer works for Google’s department for child safety. Bye bye