Four ex-Google engineers ask for federal probe of Thanksgiving week firings
The firings widened a growing rift between Google and some of its employees over the company’s handling of employee activism.
Dec. 3, 2019, 9:00 AM EST
By David Ingram
SAN FRANCISCO — The episode also adds fuel to a burning debate in the U.S. tech industry, where engineers and other tech workers are speaking out in unprecedented ways against the management of companies that for years have enjoyed a reputation for idealism. Google’s code of conduct still includes the line “don’t be evil,” a command that the fired engineers said the company hasn’t followed.
The four engineers, who spoke out for the first time in an interview Monday, said that Google’s attempts to discourage workplace organizing would backfire as workers take inspiration from the firings.
“When we win, it furthers our cause, and when we don’t win, it furthers our cause, too,” said Laurence Berland, who was a senior site reliability engineer at Google before he was fired.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything the company can do at this point,” he said.
Sophie Waldman, a software engineer who was with Google for a year and 10 months, said that before her firing, she witnessed a growing backlash within her Google office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After one recent company misstep, she said, “Someone in that room pulled out their wallet and said, ‘OK, where do I send my union dues?’”
The four planned to issue a statement Tuesday on the website Medium, cataloging Google’s actions and calling on people still at the company to take up their cause.
more:
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/four-ex-google-engineers-ask-federal-probe-thanksgiving-week-firings-n1094706?cid=eml_nbn_20191203
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