During a presentation by an executive with Google’s Israel branch on Monday, a Google Cloud engineer stood up and shouted, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.” They were later fired.
“Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a coworker who was giving a presentation — interfering with an official company-sponsored event,” Google spokesperson Bailey Tomson says in an emailed statement. “This behavior is not okay, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies.”
I guess they’ve gone from ‘disruptive’ to ‘disruption-averse’.
The context was Gaza though, so I mean neutrally surveillance can mean lots of things: security cameras at a convenience store, a security contract for the government or another corporation. What this person was protesting was supporting Isreal and it’s war/control over Gaza. The article sort of misses the point and the headlines really kills it.
I assume that user referred to “surveillance” in a broad sense as being more complicated than simply general population data collection. For example, you can be against some data collection, all data collection, no data collection, or other specific circumstances of data collection based on its content or use case.
<span style="color:#323232;">First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Because I was not a socialist.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Because I was not a trade unionist.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> Because I was not a Jew.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
</span>
Remember the Turner Diaries, on the Day of the Rope they don’t kill the minorities or queer folks or other “lesser thans”, they kill all the white people who are “race traitors” because they’re not also fascists.
You are never safe from them, you’re just further down the list than who they’re after at this moment.
Got news, clicks, eyeballs and engagement from the likes of you. Does that equal Google making the change? No, but every little insignificant bit adds up more than cynical internet comments do
I think this guy did what he felt he needed to do and it doesn’t have anything to do with us. Maybe it will spark change and maybe it won’t. The only thing I know for sure is that being a self righteous prick on the internet about his actions isn’t going to accomplish anything positive.
I think if he wasn’t looking for publicity, he would have tried to organize within his company. This kind of posturing stuff is just about image.
Unless he’s some mental child or something, that just “couldn’t hold his intense feelings inside anymore” or whatever.
He could have done something real. This kind of petulant bullshit isn’t it though. It’s just not how the corporate world works, it won’t move anything, and actually makes his cause look more childish.
In my defense that was a qualified statement. I did not just say “that guy is some mental child” or somesuch. It is just one very unpopular interpretation of his actions.
There is no such thing as “effective protest”. There is action and inaction. Protest is an ineffective middle ground that allows the enemy to target, harass and arrest you.
I doubt there’s anybody in America past elementary school that hasn’t already talked about Gaza. If you want a protest to work, it has to apply some form of pressure. An easily replaced engineer with thousands of people lined up for his job quitting is not doing that. It just makes people that are already progressive on the issue feel better, which accomplishes zilch, except profit-generating clicks for news articles.
If he was talking about the Sudanese civil war or something that might be a different story. Not Gaza though.
Go ahead and describe what exactly he should have done to make an effective protest. In the meantime, consider that perhaps he simply did not want to be a cog in a genocidal machine as he clearly stated.
Look, I respect the guy for having the right opinion. But that’s not good enough in the real world. Never was, it takes more than that. If just being a decent fellow was enough to fix problems, we’d have fixed them all already.
Harder decisions are required, it’s not easy. If he’d have leaked something, or maybe gotten himself fired for simply not-disruptively speaking out and sued or something, or organized a walk-out or whatever, that’d be admirable.
This kind of “oh people on the internet are gonna like this” move is just immature though. It doesn’t do jack shit. Standing up isn’t good enough, just gets your fucking head blown off. That’s just how the world works. Entrenched power isn’t some dumb pushover, otherwise generations of activists would have pushed it over already.
The fact there is conversation around this topic and it’s getting traction means humanity has the ability to ponder this. If human perception is changed by the conversation then his act has created an entire change in society. It just depends. Similar to the shot heard round the world. You never know what that “shot” will be.
You can handwave it away as some magical maybes if you want, but I prefer a more quantitative, substantial, evidence-based understanding. Less poetry, more fact.
I agree with you 1000% tbh. It’s just a sign of change if things like this happen more and more. Then we start to see a factual pattern. As of now. Agree 1000%
Fair enough. That hasn’t been my experience for the last almost 2 years. Teams in our org have been told that if they lose people they can’t hire replacements. Shit’s sucked
I’ve also been hearing about massive layoffs at tons of the biggest companies. I’d be surprised if they were still hiring, obviously.
Would be nice if that were the case. However, a reputation or being known at least in the tech industry for being a “problem” employee definitely can harm your options.
Yeah it’s hard to shame someone for not springing to challenge their employer on every little thing the moment they become aware of it. Sometimes it takes a bit for things to pile up to the point it’s too much.
I absolutely understand the sentiment of that engineer, but I also understand why they were fired. Maybe they wanted to get fired to make their point, but if they didn’t, yelling at an executive during a meeting is always a good way to get yourself fired no matter what that executive is saying.
So while I don’t want anyone building such technology either, I hope that person knew the consequences they were facing.
Well, first of all, one doofus doesn’t mean they are all doofus. Secondly, that person is an ethicist, not an engineer, even though Futurism calls him both, they are distinct and this guy was always making it seem like he was more than he was. Thirdly, smart people can do idiotic things, but that didn’t make them idiotic, maybe if they are habitually doing idiotic things, then sure then they are idiotic, but one idiotic thing does not make an idiot, just like I’ve misspelling does not make someone not fluent.
Even if this one ethicist was an engineer, that doesn’t mean all engineers are idiotic, that my friend would be idiotic to assert such a thing. I contend that, by and large, engineers are not idiotic. Does that mean they’re aren’t idiots? No, don’t be silly.
In the US - no. In some European countries, totally. The fact I can work without being worried that I’m going to get fired because I’ve upset some MBA is great for my mental health.
I find it hard to believe that, even in Europe, standing up in the middle of a presentation and accusing your boss of being complicit in genocide, even if it’s true, would not be a fireable offense. Otherwise there would be a lot of yelling matches.
You can get fired, but not “on the spot” and at worst, the employer has to pay your next month’s paycheck. That stands even if you were fired with good cause.
So here’s what would have happened, were this a Dutch company. Employee does the thing, employer says that they should leave, and they offer 1-2 months of a severance so the employee resigns on their own volition and the company avoids going to court. If the employee has more than 2 braincells, he gets a lawyer (there are good pro bono lawyers who work for free if you’re not well paid enough to get one). Lawyer advises asking for 6-8 months.
Company has two choices:
Pay 6-8 months of severance.
Drag the employee into labour court, which usually leans towards employees, and try to publicly argue about whether what they are doing is legal. Obviously it’s not going to about whether it’s about Google committing genocide or not, but obviously the media won’t care, and the words “Google” and “genocide” are going to be in the news in various combinations for a good year. All the while the company has to keep paying the employee, the most they can do is to order him to give back all equipment and prohibit him from contacting coworkers.
I guess the difference is that instead of being fired, you most likely get to leave on your own terms that you dictate largely. What I mean is you don’t get fired, you resign, and can refer to the incident as you have resigned. If you don’t want to resign, you can most likely stay in the fucked up work relationship.
I guess the main difference is not what you get, but that Google would have to argue in court that it is fine to fire the guy. And the court case comes before the firing, so if it lasts 10 years like all those cases you hear about, the guy keeps being employed.
I have exactly 1 trick to get away with letting out your righteous anger at executives: become such a visible figure in collective action that there is no way the company could ever fire you without it being illegal retaliation. The trick is to become that visible while having plausible deniability about organizing
This isn’t the only surveillance Google is enabling. You could MAYBE argue genocide but… let’s just say it isn’t just facebook that supports brutal regimes.
I’ve worked for… questionable companies in the past. I still argue that you more or less can’t do Research without getting blood on your hands because… blood money spends well and experiments/development without a defined product is expensive.
But… unless you are a complete moron, you understand that. Don’t get me wrong, there are a LOT of graduate students out there who never question WHY there are government grants and why their advisor is talking to Major Johnson and so forth (Val Kilmer’s Real Genius is probably the most accurate grad school movie ever made…). But you eventually figure it out. ESPECIALLY if you are working for a company and have to have a defined/target product. I know Google/Alphabet is notorious for the cutthroat/backstabbing among employees but you aren’t going to be isolated as to why you are working on a graph search algorithm or how to conceal a camera in a device.
So I don’t know if this engineer was just ridiculously ignorant or if they were hoping to “go viral” or what. But you don’t wake up one day and realize you are the baddies. You more or less realize that your first day of work and spend time deciding if that will lead to alcoholism or activism.
Usually engineers, while not always the most socially in tune people, aren’t total dumbasses. He also said (very publicly) that he refuses to do the work they are telling him to do so he’s explicitly telling them to fire him.
… Says the random internet keyboard warrior using technology and infrastructure thought-up, designed, and built by thousands or even millions of engineers over hundreds of years.
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