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.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/8/24094687/google-israel-project-nimbus-employee-fired
that powers genocide
Great that he’s standing up for himself!
or surveillance
…ok now why did you even send your resume to Google
Wonder when he had his “are we the baddies” moment.
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.
Funny, but it’s more complicated than reductive
What is “it” in your sentence?
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.
Sure did take him a long time to get upset about surveillance.
I still think that better late than never
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.
It takes a lot of courage to throw away your job, potentially career and livelihood, for your principles.
Guy worked at Google. Could have basically gotten a tech job anywhere with that on his resume.
My understanding is that no one’s been getting hired in tech right now due to all the hiring freezes. What world do y’all live in?
I got hired ~5 months ago at a big tech company.
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.
Work in tech. I still regularly get recruitment emails. if I had google on my LinkedIn, I assume I would be getting at least twice as many.
Really just the job, right? They can still get hired for their next job to not be evil.
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.
Which tech company would that be?
I’m sure your noble sacrifice for the cause dwarfs his.
Thinking these are some kind of noble sacrifices that somehow create real change in the world is pretty funny. That’s just not how corporations work.
You think some google CEO is gonna go “oh gee, that engineer sure had a point. we better start caring about ethics again.”?
There’s a difference between clickbaity stunts and effective protest.
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.
The guy should have organized the resistance or nothing at all. There is nothing in between right?
If that action made just one person rethink their ethics, then it was worth it.
And now that it is in the news, more people will see it and it will affect more people.
Not everything is a fucking movie.
Funny when sudden, out-of-place emotional outbursts are very cinematic, where slow, careful, well-thought-out, planning is really not.
Mental child? Are you ok? Maybe go outside and interact with some people not on the internet a little, because you kind of seem like you need to
Sudden emotional outbursts are not mature.
Mental child is not a mature thing to call someone
This was likely preplanned…
Hey, we’re talking about it. Maybe it will inspire others to do the same.
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.
I meant we’re talking about him taking a stand.
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.
You sure do seem to have it all figured out… 🙄
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%
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
It’s not cynical to understand that some methods are more practical than others.
Shifting the goal posts doesn’t get you more internet points
I think I’ve been pretty consistent actually.
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.
Now that’s an interesting stance. Depends what kind of protest you are talking about I suppose.
Nobody was worried when it was happening in the town over
Nobody was worried when it was their neighbor
Everybody lied to themselves when it was their friend
And by the time it came to them there was nothing left but panic and dread.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.Ironic with the switcheroo on the last group
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.
Funny, but kind of not
They
Perchance
Unless…?
Would that it were.
Removed by mod
Always
That’s the right word to use in this case regardless of your feelings on pronouns.
I’m not the other commenter, but I’m fairly certain they’re making a play on the title of this post, which just ends with “They.”
I’ve missed that. Im dumb
We’ve all been there :-)
It’s 2024
I think it’s a joke about the title ending at They, at least I assumed so.
👍
An astute observation
Proper English.
They’re referring to the title.
“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’.
World according to google.
Abetting a genocide? A-OK.
Speaking out against aiding a genocide? FORBIDDEN
Wild how much “don’t be evil” Was holding them back, innit?
The only one abiding by Google’s original Don’t Be Evil motto.
That’s why they had to fire him.
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.
Getting fired is what makes this a story worth writing about. It was intentional.
If they achieved their goal, fine. I am glad they spoke out.
I find genocide to be worse than “breaking corporate code of conduct”.
Okay? But that doesn’t mean they didn’t do something that would have gotten them fired in any company.
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.
I’ve known a lot of engineers and only known two who weren’t total dumbasses. Are you sure about your assertion?
… 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.
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
You don’t engage in that kind of direct action without being fully aware of the consequences. An engineer at Google is not that idiotic
You don’t engage in that kind of direct action without being fully aware of the consequences.
I would hope not, but you never know.
An engineer at Google is not that idiotic
I definitely would not go that far. https://futurism.com/blake-lemoine-google-interview
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.
Finally, I don’t think that this was idiotic, so…
They were probably trying to get the other engineers to follow their lead. It doesn’t seem like that happened.
“I am Spartacus!”
Everyone else: “Yeah, he’s Spartacus.”
🤣🤣🤣🤣 good one
Weird assumption to make based on nothing.
If that was their plan, they really should have found out who was with them before doing it.
I actually don’t understand their sentiment.
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.
I bet if they yelled something less controversial like “We want more money!” wouldn’t have ended in firing. Perhaps in disciplining instead.
I doubt it. Engineers don’t get to yell at executives at meetings.
Please don’t disturb the overlords while they distribute kool-aid and tell you how good the kool-aid is good for you.
Do you think you could get away with something like that at your job?
Could I get away? It’s a gamble I guess. But I’ve raised my voice at meetings more than once in my life and never lost my job over it.
To be fair, I’ve never worked in a big company like google, so they can replace you yesterday.
But if you are at that point, you are ready to lose/switch jobs.
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.
Respect.
respect
Good for him, but the ruling class has more than enough resources to replace him.
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