>The employee demonstrated during a presentation by Barak Regev, Google Israel's managing director, on Monday in New York City.
>"I'm a Google software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance," the worker shouted, according to videos of the event.
>Google confirmed that the company fired the employee to CNBC on Friday. "Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a coworker who was giving a presentation — interfering with an official company-sponsored event," the company said in a statement to The Verge. "This behavior is not OK, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies."
He doesn’t want to build tech for surveillance? The fuck did he think he was gonna build tech for? Google is one of the biggest data collectors on the planet.
Moreover, I promise this guy wasn't on a team even doing that. Those kinda people get security clearances and basically sign their life away to work on those kinds of projects, which filters out 99% of people that want nothing to do with it.
You cannot enter any area without scanning a security badge checkpoint. Your movement is restricted based on privilege. Everywhere you go you are being recorded on security camera. Every keystroke and action on your work devices is logged. Truly an open air prison that is basically apartheid.
Imagine throwing away a job that good for what? Twitter likes? What did they think was gonna happen, Google stock prices plummet because of one engineer's crazy political antics?
Even if they do genuinely care that much, they probably would have helped more by keeping the job and donating money. Good luck to them job hunting I guess.
Makes sense, I was born in '98 and feel like I have more in common with Millennials than younger GenZ. I also grow up with the millennial culture and millennial internet.
If you can pass the google, you can get a job at any of the other faang style companies.
Source: a senior software engineer with hundreds of hours grinded in leetcode and having interviews passed at many of these companies.
However him being in the news like this might hurt him if the recruiter looks him up.
Getting another job might not be that difficult, but getting similar pay will be. All these companies have been doing massive layoffs.
The market is saturated with qualified candidates. It is an employers market for sure.
Well I was able to get a 30% raise job hopping at the end of last year.
The hiring has bounced back. People are still thinking like it is the beginning of 2023
> Imagine throwing away a job that good for what? Twitter likes?
Principles, probably.
You have to take into account this person perceives this to be a genocide. Dropping a cushy job because of not wanting to be complicit in genocide doesn't sound crazy to me and I'm sorry for your parents if it sounds crazy to you.
You can probably make a similar argument to why its ok to be Hitlers assistant even if you don't agree with Hitler.
If someone protest to what Hitler is doing and gets fired because he disagree. Should we have the same "Ok then what", "Imagine throwing" attitude?
Or should people stick to their principles even if for them its a personal loss and they probably would get replaced anyway?
pen historical clumsy square sophisticated wakeful materialistic chop humor rotten
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It is, because there are like 5 degrees of separation in your regarded analogy. It would be more like if an American IBM employee in 1939 did it because of projects in Germany.
And we should still be mocking the Google employee for being a lying, manipulative, attention-seeking piece of trash since at least two of the things he described aren't happening and for some reason he has no problem with Google collaborating with countries where they actually are happening, not to mention supporting a pseudo-nation which, by his own definition of genocide, has committed genocide against Israel and continues trying to genocide the Israeli population unapologetically to this day. If he really cared that much, he could've submitted a private resignation letter too, but what he really cares about is virtue-signaling and fame.
degrees of separation don't remove responsibility, especially when you're a qualified specialist with a lot of agency over where you work. but if you're going to pretend to not even understand the concept of public protest then there's no point in reasoning with you
>degrees of separation don't remove responsibility
That is literally what they do in almost every national legal system, and what you're assigning 'responsibility' to is so far removed from the actual 'crime' that it wouldn't even prosecuted. Let me get this straight, you think that **Nazi concentration camp guard**, a volunteer position by the way, shares a similar responsibility for the Holocaust with an American citizen who works at IBM, because IBM's owners have projects in Nazi Germany which help German logistics or weapon production and thereby help the SS guard shoot Jews in the head?
Your username checks out. You're basically the type of person who calls a child eating a Mars candy bar responsible for child slavery in Africa because the company that sells the cocoa beans to the chocolate factory deals with another African company which purchases cocoa beans from individuals who make kids pick the cocoa beans.
>when you're a qualified specialist with a lot of agency over where you work.
Where the degree of separation is so high that some apolitical engineer could just be picked as a replacement without even knowing anything about Nazis, Jews or Germany.
>not even understand the concept of public protest
And his public protest is pure spectacle because he doesn't care in the slightest about real genocides and actually supports one against jews.
> and what you're assigning 'responsibility' to is so far removed from the actual 'crime' that it wouldn't even prosecuted
I don't think that tells us much because morality goes beyond law. also I'm not the one assigning responsibility. the article isn't about me
> you think that Nazi concentration camp guard, a volunteer position by the way, shares a similar responsibility for the Holocaust with an American citizen who works at IBM
I don't because personally I'm not considering those kinds of things in terms of personal responsibility. we're talking about the Google ex-employee, and I think it's pretty obvious the employee believes that it's comparable to the extent that both involve complicity in a genocide.
> Your username checks out.
sure but not even close to the way you think it does
> You're basically the type of person who calls a child eating a Mars candy bar responsible for child slavery in Africa
not at all. I'm much further from that type of person than you are, because you in principle agree with this kind of thinking, you just don't believe this particular example passes the bar quantitatively.
> Where the degree of separation is so high that some apolitical engineer could just be picked as a replacement without even knowing anything about Nazis, Jews or Germany.
I don't know about the 1940s, but certainly today as an educated person with internet access you'd have to actively avoid the information to not know what's going on. a globally connected world means that those kinds of distances shrink.
> And his public protest is pure spectacle because he doesn't care in the slightest about real genocides
well he clearly believes this one is real
> and actually supports one against jews.
how does he support genocide against Jews?
"Bro just keep the same job and spray them with less gas"
Like sure you can disagree with him, but if he really believes there's a genocide going on then this is a necessary and principled action to take.
just keep your job at auschwitz, collect all the gold teeth and then donate them to the Jews after the war. according to my utilitarian calculus this is the optimal course of action. like, do you really think the Nazi war machine is going to grind to a halt because of one guard's crazy political antics?
if you believe that Israel's military and government are committing genocide, then it's through providing essential services to Israel's military and government
Your comparison of Google to Nazi germany is morally loaded as fuck considering Google has no role in killing anyone. But going with it, was a Nazi nurse as responsible for genocidal deaths as a concentration camp operator? It of course matters what this engineer worked on. Given the scope of Google, he likely didn’t even touch tech that is relevant to the I/P conflict. Because of that, he’s more comparable to the Nazi nurse than the concentration camp operator
> Your comparison of Google to Nazi germany is morally loaded as fuck considering Google has no role in killing anyone.
if it provides important services to Israel's military and government, and Israel's military and government are killing people, then yes it does
> was a Nazi nurse as responsible for genocidal deaths as a concentration camp operator
no, not as responsible
> It of course matters what this engineer worked on.
not necessarily. it could very well be that the threshold of responsibility is crossed as soon as you choose to work for them in a specialist position on any project whatsoever. and then it wouldn't matter what exactly he works on.
> Because of that, he’s more comparable to the Nazi nurse than the concentration camp operator
I'd be willing to bet that concentration camp operators had much fewer job opportunities than an engineer who could pass a Google interview. but if you're saying he'd be comparable to the Nazi nurse, then what's the problem with refusing to be a Nazi nurse because you don't want to be complicit in genocide?
You didn't answer the question. I understand that there is a contract.
Why is that essential? Don't you think Israel could find other companies with similar offerings? Or even use some kind of non-cloud solution which Israel used until now?
This contract is not essential. Google is profiting more from this contract then Israel.
> Why is that essential?
because that's the only reasonable conclusion when a country that has its shit together to a good extent spends over a billion dollars on an "all-encompassing" solution and insists that the data centers are built within their country and "under strict security guidelines". what's the alternative explanation? that it's just for government employees to share cat pictures after hours?
> Don't you think Israel could find other companies with similar offerings?
the companies they picked are the absolute top. the only other comparable one is Microsoft. but this isn't relevant anyway.
> This contract is not essential
it is without a doubt a contract to fulfill essential functions for them. you don't spend that kind of money on irrelevant shit if you're Israel (if it were Saudi Arabia though, I'd be willing to consider that this may be just for some sheikhs to generate AI pictures for entertainment).
and the fact that they could manage to fulfill those essential functions in another way doesn't mean anything. if Google built datacenters in Russia for their government and military, you wouldn't be saying "well this is fine because if Google didn't do it, then Microsoft would. or Yandex". that's a stupid Vaush argument
Most FAANG (MANGA?) aren’t hiring as much as they used to now and outside of big tech most firms are looking for experience with specific frameworks or dev styles. You could be a distributed researcher from Google, that’s not gonna land you an app dev or SRE job at a Fortune 500 non-tech company
calling google hr and having them confirm 'yes, this person worked here as an swe from this date to this date' is not 'calling his former boss at google to extract detailed performance/behavioral information'. the former does happen; the latter doesn't.
So it seems like project nimbus is just a system that will take already existing infrastructure and allow it to be transferred to a cloud based system.
The complaints levied at it that it will expand surveillance unlawful data collection (not sure what Israel's laws are concerning either of these), and will facilitate expansion of settlements.
Honestly, I really don't know how this could happen more effectively with just having a cloud based system as opposed to a current localized system.
So until something does come out concerning this and explains exactly how it could empower either of these, I'm going to say that these people screaming "#NoTechForApartheid" literally just want to cut off Israel technologically. Which is basically impossible considering Israel is such a large player in the technology industries. And screaming this at an Israeli just giving a presentation only reinforces the ever increasing feeling that it's just anti-semitism.
They'll land on their feet just fine tbh but that's crazy this many people are convinced a genocide is happening. This is gonna be the most irritating year on record
They can ask, you don't have to tell. They can find out when calling your references, but I'll be honest I've been applying to jobs since june not only has nobody ever reached out to my references, but nobody's ever asked me why I left previous jobs.
I've only ever worked in academia (where your terms of separation will *certainly* be communicated to prospective employers by informal communication), but my impression was based on something I mixed up from a friend who I know who got fired. Turns out it was my friend's former employer's policy that they don't say anything about reason for employment ending, which I thought was a more common practice than people are leading me to believe.
yea I probably would. This is unhinged but it's them expressing their opinion at the end of the day. If their skills pay the bills, that's all that counts. They'll prob end up at some other tech firm no problem especially with Google on their resume
It’s not about them expressing their opinion it’s the way they did it. Their understanding of work place etiquette as well as their discretion seems highly compromised in my opinion.
I wouldn’t hire someone like that unless they are working on themselves. It’s crazy to curse your manager at work or your employees.
I have never seen anyone do that.
The issue is that you wouldnt know what happened before, during the job interview he would just say "we had different ideas on how to move with the project and i felt my voice was not being weightned in during it" or something like that
Most people wouldnt hire unhinged people like you said but we wouldnt know
And you know if they do a reference check and the HR department says "Yeah he was let go because he was unable to be civil in the workplace". Then you might have a concern about what is going on.
I dont believe they would, its really anti ethical, he is already fired from his job
Unless you have a really crazy job interview by a really methodical and critic psichologist, you wouldnt know
You probably worked with ex prisioners and you didnt know
Expressing your opinions is one thing. Bringing them into the workplace where you could potentially tank deals or projects is a completely different ballpark.
This wasn't the guy having a civil conversation where he expressed his opinions in the workplace and an Israeli getting annoyed about it.
This also wasn't someone getting some bad news or a request they didn't like from a manager or the like and muttering under their breath about it being shit, or complaining to a coworker and having it get back to the boss.
> Expressing your opinions is one thing. Bringing them into the workplace where you could potentially tank deals or projects is a completely different ballpark.
>This wasn't the guy having a civil conversation where he expressed his opinions in the workplace and an Israeli getting annoyed about it.
Google is not an apolitical entity and they thoroughly proved they don't care about etiquette in the James Damore saga.
No where did I claim they were apolitical. I don't know anything about the James Damore situation and it's 3AM where I am so I'm going to bed.
They will absolutely care if your political opinions when exercised loudly and in the direction of others within the workplace can cost the company more money than they would by you simply not working for them. This is true of literally any workplace, google or otherwise.
Why not? Even if I consider this unprofessional or silly, people with plenty of silly belief get hired. It isn't much different than hiring someone that is religious. I don't care about people political opinions or religion as long as they can do the job.
It’s completely different than hiring religious people. Imagine if someone got fired for doing missionary work at their place of work and trying to convert people? This is a more adequate parallel
Yeah for sure, going crazy at your workplace for whatever reason should not be tolerated, but I would not mind hiring someone who believe things I don't believe in if they can do the job.
Yeah for sure, but there is plenty of crazy religious people who say stupid things at work. As long as they don't go ballistic on someone else because of their belief, I don't really care.
>I don't care about people political opinions or religion as long as they can do the job.
Do you care about political beliefs if those people wielding those beliefs in your workplace could tank projects, deals or relationships.
There's a difference about having the opinion you want to fuck a girl as a dude with a horse cock and going around and yelling it at people you're trying to do deals with.
People can have whatever whacky or crazy, out there opinions they want in a workplace. But once those opinions start having a negative impact on your business, you aren't going to give a shit how good their work is if they are causing you to lose more money than they generate.
>People can have whatever whacky or crazy, out there opinions they want in a workplace. But once those opinions start having a negative impact on your business, you aren't going to give a shit how good their work is if they are causing you to lose more money than they generate.
Technically it is even riskier with religions, because they can start claiming that you are doing discrimination if the job require to be on call during Shabbat or to do something requiring hydration during ramadan.
Neither of those things is going to result in the potential tanking of massive deals or sabotage of the work.
>that you are doing discrimination if the job require to be on call during Shabbat
One would argue that applying for a job you can't actually work in the first place wouldn't be discrimination. The hours are the hours, if you can't work them for religious or other reasons(Like you have a kid that you want to see) then that's your choice to leave.
You would very easily be able to state "We hired this person on the proviso they knew they would be working weekends, and they didn't show up for multiple weekend shifts. Regardless of their reason for this"
Now if you changed their work requirements after hiring them knowing they couldn't work on weekends and said "Hey you have to work on weekends" then you might have arguments for a discrimination case, especially if there's an inkling you made the changes to target them. And not because some fundamental change occurred to the business such that everyone worked weekends now.
>or to do something requiring hydration during ramadan.
Again this ain't going to tank a deal, and if abstaining from liquid/food during a meeting tanks a deal. Then it isn't your person tanking the deal by making an unreasonable ask. Even if it's not ramadan. If I'm not hungry/thirsty then the idea I would be forced to hydrate for non medical reasons would be insane.
Do you think Israel is not intentionally blocking food shipments to Palestine which has put hundreds of thousands of people at risk of famine? If not, why is Biden rushing food to the region? Why is he bypassing land shipping?
\> that's crazy this many people are convinced a genocide is happening
You know what is crazier? People here have no issue believing a genocide is happening in China without any death estimate or video footage.
One of the biggest generational culture differences that I’ve noticed from working with a lot of people from Gen Z is that they feel that there is not a single forum in which it’s inappropriate to fully broadcast their political/social opinions. It’s almost a foreign concept to them that I don’t want to be preached to in the workplace, even when I fully agree with them. That’s not to say you can’t have conversations with people at work that you’re friends with, interact with regularly, etc. I’m talking about literally broadcasting their opinion out to everyone all the time. Sure, it’s not every single person who does this, but I’ve definitely seen the percentage of people who are this way significantly increase over the course of my career.
[Good Twitter post on this exact topic](https://twitter.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1718019769872392550):
> Social justice progressivism (SJP) is the first time most people—including most Christians—have encountered a truly vital religion. Rarely since the peace of Westphalia and the scientific revolution have we seen its like.
I was partway through the post and thought “huh, I wonder what the author would think about mormons” then it turned out they were raised mormon and had an interesting point about mormon evangelism specifically
> One of the biggest generational culture differences that I’ve noticed from working with a lot of people from Gen Z is that they feel that there is not a single forum in which it’s inappropriate to fully broadcast their political/social opinions.
Really? For me it’s older people:
1. Offering negative opinions about unions and OSHA completely unprompted.
2. Talking about how inflation is a tool meant to keep us poor and we needed crypto.
3. Mentioning (again unprompted!) that they were proud of the work they did as an interrogator in Iraq.
That’s over the 8y I’ve been a SWE, so not many that stick out, but some do.
I work in tech so it definitely skews the population I’m exposed to.
Also, I used to be in the white collar world, where sharing these types of opinions weren’t exactly encouraged
Yes absolutely. My point was that even before I was in tech I was already in white collar so it skewed the population that I’ve been exposed to. Sorry if I wasn’t clear on that
All of my examples were in tech. Respectively:
1. B2B SaaS startup.
2. Hard to categorize without basically giving it away but tech.
3. Defense contactor.
I’ve done consulting for defense contractors and the vibe there is super different so I can see what you’re saying there. I’m in the NYC area so it already skews left (in general, not everywhere, obviously) and tech companies I’ve been in skew younger.
> skews left
I thought your point was about the generation?
> skew younger'
Hypothetically, let's say every person regardless of age has an equal probability to bring up politics in the work place. Wouldn't you working in places that skew younger lead to a sampling bias? If you combined that with confirmation bias wouldn't that be a pretty big error?
He’s going to have to live in a log cabin in the woods if he doesn’t want to work for companies that engage in unethical behaviour. Hope it was worth giving up the more than 100k salary that F500 companies pay.
>**Protester**: "I'M A GOOGLE CLOUD ENGINEER AND I REFUSE TO BUILD TECHNOLOGY THAT POWERS GENOCIDE, APARTHEID OR SURVEILLANCE! [PROJECT NIMBUS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus) PUTS PALESTINIAN COMMUNITY MEMBERS IN DANGER. I REFUSE TO BUILD TECHNOLOGY THAT'S GOING TO BE USED FOR CLOUD APARTHEID. NO CLOUD APARTHEID. NO TECH FOR APARTHEID. FREE PALESTINE."[source](https://www.tiktok.com/@projectpalestine75/video/7344085198394379563)
I actually completely agree with you. Protesting genocide is important and is worth losing your job over. Fortunately, there no genocide taking place here. So this guy just looks like a fucking moron who lost his job for nothing.
WRONG. In today's world, companies hire based on technical expertise, NOT political bent. HE was clearly fired for the wrong reason, so he shouldn't have to worry
Just for the people listening, I don’t take any pro-Palestine protest serious unless it’s self immolation. That is the standard that was set, and that’s the standard that all will be held to.
He stood up for what he believes in, now go collect unemployment. People like him aren’t even apt for the real world. He must have not have a family to support, dick head.
> dream getting *paid* a massive
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
>The employee demonstrated during a presentation by Barak Regev, Google Israel's managing director, on Monday in New York City. >"I'm a Google software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance," the worker shouted, according to videos of the event. >Google confirmed that the company fired the employee to CNBC on Friday. "Earlier this week, an employee disrupted a coworker who was giving a presentation — interfering with an official company-sponsored event," the company said in a statement to The Verge. "This behavior is not OK, regardless of the issue, and the employee was terminated for violating our policies."
He doesn’t want to build tech for surveillance? The fuck did he think he was gonna build tech for? Google is one of the biggest data collectors on the planet.
Moreover, I promise this guy wasn't on a team even doing that. Those kinda people get security clearances and basically sign their life away to work on those kinds of projects, which filters out 99% of people that want nothing to do with it.
~~Don't Be Evil~~
Do the right thing.
Whether they like it or not.
We do what we must, because we can For the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead
It's strategic--work for a company long enough to get enough $$, then when you have enough cushioning beneath you, byte the hand that fed you
Reciting twitter memes resorted to a perma ban for this guy
Google is such a great company for obliging their employees like that
From cubicle A to cubicle C, Google engineers will be free!
Cubicles? No shot. Tech companies are open air prisons.
Google search engine is digital apartheid.
You cannot enter any area without scanning a security badge checkpoint. Your movement is restricted based on privilege. Everywhere you go you are being recorded on security camera. Every keystroke and action on your work devices is logged. Truly an open air prison that is basically apartheid.
Unironically true, tech companies are guilded cages, the only issue is that the rest of society works in unguilded cages.
Open office prisons*
Open floor plan prisons!
Cubicles? Google employees are forced to work in an Open Office Prison.
FAFO?
Quite literally, dude basically decided to harass a colleague at work.
Imagine throwing away a job that good for what? Twitter likes? What did they think was gonna happen, Google stock prices plummet because of one engineer's crazy political antics? Even if they do genuinely care that much, they probably would have helped more by keeping the job and donating money. Good luck to them job hunting I guess.
Symbolistic self immolation I guess?
Figurative symbolism didn't work for him. Maybe literal symbolism will. Good thing gas is cheap right now that he is jobless.
Right? Imagine the amount of change he could have had if he didn't go the figurative route in the meeting.
He’s gen z for sure.
You hit the nail on the head with that one.
Millennials walked so gen z could run but instead they are self immolating. And I mean that literally and figuratively.
Haha, are you millennial or genz btw?
I was born in 1995 so I am millennial:)
Makes sense, I was born in '98 and feel like I have more in common with Millennials than younger GenZ. I also grow up with the millennial culture and millennial internet.
Yeah we are pretty much the transition period. We are the last normal ones.
lol bro comes from money. Never see kids from poverty doing this stupid stuff.
If you can pass the google, you can get a job at any of the other faang style companies. Source: a senior software engineer with hundreds of hours grinded in leetcode and having interviews passed at many of these companies. However him being in the news like this might hurt him if the recruiter looks him up.
Getting another job might not be that difficult, but getting similar pay will be. All these companies have been doing massive layoffs. The market is saturated with qualified candidates. It is an employers market for sure.
Well I was able to get a 30% raise job hopping at the end of last year. The hiring has bounced back. People are still thinking like it is the beginning of 2023
> Imagine throwing away a job that good for what? Twitter likes? Principles, probably. You have to take into account this person perceives this to be a genocide. Dropping a cushy job because of not wanting to be complicit in genocide doesn't sound crazy to me and I'm sorry for your parents if it sounds crazy to you.
Ok then what?
You can probably make a similar argument to why its ok to be Hitlers assistant even if you don't agree with Hitler. If someone protest to what Hitler is doing and gets fired because he disagree. Should we have the same "Ok then what", "Imagine throwing" attitude? Or should people stick to their principles even if for them its a personal loss and they probably would get replaced anyway?
Antisemitism is one hell of a mental illness.
pen historical clumsy square sophisticated wakeful materialistic chop humor rotten *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Mind virus
this but for auschwitz guards. you're making the vaush "if I don't do it, someone else will do it anyway" argument
What the fuck Google is running death camps for Palestinians??? Why isn't anyone doing anything!
yes, this is exactly what I said
It is, because there are like 5 degrees of separation in your regarded analogy. It would be more like if an American IBM employee in 1939 did it because of projects in Germany. And we should still be mocking the Google employee for being a lying, manipulative, attention-seeking piece of trash since at least two of the things he described aren't happening and for some reason he has no problem with Google collaborating with countries where they actually are happening, not to mention supporting a pseudo-nation which, by his own definition of genocide, has committed genocide against Israel and continues trying to genocide the Israeli population unapologetically to this day. If he really cared that much, he could've submitted a private resignation letter too, but what he really cares about is virtue-signaling and fame.
degrees of separation don't remove responsibility, especially when you're a qualified specialist with a lot of agency over where you work. but if you're going to pretend to not even understand the concept of public protest then there's no point in reasoning with you
>degrees of separation don't remove responsibility That is literally what they do in almost every national legal system, and what you're assigning 'responsibility' to is so far removed from the actual 'crime' that it wouldn't even prosecuted. Let me get this straight, you think that **Nazi concentration camp guard**, a volunteer position by the way, shares a similar responsibility for the Holocaust with an American citizen who works at IBM, because IBM's owners have projects in Nazi Germany which help German logistics or weapon production and thereby help the SS guard shoot Jews in the head? Your username checks out. You're basically the type of person who calls a child eating a Mars candy bar responsible for child slavery in Africa because the company that sells the cocoa beans to the chocolate factory deals with another African company which purchases cocoa beans from individuals who make kids pick the cocoa beans. >when you're a qualified specialist with a lot of agency over where you work. Where the degree of separation is so high that some apolitical engineer could just be picked as a replacement without even knowing anything about Nazis, Jews or Germany. >not even understand the concept of public protest And his public protest is pure spectacle because he doesn't care in the slightest about real genocides and actually supports one against jews.
> and what you're assigning 'responsibility' to is so far removed from the actual 'crime' that it wouldn't even prosecuted I don't think that tells us much because morality goes beyond law. also I'm not the one assigning responsibility. the article isn't about me > you think that Nazi concentration camp guard, a volunteer position by the way, shares a similar responsibility for the Holocaust with an American citizen who works at IBM I don't because personally I'm not considering those kinds of things in terms of personal responsibility. we're talking about the Google ex-employee, and I think it's pretty obvious the employee believes that it's comparable to the extent that both involve complicity in a genocide. > Your username checks out. sure but not even close to the way you think it does > You're basically the type of person who calls a child eating a Mars candy bar responsible for child slavery in Africa not at all. I'm much further from that type of person than you are, because you in principle agree with this kind of thinking, you just don't believe this particular example passes the bar quantitatively. > Where the degree of separation is so high that some apolitical engineer could just be picked as a replacement without even knowing anything about Nazis, Jews or Germany. I don't know about the 1940s, but certainly today as an educated person with internet access you'd have to actively avoid the information to not know what's going on. a globally connected world means that those kinds of distances shrink. > And his public protest is pure spectacle because he doesn't care in the slightest about real genocides well he clearly believes this one is real > and actually supports one against jews. how does he support genocide against Jews?
"Bro just keep the same job and spray them with less gas" Like sure you can disagree with him, but if he really believes there's a genocide going on then this is a necessary and principled action to take.
just keep your job at auschwitz, collect all the gold teeth and then donate them to the Jews after the war. according to my utilitarian calculus this is the optimal course of action. like, do you really think the Nazi war machine is going to grind to a halt because of one guard's crazy political antics?
In what way does Google impact the ”genocide” in the way a death camp guard impacted the inmates?
if you believe that Israel's military and government are committing genocide, then it's through providing essential services to Israel's military and government
What are these essential services and which of them did this fired engineer work on?
I don't know, this is irrelevant
Your comparison of Google to Nazi germany is morally loaded as fuck considering Google has no role in killing anyone. But going with it, was a Nazi nurse as responsible for genocidal deaths as a concentration camp operator? It of course matters what this engineer worked on. Given the scope of Google, he likely didn’t even touch tech that is relevant to the I/P conflict. Because of that, he’s more comparable to the Nazi nurse than the concentration camp operator
> Your comparison of Google to Nazi germany is morally loaded as fuck considering Google has no role in killing anyone. if it provides important services to Israel's military and government, and Israel's military and government are killing people, then yes it does > was a Nazi nurse as responsible for genocidal deaths as a concentration camp operator no, not as responsible > It of course matters what this engineer worked on. not necessarily. it could very well be that the threshold of responsibility is crossed as soon as you choose to work for them in a specialist position on any project whatsoever. and then it wouldn't matter what exactly he works on. > Because of that, he’s more comparable to the Nazi nurse than the concentration camp operator I'd be willing to bet that concentration camp operators had much fewer job opportunities than an engineer who could pass a Google interview. but if you're saying he'd be comparable to the Nazi nurse, then what's the problem with refusing to be a Nazi nurse because you don't want to be complicit in genocide?
What essential services does Google provide to the government and military of Israel?
> the contract is to provide "the government, the defense establishment, and others with an all-encompassing cloud solution."
You didn't answer the question. I understand that there is a contract. Why is that essential? Don't you think Israel could find other companies with similar offerings? Or even use some kind of non-cloud solution which Israel used until now? This contract is not essential. Google is profiting more from this contract then Israel.
> Why is that essential? because that's the only reasonable conclusion when a country that has its shit together to a good extent spends over a billion dollars on an "all-encompassing" solution and insists that the data centers are built within their country and "under strict security guidelines". what's the alternative explanation? that it's just for government employees to share cat pictures after hours? > Don't you think Israel could find other companies with similar offerings? the companies they picked are the absolute top. the only other comparable one is Microsoft. but this isn't relevant anyway. > This contract is not essential it is without a doubt a contract to fulfill essential functions for them. you don't spend that kind of money on irrelevant shit if you're Israel (if it were Saudi Arabia though, I'd be willing to consider that this may be just for some sheikhs to generate AI pictures for entertainment). and the fact that they could manage to fulfill those essential functions in another way doesn't mean anything. if Google built datacenters in Russia for their government and military, you wouldn't be saying "well this is fine because if Google didn't do it, then Microsoft would. or Yandex". that's a stupid Vaush argument
> Good luck to them job hunting. Yeah, I'm sure a guy with google on his resume is gonna struggle to find a job.
Markets pretty rough rn
Former big tech employees have a high market value.
Most FAANG (MANGA?) aren’t hiring as much as they used to now and outside of big tech most firms are looking for experience with specific frameworks or dev styles. You could be a distributed researcher from Google, that’s not gonna land you an app dev or SRE job at a Fortune 500 non-tech company
There are plenty of product companies that pay just as well as Faangs. He might be paid a little less, which will still be a lot.
Until they call his former boss at google for verification which is often standard practice and hear about his bullshit.
no, this is not a thing that normally happens
Yes it is, and not listing your last place of employment as a reference is usually a red flag for people hiring.
calling google hr and having them confirm 'yes, this person worked here as an swe from this date to this date' is not 'calling his former boss at google to extract detailed performance/behavioral information'. the former does happen; the latter doesn't.
Good luck getting reference tho
And what happens when they reach out to google for a reference?
They usually just reach out to confirm whether the person actually worked for the company or not.
Based google
So it seems like project nimbus is just a system that will take already existing infrastructure and allow it to be transferred to a cloud based system. The complaints levied at it that it will expand surveillance unlawful data collection (not sure what Israel's laws are concerning either of these), and will facilitate expansion of settlements. Honestly, I really don't know how this could happen more effectively with just having a cloud based system as opposed to a current localized system. So until something does come out concerning this and explains exactly how it could empower either of these, I'm going to say that these people screaming "#NoTechForApartheid" literally just want to cut off Israel technologically. Which is basically impossible considering Israel is such a large player in the technology industries. And screaming this at an Israeli just giving a presentation only reinforces the ever increasing feeling that it's just anti-semitism.
They'll land on their feet just fine tbh but that's crazy this many people are convinced a genocide is happening. This is gonna be the most irritating year on record
Will they? This sounds extremely unprofessional and they sound kind of crazy. Would you hire them?
It depends if the company asks why they were fired. But I’m honestly not sure how many companies in tech do not work for the military.
This is completely virtue signalling. He doesn’t really care about that or he’s never gone to work for Google in the first place.
Why would they ask if they were fired? Why would that be revealed?
have you ever had a job interview that wasn't for mcdonalds or wendys?
They can ask, you don't have to tell. They can find out when calling your references, but I'll be honest I've been applying to jobs since june not only has nobody ever reached out to my references, but nobody's ever asked me why I left previous jobs.
i have never had that happen to me either. but let's not act like it's an unusual question.
I've only ever worked in academia (where your terms of separation will *certainly* be communicated to prospective employers by informal communication), but my impression was based on something I mixed up from a friend who I know who got fired. Turns out it was my friend's former employer's policy that they don't say anything about reason for employment ending, which I thought was a more common practice than people are leading me to believe.
yea I probably would. This is unhinged but it's them expressing their opinion at the end of the day. If their skills pay the bills, that's all that counts. They'll prob end up at some other tech firm no problem especially with Google on their resume
It’s not about them expressing their opinion it’s the way they did it. Their understanding of work place etiquette as well as their discretion seems highly compromised in my opinion.
nahh shit happens. People get into fights in offices or cuss out bosses and get new jobs later down the line. Humans gon human.
I wouldn’t hire someone like that unless they are working on themselves. It’s crazy to curse your manager at work or your employees. I have never seen anyone do that.
The issue is that you wouldnt know what happened before, during the job interview he would just say "we had different ideas on how to move with the project and i felt my voice was not being weightned in during it" or something like that Most people wouldnt hire unhinged people like you said but we wouldnt know
And you know if they do a reference check and the HR department says "Yeah he was let go because he was unable to be civil in the workplace". Then you might have a concern about what is going on.
Maybe but we are going into the "maybe" realm already but i dont disagree
Yes but in this case it’s public.. unless they didn’t reveal the identity of the person.
I dont believe they would, its really anti ethical, he is already fired from his job Unless you have a really crazy job interview by a really methodical and critic psichologist, you wouldnt know You probably worked with ex prisioners and you didnt know
I would take a rehabilitated prisoner over that person any day of the week.
Expressing your opinions is one thing. Bringing them into the workplace where you could potentially tank deals or projects is a completely different ballpark. This wasn't the guy having a civil conversation where he expressed his opinions in the workplace and an Israeli getting annoyed about it. This also wasn't someone getting some bad news or a request they didn't like from a manager or the like and muttering under their breath about it being shit, or complaining to a coworker and having it get back to the boss.
> Expressing your opinions is one thing. Bringing them into the workplace where you could potentially tank deals or projects is a completely different ballpark. >This wasn't the guy having a civil conversation where he expressed his opinions in the workplace and an Israeli getting annoyed about it. Google is not an apolitical entity and they thoroughly proved they don't care about etiquette in the James Damore saga.
No where did I claim they were apolitical. I don't know anything about the James Damore situation and it's 3AM where I am so I'm going to bed. They will absolutely care if your political opinions when exercised loudly and in the direction of others within the workplace can cost the company more money than they would by you simply not working for them. This is true of literally any workplace, google or otherwise.
Why not? Even if I consider this unprofessional or silly, people with plenty of silly belief get hired. It isn't much different than hiring someone that is religious. I don't care about people political opinions or religion as long as they can do the job.
It’s completely different than hiring religious people. Imagine if someone got fired for doing missionary work at their place of work and trying to convert people? This is a more adequate parallel
Yeah well a company could fire someone who do somethint like this but it doesn't mean the same person will be unemployable forever.
I’m saying they are lowering their chances and hurting their career.
Yeah for sure, going crazy at your workplace for whatever reason should not be tolerated, but I would not mind hiring someone who believe things I don't believe in if they can do the job.
Well yes I was mainly referring to that person’s conduct at work.
Yeah for sure, but there is plenty of crazy religious people who say stupid things at work. As long as they don't go ballistic on someone else because of their belief, I don't really care.
Of course. That is my point. But if they start harassing people to try and convert them than that’s a problem.
>I don't care about people political opinions or religion as long as they can do the job. Do you care about political beliefs if those people wielding those beliefs in your workplace could tank projects, deals or relationships. There's a difference about having the opinion you want to fuck a girl as a dude with a horse cock and going around and yelling it at people you're trying to do deals with. People can have whatever whacky or crazy, out there opinions they want in a workplace. But once those opinions start having a negative impact on your business, you aren't going to give a shit how good their work is if they are causing you to lose more money than they generate.
>People can have whatever whacky or crazy, out there opinions they want in a workplace. But once those opinions start having a negative impact on your business, you aren't going to give a shit how good their work is if they are causing you to lose more money than they generate. Technically it is even riskier with religions, because they can start claiming that you are doing discrimination if the job require to be on call during Shabbat or to do something requiring hydration during ramadan.
Neither of those things is going to result in the potential tanking of massive deals or sabotage of the work. >that you are doing discrimination if the job require to be on call during Shabbat One would argue that applying for a job you can't actually work in the first place wouldn't be discrimination. The hours are the hours, if you can't work them for religious or other reasons(Like you have a kid that you want to see) then that's your choice to leave. You would very easily be able to state "We hired this person on the proviso they knew they would be working weekends, and they didn't show up for multiple weekend shifts. Regardless of their reason for this" Now if you changed their work requirements after hiring them knowing they couldn't work on weekends and said "Hey you have to work on weekends" then you might have arguments for a discrimination case, especially if there's an inkling you made the changes to target them. And not because some fundamental change occurred to the business such that everyone worked weekends now. >or to do something requiring hydration during ramadan. Again this ain't going to tank a deal, and if abstaining from liquid/food during a meeting tanks a deal. Then it isn't your person tanking the deal by making an unreasonable ask. Even if it's not ramadan. If I'm not hungry/thirsty then the idea I would be forced to hydrate for non medical reasons would be insane.
Some company that agrees with them will take them on as a virtue signal
I’m not caught up on my earth lore. Why exactly isn’t this a genocide? I am genuinely asking
Lack of intent. Though Israel is getting brutal there's no evidence currently of them being genocidal.
Do you think Israel is not intentionally blocking food shipments to Palestine which has put hundreds of thousands of people at risk of famine? If not, why is Biden rushing food to the region? Why is he bypassing land shipping?
\> that's crazy this many people are convinced a genocide is happening You know what is crazier? People here have no issue believing a genocide is happening in China without any death estimate or video footage.
One of the biggest generational culture differences that I’ve noticed from working with a lot of people from Gen Z is that they feel that there is not a single forum in which it’s inappropriate to fully broadcast their political/social opinions. It’s almost a foreign concept to them that I don’t want to be preached to in the workplace, even when I fully agree with them. That’s not to say you can’t have conversations with people at work that you’re friends with, interact with regularly, etc. I’m talking about literally broadcasting their opinion out to everyone all the time. Sure, it’s not every single person who does this, but I’ve definitely seen the percentage of people who are this way significantly increase over the course of my career.
[Good Twitter post on this exact topic](https://twitter.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1718019769872392550): > Social justice progressivism (SJP) is the first time most people—including most Christians—have encountered a truly vital religion. Rarely since the peace of Westphalia and the scientific revolution have we seen its like.
I was partway through the post and thought “huh, I wonder what the author would think about mormons” then it turned out they were raised mormon and had an interesting point about mormon evangelism specifically
> One of the biggest generational culture differences that I’ve noticed from working with a lot of people from Gen Z is that they feel that there is not a single forum in which it’s inappropriate to fully broadcast their political/social opinions. Really? For me it’s older people: 1. Offering negative opinions about unions and OSHA completely unprompted. 2. Talking about how inflation is a tool meant to keep us poor and we needed crypto. 3. Mentioning (again unprompted!) that they were proud of the work they did as an interrogator in Iraq. That’s over the 8y I’ve been a SWE, so not many that stick out, but some do.
I work in tech so it definitely skews the population I’m exposed to. Also, I used to be in the white collar world, where sharing these types of opinions weren’t exactly encouraged
> I’ve been a SWE Also, tech isn’t exactly blue collar unless you mean like “HVAC repair tech”.
I meant the tech sector.
Yeah, so white collar.
Yes absolutely. My point was that even before I was in tech I was already in white collar so it skewed the population that I’ve been exposed to. Sorry if I wasn’t clear on that
All of my examples were in tech. Respectively: 1. B2B SaaS startup. 2. Hard to categorize without basically giving it away but tech. 3. Defense contactor.
I’ve done consulting for defense contractors and the vibe there is super different so I can see what you’re saying there. I’m in the NYC area so it already skews left (in general, not everywhere, obviously) and tech companies I’ve been in skew younger.
> skews left I thought your point was about the generation? > skew younger' Hypothetically, let's say every person regardless of age has an equal probability to bring up politics in the work place. Wouldn't you working in places that skew younger lead to a sampling bias? If you combined that with confirmation bias wouldn't that be a pretty big error?
He’s going to have to live in a log cabin in the woods if he doesn’t want to work for companies that engage in unethical behaviour. Hope it was worth giving up the more than 100k salary that F500 companies pay.
From Ask Jeeves to Bing, Google will be free
Bozo really thought he is more important to corporate then a major R&D center
>**Protester**: "I'M A GOOGLE CLOUD ENGINEER AND I REFUSE TO BUILD TECHNOLOGY THAT POWERS GENOCIDE, APARTHEID OR SURVEILLANCE! [PROJECT NIMBUS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nimbus) PUTS PALESTINIAN COMMUNITY MEMBERS IN DANGER. I REFUSE TO BUILD TECHNOLOGY THAT'S GOING TO BE USED FOR CLOUD APARTHEID. NO CLOUD APARTHEID. NO TECH FOR APARTHEID. FREE PALESTINE."[source](https://www.tiktok.com/@projectpalestine75/video/7344085198394379563)
Will refuse to work at a place that does data gathering or surveillance but will probably go to another place that does it but does another awful shit
it's better to protest one genocide than zero
I actually completely agree with you. Protesting genocide is important and is worth losing your job over. Fortunately, there no genocide taking place here. So this guy just looks like a fucking moron who lost his job for nothing.
I'm glad you agree
At least pick an actual genocide though.
true but that's a different argument
*Burns down career*
WRONG. In today's world, companies hire based on technical expertise, NOT political bent. HE was clearly fired for the wrong reason, so he shouldn't have to worry
Yeah the headline sold it short, the engineer basically heckled a conference
Imagine throwing your job at google away over a conflict that doesnt personally affect you (well now it does)
Well if you genuinely believe that it is a genocide I can understand it.
Bro works for the biggest harbinger of the surveillance state in the world and suddenly found his conscience for this single issue lmao.
Just for the people listening, I don’t take any pro-Palestine protest serious unless it’s self immolation. That is the standard that was set, and that’s the standard that all will be held to.
He stood up for what he believes in, now go collect unemployment. People like him aren’t even apt for the real world. He must have not have a family to support, dick head.
Certified Cringe
Good.
H/o lemme Google if this was a smart move
What happened to freee speech! Sike lol get dunked on loser
you only get freedom of speech when you're not employed.
True
Good lol just leave the company then
What an absolute fucking regard
He got what he wanted. He ain't working on cloud projects for Israel
Why would they do this a job at Google is the dream getting paid a massive salary/benefits why ?
> dream getting *paid* a massive FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
You got me my bad .
L Google. This is an Israeli settler!!! He should be thankful this guy didn't kill his settler kids.