https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jun/07/google-wa...
So to clarify, both of the female Google employees who lead/organized the protests have now left because they say they faced retaliation. That looks very bad for Google.
>In a message posted to many internal Google mailing lists Monday, Meredith Whittaker, who leads Google’s Open Research, said that after the company disbanded its external AI ethics council on April 4, she was told that her role would be “changed dramatically.” Whittaker said she was told that, in order to stay at the company, she would have to “abandon” her work on AI ethics and her role at AI Now Institute, a research center she cofounded at New York University.
>Claire Stapleton, another walkout organizer and a 12-year veteran of the company, said in the email that two months after the protest she was told she would be demoted from her role as marketing manager at YouTube and lose half her reports. After escalating the issue to human resources, she said she faced further retaliation. “My manager started ignoring me, my work was given to other people, and I was told to go on medical leave, even though I’m not sick,” Stapleton wrote. After she hired a lawyer, the company conducted an investigation and seemed to reverse her demotion. “While my work has been restored, the environment remains hostile and I consider quitting nearly every day,” she wrote.
Both are now gone.
Of the walkout organizers alone, four out of seven have now left.
Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14943146
Corporations do not care about gender, it's all about power and control, and they do not care about the gender of those who they have to dismantle to keep it.
The Canadian Documentary "The Corporation" is a good example of how corporations behave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y888wVY5hzw
Dividing Media narratives help to keep people from realizing who's their common enemy.
I don't think that objecting to your company's AI work for DoD or plans to comply with Chinese internet search regulations fall under any of them.
What did the "Open Research Group" at Google actually build?
Source: https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_equal_work
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/01/google-ka...
[1] https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/04/google-employees-call-on-...
[2] https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/04/leftist-googlers-kay-cole...
[3] https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/05/google-drops-heritage-fou...
[4] https://www.newstarget.com/2019-04-06-leaked-emails-suggest-...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20695964/google-protest-l...
> And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!
These are not the same thing at all.
In the US, talking about improving working conditions is also protected, but it's also not whistleblowing, either.
As a lawyer, i can tell you a lot of people badly misunderstand what "protected concerted activity" covers. It is not about your individual complaints. Explicitly not.
See, e.g., https://www.employerlaborrelations.com/2019/04/30/nlrb-publi...
"Charging Party 2 posted a 23-minute live video on Facebook during work hours and while in uniform talking about the discipline for wearing improper shoes and the confidentiality provision in the disciplinary notice, referencing the wage-and-hour lawsuits, making crude and disparaging jokes and comments about a supervisor, and stating that by asking Charging Party 2 to sign something interfering with free speech, the conduct of the company’s officials was “against the United States Constitution and you need to be shot on sight.”
As far as i can discern, hacker news would consider this protected because it complains, somewhere, about their working condition, and was in fact done as a direct response to being disciplined.
However, NLRB says
"The Division of Advice found that although Charging Party 2 referred to subjects in the video that could have been relevant to employees’ mutual aid or protection, the comments were entirely individual complaints and there was no indication that Charging Party 2 was speaking for other employees or seeking to act in concert with others. ... "
(They found it okay to fire this person)
In fact, the company had filed defamation lawsuits against the charging parties over the facebook videos, and the NLRB found that was okay too, because they weren't for protected activity.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/onward-another-googlewalko...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/inventor-says-go...
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/compliancedepartment.as...
Just looking at the titles I expect something similar in quality to articles debunked here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.09866
Meanwhile, Facebook assumes widespread immunity in ethical ontology within Thiel’s (goofy) narrative, all being quite selectively convenient given Thiel sits on FB’s board.
Both stories were initially broken by Bloomberg, which is also charmingly harmonic, temporally. Thiel likely pushed to collate onto Whittaker’s thunder is my (mere) immediate speculation.
Disclaimer: Worked as an engineer at Bloomberg 8+ years (now in academic scientific research), I doubt Bloomberg consciously coordinated the stories but anything’s possible, I suppose. (as mentioned, more likely the stories coordinated themselves in alignment to Bloomberg publication - if anything).