I don't think this person or the other organizers should have been fired, but code review is not the same as organizational approval.

(Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

But I don't think glossing "the change went through code review" as "She did it exactly according to internal policy" is helpful.

In this case I suspect the reviewers were supportive of the protest, and so approved it even though their authority didn't cover this kind of change.

I don't think any of these people should have been fired, but "by the book" is not a good way of characterizing this process. That would have been proposing the feature to management, getting their sign-off, and then making the code changes.

That sounds about right. So why doesn't Google fire the reviewers? If they don't, then they are inconsistently applying the standard. If they do, then they are punishing a coordinated employee action.

Let's take for instance the fictional case of adding a list of website to a whitelist.txt. Maybe the source file had thousands of websites to be added. Anyone could add or remove some in the middle and no one would ever know

It looks good when you review it. but there is no way to check the data integrity (at review time), you can only rely on the good faith of your coworkers.

I am not saying that's what happened but this is a good example of how anyone could sneak-in arbitrary code that pass the code review.

Is the literal problem, which necessitated the pop-up.

The Organization Does Not Approve™

It’s like asking someone if you can kick them in the knee before doing so. What do you think they’ll say?

Y’all seem confused: the organization, Google in this case, is antognizing it’s organizing employees. Google absolutely do not, will not, can not approve of unionization efforts. Ever.

Getting code review approval is not the same as following internal policy.

Adding a conspicuous feature to a security tool installed on every employee's computer requires approval from higher-ups before writing the code. The approvers should have recognized that and rejected the change, but that doesn't absolve Spiers of responsibility for the change.

As an analogy, suppose that I'm a crew member on a submarine. I have authority to fire torpedoes when a higher-up orders it, but I require a peer crew member to push their own "fire" button at the same time. Obviously, if I go rogue and start firing torpedoes myself, that's a serious violation, even if I convince one crewmate to go along with it.

If I were Google, I'd give the employee a warning (one of three strikes). I'd tell them that they need approval from someone in a certain role (that's not an engineer) to post internal notices. Otherwise, it's up to the employee and their fellow engineers to make a judgement call about which notices are right to post.

Personally I think that modifying a work tool to achieve political goals is wrong.

It's about as political as informing someone they have a right to be paid the minimum wage.

> I created a little notification, only a few lines of code, that pops up in the corner of the browser whenever my coworkers visited the union busters’ website or the community guidelines policy. The notification said: “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.”

https://medium.com/@ksspiers/google-fires-another-worker-for...

"plaster it on everyone's screen" did you read the same article I did? The alert was triggered off a single consultancy's site. I really doubt it was a common hang out spot.

Yes, of course.

Apparently this "security tool" exists to notify Googlers of policy, and the notification just linked to a Google policy notice with a warning not to violate it. This is apparently the actual notification that was displayed:

https://miro.medium.com/max/2000/0*1BTVYLTvuHiJVvp_.jpg

> Do not violate go/nlrbnotice. Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.

> Does that seem appropriate to you?

Yes. It's a tool for showing notifications related to the page being visited. Not to mention the whole thing is appropriate on moral grounds, regardless of any technicality.

Just to be clear: her "opinion" is "don't take actions that would cause the company to break federal labor law."

If that's was an actual requirement, can you make or point to a statement in an official Google capacity that states the notices displayed by the tool she maintained had to be written or pre-cleared by Google's legal team? If you can, was the requirement for legal team involvement established practice and not some post-hoc rationalization for her firing?

"Common sense" often isn't as common or as sensible as some people think.

You often make seemingly-authoritative statements like "it wasn't her role." Avoiding post-hoc rationalizations based on the fact that she was fired, can you explain to me how that was communicated to her?

> Do you really need someone to tell you that if you work on security it’s not your told to disseminate information about hiring?

Maybe if you're fully indoctrinated into a particular corporate culture that very hierarchical, siloed, and highly biased towards management and shareholders.

However, Google, at least for now, has a very unusual corporate culture.

Don't think that is true from the story, if you read it.

But if you look at, say, the UK, then unions actually fund one of the major political parties and have tremendous influence over it. Unions have in the past managed to topple elected governments. Beating the unions was Margaret Thatcher's flagship effort when she was first elected. And union membership has been in steady decline.

It's certainly not a USA specific thing. Union/management wars in the UK got very nasty indeed.

The comment she injected into a benign law website has nothing to do with that and whether there was some weak approval process that missed this glaring fact doesn’t make it okay.

... or are you saying the content of the message in the popup is one Google has to make available in some form.

Because I'm fairly certain it's the latter, but this feels like an attempt to obfuscate the real issue with tricky language.

I think the employee has a point with the pop-up. Wall posters aren't a good way to reach technology workers. Some kind of digital notification like a pop-up or regular reminder email would be more sensible. Remote employees can't see a poster at the office, for instance.

It's coopting an internal tool for political messages then implying "it passed PR" means you had permission from where it should come from.

It's not even the message itself, I don't want politics, even those I agree with, living in the codebase I use at work.

Sure the notice is required, but putting it so it shows up solely on the website for the legal firm hired by your employer is a political message before it is a helpful message.

No one's saying it "passed PR", it passed the review process that was in place for similar changes.

> IIRC, an employer has to make the content available in some form in a place where employees will see it, not just anywhere. Traditionally it's a wall display of posters in a cafeteria or break room. Trying to fulfill the requirement by putting the posters up in a broom closet of the CEO's office would be forbidden.

> It's not even the message itself, I don't want politics, even those I agree with, living in the codebase I use at work.

A lot of this thread feels like unusual sudden concern for the aesthetics of the cafeteria wall.

Like a PR?

And I don't even get what the second half of your comment is trying to say, especially the cafeteria wall comment...

Putting an unannounced popup when you visit the page for a legal firm would not fulfill the requirement either, so what is your point?

You should probably not work at Google.

I work at a place full of xooglers and other ex-faangs, and get the benefits of working with talented people without these kinds of scandals.

No, more to point out that it's a weird concern to have about an internal tool used by a company that uses their code to exert huge, global political influence. It's a strangely specific grain of rice to make an issue of.

There are plenty of ways to protest that are just as effective as a pop up that only appears on a specific site for a specific lawyer that don't involve messing with work code.