What if the message was: "Make America Great Again".

What if the message was: "H1B - go back to your country".

would it still feel ok to you?

etc

it is grossly unprofessional to insert unrelated messaging and hijack a tool to push your agenda.

"Going through standard protocols" in this case meant two other people approved the change - those two people also show serious unprofessionalism and bear responsibility as well - it is not an excuse.

Edit:

I have now also read the author's take on it.

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

I do feel that the way Google went about it was heavy-handed and reflects badly on Google as well.

It's more like posting a reminder of the current legal minimum wage—and only showed up, apparently, if the user visited the site of a consulting firm Google hired to help them figure out how to avoid unionization.

A great and entirely "professional" thing to do? Nah, but hardly worth the vigorous harumphing and tut-tutting it's receiving. It's not like she contributed code to Amp or spearheaded putting ads inline with and above search results. You know, nothing terribly evil.

I think, especially in the light of how it was targeted, a better analogy would be the act of popping a message from the Democrats when visiting the Republican RNC website or vice-versa.

I find it oppressive - the mere "reminder" wants to interfere, it wants to to take away your ability to think for yourself and make up your own mind.

I don't get how so many of the comments on here go straight to political messaging. It's an NLRB notice. There is nothing political about it.

> A great and entirely "professional" thing to do? Nah

So unprofessional?

Somewhat, rather, not not unprofessional, perhaps.

The part I found interesting was that the pop up was on a page specifically about labor rights: https://miro.medium.com/max/1000/0*1BTVYLTvuHiJVvp_.jpg

So it's not really inserting unrelated message. I feel like this is completely lost for some reason.

Well the article didn't really go into details. When I read it I got the idea she got two thumbs up on a merge request which is a far sight from getting approval from introducing a new feature by some change management board.

I suspect the details of what really happened would be quite illuminating.

> We dismissed an employee who abused privileged access to modify an internal security tool,” a Google spokeswoman said in a statement, adding that it was “a serious violation.”

See my other comment reply.

And the “standard review process” was to get approval from two coworkers. Does this even pass any type of bar of what is acceptable behavior?

A code review isn't some kind of blessing.

It's just a way to catch some issues before they get further and cause big problems.

It is too bad for this employee that the CR didn't stop this change.