Did Google change, or was this protest substantially different in character?

In the reporting TFA links to about Maven I don't see any sign of employees staging disruptive protests on Google property. This is how Gizmodo describes that protest [0]:

> Google’s decision to provide artificial intelligence to the Defense Department for the analysis of drone footage has prompted backlash from Google employees and academics. Thousands of employees have signed a petition asking Google to cancel its contract for the project, nicknamed Project Maven, and dozens of employees have resigned in protest.

A petition signed by thousands and a bunch of resignations are very different than staging a sit in in an executive's office and refusing to leave when asked. And both of the protests referred to in the past (Maven and sexual harassment) seem to have had a much stronger base of support than the 20-50 people who participated in this.

Is it possible that Google is the same Google and these people have gotten caught up in unreasonable post-2020 expectations for what valid political expression in the workplace looks like?

[0] https://gizmodo.com/google-plans-not-to-renew-its-contract-f...

I think the difference in the number of participants and base of support is material.

That said, the 2018 protests were definitely more disruptive than this one. 20,000 employees left their desks. [1]

Part of it might also be that several of the organizers of the 2018 walkouts left Google in the months following the walkouts (including Meredith Whittaker, who now runs the company behind Signal).

I think my original argument in the GP is wrong. The more I read about this topic, the more the true narrative seems like "after the 2018 walk-outs, Google took steps to ensure mass political action within the company like the action that tanked Maven would never happen again," and we're now seeing the results of those steps.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Google_walkouts

Walkouts are very different in character. It's a mini-strike, not an occupation. People voluntarily leave their jobs for a day, they don't sit in someone else's workspace and prevent them from doing theirs.

Sure, it's more disruptive to the company because the numbers are larger, but the damage done by each individual ends at not doing their work for the day. It's a statement of "this is what your company will look like if you don't address this" not "we're going to make a scene and hang out in your personal space".

This is a very selective and ahistorical definition of "strike". Strikes regularly block shipping lanes and scab workers from entering so they often prevent others from doing work on a job site.

Have you seen this done in recent years?

I've personally seen AT&T employees go on strike but they were nothing like this. The employees on strike wouldn't go to work, and there were signs and a few people sitting at tables near the entrance to main office buildings in Atlanta, but nothing was blocked and the people there sure seemed more like they were paid by the union to be there and didn't really care at all.

The bigger issue with the term "strike" here is that Google isn't unionized (yes, I know AWU exists, but it's less than 1% of their workforce)

If they were unionised the workers wouldn't have been paid for the walkout, presumably.

Yes but that's the illegal version of strike, which is met with violent law enforcement response.

The recent protest did not interfere with anyone's work. The office space they occupied was otherwise vacant.

The Google walkout wasn't a whole day. It was one outdoor meeting

20K people leave their desks every day for lunch and coffee breaks. The walkout break was outside instead of in the snack room.

Google's militaristic business contracts, and militant protests thereof, have both been ramping up in the past decade.

Google was not founded as a military contractor making targeting systems for missiles. But now they are.

It doesn't actually say anything about how Google handled those employee demonstrations though... Were they less draconian?

>> Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees

I guess that's one possibility. Another possibility is that the owners and board of Google have a very different attitude towards protests in favor of Palestinians than the owners and board of Google had towards other protests in the past.

These protests aren’t in favour of Palestinians, they’re specifically against Israel, and empower and excuse a racist death cult that has taken over Gaza.

One bit of info... this is an employer's market. 2108 was an employee's market.

> This is the most interesting part of the article for me. Google's approach today, versus how it reacted to the backlash against Maven in 2018, reflects a very different company with a different attitude toward the opinions of its employees.

I have two theories, both come with no warranty:

- Google is alarmed at how much "trust and safety" affected their ability to deliver LLMs, and is listening fractionally less to people of this political viewpoint

- Google has more existential threats and no more ridiculous ZIRP to coast along on, and so needs real income from customers that value it

- The Google department that owns this contract has some clout, and wanted to show its high-paying customer that it wasn't going to be swayed by the politics of its staff members

(I added the third theory and forgot to reword.)

Dammit this is so dumb. Half of google employees I know are literally racist against Chinese people. This is about China vs Israel, not a change in approach.

Google is very explicitly doing mass layoffs throughout the year. At this time, the company has every incentive to fire liberally. They have a quota of headcount to reduce through 2024, and firing for cause is better for morale (not to mention severance costs) than firing employees with good track records. If their layoff quota is 20% for the year, 20% of Google's employees broke the rules somehow, and Google fired them all, that'd be a great outcome for the company. That would mean they don't have to conduct mass layoffs, with all the morale and severance baggage that comes with.