Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal

Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by noobface on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @02:59PM (#7774482)

This is actually pretty big. If I'm interpreting this correctly, Google arbitrarily stack ranked employees then dropped the lowest ranked one. Courts thought that process was unfair, opening up the door for every single ex-Googler in Ireland.

I'd love to have a protections like this in the US. I've had the same thing happen to me at a large company. Political ranking rather than performance leads to some incredibly insular work places.

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by bsbechtel on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @03:04PM (#7774513)

It never feels like it at the time, but you're better off winding up at a workplace that values your contributions over your political connections.

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by TrainedMonkey on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @03:19PM (#7774613)

I honestly have not seen a company larger than ~25 people where that was true. Can you give an example?

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by azth on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @03:28PM (#7774655)

Valve? :)

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by DerpDerpDerp on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @03:50PM (#7774782)

I've heard tale that because of the lack of formal structure at Valve, you need political connections to actually get anything done.

Perhaps even more so than places with a formal structure.

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by scott_s on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @06:11PM (#7775550)

There's a famous essay about exactly that called "The Tyranny of Structurelessness". We discussed it about two months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7409611

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by kyllo on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @07:06PM (#7775739)

Someone already made a variation of Greenspun's Tenth Rule about this--in the absence of formal management, your company will contain an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of management.

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by mercer on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @04:10PM (#7774880)

It's quite likely that some kind of hidden structure emerged.

However, could you explain what you mean with 'political' in this context? Because 'political connections', in my mind, also includes reputation and knowledge of competence. And that doesn't seem like a bad thing.

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by DerpDerpDerp on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @05:06PM (#7775186)

Things that would normally qualify as "soft power", eg, being friends with the right people, trading favors, reputation management, etc.

Even the example you give requires reputation management, as opposed to merely raising a good technical argument at the time (as a new person on the staff).

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by rhizome on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @09:07PM (#7776188)

Sure, but you're leaving "competence" unspecified. Political connections are based upon competence at what? Therein lies the rub.

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Re:Sacked Google worker awarded €110,000 for unfair dismissal by sneak on Tuesday May 20, 2014 @03:55PM (#7774810)

Solo! Solo! Too Nakma Noya Solo!

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