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Lol just 94 people protested this contract at msft. I don't want to debate if it's the people at Microsoft or the suppressed voice by upper management. Either way Microsoft gets away with a lot of contentious business decisions as employees are more inclined to keep their head down.

Also about salaries, try creating a spreadsheet for salaries at Microsoft. I guarantee you, you will be fired within the week.

On salaries, I'm really confused - I'm telling you it exists. Heck, it even got media coverage: https://onezero.medium.com/leaked-salary-spreadsheet-reveals.... Do you know anybody getting fired for starting one?

When I was there, I can't even recall someone getting fired for any reason - lots of employees have been there for decades and not at all 1) keeping their head down or 2) worried about job security. I have no idea where the stigma comes from of Microsoft employees keeping their heads down, or why they would have any reason to? And especially, I really cannot recall Microsoft firing anybody for voicing ethical concerns - so why in the world would employees feel like they would be putting their job on the line?

'By the last day of August 2020, 310 employees had added their data to the spreadsheet. Microsoft employs more than 150,000 employees around the world.'

You don't say.

150,000 employees are not all L5x-L7x leveled or engineers. Not everything in the world gets leaked, so we're only addressing one leaked spreadsheet - of many.

Your original claim was that people get fired for this within the week. I refuted that I don't recall any sort of event. There weren't announcements for mass firings of 310 employees. If you have more details on this, please share. You seemed very convinced of your initial claims on how Microsoft reacts to contentious acts by employees against the company, so I imagined it must be evidence based. I really would like to know.

The point I'm refuting is that there are far less avenues in Microsoft for employees to collectively complain or share information together or dissent against the top brass.

Without examples of your claim, how would I know?

Tell me one avenue where employees have complained ? Satyas QnA ? And like you said no one does anything there. You really believe 150k people are all aligned with military contracts ? At Google there are at least 4 company level avenues to raise your voice. You can Google them. And Google has walked back on contracts after backlash on employees. So clearly there is more proactive action here. At Microsoft there is both employees are too meek or don't care and employees can't even voice their concerns. Cycle keeps going on and on.

Again, the vast majority of the 150,000 are not R&D and don't really have anything to do with product development to even matter.

Yammer, Satyas QnA - which I'm glad you mentioned because organized groups send a representative every time to talk about government contracts - quarterly all hands, etc. Not to mention the Surface/Hololens org, the org responsible for the tech, holds all hands for their teams very frequently. Sometimes, your org head could be sharing your floor, they don't have special offices.

No one's voice is suppressed and no one is being meek, I don't even know how leadership would be able to control that anyway. The simple facts are - 1) there's a small coalition of employees who feel one way about it, 2) not all concerns raised are valid ones and has a need to be addressed - because frankly, it's really a good thing leadership can stand their ground and not sway on the voices of a few employees, no? The proactive action being taken here is the ability to stick with a common sense perspective, not proactively fire your employees for saying mean things about their employer.

mav3rick 1904 days ago

Yes and at Google each individual employee can raise concerns. Not some "org head" who may ask softball questions because his promotion is directly controlled by the CEO. I can't believe you're comparing this cherry picked gathering to a setting where literally anyone can go up and ask a question.

And then you justify leadership standing their ground. Ha. So Microsoft leadership is all benevelant, never wrong. There's a reason 99/100 make the move from Microsoft to G.

tmotwu 1904 days ago

Sure thing mate. I'm not contesting on what available avenues are available for Googlers, perhaps you know more than I do. Just stating the factual observations, repeated cases of an individual employees getting fired for raising concerns. You briefly describe your anecdote, I'm describing my anecdote. I'm neutral on Google for most things, I use their products and I don't really care about their privacy issues.

No need to cherry pick my previous reply, I'll restate since some parts must have flew by :). Higher ups are very accessible to each individual employee because you really can just go up to them. Back then, the CVP always swung by our office to say hi pretty frequently. The message boards exist. And people group up for QnA because it's effective. Employees pranked their bosses without retaliation.

I don't even have a reason to justify leadership anymore. Just stating the clear facts, that the majority trust them to the right thing. Beats me why C-level is popular internally. They respond to employee concerns when it mattered, and stood their ground when it didn't. No need to make assumptions here about people being meek, lets use facts.

https://www.wired.com/story/google-shakes-up-its-tgif-and-en...

hiyou102 1904 days ago

Yeah, Google would never shut down internal dissent:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/27/googles-thanksgiving-four-pr...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/23/google-...

mav3rick 1904 days ago

At least Googlers can dissent and protest. Not one big company comes close to the amount of times Googlers can and have affected change. No company is perfect. Look inside yours before always finding flaws in one.

[0] https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1344932160331866112

hiyou102 1904 days ago

What does the many firings say about their ability to dissent and protest? I'm don't think your now unemployed colleagues would agree with that assessment. What is incredible about Google is not how much better they are than every other company but how good they are at selling employees their internal propaganda.[0]

>No company is perfect. Look inside yours before always finding flaws in one.

I don't owe Google and any trillion dollar company anything, especially not the benefit of the doubt. All these companies are evil but only Googlers seems insistent on convincing themselves about how good and moral they are.