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by thethethethe 1889 days ago
To me, it sounds as though these people want to be treated fairly and with humanity. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect that businesses in our society treat people as investments and give opportunities for upward mobility, not fire them every two years and pay them half as much as their counterparts who do the same job but wear a different color badge.

I work for Google, opinions are my own.
2 comments
username90 1889 days ago
You are right it is unfair. So now Google decides to hire everyone and pay everyone the same $12 an hour + full time benefits. That would make everyone happy, no?
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thethethethe 1889 days ago
If I am understanding you correctly, this seems like a strawman. You don't need to equalize everyone's pay to make the material lives of these data center workers better, nobody asked for that anyways. People are simply asking to be treated the same as the people who do the same work but have a different colored badge, and not to be fired every two years. It doesn't really seem like that much to ask for
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username90 1889 days ago
What makes you think the way Google paid and hired datacenter workers before wasn't way too much and they now are nice to keep them at that level instead of firing them all replacing them with cheaper people?
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plank_time 1889 days ago
How are they not being treated with humanity? They started with no skills or experience and were trained from scratch. How many jobs train on the job? Paid a good wage in an easy job and given a job for 2 years. Is that not humane and fair?

How much of your salary are you willing to give up so that these people get their job security?

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thethethethe 1889 days ago
Every job requires some amount of on the job training. FTEs of all levels at Google are practically useless for at least 6 months after they join, often requiring hours of training and 1-1s. It's pretty standard.

Yeah I agree that it sounds like a good deal until they fire you after two years and don't allow you to move up like they used to. These terminations are arbitrary, unnecessary, and legitimely harmful to people's lives, so no I don't think it's fair or humane.

I don't see why their initial skill level when they were first hired really matters here, people deserve to have job security based on current performance regardless of their initial conditions.

I don't see why I need to give up any of my salary for these people have job security. I'm sure a small portion of the funds allocated to stock buybacks should do. And, for the record, I already give 1% of my total comp to the union, which was created to protect people in situations like these

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908B64B197 1889 days ago
> and don't allow you to move up like they used to

Is there even a position to move up to?

> These terminations are arbitrary, unnecessary, and legitimely harmful to people's lives, so no I don't think it's fair or humane.

That's something they should bring to Modis, their employers. Also, do they operate any other data centers outside of Google ones?

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thethethethe 1889 days ago
> Is there even a position to move up to?

Yes, it is common for data center workers and tech support to move up to sysadmin or something similar sometimes even SRE.

They are given a 6 month trial period on a team to train and then go through the external interview process afterwards

> That's something they should bring to Modis, their employers

The whole point here is that they effectively work for Google, and Modis is a layer of indirection that enables Google to exploit them, so bringing this up to Modis is kind of besides the point

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908B64B197 1889 days ago
> Yes, it is common for data center workers and tech support to move up to sysadmin or something similar sometimes even SRE.

It sounds like they isolated tasks that are performed frequently enough and need no specialization and decided to outsource these. Maybe as a stopgap before they get completely automated.

I don't think these were ever intended as entry level to something else.

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thethethethe 1889 days ago
> I don't think these were ever intended as entry level to something else

They said in the article that there was a chance you could get hired into corporate originally but that process was removed.

> It sounds like they isolated tasks that are performed frequently enough and need no specialization and decided to outsource these. Maybe as a stopgap before they get completely automated.

Yeah but that doesn't mean we should be treating workers like shit

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