[beh9540]

What I don’t understand about this is they were most likely an at-will employee. So the company could have just said “new policy, sign it”.

I had an employer do this - I was working there a few years, owner came in and said “we’re doing background checks, fill this out and sign it”. I asked what happened if something came back on it, and he said that I’d be fired.

[kbenson]

Google employees are sort of known for being willing to make stands on moral and ethical convictions. As well as advertising itself as a company that welcomes that type of person, paying as much over the local median as they do likely means many employees can afford to lose their job and have at least a few months worth of living expenses saved up. Combined, these mean Google employees are probably very likely to make a stink about something if you trigger those traits, IMO.

Sometimes, how you say it is as or more important than what you say. Giving benign plausible explanations for red flag behavior is expected from big corporations. This isn't their first rodeo, or at least not for the people they've staffed that deal with this.

[chrisseaton]

> Google employees are sort of known for being willing to make stands on moral and ethical convictions.

Lol what?

Compare with almost any working class work-place with a union, and you will be surprised what 'willing to make stands' looks like.

[kbenson]

The thing about collective bargaining is that it's collective and a strategy to help yourself, and even when it's a stand to help some other union, it's to help strengthen unions in general, which helps your own Union, and those your own bargaining power.

Oh, and it's all done under a group to make help avoid consequences.

All sane choices to make, but not exactly what I meant to convey by taking a stand on moral or ethical convictions. I more meant being willing to deal with the consequences when you don't really have enough power to force that change. I wasn't trying to paint Google employees as overly noble, just somewhat that and also priveleged and naive. And of course that's just my perception from the outside.

[chrisseaton]

Maybe it's different where you are - but here in the UK working-class unions do often take stands on moral and political issues outside their own interests.

A major example is the massive action they took against South African apartheid in the 1980s - a political issue many thousands of miles from their interests.

https://www.aamarchives.org/who-was-involved/trade-unionists...

Many students' unions vote to ban newspapers they don't like from campus, and things like that as well.

Google employees aren't even remotely near that kind of practical stand yet.

[peakaboo]

I don't think that's true anymore. Google employees value their careers higher than anything else, otherwise they wouldn't put up with all the bullshit. Just working for Google itself is a huge red flag in their personalities.

[lenkite]

Sorry, I am not a native English speaker. Is this what you call "sarcasm" ?

[lobocinza]

I think those were fired long ago from all FAANG.