[AnimalMuppet]

Not a hiring manager, but I wouldn't either.

You want to have a position on Israel vs. Palestine? That's fine; I think most of us do. You want to advocate for your position? Go for it.

You want to advocate for your position at work, in a way that disrupts work for others? No. Hard pass. I'm running a business, not a platform for your soapbox. And if you did it at your previous place, you're likely to do it at mine.

[arcastroe]

I don't think I would hire them either, for the same reasons you listed. But I like to play devil's advocate, so here's a different take.

These employees succeeded in identifying the best way to raise awareness, achieving large media coverage and reaching a wider audience than if they had protested outside the workplace. They stuck to their values, even though it meant sacrificing their (I'm assuming) generous compensation.

I think there's some merit to that which would translate to success in other parts of your business, if you were to hire them.

</End devil's advocate>

[ryandrake]

I'd like to push back on "raising awareness." At this point is anyone in the country not "aware" that there's a war going on? Did anyone wake up today, read the news, and say, "Gosh, I had no idea this was an important issue! Incredible!" More importantly, did this action have even the slightest effect of changing any country's policy or affect the war in any way? It doesn't seem like anything positive, or even material was accomplished here--besides those employees getting fired.

EDIT: Huh--I guess I'm wrong then. I thought this was more well-known than it was.

[pas]

sure, but does it matter in any material way?

Israel or the IDF can buy this anywhere, or even just build it in-house (and there's a huge cost to spending a long time on procurement if someone can get Google to cancel this, but unfortunately it doesn't matter for anyone in Gaza right now)

and while there are a lot of objections to this (why not spend it on something a lot more useful, feeding Google is bad, etc), awareness of this, or even cancelling this does nothing to move the needle on the actual very high-prio issue :/

so all this has a huge cost to them (they lost their jobs, emotional distress) and in the end ends up as performative as Twitter/Mastodon threads :(

[arcastroe]

Of course, but what I wasn't aware of (until today's news) was that Google had signed a 1.2 Billion contract to provide cloud-computing and artificial intelligence services for the Israeli government and military.

Not saying I agree or disagree. Just saying that the protest succeeded in raising awareness.

[DiogenesKynikos]

People may not be aware that Google is helping the Israeli military.

[DiogenesKynikos]

This issue is directly related to their work. They aren't "soapboxing" about some random societal issue. Their company is providing services to the Israeli military that are likely being used to target and kill people in huge numbers.