Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
- Google Tries to Corral Its Staff After Ugly Internal Debates
The new rules are a marked departure from Google’s unrestrained culture that, along with the workplaces of its Silicon Valley neighbors, was once held up as a model for corporate America. But those companies have learned that encouraging employees to speak up in office forums can also court trouble.
As Google’s work force swelled past 100,000 employees and the nation’s politics became even more partisan, Google’s culture has become a flash point. Employee walkouts have quashed several projects and political debates on internal message boards have grown so rancorous that they have drawn the ire of Mr. Trump.
In the rules issued Friday, Google urged employees to be careful in their comments about the company.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/technology/google-culture-rules.html
Google says only talk about work at work — and definitely no politics“Our primary responsibility is to do the work we’ve each been hired to do, not to spend working time on debates about non-work topics,” said the Google memo, posted to its website. “Avoid conversations that are disruptive to the workplace or otherwise violate Google’s workplace policies. Managers are expected to address discussions that violate those rules.”
A company spokeswoman, Jenn Kaiser, said the guidelines were in response to “a year of increased incivility on our internal platforms.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/23/google-says-only-talk-about-work-workand-definitely-no-politics/
Google employees ‘refuse to be complicit’ in border agency cloud contractIn a petition circulated today inside Google and on Medium, a group of employees said immigration officials are “perpetrating a system of abuse and malign neglect” at the border. The employees point to the Trump administration’s family separation policy and the recent deaths of children in immigration officials’ custody. “These abuses are illegal under international human rights law, and immoral by any standard,” the petition reads. In the hours after it was released, hundreds of employees added their signatures to the petition.
The employees point to a request for bids on a CBP cloud computing contract, which is a service Google provides. “The winning cloud provider will be streamlining CBP’s infrastructure and facilitating its human rights abuses,” the petition continues, and the employees demand that Google commit to not provide immigration agencies with any funding or work.
- All student debt in the US, visualized
- I Shared My Phone Number. I Learned I Shouldn’t Have.
Emre Tezisci, a security researcher at Fyde with a background in telecommunications, took on the task with gusto. He and I had never met or talked. He quickly plugged my cellphone number into a public records directory. Soon, he had a full dossier on me — including my name and birth date, my address, the property taxes I pay and the names of members of my family.
From there, it could have easily gotten worse. Mr. Tezisci could have used that information to try to answer security questions to break into my online accounts. Or he could have targeted my family and me with sophisticated phishing attacks. He and the other researchers at Fyde opted not to do so, since such attacks are illegal.