Did you not read the part where she did, where she followed the process by the book and it was approved? Or did you just have your mind made up to decide to side with Google instead?
In my company, I could put in travel orders to let me go to and from Hawaii on the company dime, have a vacation, and have my supervisor approve (which is following the standard process), but doing that should get me in a lot of trouble and/or fired.
How do you think old-school labor organizing went down? Do you think the bosses stood there smiling as employees handed out flyers at lunch? Google shouldn't have a say in how employees unionize. They have every reason, literally EVERY SINGLE REASON to sabotage it at every stage to make it as ineffective as possible.
Sorry to be pedantic about a hypothetical, but I think it's necessary to consider the specifics of the actual case. Assuming this process involves something akin to a codebase commit, where the contents of the approved change can be clearly seen by the approvers, it raises the question of what sanctions her colleagues faced if Spiers' violation was so severe as to result in near immediate termination.
(because obviously, in your hypothetical situation, your supervisor would be fired if they knowingly approved a deceptive work expense)
If the supervisor did not know, then your analogy is flawed. There was no information asymmetry between Spiers and her reviewers - they knew what the change did and they approved it.
So in this case process was followed, yeah. But trust was broken, and it only stands to reason that Google would fire this employee because of it. All other stuff is secondary and pollutes the discussion.
You followed company policy, but your supervisor didn't.
Obviously, inserting pro-unionization messaging into a security tool isn't "by the book", or we wouldn't be having this discussion.
If I got a manager who I was friends with to approve my purchase of a fully decked out $53K Mac Pro so I could finally use Slack at a decent speed when I am working from home, wouldn’t you think there was something fishy?
Google doesn’t care about these antics. They, like all employers, don’t want their employees to have meaningful bargaining power.
https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/tech-news-fully-spec-apple-m...
Taking into account the exchange rate that works out to about 55K USD.
And as far as having “bargaining power” they are tech workers at Google. If they have even a modicum of skills they have the ultimate power - they can walk away and get another job.
Heck, I’ve worked at a bunch of no name companies over 20 years and even I can walk out of the office and have another job in two weeks and this is nowhere near the west coast.
*By the way, that's very much sarcasm since a well organized union doesn't need to cap wages at any level. It's just the argument that keeps getting put forward and I get sick of it.
What if this change allowed passwords to be captured in plain text? Browsing history? Surely those are fire-able offenses? So how is this situation any different?
Giving her the benefit of the doubt for the sake of argument, you'd agree there's a huge difference between adding malicious phishing code to a company tool, versus displaying a text notification that doesn't fit the tool's original intent?
The text in question read, “Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities.”, which is arguably different than the usual privacy/security warnings that the tool was intended for. But is it a fireable offense, versus an offense that warrants reprimand?
To put it another way, I think very few people would be bothered by Spiers being fired if the text notification she added were "Heil Hitler!". But that kind of content is fireable for a number of reasons. Whereas Spiers note about union rights, while inappropriate for the given plugin, is not patently against Google policy, and (again, assuming it's just a text notification) did not endanger the company.
If an employee tries to set fire to company equipment, they should be fired. If they draw a swastika on a bathroom stall, they should be fired. If they post up a pro-labor pamphlet in a bathroom stall, where it's against company policy to post any materials (regardless of content), should they be fired or reprimanded?
i, honestly, want to know why you think otherwise. what she did is wrong.
but assuming she didn't know and that's what the "by the book" process at Google truly is... that's even more concerning
The fact that 2 reviewers approved her change doesn't mean that she has the right to send notifications like this through a browser extension.