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Comment by techdmn | Hacker News Reader

Agree. Also interesting that an employee protesting on his own time is considered a "political position", while selling equipment used by dictators to oppress their people is not. The article does imply that this is not always the case, but in my experience it seems much more acceptable to engage in the latter than the former.

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If Google follows its internal policies it will have to fire him. (err let him go) And while I agree that he did it on his "own time" as you will recall all of the news reports pegged him as a "Google Executive" which certainly gives the impression that its Google sanctioned (which it wasn't according to the article). I've been on both sides of this question at various times in my career and it really requires the employee to decide which is more important to them and then to dedicate themselves to that and step away from the other. I think Wael made his choice, and I admire him for it.

(I find that he keeps getting demoted too, he started out in charge of everything in the middle east and now he is down to a mere product manager :-)

Which policy dictates that he must be fired?

When I was there the Code of Conduct required that all employees abide by the (US version) of the foreign nations laws which precluded (among other things) advocating for the overthrow of any legitimate government, colluding with government or non-government agencies in the public policy area without registering as a 'lobbyist' (there are different terms in different countries), doing anything that would suggest a conflict of interest between Google and the legitimate government. Responses available to the company when an employee had been found to violate the code included things like prosecuting the individual for damages and of course termination.

It was all pretty standard boilerplate kind of stuff. There were higher standards for managers than rank and file as well. But mostly I think it is in there to try to mitigate retaliation from countries against Google corporate.

But let me re-iterate, I don't claim that they would or should fire Wael, I'm just saying that a strict reading of it would make that their next step.

Imagine what happens if Mubarak sues Google for lost income, personal distress, Etc, because their employee lead the effort to displace him? Never under estimate the gall of a plaintiff lawyer if their target has a huge cash reserve.

Minor update, as you can see there are now governments accusing Google of formenting insurgencies. Credible or not, it started with Wael's press coverage as a "Google Executive." I believe that is why employers rather their employees don't engage like this.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/russia-glenn...

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