Workers Leaving the Googleplex

Interesting.

My Dad once sued microsoft because they had many "temporary" workers who did not get the full benefit of full time workers. These workers were labelled as contract workers however, he was able to win his case because at the end of the day, they were working full time for Microsoft. Not only that, they were often employed by microsoft for many years, even though the claim was generally that these employees were fulfilling a short term need.

He was able to get them damages for all sorts of things, including the fact that they were not entitled to store discounts while other employees were.

Even though he won, many companies including Microsoft still do the exact same thing with their employees. The only difference is they are trying to keep it under wraps so they don't get sued again.

Very likely, Google is trying to cover it's tracks in the same manner. They are probably less worried about racism than they are about this sort of permatemp law suit.

Let's face it, if they were doing something legal they wouldn't care if they were getting videotaped.

From my dad's firm's website: http://www.bs-s.com/cases/c-microsoft-vizcaino.html

There's nothing surprising about a company having different classes of employees. If that was all that the article was about, it would be a minor curiosity. However, Google's extreme overreaction to someone trying to get some very basic information about the other set of employees is what's concerning. It's difficult to know how much of this story is speculation vs fact - whether or not the yellow badged employees are really data entry, whether there are really instructions on the back of the badge with a number to call if someone starts asking questions. If true, though, it's highly concerning coming from a company that flaunts the openness of their products, and whose corporate motto is "don't be evil".

Hey, first I am from Egypt.

Second, I have to admit, I am kind of struct by most of the comments here. Most of the comment are pro google and think andrew here got it for himself.

I believe this have to do a lot with cultural differences here. Most people in Egypt, would stand with the employee against the corporation. Most egyptians would definitely be pro andrew. I believe the reason here is that most Egyptians are either employees or owners of very small businesses, and would not perceive themselves as even potentially large business owners. Egypt being a poorer country and all. This is why most Egyptian would never try to put themselves in google's foot and try to see things from their perspective.

I guess the opposite is true from most of the ppl commenting here, they must think if I was google, I would have done the same, and it's probably because they don't see it as too far fetched. Either that or the western population is becomming alarmingly submissive to authority and unwilling to question their action.

Google are clearly being unfair, this should not be acceptable.

Was the voiceover being done in a closet in a Google lobby or is there another reason for the depressed monotone? I mean, I understand we're trying to be moody and ominous here, but the voiceover could have been retelling the story of the Human Centipede and I'd have probably fallen asleep (or wanted to shoot myself).

I'm not defending Google, here, because I don't know anything about them beyond what everyone else knows from the outside. However, what do you expect the reaction to be when you are an employ for a company contracted to provide services to a client who grants you certain access and privileges which you then abuse to pursue your own interests and investigations outside of the scope of what you were employed to do?

Hell, at the end of this video, I'm still unclear what point is trying to be conveyed. Is it just "the racial balance of the employees that I saw exiting the building for two days didn't meet some proper balance I had in my head, so I decided to start doing a socio-economic documentary on my employer's dime and after everything went to shit, because of how I was conducting myself, I put together a ten minute video to explain myself to future employers"?

I saw a lot of smiling faces exiting the building and getting into nice cars. I don't see what the big deal is that people who are temporary or part of menial data-entry labor are not part of the greater events and benefits and festivities of the company. I'm sure it's that way at most companies. I'm on the development side of things and I don't get to go to the big sales-team getaways in Cancun or wherever else they go. And I doubt that the janitorial staff and security staff are sharing in the staff-bonus compensation that I am. And none of us are getting the several million dollar company loans to buy our mansion that CEOs have gotten.

Perhaps this will be an unpopular sentiment, but I just got a strong vibe of "this is my chance to be a documentary film-maker".

I used to work at Google and the "class system" was something that grated on me from time to time.

I didn't know any yellow badge folks myself, and was ignorant of their existence, just as the article mentions.

But red badges (contractors) are ubiquitous. In one case they fired all the QA contractors and made them reapply for their own jobs -- we're talking about people who had deep knowledge of certain projects, who'd been on certain teams for years, who were valued contributors, people who we didn't want to lose. But because they had a red badge, they were subject to petty whims of bureaucrats from on high, unlike white badges. At least on my team, almost all red badge QA contractors were of Indian origin, and often female.

Now that's not very different from how a normal company works. But Google just made the distinction difficult to ignore since white badges had so many privileges, including, for engineers, the right to reallocate themselves, or to exploit the famous 20% time. Google's image is that they are pioneering a different way of working, with more workplace democracy, but the truth is that these privileges are limited to as few employees as they can get away with.

And of course, the biggest class division has to do with the people who do physical labor and sanitation. I tend to work after hours and I also tend to talk to people even if they're supposed to be "invisible", so I've had conversations with some of the workers. (Ironically, one conversation conducted using Google Translate). That person emptying your wastebasket might be qualified to do nursing back in her home country. Oh, and it might amuse Yahoo employees to know that their recycling program is a complete sham -- everything is emptied into the same trash containers anyway, and the workers are forbidden from taking the cans away to cash in themselves.

Note to young videographers: When a company asks whether you're working on an expose, the phrase "I’m interested in issues of class, race, and labor" will not defuse the situation.

Honestly, I'm not sure this is a big deal. They're hiring unskilled labor and giving them a role at an extraordinary company. A rational management team wanting to generate profits for risk taking investors and generate new growth, cuts costs by eliminating benefits when possible.

They could easily get this done in India or China. If they are really doing book scanning, I'm shocked this isn't being done in the far east. With that perspective, this isn't far from "don't be evil".

It's not the best practice in the world but this isn't exploitation.

Perhaps it should inspire some investigative journalism. Perhaps Google could fund a program and give these data entry people the opportunity to innovate, rewarding them accordingly with a small scale founders' award?

Despite the assumed background of these employees, they're at Google inspiring their kids. With so few benefits outside of their salary, they can always work elsewhere. But why would they take fast food or something of the sort over this?

I imagine the cleaning crew that vacuum at Goldman Sachs at night get treated way worse.

Minor point of clarification, as the tone of many comments seems to presume that google fired the author of this blog. This could be, but seems unlikely based on the blog.

The author was not employed by Google, but by a contracting firm hired by Google. The author's actions spooked the owner of the contracting firm, who did not want to risk his relationship and business with Google.

The author even reports his direct phone conversation with the owner of the firm. "He told me the issue was very serious because it could jeopardize Transvideos contract with Google and potentially lead to 60 people losing their jobs."

That is, if Google ended their relationship with Transvideo, then the sixty people Transvideo hired to work the Google contract would lose their jobs.

Google security may or may not have asked the firm to fire the author. Most likely, however, I suspect the firm took the decision on its own as the simplest, cleanest and quickest way to end an issue before the lower level google security staff finished drafting a report that may have risked Transvideo's relationship with Google.

So, as the owner of the firm what would you do? The choices are:

a) support an employee who plans to quit in two months, but before he does wants to use his job to investigate "issues of class, race, and labor". The downside is that Google might decide to work with a different firm, thereby causing you to fire the 60 people you hired to support the contract and perhaps lose your entire business.

b) Terminate the employee to protect your business and the sixty people who work to support it.

Not a pleasant decision, to be sure, but the choice seems obvious even if Google says nothing.

What first-world, over privileged bullshit. (Paraphrasing) "The yellow badges don't get the same fancy meals, backpacks, get to ride the multi-colored bicycles, or listen to authors talking for an hour". What utter non-sense bullshit.

"Oh, its a good thing I got fired because I have to go back to grad school."

"I'm going to talk in a post-adolescent semi-deep but monotonous tone for 11 minutes to talk about how Racist Google Is".

I really want to buy this yuppie, preppie child a ticket to anywhere in America that isn't Google or Haaaaaarvard and let him see what its like to grow up on food stamps and welfare in the deep south, or better yet just drop him off anywhere that isn't a modern country.

The divide between people from different backgrounds was really obvious to me once I moved to Asia. There's an extreme class system at play. There are certainly places with this is exploited, but this isn't always the case. Often times they are just paid less, have less benefits, and work harder (at least, physically)...but they are still free, treated well, and seem generally happy.

From the description given, there seems to be some parallels between yellow badges and what I've seen in Asia.

I'm not sure that this is a bad thing. We can't all be PhDs earning high 6 figure salaries. There is a need for mundane labor, requiring little education/creativity. Maybe it's weird because it's google, and the juxtaposition is great. But what's the difference between doing in in the Valley and outsourcing it to China/India? If Google did outsource these jobs, people would just be QQing about that instead.

As for the race angle, it's hardly Google's problem/responsibility. This is a fundamental cancer within the US that requires serious effort/rethinking required to even begin to address the situation.

I've heard Google accused of having a "caste system" before, always because contractors aren't allowed X Google perk.

They may not realize that Google walks a fine line with the IRS here. Its cheaper to pay contractors (write off the fees vs. payroll tax, for instance), so many companies use contractors like employees. This is illegal, and if the IRS decides your contractor is really an employee, they will force you to pay taxes as such.

So Google must be careful to maintain a clear distinction between employees and contractors. I suspect the badges and tiered privileges are just that.

He did mention "red badge" contractors having more privilidges than "yellow badge." I can't speak to that, and perhaps Google does need to take a hard look at its hiring practices. But it seems more likely to me that the OP is encountering a feature of our tax system, not a deliberate attempt to underpay minorities.

Lots of people are commenting that maybe the yellow badges might be working on something secretive that Google does not want them to share with others. But this does not make sense for 2 reasons - 1) I am pretty sure there will be some software engineers in Google who are currently working on something secretive but they will not be under these draconian restrictions of not to talk to others or call the security immediately if a fellow Googler approaches them.

2) These ppl can go home and can talk to their spouses, their friends etc. and let them know what they are working on. So making sure that they don't talk to anyone in Google during their office hours is not going to help keep their projects secretive.

So there has to be some other angle to this story which does not involve secretiveness of their projects.

It sounds curious that people with a yellow badge are forbidden to speak to people with badges of another color.

If that's true, Google has some explaining to do, methinks.

Large companies work by inertia. Google is actually more agile for its size, but it's still a big company and ruled by inertia.

In a large company, the majority of people don't know each other, and don't communicate on a daily basis. This means that things of interest get passed from person to person, usually by email, and so the original intent of the message tends to get lost due to the 3rd or 4th reader having no idea what kind of person the original writer is, what his writing style is, whether he's being serious or joking, etc.

As a result, you end up with lots of requests for clarification, especially where it's an event that falls outside of the normal routine. It takes a lot to rile up a company, but Andrew did it expertly, pushing all the buttons his background in sociology and politics gave him a solid understanding of.

Notice how it went through three separate "request for clarification" requests, each more formal than the last. Each time, he responded in a passive-aggressive manner that re-pushed those same buttons.

As it pushed its way through the various departments and echelons of the company, such a message would become more and more threatening as the person became less and less known. People go into CYA mode (better safe than sorry), the company momentum changes and things start rolling.

Let's look at the course of events again:

1: Andrew is intercepted by someone who is probably a manager (notice his description "Agitated Chubby White Male", with the connotations of bourgeoisie).

2: The manager takes Andrew to explain the situation to security (pointing out that the security guard is a black man in a menial job, with "sedate" added for connotations of passively accepting his proletariat fate).

3: Security contacts Transvideo to get clarification from Andrew and find out his intentions (notice his description "so that the issue can be filtered and separated neatly into their bracketed accounts", with the connotations of the soulless bureocratic corporate machine).

At this point, the security department is unsure of Andrew's intentions. Was it just harmless curiosity? Is he a plant, trying to dig up dirt to embarrass Google? They can't know for sure, so they ask him to clarify his position.

What Andrew sends back is a passive-aggressive letter covering class, race, and labor, all hot button topics. His manager asks for even more clarification. People are getting very nervous at this point.

Andrew's response is political dynamite, once again using passive-aggressive techniques to all but accuse Google of racist discriminatory labor practices.

That someone with "backgrounds in sociology and political philosophy" wouldn't understand what panic his second letter would produce is incredibly hard to believe. In fact, Andrew's entire description is so slanted and colored that I'm inclined to suspect that he deliberately set about getting himself fired so that he could trumpet "Google is Evil!" from his blog, Michael Moore style.

So if he handed off all the copies of the video he had to google, where did the video in the post come from? Is it a totally different video?

Wow. This sounds like some kind of sweatshop operating within the Google campus and they are afraid of this getting exposed. Still not able to reconcile the public image of Google and what is described in this post.

Getting them to write out a confession letter is classic detective-from-tv stuff.

How naive are people not to realize you are being made to declare everything that will be used to terminate you (and in court)?

Yellow badge Google sounds very much like a microfilm company I did computer work for.

A lot of the discussion here is around what I would like the call the US/EU (not restricted to the EU but that is what I am more familiar with) divide in work ethics and what is expected from you.

In the US (apparently from comments) they can terminate your contract for (almost) any reason. In the EU (and apparently Australia) they have to build a stronger case for firing you.

Differences are also clear regarding overtime: usually paid in the EU and expected and unpaid in the US.

There is a more than we realise that separates us (EU) from the US and if this happened in the EU I (hope) people would be in support of Andrew. I don't know enough about the US to say whether or not this is acceptable behaviour from Google.

I would appreciate if you mention where you live/are from in your comments to enhance perspective to the discussion.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the reason the yellow badge worker's aren't given those benefits is to keep them separate from the rest of the work force for security reasons (to keep them from talking about their work)

They allow janitors and food service workers access to these perks, it seems kind of weirdly targeted if they are just doing it to save money.

They're probably doing work that is so confidential that google doesn't want to give them the chance to socialize with other workers.

I agree that Google is within its right to deny them lunch, shuttle services or whatever fancy perks they dish out to their regular employees. But what I can't understand is the discrimination that Google is perpetrating against them by denying them the basic human privilege of talking to another human being.

As employees Vic Gundotra or Marissa Mayer will be knowing more company secrets than these guys will know in their lifetime. Do they also have a phone number on the back of their badge to call if somebody unknown approaches them? Are they also prevented from talking to other employees so that they don't leak those secrets? Why is Google afraid that only the yellow badges cannot keep the company secrets? What if their supervisor simply tells them that what they are working on is a company secret. Like almost any other employees why Google thinks they can' keep it a secret? Why do they have to impose this almost draconian measure of human segregation only for them?

Security in large corporations are often very tight fisted.. If you forget your access card where i work, even if the security personnel know you, they have to walk you up to your desk like a lost child! until some manager 'claims' you

In this particular case i feel for this guy, but all security are going to see is a temp contractor who's making videos of google employees, and asking strange questions to interview them.. Their probably thinking either an undercover journalist (very likely at a company like google) or somebody who's just acting weird and would need future monitoring.. neither of which are really desirable!

not to mention during lunch breaks any normal employee would have one thing on their mind.. stuffing their face!

It's a funny thing when secret rules you have never agreed to and are not the part of the law get you fired despite you complete honesty and openness.

It has very totalitaristic look&feel when you have to be careful all the time so you always obey unknown rules, breaking of which might lead to severe consequences.

Aren't a lot of Microsoft'ies also contractors? If you are a contractor and rock the boat, you get fired; that is pretty much the way it is.

I think someone from Google needs to explain what went on here. Why is what's going on in the 3.14159 building regarded as top secret? If they're just OCRing documents surely that's no big deal. People shouldn't be fired simply because they're interested in sociology.

I have worked in two different kind of companies during summers while I was in highschool, a Japanese auto parts manufacturing company had a very interesting structure, from the President to the temp assembly line associate, all wore white uniforms when they arrived at work. Management offices were in middle of the factory floor completely accessible to any employee. Everyone sat in same cafeterias and enjoyed similar company perks. There was absolutely no segregation and the flow of ideas were amazing, problems got reported and were acted upon fast, it was very agile company. I really enjoyed working there and so did other employees.

The other company (auto parts manufacturer as well) had similar badge system as discussed in the article, employees with lowest ranking badge were considered the "lowest class", no one except their immediate supervisor talked to them and listened to them. This segregation meant they had no incentive to work intelligently or report problems. All they wanted to do was to do their jobs and get the hell out.

It was quite educating to work under the two contrasting management structure. The first one was a breath of fresh air and the second was very suffocating.

Am I the only guy who thinks the guy (Andrew?) was way out of line here. You put yourself in the firing line for absolutely no reason relevant to you.

Theres probably more to it than just that. Given Google's history, I have to account for other factors - maybe these are temporary employees being hired to a special program (as in a remedial or 'second chance' program).

Or maybe this is Google's new way of boosting revenue!

Lets not jump to conclusions, this will definitely get picked by major news outlets and then Google will have to respond

Thankfully the fortune 500 company that I work for in Bay Area doesn't have color coded employees. I heard Yahoo does the color coded employees and actively discriminate as well.

Seems to me there are two issues:

1.) Yellow badge worker treatment -- most of the comments here seem to accept his description of their work life (right or wrong) as fact, it is unsubstantiated to me. I see a video of people getting in their cars and going home, that is all. Considering he claims to have never spoken to any of them, except for a brief encounter before security grabbed him, it would seem even he is admitting he does not have first hand knowledge of anything he said. It is an entirely less than complete view (and possibly incorrect description) to which to draw any conclusion.

For that reason most of the discussion seems premature to me. With that said, no luxury transport, no free meals, etc -- does in fact describe the working conditions of 99.9% of Americans. A company treating people normally is not substantially interesting, tho apparently juxtaposition makes it so -- because what is interesting, and has always been interesting about Google, is that they treat their employees extraordinarily well.

2.) Was Google "right" for wanting him off the campus? Sure -- they contracted with his employer to provide some service, not to film an expose about Google itself,made possible only by being on the Google campus with unfettered access to the grounds. I realize he says he did not film it with the idea it would be an expose, but film is shot to be shown, and in his letter he makes it fairly clear what his interest was in filming, the assumptions and/or understanding he had while filming -- which gives a fairly clear picture of why he was filming. And it resulted in just about the kind of film you would expect. That isn't what he was there for. There is nothing that even remotely rises to a whistleblower type defense, as there is nothing remotely illegal about what he claims to be the yellow badge worker treatment. If he had in fact been filming something illegal (or at least in some way out of the norm in a negative fashion, even), my opinion would be more substantially in his favor -- in relation to how egregious the treatment actually was.

Does Google know that pi is 3.14159~ and not 3.1459~ ? :)

This story is clearly one sided and the facts are not fully represented. It is possible that Google managers were very protective over information about people hired as contractors. This is a tax issue, Google must show that these contract workers are not "de-facto" employees. Looking at who sets working hours is part of a logical test used in some cases. Maybe they were scared of setting off red flags at the IRS. See the microsoft and fedex cases to learn more about this issue.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1153/is_n10_v120/ai_2...

(EDIT) they also likely canned the guy for being an idiot and causing trouble

I don't think he understands how contractors work (Google didn't hire you you git, Google contracted your company and your company placed you there to fill the contract) or hourly labor works (you don't get privileges or benefits), so he turns it into a ridiculous conspiracy.

Breaking news!

Google has hourly employees! - You don't say?!

Google has contractors! - Really?!

Let's explore the narcissistic exploration of self-hurting section by section:

"In September 2007 I was hired jointly by Transvideo Studios and Google"

No you weren't. You were hired by Transvideo Studios who filled a contractor slot on their video production contract with Google.

"I had access to a personally unprecedented amount of privileges, but was not entitled to the ski trips, DisneyLand adventures, stock options, and holiday cash bonuses"

That's because you weren't a Google employee. You were a Transvideo Studios employee. Do you expect to receive benefits from another company just because you happen to be walking around on their campus?

"The workers wearing yellow badges are not allowed any of the privileges that I was allowed – ride the Google bikes, take the Google luxury limo shuttles home, eat free gourmet Google meals, attend Authors@Google talks and receive free, signed copies of the author’s books, or set foot anywhere else on campus except for the building they work in."

So hourly employees aren't entitled to the benefits package of salaried exempt employees? And the way Google is setup is to pool employee benefits in and around their building, ergo the only way for hourly employees to not receive the benefits package is to work in a different facility?! Stop the presses! It's a conspiracy!

I almost stopped reading there, hand stuck to my forehead, but then I saw this as I was closing the page and was hooked to the rest of this like watching a train wreck happen.

"To Whom It May Concern,

Yesterday I was outside the Google Book Search building, which is adjacent to the building I work in, and had the chance to talk to a few employees while they were leaving work. Most of them are people of color and are supposedly involved in the labor of digitizing information. I’m interested in issues of class, race, and labor, and so out of general curiosity I wanted to ask these workers about their jobs. I am aware of internal mechanisms for discussing labor issues with Google, and had no intention of defaming the company. I was not aware of how secretive the Book Search project is, but now understand how seriously my curiosity could jeopardize not only my own job and Transvideos’ relationship with Google, but also my legal situation because of the non-disclosure agreement I signed.

I apologize for bothering you with this innocent mistake and can assure you that in the future I will be more cautious about respecting confidentiality at Google.

Sincerely,

Andrew Wilson"

You're also a liar. Your intention was not to explore your passing interest in labor, class or race, but to feed your own self-importance by uncovering a made-up conspiracy of class warfare at Google, where the man is oppressing a silent minority of underclass poor people from enjoying the rights and privileges of the ruling overclasses. Did you mention that you were secretly video taping this?

You wanted to document this in as dishonest a way as possible, "exposing" this "dark secret" to the world the way PETA exposes animal cruelty in meat processing plants, with hidden cameras, a blog post loaded with terms-and-phrases-of-controversy.

"But Marco called back in a frenzy, saying that Google security had proof of me outside, filming yellow-badged workers leaving the 3.1459~ building on two separate occasions. I told him this was true and he said that Google legal was now involved, and they needed the video tapes immediately."

So of course your immediate innocent reaction, which you didn't think was important to share with anybody, was to secretly videotape people coming and going from their place of work without their permission.

"Burt then presented me with a document that would terminate my employment on the basis of me using __Google’s video equipment__ during working hours __(although it was during my lunchbreak)__"

It's still Google's equipment you nitwit.

"I told him I could take the shuttle home, as I’ve gotten on without my badge numerous times, but he insisted on driving me to the CalTrain station."

Really? You don't understand why they wanted to escort you personally off campus? After you were abusing company equipment, violating security, secretly filming your coworkers and pretending not to find the film, then documenting your lie by putting the video you couldn't find up on your site, then lying to your managers about the entire thing? What are you 8? It boggles the mind.

I wonder how many of the yellow badges got fired as a result of this asshole?

Wake me when this guy grows up and starts seeing a psychiatrist. And yes, please keep this post up so other companies know not to hire you either.

We do not know the conditions in the building. They probably have their own cafe there. Perhaps someone should investigate if they ever need to leave for lunch :)

As a minority myself, I think it's unfortunate that the proportion of people of color is apparently unbalanced between the "yellow badges" and the "red and white badges".

However, I think this reflects more on the disparity in Ivy League schools (which Google prefers to hire its full-time workers from) and the computer science/manual labor fields in general than any inherent racial bias within Google itself.

I'm sorry guys I must be missing something here. I figure that this video and transcript must have some deeper meaning than what I'm grokking from it as it is currently the top story with a whopping ~500 points.

To my knowledge, cultural hierarchy is very standard within pretty much all companies regardless of size. Not everyone gets a company car, their own office, the same health benefits, or if you are privileged enough to work at a company that provides them, the same gourmet lunch as has been stated elsewhere in these comments. Furthermore, the existence of sub-hierarchy (contract and temporary) workers is very common in larger companies. To my understanding, these temp and contract workers usually enjoy few if any benefits provided by the company as they are rarely actually employed by the company they are working for but rather an agency.

In addition to this, it is pretty standard procedure to ban all unauthorized taping on company campuses. If anything, to my uninformed mind the fact that an employee got as far as actually taking unauthorized video footage is if anything a credit to Google's openness (or whatever you want to call it).

So, I guess my question is: Where is the interesting aspect of this? Is the popularity of this really just due to the "divulging" that Google employs workers that aren't provided the same benefits as some of its other workers? Is it the existence of a "class system" in Google to show worker's authority/hierarchy level? If it is one of these reasons, there must be something else I'm missing as without having seen this story I would have just assumed that these things existed at Google.

I ask this as a sincere question as obviously this has gained the attention of a large portion of this community which I hold as very intelligent. I am driven to assume that whatever it is that is engaging about this story is simply going over my head.

What bothers me most about this is that these workers have a shift that essentially makes them invisible to the rest of Google employees. They come in many hours before the bulk of Googlers and they leave at a time when there is the least foot traffic on the campus.

There's a clear intention to keep this group segregated and hidden from the rest of Google and that's a bit disturbing.

I'm pretty sure most companies reduce benefits for less skilled workers, just not as clear cut as this.

I wonder what's with the confidentiality at book search. The first two things that pop to mind is keeping the yellow badges secret and preventing their enemies from messing around(publishers are pretty mad at the whole book scanning thing).

There's been a lot of comments saying something to the effect of "this guy does not understand the difference between full-time employees and contractors" or "people doing manual work should be paid less than employees."

Yet the author mentions:

"I found this social arrangement interesting, and ... decided to investigate the rationale behind Google’s decision to exclude the yellow badge class from most privileges the company has to offer, despite the fact that their labor ...[is] being contracted to Google by another company just like ... other informational laborers, the kitchen staff, the shuttle drivers, the custodians, and more."

It seems like what piqued his interest was that there seemed to be a disparity between the benefits of this particular group of workers and other normally considered low-skill work like the others he mentions.

As far as sociology or expose goes, the article is uninteresting. What, a giant corporation uses every legal means at its disposal to make sure it gets only good PR? What, there exist serious race and class disparities in the United States that manifest themselves in the workplace? What, Google has a good PR department that doesn't reflect actual internal practices? Quelle horreur!

What's more interesting from a sociological perspective is the range of most of the reactions here on Hacker News, which seem to vary between "he doesn't understand that this is just how things work" to brick shitting freak out ("passive aggressive", "nitwit", "see a psychologist").

If you find yourself immediately jumping into defense mechanisms, stop for a second and think about why that is.

Well. Either Andrew was not sufficiently informed of security policies or Google overreacted. IMO.

I would presume training for on-site contractors includes the security policies about job knowledge and ability to talk about it. Likely a handbook or something...

Or, if Andrew was within limits of the policy, Google overreacted.

At any rate, certainly if someone I didn't know came up and wanted to ask me questions about my job (which by the way would be company confidential), I'd be suspicious; I'd likely call security, depending on if I'd seen him around before or not.

I appreciate that it is interesting about the socio-economic divide. I would want to ask questions too, but, uh, I'd like try not to be utterly oblivious to the obvious security concerns.

this is the most interesting read I've found on HN in a long time. Thank you for publishing it.

A lot of people posting about how this is a 'blog' or 'complaint' or whatever seem to be completely missing the fact that this is an artist's portfolio and an actual art piece that has been previously exhibited.

It's clearly meant to generate discussion regarding racial and human rights issues, as well as the clash of public/private space. I do not see a single hint that the artist is in any way unhappy or resentful, but IMO is rather opening up an issue for discussion. (See his CV: http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/resume)

I'm shocked at all the angry responses.

I'm scared! Am I the only one that sees no big deal about scanning books? What is so secretive about it? I think they are doing an amazing job and I'd love to know how many books they can scan every day, etc...

The second thing is that I don't understand why are you calling him racist. I believe that things in the USA are quite different from I'm used to.. You can get sued for anything. I heard that an employer can get sued for asking things like age, sex, height, color during an interview for a job.

Meh, too much back-and-forth for me to jump in.

There may be a perfectly good reason for Google to exclude contractors from the "Googly perks": the Microsoft lawsuit.

If Google treats the contractors just like its employees, then the contractors can turn around and sue Google. Google needs to maintain a distinction between contractors and FTEs. Recall the Microsoft lawsuit filed by contractors: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp

mind blown. where's the don't be evil thing ?

I wonder why it is confidential. The only reason I can come up with is they don't want any more copyright infringement lawsuits and they're scanning Disney books...

Why is it such a surprise that different kinds of employees are treated differently and receive different perks? If I went to any factory in the US I wouldn't expect to see the janitors being picked up and dropped in limousines, or the housekeeping staff joining in on the company vacations. This isn't exactly the same thing, but it's like complaining that construction workers don't get paid as much as architects and investors.

I think this is the job: http://us.randstad.com/content/findjobs/job-details/index.xm...

If I call a plumber, I want my plumbing fixed. I don't care about the plumber's work benefits, problems, or anything else about his personal life; I want my plumbing fixed; that's why I called a plumber. I don't have plumbing problems enough to hire one personally; that's why plumbing contractors exist.

this made me sad. anyone still got illusion that google left china because of human rights?

Wow, so these yellow badges are sort of the plantation slave labor then?

Amazing to hear that Google has a strict caste system.

edit: wow, at 1:05PST dozens of people suddenly hit this thread and started attacking the premise.

Page too wide, and paragraphs fixed at 134 columns...not good design.

On a side note, coming to read this now with over 350 comments, without the rating system I can't make heads or tails of which ones are or are not worth reading.

he was there to cause trouble and google got rid of him. smart.

Let's not forget that Google's innovation in search has had (and will continue to have) the most profound impact on the world's poorest people... the people for whom information is least accessible via other means.

I think that many commenters are missing the point.

The question isn't whether Google is goind anything strictly illegal.

The question is whether Google is doing something what would be considered shady by a big part of Google employees; If so, how would Google acknowlege the situation; And then, how would they live thru this, with Googlers knowing that their own standards are in a serious mismatch with the actual behavior of the business body, Google.

Public reaction is another interesting thing. People's passion or neglect isn't regulated by law; instead it's regulated by their own feeling of right and wrong. It may be both legal and a PR disaster at the same time.

Of course, it might turn out that people in general and Googlers dominantly don't see any problem and don't care. It doesn't seem to be this case yet.

This is literally one of the craziest things I have ever seen. Google is doing absolutely nothing wrong or unethical at all. The guy got fired because he started accusing Google of racism.

Wow. Just wow. The sense of entitlement and self-righteousness is just mind blowing.

There is a huuuuuuuuuuugly important distinction that has to be made here:

The “Book Scanners” are NOT Google employees!!!!!

They are the workers of a company that was hired by Google to do this monotonous physical labor, you know CONTRACT WORKERS!

That’s why they don’t get any rocket-ships made of chocolate Lego bricks or whatever perks Google employees get.

As for security getting involved that is procedure!! and exactly what happens when you go snooping around on company grounds.

This this whole post is nothing but sensationalist rambling and delusional nonsense.

I dont think he should have got fired, whats so secret about bookscanning?? Google feels it now has too much power and can walk over anyone.

High Definition video link: http://vimeo.com/15852288

Two words: fuck bureaucracy.

This is why I'll never work for a large company.

"the first girl I had spoken to had followed the instructions on the back of her yellow badge – which is to call a certain manager if anyone asks about the work of the yellow badge class"

This scarely reminds of "Jedem das Seine" and "Arbeit macht frei"

Both phrases actually match the described situation perfectly

This sounds an awful lot like the movie 'The Antitrust'.