Google employee resigns, saying company ‘silences Palestinians’ | Hacker News Reader

Google employee resigns, saying company ‘silences Palestinians’

aljazeera.com

52 pointsmetadat20 comments

Same news from yesterday.

She refused to do her job. They offered to resign her and she claimed retaliation, which the labor board investigated and rejected.

These sorts of employees are poison to the company in various ways.

Is it normal for Google to relocate employees from San Francisco to Sao Paulo?

This is the issue with only hearing one side of the story.

She was perhaps offered a range of choices, selected this one, and then filed a complaint that any reassignment was retaliation.

But I would jump at that opportunity. Brazil is an amazing country.

This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32672534

Moving employees to a different country with 17 days notice (not a job that needs moving around) is a great way to unionize your workforce.

Based on the context, I have a strong feeling that we are not getting the full version of the story here.

I believe the founders are Jewish and are hypersensitive to any criticism of Israel, even if it comes from one of their own, and do not tolerate it. Hate speech against any other group is far more tolerated than what is perceived as criticism of Jews and Israel. If you do this at Google as an employee, they will squash you. Like a bug.

Seems like a good idea! If she wasn't happy there, find a new place to work. Win-win!

Would you have the same dismissive reply if the headline had been "company silences black/Jewish/LBGT voices?"

If I thought the claims were just as specious, yes.

Maybe that's a fair comparison.

With no ill-intent I put forth: Would you say the same if the headline had been "company silences white male voices"?

The reason it could be perceived as a corollary is that Islam is a considerably dominant religion globally, the Palestinian fight is uniquely mired in religious ideology on both sides (even if there is definitely more to it than that).

Homosexuality is illegal in the Palestinian territories. As is abortion.

Well to be fair. Google does business in Saudi where there does not exist LGTBQ rights.

Isn't it legal to fire an employee who speaks against their company?

That’s not why they were fired. It was for non performance.

In this case she resigned. I'm just wondering why Google didn't fire her and that's it?

I don't know the specifics of the case but it is often a lot easier to "manage them out" than to fire them. Often this means putting them on a performance improvement plan that you are pretty sure they won't satisfy but effectively tells them to start looking for another job.

No, it's not. California, like most states in the US, is an "at-will employment" state, which basically means they can fire you for just about anything. They don't even need a reason.

But in practice, at least in big tech, they will always want to have a documented and defendable reason for firing people to avoid lawsuits.

Of course, Google is run by two jews!

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