During a presentation by an executive with Google’s Israel branch on Monday, a Google Cloud engineer stood up and shouted, “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance.” They were later fired.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/8/24094687/google-israel-project-nimbus-employee-fired
Do you think you could get away with something like that at your job?
Could I get away? It’s a gamble I guess. But I’ve raised my voice at meetings more than once in my life and never lost my job over it.
To be fair, I’ve never worked in a big company like google, so they can replace you yesterday.
But if you are at that point, you are ready to lose/switch jobs.
In the US - no. In some European countries, totally. The fact I can work without being worried that I’m going to get fired because I’ve upset some MBA is great for my mental health.
I find it hard to believe that, even in Europe, standing up in the middle of a presentation and accusing your boss of being complicit in genocide, even if it’s true, would not be a fireable offense. Otherwise there would be a lot of yelling matches.
You can get fired, but not “on the spot” and at worst, the employer has to pay your next month’s paycheck. That stands even if you were fired with good cause.
So here’s what would have happened, were this a Dutch company. Employee does the thing, employer says that they should leave, and they offer 1-2 months of a severance so the employee resigns on their own volition and the company avoids going to court. If the employee has more than 2 braincells, he gets a lawyer (there are good pro bono lawyers who work for free if you’re not well paid enough to get one). Lawyer advises asking for 6-8 months.
Company has two choices:
Okay? No one said anything about what he gets for being fired. Only that it makes sense that he was fired.
I guess the difference is that instead of being fired, you most likely get to leave on your own terms that you dictate largely. What I mean is you don’t get fired, you resign, and can refer to the incident as you have resigned. If you don’t want to resign, you can most likely stay in the fucked up work relationship.
I guess the main difference is not what you get, but that Google would have to argue in court that it is fine to fire the guy. And the court case comes before the firing, so if it lasts 10 years like all those cases you hear about, the guy keeps being employed.