Google built its reputation on doing things differently in the workplace.

Company culture was cultivated through enviable benefits like onsite childcare, free meals and an emphasis on transparency. On the surface, everything looked great for the people who worked there.

You know, like the Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn 2013 movie The Internship would have you believe.

Then cracks started to appear in the facade and the company had to come to terms with the fact that there aren’t enough office slides in the world to make up for bad business practices.

Internal politics at Google have spilt into the public sphere. Last year, in November, employees staged a massive global walkout to protest ‘forced arbitration policies’ and Google’s handling of sexual harassment more broadly.

Workers have also questioned Google over a secret project to develop a search engine for China, designed to aid in its censorship regime.

Now this, from CNN:

On Monday, Google dismissed several outspoken workers in an internal announcement for allegedly violating its data-security policies. Now some employees are accusing Google of trying to suppress its critics.

“Google just fired 4 of my coworkers for daring to ask the question ‘is Google helping separate families or cage children at the border?'” tweeted Amr Gaber, a Google software engineer who has previously organized protests of the company.

“After finding openly accessible information, they alerted coworkers of the horrifying news. Yes. Google is working with [US Customs and Border Protection].”

The tweet is referring to the controversial immigrant detention centres which have grown in size and cruelty under the Trump administration. Google employees gathered outside the company’s San Francisco office to protest ongoing retaliation by the company against workers who speak out on ethical concerns:

Employees at Google are claiming that the firings are an intimidation tactic. Google claims that the workers who were fired accessed privileged information without permission.

The firings, along with Google’s reported hiring last week of a consulting firm linked to anti-union activities, suggest a shift in its approach to employee dissent. As recently as 2018, Google executives held a companywide meeting to hear complaints about the sponsorship of a political conference geared toward conservatives, a decision some employees disagreed with.

Around roughly the same time, Google fielded tough questions at a separate meeting about its work on Project Maven, a joint effort with the Defence Department involving artificial intelligence and military drone footage.

You can read more about Project Maven here.

Workers at Google have been led to believe that their independence and input are valuable to the company, but if that was ever true it seems to be changing.

Not okay, Google.

[source:cnn]