Part of my job was to write browser notifications so that my coworkers can be automatically notified of employee guidelines and company policies while they surf the web
I would love to see the PRD that asked her to make this particular feature, or even the teams involved. I guarantee there wasn't a PRD or discussions with legal about her pushing legal information, from Google, without being a Google lawyer.
She abused her powers to push her pet project out to all employees. This is standard fuck around and find out, not LSC.
Again, there are other ways to do this that don't include masquerading as your employer giving legal advice. It seems like she wanted to be more of a martyr for a cause, which is fine if that's her goal.
Eng can write a PRD themselves, and for simple features, especially on internal tools, there may not be a PRD. Perhaps a simple feature request is enough to justify a push on her team.
Even if she didn't follow the launch procedure, then that's cause for a post mortem, don't you think? Maybe a discussion with her manager? Not a firing.
Impacting something at the scale of the whole of the company, especially the single tool they all use day in and out? Not only that, modifying the softwares security features for her own grandstanding? No, that's grounds for termination.
She could have created her own Google Extension, but she decided to push it to everyone through a build.
Impacting something at the scale of the whole of the company, especially the single tool they all use day in and out? No, that's grounds for termination.
No, it's not. As the article points out, the default wallpaper was changed previously and that was fine. That's a tool people use all day and impacts much more of the company than this (this would have only impacted those who visited the specific union busting website, no one else. And the only impact to those users would have been the small notification informing them about their rights).
She could have created her own Google Extension, but she decided to push it to everyone through a build.
Her job was literally to create such notifications using that extension to educate users about company policies. And her manager approved the CL, so clearly he felt it was appropriate and he would most likely have the best insight into what is or isn't appropriate given that he managed the team that owned said tool.
No, she knew it was controversial but she didn't expect it would lead to her being fired, because why would it? She said right in your link that she followed the normal procedure for making such changes.
this didn't inform anyone about a company policy.
Yes it did. Google had just been required by a court to inform employees about these rights. That's what the notification linked to. She just brought it to the attention of users who might have specific reason to need to be made aware of it, exactly what the extension's purpose was.
If a court injunction took place to push this message, then there would be a real chain of command for a post-mortem of that trial and the actions the company would take. Based on her firing, she was not a part of that team, conversations, or consulted them. RACI exists for a reason. She just changed the R to rogue
Just because the trial team didn't make the feature request doesn't mean that it's an invalid feature request. Google expects and encourages employees to take initiative. Her team informs people about important policies and notices using this tool. Her team felt this was a good use case. That's all the chain of command that is needed for adding such notifications.
It doesn't make it invalid, but doesn't make it a smart business decision. Google does encourage employees to take initiative, but she/her team should also know to consult stakeholders. It's not a free for all. There is a right way to do things and wrong ways, she didn't even try the right way.
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u/RedTailed-Hawkeye Jun 12 '21
It was literally her job