True story, a person I know who was offered a job at Google got the employment agreement (prior to arriving which was pretty standard at the time) and read that bit about "allowing Google to protect it's IP by installing a rootkit" and they red lined it to change it "May only access Google related information and no personal information."

When they showed up HR started with "But that isn't how we use it, we would never access your personal data." To which this person said, "Great then we're agreed, all this does is make that limitation explicit.", To which HR said, "But we don't have a changed agreement", the person responded "Here is the agreement red-lined and clear, this is the only change, feel free to have legal review it."

The day proceeded until the point in the normal on-boarding process where your "mentor" would pick you up. No mentor, no employment agreement back from HR yet. Two hours later HR came back, asked for all the equipment and the badge to be returned and said, "We're sorry Google has decided we do not wish to proceed with your hire. Thanks."

I was pretty amazed by that.

I'm not. Legal doesn't want to deal with everyone having a different employment contract. Google has always leaned towards being ok with a ton of false negatives to avoid false positives. They'd rather give up 10 good hires than make one bad one.

This is just an extension of that. They don't want any exceptions and they aren't willing to make any.

Isn't it great when even something as huge and life-changing as a job is subject to a contract of adhesion with no negotiation allowed? I'm sure glad to live in such a free country with great worker rights. (Sarcasm intended.)

I have no idea how those contracts are enforceable. Quit your job, move across the country and then on your first day here are nine contracts to sign, no you can't take them home we need them now. If you don't sign you are unemployed and we want that relocation money back.

I used to ask potential employers when I got deep into interviews with them. "Is there any way I can see all the contracts I would need to sign on my first day?" and my experience is employers are very taken aback the question. How can you possibly talk remuneration when there also is some hidden contract that is part of it that you can't see until your first day?

It sounds legally like coercian. There are some porn producers who are going to jail for a very long time (their whole life) over this. Recruit girls for a photoshoot, tell them a couple days out that it's a porn shoot but it's for private collections, etc. When the girls arrive they're railroaded into signing documents, in a strange city with no money in their pocket, etc.

I'm surprised that the parent post was downvoted, because AFAICT it's a valid comparison. Is there something I'm missing?

In the context of starting a job at Google, I highly doubt you sign your employment contracts the day you show up for work.

Typically employment contracts are signed and settled well before you enter the building as an employee.

I would be surprised if the OP’s anecdote regarding the Googler pulled on the 1st day is in line with reality.

Edit: apparently I’m wrong, the downvotes were deserved! I run hiring at my company and we send people all contracts at the same time that we send the offer letter. No surprise paperwork on Day 1. I’m surprised to hear other companies wait until the start date to sort out legal

I was hired right out of school by Google in 2007. I was absolutely presented with various contract documents on day 1 to sign. In fact, I was not even given paper copies of them; I was supposed to click my agreement in an intranet signing tool.

(I couldn't say what fraction of my employment paperwork was handled in this way, but things like IP assignment were definitely included.)

At one of my first jobs, one of the things I had to agree to was having read "the employee handbook".. but it was not a pdf or other document, it was part of an internal wiki or something, with in-links and out-links all over the place.

I don't recall if I tried to figure out whether the strongly connected component that comprised the handbook was the same as "all pages on the wiki", but I was a little distressed at the time (this being one of my first jobs) that I was being asked to sign my name on something that I couldn't realistically read.

There's always a price to pay for all the innovation that happens in SV. It's just that it ends up being paid by the people rather than by the companies. Companies can afford to pay for the most exclusive of bodyguards, the government.

When I was hired by Google in 2010, I was sent physical papers to sign and return. I distinctly remember this because Google mailedthe papers to my old address from my first application rather than my 2010 address so I had to drive to my family member's house to get papers on a Friday and send them back by Monday.

I still have email copies of the contracts which they sent in parallel. This includes General Hiring Contract & Salary and a standard NDA with California Section 2870 modification.

That’s quite reminiscent of the user experience Google’s customers go through with the TOS

The only paperwork I saw in 2014 before my first day was an offer letter (no contract per se; CA is an at-will state), NDA, relocation offer (always ask for one; it's rarely offered) and a list to fill out of prior inventions. The rest does get signed in noogler orientation.

The benefits (to Google) of being a giant company with at-will employment.

That's pretty normal, at least in tech in CA. Every job I've taken in the past 15 years has had documents I was required to sign on my first day as a condition of starting employment. Most also had some other documents I had to sign to accept the offer, but those were not comprehensive.

It is pretty normal in SV to not see your actual contract before you start. I think I have only ever signed one ahead of time, and that was an unusual situation in other ways.

(Normal, not right. And I started working here in the early 90s.)

This does happen regularly, and employees should never do it (for precisely this reason).

Don't quit your job, move cities, etc etc without a signed contract.

What good is that if you're an "at-will" employee? They can just change the rules at any time for any reason and fire you if you don't agree to them.

I have enough experience to know absolutely nothing about me employer is guaranteed/permanent in the US.

Relevant story for the HN crowd: I worked for a small company (~250 employees). Real chill place. Six months after I start they were suddenly bought out by a huge multinational corporation. First order of business is everyone needs to sign a non-disclosure agreement and an agreement that the company owns all the code you write while employed with them, even if you do it on your own time. There were some people who were reluctant to sign, it was made extremely clear that if they didn't sign they would be unemployed.

That one didn't bother me, I only code at work anyway. What did bother me was at another employer right after I became eligible for the employer's (generous) match on my 401(k) (after 1 year employment) an email went out a few weeks later saying "Sorry, we won't be matching 401k contributions anymore."

I know a guy (very senior engineer) who negotiated that he would be working from home 3-4 days a week before taking a new job. Employer agreed. Few months later line manager notices that employee is not logged into whatever work chat they use in the middle of the day. Not habitually, once. Next day it was announced that there will be no more working from home.

I mean, I completely agree with you. As a non-American, the concept of "at-will" employment is utterly bizarre to me.

But, as a matter of practicality, it's less likely that, after you've signed your contract, Google comes to you on your first day and says "I'm altering the terms of our deal, pray I don't alter it further".

This is all mostly about managing unexpected risks, and my point is that it's actually pretty common for contracts to contain/omit clauses that you really take issue with. I'm just saying it's prudent to know what you're getting yourself into before you up stakes and move cities.

>But, as a matter of practicality, it's less likely that, after you've signed your contract, Google comes to you on your first day and says "I'm altering the terms of our deal, pray I don't alter it further".

It's been my experience that benefits change very regularly, sometimes significantly. For example, my current employer updates their compensation plan every year at the very least.

It's been my experience whenever the company I worked for ends up in a position where they are financially strapped benefits and work conditions change suddenly, drastically, and very frequently.

If you don't work for a big company (or even if you do) there is a good chance where you work will be acquired if you work somewhere long enough and that changes everything. I know some people I used to work with who experienced 4 acquisitions at the same job.

I would assume that if they do decide to "change the rules" then the penalty clauses in the contract kick in, such as payment in lieu of notice. Jesusland does actually enforce contracts, right?

> the penalty clauses in the contract kick in, such as payment in lieu of notice

Penalty clauses in a non-union job in the US!??? How on earth does one get such a clause?

I've had five software jobs and four non-skilled jobs and never seen anything even approaching this sort of clause in an employment agreement, or heard of anyone ever having this sort of clause in their employment agreement, unless you're talking about like CEOs.

The only employment agreements and/or offer letters I've ever seen (from both myself and my spouse) were more-or-less "here's your starting salary and you are employed at will." In fact, the last offer letter I signed literally said something along the lines of "this offer letter is not an employment contract or a guarantee of continued employment."

I'd love to see/read these mythical supposedly "contracts" sometime to see the exact verbage. I very seriously doubt that one just gets to walk away with a big payday just because their employee changed the benefits plan. Not in the US.

Where is "Jesusland"? (I'm from a small, deep blue, Acela corridor state that the current President-elect hails from, so pardon me for not knowing where this place is located).

Likely they're referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesusland_map

Well, if "Jesusland" = red state USA, it seems to me the blue states have exactly the same kinds of employment contracts.

As one of the people who gave a counterexample, let me just say that I don't support people downvoting you, and I would much rather live in your reality than this one. (Thank you for treating your employees better than most.)

(Not Google) My first job out of college I was asked to sign quite a bit of paperwork on my first day, after I had relocated to their city.

I was un are of this system until I hired in the US. It blows my mind.

Here (Germany) offer letters are used to outline the general terms of an offer however the next step will then be that you’re sent a contract (some of mine have been > 10 pages) outlining a lot of relevant things such: - role (ideally even with a job description but that is rare) - place of employment (city/country) - IP assignment - length of probation - length of notice period for both sides - expectation of work travel - vacation - compensation

And a bunch of other things that I’m forgetting.

Similar to the above story, there’s always some resistance from employers to customize terms. It’s operationally much simpler for a company to have unified terms. However at every company I’ve been at I’ve been able to secure changes to the IP assignment clauses.

Of course all of this only works because these contracts are enforceable. There’s no such thing as at will employment here.

If you want to know, the same system happens in Japan too.

When you get the offer letter it's an outline only. Then you either accept the offer letter as it is, or walk away. Asking for the detailed contract (called 就業規則 in Japanese) will always end up losing your job offer, because you have no legal right to see the contract before you join the company.

Some companies are so hostile (and this is the norm in my experience), that even very valid questions along the line of "Do I get severance pay if I am forced to retire?" or "How do stock options work?" will end your job application process right there because you will get labeled as overzealous.

Also, Japanese law doesn't require to state in the contract the exact position that you are hired into. So you will often get hired with the job description: "engineering team member". Of course HR will tell you mealy-mouthed or mellifluously that you are a senior/principal engineer and/or a manager, but none of that will hold any legal water in a lawsuit since your contract doesn't say so.

If you ask me, Japan and the US, some of the largest economies of the world are constant labor right abusers and the UN and other nations simply turn their head when this ever gets brought up.

I still remember the furore it caused when I asked for a copy of the 業務規則. (because the new overtime pay policy was paying ~$3/hr worked after 10pm and I wanted to see the section that covered that calculation)

I just wanted to read the actual language around hours worked and overtime because it was never stated what the policy was.

Turns out you couldn’t read it without a director sitting next to you, and it was in a binder that you weren’t allowed to touch.

My conversation with the CEO:

“Why would you need to read that?”

“Because my contract says ‘in accordance with the 業務規則’ and I’d like to know what my contract is”

“Well you can ask me a question and ill tell you if it’s in there”

Glad I got off that sinking ship.

I feel for you. I also had my fair share of labor rights abuse in Japan. My experience is that only foreigners are 'brave' enough to ever bring this up, which makes the whole situation even more miserable since you cannot expect any help from Japanese colleagues.

That's funny. The law in Japan stipulates that a copy of the 業務規則 needs to be in a place easily accessible to employees.

This discussion doesn't revolve around how things should be but how it is in the real world.

Employees, but not future employees :(

Well, Japan also has this thing that a written contract isn't even needed to start employer-employee relationship, oral agreement is technically enough, difficult to prove of course so everyone does written contracts, but still.

Regarding details, well, there is a list of things mandated by law to be included in the offer, they include things like salary, hours, list of additional allowances (手当), though not necessarily all of them, retirement pay and such, so you should be able to receive that information without even asking. In my, albeit not very numerous, experiences in one case I've got something called 雇用契約書兼労働条件通知書 ("Employment Contract And Notice Of Working Conditions") , which included all the details, and in the other case I've got a separate 雇用契約書 (Employment contract), which included generic things like "you work for me, I pay you for that, don't go spreading company secrets around", and 労働契約書 (Labor contract), which included all the details like salary and whatnot. I should probably note, however, that I've only asked for and received these things after we were finished with all the interviews and reached a 内定 (the employer making an internal decision to hire the worker. It's nothing official, just a word to describe the state of the person(s) responsible being okay with the idea). I just politely asked for documents to review before I make my final decision, and while I've never received 授業規則 even after asking, they happily obliged with contracts and documents related to how the company decides on employee's salaries. I think there's a lot more resistance to bother with contracts and whatnot when they don't know if you're willing to work with them in principle or not.

As for "how stock options work", well, while it's probably nice on the side of employer to entertain such a question and while it's probably reasonable to give an answer along the lines of "erm, these are stock options of this and that type, these additional conditions apply, google please?", ending the job application process right there is probably overreacting.

I also feel it's important to note that 就業規則 is not really "a detailed contract", because it's not a contract, it's more of a "Labor rules" for the company, so it does count as an internal document and not for outsiders' eyes. Obviously, the rules must conform to the law and as someone has already noted they must be easily accessible to workers, which was always the case for me. In fact I have always received a hard copy of these on my first day.

It varies by country, even in Europe. In France you also sign beforehand. But in Spain it's quite common to only sign the contract on the first day; before you can request a letter saying that they are contracting you and the salary, but not more.

Sounds like a great time to consider the differences between positive and negative liberty.

Negative liberty: no one can get in my way of doing whatever I want! Google has the right to rootkit my life and I have the right to ignore it and work at a bodega because all tech giants eventually agreed this is a good practice for them

Positive liberty: corporations can't infringe on my right to a private life and must protect my liberty to be a free unconstrained being

I don't know about you but I'd much prefer a world where everyone is guaranteed certain freedoms than one where big companies can use positive liberty arguments to exploit people in new and novel ways.

I've heard it phrased the other way around. Positive liberty is about things that are guaranteed (e.g. health care, food, human dignity). Negative liberty is about things that may not be done (e.g. no punishment for speech, no limitations on buying guns, no environmental regulations).

We are in agreement about which type is better, so this is solely a quibble about the names.

I just flipped them, reading the wiki on the terms I see I had them backwards.

My partner always corrects me and I think they have them wrong :P at least we agree on which one is better too

I think you're thinking positive vs negative rights (which are like what you're describing).

I learned this the hard way, and now insist upon a contract before agreeing to move to a company (i.e. I dont tell my previous job or give a start date until I see a contract).

So far, it hasn't been a problem.

Isnt this job switching 101? you don't have a new job until you've signed. Your notice doesn't happen until you have signed.

"Signed" isn't what you think it is. You can sign the offer letter, and possibly a couple other things, but most companies will also have more documents that you must sign on your first day of employment, and won't give them to you before then.

Interesting. That's not how it works in Australia at all.

Here, salary expectations are given in the first screening call. If they can't meet the expectation or you won't be happy with their lower offer things end there.

Interviews / code tests happen.

Offer comes over phone or email. This includes salary.

There is no signature at this stage and nothing is set in stone, its just an offer. If you accept the offer a contract is drawn up. Still nothing is certain.

Changes to the contract can happen here.

Once both parties sign. That is when you're "signed".

This happens well before your start date, usually you would stipulate the start date in the contract, so if you need to give a month's notice to your employer your new contract with a start date from a month is signed before you even hand in your notice.

There is a 3 month trial period on all employment where they can walk without much repercussions, but this is more of a concession on your part because employment is very well protected.

Any weird IP bullshit or other conditions of employment that need signing would be in the contract you signed on for.

They can't bait and switch like what you're discussing. Any NDA's are discussed up front and at least their existence is disclosed in the contract giving you a chance to see them early.

Basically you can't put new conditions of employment on people after the fact, and if you did it wouldn't be valid in court anyway, contract law trumps contract content here no matter what.

Things don't have to work exactly like this, you might want to leverage the offer for a higher pay at your current job, counter offering is commonplace here but I wouldn't ever accept one. They'll be looking for your replacement as soon as you accept.

That hasn't been my experience in the US. When I joined, I signed everything along with the offer letter. Full 10-15 pages of contract. Nothing to sign on the first day.

I'm guessing that you've only worked at / interviewed at large firms. They're large and your prospective role there wasn't senior enough for them to afford you special treatment.

I've only worked at small to mid sized firms. Either way, Knowing what the agreement is before I agree is special treatment? I'm not asking to modify the contract, merely to see it before I give notice and upend my families life.

Anything outside of what they consider to be their norm is special treatment. There aren't enough lower level people who ask to see employment agreements ahead of time.

Why is it “special treatment” to want to read what you’re about to sign when it directly involves ones means of living?

Surely a contract can't be valid if one of the parties hasn't had a chance to read it.

It's like if you bought a car, signed and paid, and discovered there is an extra agreement to actually use it, and that one says any ideas you have while driving belong to BMW.

How about: "Hey, this is your first day, now you need to take this final difficult test and if you fail we will fire you"?

I have always been the type to have a natural aversion to signing anything. Except for my marriage license, I've always done it under duress. But you know what's even worse? When employers or vendors ask you to sign lengthy contracts, and express a range of emotion from concern to outrage when you insist on reading what you are signing up to!

Here's my question for everyone on this thread: what are you going to do about it?

My rough guesses of what you could do:

- unionize your shop / commit to working at unionized shops (addresses the power imbalance between individual employees and the employer by treating employees as a group)

- use the power you have as an employee to drive change at your workplace, if you're one of those employees who is well-treated by your employer and doesn't need to unionize

- advocate for stronger labor protections in law / vote for lawmakers who will create them

- advocate for existing labor/contract protections to be interpreted the way you want (e.g. advocate or vote for judges who share that interpretation, donate to or create non-profits who can file amicus briefs or write law review articles advocating for this interpretation)

If this is what's at the top of the HN discussions on a barely-related article, it's pretty clear to me that tech workers, a relatively powerful group, feel pretty strongly about this issue. So why don't we do something about it?

Here's what I do:

- Refuse to work for a company that treats privacy as a commodity that can be bought and sold.

No one has to work at Google. Anyone who gets an offer from them has ample opportunity to work elsewhere.

As tech workers, likely making American wages, many of the folks here would be better served paying a congressperson and joining a PAC than they would be by paying union dues.

Don't kid yourself. Your employer will always be better connected and more influential politically than you, unless you organize.

You'll be fired for donating to that PAC if it's actually becoming controversial and effective. Fortunately, unions have the same status in campaign contribution laws as PACs, so your best bet to do some lobbying as a worker is to join a union and use it as a PAC.

I watched my parents suffer throughout their careers because their Unions were politically toxic and also deigned it necessary to keep their wages below market in order to apply pressure on the employer to raise the wages of others in the bargaining unit. As though a lineman and a telecontrol technologist are similarly skilled and trained.

My father spent the better part of a decade trying to hire his replacement because the union wage was so attrociously below market for his labour.

And then the politics, favouritism, bullying and abuse that occurs under a union; because the shop steward et al formed a social clique to get themselves and their buddies the best hours and best positions.

My two siblings went to work in unions and now regail me with similar tales.

No, I'm happy working for small and independent game studios and negotiating for myself, thanks. I happily donate the money to political organizations that would otherwsie be used to pay union dues.

If you actually want to be effective, the solution is to fix the union, not to engage in completely inoffensive tactics.

I don't doubt that a great many unions are horrible. For a great many reasons, unions are often, but not always, structured horribly with badly mismatched incentives, almost no democracy, and poor accountability. There are reasons for this, that can and have been addressed.

You're simply never going to be able to outcompete your employer in legalized bribery. It won't happen.

Also, if the PACs you're talking about ever get actually influential, there will be just as much politics involved. And you still haven't adresses the most important point, which is that your employer can retaliate against you for doing so without any problem.

In any case, unions can be and often are better, and can be and indeed often are hundreds of time more effective than what you're describing ever can be.

How could they not be toxic? The ability to advocate for yourself has been given to someone else, over something as intimately personal and important as the labour you undertake for the majority of your waking hours. They are your only advocate, in the absence of strong regulation and legislation, because in a union arrangement it is inappropriate for the employer to advocate for the employee against the union.

I don't need to outcompete on donations; I need to collectively pool my cash with other like-minded individuals in order to pay for political activity that will coerce and convince legislators. Those with the most money don't necessarily win, but money is the key to gaining access. I've had my representative read to Parliament an exerpt of a letter that I wrote; there was nary a need for money to get that response, only access.

My employers have never been interested in what I do with my money, and I suspect they would be _far_ more interested if I were to begin organizing a union.

The solution to employee abuse is legislation and regulation, not yet another layer of political bureaucracy.

Your employers are interested in their interest. If you're going to be using your money in an interest category where your win is their loss, they were care proportionally to your effectiveness, no matter the methods.

Now :

>How could they not be? The ability to advocate for yourself has been given to someone else, over something as intimately personal and important as the labour you undertake for the majority of your waking hours.

You can structure a union in such a way that hierarchy is very weak and involvement is direct. The reasons why this often isn't the case are interesting, and you should read about them.

The root if the issue is this : your ability to advocate for yourself is almost nil. You need to get together with your fellow workers to have any impact. By doing so, you will lose some of the flexibility in your advocacy, but will receive greatly increased power.

Literally the only politically effective lobbying group for the average person is a union. There have been many studies done about it.

I have second hand experience with four unions, and first hand experience with two. All but one were great, and the one that wasn't was clearly deficient for obvious structural and social reasons thah could be addressed.

In any case, you're free to continue wasting your money. You will be contributing to PACs that will eventually get bureucratized, ossified, ostracized, and turned against you, and because you plan on aligning yourself with extremely narrow organizations that lack the power to withold labour, they will collapse and crash.

Not only that, but success in such politics is a question of money and connections. The entire tech sector, totalling tens of trillions of dollars in valuation, is better connected than you are, will be able to vastly outspend you, and will do so in a much more efficient way than you can via a heterogenous network of PACs.

I mostly donate to NGOs and political parties directly; I get to see my dollars go directly to those who help those in need, and as a party member I get the opportunity to shake hands with legislators and talk policy with them directly. I helped get the husband of a friend elected mayor of my city. This has had a meaningful impact.

I see unions having enormous utility for those living where there is effectively one employer, and who have no real market for their labour. That's where unions shine.

Unions don't have to be limited to a single employer, and their actual advantage isn't any of that, their actual advantage is that they allow you to effectively withhold your labour, which is even more effective if you are in high demand.

In any case, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors.

If I'm in high demand then I don't need any help finding leverage; other, potential employers are leverage enough.

> If you actually want to be effective, the solution is to fix the union, not to engage in completely inoffensive tactics.

This made me laugh. If you have to fix the union, then really all you've done is worsen your situation.

"And now you have two problems."

Sometimes, when you want to fix a problem, you have to fix another problem before. It sucks but it's life. Thankfully, one of those is much easier than the other.

Unions are democratically controlled. With extremely high probability, some of them will be mismanaged and abusive. We see the same in democratic government. But we don't tend to then say "wow, that elected leader was terrible - better replace it all with philosopher kings". Unionization at least gives workers the chance to influence the business, even if that chance can be squandered.

I don't know why but it seems that unions are very different between Europe and the US.

It seems to me you've also taken the concrete action of only working for small/indie companies where the relative power between a single employee and the employer is much greater than at a place like Google. I think that's also an entirely reasonable action, and if everyone did that, many of these problems would go away.

Moving to the UK from Norway was a shock to me in the sheer length of employment contracts. Prior to that most of my contracts had been a single page: Norwegian law regulates default terms so strictly that long contracts are rarely needed. In fact, they are hard to make enforceable, because any additional concession to the employer needs to be justified, usually by extra consideration. But many rights are inalienable.

It's a recognition that few employer-employee relationship approaches a negotiation between equals.

From the standpoint of a European, this would have been totally fine some 200 years ago

People absolutely negotiate successfully with Google. New hires fresh out of uni do. Tens of thousands of more dollars.

It just seems that invading their employees privacy is table stakes for them.

You can (and should) negotiate salary, they expect that and have the authority to bump up your pay.

However, trying to negotiate the legal terms of a contract with a FAANG is highly unlikely to succeed, since HR is not authorized to change anything and Legal doesn't give a shit about you.

Negotiation doesn’t mean that you get your way and they agree to your demands

Sounds like both parties had a hard line on what they would accept

I think the takeaway is that the hard line for Google is being able to rootkit your phone

Then don't give your phone to Google. Don't use personal phone for work. Ask them for a phone if they want you to use it.

Why is this difficult? Why complain about something that is 100% in your control?

Employer that has thousands of employees don't have the time to amend contracts on per employee basis. Seems fair to me.

Google has HIPA-level access for personal data, even some medical data about people, security is tight. They don't want some righteous asshat arguing about contract agreements.

IDK the legal details of the contract, but Google has root level access to all Android phones with gapps installed. It's definitely possible for them to figure out which phone you use privately and rootkit it.

This is an extremely broad claim, do you have anything to back that up with?

Saying that Google would snoop your personal phone (which doesn't have your Google work account) as a Google employee needs some hard facts to back that up.

Since you don't know the legal details of the contract, how about we stop speculating conspiracy theories? Please keep the discussion factual and reasonable.

> This is an extremely broad claim, do you have anything to back that up with?

My claim is that it's possible for them, not that they are necessarily doing it. The technology is there.

My advice is: if you have any sort of fight with any big tech corp that gets the high levels involved, stay away from their products as far as you can.

Microsoft at least has spied on a private account's data to resolve some IP theft. https://thehackernews.com/2014/03/microsoft-admits-spying-on...

Another prior art: it's well documented that nation states do such stuff all the time. Group of diplomats from country A visits country B to discuss a big treaty with them. They stay over at the Hotel and discuss their strategy. The Hotel is bugged so country B gets an advantage during the negotiations.

What would "negotiation allowed" mean? Negotiation includes saying "no". The remedy for that is labor law, not some right to negotiate.

An interesting labor law challenge is "one side repeatedly making assertions that don't accord with contract, and I rely on those assertions, or the other side should be punished for making statements that suggest bad faith."

It's not much of a "negotiation" when the power imbalance is such that the employer can say no to your every request, but if you say no to any of theirs, you're unemployed.

Not only unemployed, but potentially unemployed in a new city, and liable for returning the relocation package. There is zero leverage in such a position if a company alters the deal, and tells you to pray they don't alter it further. Thankfully that that didn't happen to me, but it was in the back of my mind that after moving, I wasn't in the greatest of positions if there were to be any objectionable clauses.

It's especially not much of a negotiation if they fire you for daring to negotiate, rather than saying "no".

The person redlined a contract instead of spending +$2000/yr (out of a likely $250,000+ salary) on a second personal phone. Such short-sidedness is a bad trait in an employee.

Second, their protest is laudable. But their decision was consciously: "the legal department of this $xxx billion company (that spends $xx million maintaining this employment contract template) will bend to my will, or I will {quit OR relent}". If they'd quit? Job well done. If they'd relent? Then why try? You're screaming into a void, and if you didn't recognize this prior to redlining, you have a bad trait for an employee.

All scenarios point to a competent red-liner achieving their desired outcome -- an ethical win in whatever case. Only an incompetent/shortsighted/kneejerk/low-critical-thinking red-liner would achieve an undesired outcome, because they didn't consider the game before playing.

This is just name calling and blaming the victim, which is almost every employee of every tech job in the world, while celebrating the power of the employer. Insisting that a contract be negotiable when it comes to complete and total spying on you, in the context of an article where the employer is illegally spying on you, is not the trait of a bad employee

Kathryn Spiers did a man-in-the-middle attack on company property, like how some ISPs used to insert their own popups into HTML crossing their wires. Google tracked Spiers down and fired her for it, 100% justified. Separately, Google's hiring of a union-busting firm is fair game for disagreement, absolutely.

Also, I don't consider an employer having total visibility into its devices to be a power-trip. The onus is on the employee to keep their personal stuff out if they don't want it getting swept up. Of all companies, even Google couldn't design machine learning or quarantining sufficient to wall off personal data from company data inside someone's phone during their forensic prevention and investigation. So the legal department sure isn't going to promise they can unbake the cake that is your voluntarily mixed-use device.

> Also, I don't consider an employer having total visibility into its devices to be a power-trip.

That's fair, and I agree with that (as long as it's company-owned hardware and not personal hardware under a BYOD program). But I personally do not want to (and currently do not) work for a company that trusts me so little that it needs to spy on every activity I do on the hardware they give me to do my job.

I get that some people are fine with that, and that's ok, but I'm not, and I don't think I'm alone in this.

Honestly, that is the sort of solution I would expect the legal department to suggest as a counter-offer, with Google paying the difference. Having the legal department review contract changes is something I would expect to be standard for them, not a deal breaker. It is the reason for having the legal department there in the first place.

Google already will pay for you to have a separate corporate phone (the hardware and the data plan).

They will pay for a phone if they expect you to use it for company purposes. If they don't then feel free to never use your phone for your job.

I’m sure they would. Bulk enterprise plans are on the order of $8-$10/month. That’s not even a rounding error compared to an employees compensation.

Some details of an offer & acceptance of employment are trivial and not worth spoiling good will.

Me: "Hey manager, can I make an expense report for this work phone?" No matter the response, I'm ok with it, because I make Google money, and that's policy. I should work towards becoming management if I want that to change. But I probably have better things to do than such a trivial disagreement.

I wish corporations were less psychopathic, too, but this is not the hill I'd die on. Or, I'd be damn sure ready to die if I redlined as a "nice to meet you" first act.

I think I'd agree that it is a weird spoiling of goodwill, but would put this one entirely as Google's fault. Requesting a minor change to a contract the first time you see it is the expected behavior, not an outlier. That's the entire point of contracts, in order to come to a meeting of the minds. This is the equivalent of haggling at a flea market, and being thrown out as a result.

It's more like trying to haggle over the price of some bananas at Safeway.

maybe if bananas cost six figures people would negotiate over them.

So if your first paragraph is correct, what are we to make of the HR person saying "But that isn't how we use it, we would never access your personal data."? Were they lying? Or was there a real internal rule about "never" accessing personal data? A rule that was in disagreement with the $x million worth of coordinations of legal documentation?

And if your second paragraph is correct, then "Google HR lies to you on your first day as policy - if you ask certain questions" seems to be the only logical conclusion.

Perfectly determining company data from personal data on a personal device is impossible. "We would never access your personal data" means "we would never access your personal data deliberately, only accidentally in the course of an investigation of your work-related activities". Obviously no company is ever going to sign an agreement promising to do something impossible like perfectly avoid inspecting any personal data during a device audit. The person from the story might as well have been asking for the moon.

If they make verbal assurances that they'll do nothing bad, perhaps they'd be willing to write them down on the contract.

The upstream comment says that not only did they refuse to back up their verbal assurance that "they'll do nothing bad" with anything in writing, they withdrew the job offer over it.

It's been some time since "Do no evil" meant anything there...

> I'd agree if this redline didn't require several departments to sign off costing $x million.

Straw man. If a small change like this costs a company any more than a thousand bucks, they are Doing it Wrong.

You might argue that $1k is also a lot to expect, but consider that the company has likely already spent north of $25k (and sometimes a lot more than that) on the recruiting process that brought them this new employee. If they're going to throw that away to avoid an internal approval process that costs another thousand, that sounds like a bad financial decision to me.

Just fill your personal device with dick pics.

They'll stop looking pretty quick.

Only partially joking.

It's the equivalent of haggling of the flea market, and being told to give back the goods you are holding because there is no agreement on the price.

Alternative analogy. The haggling at the flea market already occurred (compensation negotiation), and the price was agreed upon. As you are picking up the goods, the seller shouts at you that he also gets to rifle through your phone, no take-backs, and you definitely agreed to it because you're picking up the goods.

One party here is altering the verbal agreement, and expecting the other party to accept without additional negotiation.

> I wish corporations were less psychopathic, too, but this is not the hill I'd die on. Or, I'd be damn sure ready to die if I redlined as a "nice to meet you" first act.

And what does Google (and most companies) do as a "nice to meet you" first act? Present you with adhesion contracts that you must sign with barely enough time to go over them. Nice.

I'm not a privacy nut, but I am concerned about a company owning my ideas when I'm working on personal projects.

I'm careful about that.

Would that be a deal breaker even at a dream job, yes.

I admire that and wish more employees looked after their interests, too, so that the commons weren't so poisoned with corporation-morality rather than humanity-morality.

Practically speaking, I think giving The Guardian or some pro-union think tank/lobbyist a copy of internal corporate policies would move the needle a lot more than a personal stand, but the personal stand is admirable nonetheless. Currently my financial freedom supersedes that level of moral freedom and agency.

Tech Solidarity collected those years ago. I think he came to the conclusion that you can't get anyone in tech to organize for anything so it didn't really matter.

Although it does seem like Googlers organize for their own comfort; they don't seem to bother doing it for their users though.

Sounds like google is doing something bad if they need to enforce this.

The power inbalance you speak of is why unions are probably needed.

You were a special snowflake in the 90s/early 2000s now you are a cog.

> The person redlined a contract instead of spending +$2000/yr (out of a likely $250,000+ salary) on a second personal phone. Such short-sidedness is a bad trait in an employee.

This isn't a solution, but a covert work-around.

Upon re-reading, I too wonder if Google means they'll rootkit any employee phone that comes onto company property. I hope they only rootkit phones with proprietary data on them.

Also, super important context: Of all the companies in the world, which ones would have employees, say, designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun, or...? Google, certainly. So I get Google's position, as long as you're allowed a personal phone free of corporate intrusions.

You have to root the phone to login to your corporate Google account. If you don't want to login to your corporate account you don't have to root the phone. If your manager wants you to have a phone with corp access then he will get you a corporate phone to do it. However many would rather root their phone than have a separate phone for their private life so Google provides that option. If that starts being a legal problem for Google I'm pretty sure they will stop rooting phones and just require people to get corp phones instead.

> designing a rootkit to exfiltrate trade secrets, or for fun

Exfiltrating data is comically trivial, it wouldn't be any fun...

Problem is that if two anti Google activists joins the same team they could leak a huge amount of user data before stopped. Pretty sure a lot of people would find that "fun", and pretty sure their punishment would be very mild compared to for example Snowden even though their crime would be bigger.

Agreed, this is not a factory job for a few dollars here and there.

Oh I "understood" it, California is a "Right to Work" state and signing the agreement was clearly a requirement of working and by not signing the unchanged agreement, it was a voluntary action of elimination etc etc. So Google was well within their rights to rescind their job offer as they did.

That said, it was at a time where Google was complaining bitterly about how hard it was to hire engineers, and their much vaunted hiring process would only offer 1 in 10,000 applicants.

That they would have a candidate who had made it through the gauntlet, and some manager was waiting for them to show up, be turned away at the last minute based on an explicit clarification of a clause that Google, through the HR rep at the intake session, had already said was consistent with the intent of the agreement? That surprised me.

If the HR rep was speaking truthfully, then I would have expected to Google legal to just adopt the updated text in this agreement and all future agreements. It literally got tweaked at least once a year so the problem of "multiple agreements" wasn't really a problem.

So my amazement was first the cognitive dissonance between what they said and what they did, then the realization that what was written was what they meant, and thus what HR had said was a misrepresentation of the intent.

I don't know how many people have lawyers review these things, I do, but I may be unusual in that regard. My lawyer said that there were a number of things in the agreement that were unenforceable, and a few that were likely unlawful, but when they came up I would probably already be on my way out so it wasn't particularly harmful to sign. And some advice on how to avoid getting on the wrong side of the agreement and thus giving them a reason to separate me "for cause." (legal or not).

And now we have this story where the NLRB which suggests that Google is not above doing illegal things to protect their interests.

California is not a Right to work state. It is an At-will employment state (as are all states). "Right to Work" laws concern union contracts requiring all employees to pay union dues.

Thanks for the correction!

I think there's a difference between "intent" and "only intent". I don't think Google's M.O is to snoop through all its employees' phones, trying to find reasons to fire everyone.

BUT, I don't doubt that if someone high up at Google wants to fire you (like they know you're union organizing - for example), then they /could/ query your data and /possibly/ find an excuse.

> To contrast, if this person had said[...]

I mean, Google could also have made that their response, rather than terminating the relationship right there.

"We're sorry we can't change the contract; would it work for you to use a work phone? We can pay for that."

Absolutely - and it seems likely their rejection may not have been due to the contract change request but due to the fact the potential employee rocked the boat... Which is quite not okay in my eyes.

> I'm definitely not defending the actions of Google here but I do understand them - it's quite likely this HR rep couldn't legally agree to this contract modification and it's entirely possible that when it was forwarded to legal they didn't have the power to approve this change without consulting up the legal ladder and possibly passing the question by upper management.

I'd be kinda surprised if legal couldn't approve a change like that. Isn't it the bread and butter of legal departments to review all kinds of contracts (with customers, vendors, etc.)?

> I'm definitely not defending the actions of Google here but I do understand them - it's quite likely this HR rep couldn't legally agree to this contract modification and it's entirely possible that when it was forwarded to legal they didn't have the power to approve this change without consulting up the legal ladder and possibly passing the question by upper management.

If you make a system where people are unable to behave reasonably, you still get to be responsible for their behavior.

> To contrast, if this person had said "I can't agree to that clause for my personal property but I am happy to be issued and exclusively use (for business purposes) a phone from you folks."

And indeed this is a thing that many people at Google do.

From what I've seen, the ratio is quite different. They'd rather make many less good hires who do as they're told than a more complicated one, even if that person were better at all the attributes. You can tell people a lot about culture and how some things are just formalities, but the contract is what remains, everything else changes with the next reorg.

From the point of view of the person at legal it makes sense (too much complexity and extra work), from higher management it makes sense (potential risk with someone who can think for themselves and won't accept everything that is handed to them), and the hiring manager will probably not pick a fight for someone who's not even on the team yet.

Yea, this shouldn't be surprising at all. Every company I've ever worked had some wiggle room with salary and equity, but when it came to the legal terms, they were not negotiable. I tried the cute "redlining" thing a few times, and without exception it always ended up with a stern letter from Legal: "Sign it unmodified or GTFO!"

I don't know who all these Captains Of Industry are who claim to be able to actually negotiate any of these terms with their company's legal department. Unless you are some kind of unicorn super-star or exec, I don't see any company wanting to deal with the hassle of negotiating a special snowflake contract for you.

Or they do in fact want that clause just as it is. By design. They simply don't want to change it.

This likely isn’t about having different contracts for different hires. Its about their intrinsic need, or more precisely, their deep requirement, to have that clause in.

If the security folks don’t get to dictate corporate strategy, why do the legal folks? I mean, is this company making widgets for money, or legal briefs?

Agreed. It's not surprising at all since they don't want to manage a bunch of different contracts. However, I'm of the opinion (and I am a lawyer) that the contracts should then always be especially construed even more strictly than usual against the drafter.

> different employment contracts

Then make all contracts explicit with such a fair statement? How many employees would one imagine, objecting to it?

Even if there are contract variations, Google has resources and talent to manage it with tools.

And a great reason for collective bargaining from the employees.

Google isn't as selective as it's made out to be.

how do you know it's just an extension of that?

I guess the person didn't really want the job. If they wanted it, they could have just gotten a company phone and laptop, used them only for work, and kept them in the office.

Company devices are occasionally stolen for their internal data: emails, docs, code, and config. This data can be useful to investors and competitors. Companies hire expensive people to limit the amount of data exposed in theft incidents. Understandably, they don't let individual employees opt-out of their expensive data security processes.

> When they showed up HR started with "But that isn't how we use it, we would never access your personal data."

So, what, was HR lying?

More to the point, Google shouldn't be putting critical business information on personal devices, that's a security risk. If they're that worried about it, they should be issuing every employee a separate phone.

"We don't trust you enough to have your own device without a rootkit, but we somehow still think it's a good idea to send sensitive company emails to somebody's random custom-ROM 3rd-party Android phone or Macbook, which might have who-knows-what 3rd-party malware installed on it."

Why would you want to put company secrets on the same device that somebody is using to play Pokemon Go, Among Us, and to connect to whatever IoT disaster that they've just been gifted for Christmas?

Google Security has a list of supported devices & OS versions that can run their rootkit. Google corporate accounts cannot sign in on other devices. When a device gets too old and rolls off the supported list, they automatically log it out and wipe any company data on it. I believe most large companies operate like this.

Google is actually more flexible than most companies: Any employee can get a company phone and employees are allowed to use their personal phones if they want (and don't mind the rootkit and spying). Surprisingly, a lot of people opt for the rootkit & spying to avoid carrying two phones. This saves the company some money on phones & mobile service contracts. And it makes those employees happy.

Why do people need company stuff on their phone anyway?

I very purposefully avoid any work email or slack or apps on my personal device.

Sure, you could interpret it as HR lying. Frequently when people speak using natural languages it is possible to interpret something in ways other than what were meant. It's clear that the HR person meant that Google's rootkit-enabled security software would make a good faith effort not to intrude on personal data. Then the person in the story proposed changing the contract wording to "May only access Google related information and no personal information." This no doubt got forwarded on to a lawyer who said "No can do, that's a legal promise that the security software is 100% bug-free." That would also require wading into the murk of what is "personal data" and what is "Google related information". Does putting your commute schedule on your personal calendar make your personal calendar "Google related"? Are chat messages in which you sexually harass your coworker "personal information"? No lawyer is ever going to sign off on this.

Also, these companies (not just Google) face the very real threat of outside groups (and nation states) attempting to infiltrate them via new hires. They need full control and detailed forensics for all authorized access devices.

This is why I'm so surprised that other commenters are surprised. If you've ever worked for a Big Serious Company (especially the defense sector, but increasingly just about everywhere), they have an IT Security department, and that IT Security department has a data loss prevention plan. Part of that plan is endpoint protection software, and that endpoint protection software has to be a rootkit, by any reasonable definition of the word.

I guess the crux of the problem is that the modified/redlined language might have made sense to the GP's friend at the time, and the HR person might have thought it made sense, but you can't tell the DLP software "no personal information" -- if there's an incident and the company needs to perform a forensic investigation, they can't be responsible for determining what they're "allowed" to look at. As other commenters have said, if you don't want your employer seeing your personal data, don't put that data on the same device as your employer's data.

Was this supposed to be on a work phone or a personal phone? If a personal phone, was it a requirement to use it for work purposes?

Most times, I believe a change to the employment agreement made by the employee would result in the employer not going forward with the hire, unless it was agreed upon in the negotiation phase. So unfortunately I am not surprised at the outcome.

What surprises me is how common it is to not provide full contracts during the negotiation phase. How can you know if there is a clause that needs to be negotiated out without first seeing what clauses there are?

Google is the expert at scaling, and that probably applies to hiring as well. If someone takes too long to get through onboarding, kicking them out is preferable to allowing it to disrupt onboarding other engineers. Would you waste time trying to debug an oddly broken kubernetes node, or just drop it and bring up a new one?

This is probably the most overlooked comment here. I'm guessing that Google just DGAF about any individual employee. They're not short of candidates, so why waste even a tiny amount of time customizing their contract terms when they can just revoke it and move to the next in line.

That's not actually what happened, Google, much like any company wants to hire people that are "good team players" "will be loyal to the company", "don't cause trouble", and "show gratitude for the opportunity given to them". So either you play the game or you have enough leverage to get special treatment(or you work somewhere else). They want good corporate drones, not individualists that protest when privacy rights are signed away.

There's also the option to just not install corporate apps on your personal device.

Exactly, they want cattle, not pets.

You'd think they'd offer the guy a job still, but without the contract changes, instead of immediately pulling out. It sounds like he was firm, but given a chance to take the job without said changes, he may still have accepted. Geez.

It is unreasonable and in bad faith to completely like a candidate and then reject them for merely asking for a contract change.

letting go of a prospective employee for trying to protect his or her privacy and apparently being able to read their contract carefully and think through it tells you all you need to know about what Google stands for today.

Never let SV compensation packages or relaxed workplace culture distract you from the fact that the interests of the owners and workers at those companies don't have the same interests.

It sounds like he didn't just ask for a contract change: He simply crossed it out and expected them to take it.

I'm honestly surprised people do that. I always go with the assumption that a job offer comes with the implication that you agree to the legal stuff as you are signing it: If you don't, you have refused the job. If you don't agree to something that has been updated, you have quit. The only thing that might actually protects you in the last scenario is something like a job contract, but a lot of places in the states simply don't have them for everyone.

Haven't you ever thought it odd that the document is entirely authored on one end and hence entirely nothing but a list of terms advantageous to one party? From this perspective, a single deletion is a pathic barely countable concession at best.

Imagine B2B contracts were written this way...whatever company has the bigger ego authors every last word and walks away the moment a detail is questioned. You could only afford negotiation tactics at that abuse level if you literally have customers begging it the alter of death to buy your product at a willingness to surrender all in order to make it happen. Plus they would sign but still hate you can hope to end the relationship with 0 loyalty the moment an alternative appeared on the market.

> entirely nothing but a list of terms advantageous to one party

The obvious counterpoint is that usually a job offer involves getting paid.

Which is why people take the job but which doesn't relate much to a large part of the negotiation being rigged in favour of one party.

You could say the same about when the Silicon Valley salary cartel was uncovered. "yeah it's anticompetitive and negatively impacts workers but,....but these companies offer you food at work and comfortable workplace and all that."

the company gets value often many times the employee's compensation, so it's a value exchange. it's entirely valid to negotiate the terms of that exchange. what's not valid is tolerating, even encouraging, the highly asymmetric negotiating positions between corporation and individual.

> It sounds like he didn't just ask for a contract change: He simply crossed it out and expected them to take it.

I believe that's how one typically asks for contract changes.

https://blog.pandadoc.com/what-is-contract-redlining-and-con...:

> The term “redlining” commonly refers to the editing and negotiation process during document and business contract management where contributors mark text and track changes collaboratively. As part of the redlining process, one party receives the document and makes additions or annotations, and the redlined text will appear in a special color so the other party (or parties) can easily track changes without needing to spend time searching for modifications.

That is exactly how it works.

I've changed every contract I've ever signed like this.

Usually those bullshit lines about employer owning all code I write, even on the weekend type stuff.

I've only had to walk from one job over it. Bullet dodged.

I've done this as well, though I only needed to once. They didn't even look at the contract I turned in. Just slapped it in a file and went on with things. Never came up again.

Don't both parties need to agree to (e.g initial) the redlined sections?

If you make the changes and they sign (or maybe even just signal acceptance), then I think they accepted them.

They assumed his assumption. Waltzing in and saying "Hey, I made this change", discussing it, and saying "okay, it seems we are aligned" is all part of the negotiation dance. G would have every right to ponder his suggestion for a few days, then respond to it.

We don't reject candidates for asking for more compensation; this should've been treated the same way. G could've said, "Sorry, we don't wish to change that contract term. What else can we do?" but, per the story, they pulled the plug entirely.

Asking or negotiating is different: Crossing something out and handing it back isn't the same.

I think you’re unaware with the way contract negotiations are done, because crossing it out and handing it back is exactly how the business world negotiated contracts.

For small changes it’s more polite than wasting time with preambles and introductory emails.

Asking is part of the activity that is negotiating. You might verbally asking for the change, and then specifically outline the additions and removals with a pen on the contract itself.

You don't have to put the corp stuff on your device. They will provide you with a company phone that you can then use for only company stuff.

If they did that after the person turned down other job offers and possibly incurred explicit financial expenses in reliance on Google accepting the redlined changes - assuming they highlighted the changes when they provided them instead of trying to sneak it past - Google could possibly be liable for damages caused by that reliance if they were to be sued or arbitrated against.

It says really bad things about the corporatist labor culture in the US that Google doesn't have any reason to fear that type of lawsuit in practice. (I.e., they could make it too expensive to win, they'd still hire without a problem going forward, and the person who sued them would have trouble getting jobs even if they win.)

> by installing a rootkit

On what? A phone or laptop? They should provide the device, if so.

As long as they are providing the hardware and I'm not forced to carry it around during personal time, I don't see a problem with it; I just wouldn't log into my personal accounts with it, and maintain separate personal hardware.

I completely agree. They can put whatever they want on a work phone that I don't need to take with me without it being an explicit part of the job. I very much mind on a personal device.

This is not a rare policy.... but they give you a work phone, and you only use it for work. If they don't pay you for being available after work, you turn it off after you stop working, and turn it back on in the morning.

It’s a shame they didn’t figure something practical out! For me, I didn’t want Facebook to have access to my phone, so I just used my personal phone for personal issues instead of using my corporate phone for everything in my life. That worked fine, I just had to pay for my own phone.

I wonder if Google legal department's hires also have that clause in their contract.

I’m sure Google isn’t going to reject a legal department hire for negotiating their contract.

I’d be surprised if any lawyer hires DON’T redline their contract.

Fact is: at a BigCorp you are a “human resource”. You are barely different to a node in their datacentre.

I don't have any knowledge of the matter but I can say with absolute confidence that yes, of course Google's legal department employees have corporate management software on their (corporate) devices, because Google's IT security department is not run by a bunch of volunteers working for the middle school PTA.

Potential employees asking for special provisions in employment contracts would be a red flag. Nobody deals with tracking every employee and the slight differences in the terms they agreed to.

Big companies never want to give you a changed contract. It's a power trip thing and generally has nothing to do with what you actually want to change.

Does this mean you are required to have an Android phone? What if you have an iPhone? Rootkit required there, too?

You aren't required to have any phone. If you have a phone and want it to have access to corp resources, you need to agree to some conditions.

I have coworkers who choose to keep their phone personal only, and others who choose to have the company pay for them to have a separate work phone.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

I did that. I had a company laptop and phone. I usually left them at the office.

For extra privacy, I stopped my personal phone from connecting to the company WiFi. Then Google bought my home ISP (WebPass). Now I use a router-based VPN.

> For extra privacy, I stopped my personal phone from connecting to the company WiFi.

In a large enough campus, wouldn't the company also operate the cell tower? (I feel like I should know this, but I don't.)

> Now I use a router-based VPN.

This is not really useful except as a way to make your internet really slow. VPN providers are a lot less trustworthy than ISPs, that's why they can afford all those podcast ads.

I use a VPN provider [0] located in my state. They claim not to spy and I believe them. My state (California) which has some privacy laws and consumer protection functions which would make things very difficult for the VPN provider if they were caught spying. I picked this VPN provider because they finance WireGuard development.

AT&T, Verizon, and other ISPs spy and sell the data they collect. They also spend large amounts of money influencing lawmakers to keep spying allowed.

[0] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com

Isn't laptop enough? What the phone does?

Some things I use corporate access on my phone for:

* Receiving pages when on call

* Team chat notifications

* Meetings while walking around the neighborhood

* Filing android bug reports

* Testing unreleased software

Google probably has their corporate app for iOS too.

Just have a phone with an obscure OS and escape all compatibility with their corporate crap. They should provide you with a phone if they want you to install their corporate app.

So, as a Google employee, they do. If you don't want to run corp software, you can easily just request a corporate phone and that's that.

It is unfortunate (and a reflection of the power imbalance in US employment) that Google doesn't simply offer a corporate phone as a matter of practice - it benefits both the employee and the employer in the long run (with dishonest actions put aside).

It does (as do other companies). It's part of the onboarding, along with what kind of desktop, laptop, etc. You can decline the phone and use your own (with the software installed). Many people choose to do this out of convenience.

I expect the employers would actually prefer to just give everyone a phone the companies owns. They are doing the work profile on a personal device because many workers strongly prefer that.

Yeah seriously. The company I work for doesn't allow corporate stuff on personal phones, but they do give them to everyone who asks for them. It's pretty nice, you get a choice of android or iOS phone and they just ship new ones out directly from AT&T.

What would suck is if you're not allowed to bring your personal phone at all on campus. Then if you have to reach family you have to do it from your work phone.

Google lets employees request a corporate phone if they want one. It just doesn’t provide one by default, because many employees do not want or need them.

I have always been able to get a phone when working at Google by just asking for it and pointing out that I occasionally answer questions or help debug big problems outside of work hours.

It's nice not having a corporate phone. Nobody can message you during off-hours without taking the extreme step of calling you at your personal number (which in the modern day is basically unthinkable).

Some people don't like carrying two phones.

Those people aren't barred from suffering from invasions of privacy and rootkits for the sake of a minor convenience.

Most places outside of tech folks with tolls need to carry company tools where they go - doctors carrying hospital beepers was essentially a meme in the 90's.

I am just explaining why they don't just give everyone a phone right away.... my company asks you if you want a work phone or to use your personal phone and get a stipend

Companies have the ability to make this option accessible or obscure, given the anecdote it sounds a lot like google was going out of their way to make it obscure and I'd suspect it was done for dishonest reasons.

I think it's fine to choose to use a personal device, but employee education around personal devices is very poor - no one sits you down and goes through your rights as a worker and companies benefit by keeping those rights obscure.

You can accept the risk if it's worth it for you and that's fine - but a lot of people aren't aware of the risks and their employer certainly won't tell them.

Are you saying they should be barred?

Not at all - I'm saying it's an option. In the US right now you surrender a lot of rights on devices you use to produce to transmit employer information (depending on contracts) but that employer right has been upheld. You should never work on a personal device and if you do there are very real costs associated with it.

They have no shortage of people wanting to work for them. Why bother taking on a 'difficult' person?

Why take on a person who reads things closely, thinks about them carefully, values privacy, and has a sense of integrity?

There are a bunch of reasons. But the business one is that modern companies can't concentrate power at the top if they want to be successful in the long term. Innovation and adaptation don't happen because the SEVP of whatever has a brainstorm. They happen because people doing the work are intelligent, well informed, and care about the customers, their colleagues, and the company. If the most important characteristic in hiring is "agree instantly with all authority figures" that's a recipe for organizational rigidity and stagnation.

Some of the best hires I've made have been "difficult". Because some kinds of "difficult" are just taking values seriously.

> values privacy

I'd expect this to be a negative for a company whose entire business is based on stalking people.

Rank and file Googlers used to be interesting people.

Now they are mostly mediocre engineers who excel at jumping through hoops -- and much less interesting as people.

Luckily for Google, they just need to keep the juggernaut moving rather than functioning optimally.

One reason would be: Negotiating contract terms in good faith proves that it's not a contract of adhesion. By making the contract non-negotiable in this way, Google also risks its existing employment contracts being deemed unenforceable, having certain terms voided, or being read in the least favourable interpretation in court.

So it's in Google's interest to at least pretend to negotiate.

Why not just get a work phone?

This actually makes me glad I never got a google job

One thing that happens in SV is:

* Employer says "hey, we have all these convenient corporate app, wouldn't it be nice to be able to check work messages and work docs on your mobile? Just install our app to "corp-ify" your phone"

* Employer now views your mobile device as containing sensitive company IP and therefore they have the right to snoop on anything on your phone.

If you install corp on your phone, Google views it as a right to rootkit your phone, view all your private messages, etc. I learned this the hard way. Whether this is ethical, or legal, I don't know, but it's one of those things that seem obvious to some and not obvious to others.

If your employer expects you to use a mobile device at work, have them pay for your phone and only use it for work purposes, assume that HR can view EVERYTHING on your phone, because they can, especially at a company like Google that has both deep mobile expertise and insane paranoia around things like IP protection and stopping whistleblowers.

100% agree. People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason. If my employer needs me to have a mobile phone they are paying for separate device and plan. It’s a little silly I need to carry 2 phones around but it makes my life so much more convenient. Unknown call on my work phone guess I’ll answer. If it’s on my personal then it’s spam. Leave company, no need to update or port my number. Want to go on vacation and still have my phone but not be bothered by company emails and calls. Leave my work phone at home.

This. And not just two phones but two laptops as well, unless the employer forbids bringing a personal one at work (which would be a reason to dump them in my case). Leave work stuff to work hardware and never ever use company assets for anything personal. A friend of mine who works for a big multinational telco (unrelated to Google) installed an open source tool on his company laptop; when he connected back on the corporate network, that tool got automatically deleted in a matter of minutes because it wasn't allowed for some reason and he got a notice about it. I can't recall the software used to keep control of corporate laptops, but according to what I heard from him it's widely used around and it catches everything: sites visited, software installs and runs, time spent working, screenshots, etc.

Why would you bring a personal laptop to work?

Sometimes your work computer is so locked down that some work tasks are made much easier by having a machine you have full access to.

For example we needed to program an Arduino-type board, but that's not possible with our work laptops (no admin rights, USB ports disabled, etc); we never found a solution other than a personal laptop. Or a colleague needed to run a supplier's simulation tool that needed admin rights, and couldn't get an exception fast enough. Or you need to run a Linux tool.

> Sometimes your work computer is so locked down that some work tasks are made much easier by having a machine you have full access to.

This is not very persuasive. What you really have there is two work laptops.

I sometimes need to do time critical things, or use sites or services, and I'm never giving personal credentials of any kind to client/employer hardware.

My personal laptop comes everywhere with me. Doesn't yours?

Nope. I find the personal phone sufficient. If corporate IT wants to know when I'm browsing linkedin, im fine with that.

Also, corporate has given itself the right to search any and all devices on me while at work, so that's double incentive to leave the home laptop at home.

In case you need to do something personal that can't wait until you get home. More of an issue with a longer commute. Might have to pop down to a local coffee shop or use the personal phone's hotspot to avoid using corp net.

I've had to check an account while at work to deal with my kid attempting to pay college tuition with one of my credit cards. Also looked up records so he could call the DMV to rectify something. Yeah, sometimes they're things that can wait a day, but a break from bug hunting can be nice.

It’s this sort of thing that makes me really appreciate my cell-connected personal iPad, with keyboard cover. It’s a “personal laptop” in 50% of the volume that I can ~always have with me.

>> People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason.

I carry three. One is from work, the other is from a different department in that same work. They both insist I have a particular type of phone running particular software. But work never calls me on those phones. They always call my personal phone.

Do you accept work calls on your personal number? - if so that’s sounds more like training issue.

Ill bring that up with my commander.

Ditto. I find it bizarre that there's people who use the same device to span pictures of their weekends and their kids, as photos of whiteboards with highly-confidential trade secrets. Tawdry jokes with friends and family alongside messages from your manager.

We use the same mind, same hands, same eyes for all of those things as well.

People view and use their phone as an extension to their body. I don't think it's possible to change that.

It’s a tool, like any other. If you use a tool for work or even a serious hobby, you are quite likely to end up with two or more of them.

To build on your analogy, in some cultures people use exclusively one of their hands to eat, and the other to clean their butts. We could learn do the same with two phones, I guess.