By: AngelList
August 29, 2019
Google faced yet another employee protest this month—this time coming in the form of a public petition signed by nearly 15,000 Google employees—over Google’s work with the government. Employees are asking executives to commit to not servicing U.S. immigration agencies with “infrastructure, funding, or engineering resources, directly or indirectly.” As The Verge uncovered, Google has had contracts in place with immigration agencies since at least 2017.
For Google, having 15,000 angry employees publicly confront the company is less than ideal. For startups recruiting against giants like Google, it is an opportunity.
For context, Google isn’t alone. In February of this year, Microsoft employees sent a letter to CEO Satya Nadella protesting the company’s military contracts, writing that “intent to harm is not an acceptable use of our technology.” In 2018, Amazon faced similar protests around the sale of Rekognition, Amazon’s facial recognition suite, to police forces.