Comment by gcr
11 hours ago
Google powerwashes your corp Chromebook when they let you go. A friend was composing an email on the train when their screen went black and the device reset itself to factory settings.
They even send the “you’re being fired” email to their personal email they have on file. Didn’t even schedule a meeting.
Most of the employer behaviour described in such gleeful terms here would be outright illegal in most of Europe and open up the employer to risk of being sued for wrongful dismissal, etc.
This is why the EU continues to get much more poor compared to the USA. Turns out "live to work" really does beat "work to live".
Eh, there are ways around that. I've worked for multiple Finnish companies that do layoffs via "lomautus" whereby they put the laid-off employees on a forced, unpaid, indefinite leave. After multiple months of not receiving a paycheck, the employees inevitably "resign".
In Germany that's forbidden, you'd have to pay them.
But you can be placed in a room/office with no windows (not the OS), a computer without internet access and nothing to do. How long can you go on like that?
The law, sadly, can't forbid asshole employers.
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And then US tech has the arrogance of claiming "we don't need unions".
yeah, shit like what we're reading here is precisely why y'all need unions.
We’re talking about a Google employee that makes 5x or more of what a European counterpart would. Lack of termination notice and other at will employment is easy to plan for when you make so much money.
Until someone starts providing examples of software companies where the employees are unioned and clear $400k+ annum, the bar is still “no unions”.
A full email? We need a "you've been fired" emoji.
U+1FAF5 U+1F525
Man, that's cold.
I think at least on windows you can powercycle it quickly a few times until it gives up this behavior. Not sure about Chromebooks.