Google contract employees are alleging the company’s confidentiality agreements prevent them from a range of legal rights from whistleblowing to telling their parents how much they make, according to a recent court filing. From a report: A California appeals court recently discussed a lawsuit accusing Google and one of its staffing firms, Adecco, of violating a number of California labor laws,…
Tag: Silicon Valley
Controversial Data Firm Palantir Fetches Market Value of Nearly $22 Billion In Its Debut On the NYSE
US tech firm Palantir, known for supplying controversial data-sifting software to government agencies, has fetched a market value of nearly $22 billion in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The BBC reports: The firm, which launched in 2003 with backing from right-wing libertarian tech investor Peter Thiel and America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), builds programs that integrate massive data…
Netflix CEO on Paying Sky-High Salaries: ‘The Best Are Easily 10 Times Better Than Average’
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, writing at CNBC: In the first few years of Netflix, we were growing fast and needed to hire more software engineers. With my new understanding that high talent density would be the engine of our success, we focused on finding the top performers in the market. In Silicon Valley, many of them worked for Google, Apple, and…
Silicon Valley Tech Workers Angered By Proposal to Make Some Mandatory Telecommuting Permanent
“The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional government agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, voted Wednesday to move forward with a proposal to require people at large, office-based companies to work from home three days a week as a way to slash greenhouse gas emissions from car commutes,” reports NBC News: It’s a radical suggestion that likely would have been a…
CIA’s New Tech Recruiting Pitch: More Patents, More Profits
America’s most famous spy agency has a major competitor it can’t quite seem to beat: Silicon Valley. From a report: The CIA has long been a place cutting-edge technology is researched, developed, and realized — and it wants to lead in fields like artificial intelligence and biotechnology. However, recruiting and retaining the talent capable of building these tools is a challenge…
Apple CEO Impressed By Remote Work, Sees Permanent Changes
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said he’s been impressed by employees’ ability to operate remotely and predicted that some new work habits will remain after the pandemic. During an interview at The Atlantic Festival on Monday, Cook said Apple created products including new Apple Watches and iPads that are launching on…
Should Employers Cut Your Salary If You Change Cities?
CNN reports: Stripe is paying employees $20,000 if they relocate from expensive cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and New York, where the company has offices. But workers who make the move will have to take a 10% pay cut. “Twitter Inc. and ServiceNow Inc. have all considered similar measures,” reports Bloomberg. And Forbes notes that other companies are also grappling…
Theranos’ Holmes May Pursue ‘Mental Disease’ In Her Defense
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Former Theranos Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Holmes is exploring a “mental disease” defense for her criminal fraud trial, in one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched cases. That possibility was revealed Wednesday when the judge overseeing the case ruled that government prosecutors can examine Holmes. The ruling was in response to the failed…
Is Virtual Burning Man the Internet’s Ultimate Test?
An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from The New York Times, written by Neil Shister, author of “Radical Ritual: How Burning Man Changed the World.” Here’s an excerpt: In perhaps the ultimate test of whether the internet can satisfyingly replicate the real world, Burning Man has gone online this year. The notion isn’t as much of a mismatch as it…
Tech Firms Face Growing Resentment Toward Parent Employees During COVID-19
Over time, as Silicon Valley companies had to change the way its employees work during the COVID-19 pandemic, “an undercurrent of resentment has bubbled up across the tech industry against those splitting time between work and family, and it’s spilled out in public on employee message boards, company chat software and on social networks,” reports CNET. From the report: At Facebook,…