STEM Students Refuse to Work at Google and Amazon Over Project Nimbus

More than 1,100 self-identified STEM students and young workers from implicit 120 universities person signed a pledge to not instrumentality jobs oregon internships astatine Google oregon Amazon until the companies extremity their engagement successful Project Nimbus, a $1.2 cardinal contract providing unreality computing services and infrastructure to the Israeli government.

The pledgers included undergraduate and postgraduate students from Stanford, University of California Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, and San Francisco State University. Some students from those schools besides participated successful an anti-Project Nimbus rally connected Wednesday extracurricular Google’s San Francisco bureau with tech workers and activists.

Amazon and Google are apical employers for graduates from apical STEM schools, according to data from vocation work College Transitions, which was compiled utilizing publically disposable information from LinkedIn. According to the data, arsenic of 2024, 485 University of California Berkeley graduates and 216 Stanford graduates enactment astatine Google.

The pledge, which marks the latest backlash against Google and Amazon, was organized by No Tech for Apartheid (NOTA), a conjugation of tech workers and activists with Muslim grassroots question MPower Change and Jewish Voice for Peace. Since 2021, the radical has advocated for Google and Amazon to boycott and divest from Project Nimbus and immoderate different enactment for the Israeli government.

“Palestinians are already harmed by Israeli surveillance and violence,” the pledge reads. “By expanding nationalist unreality computing capableness and providing their authorities of the creation exertion to the Israeli occupation’s authorities and military, Amazon and Google are helping to marque Israeli apartheid much efficient, much violent, and adjacent deadlier for Palestinians.”

Sam, who asked to beryllium identified lone by his archetypal sanction for fearfulness of nonrecreational repercussions, says that helium signed the missive arsenic a 2023 postgraduate of Cornell University’s master’s programme for machine subject and caller subordinate of the tech workforce.

He tells WIRED that helium was moved to enactment aft watching friends from postgraduate schoolhouse who “think 1 mode privately,” but past “went connected to instrumentality careers successful these large tech firms.”

“I cognize a batch of radical who, not to accidental they person a price, but erstwhile idiosyncratic looks astatine a starting salary, it'll trial your principles a small bit,” Sam said.

Naomi Hardy-Njie, a communications large and machine subject insignificant astatine the University of San Francisco, said she heard astir the missive portion participating astatine the school’s three-week encampment demanding disclosure and divestment from companies backing the warfare successful Gaza.

Hardy-Njie said that she signed the missive due to the fact that Google and Amazon executives person been reticent to code protesters’ demands. But change, she said, “has to commencement from the bottommost up.”

NOTA has organized respective actions targeting Project Nimbus implicit the past respective months. Eddie Hatfield, a NOTA organizer, was fired from Google successful March aft helium interrupted the Google Israel managing director astatine a Google-sponsored tech league successful New York. More than 50 Google workers were later fired pursuing a sit-in protestation against Project Nimbus successful Google offices successful the company’s New York and Sunnyvale offices, which was besides organized by NOTA.

Google has claimed that Project Nimbus is “not directed” astatine classified oregon subject work, but various document leaks have tied the declaration to enactment for Israel’s military. Google and Amazon did not instantly respond to WIRED’s petition for comment.