Because of Project Nimbus, STEM Students Refuse to Work at Google and Amazon

TFD – Google and Amazon are facing a significant backlash from over 1,100 STEM students and young professionals pledging to boycott the companies until they end their involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government.

More than 1,100 self-identified STEM students and young workers from more than 120 universities have signed a pledge to not take jobs or internships at Google or Amazon until the companies end their involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract providing cloud computing services and infrastructure to the Israeli government.

Graduate and undergraduate students from San Francisco State University, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the University of San Francisco were among the pledgers. Along with computer professionals and activists, a few students from those schools took part in an anti-Project Nimbus demonstration on Wednesday outside Google’s San Francisco headquarters.

Based on publicly available data from LinkedIn, employment service College Transitions developed a list of top companies for STEM grads, and Amazon and Google are among them. As of 2024, 216 Stanford alumni and 485 UC Berkeley graduates were employed at Google, per the data.

No IT for Apartheid (NOTA), a partnership of IT workers and activists from Muslim grassroots movement MPower Change and advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace, created the pledge, which is the latest pushback against Google and Amazon. NOTA has been pushing for Google and Amazon to pull out of Project Nimbus and any other work that they are doing with the Israeli government since 2021.

The vow states, “Israeli violence and surveillance have already harmed Palestinians.” “Amazon and Google are contributing to the effectiveness, ferocity, and even death of Israeli apartheid by increasing the capacity of public cloud computing and supplying the Israeli occupation’s military and government with their cutting-edge technology.

Sam, who requested to only be identified by his first name out of concern for potential negative effects on his career, signed the letter identifying himself as a recent hire in the IT industry and a 2023 graduate of Cornell University’s master’s degree in computer science.

He claims to have been inspired to take action by classmates from graduate school who, although they “think one way privately,” “went on to take careers in these Big Tech firms.”

“I know a lot of people who, when someone looks at a starting salary, it’ll test your principles a little bit. Not that they have a price,” Sam remarked.

At the University of San Francisco, Naomi Hardy-Njie, a communications major and computer science minor, said she learned about the letter while taking part in the three-week encampment, which called for transparency and divestment from businesses that support the Gaza War.

Hardy-Njie claimed that she signed the letter in response to Google and Amazon officials’ unwillingness to respond to the requests of demonstrators. However, she asserted that “change has to start from the bottom up.”

Over the last several months, NOTA has planned a number of measures aimed at Project Nimbus. Google dismissed NOTA organizer Eddie Hatfield in March for upsetting the managing director of Google Israel during a Google-sponsored tech conference in New York. More than 50 Google workers were later fired following a sit-in protest against Project Nimbus in Google’s New York and Sunnyvale offices, which was also organized by NOTA.

Though many document leaks have linked the contract to work for Israel’s military, Google has maintained that Project Nimbus is “not directed” at classified or military activities. WIRED asked Google and Amazon for comments, but neither company responded right away.