Challenges Narayana Murthy faced while doing business in a no-smartphone era

Earlier this year, Microsoft came under scrutiny when over a hundred employees published an open letter calling on the company to cancel its contracts with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. “We believe that Microsoft must take an ethical stand, and put children and families above profits,” the letter said. CEO Satya Nadella (in pic) defended the contract stating, “Microsoft is not working with the US government on any project related to separating children from their families at the border.” Nadella did not commit to more transparency.

Earlier this year, hundreds of Amazon employees signed an internal letter demanding that the company stop selling its facial recognition surveillance software — Rekognition — to law enforcement agencies. “As ethically concerned Amazonians, we demand a choice in what we build and a say in how it is used,” they wrote. Despite the outcry, Amazon executives have skirted around the issue saying that it is the responsibility of the US government to specify the regulations needed around facial recognition.

In pic: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

Last month, Facebook executives came under fire when the company’s VP of global public policy — Joel Kaplan (left) — was spotted publicly supporting Judge Brett Kavanaugh as he testified before the Senate. Kaplan’s appearance raised eyebrows and resulted in a strong backlash among employees with some viewing Kaplan’s show of support as an endorsement from the company itself. Following the outrage, Kaplan apologised and defended his actions, claiming that he had attended the hearing as a close friend of Kavanaugh. “I’ve talked to Joel about why I think it was a mistake for him to attend given his role in the company. We support people’s right to do what they want in their personal time but this was by no means a straight-forward case,” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (right) wrote in an internal post.

Last week, more than 20,000 Google employees staged a worldwide walkout over reports that former executive Andy Rubin (left) received a handsome $90 million severance package in 2014, despite sexual misconduct allegations. Reacting to the protests, Google CEO Sundar Pichai (right) said, “People are walking out because they want us to improve and they want us to show we can do better. We’re acknowledging and understanding we clearly got some things wrong.” Shortly after, Google announced new sexual harassment policies for employees including a crackdown on alcohol at work-related functions.

Netflix received a lot of pushback when it was discovered that its “unlimited parental leave” policy — which allowed new parents to avail of unlimited paid leave for the first year following the birth or adoption of a child — only extended to “salaried streaming employees” and not to those in the DVD or hourly workforce. Over 1,08,000 signatures were collected protesting the two-track policy. Netflix tried to defend its actions claiming that DVD workers received a minimum of 12 paid weeks of maternity and paternity leave. But the company bowed to the backlash and upgraded its parental leave policy for hourly workers and those in the DVD business.

In pic: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings