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Everything you do, and everything that happens -- from the location of a water cooler down to serious violations of the law -- is confidential upon pain of termination and the risk of ruinous litigation. You are forbidden to speak to the government, attorneys or the press about wrongdoings at the Company. You are forbidden to speak to your spouse, or your friends, about whether you think your boss could do a better job.
These are only a few of the eye-catching elements in Google's confidentiality policies, according to a lawsuit brought forward by one of the 65,000 "Googlers". The plaintiff has registered his complaint under a "John Doe" identity, as Brian Katz, Google's Director of Global Investigations, Intelligence & Protective Services falsely informed the rest of the Googlers that plaintiff had been terminated for leaking certain information to the press. This was not the case, and Katz knew this, according to the plaintiff: he fears going public will ruin his reputation in the tech industry.
Earlier this year, a Nest employee was fired because he posted comments about Nest's CEO Tony Fadell on Facebook. The reason given for termination was that these posts breached Google's Data Classification guidelines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @11:19PM
Amen to that. Google should be broken up into a dozen or more smaller companies.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Sunday December 25 2016, @03:33AM
Can't tell if you're being facetious.
They are smart enough to realize what you have said, and have provided the illusion they have. This way, the buck stops at each letter. This allows for cream to rise to the top, while shit can still roll downhill.
Scum also rises to the top with cream, and poor management filtration gets the top filled with scum that just churn out a lot of shitty policies all day.
It isn't unique to them; it's a problem at any company of a similar size. But, they've had years of the best and the brightest, and no one said they were trying to hire the moral and virtuous. It's hard to sell people out when you feel bad about it in much the same way as its easy to create and enforce draconian policies when you don't.