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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: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 25 2016, @04:16AM
They need educating too. I suspect a class on appropriate behavior would be wasted on the sort of person whose ego has gotten so large they think they're above the law. The sort of education they need is humble pie, lots of it.
Mark Twain had discussed [classic-literature.co.uk] the limits of education (which he actually means in the situation is "outside influence") presented as a conversation between "Old Man" and "Young Man":
Old Man: The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock. To make it more exact, the iron's absolute INDIFFERENCE as to whether the rock be removed or not. Then comes the OUTSIDE INFLUENCE and grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. The IRON in the ore is still captive. An OUTSIDE INFLUENCE smelts it free of the clogging ore. The iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further progress. An OUTSIDE INFLUENCE beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace and refines it into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now --its training is complete. And it has reached its limit. By no possible process can it be educated into GOLD. Will you set that down?
Young Man: Yes. "Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into gold."
Twain subsequently makes a case that humans are shaped purely by nature, but there is still this counter observation that outside influences have limits on what they can do.
I often see people who think that learning is a way out of many problems and conflicts of people, sometimes even to the extent that they think such learning can stick sp well that it becomes inherited. But education has its limits.
Here, it would not do to attempt education, but rather to provide sufficiently negative punishments for actions you believe to be heinous crimes. So rather than attempt to teach the falsehood that someone who is above the law is not, let's simply make them not above the law.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 25 2016, @04:17AM
Twain subsequently makes a case that humans are shaped purely by nurture, but there is still this counter observation that outside influences have limits on what they can do.
Ugh.