Now that mirage has a few cracks in it and executives are freaking out.
Reminds me of Westworld.
You leak of trade secret, you can be fired. But if you talk about work practices, that's a legally protected right that these companies don't want you to talk about. If they can make people who do feel ostracized and like they're betraying their family, maybe they'll reconsider sharing what goes on behind the curtain.
I assume you're ok with people being mad about leaked products they've been working hard on for years having their big debut ruined?
So why would employees be mad about the leaking of internal meetings or discussions? Because in the majority of the cases, these leaks don't hurt company management, they hurt employees.
Several times in the past, Googlers have had their physical or mental safety threatened by such leaks. What you see as a company discussion leaked, turns out to be a real life Doxx-ing of employees. Would Damore have been fired if someone hadn't leaked his memo externally? Probably not, he'd be quietly transferred by HR and maybe managed out, but able to preserve his career elsewhere in the valley. The response to his firing was that the internal company meeting questions got leaked and the real names of several female and transgender employees got forwarded to alt-right sites, which proceeded to harass them, send death threats, etc.
And one year, an "innocent" leak of Google's yearly company Christmas present, a brown envelope with cash in it, put the physical safety of Googlers at risk, because Google Shuttle bus stops are well known and Googlers are easily identified in public, and that day, everyone knew Googlers would be carrying hundreds of dollars of cash in brown envelopes.
These leaks often harm employees, not management.
Furthermore, you can see in this letter from Brian Katz, the head of stopleaks, more or less everything discussed here, and certainly, it coming from "management": https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/05/22/katz-letter-google.pdf (Actually, everything here is useful/interesting: https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/05/22/discovery.pdf )
Note that he expressly suggests bringing concerns to a manager rather than speaking publicly about them, which likely includes concerns about working conditions or illegal conduct. He also cites the whole "damages our culture" aspect that is extremely relevant to the topic at hand.
Edit: Removed off-topic addressing of removed content from parent post.
If you leak say, a private thread from internal mailing lists, you could lose your job, especially if it could harm other employees. If you summarize some issue, you probably are on steadier ground.
Google has a vibrant internal culture of criticism. Memegen has already leaked (https://gizmodo.com/5946769/google-workers-make-internal-mem...), execs and products get raked over the coals at weekly company wide meetings, there's actually internal comics that satirize company beliefs.
And yes, management doesn't always listen, probably the single biggest reason unionization might be needed in Silicon Valley, not for worker pay and benefits, which are already good, but to ensure management listens on other issues.
BTW, the TGIF transcript and meme leaks are the kinds that have ended up Doxxing employees and triggering harassment. The gizmodo link I put properly redacts the usernames, but other leaks have not.
People should not say things even in a private corporate setting that they would not be comfortable if was someday public. Not only can a lawsuit or investigation bring internal correspondence to light, but for instance, some of my correspondence could be FOIA'd! People fail to realize their corporate correspondence is not their private place, and treat it accordingly.
I do have a lot of sympathy for targeted folks like LGBT folks getting harassed, particularly after events like Damore and the related lawsuits and embedded posts/content. But in many cases, they are already publicly identifying their RL name, gender identity, and political positions on Twitter, for example. They weren't so much "doxxed", as they became higher profile due to having been in the news.
This sucks a lot, but we can't hide important information from the public based on the unfortunate reality that soul-sucking nightmare trolls chase every name that gets even the briefest of public attention... imagine if we took that approach/mindset with leaks coming out of the White House.
PS - I really wish more of Memegen was leaked/public. I can't count how many times a news story has led to the thought "darn, I wish I could see what Memegen looks like today".
Google, as a corporate entity, definitely did not gain from the leak, and certainly would've preferred it not leak.
As opposed to doing what else? Emptying bins?
They are employed to spin news for the benefit of the corporation. They have risk assessments and plans-of-action for the most likely eventualties. Their job is to do exactly what they've been doing in response to this leak.
Below is an excerpt
———
The public image of Silicon Valley’s tech giants is all colourful bicycles, ping-pong tables, beanbags and free food, but behind the cartoonish facade is a ruthless code of secrecy. They rely on a combination of Kool-Aid, digital and physical surveillance, legal threats and restricted stock units to prevent and detect intellectual property theft and other criminal activity. However, those same tools are also used to catch employees and contractors who talk publicly, even if it’s about their working conditions, misconduct or cultural challenges within the company.
McDonalds, and more general retail businesses, Target, Walgreens, ..., call centres, ... those are the ones both installing massive surveillance and actually getting it analyzed. Or at least, enough to pay me loads of money to make it possible, and I've had some conversations, they do this routinely. And frankly, I'm pretty sure that since this is directed by low-level managers (you can't do it otherwise, not at that scale, all tracking is done by the store manager) there will be tons and tons of abuse of these systems. I mean for trivial reasons, like stealing, attempting to make a false accusation of stealing stick, stalking girls (or even men), that sort of thing.
From what I can tell, at FB the entrances and exits, some presumably high value locations inside and to a lesser extent the parking lot, those are the places under surveillance. I'm pretty sure that at most places in the FB buildings nobody can see you on any security monitor (it's one of those open plan offices, not much privacy, easy to get everything under surveillance, but they're not doing it. I've been to several call centres where surveillance was utterly pervasive in the same sort of environment. Although the environment was much, much better at FB. Big open office plan, but the air was perfect, for lack of a better word. It wasn't cramped at all, it wasn't like those call centres at all, no wall smelled, not like smoke, not like oil, nothing like that). And of course you hear stories, like "sneaking" into the office on sunday for a board game because it's an easy place and central for everyone to get together is pretty normal.
Of course I realize that this is "fake" like it is fake at any company. Unless you're the CEO AND own a majority of the shares, the company is not a social club, it is not there to have your back. But they have that vibe going there, and they wouldn't have that vibe if they broke it for trivial reasons.
> legal threats and restricted stock units to prevent and detect intellectual property theft
Protecting yourself against insider threats by giving employees means for a good life ! How UNAMERICAN !
I'm pretty sure at your local supermarket you'd find those same threats, except they're totally pervasive. Every employee will have been threatened, and I assure you, ...
... not with restricted stock units or any kind of reward.
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employee-concerned-c...
Discussing working conditions publicly is legally protected by worker rights laws.
So yes, protecting yourself against that (by firing people for discussing working conditions, for example) is both un-American AND illegal.
My understanding is that FB does not have a "fear-based" culture that would've prevented leaks, so really the only way they could keep people in line at scale is if there was a cultish element to their onboarding process that makes people "love" FB so much that employees are actually so offended by a leaker to make comments like this.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/16/facebooks-secret-police-catc...
Google's is run by a guy named Brian Katz, who's been the subject of a lawsuit before: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/anonymous-google... and the very same has allegedly threatened a bartender who found a prototype Nexus 4: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2224589/Google-threa...
Apple security folks have tossed a guy's home looking for a prototype iPhone, escorted by police. All of them, allegedly, had badges: https://gizmodo.com/5836990/lost-iphone-5-investigators-were...
They obviously can intimidate employees into silence, but it's far more useful and beneficial for morale to go for the "loyalty" angle, and make sure employees shame others who leak.
I would imagine people at FB that believe working there is objectively good are having a hard time reconciling that belief with the negative externalities that are playing out in society at large.
If you see working at one of these companies as a status symbol, you'll do whatever it takes to protect that image.
There's a strong selection bias at work here in these posts and I think it's a serious statistical error to assume this represents the median view of Facebook employees.