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Regardless of what you or I think of the policy, most major software companies (Google included) have clauses in your employment contract around how you represent the company in a real or percieved official capacity. This wasn't just some account persona; it was published as if it were an official open source product endorsed by Google (complete with branding). The author apparently didn't have permission or legal right to do so, and publicly violated their agreement.

Was the response short sighted? Up for debate. But unfortunately for the author, they have no real legal standing on this matter. Had it been their own repo, sans any branding, it would likely have been fine.

> I should be able to even berate my employer, as long as I'm not doing it from a persona that's directly tied to my employer e.g. my real name or git handle etc. They might not like it, but they sure as shit shouldn't be able to fire me for it.

There are many things you should be able to do publicly without repercussion from your employer. However, your example is berating them, and I'm taking that literally: "to criticize in an angry manner".

If I read this correctly, then you believe your employer should be able to fire you if you angrily criticize them in public under your name. I agree in principle, that could damage their trust in your ability to do your job. Depending on specifics, that damage could be enough to justify firing you.

I don't understand why doing so anonymously should change the potential damage to their trust in you, if they later learn you said what you did.

you raise a good point, I was trying to take the example to the logical extreme by specifically using berating. in essence, the example would be the same as whistleblowing (mechanistically speaking)

So one would have to weigh the risks of being let go (and legal consequences if it was indeed whistleblowing) depending on the level of criticism being levied.

I disagree that the berating example is in any substantial way similar to whistleblowing.

I believe we are more on the same page than not, but I caution you to more closely evaluate an employee's obligations on how and when they speak about their employer, whether in public or where there's a chance of private speaking becoming public, regardless of the name or persona used.

I include whistleblowing, because some whistleblowing is not legally protected and, from an employment perspective, some whistleblowing requires that certain steps were first attempted or considered.

I've had to do that re-evaluation myself, from the employer side, and it changed my mind in some ways, even from my perspective as an employee.

(This sounds one sided only because we're not bringing up any employer obligations. I'm not in HR, but that re-evaluation more firmly entrenched my belief that HR is often a necessary evil.)

I pretty much agree with you in principle. I'm in the US (not in silicon valley but working in software for over a decade).

Given my stance on a lot of things though I don't know how much evidence this is that this view isn't "too radical" but my (biased) take is that a lot of good ideas are radical until they aren't, and usually the ones don't ever become mainstream have better counterarguments than anything I've heard or been able to come up with against this view. I still don't really expect it to change in my lifetime though (in terms of what's legally allowed) just because of how massive a shift it would be.

Thank you, I appreciate you sharing your views on this.

Coincidentally, I've only recently learned of the Overton Window [0] which describes that the spectrum of acceptable ideas in a society is subject to shift.

[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window>