When corporations begin to take on the wealth, power, and size of nation-states, is it no wonder that they may have the same variety of opinion as one?
Most small to medium sized businesses have employees with a variety of opinion. But most businesses are mature, follow pretty standard norms of work decorum, and people leave their political positions out of their interactions with coworkers.
It should be that way, but it is not in the Bay Area.
Should it? Sure, it detracts from the organizations mission. It's counter productive. However, if you eat all your meals at campus, then where else express politics? I think this is more about companies taking over too much of life and life bleeds into work.
My impression from the article (and Damore case) is not that discussing politics is a problem per se - the problem is people there taking their politics up to 11, and forgetting any kind of rationality or even common sense on the way.
That's an interesting train of thoughts, in the same way, we criticise countries for not being democratic enough, whereas now we have corporations more powerful than most countries but with zero democracy inside them, the top has all the power