But that's not what the article says and it does that on purpose. The phrase "Google Employees resign in protest" is significant from a writers PoV. If they had sources and evidence to suggest it was close to the project, they would have said "Google's Project Maven Employees resign in protest" as it gives it more weight.

The art/lie is omission and letting the reader jump to the conclusion. Currently there is nothing in the article to suggest that these aren't just call-centre workers but they (Gizmodo, pronouns pal) will let you believe that its Maven people and senior engineers.

It puts the article in to random-arse speculation mode of a pretty bad kind.

I agree that the nature of their employment isn't being made clear and I'd argue that this was done to mislead, if the author had knowledge that people close to the project resigned they would have published it in the headline.