Google fires employee who leaked memo on raises | Hacker News Reader

Google fires employee who leaked memo on raises

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I work at Google, and I am really happy that someone got punished for leaking this memo. A firing like this increases accountability and shows that loyalty and keeping confidentiality mean something. When it is done fairly and with cause, firing an employee can make a huge positive difference in an organization. The best situation is where a problem employee who was lowering the morale of others is fired.

Wow, that just seems kind of mean. Obviously the notice at the top says otherwise, but there's really nothing very sensitive in this memo and it was so broadly distributed there's no way it wouldn't have found its way out eventually.

Why, personally, is your morale lowered by knowing people leak stuff? I just don't see get it.

Imagine the following hypothetical situations:

You come from a working-class family, but through long years of studying hard, you get a job at Google. Your extended family all have blue-collar or service jobs. Your cousin gets laid off, and then reads in the paper that you just got a 10% raise, plus $1000 holiday bonus, plus a portion of your bonus pay up-front. Awkward Thanksgiving ensues.

You have a long-time sibling rivalry with your brother, including a game of one-upmanship that extends back to grade school. Finally, you got tired of it, and after his latest raise, you just stopped telling him your salary. Now he hears on CNN that you just got a 10% raise, which leads to much whining about how come you're making more money than him. Awkward Thanksgiving ensues. He goes to his boss and asks for a raise because Google gave one, and his boss replies that he's not worth it, which results in him quitting his job with no plans for what to do next. Awkward Christmas ensues.

Your mom calls you because she just heard on the radio that you got a 10% raise and $1000 bonus, and you didn't tell her, and why do you never talk to her anymore? Awkward...oh hell, if your mother is that neurotic, Thanksgiving would probably be awkward anyway.

You go out for drinks with your friends from other companies, but since you are now apparently rolling in dough, the expectation is that you're buying. These people probably aren't the type that you'd invite to Thanksgiving anyway.

You've been trying to teach your kid about the importance of managing money prudently, and so have restricted their allowance. They come home from school saying, "My friend told me that her daddy said that he heard on the radio that you just got a raise, but you said that you didn't have money to give me a raise. I hate you forever." Sullen, miserable Thanksgiving ensues.

The point isn't that any one person was financially harmed by the leak: it's that by leaking, the leaker has robbed his coworkers of the ability to control to whom and when they break the news. There's no way that the leaker could possibly know the personal circumstances of 30,000 Google employees. Many of them may have very valid reasons for not having details of their compensation plastered across the evening news. When and how they reveal that should be for them to decide, not for one person to decide.

Well this is to work very hard to find some justification where I think the reality is a bit different: it was a good move to fire the employee because a rule is a rule. If it is confidential you can't leak it, even if it is the simplest and harmless of the things.

But I don't think that here the problem is that the leak may harm workers. You work at google so everybody already know you have a good salary. 10% raise is really marginal in the game of big numbers, who freaking cares?

Instead I think that the company had some reason to avoid leaking this. Either because they wanted to keep this secret to don't appear weak, or because they wanted to divulgate the news in a moment where the mediatic resonance is at max.

Still a rule is a rule. You can't leak a confidential company secret, whatever it is, otherwise you deserve to be fired.

Great set of employee-centric examples. And there was me thinking only of the market effects!

Why did such yarn spinning get so many upvotes. This is a really silly post. There are lots of people for which their salary is completely known by anyone who cares to. What happens at Thanksgiving for those people in your fantasy land?

Why do you assume a shitty, selfish, envious family who would look at your raise with contempt instead of being happy for you that you're finally moving toward getting market rate for your work?

First, it lowers my morale because it drains my confidence that very important secrets are safe. Some corporations do not leak at all - Apple comes to mind. They are notoriously mean at hunting down leaks, and it makes people paranoid. This is good. The ability to shock and amaze with new products has contributed substantially to Apple's brand. Other companies envy it.

Do you think it is mean for traffic officers to give speeding tickets? We know some people speed despite posted limits, but we are all safer because most people do obey the limits.

You sound really naive and honestly it might do you good to get fired so you learn a simple life lesson: Google is a company that only exists to make money. That's its sole purpose. It's not your friend, it's not your family. You don't work their because they enjoy your company. You work there because the right people assume that you provide more value than your salary costs (i.e. they make a profit on their exchange with you). You need to grow past this "loyalty" nonsense.

It's true that I wouldn't personally go releasing information like this, but that's because I can make more money if I'm known as someone who doesn't air company laundry, not because of some misplaced and immature sense of "loyalty".

Ironically, the leak probably helped Google as some good talent out there never gave them a second look because they have a reputation of not being competitive with their salaries. They make billions so there is no valid excuse for paying less than places who only make hundreds of millions.

Just because you are jaded and have given up on loyalty and the idea of responsible corporations that care for their employees doesn't mean the rest of us must do so as well.

You paint a very black and white picture. Either the world can have caring corporations, or it can't. Your opinion leaves no room for middle ground. That alone should convince you to re-evaluate what you believe.

What you're saying makes no sense. A corporation is there to make money. Full stop. It's a thing, not a person. It doesn't care because it can't care, it has no feeling only a purpose.

If you get in an accident and lose both arms are they going to pay you to sit around because they care? Of course not. They will (hopefully) try to soften your landing, but that's less because they care and more about moral of existing and future employees.

Life is going to be a painful experience until you learn to only give the amount of loyalty that is given to you. No matter what a company says or does, they are going to drop you the second you don't make sense on paper (including if they find someone who can do what you do cheaper). If you behave any other way you've been brain washed [1].

[1] This doesn't mean that if you get an offer for $1/yr more you have to drop your current company. You have to keep the short and long term in view.

Enlightened Self-interest. It might be a completely rational move for Google to keep their staff happy, well-motivated and well-treated in order to maximise their productivity.

When doing comparisons (i.e. "Is this new guy really cheaper?") that sort of thing is figured into the price. Companies that care about morale figure more into the value of keeping existing employees, but places that use brain washing techniques [1] are going to count the "morale costs" of someones real value very low because they're controlling morale anyway [2]. I've directly seen this applied in several companies. Sometimes it was in response to loss in revenue (i.e. out of their control), a couple of times it was just because.

[1] When a company puts slogans all over their walls, keeps on bleating the same message about "we're a family", uses phrases like "always put in more than you take out!", it's nearly always because they're trying to create the impression in their employees that a relationship exists that actually doesn't.

[2] Most likely by driving it as low as they dare so that anyone who would leave already has.

This is clearly flame bait / troll comment, but I would like to make a comment to rebut the central point, namely that personal relationships somehow "do not matter" or are purely exploitative at organizations.

First, I've found that one's work experience is dependent to a huge degree on the direct manager. If your manager is an asshole, you will hate your job. If you don't get along with your manager, you will dislike your job. If your manager does not care about you, you will dislike your job. If you work at an enlightened organization, you may be able to raise the issue up the chain with your manger's manager and apply for a transfer. Otherwise it is best to find another job.

That was the practical angle. Here is the theoretical one: if you call "social capital" the propensity of employees to form relationships, care about each other, and be loyal to each other, then the argument put forth is that low social capital corporations will somehow be better adapted than high social capital ones and will push them out of existence Darwin-like. This simply hasn't happened - Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple are all examples of places that by and large treat their employees fairly. I've heard that Oracle is more "cut throat" but I don't really know what that means in practice and have never worked there. Oracle does, however, seem to suffer from Ellison's weirdness. Just as there is a market in employee salaries there is also a market in corporate culture - a company that is not nice is not going to attract top talent. I have never heard that Oracle has attracted a substantial number of top-notch engineers.

On a personal level, it is always advantageous to be friendly, nice, respectful, and take everything in stride because it wins you friends and lets you do things like get other companies to hire you, a process which increases your market value as an employee. It is also completely free.

Keep in mind that this is specific to large tech companies - other sectors like Finance and Sales are going to obey their own cultural trends which may be more selfish and greedy. The start-up sector tends to attract and encourage a rather different breed, but the conditions are also completely different from a traditional corporate environment, so different personality characteristics will be adaptive.

>This is clearly flame bait / troll comment

I'm not trying to troll you, I'm trying to get you to take off your rose-colored glasses to save you from some real heart break down the road. Believe me.

>namely that personal relationships somehow "do not matter" or are purely exploitative at organizations.

Relationships can matter up to a point, but if your company took a hit in the market and has to shed 30% of its human resources your relationship is not going to matter. It can't, the company is trying to survive. And this goes double for a public company, it's basically illegal for them to value your friendship over their bottom line.

>First, I've found that one's work experience is dependent to a huge degree on the direct manager.

Fair enough.

>This simply hasn't happened - Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple are all examples of places that by and large treat their employees fairly.

The question is vastly more complex than that. For one thing, the aggressiveness of a company is going to depend on the market their in. You'll have the worst experience in retail because they have such tight margins.

For another thing, how do you figure they treat their employees "fairly"? "Fair" is a difficult thing to pin down, but if we look at some knowns: Google makes billions in profit. Google pays under market rate for developers because "but you'll be working at Google! GOOGLE!". Now if you could provide some citation that shows that Google employees end up making more money at their next company on average because of this situation then I would find it less unfair/exploitative, but I doubt you can.

>a company that is not nice is not going to attract top talent.

Not to nit pick, but the last company I worked at thoroughly debunked this idea. The devs were very high end and the management was horrendously bad but it was a hedge fund paying nearly double market rate in total compensation (i.e. most of the money came in bonuses which could be as much as double your salary).

>On a personal level, it is always advantageous to be friendly, nice, respectful, and take everything in stride because it wins you friends and lets you do things like get other companies to hire you, a process which increases your market value as an employee.

Of course. I've liked most everyone I've ever worked with, and I think most people I've worked with have liked me. I form friendship, etc. I just know what my relationship with the company is. As long as I'm good value, they'll keep me around. I view them the same way. I like the people but if I find a better deal [1], well, it's nothing personal, just business.

>The start-up sector tends to attract and encourage a rather different breed, but the conditions are also completely different from a traditional corporate environment, so different personality characteristics will be adaptive.

This site gives the impression that the start up culture is much more greedy. Most people appear to create a startup to get rich. Fair enough, but they also seem to want employees who will pull insane hours and cost nearly nothing. All this for an idea that probably wont pan out and even if it did, what kind of equity would they get for so much effort? If the startup tanks it doesn't even look that good on a resume.

[1] And by better deal, I mean overall. Making twice as much money but doing boring monotonous and stressful work wouldn't be a good long term trade off for me. I currently make enough that I don't have to make those kinds of sacrifices.

Honestly, I'd fire an employee who leaks a memo out. Not for doing it. But for being stupid enough to get caught.

So your point is that it's ok to leak internal memos or commit other acts of sabotage, as long as you don't get caught?

Point is don't be stupid enough to get caught

Also, the fact that they didn't hide their tracks indicates that they most likely aware completely unaware that they might be causing any harm to the company.

A lapse in judgement, maybe -- but if so, the appropriate response would be a private reprimand, not a bullet to the head.

Especially considering that no conceivable harm has come to Google as a result of this leaking, and that it's impossible to keep news like this secret in the Valley, anyway.

The memo says: CONFIDENTIAL: INTERNAL ONLY GOOGLERS ONLY (FULL TIME AND PART TIME EMPLOYEES) right at the top.

When an employee starts working at google they go to orientation where they get briefed on a lot of things about the company, fill out HR paperwork etc. One of the documents they get and one of the discussions they have is how you don't release confidential information of the companies or its clients.

I don't see how it's possible to go through employee orientation and not know that releasing a document that says "INTERNAL ONLY" would be a terminable offense.

That may be true, but strategically, the information in the memo was good press for Google, and the firing of the employee for leaking it is bad press for Google.

If I believe the media that this leaked memo might bring attention from the DoJ back onto Google over the anti poaching agreements then the leak and it's contents are bad news.

If I'm trusting Google with my data then the termination of the employee for violating their code of conduct could absolutely be viewed as good news.

Any of this being good or bad is completely dependent your view point and how it might affect you. If I'm a shareholder I'm glad the employee is gone and not necessarily happy that the DoJ might take a closer look at the company or estimated billion dollars this will cost each year. If I'm a potential Google employee I'm probably a little bit wary about the termination and glad that they are paying more competitive salaries but potentially disappointed that future bonuses will be reduced.

Silicon Valley owes much of its existence to people sharing information between companies: at the Homebrew Computer Club, at Hackers, at First Tuesdays, at user groups, on tours, at parties, in lectures. Some of that sharing was officially sanctioned, and some of it was not. It's a special part of its culture, and I think accounts for much of its innovation. Apple has always been an exception.

Google grew up in the shadow of much bigger, better-funded competitors: Microsoft, then later Yahoo. I speculate, without having asked anybody, that this accounts for the culture of fanatical secrecy, outstripping even that of Apple, that has enveloped the company since its early days, and which I think now is a permanent part of Google's culture, even though the bigger, better-funded competitors are now the underdogs, unable to execute.

This firing is a symptom of that tradition of secrecy.

I fear that the next half-century of the Valley will be poisoned by this, because Google is today's Fairchild, Mountain View's Microsoft. Every new startup will be backed by Googlers or Xooglers, founded by Xooglers, or at least advised by [GX]ooglers. So this poisonous culture of secrecy, which kills innovation, will fill the Valley like a vile miasma, along with the many wonderful things that come from Google experience.

This may all be true, but the particular example we are discussing does not support your point. I don't see how whether or not another company knows who received raises has an rats ass to do with innovation.

Silicon Valley also owes much of its existence to the defense industry.

Google is going to fire the employee who leaked the firing.

... all in a determined effort to increase employee morale.

"The beatings will continue until morale improves."

Sometimes, to raise morale, you just have to fire all the unhappy people.

That strategy works best when the firings cause previously happy people to become unhappy.

I never thought of Dwarf Fortress as management training before, though I probably should have.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Tantrum

It's true. Unhappy people can poison a culture and be a drag on everyone. The big question is whether they're unhappy because they're just unhappy people in general, or if they're unhappy because the company truly sucks.

You probably have to assume the former because if it's the latter you're probably not in a position to do anything about it anyway.

Google is going to fire Google for hiring the employee that leaked the firing of the employee who leaked the raises.

There was an old woman who swallowed a fly ...

A Møøse once bit my sister...

I'd love to hire that person.

We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

...

Møøse trained by YUTTE HERMSGERVØRDENBRØTBØRDA

Special Møøse Effects OLAF PROT

Møøse Costumes SIGGI CHURCHILL

Is Google using some subtle permutation on every version of the email sent out?

All it would take would be swapping "--" for "...", "ie"/"i.e."/"eg"/"e.g." You should probably compare your local copy of an email with someone else before leaking it!

I doubt there are 23,300 possible permutations. Moreover, I doubt a Googler wouldn't think of this classic before leaking his e-mail. Any other theory? Perhaps no one was fired and it's just link bait?

I heard from a Googler before the article came out that the leaker was fired. While one could imagine a second, as-yet unleaked email about the fake firing, isn't it much simpler just to assume that the leaker was fired?

Most likely somebody just forwarded it to their favorite blog, especially if they didn't think the email was confidential. Pretty easy to track outgoing email.

With "CONFIDENTIAL: INTERNAL ONLY GOOGLERS ONLY (FULL TIME AND PART TIME EMPLOYEES)" at the top it's hard to believe they might have thought it wasn't confidential.

Assuming a worst case of two possibilities for each difference, that comes out as ceil(log_2(23300)) = 15 differences necessary. You could easily get that by swapping out words for synonyms (especially if you use more than two synonyms per difference).

Don't forget unicode homoglyphs, as well.

And even if a journalist trimmed whitespace when formatting for publication, they might not have if forwarding back to a Google rep 'for comment'.

You'd need over 14 binary manipulation choices, but only about 9 if you had a choice of three. If you include word synonyms in the choices, with over 250 words in the memo, I don't think it's unreasonable.

How about summarizing a memo instead of copypasta? Then they'd have to diff the facts to mess you up.

A good news source, if there are any left, probably won't run a story based solely on an anonymous tip.

Well, what if the news source only published a summary, and not the original?

That's not journalism.

OK, it may be today's journalism, but who trusts news sources like that?

"Hey Bob, I'm thinking about leaking my email... can I diff it with yours?"

The other problem I can see is that there's only 5 or 6 of those points, which would be enough to narrow down the leaker, but not ID them outright. Probably easier (if more evil) to check all the outgoing mail in gmail.

You can also use trailing spaces. I have done this on the past successfully

But when it's actually leaked and posted, it'll most definitely be trimmed.

You could use a pattern of one or two spaces after each sentence. Encode an id in that. If text is copy and pasted and not processed with a s/ / /g, that most likely won't be detected by the copy-and-paster (especially when it's all done in a variable width font).

Looks like HN does remove double spaces, what I meant was obviously s/[space][space]/[space]/g :)

It's not HN, it's a feature of HTML. All whitespace characters (including tabs and newlines) are condensed to a single space, and leading/trailing spaces are removed. So if you have a habit of double-spacing after sentences, HTML simply ignores you, unless you use <pre> or  .

Ah didn't know that. Well that would make the single/double space encoding of an id much harder.

Actually, it makes it more effective if anything. The browser displays it as a single whitespace, but the source isn't altered, (and therefore easily checkable).

Yeah but if a user copy/pastes it from his email client into his blog posting system, the double spaces are stripped, too (I checked it with Firefox, maybe other browsers work differently). It would only work I think if the single/doubles space pattern was preserved across copy/paste operations.

Or worse, the INcoming mail in gmail.

What is evil about checking corporate mail for corporate mail leaks?

i doubt it's that complicated, they have full control of the mailservers, I bet the person just didn't think leaking the information was that big of a deal.

With 23,000 employee's that's alot of permutations for a 3 paragraph email.

Or, you know, run a giant grep on every mail sent to or from Gmail and internal mail over the last 12 hours...

Talk about carrots on a stick.

What underscores the utter ruthlessness of Google's actions is that it's impossible to imagine that the leaker meant any harm at all coming to Google from their what they did. If anything, they were probably nothing if not deeply proud of Google in that moment; and giddily euphoric -- and thought it could only help Google for the world at large to know of its generosity to its employees.

Had they only known.

Look at the constant media beating Google takes over the leaked, internal "don't be evil" slogan.

It's hard to imagine what harm would be caused by waiting a day to leak the memo, except for the missed opportunity for the leaker to be the hero. The timing would indicate the leaker's motive was not "hey, our PR department keeps sitting on this awesome news."

Good thing Google took a hard stance on data protectionism! Wait, where have I heard about data protectionism again?

http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/09/facebook-slaps-google-openn...

So was there really an ad smack in the middle of the email?

Didn't they just redo the AdSense interface? Maybe you can bid for ads on internal memos now.

Or maybe they announced that they dis it just to keep people from doing it in the future.

Not like someone is going to stand up and say that they weren't caught (or at least not till they leave their jobs.)

He probably used his Gmail account ...

So, to summarize: Google managed to appear more intimidating to any and all its competitors (by giving everyone a 10% raise) and fuck up its public image, all in two days.

Zuckerberg must be laughing his ass off right now.

I don't see how it could possibly affect the public image in a negative way. Google, like any other company who shares a lot of information internally, is very serious about confidentiality. A guy who deliberately leaked a memo clearly marked as "internal only" deserves to be fired, period.

You think Facebook wouldn't fire an employee who leaked confidential internal company information?

No, but it's irrelevant anyway. Google should've fired the guy (gal?) anyway, but it's publicized as well. That, in anybody's eyes, shows a greater lack of professionalism and company adherence to confidentiality than leaking a (positive!) memo.

Hmm..If only Yahoo had followed (or would follow) such a procedure!

[there used to be confidential VP-only meetings and information and that would also somehow end up on blogs..imagine that].

I just don't understand why they would care that this information leaked. It's not like they could possibly keep it a secret that every single Googler got a 10% raise at the same time.

Sets a bad precedent, that it's okay just to forward any confidential memos on.

Does anyone know if the leaker got paid for revealing this memo? If so, I have little sympathy...

Way to destroy the goodwill you just spent millions of dollars on.

wait a sec... Is it really a 10% raise? "we're moving a portion of your bonus into your base salary"

The bonus to base salary is an additional change. The 10% raise is discussed in the previous paragraph, and then the bonus change is in the next paragraph, starting with "There's more."

Do no evil.

Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.

If they didn't take action, then "CONFIDENTIAL: INTERNAL ONLY GOOGLERS ONLY (FULL TIME AND PART TIME EMPLOYEES)" would turn into a joke. Now people might listen - or at least leak more carefully.

Which leads me to think that this just may be a setting stone to future, more important memos. No sense in scaring them unless they wanted to secure the channel for something else.

When is ensuring employee confidentiality not good general business practice?

Large companies have often used internal memos on purpose for leaking information. On some level, they want the information to be leaked (companies with thousands of staff makes it nearly impossible for it not to be).

A somewhat classier, less-heavy-handed approach would have been to simply not give that employee a raise.

Would that have made the headlines? If not, it wouldn't have the same effect.

It would have made the headlines if a google rep gave boingboing or IO9 a brief interview saying "we are not evil, but no one messes with the google."

no, this way they're saying "okay, we can't trust this guy, he's out of here". denying him a raise would just be punitive, which isn't too classy.

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