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Earlier this year Google e-mailed all employees and noted that accessing docs outside the scope of your job responsibility is forbidden and a fire-able offense. I think this policy change marked the end of the open culture you speak of.

Whether this was a legitimate policy change or a change simply made to find reasons to fire activists, I don't know. But, it was made clear many months ago that digging around to access docs outside your spec could result in a firing.

> Whether this was a legitimate policy change or a change simply made to find reasons to fire activists, I don't know.

From the outside it seems like a very legitimate policy change. If my co-workers are stalking my calendar to find meetings they politically disagree with so they can pressure me and/or leak it to the press, well that's super creepy. I think this is a perfect example of why "full transparency" can actually be conducive to a toxic working environment.

Even if it wasn't formally against the rules the intent behind that type of stalking should get anyone who engages in it fired. It's literally harassment. I think Google's change in policy is for the best here as it codifies common sense.

As an aside, can you explain what a meeting someone might "politically disagree with" is, and how you could have such a meeting without bringing politics into the workplaces?

More on topic, I'll note that nowhere did anyone use the word "politics" except you.

From the article:

> Rivers had said she was being targeted for protesting against U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is testing a Google cloud product. Berland was active in protests against YouTube for its handling of hate speech policies.

As others have stated in this thread, they were apparently policing people's meetings around these topics. If you don't like your company's legal clients, quit. Do not stalk your co-workers, harass them and leak info about them to the press.

That's not correct. Rivers wasn't fired for anything related to calenders or meetings.

None of the four employees in question have been accused of leaking anything to the press.

Google's statement insinuates many things that aren't actually true.

> Google's statement insinuates many things that aren't actually true.

Do you have any sources that back that statement up? Google's accusations are very explicit about what these people were doing:

> To the contrary, our thorough investigation found the individuals were involved in systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work. This includes searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs — repeating this conduct even after they were met with and reminded about our data security policies. This information, along with details of internal emails and inaccurate descriptions about Googlers’ work, was subsequently shared externally.

Read carefully.

The leaking was not explicitly blamed on the people that were fired.

Yes it is, from the Google statement:

> We want to be clear that none of these individuals were fired for simply looking at documents or calendars during the ordinary course of their work.

> To the contrary, our thorough investigation found the individuals were involved in systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work [...] This information, along with details of internal emails and inaccurate descriptions about Googlers’ work, was subsequently shared externally.

The passive voice of "was subsequently shared externally" does not apply to the object of the earlier sentence ("these individuals"). If the individuals were actually the leakers, Google could have used a more direct and natural wording, like

"These individuals subsequently leaked some of this material."

But the statement doesn't use this very natural wording, it uses a strange, highly passive, construction. One is left to wonder why. To be fair, you're not the only person who fell for this trick, I know a lot of very smart people who didn't notice this until it was pointed out, but it is a trick.

Edit: replying to your other comment, You're asking me to prove a negative, that these individuals didn't leak anything. Why should I do that when they haven't even been explicitly accused of having leaked something? No one, not the employees, and not google, as claimed they leaked anything. Google claimed that some stuff was leaked. This is true. And yes, its hard to read Google's statement and come to that conclusion. That's intentional it was worded the way it was very carefully. That's the point. They're being duplicitous.

I'm not asking you to prove a negative though, I'm asking if you have any proof that what Google says is untrue since you say that it is. Using a passive voice doesn't mean that it's untrue, I actually find the Google wording to be more natural than your version.

Is there anything beyond the semantics of the Google statement that makes you feel that it's false?

> I'm asking if you have any proof that what Google says is untrue since you say that it is

To be clear, I believe that everything Google has actually stated is factual. You're just drawing wrong conclusions from partial information. So in one sense, no, because Google hasn't lied. I don't have any proof that I could share. But yes, I have strong reasons to believe the things I'm stating.

As an aside, are you a native English speaker? There's some very interesting cultural aspects when assigning blame. In American English, its the norm to assign blame directly "John leaked the documents.", whereas in other cultures/languages, a passive structure is more common "John had the documents. The documents were leaked." This would be a common and correct way of blaming John for leaking something in some cultures, but in English it isn't.

Presumably Google and its lawyers are primarily English speakers.

I am a native English speaker, I just find the original statement to be more natural and less forced.

Out of curiosity if you think that the statement is true, but constructed in a way that hides information, what do you think actually happened? If I understand your position it looks something like this:

1. The four people mentioned setup watches on people's calendars, went looking for information on people... the targets of their searches weren't part of their every day work life.

2. They shared that information with someone (no one knows who) but not the press or externally.

3. The people who had the information shared with them then leaked it externally.

4. Google found out and fired the original four people from step 1 and wrote a memo deliberately masking step 2.

It's possible the above is accurate (please let me know if I got your position incorrect), but I don't think the wording of Google's announcement alone is enough to prove that. I'm apt to take it at its face value, especially because step 1 is by far the worst part in my mind and that doesn't seem to be in doubt.

That's why I'm curious if you have some inside knowledge or something (your bio says you work at Google).

Note that you set up a watch of someones calendar just by looking it up, so it is very easy to accidentally watch a lot of calendars. I wouldn't read too much into that statement.

Maybe so, but the Google statement does say that the employees in question did all of this in a systematic way that was outside the scope of their job responsibilities. I'd actually like to know a lot more about step 1, I suspect it holds the key to figuring out what's going on.

I feel like they got very little, since they focused so much effort demonizing this calendar watching. I can understand when they say that you shouldn't share photographs of others calendars or harass them over calendars, but I don't see why viewing others calendars is a bad thing itself. It is kinda like looking at their code or commits, you can see what they do and how they work, it is very useful if you intend to transfer or just wonder how other teams are doing things.

Semantics matter, since we're now at the phase of the process where legal counsel would be involved drafting these statements (even if they're internally targeted, because Google knows its internal confidential broadcasts to employees will be leaked).

This statement was written by very well paid professionals, they wouldn't make a vague statement like that if they knew for a fact that these people leaked the material.

> Google's accusations are very explicit about what these people were doing:

Are they? If you can quote for me where Google actually states these people leaked material, I'll concede the point, but they don't. Google says two things:

1. These four individuals searched for information that was outside of their job scope

2. Information these individuals searched for (along with other information) was shared externally

They don't claim that the individuals that did 1 also did 2, in fact the statement is carefully worded to not make that claim, but to still heavily imply it. The untrue (or at least, unsubstantiated) insinuation in this case is that any of these people leaked things to the press.

I think it's extremely difficult to read Google's statement and come to this conclusion. Again, do you have any evidence to suggest that what your saying is true? Do you know that the people who did the information gathering didn't do the leaking? If there's a source that states that, I'd love to read it.

> Do you know that the people who did the information gathering didn't do the leaking?

Were this criminal court, the burden of proof would be on Google to show that people who did the information gathering did do the leaking.

This is, of course, the court of public opinion, so one's own biases will come into play on who one assumes is telling the truth. But Google's internal statement (at least, what of it we've seen) doesn't connect the dots tightly enough to eliminate reasonable doubt.

The way it reads to me is that Google wanted to find a reason to fire these people and found the data thing to be a convenient and plausible excuse.

To me it reads like:

"Hey, I guess we didn't think we needed to make it explicit that you shouldn't stalk, leak about, or facilitate harassment of your colleagues because they're working on projects with which you have personal objections. Let's now be clear that's not OK; these people just got fired for it and now we're going to make bright lines around that type of conduct to be clearer about the company we are."

"Stalking", "leaking", and "harassing" are all very loaded and subjective terms, and I don't trust any party who wants to lean on them as a substitute for facts.

Setting up alerts around a co-worker's calendar that you're not actually meeting with is definitely stalking. Would you want someone doing that to you?

"Setting up alerts" is an overstatement, all you do is press "add calemdar" to view it and then it also sets up alerts automatically. I've done this a lot since I want to see what people are working on etc and adding their calendars is the easiest way to view a calendar, and I don't see why anyone doing it to me would be a problem. Maybe I just misunderstood the UI though, but I'd be very upset if I was fired just because calendar UI confused me... It is kinda like people looking at each others code commits to see how their work or what they work on. It is a part of having an open company culture.

I wouldn't put anything in my organization's calendar that I wasn't okay being broadcast to the entire organization. Certainly not my medical appointments or other sensitive personal things. Otherwise, who cares if somebody wants an alert that I have a meeting? That's why the feature exists.

> Otherwise, who cares if somebody wants an alert that I have a meeting?

I would care if the person doing this then leaked my meeting information and tried to use my meetings for political gain.

Are there details for what exactly was leaked? I don't mean to imply that you're wrong if you can't produce a list, and I agree that leaking another person's meeting information to the public is a plausibly fireable offense. I just can't find confirmation that that's what happened in this case, and the clearest details I can find seem to talk about 'leaks' and 'calendar access' as separate incidents.

Bloomberg article for example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-12/one-googl...

"A Google spokeswoman said the company is investigating the employees who were placed on leave. One of them had searched for and shared confidential documents outside the scope of their job, while the other tracked the individual calendars of staff working in the community platforms, human resources, and communications teams, she said. The tracking had made the staff in those departments feel unsafe, the spokeswoman said."

Feel free to substitute whatever terms feel appropriate. Google management reports some of the targets of the activity "felt scared or unsafe, and requested to work from another location".

Please. Nobody is unsafe at their cushy office job because somebody looked at their calendar. Those words are cheapened every time they are wielded as political weapons.

The restriction on viewing and disseminating internal corporate information (not user PII, but design documents and plans) outside of one's field of responsibility is new, and there was wide concern internally that it looked like setup for this type of "you don't agree with another team and are throwing same in the wheels by adding inconvenient questions; get fired" arrangement.

Having blackout dates for employees buying and selling stock is something every company I’ve worked for has enforced. It doesn’t have anything to do with the open documents policy