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Comment by khazhoux | Hacker News Reader

> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared...

I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous (and sometime current!) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all internal details private, even after he leaves. They could not be more clear about this when you join the company.

Why do people think it's OK to share like this? This isn't a whistleblowing situation -- he's just going for internet brownie points. It's just an attempt to squeeze a bit more personal benefit out of your (now-ended) employment.

Contractual/legal issues aside, I think this kind of post shows a lack of personal integrity (because he did sign a paper agreeing not to disclose info), and even a betrayal of former teammates who now have to deal with the fallout.

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How do you know he was paid to keep all internal details private after he leaves? Do you have knowledge of the employment contract, can you share the relevant language with us?

All he says is his concern about "optics", which has nothing to do with contract.

If Google has a problem with his post, they can go after him, but that's an issue between Google and him, not with you or me or the rest of the internet.

I'm definitely struggling to see what any of this has to do with personal integrity, betrayal, or squeezing personal benefit. To the contrary, it simply seems informative and he's sharing knowledge just to be helpful. Unless I've missed something, I don't see anything revealed that would harm Google or his former teammates here. No leaks of what's coming down the pipeline, no scandals, nothing of the sort.

People are allowed to share opinions of their previous employment and generally describe the broad outlines of their work and where they worked. This isn't a situation of working for the CIA with top-secret clearance.

> Do you have knowledge of the employment contract, can you share the relevant language with us?

I actually could dig up my own contract from years ago (ugh, the effort though) but Confidentiality clause is in there, and it was made clear during on-boarding what is expected from employees: don't share any internal info unless you're an authorized company representative.

You should write to to the author, to scold them directly!

General working conditions are not "internal info"; it is beneficial to society to discuss working conditions (which can be pretty detailed), and is thus a protected activity under various laws. Nothing in any contract can obviate this lawful right (and, to some, a basic duty of citizenship, since the country is more important than any single company within the country). At best contracts can highlight what is privileged information that there is a duty to keep secret.

Now you have me curious. Which laws, specifically?

Broadly, section 7 of the NLRA, but it is not spelled out in the text of the act. Instead, Quicken Loans, Inc. v. NLRB established the precedent that discussing working conditions is not a violation of confidentiality: https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-q...

The big one in the USA is the National Labor Relations Act, but this generally applies to group action. However, such group action can be literally publically posting about a job's work conditions.

Here's a list of recent state laws in Washington, Oregon, and Maine, which prohibition certain kinds of NDAs (oriented toward unlawful activity, not general speech rights): https://www.foley.com/en/insights/publications/2022/07/sever...

Contracts are required to be 'reasonable' for both parties. This puts limits on the ability to constrain in a contract. I don't know how much this reasonableness standard is statutory or judicial.

For public-sector employees there's some protection under the first amendment. https://www.workplacefairness.org/retaliation-public-employe...

And in Connecticut this free speech protection transfers to private-sector employees too: https://law.justia.com/codes/connecticut/2005/title31/sec31-...

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/free-speech-and-express...

https://www.pullcom.com/working-together/there-are-limits-to... > there is no statutory protection if the employee was only complaining about personal matters, such as the terms or conditions of employment. The employee has to show that he was commenting on a matter of public concern, rather than attempting to resolve a private dispute with the employer.

Excellent, thank you.

https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...

"Workplace conditions" is protected similarly to wages.

So only people who never worked at Google are allowed to criticse Google?

This is a hopelessly naive misunderstanding framed as obvious disloyalty, I want to buy calls on your career in middle management.

You mean puts?

nah calls, very in line with what _sounds_ good even when naive and misinformed

What did he sign? And what are the relevant laws?

You have to be careful thinking you owe your employer everything they would wish to have. Disclosing the inner workings is extremely helpful to people trying to figure out where to work, and how their current employer compares to others. I got a job at Google X Robotics in 2017 in large part because the place was so secret and I always wanted to know what happened there. It was quite an interesting experience, but I do wonder how I would have felt if someone like me working there had written something like this before I made the decision.

I've never worked at Google Brain, but I've been a research manager in tech for a decade, and nothing here seems surprising to me. It discusses the archetype of the well funded industry lab that is too academic and ultimately winds down.

The post makes sensible but generic statements based on the view of an IC. It tries to work back from the conclusion (Google struggles to move academic research into product) and produces plausible but hardly definitive explanations, with no ranking, primarily because there's no discussion of the thinking, actions and promises made at the executive level that kept the lab funded for all these years.

You're right that I don't know enough as an IC to comment on the thinking, actions, and promises at the exec level that kept Brain funded. But even if I did, to the GP's point, I would not talk about that part at all.

I'm curious about your perspective as a research manager in tech - would you be willing to chat privately?

> But even if I did, to the GP's point, I would not talk about that part at all.

Even if you were one of said executives, who was moving to a higher-level job at another company, and the company was interviewing you as to the reasoning behind decisions made in your previous job?

I've been quite careful not to divulge anything confidential, and anything that is remotely close to sensitive has publicly accessible citations. My opinions about Google are tantamount to discussions about workplace conditions, and it would be very bad for society if ex-employees were not allowed to discuss those.

But all your opinions are informed by your years of TGIFs and internal emails and discussions and presentations and your insider perspective. When you talk about promotions, or internal values and prioritizations, you are leveraging info gained privately.

If I'm wrong and nothing in your contract or on-boarding said you shouldn't talk about internals, then my bad. But I suspect they were as clear with you as they were with me, that it's not ok to post anything based on inside info. And in your opening paragraph you say:

> As somebody with a unique perspective

Your unique perspective was your access as an employee.

> and the unique freedom to share it

Your unique freedom is that you're done receiving money from them. But contractually, this doesn't matter.

Why do you care? Unless you work for Google Legal, you're in no position to scold OP about anything

I care because I value these Confidentiality commitments, and I believe that if someone doesn't like them, they should not sign them to begin with, rather than breaking them. A company (like any group of people) is allowed to define the culture and standards required for membership.

I've worked in extremely secretive companies, and very open ones. I prefer the open ones. But I still don't say anything about internals at the secretive ones -- because that was part of the commitment I made in exchange for employment.

From my perspective, in the most bold words I can think to phrase this: You're betraying the citizens and lawful residents of your country by not informing them of what to expect should they accept a job at one of these companies. Have fun with your 30 pieces of silver (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_pieces_of_silver ).

> and I believe that if someone doesn't like them, they should not sign them to begin with, rather than breaking them.

Do you, at least, believe that confidentiality agreements should be broken if it is to make the police or public aware of a crime? How about a civil infraction, such as a hostile working environment?

> Do you, at least, believe that confidentiality agreements should be broken if it is to make the police or public aware of a crime? How about a civil infraction, such as a hostile working environment?

Absolutely. I referenced whistleblowing in my original post above. This isn't a such a case.

Does this apply to people who infiltrate what they believe are corrupt companies with the expectation of digging up dirt, and thus sign the confidentiality agreements with the expectation of violating them?

Does this apply to moral wrongs, which are technically legal (e.g. cruel conditions at animal farms)?

bootlicker lol

It’s obvious you care about the people you worked with, and the potential for what you were building. From my perspective you wrote this for the people who couldn’t.

Ignore this person.

Because a promise that imprisons knowledge indefinitely has no integrity. To me, it's clear that it is absolutely in the public interest to - perhaps not go out of one's way to spread, but at least feel free to - explain the conditions and inner workings of large and impactful organizations.

We're all thinkers who are asked to apply our minds in exchange for money, not slaves whose brain is leased to or owned by our employers for the duration of our tenure.

Even when asked to keep things secret, there's still no way for a company to own every last vestige of knowledge or understanding retained in our minds, and there's still an overwhelming public interest in building on and preserving knowledge, to the point that, in my opinion, nearly any piece of human knowledge short of trade secrets should eventually be owned by humanity as a whole. (and there's even some moral arguments to be made about some trade secrets, but that's a much deeper discussion)

I personally find that people who are overly concerned with secrecy view their integrity from the lens of their employer, but not at a human interest level. To be clear, there are still times for secrecy or the security or integrity of information to be respected, but it's nuanced and generally narrower than people expect.

I'm really baffled by how many people think a job is more than a job and there's some ownership over the employee's critical thinking capabilities during the job and after it ends.

While I agree the OP is "going for internet brownie points" (or probably a bit butthurt from being laid off from a certifiably top-5 cushiest job in the United States) the article doesn't include anything even remotely trade secret and is predominantly opinion. It's really totally fine to blog about how you feel about your employer. There are certainly risks, but a company has to pay extra if they actually don't want you to blog at all (or they have to be extremely litigious).

There's a strong precedent of employer-employee loyalty that has substantially been set due to pre-internet information disparities between the two. In the past year or so, there have been some pretty unprecedented layoffs (e.g. Google lays off thousands and then does billions of stock buybacks ...)... The employer-employee relationship needs to evolve.

> a company has to pay extra

Part of my problem is that Google (and similar companies) are already paying insane (in the best way possible) amounts of money, and when you sign the agreement to take said money, you explicitly promise you won't talk about company internals.

To me this is quite simple: if you accept what winds up being millions of dollars in cash+equity, and you give your word that you'll keep your mouth shut as one of the conditions for that pile of money... then you shut keep your mouth shut.

You keep your mouth shut about material property of Google. E.g. don't post code, and probably don't give details about code that hasn't been made public. Sure, this area is not clear and can also depend on one's internal position in the company, but it's important to separate moral hazard from legal hazard.

As far as one's opinions go, and in particular how the company made you feel, that's not paid for. A severance agreement might outline some things, but again that's legal hazard and not moral hazard. There are certainly some execs and managers who will only want to work with really, really loyal people, who throw in a lot more for the money. And some execs will pay a lot more for that... e.g. look at how much Tesla spends on employee litigation.

Should you also not use any skills you gained at your previous employer at your new employer? Not to mention any techniques you learned about that may help your current employer? Would doing so be "talking about company internals"?

So how do you ever get a better job than entry level, if you aren't willing to use the knowledge you gained at prior jobs in new jobs?

I read the article and thought he did a fine job of not spilling too many secrets - I'm curious what you thought he said that crossed the line?

I'm not personally aware of signing something that says "I'll keep all internal details private" though I agree I'd be highly unlikely to refer to anyone below the SVP level by name -- but I think that's exactly what OP did?

True, this wasn't the most egregious. But the principle still applies. He said himself he held this back until his final check cleared.

A large company acting out spite towards a former employee has happened more than a couple times. Minimizing that risk seems entirely reasonable.

As others have said, I really don't see anything that's especially private in the article. The author wrote in pretty general terms.

> he's just going for internet brownie points. It's just an attempt to squeeze a bit more personal benefit out of your (now-ended) employment.

So, many researcher types (and not only them, but also including many of us) are motivated by — find it personally rewarding at a psychological level — to share their thoughts in a dialog with a community. They just find this to be an enjoyable thing to do that makes them feel like they are a valuable member of society contributing to a general collaborative practice of knowledge-creation.

I hope it doesn't feel like I'm explaining the obvious; but it occurs to me that to ask the question the way you did, this is probably _not_ a motivation you have, not something you find personally rewarding. Which is fine, we all are driven by different things.

But I don't think it's quite the same thing as "internet brownie points" -- while if you are especially good at it, you will gain respect and admiration, which you will probably appreciate it -- you aren't thinking "if I share my insight gained working at Google, then maybe more people will think I'm cool," you're just thinking that it's a natural urge to share your insight and get feedback on it, because that itself is something enjoyable and gives you a sense of purpose.

Which is to say, i don't think it's exactly a motivation for "personal benefit" either, except in the sense that doing things you enjoy and find rewarding are a "personal benefit", that having a sense of purpose is a "personal benefit", sure.

I'm aware that not everyone works this way. I'm aware that some people on HN seem to be motivated primarily by maximizing income, for instance. That, or some other orientation, may lead to thinking that one should never share anything at all publicly about one's job, because it can only hurt and never help whatever one's goals are (maximizing income or what have you).

(Although... here you are commenting on HN; why? For internet brownie points?)

But that is not generally how academic/researcher types are oriented.

I think it's a sad thing if it becomes commonplace to think that there's something _wrong_ with people who find purpose and meaning in sharing their insights in dialog with a community.

The primary purpose of an NDA is to allow the company to enforce trade secrets: the existence of the NDA is proof that the company took steps to maintain the secrets' secrecy. Nothing in this blog post looks like a trade secret to me; rather, it's one person's fairly high-level reflections on the work environment at a particularly high profile lab.

While he technically may have violated the NDA, it's really hard for me to see any damage or fallout from this post. It's gentle, disparages only at the highest levels of abstraction, doesn't name names, etc. I don't think it makes sense to view it in a moralistic or personal integrity light. Breach-of-contract is not a moral wrong, merely a civil one that allows the counterparty (Google) to get damages if they want.

> a betrayal of former teammates who now have to deal with the fallout.

What fallout is this ? Did you sign a contract with him ? If you are harmed by it, why don't you seek legal recourse ? Your entire rant started with some NDA stuff, and in the end you say, "legal issues aside". This is like the "Having said that" move from Curb. You start with something, then contradict yourself completely with "Having said that". If you have a contractual grievance, seek it. If not, you are grieving on the internet, just like he is.

That's a very optimistic take on how new generations perceive the ethics surrounding confidentiality. Are you really _baffled_ by this? I understand that it's a common position, but it's a position that is so clearly tainted by the conflicts of interest between employer and employee. And a keen awareness of those conflicting interests _only_ serves to better an employee's ability to serve themselves best in a capitalist economy.

I'm not saying you are wrong per se. But if you don't see why employees are willing to act in this way, you don't see how employees feel about being trapped in a system where no matter how much you are paid - you are ultimately making someone else more.

I totally get why people act this way. Because it's Very Important That Everyone Knows What I Think.

But there is no inequity or conflict of interest here. None of that about being trapped in a capitalist economy is to the point here. He has probably a couple million dollars in his bank account that wasn't there before, and the deal was to not talk publicly about internals (which includes promotions process, internal motivations and decision-making, etc).

You don't think there's any inequity between somebody with a couple million in the bank and google, or any conflict of interest between my desire to talk about my work and my employer's desire that I do not? Your position is valid enough without being willfully obtuse.

Once you agree to not talk about it (as part of the employment terms), then there is zero conflict of interest.

"Yes, I agree to not share internal info, in exchange for this money. And by the way, I will still share internal info, because inequity."

You're thinking about employment contracts like an abstract economic exchange between two free parties, which is very micro. Try thinking about it instead like a bargain with the (macro) devil.

In other words, consider someone's perspective who has society split into two camps: the people who do all the work, and the corrupt elite that make their living through theft and oppression. In such a world, signing a contract with an employer (i.e. capitalist i.e. elite) is more of a practical step than a sacrosanct bond. There's a level of "what's reasonable" and "what legally enforceable" beyond the basic "never break a promise" level you're working at, IMO.

No ones endorsing publishing trade secrets randomly, but you're treating all disclosures like they're equivalent.

Yet for some reason OP and everyone here are supposed to care what YOU think?

I'm not suggesting people shouldn't post thoughts and opinions. This is about whether a personal desire to self-express, should override their explicit prior commitment/promise not to do so.

I checked with some Google friends who told me their contract even makes it illegal to tell anyone that they work for Google (no joke).

One side is what's in the papers you signed and the other side is to what extent the terms can be enforced. But you have a point in that it would be good professional practice to wait for a decade before disclosing internals especially when names of people are dropped...

> I checked with some Google friends who told me their contract even makes it illegal to tell anyone that they work for Google (no joke).

Which country are they in? Is their employment contract directly with Google, or with some other, independent company that provides services to Google?

(I've been employed by G in multiple jurisdictions and have never seen or heard of such a clause.)

I would never trust or hire people that wash their laundry publicly like this.

That's not really what's happening here I think.

I think he's just not sure what's ok or not ok to write about. Nothing he wrote here was problematic. No secrets and just sort of mild criticism.

The check cleared!

I can't imagine being such a sucker that you care this much about your former employer? You're like a housebroken dog.

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