There are differences between saying "You can't do that here, so..." 1) "... we will fire you, because you have generated negative press for us with this even

There are differences between saying "You can't do that here, so..." 1) "... we will fire you, because you have generated negative press for us with this even though we had no explicit policy prohibiting this" 2) "... we will fire you because what you did has directly violated an explicit existing company policy" 3) "... we will give you a warning, and add 'workplace gender diversity' to the list of topics prohibited from public discourse by employees so that in the future we can fire people for this" It's unclear whether 1) or 2) happened (I suspect it was 1), and they could have chosen 3). They didn't. And the poor sap probably doesn't want to consider a lawsuit against Google if it was 1) and not 2) even if one could argue wrongful termination. And that's exactly what authoritarianism is about, the power to make rules pretty much on the fly and expect those affected by your choices to play by them. PS: Not taking sides here, IMHO the manifesto was dumb and the person sounded like a green'un who got a rude dose of reality from what he probably considered merely a provoking thought experiment/writing exercise.