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My impression is that it is not so much that management wants to stop leaks (though I'm sure they do) as it is that the vast majority of rank-and-file employees

My impression is that it is not so much that management wants to stop leaks (though I'm sure they do) as it is that the vast majority of rank-and-file employees want the leaking to stop because past leaks have so very badly damaged the previously-open culture of communication within the company. The NYT should not be my main source of information about what is going on in my workplace.

mannykannot 8y ago
>The NYT should not be my main source of information about what is going on in my workplace. ...and I assume your position is, by implication, that no-one outside of Google has any business knowing what is going on inside it by any means, even as it sucks up unprecedented levels of information about their own lives.
- ryandvm 8y ago
  That's an excellent point. There's a delicious irony about the world's nosiest company complaining about its privacy being violated.
brown9-2 8y ago
Sounds like you should be upset that management was keeping projects like Dragonfly or the ambitions of the DOD contract a secret internally then.
- Lkjhmnbv 8y ago
  Yeah I seriously dont understand the point being made. Op likes the culture because it's so open and transparent, but doesn't like that the transparency is shattered by having the nyt report on things internally? Does op just want to be kept blinded by ignorance? I'm seriously confused by the point, and think I'm missing something really basic and fundamental.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    Historically, google has been open internally but closed externally. I as an employee could expect transparency from leadership about a lot of things. If something was interesting you could expect detailed, technical answers. This is no longer the case if the thing is controversial (but for many non-controversial things, there's a lot of transparency still). One way of putting it might be that historically, employees had enough informayto generally keep the company in check. I'm not convinced that's the case anymore, and I can't blame the leadership when their attempts to be transparent result in live leaks to the nyt.
    - Lkjhmnbv 8y ago
      Ok so you weren't saying you were learning things about your company in the NYT, you're saying you are reading things you knew about your company in the NYT? Do I have that correct?
      - joshuamorton 8y ago
        (note that I'm not the ggp). I don't think that's quite it. Let me simplify and suggest that, broadly speaking, there were three classes of information: need to know, confidential, and public. Public is obvious, need to know is also fairly self explanatory, and confidential information would be that which is broadly available to those who wish to know within the company, but shouldn't be shared externally. Leaks shift the confidential stuff toward need to know. So upcoming product launches are need to know, and I end up learning about new things when they're announced on a blog instead of internally ahead of time (this is for both controversial and uncontroversial things, like "here's what we're announcing next week") But the more annoying and perhaps damaging part is that when controversy is raised, leadership can't respond to it with nuanced, confidential answers. Everything has to be in pr speak because it will get leaked, so the response is made with that in mind, or worse the response is directly to the press instead of to employees because a concern was raised via the press. It's a bit of a viscious cycle. But to directly respond, it's both. It's seeing things I already knew that probably shouldn't be public, and learning things that I'd previously have learned from a meeting on the internet and knowing that as a result, I have less of the story than I would have before.

mannykannot 8y ago

>The NYT should not be my main source of information about what is going on in my workplace. ...and I assume your position is, by implication, that no-one outside of Google has any business knowing what is going on inside it by any means, even as it sucks up unprecedented levels of information about their own lives.

ryandvm 8y ago
That's an excellent point. There's a delicious irony about the world's nosiest company complaining about its privacy being violated.

brown9-2 8y ago

Sounds like you should be upset that management was keeping projects like Dragonfly or the ambitions of the DOD contract a secret internally then.

Lkjhmnbv 8y ago
Yeah I seriously dont understand the point being made. Op likes the culture because it's so open and transparent, but doesn't like that the transparency is shattered by having the nyt report on things internally? Does op just want to be kept blinded by ignorance? I'm seriously confused by the point, and think I'm missing something really basic and fundamental.
- joshuamorton 8y ago
  Historically, google has been open internally but closed externally. I as an employee could expect transparency from leadership about a lot of things. If something was interesting you could expect detailed, technical answers. This is no longer the case if the thing is controversial (but for many non-controversial things, there's a lot of transparency still). One way of putting it might be that historically, employees had enough informayto generally keep the company in check. I'm not convinced that's the case anymore, and I can't blame the leadership when their attempts to be transparent result in live leaks to the nyt.
  - Lkjhmnbv 8y ago
    Ok so you weren't saying you were learning things about your company in the NYT, you're saying you are reading things you knew about your company in the NYT? Do I have that correct?
    - joshuamorton 8y ago
      (note that I'm not the ggp). I don't think that's quite it. Let me simplify and suggest that, broadly speaking, there were three classes of information: need to know, confidential, and public. Public is obvious, need to know is also fairly self explanatory, and confidential information would be that which is broadly available to those who wish to know within the company, but shouldn't be shared externally. Leaks shift the confidential stuff toward need to know. So upcoming product launches are need to know, and I end up learning about new things when they're announced on a blog instead of internally ahead of time (this is for both controversial and uncontroversial things, like "here's what we're announcing next week") But the more annoying and perhaps damaging part is that when controversy is raised, leadership can't respond to it with nuanced, confidential answers. Everything has to be in pr speak because it will get leaked, so the response is made with that in mind, or worse the response is directly to the press instead of to employees because a concern was raised via the press. It's a bit of a viscious cycle. But to directly respond, it's both. It's seeing things I already knew that probably shouldn't be public, and learning things that I'd previously have learned from a meeting on the internet and knowing that as a result, I have less of the story than I would have before.