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>In the past, one of the employees said, employees could review internal documents for virtually any project underway within the company. In recent years, howev

>In the past, one of the employees said, employees could review internal documents for virtually any project underway within the company. In recent years, however, more projects have become closed off and accessible only to smaller groups on a “need-to-know” basis, the employee said. >Earlier this year, following a series of leaks to the media, Google executives tightened their grip. They shut down thousands of contractors’ access to company documents, citing security concerns. Google’s senior managers, meanwhile, warned employees not to access or share certain documents. Can someone explain what the controversy is here? It reads like two people exfiltrated documents and shared them with the media to further their political (?) ends, after being part of a larger group that was warned not to do so.

mav3rick 7y ago
It's Google so people post negative things here without reading the article.
josefx 7y ago
> Can someone explain what the controversy is here? Google had some rather controversial projects that officially got shutdown over employees being rightfully concerned. An example would be the highly censored Chinese dragonfly search engine. Google clamping down on project information on a "need to know" basis could be seen as rather problematic when you consider that management considers that kind of project acceptable.
- chii 7y ago
  > Google clamping down on project information on a "need to know" basis could be seen as rather problematic when you consider that management considers that kind of project acceptable. it's daft, but upper management/owners can choose to do the most profitable project, and the employee's choices are to quit or comply (or give reasons why the project is not profitable, and offer an alternative). An employee cannot really complain/shutdown the project on moral/political-ideology grounds, at the cost of shareholder profit, while they themselves suffer no ill consequence (since they get paid a salary regardless).
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    > An employee cannot really complain/shutdown the project on moral/political-ideology grounds, at the cost of shareholder profit, while they themselves suffer no ill consequence (since they get paid a salary regardless). I disagree - there are certainly things which would justifiably get shut down and cause them to not have an employee base if they went through with it. They are just so unnormalized that it is not only implicit but they don't even have names for it. It is perfectly legitimate that the untoward would face demands because it isn't what they signed up for. There are all sorts of depraved things which could be done for profit which anyone remotely moral and reasonable would nope out of - often because it is already stupidly illegal. In a healthy system this aspect goes unnoticed because nobody even tries for it because it would be foregone disaster in the same way attempting a coup in a healthy democracy would just end with the instigator in jail very quickly. The alternative logical result of the logic would be that when every cannery workers quits when the management decides to sell canned human flesh would hold the workers at fault and not the depraved cannibal manager. An extreme example but it demonstrates that the principle would have its limits. The reverse principle doesn't hold entirely either. Sailors thinking they signed up for timber shipping and finding they would be engaged in privateering with a letter of marquee or transporting slaves would be very within their rights to demand sticking to the enterprise. However objecting to hauling finished lumber instead of timber would be unreasonable of the workers unless there was say a safety issue from load distribution and vessel design.
  - josefx 7y ago
    > upper management/owners can choose to do the most profitable project, and the employee's choices are to quit or comply Comply with what? How would you quit over a project that you aren't even told about? This "employee's choice" makes no sense when the employer creates an intentional information blackout to hide its questionable activities from scrutiny.
donalhunt 7y ago
It's interesting that contractors have gained access to so much information. When I was a contractor for a brief period in 2004, contractor access to information was very limited and full-time employees had access to a lot more information (which they weren't allowed to share).

mav3rick 7y ago

It's Google so people post negative things here without reading the article.

josefx 7y ago

> Can someone explain what the controversy is here? Google had some rather controversial projects that officially got shutdown over employees being rightfully concerned. An example would be the highly censored Chinese dragonfly search engine. Google clamping down on project information on a "need to know" basis could be seen as rather problematic when you consider that management considers that kind of project acceptable.

chii 7y ago
> Google clamping down on project information on a "need to know" basis could be seen as rather problematic when you consider that management considers that kind of project acceptable. it's daft, but upper management/owners can choose to do the most profitable project, and the employee's choices are to quit or comply (or give reasons why the project is not profitable, and offer an alternative). An employee cannot really complain/shutdown the project on moral/political-ideology grounds, at the cost of shareholder profit, while they themselves suffer no ill consequence (since they get paid a salary regardless).
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  > An employee cannot really complain/shutdown the project on moral/political-ideology grounds, at the cost of shareholder profit, while they themselves suffer no ill consequence (since they get paid a salary regardless). I disagree - there are certainly things which would justifiably get shut down and cause them to not have an employee base if they went through with it. They are just so unnormalized that it is not only implicit but they don't even have names for it. It is perfectly legitimate that the untoward would face demands because it isn't what they signed up for. There are all sorts of depraved things which could be done for profit which anyone remotely moral and reasonable would nope out of - often because it is already stupidly illegal. In a healthy system this aspect goes unnoticed because nobody even tries for it because it would be foregone disaster in the same way attempting a coup in a healthy democracy would just end with the instigator in jail very quickly. The alternative logical result of the logic would be that when every cannery workers quits when the management decides to sell canned human flesh would hold the workers at fault and not the depraved cannibal manager. An extreme example but it demonstrates that the principle would have its limits. The reverse principle doesn't hold entirely either. Sailors thinking they signed up for timber shipping and finding they would be engaged in privateering with a letter of marquee or transporting slaves would be very within their rights to demand sticking to the enterprise. However objecting to hauling finished lumber instead of timber would be unreasonable of the workers unless there was say a safety issue from load distribution and vessel design.
- josefx 7y ago
  > upper management/owners can choose to do the most profitable project, and the employee's choices are to quit or comply Comply with what? How would you quit over a project that you aren't even told about? This "employee's choice" makes no sense when the employer creates an intentional information blackout to hide its questionable activities from scrutiny.

donalhunt 7y ago

It's interesting that contractors have gained access to so much information. When I was a contractor for a brief period in 2004, contractor access to information was very limited and full-time employees had access to a lot more information (which they weren't allowed to share).