The idea that these people accessed highly confidential information is laughable. They looked at people's calendars and read docs that were set to be visible to

The idea that these people accessed highly confidential information is laughable. They looked at people's calendars and read docs that were set to be visible to everyone internally. They found that Alphabet was working with firms that do union busting things and tried to gather support to start a union. Alphabet retaliated against them swiftly and made efforts to smear their names internally. As part of the fallout from this, one small but important part of company culture was broken. It used to be that almost all docs were visible to all employees and exceptions were locked down with the access controls docs gives you. Any design docs, roadmaps, etc. you were curious about was very likely to be accessible. Maybe you were considering using a service for your stack and wanted more detail or context, maybe you are considering switching teams and want to see what they're up to, maybe you're just curious and want to learn about something new. Soon after these people were fired the default was swapped to things being very locked down and most people do not think to open it up to more than the reviewers/teammates that need access. (I'm also of the opinion that the notice that them NLRB required Alphabet post in-office was not sufficiently visible as all of the offices I've been in had them tucked away in places like the mail room but that's just me)