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Comment on Google fires employee who leaked memo on raises

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If they didn't take action, then "CONFIDENTIAL: INTERNAL ONLY GOOGLERS ONLY (FULL TIME AND PART TIME EMPLOYEES)" would turn into a joke. Now people might listen - or at least leak more carefully.

Which leads me to think that this just may be a setting stone to future, more important memos. No sense in scaring them unless they wanted to secure the channel for something else.

When is ensuring employee confidentiality not good general business practice?

Large companies have often used internal memos on purpose for leaking information. On some level, they want the information to be leaked (companies with thousands of staff makes it nearly impossible for it not to be).

A somewhat classier, less-heavy-handed approach would have been to simply not give that employee a raise.

no, this way they're saying "okay, we can't trust this guy, he's out of here". denying him a raise would just be punitive, which isn't too classy.

Would that have made the headlines? If not, it wouldn't have the same effect.

It would have made the headlines if a google rep gave boingboing or IO9 a brief interview saying "we are not evil, but no one messes with the google."

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