The recent comments about Google's retention policy that have come up due the anti-trust case reminded me of what I found to be the creepiest thing at Google, how Google got line engineers to really buy into shutting down discussion of illegal and unethical activities.
And, BTW, I think it's totally reasonable for companies to have retention policies for a variety of reasons, including how easy it is to have comments that are taken out of context go viral due to sensationalist journalism.
But I don't think that's the main driver of Google's retention policy. Instead (I would guess) it was meant to prevent incidents like the time Eric Schmidt (then CEO of Google) apologized to Steve Jobs for a recruiter accidentally violating a no-poach agreement that was intended to keep wages down (https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1172676081628766208).
There was also the time an exec asked to move the discussion to the phone because they were discussing illegal activities (don't have the reference to this one handy).
Anyway, Google was able to get employees to buy into shutting down discussion written discussion of shady activities by turning it into a meme.
They made a lawyercat meme and got people to enthusiastically jump into potentially shady discussions with comments like "remember the lawyercats" or just a lawyercat meme image, pushing discussion into an ephemerial medium without repeating the self-incriminating "let's talk on the phone because we're going to commit crimes" incident.
@danluu When I was an intern at Google I got the impression, that it was mostly about preventing idle speculation about legal issues that could be misunderstood, but maybe that impression was part of the trick.
@flaws @danluu No, I think that's exactly why companies do this sort of thing; danluu is being a bit cynical here, it's part of his charm. I've worked at several of these companies. If you see something illegal, you talk to lawyers in a privileged context. You don't joke about "crushing the competition" or doing anything illegal, because of exactly what you say.
We've all seen legal proceedings go in an unfair direction due to some offhand comment being taken out of context or something. It's worth being careful to avoid it.
