God forbid a monolithic, trillion dollar corporation have an employee saying things they don't like.

When it's a widely circulated internal document criticising the hiring practices behind 40% of the company's workforce, it's hardly surprising.

He put them in a difficult position. The brand and employee-esteem damage caused by tacitly condoning his manifesto by not firing him, vs just getting rid of one engineer. Easy maths. He's gone.

Edit: backwards words not now.

True, but what's troubling isn't that he was fired, it's that the memo got leaked, caused a bunch of controversy and basically forced Google to take a position on whether they want to discuss this stuff. Yes, one guy getting fired for sending out something inflammatory and critical isn't a huge deal (although I would have expected Google to be more tolerant), it's the fact that it went public and then when Google had to make a public statement deciding whether to fire him or not they chose "we don't think these ideas should be discussed".

How do you think companies work through their own policies or change direction?

Employees write strategy memos all the time.