Those are well defined roles. Specially in a company of that size.

She didn’t just make a judgement call. She went way outside her role imo.

She claims she's in a role to make judgment calls on adding content - and that this was reinforced by her previous stellar performance reviews, which made her confident in her judgment - but I don't personally have enough info to know if that's the truth. She very well could be stretching the truth that maybe every other addition she's made was under the direction of HR or product, in which case she is definitely out of line here - it would take the input of a Googler on her team to know for sure.

That having been said, this would still be considered an unusual call to have made. But had I been on the receiving end of this message, I suspect I'd have found it annoying unless she remembered to suppress it after first display---if she had, I wouldn't have been bothered by it.

That's not so much a matter of opinion as of what her role is, exactly. I don't know. Do you?

While they're at it, they should stop bending (and probably breaking) export controls regarding China, and stop doing immoral DoD and ICE projects.

And heck, why not implement a process by which all private contracts are approved by a company-wide vote? Including the guy that sweeps the floor. Oh, afraid that employees will leak the details of the project? There's always NDAs, but if you are so concerned about leaks, maybe that's not a project you should be doing then.

Now understandably the janitor has provided a lot less capital than deeply invested shareholder, so their votes are uniformly weighted according to their share of ownership.

I'm guessing the engineer might own about 1/10,000,000th or so of the company if she has a healthy 401K. So as long as she can convince 10,000 or so other employees and 49.91% of the rest of shareholders to go along...

Wait, what? How would this work? Who would take a Google bid seriously if, after awarding them the contract, they turn around and have to ask the employee population for permission to proceed?

The big issue I see with a lot of discussion around this issue is not a lot of thought is put into the practicality of running a large business concern. Stuff that works when it's two guys and a server does not (can not) fly when you have a large group of people to manage.

Whether or not it was her job has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it was protected activity.

Unless she was asked to do it by management, it was her thoughts. As much as the title makes this seem like David v Goliath this is really just employer v disgruntled former employee.

No matter your thoughts on "its required by law... Blah blah blah" it's not up to her to enforce the law on behalf of an employer. Google has the right to post or not, statements of its choosing. In fact it's absolutely within Google's right to ignore this law, doesn't mean there won't be consequences but it they can do it.

This is so cut and dry I'm surprised she found a lawyer willing to take the case. It's staggering there's even a discussion ok HN about this.

FTA, your personal assertion is quite wrong. Her line of work was security and at most she was tasked with posting content regarding privacy and security concerns regarding non-Google tools and services.

Her personal political views and opinions don't pass off as InfoSec topics.