These are stiff consequences for the violation in question for Google.

Individual employees publicly embarrassing the company (https://mobile.twitter.com/jweise/status/491788092710199297?...) or accidentally disrupting the network fabric and costing the company $X in missed revenue don't get fired for first offense. The way this was handled seems unusual, suggesting either there's a piece of the puzzle we internet pundits aren't holding or Google has changed its tolerance policy for honest mistakes.

Depending on what the cause is it might be different. If someone makes a reasonable mistake, like pushes something to production that they should not, then you could argue that there are not enough checks and it is not something you should get fired for. You should change the process.

If someone deliberately goes around those checks to push something anyway then it could be a fire-able offense.

I'd disagree. Another post shows stellar performance reviews, so if this is considered a mistake, it should be remedied and she should be reprimanded. Outright firing seems heavy handed

My take on this is that she was trying to ruffle feathers, and she succeeded. I suspect her firing took into account that intent. Putting myself in the shoes of whoever decided, I can only think that factor would have weighed heavily against her.

She might be naive enough to believe that this was actually protected concerted activity, but I don't think so. I'm not sure I think firing her was the right play, but I also don't have all the information. I will say that I don't think this outcome should surprise her. It should definitely been one of the likely outcomes she modeled when deciding to submit that code.

This firing has created a small storm of bad PR for Google, and I'd be willing to bet it's created a large storm of bad feeling among Google employees. (Although a smaller matter, using "security violation" as a spurious reasoning for the firing probably also slightly downgrades the credibility of the company's internal security efforts.)

So if her goal was to cause disruption at Google, it sounds like management just gave her a major assist. Like a Falcon Heavy's worth of assist.

The article quotes a law professor who says that it probably is protected activity, so I'm not sure "naive" is the correct word.

The analogy Prof. Dubal uses is not apt. They seem to believe that the extension was some kind of public notice board where anybody could post something, but that is not what it is. Since they did not have sufficient context, I would be disinclined to trust their judgment on this issue.

Also, FWIW, this may provide some interesting reading: https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/are-employers-required-to-...