You need a full Santa exemption with business reason to use brew. The average person working on some server that deploys to borg does indeed use their Macbook as a thin client. Who's obtaining deps for their builds from brew? If you're building stuff on Mac, it's via bazel and all your deps are in source control.
I never said anybody is obtaining deps for builds- that's all UncleMeat.
At the time I used brew (5 years ago) it didn't require a santa exception with business justfication (and my justification would have been "I need this for my work"). Fortunately this wasn't really a problem for me any way as I don't even look at Mac machines as anything other than a thin client.
It is true that this was the problem with the brew author. Homebrew being part of the typical Google workflow is entirely independent of the situation.
But, as usual for internet discussions, it is fun to rathole on side conversations.
The best part is, I was defending the use of homebrew (which I absolutely hate) and local development (which is far inferior, IMHO, to blaze/forge/citc/piper). I had really hoped releasing abseil/bazel would help but sadly, it was done too little, too late.
Many googlers use brew to install applications on their laptops. This not against policy. Other googlers work with code stored directly on their laptop. There may even be developers who are obtaining deps (for their own builds) from brew.
The problem with the brew author is that he had every opportunity to make himself look hirable at Google but instead chose to write an incorrect screed and publish it on the internet.