How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment

It’s not only corruption that can get you into trouble with an adversary who is fishing for trouble, but also mistakes, imprecise language that can be taken out of context, speaking out of ignorance or partial information, unprofessionalism, unpopular opinions, etc.

If you know that anything that you say to your coworkers will be publicized by a third party with the intent to ruin your career, then you either should self-censor to use corporate speak any time you text anyone, or you and your coworkers should delete your texts and emails to reduce liability.

> anything that you say to your coworkers will be publicized by a third party with the intent to ruin your career

I don't know anyone that has happened to, do you? I think that risk is absurdly over-exaggerated, and IME people who it does happen to, and complain about it, are actually guilty.

Here’s one example: In 2015 Planning Commissioner Christine Johnson was swayed by popular opinion to vote for a provision requiring registration numbers on short-term rental listings (which was later ruled to violate the Communications Decency Act until a couple more years of revisions), but then she changed her vote after a text from the Mayor’s office who appointed her. The newspaper sunshine’d the texts (https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/planning-commissioner-change...). It wasn’t corruption to take advice from the Mayor (who was right that it was not enforceable), but it was embarrassing and in 2018 she lost her election for supervisor.

Here’s another article based on sunshining web browser history during a meeting that I thought had questionable newsworthiness https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/facebook-food-reservations-f.... Imagine if someone had compromising website visits such as porn.

On the other hand, I do see the importance of making records auditable. The school board wasted $15 million switching payroll providers and no one has published an investigation into who exactly made the key decisions. I imagine that emails would be very useful but they are probably all deleted. https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/12/san-francisco-may-dump-tro...

I think we need to strike a better balance such that text messages and personal browser history is not sunshinable, but design docs and official decisions and work are retained.

> Christine Johnson

Why shouldn't the voters know why she voted that way? What's the problem here?

> I think we need to strike a better balance such that text messages and personal browser history is not sunshinable, but design docs and official decisions and work are retained.

The corruption and other important information is often in the personal communications - and most corrupt people aren't stupid. They will hide it wherever they can.

I have no problem at work being responsible for what I write. I don't know anyone else who does either. Your evidence is of a few anecdotes, none of which were persuasive to me.