When Employees ‘Do No Evil,’ Google Fires Them

The company is being sued by former employees for breaching its famous (and now removed) code of conduct

Stephen Moore
Marker
Published in
4 min readDec 2, 2021

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Image: Google Logo / Edited by author

Despite adopting the mantra “Don’t Be Evil” as part of its company code of conduct for the best part of 20 years, it appears Google is guilty of being evil now and again. This should come as no surprise — very few behemoth-sized companies are squeaky clean when the hood is lifted — and if it has, well, I’ll have what you’re drinking.

The earth-shattering revelation comes as three former employees sued the company for wrongfully terminating their contracts because they spoke out about Google’s failings to follow the policy. The ‘evil’ in question is the company’s decision to pursue controversial projects, including work for U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration. The employees felt entitled to call out the move as it reflected poorly on their own work, and did so via a widely shared and supported petition. In response, Google fired the engineers in November 2019 for violating the company’s data security policies, alleging that the employees leaked information (all three deny this). In the immediate aftermath, one of the engineers was defiant, saying, “everyone has a right to know what their work is being used for.”

Google disagreed. Now the battle has made its way into the courts. In simple terms, the lawsuit alleges that the company has a contractual obligation to adhere to this mantra because it makes employees sign a contractual agreement to do the same. But the situation is messy, and the likelihood of any accountability falling on Google is slim to none. The company has been here before; in 2018, a walkout in protest of the company’s handling of several high-profile sexual harassment claims revealed a range of internal conflicts, from employee objects about Google’s expansion to accusations of retaliation against employees who spoke out. (Notice a pattern?) Evil or not, Google survived relatively unscathed.

“And remember … don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right — speak up.”

The problem is defining the mantra and what it means in today’s world. What is…

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