This isn't even about people at the top. When everyone is on the same team and owns equity in that collective endeavor, someone that goes outside to publicly bad mouth the team is hurting everyone on their team. That's some Grade-A anti-social behavior. I'm an IC and far from the top, but I never want to work with such people who use righteous indignation to justify their anti-social actions.
These two people are two nobodies who took it upon themselves to be the arbiters of judgement and instead of checking with their colleagues to see if their views were collectively aligned with the consensus of their colleagues. They should be asking themselves "AITA?". If you are whipping up public outrage that hurts your colleagues without validating if there is consensus among your colleagues, the answer to that question is unequivocal "yes".
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” ― Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
"These two people are two nobodies who took it upon themselves to be the arbiters of judgement and instead of checking with their colleagues to see if their views were collectively aligned with the consensus of their colleagues."
The article stated a thousand Amazon employees accepted the event invite before it was deleted by management, which goes without saying that they had enough group interest internally to warrant the event... which is within the purview of their already established employee interest group.
Source: Amazon Employees For Climate Justice @AMZNforClimate We're a group of Amazon employees who believe it’s our responsibility to ensure our business models don’t contribute to the climate crisis. Views ≠ Amazon.
https://twitter.com/AMZNforclimate
These employees are only guilty of voicing their dissent publicly and running afoul of corporate PR policy. We are all entitled to voicing our opinions and beliefs and rallying around a cause individuals are passionate about e.g. climate change impact, Google ending military/China contracts, etc. The unfortunate way I've seen this play out is that at-will employment means an employer is free to sever your relationship at any time with them and can do so under the cloak of bad performance, violating company policy, etc. and it will be an uphill battle to prove retaliation in court when they have the best legal team money can buy. Best to be prepared to look for employment elsewhere if you are organizing a group event to expose your employer to negative PR when on their payroll.
I'd love to be proven wrong though.
FWIW: my experience with Brazilian Google-employees is that their lives are shockingly insulated from the rest of the country. home -> car -> guarded parking -> <entertainment> -> home. we admittedly privileged expats got to experience more than them even, at times!
If you criticize your employer by putting other sectors of the company in a fragile position and still think you should not face any consequence, you have no SITG.
Simply put: no symmetry in the risk you are taking => no weight to your words => I just don't care at what you say.
Likewise, if you just learn about a perceived misdeed from a company and all that you can say is "This does not make me want to work there" but it does not make you say "I will not allow myself the benefit of consume something that was achieved through bad working conditions", you have no SITG. You don't work there already, you are not losing anything -> no weight to your words => I don't care at what you say.
Lastly, the ad hominems have no place on HN.