I try not to judge, but ignorance and lax thinking of this magnitude is hard to ignore.
I'm far from being a Google fanboy and have in the past skewered a fanboy while reviewing his book; Google has plenty of people in public relations management, a lot of money to spend on it, and doesn't need my help; and every now and then I cringe when I hear people refer to Google's "don't be evil" slogan.
But this self-absorbed post makes me want to defend Google, for once. Here's the story as I see it, and as most people with even a passing interest in management and some minor real-world experience would probably see it:
A person was fired for indulging his personal politics at a contract site in a way that endangered the contract between his employer and the client (whose actions were legal and generous beyond the current norm).
I'll add that every company has a "class" system, using the scare quotes because the original poster chooses that word for emotional effect due to its association with reprehensible behavior (that doesn't apply here). The appropriate term is hierarchy.
Google apparently gives many fringe benefits to some contractors (red badge ones): free lunches, shuttles, access to internal talks; this is incredibly generous by common standards. But in the everyone should have everything everybody else does mindset of the original poster, the existence of different types of contractor (red vs yellow badges) is indicative of something bad.
Gee, how lucky Google was that this genius didn't learn about the discrimination in the use of the corporate jets. Imagine what his post would be like if he had learned that the interns couldn't use the company's 767 to take their friends to Bermuda.
He mentioned he was going to grad school; probably will fit in perfectly.
