A large number of people have left Google after their understanding of the larger context changed.

When I was there in the late 2000's I recognized that their internal and external narrative was very carefully constructed. For me, that is always a red flag as it suggests there is an alternative narrative that might not be quite so flattering, if not downright bad.

That isn't to say that they "lied" or they mislead, just that they consistently worked to emphasize information that fed the narrative they liked, and downplayed information that suggested other narratives might be more accurate.

I related some of this to a coworker at Google using an example that a friend of mine on the police force of Nashville gave me. He said, "I can tell you that this woman just picked up a gun and shot this guy in cold blood. Three people saw her, and she has admitted to doing it. She's a murderer right? That is a narrative. If I add in the fact that just prior to shooting the victim the woman had freed herself from a rope restraint system, and that the victim had kidnapped her and was holding her as a sex slave, now she is a hero right? The narrative changes. The fact that she killed him are the same, but the narrative is much different."

I was having this conversation with my friend in the context of how difficult policing could be. There are people who construct narratives around the facts they choose to present in order to construct an emotion in the listener.

Countering narratives require that more facts be made available. My Grandfather was a US Attorney and a big believer in honesty as the best policy, he would say "The truth of a matter doesn't change when you add additional facts." It took me a long time to appreciate the depth of that statement.

The issue of narratives is further compounded if one side of the situation is constrained in supplying additional facts, like the police are about on-going investigations and Google employees are by their non-disclosure agreements. It gives an advantage to the side not so constrained to construct their narrative the way they want to construct it without fear of contradiction.

I was told by a member of one of Google's many internal committees that I was considered something of a "trouble maker" for asking questions that "suggested the company was hiding something, even though I had no evidence to back up those suggestions." I appreciated that they were trying to help me be more successful at Google, but to be honest that was a reasonable characterization of my actions. Although the questions I asked tended to relate to a particular piece of data or fact that was missing and might change the current narrative.

My assumption going in was that if there was a data point missing from the discussion, and I could see how that data point would change the narrative, then the entity constructing the narrative was likely hiding something. I generally want to know that data point because I prefer to make my own judgement based on all of that facts that are knowable rather than accept someone else's judgement using only facts they provide.

Pro tip, this always bothers people who carefully construct narratives to serve their agenda :-) So don't do it unless you are okay with the person seeing you as a threat.