Facebook's famously tight-knit and tight-lipped engineering organization has become increasingly leaky in the past couple of years, as posts and data make it to the press with surprising regularity.
What changed? Is it morale? Or something that happens at scale? Does the rate of leaks say anything about the health of the company?
Talk to a reporter about why people leak. The reason people leak is when they feel that the organization doesn't listen to them and they can't steer the organization any other way. If your employees feel respected and listened to- and that their internal warnings are being heeded- they won't leak to an outsider. If they feel that they are a Cassandra, doomed to be correct but ignored, they will leak.
Now sometimes workers are wrong- the problem they were obsessed with wasn't actually that serious, their boss did take their advice into account and decided to resolve it a different way, etc., but in general, lack of respect is why people leak.
The same thing that happened at the other tech companies. A newer, younger generation of employees joined. The Gen Z cohort seems to be much more ready to bring politics and ideological wars into the workplace, and really view any institution they're a part of as an opportunity to weaponize that institution. This culture had already taken root on college campuses, and my belief is that they view that as the 'normal' way of operating, including making purposeful leaks. I know this is anecdotal and speculative but I am offering it up as an explanation nevertheless, and would love to hear other theories on what changed.
I do not believe that the change is simply due to the companies growing bigger. They already were big in prior years and had gone through phases of fast growth in employee count previously. Something is different this time, which is why I am pointing to a generational change.
What changed? Is it morale? Or something that happens at scale? Does the rate of leaks say anything about the health of the company?