[x15]

This is also my biggest curiosity related to Poole.

I've read on /g/ that he's been working on Google Plus. In the thread I read that, people were joking that he is going to get fired now that the project is sun-setting, but there was no real evidence to back that up.

[tylerl]

If you check the profile page someone else screenshotted below, it says he started as a "founding partner and co-lead of Area 120", which is a an internal startup incubator.

Whatever he worked on while there is anyone's guess, could have been a dozen things, but mostly I'd guess he was probably working on getting the general program off the ground and self sufficient.

Then he worked on Hangouts Chat (replacement for Hangouts) for a REALLY short time (7mo it says) before moving to Geo. I wouldn't read too much into the brevity of his time in chat because the move to the Maps team also moved him to Tokyo. If you really want to live somewhere in particular it's not uncommon to decide what office you want to work in and find a team there to move to. My understanding is is that Poole really likes Japan, so this doesn't seem crazy.

Altogether his career progress looks... normal. Perhaps a bit of trouble finding a niche, but that happens. Just another guy trying to figure out where he fits in, what he wants to do. So, no real story here; nothing of particular note.

[codetrotter]

> My understanding is is that Poole really likes Japan

I think that is true. I heard he started some kind of message board like a decade and a half ago. Some kind of place for people interested in anime to talk with one another. :^)

[darkpuma]

Some people got the idea that Google hired him to make an "internal employee's only imageboard" but as far as I can tell there was never any truth to that, or at least any evidence of it. Because Google+ is/was an internal social media of sorts, that apocryphal story of an "internal 4chan" morphed into "moot runs G+".

[Grue3]

When I worked at Yandex (aka Russian Google) there were two internal social networks. The official one, where work-related content was posted, and a secret anonymous imageboard known as "yachan". It was used to anonymously complain about various things or people at Yandex, but there were also some sexist, racist and other -ist posts as well. I wouldn't be surprised if Google has a secret chan-style imageboard too, hopefully it's less toxic though.

[krapp]

Why would anyone trust the anonymity of a site on an internal corporate network?

I just assume every keystroke I make and everything I do is being logged and reviewed by someone while at work. I don't even log into any of my accounts at work because I don't want my employer stealing my passwords and covertly monitoring my email and social media communication. To say nothing of actual camera surveillance.

[tenpies]

Putting a lot of faith on the organization's leadership: it would befit them to treat it as anonymous, even if they have the capability of identifying posters. It would be an incredibly valuable window to honest feedback, although harder to pin down.

It's similar to how every employee understands that their manager has the capability of getting their corporate chat logs. It's one thing to have the capability and another to act on it. If a manager acts on it, it will almost always destroy any trust between the manager and his/her team. Within the organization, they will almost certainly be branded "that psychopath manager that reads chat logs" unless there was an exceptionally good reason to justify it (e.g. a legal reason).