The consequences of naming someone in such a manner, in an article that makes its rounds on the Internet, can be actually quite dire. Public harassment, etc. There are some pretty unhinged people out there, and in particular some rather ugly people who in particular get especially unhinged on the topic of women in tech at Google, etc.
And weirdly superfluous to the point he was trying to make. Did anyone really need the name of someone with whom he has an axe to grind in order to believe the larger point about Google's organizational ossification?
This wasn't a twitter tirade. This was on his niche blog post about someone's personal experience and towards someone who was making 10s of millions. Big difference.
With her budget, just her org is effectively bigger than the biggest tech company in most countries of the world. At that point upper leadership is not allowed to differentiate between private and public life. Public criticism is private criticism and vice-versa. It's likely a testament to her achievements that she has earned an enviable? level of success that makes public criticism acceptable.
> in particular some rather ugly people who in particular get especially unhinged on the topic of women in tech at Google, etc.
That being said I do agree with your point. With those risks in mind, I still think it should be socially permissible to make this kind of post.
> I think it's in very bad taste in this case.
I thought it was done as well as one could. I know the west coast prides itself for its 'niceness', but in a lot of parts of USA, plain expression of dislike is considered in better taste than the kind of passive aggressiveness that would result from softening the poster's language. It was meant to be a targeted question at her competence. Just because she is one of many incompetent people at the helm at Google, doesn't invalidate the poster's experience.
The anecdotal optics might be bad. But I for one rely on Occam's razor before jumping to conclusions about racial/gender angles in everything.
Do you honestly believe that somebody is going to be harassed by the public or harassed in public or harassed in private because somebody on a niche blogs wrote that they were a bad boss? Or are you inventing a false scenario to argue against some writing you consider to be in bad taste?
I think it's in very bad taste in this case.