Anecdotally speaking, I have seen a change in behavior even from early 2024.
I was in a meeting (online) with a few people from Google shortly before Google IO about something fairly small. The technical engineer actually spoke(!) and he talked about revenue and stuff. I was dumbfounded that technical engineers at Google would ever care about "moving the needle".
replyAre you sure it wasn’t a “customer engineer” role?
replyI know many people at Google who have been waiting to get laid off to get better terms than they would from just quitting. Now they know what to do.
replyPeople don't typically get a nice severance package if they're fired for violating company policy.
reply(edit: not saying that was the case here, working on devrel usually makes it part of your job to publish code)
Firings like this often include a technically voluntary separation agreement that gives you a few extra weeks' pay or some additional months of health benefits etc. precisely to avoid that problem. (Also gets them out of paying unemployment, and means they can get a fresh set of NDAs/nondisparagement etc. signed with the employee.)
replyI would never fire an employee unilaterally, especially over something like this, when there's valuable IP at stake and you can just talk the person into agreeing to sign over whatever it is you need.