Employee fired by Google over leaked bonus info was former Apple whiz

The employee who was sacked by Google for divulging information regarding employee salary hike and bonus, happens to be Randy Wigginton, a former number six at Apple.

Gawker reported that the unidentified employee who was immediately fired for disclosing to the media a 10 percent raise and $1,000 holiday bonus at Google was Wigginton, an acclaimed engineer who created MacWrite, who had also served at PayPal and eBay.

According to a report by Gawker after Google had fired Wigginton, his Wikipedia entry was altered by a fellow Apple and Google alum to say Wigginton previously, rather than presently, worked for Google. Also ten days later his LinkedIn profile was updated with information that he was no longer with Google since Nov. 2010.

The news regarding the raise was first reported by Business Insider which had posted an internal memo sent by Google CEO Eric Schmidt to the employees.

Another reason cited by CNET for Wigginton's termination was that the leaked information had endangered the lives of Google employees as it made them susceptible to mugging as they carried their bonuses home. Also Wigginton is part of the Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) team in Google. SREs have access to sensitive information at Google which includes unhindered access to user accounts.

In July Google had fired David Barksdale, a Site Reliability engineer at Google's Kirkland, Washington Office on charges that he unduly accessed contact lists, chat transcripts and tapped into Google voice call logs and Google Internet phone service of a 15-year boy whom he befriended.

Randy Wigginton was one of the first employees at Apple and is the creator of MacWrite, word processor application and Full Impact, a spreadsheet program for Apple Mac. He joined Apple in 1976 after he met Steve Wozniak at the Homebrew Computer Club. He worked with Wozniak on the circuit design and ROM software for Apple II.