Disclosure: I am currently working on a "Why I Left Apple" blog post/video, albeit much different than the examples in the article.
I'm from a generation where you didn't publicize this kind of stuff, and I'm not quite sure I understand the intent/social value of such posts/videos outside of the "whistleblowing" types of posts. Absent of any context, these posts/videos just strike me as self promotion.
Which is incidentally the exact reason why the posts are popular. There has been a taboo on hiring/firing literature, and only recently have people become more transparent with information that is very valuable. Having unique perspectives makes you stand out, although admittingly in the case of posts which make it to the top of HN, it's often the interview-from-hell from a Big 4 or a "my incredible journey" exit. (both of which are tropes that are not applicable in my blog post)
In 1972, if someone left a company, they would willingly tell anybody who cared to ask. It is a frequent question during the interview process because it is insanely useful in helping to understand a potential hire. You didn't publicize this kind of stuff because the effort of typing it and Xeroxing it for your zine wasn't worth the reward of a reader getting some sort of insight into the company culture.
But now publishing that thought requires almost no effort beyond just typing it or saying it. That's it. It's just a personal story.
edit: Unless you meant solely gp's context of an engineer posting about a similar topic. I defer on that, I was talking about the BuzzFeed employees.
Vanity blogging and self promotion seem to be inevitable side effects of the frictionless nature of publishing on the internet and the lack of will or resources to do thorough moderation on aggregators with public contribution.
When I saw this headline, I immediately thought of Mark Duffy's rant in Gaeker: http://gawker.com/top-10-best-ever-wtf-omg-reasons-buzzfeed-...
I was surprised to see that BF apparently has such strong constraints on creative's side projects. That policy apparently doesn't apply to the investigative journalism team, where reporters seem to have free reign to open source their work and share their data.
1. BF trains people to go for eye-catching content and personalities, so as people leave in the normal course of events they call attention to their departure as a way of helping their own career.
2. BF basically doesn't come off as a bad place and indeed seems to be teaching these people to do, well, item #1.
It seems like they're publicly biting the hand that fed them by making these videos: If BuzzFeed never hired them in the first place, they'd all just be no-name YouTubers.
BuzzFeed Motion Pictures was launched in 2014 with a big splash and a $50 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/buzzfeed-raises-50-mil...). It's led by viral content pioneer Ze Frank (http://allthingsd.com/20120914/buzzfeed-hires-web-video-pion...).
Frank has characterized the unit's approach to content creation as "cheap and fast" (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buzzfeed-studios-20150...), and they got in a fair bit of hot water last year after firing two on-camera personalities for appearing in a non-BuzzFeed video (http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/06/non-compete-agre...), with Frank then warning remaining staff that "you cannot work on personal projects outside of BuzzFeed that impact your ability to work for us" (http://adage.com/article/media/ze-frank-buzzfeed-motion-pict..., https://www.buzzfeed.com/zefrank/being-a-part-of-buzzfeed-mo...).
All of which makes the place sound a bit like a video sweatshop that makes its money by grinding up talented young people and then spitting them out, so it would be interesting to know how many of the complaints in this article are from people who worked at BuzzFeed in general versus how many are from people who worked at BuzzFeed Motion Pictures.
Don't despair, I still go to YouTube to see how to fix things.
The web is broken. Sigh.
Look at that woman who got fired after complaining about the conditions at Yelp for example. She tried to turn the situation into a personal brand.
It's the internet version of people that try and become Z-list celebrities through reality TV shows.
At least for my cohort, that's not the reason why you didn't do it. You didn't do it because it was career limiting. There was value placed on a person who had a sense of discretion.
I'm sure a lot of HR types Google their candidates. I'm wondering if any would drop a candidate for having posted these things.
Outside of the "Why I Left" posts, a lot of younger people put a lot of content on social media that my age peer group would consider "career limiting".
Napster and LimeWire were big in my younger years and it allowed kids to illicitly amass music collections beyond what most middle-income kids could in a previous generation. Does that mean my generation were inherently more appreciative of music and/or more unethical, had Internet file-sharing never come to pass?
The only thing that Napster and Limewire did was to allow you to get more faster. You guys were no worse than my generation who shared vinyl and recorded "personal copies" onto cassette tapes.
When I was young, schools used your "permanent record" as a scare tactic. Having a black mark on your school record could prevent you from getting certain jobs (the one example cited by my high school principal was getting into the police academy). This stuff would get laughed at today.
On the other hand, today's version of your "permanent record" (i.e., anything you've said or done online) is broader in scope and for the most part, available to everyone. While it seems like everyone is aware of the potential consequences, it also seems like people are also less concerned about them as well. I'm just amazed at some of the stuff I see on sites that use Facebook comments where everyone is pretty much posting with their real name.
However, if the reason I left was simply one of cultural differences, or some other not-quite-a-fit scenario, I would certainly have no qualms attaching my name to it. Like I said, that's often something you're asked about in an interview anyway.