First, it lowers my morale because it drains my confidence that very important secrets are safe. Some corporations do not leak at all - Apple comes to mind. They are notoriously mean at hunting down leaks, and it makes people paranoid. This is good. The ability to shock and amaze with new products has contributed substantially to Apple's brand. Other companies envy it.
Do you think it is mean for traffic officers to give speeding tickets? We know some people speed despite posted limits, but we are all safer because most people do obey the limits.
This is clearly flame bait / troll comment, but I would like to make a comment to rebut the central point, namely that personal relationships somehow "do not matter" or are purely exploitative at organizations.
First, I've found that one's work experience is dependent to a huge degree on the direct manager. If your manager is an asshole, you will hate your job. If you don't get along with your manager, you will dislike your job. If your manager does not care about you, you will dislike your job. If you work at an enlightened organization, you may be able to raise the issue up the chain with your manger's manager and apply for a transfer. Otherwise it is best to find another job.
That was the practical angle. Here is the theoretical one: if you call "social capital" the propensity of employees to form relationships, care about each other, and be loyal to each other, then the argument put forth is that low social capital corporations will somehow be better adapted than high social capital ones and will push them out of existence Darwin-like. This simply hasn't happened - Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple are all examples of places that by and large treat their employees fairly. I've heard that Oracle is more "cut throat" but I don't really know what that means in practice and have never worked there. Oracle does, however, seem to suffer from Ellison's weirdness. Just as there is a market in employee salaries there is also a market in corporate culture - a company that is not nice is not going to attract top talent. I have never heard that Oracle has attracted a substantial number of top-notch engineers.
On a personal level, it is always advantageous to be friendly, nice, respectful, and take everything in stride because it wins you friends and lets you do things like get other companies to hire you, a process which increases your market value as an employee. It is also completely free.
Keep in mind that this is specific to large tech companies - other sectors like Finance and Sales are going to obey their own cultural trends which may be more selfish and greedy. The start-up sector tends to attract and encourage a rather different breed, but the conditions are also completely different from a traditional corporate environment, so different personality characteristics will be adaptive.
I work at Google, and I am really happy that someone got punished for leaking this memo. A firing like this increases accountability and shows that loyalty and keeping confidentiality mean something. When it is done fairly and with cause, firing an employee can make a huge positive difference in an organization. The best situation is where a problem employee who was lowering the morale of others is fired.
Do you think it is mean for traffic officers to give speeding tickets? We know some people speed despite posted limits, but we are all safer because most people do obey the limits.