At [company that purportedly highly values candor], I’ve seen multiple people get canned by VPs or directors they’ve criticized internally. Granted, these situations were cases where this was communicated either in a larger feedback meeting that was supposed to be a “safe” space for such feedback, or via other communications that were visible to more than just the person being criticized. These criticisms were definitely high up in the PG pyramid and critical of the direction / vision / execution, not of the person themselves. The people who were fired from this were high performers who weren’t otherwise on PIPs or anything like that. Leadership did the typical leadership dance of shifting blame, re-org, and carry on. It was sad and further eroded both trust and morale of others familiar with these situations.
I've seen this a lot, especially with junior folks getting on their high horse publicly about some direction or decision. Whenever it happens I make a point of putting a reminder in my calendar to check their corp Slack handle after three weeks to see if they're still employed. 9 out of 10 are deactivated when I check back.
Hold your tongue, there's no such thing as a safe space in any all hands or group-level meeting.
I suppose it depends on what type of “criticism” it is. Generally feedback is most valuable when it’s constructive not critical. If you just say “X is bad” that isn’t very useful no matter how you phrase it.
I would be surprised if respectful constructive criticism was met with firing but I suppose it does happen. Probably not the best to be working for those people in any case.