We don't disallow them, but meta is the crack of internet forums, so the bar for those to be on topic is high. The current post doesn't come close to clearing the bar.
Why? Because such perceptions are extremely common and nearly always bogus. You've fallen into the trap (<-- I don't mean to pick on you personally! it's extremely common, as I say) of arriving at an overgeneralization based on a small handful of datapoints that you happened to personally notice. The reality is that HN hosts tons of negative threads about Google. A couple minutes with HN Search is sufficient to establish this. There are also neutral threads about Google and positive threads about Google, of course—it's a big company—but the negative probably dominates.
Hypergeneralization-about-HN-based-on-tiny-set-of-datapoints-that-coalesce-into-perception-that-feels-convincing-but-in-fact-is--bogus-and-which-has-strong-inflammatory-qualities-that-fit-other-peoples-priors-perfectly-and-get-them-going is just about the most common phenomenon that exists on this site and is definitely not the basis for an on-topic submission!
I'd be happy to answer whatever you want to know about how we run HN but you'll have to explain to me what "reputation management" means. It sounds gross though.
