I have no idea why would you accuse GP of lying. You don't know him. Do you routinely judge if a person tells the truth based on some words he used?
Also, you confuse the GP's feelings about the situation right now with his attitude back then. Back when it happened, he didn't know of a 3 months long plot against him. Now he does know. He was shown the (obscenity censored because it would apparently alter the meaning of my post) documents, he read it black on white. Just before getting fired, too. It's nothing strange that his wording now is emotional and blunt, it says nothing about how he was back then.
Lastly, of course, there are polite ways of telling people to censored, you know why off politely. It's what assertiveness is all about. There are people, however, who don't really care about the form: they just can't stand others disagreeing with them. I don't think it's that rare a trait. How about that line of thinking:
"He's too polite, he's trying to hide something. And he dared to disagree with me, his superior. More than once! I don't have the time to deal with a time-bomb like him, which can blow up behind my back at any time. I need an army of easily controlled people to help me further my career. Yeah, it would be safer to spend a few minutes more and slip a couple of lies when working on his evaluations."
Preparing reports which are not true, yet are not outright lies, and which make some person look really bad doesn't really take much time. Especially if one does it for a living.
> I have no idea why would you accuse GP of lying.
He claims that he "politely" told someone to "fuck off". It's not really a question of lying, but a question of possibility. You can't politely tell someone to fuck off. Either you didn't tell them to fuck off or you didn't do it politely. "Fuck off" is not polite. It's not supposed to be polite. If you politely ask someone to leave you alone, you're not telling them to fuck off.
> Do you routinely judge if a person tells the truth based on some words he used?
Not that it's really relevant, but yes. How else would you judge a person's truthfulness except through the words they use? Your words matching the facts is basically the definition of truth.
Do you routinely assume that everything anyone claims is accurate?
> Also, you confuse the GP's feelings about the situation right now with his attitude back then.
No, I'm reading his description of what happened. He gives two versions, one of which (fuck off) is intrinsically unpolite. The other (mind your own business) is pretty rude, too. Given his descriptions in general, it's hard to imagine that this was actually a polite exchange.
It's also difficult to believe that his politeness was rewarded by months of revenge plotting and spite. It would be easier to believe this if he presented this as an isolated story. Instead he presents this as an example of how terrible "99%" of HR employees are. So either 99% of HR employees are actually pointlessly spiteful and terrible, or he's intentionally lying, or he has had so many bad interactions that he believes it to be true. If it's the last case, I've got to wonder if the problem is really all of HR or if it's the one guy who keeps having problems with HR.
>>my bet is that the last paragraph of the statement holds the key:
No, this is obviously the key:
"review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board"
This is an explicit statement that he was lying to the board about something. It cannot be worded more clearly unless switching to use the word "lying".
> I thought that his open stance on what he'd been doing would mean he'd being open to people criticising what he'd done
His goal in publishing this information seems to be to foster a community of transparency. To that end, his actions appear entirely consistent.
Put another way, what additional information do you want him to convey? His goal is to accurately and openly convey information, and he's basically laid it all out on the table.
You're free to have an opinion on whether his actions were right or wrong, but don't expect him to engage with your criticism when that takes a lot of time and effort (and is not part of his goal).
I don't know who any of these people are but I don't like the idea of hearing one person's account and automatically assuming it's true. At least not in the case of assertions that are potentially career-ruining.
> Most likely relying on second-hand info that was just wrong.
I would have been happy to give him the benefit of the doubt and still would. To me it seems to me he continually repeated these claims over the whole incident and ignored people who pointed out that what he was saying was obviously false. I only pointed to the most egregious example.
To be clear, I'm not super worried about companies just screwing up, shit happens. However, I have a personal bias against dealing with people who are dishonest when that happens.
Do you? Because that part is way more irritating, and, honestly, starting to read your original comment I thought that was where you were going with this: Why was he fired, exactly?
The way the statement was framed basically painted him a liar, in a way, so vague, that people put forth the most insane theories about why. I can sense some animosity, but do you really think it's okay to fire anyone in a way, where to the outside the possible explanation ranges from a big data slip to molesting their sister?
Nothing has changed. That is the part that needs transparency and its lack is bewildering.
> He has done lots wrong over many years to many people.
[citation needed] and distraction. So what if he didn't do anything of what he is currently accused of, I am sure he has done lots of wrong before (of which I am going to list exactly nothing)?
> he has been treated the same way any other employee at MIT would be treated.
He has resigned to shield MIT from public pressure after lots of lies have appeared about things he hasn't said.
... years later, with a throwaway account.
>First, thanks for coming clean. You're a human being who's made a really bad decision.
See my first line?
>When faced with a choice between the moral rectitude and the livelihood of your family, it's very difficult to choose the former.
"But I was a coward and I didn't want to lose my job, didn't want to fight a legal battle, and, like I said, it was just China spying on it's people, which everyone knew they do anyway."
Look, you can be as upset as you want with me for my attitude with this person, but don't make up stories about how hard his life is to justify this type of spineless behavior by others.
We should all work harder to avoid making the decisions that result in harm to others. I encourage those around me to learn from the mistakes of others and not make choices that cause harm.
> > The writer already assumes that we think he is lying.
> Not quite. He assumes we think he could be mistaken. ("[…] it could be conceivable […] that, in my grief, I remotely logged in, sent the email and forgot I did it"). Still a bit fishy, but not as much as you make it sound.
Not quite assuming that we think he's lying, but a very common tell for lies is that the lier is preempting challenges to weak points in the story.
A lot hinges on his location and the exact job, but it smells very fishy that he apparently is set up for remote access to email (so it sounds like a "regular" knowledge worker job where checking your email from not-the-office at times is not uncommon), but when leaving very suddenly, ie. with no time to hand over work to colleagues, as you'd normally do for planned leave, he wouldn't bring the dongle with him, to be able to check in and make sure his colleagues have what they need to move on without him.
> If I did not feel safe posting something important
So far so good...
> I would make sure to include proofs.
Why do you imagine GP's comments could be made public under their own name if they included proof, given the concerns they have put forward? Their company could still be ruined by Stripe afterward, no amount of proof will change that. A court cannot force them to accept payment traffic as long as they pretend to refuse them for a different reason.
> If I can't include either, I keep my mouth shut.
This is how dictators and other perpetrators of abuse stay in power. In essence, you are colluding with them by keeping what they do a secret on purpose.
> I absolutely think that anyone with half an ounce of emotional intelligence should have anticipated that reaction, and should have known that writing that as he did would have been completely counter-productive and cause a huge shit show for the company.
He wrote it in an internal group dedicated to the very subject he wrote about. It got leaked and distorted, and I can't even count how often the whole context got twisted in the exact same way as you just twisted it.
Who leaked it? Dunno. What's so bad about it? Can't say. But one thing is sure, the person who ended up losing their job is to blame. And of course the people who just can't even be bothered to get fact one of it straight while signing it off aren't spineless in the least. How would that even work, all people have spines.
the thing is there is (legally) a huge gap between lying and "not being candid"
in the later case you can have a lot of subtle manipulative formulations, phrasing misleading emphasizing and de-emphasizing of parts misleading representation of what certain decisions imply, intentional not correcting when you notice that someone did misunderstand something and it will lead to them supporting decisions of you they would normally not have supported etc.
all of this are legal actions (and in-actions; at least if subtle done) which still can get you fired for "breakdown of communication and/or trust" in pretty much any job, especially a position like CEO
outright lying on the other hand likely can entail a lot of legal trouble in many ways
so them saying that he "wasn't candid and there was a break down in communication" then it likely means that and a break down in trust but not outright lying (except if they want to downplay the situation, but why should they)
> You might want to reevaluate that position. You're reflexively siding with the CEO. You don't know that he's lying and saying "I think was fired because I did this" is not lying either way anyways.
I have no idea why would you accuse GP of lying. You don't know him. Do you routinely judge if a person tells the truth based on some words he used?
Also, you confuse the GP's feelings about the situation right now with his attitude back then. Back when it happened, he didn't know of a 3 months long plot against him. Now he does know. He was shown the (obscenity censored because it would apparently alter the meaning of my post) documents, he read it black on white. Just before getting fired, too. It's nothing strange that his wording now is emotional and blunt, it says nothing about how he was back then.
Lastly, of course, there are polite ways of telling people to censored, you know why off politely. It's what assertiveness is all about. There are people, however, who don't really care about the form: they just can't stand others disagreeing with them. I don't think it's that rare a trait. How about that line of thinking:
"He's too polite, he's trying to hide something. And he dared to disagree with me, his superior. More than once! I don't have the time to deal with a time-bomb like him, which can blow up behind my back at any time. I need an army of easily controlled people to help me further my career. Yeah, it would be safer to spend a few minutes more and slip a couple of lies when working on his evaluations."
Preparing reports which are not true, yet are not outright lies, and which make some person look really bad doesn't really take much time. Especially if one does it for a living.
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