It does seem like it may have been a case of some politically motivated employees being disruptive. The part that is just irredeemable is:
> I thought about it through COVID-19, as HEY launched in the midst of a civil rights uprising and we toiled over the customer support cases of people who could afford to pay $99/year for personal email.
This sounds like the person is complaining that their supposedly privileged customers distracted her from activism. If she has a problem working for "people who could afford to pay $99/year for personal email" then she should probably find a different job where she will serve a demographic that is more palatable to her.
>“We have heard that many of you are in pain and upset by yesterday’s Moving Forward session,” the email said. “While it was meant to be a dialogue, it’s obvious that those who attended did not feel heard.”
>Employees greeted the news that Ms. Lee was stepping away as a sign that Uber’s leadership was taking their complaints seriously.
One employee wrote that the company’s executives “have heard us, they know we are hurting, and they want to understand what all happened too.”
Let me get this straight. Employees are "in pain" and "hurting" and "feeling not heard" because the head of DEI (who happens to be an Asian woman) said that people should be sensitive and not use the term "Karen" as a casual slur against white women who actually represent a broad spectrum of experiences? I consider myself progressive, but it feels like we've completely jumped the shark with some of this stuff.
Everything about this just reads...weird. The spacing, the conclusion, the cause... all of it.
The author got mouthy on twitter (by their own admission) about company information. I don't think this person got "bullied" out of their job being innocent. Most companies, even the most "inclusive" will target employees who are talking negatively in public about them.
It sounds like the author should've left the company instead of attempting to use weird passive-aggressive tactics to enact change. The conclusion seems to imply that they were racially profiled but the writing suggests that they were, at least in part, someone who instigated the company's response. I'm not convinced the author is making the point they want to make about actual bullying in a corporation.
It doesn't have to have a particular animus to have the effect.
The question is, why make a big blog post about it in the first place? They can't claim innocence, since they followed Brian Armstrong pretty much to the letter, and have the walkouts to boot. So we can assume the attention was calculated.
Just look at how many posts on HN are now like "I want to work there!" Recruitment signalling accomplished.
The backlash is real, and to me the interesting part is it's semi-liberal tech dudes leading the charge.
BTW do you mean to say that bringing up issues of equal pay justify overt censorship as a "business decision"? Just asking because that was the issue I mentioned above.
Indeed -- here is some additional context that the article doesn't provide:
The fired employee Tweeted today:
>In the interest of transparency, I was let go for calling out an employee’s inaction here on Twitter. I stand by what I said. They didn’t give me the chance to quit [0]
He then specifically cited [1] the Tweet in question that was the cause:
>I asked @Vjeux to follow @reactjs's lead and add a statement of support to Recoil's docs and he privately refused, claiming open source shouldn't be political.
>Intentionally not making a statement is already political. Consider that next time you think of Recoil. [2]
This is specifically targeting an individual front-end engineer at FB, which in my own estimation crosses the line from criticism of executives or general policy, to specifically trying to instigate public outrage against a co-worker. If such actions were directed at me, I would definitely consider it as contributing to a hostile work environment. It all strikes me as a modern-day example of "Havel's greengrocer" [3].
This whole story is wild to me, having worked previously at a different company which was also a frequent target of criticism on the blog run by the victims.
Sure, we definitely used to eye-roll at some articles. But my ass would've been fired in 5 seconds for even sending them an email, let alone anything beyond that.
> ... Jones, who worked on social media accounts for the company, had “liked” the tweet, on behalf of Marriott International... The problem? It had been posted by a Tibetan separatist group...
This reads to me like the employee went rogue and took politically sensitive stance on behalf of the company. I'd label that brand damaging negligence and it seems like fair grounds for dismissal. Maybe there's more to it.
It sounds like she coopted a security tool to spam users with a political advocacy message.
Hard to see why she shouldn't be fired for that.
Of course she has the right to express that message, and it seems to be factually correct. But that doesn't mean she can use a security tool to spam people.
> private citizens getting doxxed, slandered, and sometimes fired from their jobs because of a racist tweet or off-putting remark.
I think even more concerning for most people is a mob going after and firing people who didn't do these things. David Shor getting fired because he Tweeted that rioting was a bad political tactic, causing angry Twitter users to successfully press his employers to fire him. The case of the guy who got fired because someone thought he made an "OK" sign while driving and whipped up an angry Twitter mob (both cases are discussed here[1]).
Here's a random case I had stumbled upon a few years back that's now been forgotten[2] - man posts video of Chipotle telling him he has to pay for his burrito first because they say he's taken burritos without paying for them, accuses Chipotle workers of racism, and whips up a Twitter mob. Chipotle immediately apologizes and fires the manager. Then people notice old Tweets from the same guy bragging about stealing burritos from Chipotle. This leads Chipotle to rehire the person. If a random person decides to lie about you and whip of a Twitter mob, you have to hope that they've been so sloppy as to brag about their crimes on Twitter beforehand, because a simple unverified accusation from any random person is enough to get you fired.
And even after many cases like this, Twitter still let's people try to create Twitter mobs to get revenge on private citizens (particularly jarring when Yishan is arguing that the reason news articles are censored is to avoid angry mobs). However, they'll ban people who politely state heterodox opinions on controversial subjects (even if they are relatively common positions among the public). And since Yishan brings up Reddit, it's worth noting that they have a similar approach as well (whipping up angry mobs is fine, heterodox positions are not).
This culture on these sites is a result of the choices that social media companies have made (and not just the choices mentioned above, but others like the efforts made to push engagement). We see the results of that choice by the state of these sites. And the people involved, instead of taking responsibility for what they've created, decide to dump all the blame on the users.
I recall seeing elsewhere that the employee wasn't fired for blogging about starving, but that she was found to have used her personal account to leave-in some cases-distasteful comments on some customer pages, and outright offensive ones on others.
Attempting to recall and track down where I saw this.
> And I am sure it had nothing to do with her getting alcohol delivered to her while at work [archive.is] or bragging about making sexual jokes to the companies twitter account [imgur.com]. It's either quite a coincidence or she knew she was in trouble and wrote the letter to try and make the company look worse.
This part of the article had me scratching my head:
"Hansson’s response to this employee took aback many of the workers I spoke with. He dug through old chat logs to find a time when the employee in question participated in a discussion about a customer with a funny-sounding name. Hansson posted the message — visible to the entire company — and dismissed the substance of the employee’s complaint"
Could this worker have drawn attention to faulty code or shoddy methods with a typical blog post or news article? I have a feeling that the allegations, firing and potential trial are just increasing her profile beyond what it would've been, thus further exposing the case to scrutiny.
To scrutinize her, I worked for a time as a data analyst in the pandemic too. There was a lot of shoddy work in many places, but no one of the many great employees I worked with hijacked mass communication software to send an inane message. Look at her message's text, it reads like a Tweet, there's no substance to her critique of her government in the actual message in question (she offers some more detailed objections elsewhere).
For their part, Florida did a very poor job with COVID. The governor was part of the crew of the GOP who detests science and reason, it seems, or at least capitalizes on those feelings in the populace. I understand why they fired her, you can't have data analysts hijacking your software to send mass messages of protest. I'm not sure if the message really did much damage in the end, saying it distracted fellow employees...is that very damaging?
Comparing this to the case at Google, for instance, where the engineer wrote up a long essay with many data points and actual structure...I can't help feeling that both employees' messages were greatly disseminated by the hierarchy's response to them, though I believe her Tweet had much less discussion and text to generate a broader debate here on HN or elsewhere.
There are links sprinkled all throughout the comments of instances of people having views erroneously attributed to them and the public pressure causing them to lose their jobs. Here's one I just read.[1] How prevalent these are, and whether they outweigh any positive effects of the behavior (or if you even believe there are positive effects) is probably a more nuanced question.
But, maybe it's a case where they knew the negativity (racism, harassment, bullying, etc.) was so bad, they had to do something to curb it, even if it meant destroying the company.
Sounds crazy, even I'm skeptical, but maybe for once somebody chose to do the right thing despite the money at stake. Dunno.
> Action became more urgent when Thomson Reuters began to inject pro-BLM political propaganda into the workplace through a series of official company events that invited BLM activists to the company, where they proceeded to spread some of the very falsehoods that have so devastated disadvantaged black communities.
Yeah, sending an unsolicited mass Email accusing co-workers of promoting propaganda is not going to go over well. Harsh, abrasive language targeting co-workers and management is a 100% fireable offense.
> Almost immediately, my post started to receive a barrage of bizarre, hateful, abusive, and ultimately extremely racist comments from Thomson Reuters employees.
> For example, one commenter condemned the stats that I presented in my post (which were taken directly from official government sources) as “inaccurate”, “false and/or fraudulent”
That doesn’t sound hatful, abusive or extremely racist. But publicly condemning your colleagues without any reasonable evidence is a pretty sure fire way to get fired.
> Fully 13 Thomson Reuters employees expressed their approval of condemning my post based on this race fantasy by publicly "liking" it and attaching their names to it. If it were only a single disturbed individual it would be easier to ignore his troubling condemnation. However, with 13 people publicly expressing their agreement, it began to feel like there was some kind of group harassment going on.
Yikes, this again shows absolutely no rational thought process. And yeah calling your colleagues “disturbed individuals” means you’re going to get fired.
I didn’t read the rest, it’s just more ranting, name calling and whining. Either this guy is one of the most clueless people I’ve ever met on how to communicate and behave in a workplace environment or this was a largely intentional act to get fired in a blaze of virtue signaling to the right.
It’s fine if you want to die on a hill, but at least come prepared for the consequences. To write that post and unsolicited follow up Email berating his colleagues and bosses and be surprised at the consequences strikes me as one of the most naïve things I’ve ever seen or heard about in the workplace.
I hope his ideology is more important to him than his career because that’s the signal he’s broadcasting loud and clear. And there is some virtue in that, but then at least go work for someone who celebrates your ideology, don’t try to slam your ideology down people’s throats with a massive essay (with shaky conclusions) and then criticize them publicly in a mass Email when they’re offended by you.
Not everyone is going to agree with you and that’s pretty important to understand working at a traditional news agency.
With the “silence is violence” quip, this guy sounds like a pissed off conservative who tried to “own the libs”, but instead just disrespected his employer, bosses and colleagues and got fired for it.
Hopefully he has a career in data science for conservatives because it’s pretty clear he has no respect for those that disagree with him.
I don't really see where the mass or the hysteria is. It's an individual business parting with an employee because the views shared in public are likely going to harm the business.
Happens probably every day somewhere, why has this even become noteworthy?
"What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders – and bystanders – was not the appropriate way to handle the situation"
It was also pointed out she had previously made jokes about male genitalia on twitter (from her work account) a few days before, which obviously (in internet rules) makes her a hypocrite.
Anyway, all of this is just leading to the point that we're going to need to find a new term, sort of like "peter and the wolf" where a person abuses the virality of social media, in combination with stereotyping, confirmation bias and willingly incorrect analysis of situations, to attempt to take down other people illegitimately. Oh wait. That's just cancelling cancel culture.
> I've struggled to understand why so many people have piled on to these absurd accusations without facts.
I watched a similar situation play out in real time. A friend had to fire an employee who wasn't submitting work or even responding to communications. The employe retaliated by using their moderately large social media presence to disparage my friend and her company.
Strangely enough, other people with zero experience in the matter were piling on to support the claims. It seemed they felt obligated to amplify and lend credence to the allegations of one of their social media friends.
The experience was extremely stressful for my friend, but ultimately the former employee cooled off and deleted many of the posts. It's hard to tell how much damage was done in the process, but I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts.
https://janeyang.org/2021/04/27/an-open-letter-to-jason-and-...
It does seem like it may have been a case of some politically motivated employees being disruptive. The part that is just irredeemable is:
> I thought about it through COVID-19, as HEY launched in the midst of a civil rights uprising and we toiled over the customer support cases of people who could afford to pay $99/year for personal email.
This sounds like the person is complaining that their supposedly privileged customers distracted her from activism. If she has a problem working for "people who could afford to pay $99/year for personal email" then she should probably find a different job where she will serve a demographic that is more palatable to her.
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