What would you have done in the situation? You're the CEO of a company. You have someone in a glorified PR position. That same person has caused massive blowback by not once, not twice, but multiple times showing extreme poor judgement. This person then makes a public statement saying your company "supports" that person thereby ostensibly pulling the company into the fight. What would you do?
It would take all of five seconds for me to ship that person out.
Even if you are working on a three strike position; all three strikes came in the last few days.
This has nothing to do with the DDoS. This has to do with having someone in a position representing the company to your target audience and not just doing a poor job of it, but doing such a trainwreck of a job that the company's PR needs to spin up to defcon 1.
> Any (ex) CEO that doesn't know why they got fired by someone reading a lawyer's script obviously doesn't have a clue how things work.
I want to be clear, here: you're telling me that it is your position that someone who was CEO of Autodesk – not exactly a shareware developer or anything – served in that role for 14 years and oversaw its rise to dominance over its space... doesn't "have a clue" how things work?
Is it possible that she simply expected a little better than a phone call, given that she's the CEO of the company?
> The personal insult during the phone call really shows her character.
It does. It shows me she's a straight talker and the sort of person who expects the same from others. I like those kinds of people – with them, I always know where I stand. Fuck the phonies.
> Practicality aside, how stupid do you think I would have to be to start a massive witchhunt against somebody who has had allegations made against them by an anonymous person?
They weren't talking to you they were talking to the person who asked for the witch hunt.
Although somebody does know exactly who this is and never should have let it slide. Those of you with your head down, it's time to go over your boss's head and say something.
> 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 agree with you that there should be NO witch hunting. Just to clarify Jessica's part in the fraud, she was one of the people vocal about outing the founders after not being paid for over a month. For some reason, she suddenly changes her mind. She starts erasing any evidence of OP doing work and The CEO fires her with cause claiming that he has evidence she's not been doing work. Jess is promoted with a raise and changes her title to CMO.
Now, maybe this is just a bitch move, but if Jess is willingly participating in the CEO's scheme to fire OP with cause, I feel like this is crossing the line into fraud. Again, witchhunting is wrong, but just clarifying Jess's part in the fraud (if it counts as fraud)
Your decision today. You took ownership before for the arbitrary decisions to remove DS and 8Chan, take ownership now and do not try to backpedal. You are Cloudflare's leader.
>That’s a failure of the rule of law on two dimensions: we shouldn’t be the ones making that call, and no one else who should was stepping up in spite of being aware of the threat.
You failed to take ownership of this issue either way. Your response suggests you can't understand the responsibility that you continue to have and are trying to shirk it. My suggestion is, find someone who is willing to be compensated to have this responsibility if it burdens you so. That's part of a leader's job.
> Your only evidence is one letter sent by anonymous employee (assuming the NYT has accurately described the person in question and they were in fact at Reddit).
Do you really need more evidence? Your CEO should be a pillar of stability. A rock, a mountain of fortitude. One mistake or "situation" I can understand, but it appears her issues have followed her to reddit. There's clearly and obviously something more going on. Again the point is not one of right or wrong, but who you want heading up your company. And quite frankly, I wouldn't want her anywhere near my properties.
If you have a person who never does anything wrong, but trouble has a way of following them everywhere, would you want that person working for you? Put yourself in the shoes of reddit's board. This isn't about her career, they don't care about her career, her needs or wants, it's about what's best for reddit.
This isn't a fantasy world where ideology wins out, the good guy wins, and pragmatism and compromise are only found it stories... No, this is the real world where you have to weigh the benefits and drawbacks and make extremely hard and difficult decisions.
> the corporate policy of ignoring complaints against high performers
I have seen someone let go for misbehavior in spite of an assertion (at the time) that they were a very high performer. This was not uniformly the policy, and it's not clear to me it was ever actual policy. Susan reports that she was told by other parties that this was the reason - but it is possible she was informed incorrectly.
> the CTO who should have been fired a long time ago for being complicit in other scandals
Could you clarify? I have no idea what you're referring to, and "Thuan Pham scandal" doesn't turn up anything that looks relevant for me in Google.
I have tremendous respect for Thuan. With regards to this particular issue, it's clear he could have done better. At least, he missed a chance to fix this. We'll see what a more thorough examination reveals.
> but somehow you do believe Susan Fowler
I believe Susan Fowler honestly reported her experiences. I believe Susan Fowler because disbelieving her misses a chance to fix things. And I believe Susan Fowler because I don't see her having anything to gain - and plenty to lose - in offering us that chance. I appreciate her bravery.
> how exactly are you intent on holding management accountable?
I am intent on paying attention to the process, looking for honesty and integrity and meaningful change in response, and being vocal where it is lacking. Employees are asking - and Travis is answering - tough questions at the weekly staff meeting. If you have constructive suggestions, I welcome them.
> Should everyone involved be let go, including the CTO and CEO? Do you really believe stuff like this bypasses them?
Some kinds of involvement clearly deserve termination, but at this point we're still learning about what went on. There are possible answers that would have them out or me quitting in protest - and there are possible answers that wouldn't.
> No, you have this backwards. Ohanian was Pao's boss.
You based this on what specific information? The only insider information I read about this suggested that Pao was Ohanian's boss. Regardless, I still assert as CEO, Pao is the one responsible, and she had options to not put herself in that position.
> Weigh that against a CEO who accepted a resignation and re-hired for the position based on a single email alone without so much as a follow up call.
That is the part that smells to me too. I don't know any CEO, manager, or person otherwise responsible for employees, that would take a single resignation email as the one and only thing to start the paperwork and rehire a replacement.
The cynic in me, say that the CEO was unhappy with performance and/or the leave. Used his posistion to gain control and send the mail to get the ball rolling.
If it wasn't him, I would fully expect him to launch an investigations right then and there when it became apperant that someone spoofed an email. IT should have all the logs necessary to figure out where the email was send from.
> I named both the Pixsy employee who threatened me and their supervisor, who apologized but refused to answer my questions about how these threats came to be sent, and whether Pixsy was a company that made a practice out of copyleft trolling.
They did apologize and his demands were rejected because, really, it was more like a fishing expedition. He then escalated the situation because he couldn't accept their apology and thought it was part of a wider conspiracy. They responded in kind. So much drama over nothing.
> As far as I am concerned I am thinking of suing, but if you simply paid out my leave I would be satisfied.
You know to many that type of language would be interpreted as a threat. You might also take into consideration the CEO may legitimately believe the company has done no wrong in this case. Not all people/companies respond to threats by getting scared, many fight back.
The allegation which is being made, is that the company accepted a fake/fraudulent letter. It will be highly unlikely that a company would openly admit to be such a victim, unless it was in their best interest.
> If the CEO is as honest as the question makes him out to be, this should be enough, and it's much simpler.
This is business, a CEO's job is to protect the business not kowtowing to someone who is threatening to sue.
This is not a whistleblowing case, it is a case of wanton destruction by a former employee.
> That line of reasoning doesn't set the bar for what's right and wrong.
Dragging in all kinds of stuff that has no bearing on the case doesn't set the bar either.
> Are you sure no matter what the company did?
Yep.
> What if the CEO threatened the ex-admins family?
> Or if the ex-admin found child porn on the CEOs computer?
In that case you go to the police and file a report with them. Hurting the company, the employees and customers when your target is the CEO is ineffective and illegal besides.
> There's a fine line between right and wrong in most situations.
No, it's crystal clear that this was wrong in any way you would like to look at it.
> The most egregious acts of disobedience can be seen as defiance or foolish. It's not for you to decide- especially when there isn't any context to this whole situation.
This is a criminal act, pure and simple. If the CEO did anything illegal this guy/girl is an idiot for doing something illegal himself.
>I can only assume there is more to the story or the CEO was having a particularly frustrating/upsetting day because otherwise this is a pretty dodgy response.
Another post in this discussion notes that this isn't the first time the CEO has acted this way over petty things.
> You cannot have a trigger happy fire an important ceo over some to me is a small trust issue
Well, if that was the case it actually was fine but there is no hard proof that it was like that and if it was they messed it up. So failure on all counts.
> What are your thoughts on him being pretty much the only one not being able to see that the feature he pushed would create massive problems with account impersonation?
He moved too fast and everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is to correct mistakes, which he did.
> What about him retweeting obvious misinformation?
It was dumb and he recognized that. He removed it within hours.
> Proudly mocking his new employees with factually wrong understanding of the product?
IMO it was wrong to bring it up publicly, but it wasn't factually wrong. It was information from the server team.
What would you have done in the situation? You're the CEO of a company. You have someone in a glorified PR position. That same person has caused massive blowback by not once, not twice, but multiple times showing extreme poor judgement. This person then makes a public statement saying your company "supports" that person thereby ostensibly pulling the company into the fight. What would you do?
It would take all of five seconds for me to ship that person out.
Even if you are working on a three strike position; all three strikes came in the last few days.
This has nothing to do with the DDoS. This has to do with having someone in a position representing the company to your target audience and not just doing a poor job of it, but doing such a trainwreck of a job that the company's PR needs to spin up to defcon 1.
Doesn't that person seem unfit for the job?
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