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What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

quora.com

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Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#31

Post by xyzzy4 »

lazyant wrote: post #26
dnate wrote: post #19

I would be interested in what constitutes as "jaywalking" in a software company. Something everyone does but can be grounds to termination? Can anyone tell me about specific cases?

maybe login in with somebody else's credentials? or some other security-related or procedural stuff that he bypassed to make things easier? using non-authorized (personal) equipment or software? just speculating

One time when I was an intern, I got screamed at by an old-timer technician when he found out I connected a few computers in a lab room to the Internet. Because an Internet connection causes viruses.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#33

Post by finnyspade »

So having interned at Facebook, I find this post confusing. They made it very clear to us during HR onboarding that the only zero tolerance policy was on unauthorized access to user data.

The harassment stuff isn't a zero tolerance thing. They even told us to go ahead and ask out other employees if you're interested, but just don't press if you get a no.

It's pretty clear he accessed data he shouldn't have, and for that a zero-tolerance policy makes total sense.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#34

Post by empressplay »

metaphorm wrote: post #24
empressplay wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally when there's a termination it's because there's a pattern, not a one-off thing. Edit: People who get fired want to believe that they did one "stupid" thing and it was "unfair" they were fired. Hiring a new person and training them up isn't exactly cheap, easy or straightforward. I realise there are exceptions but logic would tend to suggest that in most cases businesses don't fire people for one-off mistake…

did you read the linked Quora post? it pretty explicitly details that Facebook has a whole list of zero-tolerance "violations" that they will fire you for doing even once, without warning.

Legally they need to be "zero-tolerance" policies in order to restrict people's ability to contest firings. But in practice it's expensive to hire people, so while zero-tolerance policies are used to terminate people, it's typically not their first offence (unless another employee has an actionable case related to the employee's behaviour.)

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#36

Post by empressplay »

ebola1717 wrote: post #27
afandian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going by the way the rules were applied in the (somewhat mysterious original post) there's no reason to believe the rules are applied in this way.

Firing employees for minor things is bad for morale & causes high turnover. Especially in software, a company wouldn't want to fire engineers arbitrarily, since it's hard to train new ones & transfer an engineer's knowledge of the codebase. That makes me really doubt his claim that this was "like jaywalking."

Especially if they're shown the door immediately and thus aren't available to train up their replacement. You lose domain knowledge and have to rely on a co-worker or manager to train up a new employee which isn't ideal.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#37

Post by ivanca »

jh123908 wrote: post #23
fulafel wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why you wouldn't disclose why you got fired if you are going to write a post about how you feel after getting fired. He wrote "I won't go into what it was to protect my identity and that of all involved." So the person thinks it would be easy for Facebook or his former coworkers to identify the case if he told us what specific policy violation (s)he was fired for.

He thinks it would be easy to identify him from the cause, even though according to the post many people in the company do it routinely

...is easy to identify him BECAUSE he was fired. A lot of people are caught jaywalking, but only a handful are fined.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#38

Post by chris11 »

hoopism wrote: post #11

If you are considering writing a post like this ask yourself: "Am I comfortable telling people the cause". If the answer is no then you shouldn't write a post like this. I know he mentions that it's for "privacy reasons"... but any rational person is going to conclude that you are not disclosing the reason because it reflects poorly on you and undermines your gripe. Now if you are comfortable disclosing the cause, th…

It could just be that he didn't want to make a post with personally identifiable information. I know if I was in his position I wouldn't really want my former coworkers to immediately think I was the person who wrote that post.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#39

Post by [deleted] »

finnyspade wrote: post #33

So having interned at Facebook, I find this post confusing. They made it very clear to us during HR onboarding that the only zero tolerance policy was on unauthorized access to user data. The harassment stuff isn't a zero tolerance thing. They even told us to go ahead and ask out other employees if you're interested, but just don't press if you get a no. It's pretty clear he accessed data he shouldn't have, and for t…

[deleted]

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#40

Post by throwaway049 »

littletinman wrote: post #7
[deleted] wrote: post #4

[deleted]

To one extreme, this could be a case of "an unsolicited pat on the rear" being perceived by the offender as "a high five" and to the offended "a disturbing invasion or personal space." On other extreme it could be he "chucked a tennis ball and it broke an office window." Everyone's perception these days of the extent/effect of any offense seems to broad that without details... what's the point of articles like these?

How does a high five morph into a pat on the rear? Even if my co-worker was about 10 feet tall that's still terrible hand eye coordination.
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