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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?

#71

Post by rpgmaker »

fulafel wrote: post #12
littletinman wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is another one of those "I got fired but I won't tell you why" posts. There was another post on here not too long ago about a guy, who for very vague reasons, got fired from Google. 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. It doesn't help anyone else because we don't know what mistake you made that we should avoid. It…

> 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.

I assume that FB calls "jaywalking" a specific kind of policy violation so I think his/her boss could still identify anon. I still think there is a lot of value to his post since the question was "What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?" not why. The reason why anon was fired is secondary.

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

#72

Post by kelukelugames »

uniformlyrandom wrote: post #67
kelukelugames wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like he violated a privacy issue. Probably looked up a friend or celebrity. At my last job, a company that sells houses, people looked up each other's data for fun. I was kind of annoyed that one of the college hires found how much I paid for my house but that was the norm. Okay, I should probably specify that I didn't tell anyone my address. People don't even know my legal name. I worked at and bought my h…

Home sales is open data in US. You can look it up at Zillow. All you need is an address.

I certainly didn't tell him my address.

Right now I can't tell if people are excited to tell me there are way to uncover my home address or they think those methods are socially appropriate and not an invasion of my privacy.

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

#73

Post by SeanDav »

empressplay wrote: post #34
metaphorm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

In the Quora article, there is a reply by an existing Facebook senior manager, who confirms the zero tolerance policy, even stating that people get fired at Facebook for accidentally breaking a policy they were either not aware of, or had forgotten about. Facebook really do apply the policy that ignorance of the law (rules) is not an excuse.

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

#74

Post by kelukelugames »

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.

I suggest understanding Geller Mann amnesia effect. It's very true of Internet comments, especially about tech companies.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

― Michael Crichton

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

#75

Post by forgottenpass »

propellerhat wrote: post #62

My opinion: This person used someone else's electronic credentials to perform a task without asking for permission. This person did not have the proper level of access on their own account to perform this action, so they used someone else's (likely the "VP" who they were working with on that project). This would/should get you fired at many places.

This person used someone else's electronic credentials to perform a task without asking for permission. [...] This would/should get you fired at many places.

You mean that thing that happens all the time at every office?

I have a post-it note on which my boss wrote his password for me, specifically because he was sick of my asking whenever I needed to be granted access to new things. I can't think of a single job I've that involved computers where I wasn't given access to user accounts that were not mine for reasons of expediency in the face of inflexable permissions systems.

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

#76

Post by LukeB_UK »

> I felt stupid for not planning that I would have to give up my devices, which were my primary devices and hadn't been backed up in a while. I had a lot of personal things there that I never got back.

Don't rely on your employer's devices as your personal primary devices. Things like this may happen, or they might want to claim ownership of everything done on those devices. Hell they could even be tracking what you're doing on them.

Same goes the other way, your devices are yours, if you need a computer/phone/tablet for your job, your work should provide one. I see too many people happy to use their own devices at work so they don't have to ask for things.

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

#77

Post by CocaKoala »

forgetsusername wrote: post #8

> For instance, on harassment: telling a coworker of either gender that you like their clothes can be reported as harassment What a terrible society we're developing for ourselves.

I agree; it's absolutely a shame that people need to be explicitly told that harassment can take the form of compliments, and that saying something nice about somebody does not give you a free pass about the content of your statement.

I'm not sure this is something we're developing, though; I'm pretty sure society has been this way for a while. If anything, it's good that it's being explicitly spelled out, because hopefully that means the improper behaviours will start to extinguish.

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

#78

Post by metaphorm »

kelukelugames wrote: post #74
metaphorm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suggest understanding Geller Mann amnesia effect. It's very true of Internet comments, especially about tech companies. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often,…

are you meaning to imply that the author of the Quora post did not understand the reasons behind his/her own termination?

I hope you realize that the Quora post linked here is NOT the second hand account of a journalist, but was instead a primary source from an involved party.

I don't think the Geller-Mann effect applies to this kind of situation and I find it more than a little strange that you're suggesting it would.

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

#79

Post by CocaKoala »

justinsaccount wrote: post #48
lazyant wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, bypassing procedure was my thought. This sentence says a lot: > If a week prior, I had typed a few different keystrokes, I would never have been in that room. So I doubt it was something like "Looked at a users private information"

Why does that make you think it's not looking at user's private information?

He's running a test, and he wants to make sure his new function retrieves data properly. He can search for his own name, but out of idle curiosity and boredom (he's seen his own data a million times, he wants something visually distinct on his screen), he searches for the name of a friend of his that he hung out with last week. It's only a few different keystrokes to type the alternate name, but now he's accessing private information and gets canned.

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

#80

Post by awakeasleep »

nilkn wrote: post #64
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…

What's scary (if the offense was indeed access to user data) is not that this one person did it, but that this person insists that it's as common at Facebook as jaywalking is in the real world.

Which seems impossible, considering an automated system flagged him for this level of scrutiny.
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