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Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

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Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#251

Post by chrischen »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #189
ndespres wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Hawaii example was rhetorical, but you can find examples of Americans being fired for supporting BDS movement or speaking against Israel occupation of Palestine, we even have laws against doing business with BDS supporters in some states. So we do evidently care enough about these sorts of disputes to make laws about them.

"I think the Hawaii example was rhetorical" And my point was that it was a very poor analogy. "we even have laws against doing business with BDS supporters in some states" Link? I see some laws against state governments doing business with those companies, but nothing that says that a private business (like Marriott) has to fire supporters of that movement, nor do we have laws that prohibit those companies from doing…

US government banned contractors using China-manufactured electronics.

You can make up all sorts of excuses about how it’s for national security, but from the otherside it looks like the US is simply unfairly preventing a Chinese company from competing in a foreign market that it has not natural entitlement to.

Whether or not the reasons for it are true, the reality is it has real financial consequences for Chinese electronics companies, even if they are fully legitimate and with good intentions. Thus it’s an example of how the US is potentially using political power to suppress foreign influence.

Here is a link for your convenience too: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/12/us-government-agencies-zte...

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#252

Post by quadrangle »

gnicholas wrote: post #217
cylinder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real story is he has no employment rights because he's in America and he's "at will." They can dismiss him because they don't like his lunch selection that day and he has no rights. That's at will employment. This type of situation plays out all over the country everyday.

I see this pro-worker sentiment on HN pretty regularly. But I also see the "hire slow, fire fast" mantra. Are these views held by different people, or by the same people regarding different situations (like working for big companies versus startups)?

different people most likely is my guess

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#253

Post by quadrangle »

sandov wrote: post #34

What a crappy website. Autoplay video and whenever I click on the text below the image, the image comes up and covers what I was reading.

I visited it with a ton of blocking/privacy plugins including NoScript, it was all broken site. I clicked Firefox's "reader" feature and read the article. It was a clear, effective read.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#254

Post by bArray »

For those saying something along the lines of "should we expect a massive reaction every time a few people get upset?" - just look at the UK and the Nazi pug story [1]. It seems as though a mass of outraged people on social media can have very real life consequences as there's no evidence for it stopping anytime soon.

Personally I think this is more towards a vigilante mob culture and in most cases it's counterproductive to throw people under the bus. The real failure here was Marriott failing to envision somebody one day accidentally pressing a button in "error" (at least to cause negative PR). They've set a dangerous standard for themselves that large negative PR should result in job losses.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/09/nazi-pug-man-arr...

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#255

Post by ad_hominem »

cylinder wrote: post #237
KyeRussell wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proponents of a largely deregulated labour market love talking about France. As someone working in Australia—a country with labour laws that are more sane than France (and definitely the U.S.)—instantly bringing up France just tends to stink of a false dichotomy and a line of rhetoric from people that try to justify the U.S.'s unjustifiably unfair labour laws. I suggest that people who aren't familiar with Australia'…

I'm the GP who brought up this topic. I actually am American and now working at a managerial level in Australia. When I ran into trouble with someone on my team performing at a poor level, I was a bit exasperated with these regulations and how they required me to put him on a performance improvement plan rather than immediately dismiss. I was frustrated, but it forced me to talk it out with him. We did a bit of a res…

Plenty of white collar businesses in the US use performance improvement plans. But that would be a ridiculous remedy in a business with thin margins like a restaurant - some businesses need the freedom to hire and fire quicker.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#256

Post by mistermann »

emodendroket wrote: post #229
corobo wrote: post #21

The meat of the story is that Omaha man worked for Marriott hotels on customer support. Their support system allows their agents to like tweets. The man appears to have inadvertently clicked like on a tweet while dealing with a large influx of support messages (due to a promo going on) thanking Marriott for listing Tibet as its own country which was a huge no-no due to Mariott's presence in China. Execs fire him as a…

Are we really expecting social media employees to be familiar with and adept at geopolitics?

Not kissing China's feet in this case could have cost Marriot many millions of dollars, so yes.

Welcome to the future of humanity, I guess we'll see if everyone is so casual about this type of thing when it's them who crossed the petulant monster child the West has created.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#257

Post by tempestn »

banned1 wrote: post #79
intopieces wrote: post #25

Even if it wasn't an accident -- even if he saw the Tweet, and on behalf of Marriott and in full intention of broadcasting such, he clicked "Like" on this tweet, it's completely insane he would be fired for it. The tweet exhibits a positive sentiment. I would not expect most people to know that this sentiment matters to China. This is another example of China exerting influence on the open web, and it's shameful that…

Employees in social media teams should not be clicking LIKE in anything. It’s too risky to the business, and it conflates your personal preferences with corporate business goals. You cannot be yourself on social media anymore. You just have to be inactive, a fake, or pretend to be like what the echo chamber asks you to be.

Clicking 'like' on tweets positive toward the brand is a common job for employees in social media teams. Making connections around the brand is the whole job of those employees. (Not saying whether or not he should have liked this particular tweet, or whether it was an accident or whatever—just that it's common and part of the job to like a tweet.)

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#258

Post by mistermann »

tinza123 wrote: post #170
intopieces wrote: post #25

Even if it wasn't an accident -- even if he saw the Tweet, and on behalf of Marriott and in full intention of broadcasting such, he clicked "Like" on this tweet, it's completely insane he would be fired for it. The tweet exhibits a positive sentiment. I would not expect most people to know that this sentiment matters to China. This is another example of China exerting influence on the open web, and it's shameful that…

It is not that hard to imagine being fired by "clicking" likes, let's not oversimplify like this. Official tweeter accounts carry weights. Plus this is not about China at all, what if this is a Nazi tweet? An ISIS tweet? An anti-LGBT tweet? It's either the company's way of dealing with PR problems, or the employee's misconduct, but not about China.

> Plus this is not about China at all

Am I misunderstanding you? How can you say this story is not about China?

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#259

Post by yur83838 »

jliptzin wrote: post #246
KyeRussell wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proponents of a largely deregulated labour market love talking about France. As someone working in Australia—a country with labour laws that are more sane than France (and definitely the U.S.)—instantly bringing up France just tends to stink of a false dichotomy and a line of rhetoric from people that try to justify the U.S.'s unjustifiably unfair labour laws. I suggest that people who aren't familiar with Australia'…

Can you terminate employees because you need to save money (i.e. laying them off)?

yup, redundancies can be used to dismiss employees. The caveat is that you can't rehire for that role for a certain period of time. This is simply to avoid the problem of companies claiming random employees are no longer needed.

It is not uncommon for smaller employers to fire a manager, and hire a new supervisor though. Same job - different title.

I'm unsure if it's been challenged at the FWC - I doubt it would stand.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#260

Post by greglindahl »

yorwba wrote: post #220
greglindahl wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of young people in France are on short-term contracts, precisely because long-term employees are hard to fire. Imagine that you are a startup in France, with long-term employees, and suddenly you realize you screwed up, and you have to cut your expenses in half. Today, that means your startup is dead and all employees are screwed, but in the US, your startup continues with a much lower valuation. Which is bette…

> you are a startup in France, with long-term employees, and suddenly you realize you screwed up, and you have to cut your expenses in half. You dismiss employees equivalent to half of your expenses on economic grounds, and after the appropriate notice period (1 month for employees with 6 months - 2 years tenure [1]) you now have half the expenses. If that's not fast enough, I doubt your startup would have survived f…

OK, no problem, I am convinced because Europe has tons of successful startups.

That works great until the next time I am interviewed by French TV about why the EU doesn't have as many startups as Silicon Valley.

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