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Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

reuters.com

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Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#71

Post by dekhn »

dlp211 wrote: post #46
holler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. Personal politics should be just that, personal.

> where mob rule is becoming the status quo. The Government of the US is currently (mostly) controlled by a party that received fewer votes.

That's not mob rule, that's completely and absolutely how the legal US government operates. Overturning the electoral college would require a constitutional amendment, which is no trivial task.

Mob rule is entirely different: it refers to rule imposed from outside the law, possibly by a large group.

Also, the "fewer votes" really only applies to the presidency, not the senate, house, or governors.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#72

Post by nemothekid »

_b3dj wrote: post #30

> “Intentionally not making a statement is already political,” Dale wrote in the tweet No it’s not. And this reminds me of the Dictatorship of the small minority [0] from NN Taleb. There are small intolerant minorities who are extremely vocal on certain matters to the point their opinions resemble a dictatorship [0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Almost every day on HN I read that multiple flavors of "FB/Palantir/Google/MS engineers who do nothing while Zuckerberg/USG/China invades more and more of our privacy are complicit in the cog that is Zuckerberg's ambition", but when it comes to race relations, suddenly engineers should be allowed to work in silence.

I understand there's nuance, but I only hope the hivemind considers this nuance the next time they pile on Amazon engineers who decide to build facial recognition databases for the NSA.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#73

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

rmellow wrote: post #56
baby wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you weren't getting downvoted because I was wondering the same, and I'm happy someone asked so that I could learn the answer.

Seconded. Us non-Americans watching what's going on can't be expected to know something an unremarkable American cop said 50 years ago. Is it such a well known phrase among Americans or something that most people just learned was a thing?

Even in the US it wasn't well known - most people just learned it was a thing.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#74

Post by [deleted] »

nemothekid wrote: post #72
_b3dj wrote: post #30

> “Intentionally not making a statement is already political,” Dale wrote in the tweet No it’s not. And this reminds me of the Dictatorship of the small minority [0] from NN Taleb. There are small intolerant minorities who are extremely vocal on certain matters to the point their opinions resemble a dictatorship [0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Almost every day on HN I read that multiple flavors of "FB/Palantir/Google/MS engineers who do nothing while Zuckerberg/USG/China invades more and more of our privacy are complicit in the cog that is Zuckerberg's ambition", but when it comes to race relations, suddenly engineers should be allowed to work in silence. I understand there's nuance, but I only hope the hivemind considers this nuance the next time they pil…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#75

Post by dekhn »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #32
_rn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is a strange and pretty misleading headline. Here’s the primary source tweet: https://twitter.com/aweary/status/1271522288752455680?s=21

I really think it crosses the line to being a dishonest headline. Reuters has to know that people will misunderstand it as an accusation that the employee was fired because he protested.

This is the MO of news journalism (well, at least a subset). There's a narrative that sells ("big corp = bad, fire person for complaining to zuck") but they still typically include a little detail in the article ("actually fired for harrassing coworker") below the lede.

I don't think I've ever seen a newspaper that hasn't done this.

[edit: if you want to see some articles about misleading headlines, see https://daily.jstor.org/the-incredibly-true-story-of-fake-he... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/youll-cry-when-you... ]

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#76

Post by baddox »

rubber_duck wrote: post #35
mgleitub wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 su…

He decides because he believes something strongly it permits him to publicly attack someone he works with... Imagine having to deal with this guy in a team when he has a strong opinion on something the team disagrees with ...

I can easily imagine dealing with a tweet that asks me to do something, and then another tweet that says that I didn't do the thing that was asked of me. That doesn't sound too bad to me. What am I missing?

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#77

Post by acruns »

PiggySpeed wrote: post #36
dvtrn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kill em with kindness. “Thanks for letting me know how you feel about this, I consider this a valuable opinion and think deeply on it”. Then go ahead and do whatever you were going to do anyway, but at least let them know you’ve heard and acknowledged what they had to say. Sometimes folks just want to be acknowledged, that doesn’t seem like too much of a burden.

I this this is a good approach that I've used before. I think it starts to crumble when people start to demand you to do stuff like posting on your social media or showing them donation receipts.

I have found that having a serial killer resting face precludes me from these type of workplace bullies (only kinda joking).

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#78

Post by sdinsn »

baddox wrote: post #64
PiggySpeed wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting a new job soon and I'm trying to figure out how I'll handle these "silence is complicit" characters. My personal policy is to not discuss political/social issues at work.

If you think that it's not true (that silence is not complicit), then shouldn't you attempt to explain that?

Wanting to be silent at work and thinking that silence is being complicit are both compatible beliefs.

Work isn't your entire life, you can be loud outside of work and yet still be silent at work. Think of the phrase, "Don't shit where you eat".

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#79

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

nemothekid wrote: post #72
_b3dj wrote: post #30

> “Intentionally not making a statement is already political,” Dale wrote in the tweet No it’s not. And this reminds me of the Dictatorship of the small minority [0] from NN Taleb. There are small intolerant minorities who are extremely vocal on certain matters to the point their opinions resemble a dictatorship [0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Almost every day on HN I read that multiple flavors of "FB/Palantir/Google/MS engineers who do nothing while Zuckerberg/USG/China invades more and more of our privacy are complicit in the cog that is Zuckerberg's ambition", but when it comes to race relations, suddenly engineers should be allowed to work in silence. I understand there's nuance, but I only hope the hivemind considers this nuance the next time they pil…

If the Recoil project were contributing to racism in the US, I think we all agree that would be a problem.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#80

Post by JohnBerea »

rmellow wrote: post #56
baby wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you weren't getting downvoted because I was wondering the same, and I'm happy someone asked so that I could learn the answer.

Seconded. Us non-Americans watching what's going on can't be expected to know something an unremarkable American cop said 50 years ago. Is it such a well known phrase among Americans or something that most people just learned was a thing?

I was the one who asked the question and I've lived in the US all my life. I had never heard the phrase or knew that Trump said it until this conversation just now.
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