Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#221

Post by waterhouse » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #186

waterhouse wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also told the following rationale: If elections are decided entirely by popular vote, then candidates are incentivized to campaign in population centers, and have no incentive to ever visit sparsely populated states. (Like, bringing your margin from 70% to 85% of 4 million people is worth more than going from 0% to 100% of 400k people.)

That only makes sense if you believe that land area is the appropriate unit to attempt to equalize political influence over, rather than people. If you think the people are who should have political influence in a democracy, rather than units of land, then it should be desirable that politicians campaign to as many people as they reasonably can.

It's not equalizing political influence between states (that is, bringing them into equality), just bringing them somewhat away from inequality. (Also, states don't have equal land area, it's more like political districts.) The electoral college gives votes as a linear combination of "per political district" and "per people", with 435/538 = 80.8% being "per people".

Also, I guess it's the fact of "winner takes all within a state" that disincentivizes candidates from simply drumming up more support within states they've already won, more so than the distribution of votes per state.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#222

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

austhrow743 wrote: post #217

whymauri wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you actually acknowledge them? I think this is fine if you're taking it to heart and actually internalizing the discussion a bit. Otherwise, it's disingenuous. Edit: this is very basic EQ and active listening, not sure why it's controversial to have good social skills.

If you want genuine don't ask people questions where the answer can give them negative backlash at work. Getting upset when someone wont be truthful on things with you on touchy subjects at work is like being upset when someone wont be truthful with you on touchy subjects when you're pointing a gun at them.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#223

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

dvtrn wrote: post #53

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…

And he seems from replies and subsequent tweets to still be taking shots at the former coworker. I passively wonder if there wasn’t already some history between the two we just aren’t privy to

Or this guy could just be a total asshole. Think of it another way: If you so demand that everyone post messages of support for your political stance, those messages completely lose all meaning. Does anyone in North Korea really give that much of a shit about all the praise for their "Dear Leader"? No, they just don't want to be killed or sent to a prison camp.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#224

Post by rumanator » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

mgleitub wrote: post #16

nsainsbury wrote: post #4

I think a key phrase here is "he was dismissed for publicly challenging a colleague’s silence". In other words, he publicly harassed a colleague who (for what could be any number of perfectly valid reasons) preferred not to publicly state their beliefs. That would seem to me to be an eminently reasonable reason to fire someone. If you go around publicly harassing your colleagues to publicly state their political opin…

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…

> This is specifically targeting an individual front-end engineer at FB, which in my own estimation crosses the line from criticism of executives or general policy, to specifically trying to instigate public outrage against a co-worker.

More importantly, it sounds like he was bullying colleagues to force them to comply with his personal desires on how to do activism by proxy.

Worse, he was trying to force colleagues to risk losing their job in the process just so that they could cater to his whims.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#225

Post by DenisM » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

clairity wrote: post #183

adventured wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have the numbers to impose the authoritarianism they seek (to fully remake things in the way they see fit), so the rampant threats and intimidation are meant to force joining. The best way to accomplish that, is to threaten a person's livelihood, which threatens their ability to exist. They started by just doing social ostracising, social threats of exclusion, and now they've moved on to targeting liveliho…

> “The malignant dictatorship of social media rage in the US is becoming insufferable. It's probably going to require government regulation to stop it.” you know you can just not tune in, right? it’s not coercive in any way, unlike said dictatorship or government regulation. amplification of voice is not a civil right.

You can easily find yourself dragged into situation where activists at your workplace demand you sign a letter, or else you will be branded . If you depend on these people in any way, you will be in trouble. And it's the social media that turned your coworkers that way.

These days you don't have to go to social media to find trouble - the social media comes to you.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#226

Post by guerrilla » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

sdinsn wrote: post #85

draw_down wrote: post #2

I'm sure the free speech brigade will be along any second now, to plead this person's cause. Yep, aaaaany second now.

You don't have freedom of speech protections against your private employer. You only have protection against government action. And there is no government action in this story.

Which is really a shame indeed.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#227

Post by scarmig » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

lefstathiou wrote: post #151

baddox wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not mob rule, that's completely and absolutely how the legal US government operates. Those aren't mutually exclusive. Middle school civics class explanations of the electoral college are fine. You can understand the reasons the electoral college was created and still oppose the fact that there have been multiple recent cases where the electoral college went against the popular vote. And, not that it's partic…

It could be argued the electoral college is designed to prevent mob rule by preventing would be presidents from getting elected just by pandering to the “mobs” of people living in high population states like California and Texas

Though it doesn't prevent Presidents from getting elected by pandering to the mobs living in Oklahoma and Kentucky.

The issue with fighting mob majority rule with minority rule is that there's no reason a minority is itself any better or non-moblike than a majority. It's trivial for me to select a different minority whose votes are allowed to count that gives totally opposite results than what exists now. The one advantage of having government be determined by a majority of all people is that you can't slice and dice "all people" to be a particular biased subset of people to get particular outcomes.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#228

Post by skissane » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

catalogia wrote: post #209

baddox wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, it's still not mob rule, by the virtue of the fact that mob rule is necessarily non-legal, while the electoral college is the essence of "legal". Okay. I'm not attached to the particular semantics of "mob rule," but if you define it deliberately such that it doesn't apply in this scenario, then of course it doesn't apply. I just meant, very simply, that it's rule by someone other than who the people expres…

The "mob" in "mob rule" does not refer to a mafia. Perhaps that's the source of this confusion?

Indeed, it comes from Latin “mobile vulgus”, which means roughly “easily swayed common people”. “mobile” is of course the origin of the English word “mobile”, but the thing being easily moved here is the crowd’s feelings and opinions. “vulgus” is source of the English word “vulgar”, but less pejorative - the masses, the crowd, the common or ordinary people, the non-elite

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#229

Post by dvtrn » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

whymauri wrote: post #204

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.

But do you actually acknowledge them? I think this is fine if you're taking it to heart and actually internalizing the discussion a bit. Otherwise, it's disingenuous. Edit: this is very basic EQ and active listening, not sure why it's controversial to have good social skills.

Acknowleding someone’s opinions and feelings can be as simple as being quiet, letting them speak, giving them room to express themselves without interruption, objection objection or reprisal. You don’t need to automatically alter your course of action just to merely recognize and acknowledge something someone’s said, sometimes just shutting up and being deferential is enough.

“Thank you for your opinion but I’m going another way” is no more of a failure than establishing any other decent and respectable boundaries between peoples.

Manners maketh the man (or woman, or however an individual chooses to self-identify).

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#230

Post by rumanator » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:50 AM UTC

holler wrote: post #38

rubber_duck wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ...

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.

> Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo.

I'm not sure we should mark this down as a political and cultural climate thing. I'm more convinced the guy was simply an asshole and it so happens that he felt strongly about politics.