Update on an Employee Matter • Hacker News Board

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#151

Post by throwaway_6142 » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

chandra381 wrote: post #148

throwaway_6142 wrote: post #137

The employee who was first fired was an Antifa sympathizer had a history of harassing anybody who didn't align 100% with him politically, calling anybody to the right of Josef Stalin a Nazi, and generally trying to turn the workplace into a political battlefield at every chance. He also tried to intimidate the company by threating legal action and public defamation of the company when he didn't get his way. The other…

Are you a GitHub employee? Otherwise what is the purpose of this really weird and ad-hominem rant

How is it ad-hominem?

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#152

Post by Griffinsauce » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

odiroot wrote: post #128

biermic wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent from the events: The way Github employees communicate with each other makes me kind of uncomfortable. In the companies I've worked here in Europe, such discussions just would not happen in a cooperate chat room.

Yes, we don't take calling anyone "Nazi" lightly. Well, at least level-headed people don't. It's disrespectful to the people who were imprisoned, tortured and exterminated by the real Nazis.

This is a confusing statement. When you say "there are nazis" when there are nazis (among a bigger group) that is just a factual statement. The disrespect is in not taking the threat seriously.

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#153

Post by yongjik » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

In HN, I've been seeing way more comments supporting the "freedom of speech" for those who stormed the Capitol, compared to other sites. (That might tell more about what sites I visit, but whatever.) So far I chalked it up to the strong libertarian bent of an average HN user - some people really believe in absolute freedom of speech. While I don't necessarily agree, I can live with that.

...And then I see multiple comments defending a company's decision to fire someone for one slack comment.

Makes me wonder if people just want their side to win.

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#154

Post by relbeek2 » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #144

londons_explore wrote: post #17

"We did something wrong which we don't want to talk about, and as part of an agreement to save ourselves from a lawsuit we are now apologising publicly for that bad thing we did and we promise not to do that bad thing again"

And we won't even give the name of the person who's taking personal responsibility, we'll just quietly scrub her name from the "leadership" page. Some anonymous person is taking personal responsibility and keeping her name out of the news so she can get a CHRO job somewhere else. https://github.com/about/leadership http://web.archive.org/web/20210101021219/https://github.com...

It’s not ethical to post the persons name, and potentially even illegal.

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#155

Post by ratww » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

chanakya wrote: post #138

jakelazaroff wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that at the time, in the immediate vicinity, there were significantly more Nazis “out there” than usual.

We don't know that, no one has counted. There were tens of thousands of people there, how many were Nazis? We don't know how many of them are there in the US, for that matter. What we do know is that they have no real cultural influence or power. That's why calling them out as particularly dangerous is an act of politics. It attempts to smear political opponents by grouping them with evil figures like Nazis, white su…

There were people with using nazi symbols in the protest. People wearing nazi symbols are historically violent to certain groups of people. That's enough reason to alert people in the vicinity about it.

At my work's Slack I get snow alerts, heat wave alerts, lockdown alerts. All those can be politicised depending on the audience, but are still highly appropriate to be had on a company's Slack channel.

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#156

Post by Griffinsauce » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #130

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that denying there are Nazis?

If you read the full sentence in the article, you will note that it continues by saying that the label is "slandering." Something has to be untrue for it to be slander. Therefore, by saying that labeling people in the crowd as Nazis is slander, it denies that there were Nazis in the crowd.

That employee is taking the position that "there are" is equal to "all those people are", the same flawed logic is being used as a premise by a lot of commenters here.

It's so blatently wrong that it's hard to assume good faith.

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#157

Post by pc86 » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

It's a good thing Nat took the time to tell us that GitHub condemns the attack on the US Capitol. We might not know otherwise.

I mean seriously, why do corporations feel the need to say this nonsense? Are we really at the point where a corporation needs to waste time to tell us "hey y'all, in case you weren't sure, we don't actually support an armed insurrection attempting to stop the democratic transfer of power, and lynch a sitting Vice President."

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#158

Post by pothos » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #134

odiroot wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we don't take calling anyone "Nazi" lightly. Well, at least level-headed people don't. It's disrespectful to the people who were imprisoned, tortured and exterminated by the real Nazis.

As a member of the group of people who were imprisoned, tortured and exterminated by the “real” Nazis, I’d much rather be warned that their successors were involved in an ongoing terrorist attack in the immediate vicinity than tiptoe around the issue to avoid making conservatives uncomfortable.

All over social media (https://twitter.com/jlazaroff) and on this very website, you rail against white people, you rail against white people having too much wealth, you rail against white people having too much power, and you rail against white people having too much speech.

Yet consistently, you become furious whenever anyone makes a similar assertion about Jewish people.

Why should non-Jewish people continue to tolerate your tribal behavior? You're basically a walking, talking Nazi caricature of a subversive Jew. You can do better.

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#159

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #121

babelfish wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you fire a Jewish employee for (rightfully) calling out that Nazis were present at last weeks insurrection, but not folks who make jokes like “Hitler gave the Jews free healthcare” (per the Verge article another commenter posted), there better be consequences at the VP level

Yeah, Github sure sounds like a lovely company to work for, and tone is set at the top.

[deleted]

Re: Update on an Employee Matter

#160

Post by jedberg » Sun, Jan 17, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #153

In HN, I've been seeing way more comments supporting the "freedom of speech" for those who stormed the Capitol, compared to other sites. (That might tell more about what sites I visit, but whatever.) So far I chalked it up to the strong libertarian bent of an average HN user - some people really believe in absolute freedom of speech. While I don't necessarily agree, I can live with that. ...And then I see multiple co…

It's perfectly reasonable to believe in freedom of speech in the public forum but a set of rules and decorum at the workplace.

The two should be separate. When people really complain is when someone faces consequences for their public speech at their workplace. But we're still humans and we still care about who we associate with.