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That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

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Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#121

Post by yuliyp »

camillomiller wrote: post #77
King-Aaron wrote: post #18

> Being as I’m not an idiot Well, I'm afraid to say after reading this, I have to disagree. Common sense would have made me consider not posting an inflammatory tweet like that, to be perfectly honest.

Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression? It is factual that one person was touting instruments of war, but by most comments here that’s seen as “the right” because it’s representing “business”. What you’re all saying implicitly is that the rights of a corporate employer to make money are always above the freedom to personal expression, by contract, by law…

This isn't anything particularly corporate. If you worked at a mom and pop restaurant and mouthed off with this level of vitriol about the customers you should expect to be fired.

I don't think there's any discussion about whether the OP had the right to make such comments. The employer also had a right to no longer employ them. Nobody's personal expression rights were violated, just the expression had consequences.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#122

Post by ben_w »

wiseowise wrote: post #29
js98 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Being technically right isnt the only thing which matters in an employer/employee context. They (the employee) represent the company

They’re not even technically right. Leave your edgy fursona (is that how they call it?) to your personal life.

Ponies are kinda their own thing, despite the slight overlap with furries.

No idea what noun the former use for the thing, though there's probably a dozen here who will add that detail…

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#123

Post by grimgoldgo »

kristiandupont wrote: post #104
grimgoldgo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fuck you" has so many different tones, and is so ubiquitous. It can be playful, jocular, intense, deadly serious, all over the place. Fuck you is not, by default, a personal attack, imo. It's also almost certainly culturally different on different coasts, online, in person, etc. A tweet is like, nothing.

I find it very hard to believe that you are arguing in good faith at this point.

I have had a different life from you. I've been homeless, I've been wealthy, I've lived in many cultures and communities from suburbs to communes. I've worked tech I've worked as day labor moving soil by hand. I guarantee you that language (and especially the use of curse words), varies wildly.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#124

Post by galkk »

grimgoldgo wrote: post #57
SuchAnonMuchWow wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the previous tweet said "fuck you", yes it is an attack.

"Fuck you" has so many different tones, and is so ubiquitous. It can be playful, jocular, intense, deadly serious, all over the place. Fuck you is not, by default, a personal attack, imo. It's also almost certainly culturally different on different coasts, online, in person, etc. A tweet is like, nothing.

Let me guess, you're of those people who say that phrases like "kill all men" do NOT mean "kill all men", but something ?

At best this is extreme playing with words, and at worst this is just mental gymnastics

Fuck you is fuck you, this is rude and as personal as it gets.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#125

Post by Apocryphon »

oefrha wrote: post #38
WheatMillington wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. The author seems so incredibly obnoxious and insufferable, I don't understand how anyone could work with them. This should have been a lesson on the toxic and pointless nature of social media, but the author seems to have misread the situation entirely.

All the fist bumps and cheers in these social media echo chambers won’t help them reflect. Unlike the OP who casually tagged some tech guy on Twitter and said “I’d shake your hand but the blood never washes off” (what the actual fuck), reasonable people won’t engage them on social media and tell them how incredibly toxic they are.

It would seem that the legal vindication from the NLRB decision on non-disparagement clauses is the true victory.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#126

Post by Firmwarrior »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #48
comprev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key element is the poster was essentially _representing_ their employer at a tech conference. This would be no different than wearing the uniform of a supermarket and going on a political rant with a megaphone.

Genuine question, though (and not "asking just to make a rhetorical point because I've already decided on an answer"): is that really the case? I know the boilerplate "tweets do not represent the views of my employer" thing is a cliche at this point, but I always assumed it was at least partly true. If you're not tweeting directly from AcmeCORP's socials, wouldn't there be some understanding that you're not a direct…

I'm not a tweetin' man myself, but if I were doing business with a company and one of their employees was publicly trash-talking me, I'd probably get pissed and complain to my contacts at that company

I wouldn't explicitly dig around to try and figure out who a pseudonymous person is to try and get them in trouble though

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#127

Post by spondylosaurus »

galkk wrote: post #110
spondylosaurus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question, though (and not "asking just to make a rhetorical point because I've already decided on an answer"): is that really the case? I know the boilerplate "tweets do not represent the views of my employer" thing is a cliche at this point, but I always assumed it was at least partly true. If you're not tweeting directly from AcmeCORP's socials, wouldn't there be some understanding that you're not a direct…

It was literally written in 2nd sentence of the post I was attending KubeCon on behalf of my then-employer, VMware.

Right, but does it follow that "attending on behalf of" equates to "representing the company's official views and opinions"?

I guess what I'm really asking is whether an outside observer would genuinely assume her tweets were indicative of VMware's official stances on anything, or whether they'd assume she was just one cog in their employee machine. Or maybe it's somewhere in the middle.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#128

Post by wiseowise »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #7

Nice read, thanks for sharing. It's interesting (to say the least) that they more or less used a "no talking about politics" clause to fire this woman, even though the other guy's statements about DoD weapons systems are certainly just as political. But he's an Air Force guy, she's a dissident, he's establishment, she's counterculture, so he got to push her out of a job for meeting him on his playing field, so to spe…

> DoD weapons systems are certainly just as political.

It’s not. Maybe insensitive to contra-war, but not political.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#129

Post by parineum »

camillomiller wrote: post #77
King-Aaron wrote: post #18

> Being as I’m not an idiot Well, I'm afraid to say after reading this, I have to disagree. Common sense would have made me consider not posting an inflammatory tweet like that, to be perfectly honest.

Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression? It is factual that one person was touting instruments of war, but by most comments here that’s seen as “the right” because it’s representing “business”. What you’re all saying implicitly is that the rights of a corporate employer to make money are always above the freedom to personal expression, by contract, by law…

> I reiterate that you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom.

Nah, she should have quit and exercised her personal freedom to work for an employer she doesn't think is a war criminal. _That's_ how capitalism works, vote with your labor/dollar. Instead, she fought tooth and nail to keep that corporate job and the blood money that came with it.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#130

Post by jossclimb »

ben_w wrote: post #94
constantly wrote: post #4

I would have fired this person as soon as humanly possible for basically (actually) telling customers of the company to go F themselves, and making horribly insensitive and inappropriate jokes at their expense. imho the point of this article seems to be to tell the story where big bad VMWare or the target of VMWare’s employee’s ire stomped on poor VMWare employee, but I think it makes the employee look bad. I would a…

I'm not a free speech absolutist[0], but if there's one speech one ought to be free to do, it's to write mean things about a government body (or deals with one) in a country that has a constitutional right to free speech. [0] neither is the US, despite what it says; I am however a free-speech maximalist , and the differences between these positions includes but is not limited to acknowledging that some speech chills…

she has free speech, and they are free to fire her too.
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