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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

#231

Post by lelanthran »

spondylosaurus wrote: post #127
galkk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Yes. That's the whole point of "representing your employer at $FOO conf".

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#232

Post by grimgoldgo »

galkk wrote: post #168
grimgoldgo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really, really not. Fuck you has a huge range of meaning. Carlin built several comedy bits around the word Fuck specifically because it was used colloquially so many ways.

Did he took some person, in audience or otherwise public and built entire bit around saying "Fuck you" addressing that person? Carlin's sketches (at least ones that come to my mind, as I really loved to watch Carlin about 10-7 years ago) is irrelevant. When Carlin said "fuck you" he was speaking about phrase, not to someone in particular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqaOLThPg4 There could be different Carlin bits…

I do believe I'm at least attempting good faith here, I just do not find "fuck you" as a tweet, even levelled against me, to be particularly aggressive. Especially such a short message.

I'm likely more terminally online, more cynical, or more desensitized, but I see the two word "fuck you" to be such low effort that it doesn't even rise to the level of notice.

Like, an insult that specifically called out my behaviors or appearance or something and said fuck you? That feels meaningful, that's personal. But like, autocompleting two words flippantly into a tweet is like... Nothing?

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#233

Post by grimgoldgo »

blindriver wrote: post #212
grimgoldgo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Fuck you. EDIT: Just to clarify, I didn't mean that pejoratively, I actually meant it in the supportive context as in: "Fuck you, I support you."

Heh, rules.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#234

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

bbor wrote: post #223
oefrha wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

In what way is the US military analogous to Nazi Germany?

Spoiler alert: It isn't.

And I'm sure I'm far from the only person here who's near relatives died in the holocaust, so this little bit of rhetoric you're employing is grossly offensive.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#235

Post by ben_w »

lelanthran wrote: post #194
ben_w wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Right, understood. But it is the right of every company to have the freedom of association[1] to determine what sort individuals they want to associate with, no? Just because someone has the freed…

Indeed, that's another and more extended example of why I'm a maximalist rather than an absolutist.

In the context of the DoD… if people, online or offline, get to them just by swearing, then North Korea should have saved money and developed an f-bomb instead of an a-bomb.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#236

Post by Pannoniae »

bitwize wrote: post #211
Pannoniae wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily disagree with the substance but I think the logic is very sound here. Saying "you are free to choose another industry to work in." if you don't like a specific aspect of an industry is I think a quite exclusionary and condescending view. Nothing ever improves if everyone just leaves everything ranging from jobs or even entire fields when they don't like some of it. There are many people who want t…

Bringing more bigotry to the industry is not improving it. There was a subtext of "bigots are not welcome here".

Of course, that is not an improvement at all..... god I wish we just left all personal stuff and identity outside work and unrelated hobbies, it would be much easier... I remember when most people only had a username and zero personal information about themselves so everyone was pretty much faceless, so this wasn't as big of a problem.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#237

Post by matheusmoreira »

geocrasher wrote: post #170
paganel wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were not these person's "clients", they were the government clients of the company employing him/her. I would have expected the US employees to still have the freedom to say "fuck you!" to their government, even though said government might be on the list of one employer's clients. More generally, one shouldn't have to give up his/her personal rights to say "fuck you!" to the government once he/she enters an emp…

Just because you retain the right to say F U to your government doesn't mean you have the right to say F U to your employer's customers while acting in the context of such employment.

They absolutely do have that right. They even exercised that right. The government did not send police to their house to arrest them. There are many governments that would.

What they don't have is freedom from consequences. They don't have imnunity from being fired.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#238

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

yumraj wrote: post #154

This sounds exactly like the person who first does something stupid, then instead of accepting their mistake doubles down on it and takes several steps to make it much much worse, and then when has to face the consequences blogs about it with a straight face while trying to get public sympathy. Is there a word for this kind of behavior? For what it’s worth, IMHO, VMWare comes across as extremely mature.

This person came from the Pivotal acquisition, which is saturated with toxic people who don't produce much of value.

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#239

Post by ojhughes »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #153
Firmwarrior wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is also unclear to me what role the author played at VMWare. Random, faceless dev, or an external relations role with a much tighter association to the company.

They were in PonyOps

Re: That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job

#240

Post by preezer »

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…

Jep, I thought the same.
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