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Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

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Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#51

Post by Mikeb85 »

Jormundir wrote: post #42
eigenvector wrote: post #4

The fact that they can come out and say this demonstrates that these employees, the people best able to assess this, don't believe that Eich will retaliate. That Mozilla is and remains a place where any employee can express their views on political issues, even if they know they're contrary to the CEO's. And that destroys any argument for Eich's role as CEO creating a conflict with Mozilla's ability to welcome LGBTQ…

I wouldn't call it a witch hunt. Now every Mozilla employee's work is contributing to Eich's paycheck. The paycheck with which he will (has) donate(d) to oppose gay marriage. If I was a Mozilla employee, this is not something I would want to be contributing to. This argument can obviously be applied to any employee in the company, but it's severely exacerbated when it's applied to the CEO, who's getting a huge payche…

It definitely is a witch hunt. What next? Are you going to fire any employee that goes on vacation to Russia, Turkey, or gasp Cuba? Or anyone that contributes to a charity you don't agree with?

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#52

Post by bentruyman »

cmhamill wrote: post #27

Some very strange reactions in this thread. The idea that this somehow validates the notion that Eich's politics don't affect Mozilla as a workplace seems particularly bizarre, to me. My read on this is that there are employees at Mozilla who feel strongly enough about this to speak publicly, and the most likely reason is because they believe that Eich as CEO will affect their workplace.

He's been CTO since 2005. Now his views will suddenly begin to "affect their workplace"?

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#53

Post by simonster »

simias wrote: post #32
stormcrowsx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich was actively trying to stop what many people think should be a human right. He should face flak, and get a hard time over it, they should threaten his position. Even if they don't get him out of CEO it will make the next idiot that's high up in a company think twice before donating to stop human rights.

Come on, he didn't fund the war in Uganda. I don't share his views or anything but I don't see why "not liking the gays" or whatever should have any influence at all on whether or not he's suitable to run a tech company. It's not a political office.

To some degree, CEO is a political position. It is not so surprising that, if you are gay, or even if you are heterosexual but support gay rights, the publicly stated views of your organization's CEO would have an effect of your sense of belonging at that organization. I believe that it's unlikely that Eich's political views will ever affect his decisions for Mozilla, but they can certainly affect Mozilla's culture.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#54

Post by m0a0t0 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #45
mikestew wrote: post #8

Just the CEO? Who else shall we burn at the stake? Mary, the office manager, goes to church every Sunday. How did she vote? John over in mobile dev is a devout Muslim, I'll bet he doesn't take kindly to such things as gay marriage. Time to start scanning through those campaign contribution records for Prop 8 and seeing if a JOIN on the employee database gives us any results. I've always held to the idea that my job i…

Thank you for posting this. It's insane that there's this witch-hunt over someone's personal views, and the fact that this outlandish behaviour is actually supported and applauded by people. If anything this just gives more credence to the 'gay agenda' conspiracies that up until fairly recently no one took seriously...

Because equal marriage is really, really important. When gay people are not accepted in society opposing something that would improve that greatly is a bad thing to do

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#55

Post by bhitov »

eigenvector wrote: post #4

The fact that they can come out and say this demonstrates that these employees, the people best able to assess this, don't believe that Eich will retaliate. That Mozilla is and remains a place where any employee can express their views on political issues, even if they know they're contrary to the CEO's. And that destroys any argument for Eich's role as CEO creating a conflict with Mozilla's ability to welcome LGBTQ…

> That Mozilla is and remains a place where any employee can express their views on political issues, even if they know they're contrary to the CEO's. And that destroys any argument for Eich's role as CEO creating a conflict with Mozilla's ability to welcome LGBTQ employees and community members.

Not that I necessarily think having Eich as CEO would make Mozilla unable to welcome LGBTQ employees, but this argument is absurd. It is not at all difficult to imagine a rule set that permits free speech while still discriminating against LGBTQ employees in some other way.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#56

Post by hkphooey »

mikestew wrote: post #8

Just the CEO? Who else shall we burn at the stake? Mary, the office manager, goes to church every Sunday. How did she vote? John over in mobile dev is a devout Muslim, I'll bet he doesn't take kindly to such things as gay marriage. Time to start scanning through those campaign contribution records for Prop 8 and seeing if a JOIN on the employee database gives us any results. I've always held to the idea that my job i…

Yes, Mary the office manager, she claims to be a Christian but I've always suspected her of being a witch. Burn her! Drown her! Do both!

But whatever you do, don't go near John, because I hear he gets upset over cartoons and he might react violently rather than meekly accepting punishment like a good Christian.

If you're sick of the political correctness and need a good laugh, watch this short piece by British aethist comedian Pat Condell, 'How gay is Islam?'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLbltj-tD1Y

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#57

Post by brandon272 »

simias wrote: post #32
stormcrowsx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich was actively trying to stop what many people think should be a human right. He should face flak, and get a hard time over it, they should threaten his position. Even if they don't get him out of CEO it will make the next idiot that's high up in a company think twice before donating to stop human rights.

Come on, he didn't fund the war in Uganda. I don't share his views or anything but I don't see why "not liking the gays" or whatever should have any influence at all on whether or not he's suitable to run a tech company. It's not a political office.

Well, we're talking about real people with real families who want to be able to have equal protections under the law and look out for themselves.

It may not be "the war in Uganda", and it may not affect you personally, but it's certainly a critical issue for some people.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#58

Post by sheri »

simias wrote: post #32
stormcrowsx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich was actively trying to stop what many people think should be a human right. He should face flak, and get a hard time over it, they should threaten his position. Even if they don't get him out of CEO it will make the next idiot that's high up in a company think twice before donating to stop human rights.

Come on, he didn't fund the war in Uganda. I don't share his views or anything but I don't see why "not liking the gays" or whatever should have any influence at all on whether or not he's suitable to run a tech company. It's not a political office.

> but I don't see why "not liking the gays" or whatever should have any influence at all on whether or not he's suitable to run a tech company.

If a person in a position of power over others (hiring/firing/promoting) has openly held views of discrimination against a certain group of people, it is a problem. It doesn't matter if he's the president, or a CEO of a tech company.

Of course, its entirely possible that he doesn't let his views impact his work or the way he treats his employees.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#59

Post by freehunter »

angersock wrote: post #38
davidgerard wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>when there is no documented instance of him ever disparaging or otherwise harming LGBTQ employees or community members. Except the bit where he contributed $1000 to a campaign to vilify them and take away their rights.

Here's the proposition's full text: http://www.ag.ca.gov/cms_pdfs/initiatives/i737_07-0068_Initi... It hardly vilifies anyone--it's pretty stupidly worded as is ("marriage"? What is that? How does it compare with "civil union"?) Look, did you vote for Obama or Bush? Then you too have actively vilified people and acted to take away their rights. We can't punish people for participating in our form of government, even…

>"marriage"? What is that?

Marriage is a defined legal construct, not an abstract idea.

>We can't punish people for participating in our form of government, even if we disagree with them.

Of course we can. It's the government that can't. We can freely choose who we associate with, and we can freely choose to not associate with people who hold opinions that we feel are immoral, even if the opinion isn't illegal.

Re: Mozilla employees tell Brendan Eich he needs to “step down”

#60

Post by wpietri »

simias wrote: post #32
stormcrowsx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eich was actively trying to stop what many people think should be a human right. He should face flak, and get a hard time over it, they should threaten his position. Even if they don't get him out of CEO it will make the next idiot that's high up in a company think twice before donating to stop human rights.

Come on, he didn't fund the war in Uganda. I don't share his views or anything but I don't see why "not liking the gays" or whatever should have any influence at all on whether or not he's suitable to run a tech company. It's not a political office.

He didn't "not like the gays". He helped keep gay people from their civil rights and harmed gay families.

The relevance to the CEO job is that he is a) boss of everybody at Mozilla, and b) the public face of Mozilla to customers, donors, partners, and the public. Having actively worked against the civil rights of gay people gives both groups cause to question their involvement, and has to make some employees nervous that they will face the same sort of discrimination at work that they have faced elsewhere in their lives.

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