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Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

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Re: Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

#111

Post by anal_reactor »

Henchman21 wrote: post #102
crossroadsguy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After suffering Jira at two previous employers when it was being considered at the third org, I lobbied, pretty much begged, and cried along with many other colleagues who had this inflicted upon them previously. Yes, we indeed ended up with Jira and one another Atlassian monstrosity.

Confluence? I know most people really want a hard-to-use wiki with a special markdown flavor to write up things that instantly go stale, never to be reviewed again. Or, at least that's the only way I've really seen Confluence used?

Nah. The prime use case of Confluence is to tick "yes I've written the documentation".

Re: Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

#112

Post by nunez »

breppp wrote: post #34

Is it really surprising she was fired? It's completely okay to say whatever you want and stand up for yourself, but you are not a child, own the consequences rather than whine

For a light insult at an executive of a company at a company with a "no bullshit" culture? Absolutely!

Re: Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

#114

Post by kstrauser »

anal_reactor wrote: post #110
firefoxd wrote: post #33

I think the cult of personality always backfires, pun intended. Our company biggest product was a celebrity making fun commercials for the actual product. Works wonders. Personally I don't have a problem with him, I enjoyed his movies in the past. But not everybody does. Internally, the company tried to push this cult so deeply that it was part of the hiring process, part of the onboarding, even obscured some of the…

> Many of us are mature enough to follow the principle of, "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything." This isn't maturity, this is selfishness. A group often benefits from someone challenging the status quo, but the individual doing that gets punished. In your view, Germans during WW2 were "mature" by not saying anything that wasn't nice about nazism, and nowadays Russians are "mature" when they d…

I might generalize this as “push against actions, not personalities”. Don’t like someone because you just don’t mesh? Keep your mouth shut. You have a different outlook than they do, and yours is as wrong from their POV as theirs is from yours. Someone you think is interesting and fun to be around does something bad? Resist it.

Re: Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

#115

Post by philipov »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #82
Drakim wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, why surround yourself with people who are critical of you, when you can surround yourself with yes-men who will loyally toe the line? Positive contributions comes from loyal subjects who agree with their betters.

That's one way to look at it. Another way is that people who are aligned with the CEOs mission will help achieve the mission, and people who are not aligned will not help achieve the mission. And it's the CEOs job to define the mission

When the mission is to screw over the employees, we don't need people who will align with that. CEOs should be held responsible for the enemies they create within their organization. Treating people as necessary collateral damage is unacceptable.

Re: Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

#116

Post by ivan_gammel »

Drakim wrote: post #61
neversupervised wrote: post #39

There’s no reason a company should put up with enemies within. In rare instances a disgruntled employee might be able to make a positive contribution. In most cases, even if the employee has valid reasons, by the time they are disgruntled there’s no coming back. It’s best for everyone to move on.

Yes, why surround yourself with people who are critical of you, when you can surround yourself with yes-men who will loyally toe the line? Positive contributions comes from loyal subjects who agree with their betters.

The “people who are critical of you” are very broad category that includes both toxic behavior and constructive disagreement. The former must not be tolerated, the latter can be encouraged as long as it’s not a blocker. In this case it is clearly the former and it requires suppression, but disciplinary action may have been too harsh or perfectly adequate depending on prior history with this employee. It was not said like “it was insensitive to appear in front of the team this way”. It was indeed said like he is a rich jerk. Zero added value, rage bait, polarization of the team.

Re: Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

#117

Post by em-bee »

fragmede wrote: post #74
breppp wrote: post #34

Is it really surprising she was fired? It's completely okay to say whatever you want and stand up for yourself, but you are not a child, own the consequences rather than whine

I'm waiting for the Europeans to wake up and tell us about labor laws.

seems redundant given that the c̶o̶u̶r̶t̶ NLRB siding with the employee suggests that even in the US employees are likely protected in this case, but interestingly i feel this one is undecided, because insults are taken quite seriously in some european countries.

from germany i know that whether an insult is grounds for firing someone depends on the regular interaction the two people have, so if you take a company of rednecks (to employ a stereotype), a redneck employee calling their redneck boss some typical redneck insult would be interpreted as acceptable, and make any firing based on that illegal. but if the same insult is used by a lawyer in a law firm from a big city, then suddenly that same insult is a valid reason to get fired.

(edit: rephrase and replace court with NLRB)

Re: Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

#118

Post by dcrazy »

breppp wrote: post #108
hollerith wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw GP as an argument that they shouldn't be illegal.

I don't know if they are legal or not. But assuming you don't want to leave a company, there is minimal tact of what to say when. You have a choice not to use said tact, but this entire "employee goes on moral crusade, gets fired, goes on moral crusade about firing", is a feature of a kind of employee that is even for other employees not amazing to be around

There’s enough of a difference, IMO, between campaigning against your organization’s plans and venting to your coworkers about the way in which the CEO delivered said plans.

Re: Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

#119

Post by dcrazy »

em-bee wrote: post #117
fragmede wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for the Europeans to wake up and tell us about labor laws.

seems redundant given that the c̶o̶u̶r̶t̶ NLRB siding with the employee suggests that even in the US employees are likely protected in this case, but interestingly i feel this one is undecided, because insults are taken quite seriously in some european countries. from germany i know that whether an insult is grounds for firing someone depends on the regular interaction the two people have, so if you take a company of…

The court has not sided with anyone yet. The NLRB sided with the employee and has argued her case in court.

Re: Atlassian says it had right to fire engineer for suggesting CEO is 'rich jerk'

#120

Post by dcrazy »

Henchman21 wrote: post #102
crossroadsguy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After suffering Jira at two previous employers when it was being considered at the third org, I lobbied, pretty much begged, and cried along with many other colleagues who had this inflicted upon them previously. Yes, we indeed ended up with Jira and one another Atlassian monstrosity.

Confluence? I know most people really want a hard-to-use wiki with a special markdown flavor to write up things that instantly go stale, never to be reviewed again. Or, at least that's the only way I've really seen Confluence used?

You can fail to maintain a wiki written in any software. The value of Confluence is when everyone uses it, so there’s one place to find info to answer questions like “why the hell did we do it this way?”
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