What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook? • Hacker News Board

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#131

Post by forgetsusername » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #46

forgetsusername wrote: post #8

> For instance, on harassment: telling a coworker of either gender that you like their clothes can be reported as harassment What a terrible society we're developing for ourselves.

That seems like a deep (but possibly unintentional) misunderstanding. There are, of course, situations where you find someone who doesn't work with you nor are you friends with, and repeatedly tell them that you like their clothes, and they clearly aren't taking it as a compliment, and you persist, and that is unequivocally harassment. Technically, that consists of "telling a coworker that you like their clothes", bu…

>someone who didn't have a solid grasp of what harassment is (or worse, wanted to convince themselves that their harassment didn't count) would portray it that way.

And sometimes attention-seekers will convince themselves that something they hear, even if it isn't directed at or to them, is harassment, and try to use it to harm other people. Like the Adria Richards thing.

No worries though. Eventually these types will find themselves working solely with each other, in some sort of bureaucratic-HR-dystopia, which requires explicit permission before anyone can speak to anyone else.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#132

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast » Sat, Mar 05, 2016, 3:45 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #129

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge difference between 'I like your clothes' when it means "that's a good look for you" and 'I like your clothes' when it means "they'd look better on the floor next to my bed" and 'I like your clothes' when it means "I realize that you have asked me many times to stop this unwanted attention, but I also realize that you don't really mean it and don't you realize that I am really a Nice Guy".

And apparently you can be fired for any of the three.

I find that difficult to believe.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#133

Post by geofft » Sun, Mar 06, 2016, 1:33 AM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #131

geofft wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a deep (but possibly unintentional) misunderstanding. There are, of course, situations where you find someone who doesn't work with you nor are you friends with, and repeatedly tell them that you like their clothes, and they clearly aren't taking it as a compliment, and you persist, and that is unequivocally harassment. Technically, that consists of "telling a coworker that you like their clothes", bu…

> someone who didn't have a solid grasp of what harassment is (or worse, wanted to convince themselves that their harassment didn't count) would portray it that way. And sometimes attention-seekers will convince themselves that something they hear, even if it isn't directed at or to them, is harassment, and try to use it to harm other people. Like the Adria Richards thing. No worries though. Eventually these types wi…

Have you talked to anyone of "those types" about their workplace? I can assure you that working in such an environment is not a dystopia, although it only works by making sure that people who do think it's a dystopia are kept far away (they're a bad culture fit).

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#134

Post by stevejones » Sun, Mar 06, 2016, 10:32 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #119

stevejones wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They made it very clear to us during HR onboarding that the only zero tolerance policy was on unauthorized access to user data. Given that Facebook HR trawls user data to send job spam I find this claim quite ironic.

What evidence do you have of this? Particularly with respect to nonpublic data.

My inbox.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#135

Post by otterley » Sun, Mar 06, 2016, 7:36 PM UTC

stevejones wrote: post #134

otterley wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do you have of this? Particularly with respect to nonpublic data.

My inbox.

And the information they used to decide to contact you wasn't available, ever, through any other means? Even a referral from a friend or former colleague?

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#136

Post by stevejones » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 9:39 AM UTC

otterley wrote: post #135

stevejones wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My inbox.

And the information they used to decide to contact you wasn't available, ever, through any other means? Even a referral from a friend or former colleague?

I don't know anyone who works for Facebook. I'm thousands of miles away from Facebook HQ. I keep careful tabs on who has what info about me and use many different email addresses.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#137

Post by rco8786 » Wed, Mar 09, 2016, 4:31 PM UTC

delazeur wrote: post #122

rco8786 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps speeding would be a better analogy. Everyone does it, but when you see the blue lights(or get a meeting req with HR) you know you're in trouble.

It doesn't sound like the violation and the investigation were temporally linked though. When you're speeding and you see flashing lights, you know you're in trouble for the thing you're doing right then . If some minor violation is common practice (everyone is doing it all the time), how would you know immediately that you were in trouble for it when you get the meeting notice? The person even said that they had pre…

No analogy is perfect :)

How about a red light camera? Pretty commonplace to push a yellow light, and when you get the envelope in the mail from the city ticketing office you probably know what it's about.

Re: What does it feel like to be fired from Facebook?

#138

Post by CocaKoala » Tue, Mar 15, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #130

CocaKoala wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree; it's absolutely a shame that people need to be explicitly told that harassment can take the form of compliments, and that saying something nice about somebody does not give you a free pass about the content of your statement. I'm not sure this is something we're developing, though; I'm pretty sure society has been this way for a while. If anything, it's good that it's being explicitly spelled out, because ho…

> saying something nice about somebody does not give you a free pass about the content of your statement. And sometimes people really do think you're wearing a nice shirt and want to tell you that.

I didn't see your response for a long time.

"That's a nice shirt, I really like it!"

vs.

"Hey, that shirt looks good on you now, but I bet it would better on the floor of my bedroom!"

are two ways to say that you like somebody's shirt. One is a workplace appropriate compliment, one is obviously not.

A policy like "even complimenting your coworker's clothes can be reported as harassment" isn't some trap designed to catch you and punish you for the act of being friendly. It's a policy that's designed to defang institutionalized harassment that persists under the guise of being friendly; by couching sexual come-ons or derogatory remarks ("I always like the shirts you wear, they're by far the best part of having you work here" is a compliment for the shirt, and an insult to the person wearing it) in the form of a back-handed compliment, disgusting people can then claim that they're being punished when all they wanted to do is be nice.

If you still don't understand my point, please let me know and I'll try to explain it further (: