Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#161

Post by clairity » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:07 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #55

holler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. Personal politics should be just that, personal.

Politics by definition cannot be personal. It's the practice of resolving conflict within society; if you don't interact with society, there is no politics possible. (Note: this doesn't mean I agree with the behaviour shown in this case - nobody says politics between colleagues must be done over Twitter.) (edit: sad downvotes without actual logical counterpoint are sad.)

politics are profoundly personal but also pervades the whole human-organizational stack. conflict resolution might be one of its applications, but make no mistake, politics is primarily concerned with power and its application.

(human) politics requires just 2 people, not a whole societies’ worth; even zero people at the limit, since politics happens in and with other species too.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#162

Post by bluntfang » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:08 AM UTC

PiggySpeed wrote: post #21

nsainsbury wrote: post #4

I think a key phrase here is "he was dismissed for publicly challenging a colleague’s silence". In other words, he publicly harassed a colleague who (for what could be any number of perfectly valid reasons) preferred not to publicly state their beliefs. That would seem to me to be an eminently reasonable reason to fire someone. If you go around publicly harassing your colleagues to publicly state their political opin…

I'm starting a new job soon and I'm trying to figure out how I'll handle these "silence is complicit" characters. My personal policy is to not discuss political/social issues at work.

>My personal policy is to not discuss political/social issues at work.

Your silence is part of the discussion. You cannot escape the political atmosphere of the government to whom you pay taxes. If you want to separate work and politics, you need to not participate in the system that allows the politics to exist.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#163

Post by m3kw9 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:09 AM UTC

He probably did more than that in which he was doing a lot more to show his displeasure, not that I’m disagreeing but you don’t just raise your hand and they fire you

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#164

Post by DenisM » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #55

holler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. It's endemic of the political and cultural climate we're in right now, where mob rule is becoming the status quo. Personal politics should be just that, personal.

Politics by definition cannot be personal. It's the practice of resolving conflict within society; if you don't interact with society, there is no politics possible. (Note: this doesn't mean I agree with the behaviour shown in this case - nobody says politics between colleagues must be done over Twitter.) (edit: sad downvotes without actual logical counterpoint are sad.)

Politics at the workplace should be kept personal. Politics between colleagues should not be done at all.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#165

Post by esperent » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #79

nemothekid wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every day on HN I read that multiple flavors of "FB/Palantir/Google/MS engineers who do nothing while Zuckerberg/USG/China invades more and more of our privacy are complicit in the cog that is Zuckerberg's ambition", but when it comes to race relations, suddenly engineers should be allowed to work in silence. I understand there's nuance, but I only hope the hivemind considers this nuance the next time they pil…

If the Recoil project were contributing to racism in the US, I think we all agree that would be a problem.

Connecting facial recognition software and racism seems to be earning you downvotes here.

While racism is the hot button topic right now, widespread governmental and corporate (or indeed, private) use of facial recognition software is problematic for many reasons. Erosion of privacy, sexual and non-sexual harassment and stalking, racial profiling, gender profiling, profiling for membership of any other kind of group, cute Facebook apps tied to shadowy political organizations, even crazy dystopian inventions like the Chinese social credit scheme. This tech needs to be very strongly regulated, and soon.

Anyone working in this field, and creating this type of software for companies with a historically weak moral compass, _should_ think deeply about their involvement.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#166

Post by newbie578 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:11 AM UTC

Wow, talk about being a dick. "Intentionally not making a statement is already political." I am really curious, are these types of persons not able to see their own hypocrisy?

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#167

Post by formercoder » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

purple_ferret wrote: post #146

Grimm1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics should be kept out of the workplace.

Normally sure, but when politicians are using your platform (paying you) to further their own narratives, it's fair game.

That depends on if you are a platform or a publisher.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#168

Post by birdyrooster » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:13 AM UTC

rmellow wrote: post #56

baby wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you weren't getting downvoted because I was wondering the same, and I'm happy someone asked so that I could learn the answer.

Seconded. Us non-Americans watching what's going on can't be expected to know something an unremarkable American cop said 50 years ago. Is it such a well known phrase among Americans or something that most people just learned was a thing?

We didn’t need to know it to read it as inherently racist. If you can’t interpret that, it’s a problem with reading comprehension.

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#169

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

nickff wrote: post #132

makomk wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the unfortunate reality is that this isn't about individual people expecting support for certain causes. What you're looking at is fundamentally a social phenomenon - a belief that's been spreading from person to person and community to community that every person in the social group must support the correct causes in the correct ways, that anyone who doesn't go along with this is actively going against the c…

I agree that this type of toxic peer-pressure is spreading, and I have no idea what to do about it. It reminds me of what Louis Fischer and Arthur Koestler described in their respective essays in "The God That Failed". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed

[deleted]

Re: Facebook fires employee for publicly scolding a colleague

#170

Post by jhanschoo » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 1:15 AM UTC

purple_ferret wrote: post #146

Grimm1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics should be kept out of the workplace.

Normally sure, but when politicians are using your platform (paying you) to further their own narratives, it's fair game.

Even still, there are appropriate channels and using a public platform to personally attack someone is a nuclear option that you should expect consequences on.

e.g. government employees initially raise concerns on policy privately, then resign and speak out when the discussions fail.