Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job • Hacker News Board

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#271

Post by thanksgiving » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:23 AM UTC

ad_hominem wrote: post #255

cylinder wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the GP who brought up this topic. I actually am American and now working at a managerial level in Australia. When I ran into trouble with someone on my team performing at a poor level, I was a bit exasperated with these regulations and how they required me to put him on a performance improvement plan rather than immediately dismiss. I was frustrated, but it forced me to talk it out with him. We did a bit of a res…

Plenty of white collar businesses in the US use performance improvement plans. But that would be a ridiculous remedy in a business with thin margins like a restaurant - some businesses need the freedom to hire and fire quicker.

Sorry but why should the law have to cater to someone's business model?

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#272

Post by cylinder » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

ad_hominem wrote: post #255

cylinder wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the GP who brought up this topic. I actually am American and now working at a managerial level in Australia. When I ran into trouble with someone on my team performing at a poor level, I was a bit exasperated with these regulations and how they required me to put him on a performance improvement plan rather than immediately dismiss. I was frustrated, but it forced me to talk it out with him. We did a bit of a res…

Plenty of white collar businesses in the US use performance improvement plans. But that would be a ridiculous remedy in a business with thin margins like a restaurant - some businesses need the freedom to hire and fire quicker.

They use those plans to avoid discrimination lawsuits, that is really the only reason behind it. HR in the US is totally different too, it's basically "just protect the business from being sued by employees."

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#273

Post by chillwaves » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:28 AM UTC

um_ya wrote: post #264

andrepd wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More often, you assert. But have you got any evidence to say so?

Can confirm, I run a business. The biggest expense to my company are the employees. All the regulatory requirements and bullshit that comes along with it, not to mention the risk of an employee suing the company for whatever reason. There's a lot of risk hiring employees, that's why I try to minimize the number of employees I have to hire, whenever possible.

Your employees are also the profit generators so I would say it just comes with the territory.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#274

Post by banned1 » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:32 AM UTC

KyeRussell wrote: post #203

banned1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why many companies don’t hire many people in France http://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/knowledge/publications/14...

Proponents of a largely deregulated labour market love talking about France. As someone working in Australia—a country with labour laws that are more sane than France (and definitely the U.S.)—instantly bringing up France just tends to stink of a false dichotomy and a line of rhetoric from people that try to justify the U.S.'s unjustifiably unfair labour laws. I suggest that people who aren't familiar with Australia'…

You don't have to empathize with a business owners. It's their resources at play. So they simply will do business elsewhere. I don't have to open an office in France. I just don't. It's too much hassle. I open it wherever I want. So if an employee loses out by not being hired by me (or I lose out by not hiring some French awesome person), then so be it. But the point is that the US environment is more friendly for businesses, and as a result we have a lot of them. Maybe other places also have a lot of them too, but if you did a poll all over the world of what country they would want to emigrate to, it would be the US who will lead the worldwide poll.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#275

Post by azernik » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:33 AM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #268

cylinder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real story is he has no employment rights because he's in America and he's "at will." They can dismiss him because they don't like his lunch selection that day and he has no rights. That's at will employment. This type of situation plays out all over the country everyday.

Or the real story is how much businesses kowtow to the Chinese government and enable their human rights abuses. I would be quite happy to see Marriott face blowback in the US and other parts of the world over this as people show their support for a free Tibet. Letting China browbeat businesses into submission for the privilege of operating in that market isn't a good thing and more businesses need to be made to decid…

Sometimes a story captures lots of little elements of the world we live in all at once.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#276

Post by azernik » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:37 AM UTC

8bitsrule wrote: post #158

rndmize wrote: post #50

> China forced Marriott to suspend all online booking for a week at its nearly 300 Chinese hotels. A Chinese leader also demanded the company publicly apologize and “seriously deal with the people responsible,” the Journal reported. I look forward to the coming years where China continues to grow in influence and power, and the useful things they choose to do with them. /s The last time I felt like I was seeing a use…

I think they've been influenced by seeing all the attention DT gets for throwing shit fits.

Trust me, they were pulling the kinds of stunts over Tibet and Taiwan and the Diaoyu islands and a few other issues loooong before Trump made that fateful ride down the escalator.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#277

Post by helloindia » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:41 AM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #38

"Dozens of social media accounts were tweeting angry things, including many death threats, at both Roy and Marriott. This seems especially odd considering Twitter itself is officially banned in China, and thus can be accessed only by residents breaking the law or by bot accounts." Not sure why they assume that "dozens of social media accounts" of pro-China supporters is not possible. They're making some weird assumpt…

Have you not heard about China's 50 cent army?

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#278

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:42 AM UTC

patmcc wrote: post #230

manigandham wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that reasonable when firing an employee (vs layoffs)? So a bad performing person now costs even more to get rid of? That might force the company to just keep them on and try to squeeze out some productivity, waiting until they just quit instead.

It's reasonable when firing an employee without cause . If a person is performing badly, document that and then fire them.

> If a person is performing badly, document that and then fire them.

Which is entirely subjective. There are a billion criteria you can reasonably evaluate someone on, so it's trivial to make the average person look below average by choosing the things they're bad at as the things to evaluate them on.

A company will always be able to get rid of an employee they don't like one way or another. The only choice you have is how much bureaucracy to impose. But it's the same amount of bureaucracy even when the company has a justifiable reason.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#279

Post by helloindia » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:55 AM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #23

avree wrote: post #11

It's strange to me how much emphasis they're putting on the tweet. Wasn't the spark that incensed China so much their decision to list Tibet as a country in the survey?

Nobody really knew about that until the yeeet was liked by the Marriott corporate account, so in a sense you’re right but the ‘like’ was the proximate cause of the firestorm.

Listing Tibet & Taiwan as country was discovered by some while filling a survey on Marriott china site. Tweet Like wasn't the cause of the firestorm

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#280

Post by sneak » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 5:56 AM UTC

cylinder wrote: post #54

corobo wrote: post #21

The meat of the story is that Omaha man worked for Marriott hotels on customer support. Their support system allows their agents to like tweets. The man appears to have inadvertently clicked like on a tweet while dealing with a large influx of support messages (due to a promo going on) thanking Marriott for listing Tibet as its own country which was a huge no-no due to Mariott's presence in China. Execs fire him as a…

The real story is he has no employment rights because he's in America and he's "at will." They can dismiss him because they don't like his lunch selection that day and he has no rights. That's at will employment. This type of situation plays out all over the country everyday.

Mutual consent is very important in interactions.