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Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

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Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#31

Post by mahouse »

icpmacdo wrote: post #18
bane wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Her optics at this point are terrible . - CEO of a community-based site where the community doesn't like her (to put it nicely) - Lost a very public lawsuit against a previous employer that revealed quite a bit about her personal and work habits -- and it wasn't exactly glowing, often downright damning. - Tried to recoup legal costs for the lawsuit she started and lost - Was ordered to pay legal costs to her former e…

And now new Digg is capitalizing on the drama http://digg.com/2015/talk-to-us

This is pretty pathetic. Also, if you look at Digg's front page, it looks nothing like Reddit. I wonder how they will steal any user from them.

Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#32

Post by heimatau »

dang wrote: post #27
heimatau wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This submission isn't contributing to the understanding of the drama. Instead, it's getting caught up in the emotional and herd mentality.

My comment agrees with you about this particular submission. I probably should have made that clearer. Btw, the HN rules ask you not to complain about downvotes in comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

You are correct. I thought the guidelines encouraged discussion instead of down voting but...upon looking at the guidelines, I was wrong. Also, I don't mind the down votes, all I did was ask others to discuss more instead of clicking a simple down vote link. Many can down vote but how many can have a conversation?

Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#33

Post by georgemcbay »

paulhauggis wrote: post #21

"In early 2012, he was supposed to move to San Francisco when he was diagnosed with Leukemia." "Fortunately, reddit’s then-CEO, Yishan Wong, allowed him to keep his job and continued paying him until he was ready to work again" So he worked for the company from 2012-2015..3 years. It sounds like at least a year of this was spent in and out of the hospital and he continued to get paid. It's not like he was fired on th…

The fact that we only know one-side of the story* is actually the biggest "wtf?" in all of this, in my opinion.

That the reddit executive staff hasn't really addressed this entire shitstorm publicly and officially by now is absolutely mind-boggling given what reddit is. They are giving the impression that they still see this just as a conversation between mods and admins and are basically ignoring the public spill-over (except for Alexis' dismissive comments).

*(really we know less than one side of the story since AFAIK Victoria hasn't really talked about it publicly, which from her side is totally understandable for either legal [if severance is involved] or just not wanting to get blackballed reasons).

Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#34

Post by mhomde »

bane wrote: post #15
rhino369 wrote: post #10

Pao needs to be replaced. Whether the hate the community at reddit has is justified, it does exist. The company is begging for a reddit clone to pop up and steal the users.

Her optics at this point are terrible . - CEO of a community-based site where the community doesn't like her (to put it nicely) - Lost a very public lawsuit against a previous employer that revealed quite a bit about her personal and work habits -- and it wasn't exactly glowing, often downright damning. - Tried to recoup legal costs for the lawsuit she started and lost - Was ordered to pay legal costs to her former e…

...and they even fired the guy responsible for secret santa. You can't even make stuff like this up or be more grinch if you tried to

https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bysny/rsec...

Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#35

Post by ironlady »

mahouse wrote: post #31
icpmacdo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now new Digg is capitalizing on the drama http://digg.com/2015/talk-to-us

This is pretty pathetic. Also, if you look at Digg's front page, it looks nothing like Reddit. I wonder how they will steal any user from them.

When digg stole from reddit it was different, when reddit stole from slashdot it was different... People are more likely to move to something new and different, as strange as that sounds.

Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#36

Post by true_religion »

ironlady wrote: post #35
mahouse wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty pathetic. Also, if you look at Digg's front page, it looks nothing like Reddit. I wonder how they will steal any user from them.

When digg stole from reddit it was different, when reddit stole from slashdot it was different... People are more likely to move to something new and different, as strange as that sounds.

But... reddit stole from digg.

I'm not sure if Digg ever stole from Reddit since I think Digg came first in popularity for a long time.

Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#37

Post by Cowicide »

claudiug wrote: post #3

is possible in USA to get fired with no procedures, or not getting any money?

Well, the fired worker who has cancer made a post where he thanked Ellen Pao and Reddit for paying for his COBRA insurance for up to a year after his firing. So, I'm not sure he was simply let go and that's that.

I'm not saying that Reddit isn't making mistakes, but I am glad that they at least finally tried to do something about the serious troll problems there.

I'm still waiting for a source that explains this mess without all the hyperbole and assumptions. However, I'm increasingly thinking that won't happen as it seems a lot of redditors have already made up their minds that this or that person is evil and this and that person is a godly saint.

I'd like to hear both sides of the stories, etc. before I make up my mind on this situation.

Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#38

Post by dogma1138 »

hwstar wrote: post #25
sp332 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All 50 states have "at-will" employment, which means the employer can let the employee go or the employee can choose to leave at any time with no reason given. There are limitations on certain kinds of jobs, and severance packages are common but only for full-time or salaried employees I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

49 states have at-will employment. The exception is Montana. In Montana, they have 'just cause' similar to the rest of the developed world.

While At-Will might suck the other side of it is not having to give 2-3 months notice which isn't that uncommon in the UK and some other European countries.

While you might be able to get out of those periods it makes switching a job quite hard, to near impossible especially if you have a rolling contract without a set expiration date.

Every coin has 2 sides, it's easy to look at things in the US and say it's wrong look at the Netherlands they need to drag you to court to fire you.

At the end both extremes result in conditions which are unfavorable to the employee rather than to the employer, you might get some peace of mind not fearing that they might tell you on a friday not to come next monday but with the opposite extreme employers don't want to give permanent contracts or when they do they lock you into such long notice periods that you'll usually have to just drop off all your stuff at 8 am leave a note with lawyer's contact details unless you find some company that will wait 2-3 months for you to give notice..

Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#39

Post by dogma1138 »

georgemcbay wrote: post #33
paulhauggis wrote: post #21

"In early 2012, he was supposed to move to San Francisco when he was diagnosed with Leukemia." "Fortunately, reddit’s then-CEO, Yishan Wong, allowed him to keep his job and continued paying him until he was ready to work again" So he worked for the company from 2012-2015..3 years. It sounds like at least a year of this was spent in and out of the hospital and he continued to get paid. It's not like he was fired on th…

The fact that we only know one-side of the story* is actually the biggest "wtf?" in all of this, in my opinion. That the reddit executive staff hasn't really addressed this entire shitstorm publicly and officially by now is absolutely mind-boggling given what reddit is. They are giving the impression that they still see this just as a conversation between mods and admins and are basically ignoring the public spill-ov…

Do you really think that any legal department would allow anyone to comment in such case?

Anything they say might lead to a law suit, in such cases if they comment on anything it will be in the form of the most anemic press release possible with every fact checked about 10000 times before hand.

Re: Reddit's CEO Allegedly Fired a Worker for Not Recovering from Cancer Fast Enough

#40

Post by yawaramin »

dogma1138 wrote: post #38
hwstar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

49 states have at-will employment. The exception is Montana. In Montana, they have 'just cause' similar to the rest of the developed world.

While At-Will might suck the other side of it is not having to give 2-3 months notice which isn't that uncommon in the UK and some other European countries. While you might be able to get out of those periods it makes switching a job quite hard, to near impossible especially if you have a rolling contract without a set expiration date. Every coin has 2 sides, it's easy to look at things in the US and say it's wrong l…

Two to three months is crazy. The norm in Canada is two weeks.
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