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Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

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Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#531

Post by JuniperMesos »

bostik wrote: post #363
gortok wrote: post #23

Having listened to the book on Audible, I'm both shocked at the behavior of the executive team, and not surprised all at the same time. What bothers me about all of this is what it says about us. It says we're willing to give rich and powerful people a pass just because they make overtures towards something we care about. We wouldn't give our children a pass like this, nor would we teach our children to act this way,…

> Cheryl Sandberg inviting the author of the book to sleep in her bed next to her on the company jet, and the petulent and vindictive behavior when the author said 'no'. Considering the timing... does that mean MeToo doesn't apply if the predator is also a woman? Sexual advances from a position of power are simply not okay. (Weirdly as a society we appear to have accepted that an older woman predating younger men is…

It's a cool thing if you're the younger man getting sexual attention from a hot older woman. Declaring by fiat that this is not okay doesn't change what peoples' desires actually are, or what behavior done by other people they feel compelled to punish.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#532

Post by lixtra »

scrollop wrote: post #529
lixtra wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN guidelines say: Assume good faith. We should apply it to Sheryl here as well. In Europe several of my acquaintances shared a bed with their professors/superior for various non-sexual reasons. It’s also a cultural thing.

Coming from a European, this is definitely not normal. I would examine why your acquaintances are normalizing such creepy behaviour.

I agree it’s awkward. But I don’t find it creepy per se. It was a tradeoff to which all parties consented.

In one case there was just that one room available stranded in the middle of nowhere.

In other cases it was due to lack of financial resources.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#533

Post by alterom »

prepend wrote: post #337
alterom wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, clearly the employee and the company have the same leverage in negotiation here. It's a free market! If she didn't like the offer, she could've just gotten herself fired from some other company instead. /s

She was privileged to even get a severance. Most people just get fired.

That's not privilege.

She earned it.

A company's reputation when it comes to severance is a part of compensation negotiations and decisions whether to accept the offer to work there.

She got a high level job where such a severance is expected. If it weren't, they'd struggle to find anyone to fill that job.

The severance wasn't contingent on her past. Anyone else holding that job would've gotten a difference.

A male probably would've gotten a larger one, for that matter.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#534

Post by nostrademons »

jonah wrote: post #500
nostrademons wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know an ex-Facebook employee who told me that "Nobody at Facebook ever makes a conscious decision about whether something is good or bad. You are given a metric, and your job is to make that metric go up. If it turns out that making the metric go up has negative consequences [for the business, I don't think it's anyone's job to worry about the rest of society], then somebody else is given another metric to ameliora…

That's a really effective way to get a group of people to do horrible things. Break it up into small pieces where each one isn't that bad in and of itself.

Basically how a corporation is structured. The whole point is limited legal liability, so that the corporation as a whole can do things that would be blatantly illegal if any one person did them.

Governments too. The defining characteristic of a state is the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Some more recent theories on state formation come down to the state being the biggest bandit of them all, the one that subsumes and threatens to kill all other organized sources of violence, and hence becomes the "legitimate" one simply because it has eliminated all other contenders. One of the most popular courses at my college was entitled "Murder", and the syllabus was largely devoted to this tension between how the worst crime of all, when talking about individuals, is simply how states do business.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#536

Post by andy_ppp »

sethops1 wrote: post #494
andy_ppp wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you should never be allowed to comment on the behaviour of companies you worked for?

If you read the book it becomes clear the author was a key enabler of Mark and Sheryl. Should she be allowed to comment? Of course. But don't think for a second she's a good person for doing so.

I have read the book, I didn’t mind her conscience surfacing at all. I’m not sure I’d want to go up against an organisation like Meta, and having first hand accounts of how these people love money and power more than they do values and people.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#537

Post by antonvs »

lokar wrote: post #520
prepend wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She didn’t have to agree to the contract. I don’t really want some arbitrary govt limit restricting what private parties can do with each other.

I’m certain that if these clauses were banned, exactly zero contracts that would otherwise have been agreed would be abandoned. They are completely one sided, and superfluous to the goals of the contract.

> superfluous to the goals of the contract.

How so? The goal of these companies is generally to exercise the maximum possible control over what employees do and say.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#538

Post by krisoft »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #333
Hizonner wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nice, but the rest of us didn't accept anything to agree to provide a legal system that would enforce it... and there's no reason we should.

We have a system of laws that decide which private contracts are enforceable and which are not. So we can try to change the law but as it stands we have decided that this one is enforceable. FWIW I agree about not enforcing non disparagement clauses but legally that not the world we live in.

> We have a system of laws that decide which private contracts are enforceable and which are not.

And we are arguing that private contracts like this should not be enforceable.

> we have decided

I have not been consulted on this matter.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#539

Post by krisoft »

wavemode wrote: post #498
Hizonner wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nice, but the rest of us didn't accept anything to agree to provide a legal system that would enforce it... and there's no reason we should.

...Huh? You want to be personally consulted before any law comes into effect?

Why not. Doesn’t sound that crazy.

Re: Author of "Careless People" banned from saying anything negative about Meta

#540

Post by ElFitz »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #506
whynotminot wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, raise it past the transition period. I’m tired of the pearl clutchers. Decide an age you’ll actually accept. That’s an adult. No more infantilization.

You're not understanding my argument. Within the current way we do things, whatever age you pick is the age the transition period starts for a big fraction of people. Just picking a higher age doesn't work. If anything, based on the median in the US right now, we should be introducing more self-determination earlier .

> Within the current way we do things, whatever age you pick is the age the transition period starts for a big fraction of people.

My point precisely. Many people only start experiencing life as adults once they’ve been declared adults. Which kind of makes sense.

Maybe something more progressive than a random date would be better. Some countries already do it for some things (both in rights, responsibilities, and legal consequences), many also have specific framework for people who simply can’t be held responsible for themselves (with, often, abuses).

But it’s what we have.

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