Business Insider CTO Forced to Resign Following Twitter Firestorm

Two things complicate this: firstly, social networks are really making the idea of a 'private sphere' of beliefs that are separate from one's public role unsustainable. Secondly, CTO is a high-profile role, a representative of the company with responsibilities including dealing with technical partners and attracting new employees. This role is compromised by behaving in a way that is very likely to damage those relationships.

Obviously, he's now going to be on the receiving end of abuse that's as bad or worse than anything he's ever said himself. In the interests of consistency, I obviously have to deplore this; two wrongs don't make a right. The sight of a bunch of righteously-enraged Twitter users piling on is not exactly edifying and won't do anything to persuade anyone that civil discourse is the way to a better future.

A couple of years ago I thought we might be on the verge of a new era of permissiveness, in the sense that policing the subjectively offensive thoughts of others would be so obviously impossible that we'd have to accept the existence of offensive ideas and aim instead for the more achievable (and more liberal, to a given definition of 'liberal') goal of ensuring that people simply ensure that their public (in the sense of official or political) conduct is impartial irrespective of their private beliefs. Now, I'm not so sure. People seem to like being outraged by others, and seem to want to suppress views they dislike even if no identifiable harm has been caused (in fact, one can always claim some harm on the basis that someone's feelings were hurt). It now seems to be reasonable to argue in favour of, in effect, a campaign for the improvement of public morals, a notion that seemed remote only recently.

That said, I also personally think that this guy sounds like an asshole, and I wouldn't have wanted him as my boss or my subordinate if he displayed any of the attitudes on show in his Twitter feed in the workplace. It's highly likely that he did so, and for all we know he could have been under existing disciplinary warnings or subject to internal complaints. It might be that what people say about him on Twitter has nothing to do with him being fired.

This is just a meme which the mob picked up and ran with, just like "Phil Fish is an asshole" that drove him out of indie game dev.

Edit: for example, when people say he makes misogynist tweets, then they need to offer evidence that he is against women or hates women.

I spent a few years dealing with the asshole charlatan CTO, who I shit you not, was "discovered" while working at computer renaissance.

The major differentiator between him and the lead dev who never got his way, was that the CTO could calmly and credibly state his case. Even if that case was as ridiculous as "we need to rewrite all our systems to use UDP, TCP is making everything slow". When confronted with these kind of theories the lead dev would easily be goaded into hissy fits, that made him sound like an egotistical baby.

Everyone on this forum knows that blaming TCP for system slowness is total misdirecting bullshit. But the CEO doesn't know that, and if you present your case without savvy social skills you will lose every time. This lead dev proved it for several years. It sucks, but it is life.

Interestingly I happened upon this telling quote that I later learned through informal channels was attributed to the CEO

   "I have 25 code writers that are absolute 'Rain Men', but I gotta have ONE 'Rain Man' with social skills to run the place."