choiwisely 8 hours ago [-]
> Employees and investors absolutely need the right to know about the people doing this "Michael" the CEO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaacchae1981
"Charlie" the CTO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/albrown
"Jessica" the CMO: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tess-stevens-28bb9138
Company: http://www.wrkriot.com/ + https://www.linkedin.com/company/7587861
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381499 and marked it off-topic.
So are names of the company okay? I feel that's just as witch hunty.
The witch hunt dynamic is really a problem and when it gets going—which unfortunately it did in this case—intervention is required.
Is there something inherently suspect about it? I'm not familiar with this one.
Even when you win, bogus lawsuits are expensive and painful to sort out. My mom was sued after a business deal went south. Seeing the judge find for her on all counts and upbraid the plaintiff and the plaintiff's lawyer was satisfying, but it was not worth the 18 months of severe stress or the substantial legal bills that we had to pay.
If you would like to see more names named, then try accompanying your request with a credible offer of a legal defense fund at least $100k in size. That's a lot more persuasive than the notion that random internet commenters will be disappointed.
You can't seriously believe this makes sense, right?
What does a "right" to know something mean? Apparently you think that kelukelugames has the right to force Penny Kim to make public statements that would put her at the risk of a major lawsuit. Can kelukelugames compel this of everyone who has a bad employer experience? By what mechanism is the right enforced? What are the penalties if kelukelugames right to know is not enforced?
As far as I'm concerned, the only rights involved here are Penny Kim's rights to privacy and freedom of association. She was not obligated to publish this. Doing so was difficult and puts her at risk. It was a gift. I think it's ungracious to look at a gift and say, "YOU OWE ME MORE!"
If you would like people to publish more things like this, especially to the extent of naming names, then I think the best approach is to reduce the risk to whistleblowers. One way to do that is to create a legal defense fund large enough to handle a lawsuit over the naming of names. My guess is that $100k is about the minimum for that.
Does that help explain my comment?
"I cannot fathom what you mean"
"Apparently you think that kelukelugames has the right to force Penny Kim to make public statements that would put her at the risk of a major lawsuit. Can kelukelugames compel this of everyone who has a bad employer experience? By what mechanism is the right enforced? What are the penalties if kelukelugames right to know is not enforced?"
Wait so is it that you don't understand my point or that you literally are making up my point? I never even made the slightest implication I believe any of that and you made up this entire system of beliefs for me. This is insane. Stop.
"I think it's ungracious to look at a gift and say, "YOU OWE ME MORE!""
Oh hey, another thing I didn't do! Fun! But yeah, you're right, this is unreasonable! You know what is reasonable though? Anyone who even dare ask a question should be forced to pay a six figure some because some guy on the internet said so and really that is it.
I'll let you get back to mocking behaviors you made up in other sub comments. Thanks for your contribution.
For example, I could say I have a right to structurally secure buildings. If the floor of the mall falls apart underneath me, I can sue them for damages for not obeying the building code. If the mall's owners refuse to pay, the police will storm their house to extract payment(and if they resist, they could be shot). The police could end up shooting someone to enforce this right.
When you say, "This commenter has a right to Penny's information", a reasonable interpretation is, "Penny or any other person declining to support this right and provide this information will be punished or hurt in some way."
It's specifically that word "right" that you used that's in question. It makes me think of "enforcement", and I don't consider the right you described to be worthy of enforcement.
Those are how rights work: through obligation and enforcement. A right to know is a positive right [1], which means other people are compelled to provide it for you. E.g., I have a legal right to know the financials of publicly traded companies. If a company fails to honor my right, the SEC will come after them. First with lawyers, then with people with guns.
> Oh hey, another thing I didn't do!
I was referring to the behavior I was originally objecting to. But I'm not sure you didn't do that, because your point on "rights" seems to imply that Penny Kim is obligated to do more.
If you would like to make clear what you actually meant, I'd be glad to read it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
We both know that you can't believe that, so why are you arguing your point as if you do...? What offends you so much that some stranger on the internet said that it was right for this information to be out in the open? Are you just completely desperate to argue with a stranger over nothing and change the topic to argue semantics? Maybe try reddit?
A bunch of people were complaining about Penny's not naming names. I pointed out that she didn't do it for a reason. For her to do so could be very costly. I said that if people really wanted her to talk, they should offer to share in the costs by putting together a legal defense fund.
You then responded by saying I couldn't be serious, and talking about "this person" (presumably kelukelugames) and whether I thought they had "no rights to know" more.
Assuming you were serious, I expanded on what an actual "right to know" would mean, showing that the idea has significant implementation problems. If you meant something else, you could have cleared that up by saying what you did mean.
> What offends you so much that some stranger on the internet said that it was right
The reason I objected is that when people take a gift and are immediately critical that the gift was not larger, it discourages the giving of gifts. If we want more whistleblowers, we must make sure their experience of whistleblowing is a positive one. If all they hear is, "Y U NO GIVE MOAR", that is not a positive experience.
I think it's particularly important here because this instant entitlement is a perennial problem for open source project maintainers.
Does that make my motivations clearer?
> Are you just completely desperate to argue with a stranger
Pal, you are the one who responded to me, and you did it with a lot of attitude. The person I was responding to thought my point was reasonable. You appear to be the only one excited for an argument here.
So basically you have a bunch of reasons why you're upset about this but none have even a remote relationship to the topic at hand? Because you feel open source software maintainers have a certain problem, by logical extension we must be facing the exact same thing in this totally different situation.
Read about, eg, what happened to Mother Jones when a billionaire sued them. It's easy for one person with more money than the other to impose huge costs in our legal system.
"Just to be clear, your offer is this ex-employee possibly gets to pay a $x00k legal bill for your convenience, right?"
No.
I don't mind people wanting things. We all want things. But I think it's a problem when that crosses the line into expectation or demand.
It sounds like you had a really bad experience, which of course is your prerogative. But generalizing your experience to attack an entire company seems to demand a higher burden of evidence and credibility -- a standard that is tough to ascribe to an anonymous hit-and-run commenter who seems to have the sole motive of flinging as much dirt as possible.
I guess the question I'm posing, to you and to this forum, is the following: to what extent can you take a non-specific, general denunciation seriously without a name and a real reputation behind it? Penny did a brave, good thing in writing about her experiences for public consumption. If you want anyone to take you at your word, I'd encourage you do the same. I look forward to reading about your perspective, with a name and context attached, since it's worlds apart from mine.
When I worked at Redfin, a number of people complained about racist and sexist incidents. All of them were minor. For example, boss touching a black woman's natural hair. No one wanted to escalate it to management, because they didn't feel it was safe or that people wouldn't care. Some co-workers were empathetic, while others expressed disbelief and defensiveness. Many were dismissive because "it's worlds apart" from their experiences. A couple of us eventually escalated to management. The lack of empathy was disappointing but not unexpected. A handful of my friends have left or want to leave partly due to these incidents. That's not good.
What would you do? Feel free to PM me. I think a private conversation would be more honest and involve less posturing.
[1] https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... Looks like I only say nice things about Redfin. :)
Which of course is no excuse; where my experience remains different than yours is in your characterization of the management team. I've found them to be proactive and sensitive in forwarding inclusiveness and educating employees on the ways inadvertent discrimination can cause harm -- and as a minority, I never had any problems. As I'm early in my career I don't have much of a benchmark, but I'd love to PM you to understand what you would have done better. Above all, thanks for engaging productively -- I apologize for coming in hot, but hope you understand that I feel loyal to an organization and leadership team that, in my view, has done a fantastic job making me feel welcome.
Anyway, when did you work there? There is a good chance you benefited from a more sensitive management team caused by a few awkward exits.
> It sounds like you had a really bad experience, which of course is your prerogative.
Sharing it might be someone's prerogative but labelling their experience this way doesn't feel up to HN standards.
He knows my facebook account so I don't see how he thinks I'm trying to stay anonymous. Though I'm flattered he read thousands of my tweets to find the four or five about Redfin.