There is also another aspect. In theory your personal life and work are separated. Your religion or political opinions should not matter at work.
But many people (sadly even on HN) think it is ok to fire people, based on their opinions.
But many people (sadly even on HN) think it is ok to fire people, based on their opinions.
Lest we forget:
- Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, fired for a donation,
- Douglas Crockford, uninvited from NodeVember, the general opinion is that he said something that a woman didn't like,
- Tom Preston-Werner, co-founder and former CEO of GitHub, upon an unproven accusation,
- And all people and the 2 colleagues who have been fired in smaller companies, in smaller events, without proof, only based on lynching and without demonstratedly due process to determine what they're guilty about (@mr-kanks from PyCon, I think about you every day I talk with a woman at work).
I don't think what he did say was quite eloquent and it was clearly emotionally heated, but it didn't imply nor state that Trump voters are unwelcome.
Obviously only excerpts from the full email[0], but seems to contradict what you just said pretty heavily. If I was someone who voted for Trump that worked at Grubhub, I know that I would have been afraid for my job after that email. Possibly even still would be, and might even consider moving jobs in order to not be afraid of that.
[0] The full original text of his email is at the bottom of this page: http://media.grubhub.com/media/press-releases/press-release-...
It's referring to things like ridiculing or mocking minorities, immigrants, and disabled people. Which I think we can all agree are things that Trump did and have no place in a workplace like Grubhub, no?
But I think things get more complicated in the current environment where people who have voted for Trump have basically been labeled the same as him. It's apparently possible to have a "hateful attitude", or be racist, or whatever else, which can get you fired at GrubHub, by having voted for Trump.
But honestly, regardless of arguing intent or whatever, I think the crux of the argument boils down to this: If you had voted for Trump and worked at GrubHub, would you be comfortable going to the CEO and saying "I voted for Trump" without fearing for your job, after that email? I would imagine the number of people at the company who don't/didn't feel that is non-zero (purely based on a vote, not based on if anyone there is actually racist), and I view that as completely inappropriate.
The CEO never said Trump voters aren't welcome. That was the original comment that I disagreed with. It's factually incorrect to say that's what the CEO said.
"the new administration deserves our open minds and a chance to lead... never stop believing that the fight for what's right is worth it"
He very explicitly says that any employee that disagrees with his statement should resign and the "statement" included his political views.
Will wearing a t-shirt with "I heart America" get you fired at GrubHub? It's on Matt's list of no-nos: nationalist.
Nationalism and expressing love or pride in one's country (patriotism) are two different things, I think. They can be felt simultaneously but can also be expressed separately. Nationalism focusses more on cultural background, language, and heritage, which "I ︎<3 America" doesn't necessarily convey.
I don't know how all of this will shake out at GrubHub. The most I've heard of the company has been around this incident. There's a lot of close and sometimes purposefully uncharitable parsing of language and cherry-picking going around in general.
I would agree that they are distinct, but very much related.
> Nationalism focusses more on cultural background, language, and heritage, which "I ︎<3 America" doesn't necessarily convey.
Ok, then, how about this t-shirt of Mickey/Heart/Flag: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/155866837074483117/
Sure. If they weren't, you wouldn't have put forth the example you did.
"how about this t-shirt of Mickey/Heart/Flag:"
I don't understand what you're getting at (nor am I interested in defining the working attire policy of GrubHub). My point was that there can be a meaningful distinction between nationalism and wearing a "I <3 America" T-shirt, which it looked like you were equating. If you have a point, please make it.
> [from your OP] Nationalism focusses more on cultural background, language, and heritage, which "I ︎<3 America" doesn't necessarily convey.
I picked an "American" cultural icon in conformance with your definition of nationalism.
> If you have a point, please make it.
Social commentary on the current attempt to render expressions of affinity for one's "cultural background, language, and heritage" as socially unacceptable, and indicative of regressive and/or antisocial mindset, and possibly cause for loss of livelihood in companies such as Grubhub.
I'm getting that impression from you in this discussion as well. Given the email as a whole and his follow-up, I don't get the impression of a CEO that would have someone fired over either of the T-shirt examples you've given. So far in this thread, that's been implied by your argument, and that's the only thing you've put forth. I also don't think that's everything you have to say on the topic, and I'm not going to assume what that is. Building straw men is in no way a useful exercise for constructive discussion.
I think there's a lot to be said for your statement:
"Social commentary on the current attempt to render expressions of affinity for one's "cultural background, language, and heritage" as socially unacceptable, and indicative of regressive and/or antisocial mindset"
I also don't see that being fairly applied across the board by a lot of people making arguments like this.
As stated before, I don't know that much about GrubHub or the CEO. If there is other evidence based on his behavior or experiences at GrubHub, that would add to this discussion of the letter and its affect on GrubHub. As I don't have any, I don't have anything more to say on the topic.
Where does he say that?
Quick example, as awful as sexual harrassment is - the code of conduct at your workplace - it doesn't say - Sexual harassment (like the kind Trump does) will not be tolerated. They manage to get a point across regardless.
But making public your support for Trump — or the KKK, or NAMBLA, or Hacker News — is a completely different thing. You can and should be judged on the basis of the ideas and opinions that you promote.
Usually people are judged based on the ideas that those who oppose them hold.
On Liberty: Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
That reminds me of the quotation:
"A new idea is a beautiful and fragile thing. Attack people, not ideas."
I don't know who said that first, but I love that quotation. It mocks itself (and other witticisms), and at the same time reminds you to focus your energy attacking ideas rather than people.
In extreme cases, someone can have a lot of bad ideas and you need to challenge them personally. But that's only in extreme cases, and doesn't apply transitively to supporters of the person.
Not in the context of your employment, you shouldn't. Really, where does this attitude come from that one's employer should get a veto over everything one does when off the clock? It's usually from people who are always complaining about evil corporations stepping on people's rights, too. I don't get it.
Anything to back that up?
http://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford
This appears to have been the instigator:
Fired for a donation that supported enshrining discrimination in a state constitution. It was a good firing.
Support nasty causes, win nasty prizes.
Plus, the point is, if we purge people based on their political opinions, why bother with democracy?
What is legal is not the same as what is moral or ethical.
Figuring out how to tolerate dissent is an issue I think a lot of people are trying to figure out right now, as your statement is pointing to.
He may have good reasons to think that, which aren't forbidden by law. It was legal, it is moral for some people, it is ethical for others, what about we let him do his job of managing a technical company? Companies shouldn't be forced to fire people who are considered as "witches" by the people, as long as they're competent in their job. It takes a huge amount of time to train CEOs and keep replicas on hot standby in a company, if the company has to second-guess the people's opinion about the politics (or sexual life) of CEOs, it's bad for the economy. And if we practice a witch hunt at every level of companies, it quickly goes unethical. See this quote from GitHub's new Diversity Director:
> "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women"
You bring up good points regarding the training and the costs of replacing people. Those costs are balanced against the value brought to the company, right?
One of the reasons I think it's difficult to discuss as when people start giving examples as to what should be tolerated and what shouldn't, some people are going to think it's absurd, and take issue with the discussion as a whole.
For the sake of argument, I'll try.
Let's say one of the goals of the company is to provide honeymoon packages and the target market is gay couples. An employee makes a donation in support of something like Prop 8. Is there a conflict there? Are they a good fit for the company? If not, should they look for someone else? Perhaps the person shouldn't have been hired in the first place. Should the company be able to make that decision based on knowing the candidate made such a donation? Should the candidate look elsewhere and not consider a position at the company? Can a company's goals change over time? Can a company's goals include those broader than just the product they market?
You mention "let him do his job of managing a technical company". I think there's tension here, as well (independent of the situation at Mozilla). People are not purely rational beings. How people get along in the workplace is important to its overall effectiveness. What's acceptable in one workplace is not going to be acceptable in another, similar to how people have different circles of friends. Should companies be able to hire for fit? Fire for it?
I think there are some very real questions there. And a lot of contentious issues. Please don't assume my answers to all of these questions, either. You're guaranteed to be wrong as I haven't come to a firm conclusion on all of them :)
If toleration of political opinion is a settled issue for you, please share :) Can you think of a political position that should not be tolerated?
The whole "what's legal is not necessarily moral or ethical" is another kettle of fish, which is the point I was making initially. Your point about what's moral for some people and ethical for others points to some agreement on your part, doesn't it? Perhaps one difference is whether or not we agree that a company can or should have an ethical purpose or should reflect the ethics of the people who own the company or work of the company. Or do business for the company, for that matter.
I don't expect you to have answers to all of these questions. I'd be surprised if you did. If you don't think these are valid questions, I'd be interested to hear which ones are invalid and why.
Lots of people knew proposition 8 was reprehensible and protested accordingly. Eich chose not to listen.
> if we purge people based on their political opinions, why bother with democracy
Purging people based on political opinions is exactly how democracy is supposed to function. We regularly vote politicians out of office because of their political opinions. What other criterion should a democracy use to select leaders?
What does "purging" mean to you in this case? You've now provided two examples: firing and voting. What level of political disagreement justifies what actions? I don't think there's widespread agreement, and it's something I'm trying to figure out for myself.
Voting someone out of office is firing them. We're talking about firing.
So for the sake of LGBT Mozilla employees, I'm glad Eich was shown the door. I'm not interested in entertaining a bunch of fluffy questions about heuristics, expression of opinion, what "purging" really means, or whatever. That's just noise.
When you post on Facebook or Twitter, you're publishing content in the public sphere, deliberately. Published ideas are for public consumption and judgement. If you don't want those ideas and opinions to be judged, don't publish them. Talk to your friends and family about them: keep them in the private sphere.
There's a perverse modern idea that you don't have an identity unless it's a public identity. You barely exist unless you're seen to exist in Instagram pictures, Facebook posts, and Tweets. Not only don't you exist unless you build a social media identity, but because identity is sacrosanct, whatever you publish must be accepted without reservation and judgment — because it's just you being you.
That's bullshit. You have a private identity. You don't have to publish your opinions in the public sphere, and if you do everyone has every right to judge those opinions. If you don't want to be judged, keep it private.
Nor are they obligated to. To paraphrase, I may defend your right to speak your opinion but I am not required to be your friend or to spare you from any social consequences of your speech. Make no mistake, there has never been a time when unpopular speech did not have consequences for the speaker and if this bothers you then feel free to exercise your right not to speak or select a society that shares your beliefs.
Freedom of speech means the government cannot throw you in jail for the things you say. That is it. Short of violence, everyone else has the freedom of speech to tell you how reprehensible you are without limitations.
This idea that people have the right to say whatever they want without repercussions due to "freedom of speech" is a meme that needs to go away.
Quoting from http://volokh.com/2013/08/06/lawsuit-over-firing-based-on-em...
In 1937, “the California Legislature, recognizing that employers could misuse their economic power to interfere with the political activities of their employees, enacted Labor Code sections 1101 and 1102 to protect the employees’ rights.” Labor Code section 1101 provides: “No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy: [¶] (a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics …. [or] (b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.” Labor Code section 1102 provides: “No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.” These sections are designed to protect “ ‘the fundamental right of employees in general to engage in political activity without interference by employers.’ ”
Now it can be used to protect those who political beliefs are more on the right. How the worm turns!
I would argue that Facebook is private, Twitter is public.
You have no expectation of anything on Facebook not being public.
It's not very reasonable to insist that everyone conceptualize all assurances as blatant lies all the time.
You could in theory have it communicate directly with your counterpart's server over TLS, which would provide a good deal of privacy, but then you're trusting your counterpart's server. Given that most people aren't capable of running a mail server, it's not an ideal solution.
That started with talk shows on TV, where it is implied that you haven't had an emotion until it's made public.
Why work at a Christian company if you find their beliefs oppressive?
I say this as someone who thinks there is a thin line (a birth canal) between infanticide and a legal abortion.
And there's always the option of working at common ground. Instead of picking a point of contention, serve at a food bank. Nobody objects to those.
For example, the mandatory volunteer time may not have offended any principles and come with higher pay.
> however if your core beliefs are out of line with a companies beliefs then it just might make you a bad FIT for the company. Not about your opinion, but about you fit with a group of people who's opinion and beliefs are opposite.
So I can veil and justify my prejudice in a company mission statement? This is busybody-ism run amok. This is institutionalized busybody thinking. We really need some collective soul-searching because great people are being destroyed.
How about this, let's stop ruining people for what's going on between their ears. Everyone's got stupid ideas and ugly and complicated thoughts. Get over yourselves, thought police!
Employers: hire people for what they can do for you, pay them fairly, and let them live the rest of their dumb lives in peace. If employees are being assholes in the workplace, discipline and/or fire them. If employees are tarnishing your brand by doing things disagreeable to you
A) publicly, **AND**
B) in your brand's name
Of course, the larger problem is the rest of the culture. There are groups who will retaliate against individuals by naming them and trying to link them to the brand of their employer. It puts the employer in an impossible bind. Brendan Eich and Mozilla spring to mind as a particularly memorable example of this.
It's a form of cultural terrorism, where one's private ideas can get them killed. The only solution, as distasteful as it sounds to many, is to not let the terrorists win. Mozilla should have kept Eich on, just to spite the SJW's and prevent them from souring civil discourse.
49 people were massacred this year for going to a gay nightclub, but Eich was a victim of terrorism because he was fired? What are you smoking?
Brendan Eich contributed to the Prop 8[1] traditional marriage campaign that the California electorate voted on. It was a constitutional amendment and it passed which, in 2008, was simply stunning.
In any case, Eich was shamed retroactively for his contribution. The hate and vitriol I read directed at the man at the time was incredible. If I were him, I would have been more in fear for my life and my family's, much less holding on to my CEO position. I don't know Brendan except hearing heard him speak a bit on youtube on technical topics, maybe he's a braver soul than I am IRL.
In any case, "the use of violence or threats of violence in order to coerce, especially for political purposes" is the #1 definition of 'terrorism', which describes what happened with Eich pretty well. Fear is as powerful a weapon of terrorists as bullets or jet planes or pressure cookers are. Is this definition of terrorism and its implications well understood by you, and are you simply resistant to empathizing with someone with different politics than yours? That's all well and good until it's your ox that gets gored.
Eich wasn't fired, at least not publicly. He stepped down because the cowards/traitors on the board let him dangle with no support.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008...
Yeah. He was given a taste of his own medicine with regard to what it feels like to be victimized.
Edit: I have upvoted gaur because their minority viewpoint needs to be fully heard to be understood.
On the facts, Mozilla and I both say I resigned, and Mozilla's board members said at the time that they wanted me to stay.
But in fantasizing that I was fired, gaur's moralistic and judgmental language exhibits the usual signs that Jonathan Haidt has detailed in "The Righteous Mind": a casting out of the other as beyond redemption and justly punished, without the ability to model said other or address their point of view.
(Also without ever adverting to the bad "purging" precedent he's endorsing, which global Trumpism can and will exploit by reversing his right-makes-might-makes-right circular argument. The shoe may soon be on the other foot even here in the USA, at least in large regions; it definitely never left the first foot in places like Saudi Arabia.)
Dishonesty and self-pity are not worth hearing or studying -- we have enough of them already.
Gaur expresses or implies falsehoods about California law, but I've addressed those elsewhere on HN and won't repeat here. Links:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721928
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12721891
Of course, you're right on, and that level of injustice he lusts for invites a cruel backlash. Your ominous parenthetical sidebar is not lost on me, and we may be heading to ugly places under Trump.
I am glad to hear you speak well of the Mozilla board. I know you all were put in an awful bind, and you did the most honorable thing you could.
Take care, I pray for you and for the country.
Thanks for your other words & thoughts.
I hope you took good notes during those times and write your memoirs someday. What was it like to become a public figure after having such an impact on our industry? And then, I'm convinced you were just at the wrong place career-wise at the wrong time, what was it like to be a public figure caught up in a media firestorm? That's a story I'd like to read someday.
Also, what are you going to do next, if you're in a sharing mood?
I've been bummed not to have Privacy Badger on my Android Firefox. I will give Brave a tumble, thanks!
As much as I disagreed with Brebdan Eich's political positions, I thought it was wrong that he was pushed out of Mozilla because of them. HN is not a single voice but my reading of it at the time was that, contrary to my position, most people thought it was the right thing to do.
This is true only if your company has a deliberate no religion or politics position, and can operate like such.
There are three things you hire people for:
- Doing something specific
- Working more general things out
- Choosing what the first two do
The first is completely apolitical, the second is partly apolitical, the third is completely political. Suggesting that a company is not, in some manner, a political machine is a useful way of shifting the blame for the things it does to the regulatory system and making employees do things they don't agree with.
Keep in mind though that that's just a current fashion, not a law of the universe. You could just as easily make the case that if your religion doesn't matter at work, you should get a new religion (or a new workplace).
The only reason our current beliefs are in fashion is basically that the continual development of new technology has made public morality irrelevant. But if we ever stop being able to innovate ourselves our of the hole we're digging then the party's over and we become an islamic republic or whatever.
Quoting from http://volokh.com/2013/08/06/lawsuit-over-firing-based-on-em...
In 1937, “the California Legislature, recognizing that employers could misuse their economic power to interfere with the political activities of their employees, enacted Labor Code sections 1101 and 1102 to protect the employees’ rights.” Labor Code section 1101 provides: “No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy: [¶] (a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics …. [or] (b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.” Labor Code section 1102 provides: “No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.” These sections are designed to protect “ ‘the fundamental right of employees in general to engage in political activity without interference by employers.’ ”
Once you start thinking like that, it becomes easy to find any way to rationalize firing anyone for any reason.
Yeah, don't get me wrong: not vaccinating your child is a very shitty decision, and dangerous both for the child and other children they interact with. Herd immunity and all that.
But let's be fair: one major difference between anti-vaxxers and Nazis is that anti-vaxxers are simply misguided and ignorant. The Nazis on the other hand knew exactly what they were doing (exterminating people) and even developed fucked up methodologies for doing it more efficiently. So I stand by my previous assertion that the two groups are categorically and fundamentally different.
Free speech acts as Natural selection for ideas. Bad ideas never get checked and fester in filter bubbles if you don't let people express themselves openly.
I encourage everyone to avoid answering that question, it presupposes that the mindset that resulted in such a question is valid on some level and worthy of engagement.
You can judge on consistency by using some empathy and substituting in Jews, progressives, and Muslims to select some arbitrary left wing groups as opposed to the right wing groups initially named. For people with empathy (and a bit of wisdom) regardless of which side they're on, they can see that its a fundamentally immoral method of argument, regardless of who is picked as today's trendy victim of the sophistry. How can something moral and worthy rely specifically on not using empathy? The response to civilization getting punched in the face by a right fist a century ago should be something like "turn the other cheek" not having bad guys propose "punch back left handed, maybe harder and using computers this time". You're not going to win with a strategy that boils down to being nazis, but more specifically left wing nazis so that means we're not only OK but we're great because I'm sure the other side shares our views that they're deplorable and if we just call them racists or bigots one more time then they'll finally start voting for us. That was quite an empathy fail in the recent election strategy. We tried left wing authoritarianism last century a couple times and it failed every time. Oddly enough it turns out people hate being genocided regardless of being told its to help the left or the right. Theoretically and pragmatically WRT empathy, mislabeling "natural" is just a bad strategy, gonna fail.
Another way its not "natural" is confusing groupthink with observing actual nature or wisdom. For example, today left wing progressive views are extremely popular, near universal in some subgroups echo chambers, in the 30s in Germany somewhat further right views were more popular. Popularity contest results are very interesting but has nothing to do with morality and ethics and right and wrong and the correct way to live a good life. Is the truth of the world that the Earth is flat or round? Did the earth change shape before and after Columbus or just the groupthink? Is the logically efficient and dependable way to determine the result of 2 + 2, to vote on it? In summary don't confuse merely measuring groupthink vs observations and analysis of actual "nature".
So not bad, given a two word phrase "natural selection" its gotten at least three gaping philosophical holes shot thru it.
In case you hadn't noticed, fascism seems to be increasingly popular around the world lately despite speech being freer than ever before.
Being shamed isn't an infringement upon free speech. Being subject to legal sanction that impacts your liberty or property interest is. Your conservative friends have suffered no loss of their speech freedom, they simply haven't found a sympathetic ear for their viewpoint among liberals. Nor should they, say I as a liberal - when they come to me saying they want to restrict others' freedoms, I feel zero desire to assist them in that project or even associate with them.
Why would you assume that the subtextual nature of these fascist views explained their existence, though? They've been kept below the surface because when they were openly expressed in the past the overall reaction was highly negative.
You seem to think that if we just accepted people going about spouting fascist opinions, they'd eventually grow out of it or somesuch, as if it were a developmental stage everyone went through. The reality is that a lot of wars have been fought over these ideas already, most famously World War 2. And what we learned from that were that first, fascism when implemented on a large scale can lead to monstrous moral evils, as much as any other totalitarian ideology, and second, that some people seem totally OK with that.
Now, that would be merely interesting if we could be disinterested outside observers, in the same way that it's interesting to watch two ant colonies duke it out for territorial dominance because we don't empathize much with the individual ants. On the other hand, fascism (like all totalitarian systems) always has designated out groups who are designated to be acceptable targets for violence, both formal and informal. If you're passively accepting of that when it's happening to someone else next to you, then you share a small part in the moral responsibility insofar as your passivity differs from your base level of passivity. That is to say, if you're the sort of person who wouldn't lift a finger to help someone else in any trouble - being hit by a car, say, or suffering some wholly random natural calamity - then you're just an unhelpful person to begin with, whether that's due to anxiety, fear, or simple selfish indifference. On the other hand if you're normally helpful but don't help someone out if they're suffering from fascistic (or other ideological) violence, then you're indirectly assisting the oppression and bear some of the moral culpability for the results.
The fact is that when someone goes about saying (for example) they want the USA to be a country for white people and are willing to employ force to that end, that makes everyone who's not white feel much less safe because such speech normalizes the use of force against them. Of course, it's just as troubling if someone goes around asserting that they feel fine about hurting or killing white people. However, the facts that white people a) form a majority of the population and b) have inflicted far more violence against people of color in the recent historical past than they have been subjected to in return suggest a strong statistical basis for treating the first case as a much bigger problem than the second.
John Stuart Mill disagrees as I quoted previously: Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
"On Liberty" also delves way into harmful speech which Nazism certainly is, but all I'm really pointing out is that's a light year away from merely voting for Trump and seems to be done solely to dismiss others.