Hacker News Reader

Comment by Qworg | Hacker News Reader

You can say whatever you want. You can be as loathsome or virtuous as you'd like on your own time and dime. But the moment what you say goes contrary to the shared expectations of the company you belong to or negatively impacts how business is done, you're finished.

Is this a difficult or arguable point?

View on HN

It's neither difficult nor arguable, but it's a bit of a cop-out. Google is, of course, well within their legal rights to fire the employee. The 1A applies only to government restrictions on speech.

But the larger question, of whether it is good that a particular political ideology, adhered to by a small minority of the country, should hold such sway over public discourse that to challenge any of its dogmas is to commit career suicide, remains. This is a trend that is only accelerating, and it's going nowhere good.

If he held his opinion purely in the public sphere, I'd agree with you - but he posted it in an internal companywide manner that directly impacts how he'll be able to work with his coworkers.

Being divisive at work isn't good for business.

You're right, that's an important difference. However, it doesn't alter the core point about the chilling effect this particular ideology is having. Could you honestly say that someone expressing an equally divisive statement that was in agreement with progressive dogma would be fired? If someone argued in favour of refraining from hiring straight white men until sufficient diversity had been achieved, do you think Google would have fired them?

If they were serious about it (and not in a Jonathan Swift kind of way), perhaps. That said, it is difficult to see how it is equally harmful given how normal straight white men are in society.

Brendan Eich got fired from his CEO position for the offense of privately and silently donating a few thousand dollars to a PAC which was against prop 8.

The above sentence is a fact but I am compelled to write it with a throwaway account since even mentioning the idea that this may have been unfair puts my career at risk. That's how bad it's gotten.

Brendan's situation was very different - he's a public figure and you no longer belong to yourself at that point.

Is Google being blind to the bubble they exist in 'good for business'

As best I can tell Google is within their legal rights to employ this individual as they see fit

I'm going to disagree that getting rid of inconvenient truth tellers is 'good for business' though

How on earth his opinion could "negatively impact how business is done"?

because you can't work with people who hate you no matter why.

They're firing him not even because of his opinions but because he's just bringing more "bad" than "good to the compagny.

At the end of the day it's not the "compagny taking a moral standpoint" but "solving a compagny problem" in the most simple way

> because you can't work with people who hate you no matter why.

So if I understand your argument correctly, if people hate you then it's OK to fire you? I'm sorry, this makes no sense to me.

He can't be put into teams. At least in my office, all work is done in teams.

If the shoe was on the other foot would we be so quick to write it off? If Google was run by right-wingers and fired LGBT activists would we say "they can do whatever they want since it is their company"? Why do we not allow discrimination on the basis of religion (a belief) but allow it based on political opinion (a belief)?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com