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Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

Nope. 100% disagree with you. Nobody should be fired for speaking out and/or starting a meaningful conversation. The opposite is censorship.

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Creating a hostile workplace is not “meaningful conversation”. The memo constituted pretty blatant harassment of all his female colleagues. You don’t have the right to say whatever you want. People absolutely should be fired for harassing and discriminating against their colleagues (which is effectively what the memo was). It’s toxic and incredibly hurtful and cannot be tolerated.

An hostile workplace is one firing an employee for the mere act of sharing an opinion. As the memo was not directly addressed to any female and did not insult them it is clearly not harassment. Questioning the hiring policy is not like attacking people directly. This is sad to see how much everything got conflated in an angry prêt-à-penser ideology that justify every of its excesses against the non believers.

No you're right, he didn't address harass a single coworker. Instead he harassed all of the women he work with at the same time. Just because he didn't name names doesn't mean it's not harassment; he deliberately insulted an entire demographic of people, and then tried to pretend it was "scientific" when it was just a load of bullshit, as if that makes it any better.

If his memo was railing against, say, the Irish, would you still think he wasn't harassing any of his Irish colleagues?

> any female

Now I understand. Go back to redpill please.

> If his memo was railing against, say, the Irish, would you still think he wasn't harassing any of his Irish colleagues?

If an entreprise I work in would start things such as saying "there is not enough Irish in the entreprise", have a skewed hiring process towards Irish, imposes me lessons about how to behave around Irish, and forbid the use of French even when only French speakers are around, yes I would totally support someone (of every nationality) asking the hierarchy what is going on. Or I may even do it myself.

The only case it would be acceptable is of course a company which makes money based in Irish culture and language, which then require these specific people to be hired. But on the women side of the things, as I consider them totally equals to men and thus apt to do the same technical jobs as men granted we speak of the same education level, I don’t see why they should be favored over men. And some women in my lab totally think that way too. One actually told me she hates this type of policies because it kinda lowered her work to get her job (not that’s easy either to succeed as a man).

> Nobody should be fired for speaking out and/or starting a meaningful conversation

Do you also strongly disagree with the concept of at-will employment?

If not, how do you reconcile the concept of at-will employment with this statement?

You really think the memo was "starting a meaningful conversation"? Did you even read it?

> Nobody should be fired for speaking out and/or starting a meaningful conversation.

Do you not live on the same planet as the rest of us ?

Because it is common, legal, socially popular and frankly the status quo for companies to fire you based on what you say during work time. After all companies are paying you during that time to represent them and their values.

Society actually expects people to be fired based on what they say during work.

For better or worse, this is precisely the sort of freedom of association that at-will employment allows.

I think it's probably for the better myself.

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