Comment by CharlesColeman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CharlesColeman | Hacker News Reader

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> You don't get to co-opt internal tools to post your interpretation of federal labor law, or to send a message to the management team, or whatever else her motivations were. That's why she got fired.

> This kind of thing would have gotten her fired from pretty much every company in the country and for good reason - she's untrustworthy and cannot seperate her job as a Security Engineer from her activism, and I'm sorry you can't see that.

What Google-specific support do you have for this, than post-hoc rationalizations based on her firing? Every indication I've seen has told me that Google has developed a very unique corporate culture, which makes inferences from "every company in the country" suspect.

I can definitely see your position (which approximately seems to be: a worker's primary moral obligation is to serve his employers to their satisfaction during his employment. Assertion of his own rights on work time with work resources is a severe moral violation as it puts the workers' interest above the employers'.), I just disagree.

> She's not a black person during Jim Crow era. She's not oppressed, and it's offputing that you would even make that comparison. She's a bay-area engineer who was making a very good salary and betrayed the trust that her position entitled her to.

I'd say she is oppressed, just in a different, less-severe way than black people during the Jim Crow era.

> And it is interesting that you can claim that she did nothing wrong, and at the same time understand why she should be reprimended.

Really? I thought it was pretty widely understood that morality and law are not the same. You can have immoral things that are legal, and moral things that are illegal. Corporate policy is a weak kind of law that has even less claim to respect than federal and state law.

>What Google-specific support do you have for this, than post-hoc rationalizations based on her firing?

That's not post-hoc rationalization. That's the stated reason. That's also clearly the reason if you take an inventory of the facts on hand.

>Every indication I've seen has told me that Google has developed a very unique corporate culture

Yes, "unique" just like every snowflake is unique. And "Unique corporate culture" doesn't mean you can do whatever you want, as James Damore found out. And yes, her actions (not anybody elses) led to her termination, as would have been the case in every other company.

>I can definitely see your position (which approximately seems to be: a worker's primary moral obligation is to serve his employers to their satisfaction during his employment. Assertion of his own rights on work time with work resources is a severe moral violation as it puts the workers' interest above the employers'.)

That's not my position and I don't appreciate this distortion.

And no, she's not a moral arbiter of Google. She doesn't have the right to assert her interpretation of law and morality on the entire corporation. Maybe she thinks she was doing a moral action (though I would argue her action is narcissim and attention-seeking), but Google employs tens of thousands of people across the world, with different religions and politics and beliefs. You don't get to co-opt internal tools to advocate for Jesus Christ as your saviour (and what could be more moral than saving people from eternal damnation) just because you think that's the moral action.

>I'd say she is oppressed, just in a different, less-severe way than black people during the Jim Crow era.

Talk about an understatement of the century. She's as much oppressed as a grounded teenager, which, you're right, on the oppression scale is "less-severe way than black people during the Jim Crow era".

> That's not post-hoc rationalization. That's the stated reason. That's also clearly the reason if you take an inventory of the facts on hand.

The stated reason can obviously be a post-hoc rationalization. It's entirely possible that she crossed a line her employer drew after the fact.

> That's not my position and I don't appreciate this distortion.

Well, if you could clarify, that would be great. It's clear to me that there's some moral component to your position, given your language:

>>> she's untrustworthy

>>> [she] betrayed the trust that her position entitled her to.

> She doesn't have the right to assert her interpretation of law and morality on the entire corporation.

(I should note that it's not her interpretation, it is the law.)

> I would argue her action is narcissim and attention-seeking

I does sound like you feel that her overriding moral obligation was to serve her employers to their satisfaction, and that it was a strong moral violation to take a fairly anodyne action that caused her employers some discomfort. No money was lost, no security systems breached, no confidential data exposed. The only thing that happened was a few people saw a required legal notice that her employers would rather have people forget about.

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