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Comment by ooobit2 | Hacker News Reader

I've fired people for having less wherewithal than to ask a question like this. His performance, output, or attitude are irrelevant. He knowingly used company property to violate federal law... IP law at that. Guy should be lucky he didn't get sued for gross negligence.

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If you fire people just for asking questions (possibly after misunderstanding the intent of the question like in this case), then it seems likely you'll end up with a team of sycophants that only tell you what you want to hear.

I had the first impression as you but IIUC they are saying the rep's poor ethics/judgement are enough to make them unemployable and we should all realize and agree or our judgement is also questionable.

E.g. Bob's super smart and gets 10 times the work done as anyone else but he also sexually harasses the secretary and dips into the petty cash drawer at least once a week.

It should be clear we don't want to have Bob as our employee. See Susan Fowler's experience with her boss at Uber who sexually propositioned her repeatedly but HR said they would not remove because he was a high performer... https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...

My question was only to hopefully learn a bit about how people who do such weird things, can be like, otherwise at the workplace.

Wasn't suggesting anything related to firing or not.

@wcoenen you're right in that there's a misunderstanding of intent.

@ooobit2 I was asking, only to hopefully learn a bit about how people who do such weird things, can be like, otherwise at the workplace.

> I've fired people for having less wherewithal than to ask a question like this

Makes me wonder if you've fired people in the past, because of misunderstandings

I might be misreading the comment above, but it sounds to me like it's asking, "Were there any signs of him being untrustworthy?" (and not "He shouldn't have been fired.")

It is precisely because of the magnitude of his error that it would have been nicer to fire him before he made it.

> like it's asking, "Were there any signs of him being untrustworthy?"

That's right -- I'm interested in hopefully recognizing such signs myself, sooner rather than later

>I've fired people for having less wherewithal than to ask a question like this.

Can you explain what this sentence means?

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