Apple employees are going public about workplace issues
theverge.com
theverge.com
Rather "how do you report someone that might possibly do something in the future, because he said mean things in a book a few years ago so obviously he's evil.
The answer is: you don't.
If he mistreats women or anyone else at work then fire him. If he doesn't, don't.
You can even have a policy against employees saying things on twitter, and fire him if he breaks that.
But you can't fire people because you think they probably have the wrong opinions based on things they said 5 years ago, that's Soviet level repression.
It's scary to know what is going on in some poples head. You see their crazy dark thoughts and you just can't ever trust them anymore. You don't want to be alone in a room with the guy, because he obviously has some serious issues.
Can you see how that affects other people's ability to do their job?
And I'm sure a number of people have had dark thoughts about me, my gender, my ethnicity, my appearance or whatever.
But that is expected, it's part of living in a society, the unspoken rule is that everyone thinks these thoughts but you treat people as if you didn't.
For example, I wouldn't have any problem working alongside a rabid feminist who a few years earlier had written some shocking things about how men are idiots, as long as she's polite and fair to me.
"Soviet level repression" would be sending Mr Martinez to a forced labor camp; maybe his relatives disappear, that sort of thing.
If I find out that a coworker of mine attended a White Power rally a few years ago, or stormed the Capitol this January, you bet I'm bringing it up to my manager in a "it's either me or them" conversation. And I won't be the only one on my team.
You may be cool working with all manner of assholes, doesn't mean other people should be.
It used to be you were innocent until proven guilty. Attending a white power rally isn’t a crime in most places (freedom of assembly).
Assaulting law enforcement and damaging the Capitol is. If you have evidence, report it to law enforcement.
If the person does nothing while at work, there shouldn’t be a problem. You are not their judge. This is precisely why we have around privacy, what your company can ask you, etc.
You can save your boss the time and quit. You can save even more time by asking for the full background of every coworker of yours and determine if they live up to your standards.
Better yet, make your own company comprised of only people who meet your definition of acceptable people based on their political and social opinions that they don’t even share at work. Be careful though, you’re likely to get sued for violating employment laws.
The justice system is not for moral credibility, it is there for moral determination. Even the accusation of sexual abuse is extremely chilling for those who work with children — because it strikes at credibility, at whether people feel you are safe around kids. Would you feel that a pediatrician or teacher accused of sexual misconduct is safe around your children? Or rather, are you surprised that many people would say f-ing no?
Note that being accused is not a crime, and it's an even lesser standard than some old Tweet, because at least that's a written record. But mere accusation can destroy credibility, especially when it has to do with sex.
Now if you were a black man and your boss attended a white power rally, are you seriously going to say there isn't a F'ing Interesting Story of Moral Credibility going on here? If that employee ever sues for workplace discrimination, do people think that a history of white power rallies shouldn't come up?
He had very publicly ridiculed user privacy, which is one of the core defining values that Apple purports to uphold.
He had very publicly aired all sorts of dirty laundry about previous employers, which was virtually guaranteed to happen eventually after some period of employment at Apple, and which is something Apple particularly hates.
So it's entirely beyond me how anybody thought he was a good fit at Apple.
That said, once hired, I think he's owed some monetary compensation for steps he took in reliance on the new job (at least morally, and quite possibly even legally, even in an at-will state).
The people in the club don't want him in and they make the rules. Unlike Soviets, Apple isn't the state and Martinez can go elsewhere. No one forced Martinez to pen the book. There are all sorts of books you can write that will cause a negative reputation to precede you. Your reputation has consequences! Imagine that!
You don't need to mistreat someone for them to feel uncomfortable if you've published a book mistreating people before. The precedent is enough - since obviously, anyone who has read the book will be thinking "that's what he's thinking about me right now". I think Martinez made a mistake, he thought he could be Brett Easton Ellis and then go and work in a large corporation. The truth is that even if he doesn't identify with the character he portrayed in the book (which he probably does but not to the extent his accusers think) it doesn't matter - because he literally wrote a book about how identifies as that person, and at that point the trust he broke "as character" has genuinely been broken in the eyes of his future colleagues.
The fun thing about that word is that people can't really define it, or rarely go to the work to do so. Virtually everyone defaults to "I know it when I see it" which is a statement that basically says "my biases or identity or viewpoint will dictate it".
Evil is that which threatens your survival in some manner: directly by force, indirectly by threat of force. Survival is itself not boolean, it is basically a rolling total of percentile risk.
And most importantly, that perception of evil is specific to your point of view, and your individual existence in the world.
To point back to the article, it specifically mentions Muslims and the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which very clearly demonstrates the perspective-based essence of the perception of evil.
Palestinians think Israelis are evil for starving them and bombing them, a constant threat that reduces their collective individual survivability.
Guess what, Israelis think Palestinians and Muslims are evil because they lob missles at them, send their own bombers, and several times attempted to invade and destroy their country.
Well, gosh, two sides that think the other side is evil. That is war and conflict. It isn't always going to be Axis vs Allies with one side using gas chambers and the other side rolling in gallantly on tanks.
War sucks.
Evil is relative.
But these days, nuance is dead.
So a bunch of people thought some new hire's views were "evil", that is those statements promoted an attitude that contributes to a subculture of hostility against them and reduces their survivability quotient.
So they get him fired, so from his perspective a bunch of radicalized thought police fired him from his job denying him a good salary for a long time, directly threatening his survival. Guess what, that makes the thought police evil.
The fun thing is when you get to modern civilization ramping through its resources faster than is sustainable. Participating in society is degrading your survivability. You are evil to yourself.
And if evil is simply a representation of risk to your survivability in the great game of life centered on the global biochemical reaction that is life, there is no universal evil, and there is no god.
Hope this helps.
The far left (I'm a liberal but mostly an environmentalist and better-distribution-of-wealth liberal) can go ahead and do twitter brigades and online outrage mobs. Whatever.
But these witch hunts that get people fired in a country where there's no socialized medicine and no safety net start to get to the actual evil of a witch hunt running down someone unpopular and burning them. Yes, getting someone fired from a job can get them killed.
1000 people (together with the leadership) just ruined job safety for the rest, now people have to play gender politics as well instead of just improving the ecosystem.