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Comment by casion | Hacker News Reader

I find it strange that someone in this position, regardless of their beliefs, does not recognize that as a (potential) CEO - they speak for the company. It doesn't matter if you're on or off the clock. What you say in public is a reflection on the company. It doesn't matter if you think that your personal identity and professional identity should be separate. At that level, at this point in history, in this specific business culture, they are not separate.

Based on that alone, beliefs totally aside, she was clearly unfit for the role.

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I definitely agree that a PR person for a company should be held to a higher standard.

But it is sad that the company cowered to the demands to an online mob. Based on her description (which is obvious biased so take w/ a grain of salt), nothing she said is controversial. It's a reasonable disagreement on policy position.

If their policy was "don't talk about politics or policy at all" then that is one thing. But the policy really more like, "its okay unless some people on twitter are butthurt and now you have prostrate yourself as a racist" (at which point we'll fire you for being an admitted racist).

And I'm sure it won't end their headaches, as she'll probably go on Fox News routinely to shit talk Levi's for hating America.

I think her point is that the company takes many explicitly political stances all of the time. So why not this one?

In this case, there's a mob of people willing to demonize her and the company. Should mobs rule dominate company politics?

Alternatively: she was unfit for the role because she was unable to navigate (manipulate) this situation.

Should mobs rule? Probably not. Should a "Brand President" be capable of dealing with situations like this: absolutely. Should a CEO be capable of doing so? Yes.

> she was unfit for the role because she was unable to navigate (manipulate) this situation.

It sounds like the obverse of this may be true: the roel was unfit for her because it did not allow her sufficient choice in how to manage the situation.

A brand manager for a major brand should be able to influence what policies the brand takes a position on and what policies it does not. It sounds like that has been the case to this point, but in this case one of two things happened: either the latitude that she was given in the position was curtailed, or it was the first time where her personal beliefs diverged from the positions of the rest of the company.

In the interest of exposing my own biases, I stopped financially supporting Levi’s in 2018 after their CEO publicly came out in support of additional, stricter gun laws: https://fortune.com/2018/09/04/levi-strauss-gun-violence-par...

Companies generally take uncontroversial-for-business stances, or possibly controversial stances on issues directly related to their bottom line. It should be self-evident why they wouldn't be interested in this one.

Ah, but this isn’t the first time Levi’s has taken a stance on something unrelated to their bottom line: https://fortune.com/2018/09/04/levi-strauss-gun-violence-par...

Very true but I believe this is changing for the better and people learn to differentiate. Maybe not today, but it is on its way.

Although it does not seem to work for journalism ironically. Any opinion article is seen as the opinion of the whole journal.

But I don't see her as unfit for the role. Sometimes you have to accept the things like they are and sometimes you have to take a stand. To generally criticise this behavior would be wrong as it would promote CEOs that are braggarts.

I also think this will damage the brand image and that is not because of the CEO.

That is completely unacceptable.

Corporations have more than enough power already. We do not also need to allow them to dictate the political views of their employees.

> Based on that alone, beliefs totally aside, she was clearly unfit for the role.

Correct. The role does not fit anyone willing to speak out about issues when they see something wrong or have the integrity to refuse to recant their true beliefs to keep their job.

The problem is that she was given this platform because she is president of Levi's. If she were sales-level executive, news orgs wouldn't really care that much. I agree with her opinion and love to hear alternative viewpoints, but it's difficult to separate her role at Levi's from who she is.

What happens when corporations apply this to all their employees? What's to stop them?

They already do? Look at the ability to unionize and the immediate army a company will deploy to nip it in the bud.

And we should allow that to continue?

It doesn't, many require disclosure when posting opinions online

> Corporations have more than enough power already. We do not also need to allow them to dictate the political views of their employees.

They don't.

“Views” of “employees" are different than “public activism” of “corporate officers”.

What prevents corporations from applying this to all employees?

Non-competes used to be for high level executives. Now they are forced on people making sandwiches at Jimmy John's.

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