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Comment by LewisVerstappen | Hacker News Reader

Gotta love mocking people who were just fired.

Pretty much any time a major tech company announces layoffs the peanut gallery shows up talking about how everyone getting cut is lazy/dead weight.

In reality it's far more likely they had the misfortune of being assigned to teams that weren't core to the business' operation or driving revenue or some Exec/VP lost a political battle and their department got the axe.

It’s a classic post hoc rationalization that happens when folks are fully committed to loving business and bosses over actual people’s well-being. It’s gross.

For sure.

To be fair, organizations select for people who love the business and its leaders over people who are willing to point out when the emperor has no clothes. Sort of the same way that in subcultures where abuse is common, the people who remain are selected for those who will support abusers and blame the abused.

So I get how it happens, and why people like to victim-blame as a way of making themselves feel better about their choices. But it's still thoroughly gross.

We are very hypocritical that way. You can get upvotes for being glad you were laid off, you can get upvotes for saying the people who got laid off were bad people anyway.

So when is the appropriate time to mock them? When they are employed making high six figures to invent harms and then ways to reduce them?

Why are you insisting they're inventing harms? Do you have evidence to support this? Are you just opposed to the idea of ethics?

I have a creepy feeling that this entire thread has been infested by Facebook insiders who are working on something that is awful, and lobbied and heckled to get the people fired who were telling them it was awful. No one else would have this sort of venom.

How about we just don't mock people?

Mockery is a very powerful tool to speak truth to power.

It's kind of nice to watch people who call you names for a large amount of money get fired, yes.

I'm not a fan in general, but in this context understanding the team's mindset seems relevant to understanding what the practical effects of this cut will be. Should we expect Facebook to innovate less responsibly in general, or was this team working towards alignment with specific cultural attitudes? For example, the article describes how the team stopped Facebook Dating from adding a race filter and saw that as one of their proud accomplishments - this seems like more of a values judgment than a question of responsibility, since it's not a question that's anywhere near settled in broader society.

Attacks on character should have justification in the comment, not merely a reference to a Twitter existence.

> these people are also nutcases.

In what way?

"Zvika Krieger is a subversive ritualist and radical traditionalist who is passionate about harnessing ancient wisdom to create modern meaning, fostering mindfulness and authentic connection amidst digital distraction, and bridging the sacred and profane. Zvika is the Spiritual Leader of Chochmat HaLev, a progressive spiritual community in Berkeley, CA for embodied prayer, heart-centered connections, and mystical experiences. "

One of them is an apparent cult leader, for example.

> subversive ritualist and radical traditionalist

This sounds like the person I’d put in charge of a department designed to run in circles.

If they were a deacon in their church, you wouldn't blink at it.

Many people in this industry would blink at that. I recall a whole lot of people on HN blinking at the christian beliefs (among other things) of the guy at Google who said the text generator was alive.

His resume has some impressive accomplishments, but has enough BS that it makes me suspicious of what teaching courses on ethical design actually entails.

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