That Time I Posted Myself Out Of a Job
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imho the point of this article seems to be to tell the story where big bad VMWare or the target of VMWare’s employee’s ire stomped on poor VMWare employee, but I think it makes the employee look bad. I would absolutely not hire this person based on this post. Work isn’t the right time to be attacking people on a personal level.
This should have been a lesson on the toxic and pointless nature of social media, but the author seems to have misread the situation entirely.
Leave your edgy fursona (is that how they call it?) to your personal life.
(Anyone thinking this about "the pony" is missing the point, probably disingenuously so.)
I'd probably rather work for a company that requires people to be professional on a job than one that allows them to "authentically" go wild and throw shit around. There are limits to how much "authenticity" I want to see from my coworkers. Everybody has their own opinions, but there's a time when one needs to choose between staying a professional or let oneself loose. And I'd rather work in a place where the former is encouraged.
No idea what noun the former use for the thing, though there's probably a dozen here who will add that detail…
What other factual statements should you not be allowed to make about your employer's clients?
They are free to make these claims in a way that doesn’t damage the business. Like a second personal Twitter account.
Are they, though?
I mean, presumably they were posting from a personal account to begin with. Just how separate would a second account have to be - Is it enough to just say all opinions are their own, and only post on their own time? Could they use their own name? What about an online handle they'd used before, if a highly motivated doxxer could possibly identify their employer?
It was a customer of the company that got offended. Should he know every customer of the company? If the company has 1000s of customers, are they all off limits? Are you supposed to know who they are?
If you work for AT&T and an AT&T customer (of the millions it has) is a jerk or you have some political disagreement with their views, do you get to tweet about it on your personal twitter account? Should they be able to complain and get you fired?
Or you think you can be obnoxious clown without repercussions?
Seems to be working for Elon, tbh.
If I was a big tech company especially one trying to find people interested in working lower down the stack, I wouldn't go around pissing off leftist furries.
The author seemed perfectly fine with getting paid by their employer, but somehow felt morally justified to openly criticize the way they got their paycheck. It sounds like a very selective self-righteous position.
But most people are extremely hypocritical, and will gladly ignore their “ideals” in the name of the holy fat paycheque.
Also, I cannot really explain really well, but it seems like there is a big difference saying “he” about just mythical person, and referring to a real person (whose gender you don’t know).
Not hard, but incorrect.
Regardless of how the vicissitudes of politics go, the current NLRB has made its decision, so the author is acting in accordance with the law. Their legal counsel agreed. Perhaps you find this dishonorable or morally disagreeable because of the particulars of this case, but given this is about an individual employee vs. megacorp, it seems no different in principle from the adage of "don't feel bad for quitting, your company would lay you off without a moment's thought." That VMWare vice president is not losing any sleep over the $40k.
Like what world do you live in that people don't complain about their old jobs such that you think it's that unacceptable?
Funnily enough, it would seem that VMWare historically has bigger things to worry about when it comes to the military, protests, and broken contracts:
> The Defence Information Security Agency (DISA) reversed a decision to award VMware Inc. with a $1.6 billion contract, following a protest by number of tech companies last February.
> The Pentagon’s decision to cancel its joint enterprise licensing agreement with VMware means the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was able to dismiss protests against the award made by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Citrix Systems Inc., Nutanix and Minburn Technology Group, LLC, as per the statement at this link.
https://siliconangle.com/2015/03/17/u-s-military-drops-1-6b-...
In any case, regardless of the intentions of the author, VMWare doesn’t look particularly worse off for having this story publicized. It feels like they were caught between a rock and hard place.
I disagree. If leadership of a company makes an ethically questionable decision and everyone who disagrees with that decision quits, that leaves an even more ethically questionable organization behind. I think all good people have an obligation to voice an ethical objection to their company's behavior whenever relevant. Don't just quit and let the amoral/immoral people win.
The author's problem was not that they decided to object instead of quit. Their mistake was doing the objection in both a public and intentionally inflammatory way.
If the opposite is stay and actually make efforts for change then yes. If it is staying and keeping your mouth shut then it's just keeping the status quo. And that may be fine and understandable but don't be offended when called out on that.
Posting a cynical tweet does not reflect a moral high ground, specially if the person doing the tweeting doesn't express any similar concern on any other occasion regarding their line of work and how they contribute directly and indirectly to that moral hazard, and apparently gets disappointed when their employer fires them.
Frankly, it all looks like puerile attention-seeking fuelled by Twitter echo chambers.
Do you go all out on your ideals? Does your employee not do anything that violates them?
this is complete bs. it's not 'VMWare or unemployment' (or any $bigtech or unemployment). there are a ton of employers ready to pay competent people a decent salary.
Where did you read this?
Your "hot takes" for the most part (especially when they're basically cheap dunks) on SM help only twitter.
There's plenty of criticism that can be done about the parts mentioned, but those tweets are pretty much the definition of heckling. Honestly nobody cares, and nobody is there for that
Boy, I'm so happy I don't work for anyone, I'd hate to have to deal with sensitive pricks that think they can dictate what their employees say on social media.
https://www.alexanderjarvis.com/the-pitch-deck-fuck-you-list...
> What is the fuck you list? Simply put, it’s what you tell Billy Bob to get him to shut the fuck up, and as someone who hates you, still make him think what you are doing actually makes sense.
> The fuck you list are 3-5 key points about why your business is amazing and you are going to win. They are the important points you would feel annoyed for having not conveyed when you leave that big meeting with the investor you really want to close.
We have arrived at peak HN.
A New Yorker using the expression is just frankly a different reading than a Washington DC type.
More generally, one shouldn't have to give up his/her personal rights to say "fuck you!" to the government once he/she enters an employment contract.
What they don't have is freedom from consequences. They don't have imnunity from being fired.
A government official used his position of power to get a critic fired over a personal insult.
I'm not sure what "free speech" is good for if government officials can just get you kicked from your job for exercising it.
https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/op-ed-usafs-chaillan-knausenb...
OP was fired for stepping on the toes of a thin skinned official with a good network.
Guess I'll never know.
Here's a genius idea: keep your hot takes to an isolated Twitter account not directly associated with your employer? Have we really forgotten basic OPSEC?
Nonsense; no company allows any employee to publicly hurl insults at a large paying customer.
But then again, VMWare never had a reputation as a good employer, did they?
The fact that the author claimed brought a third party to a work-related meeting with a VP with the purpose of live tweeting it to the world already speaks volumes.
[0] neither is the US, despite what it says; I am however a free-speech maximalist, and the differences between these positions includes but is not limited to acknowledging that some speech chills other speech.
(Curiously, I've just seen someone walk past me with "duck off" printed on their T-shirt. But then, culture here in Germany is much more liberal about both word and deed — it's American cultural norms that made the autocorrupt inside my quote marks).
Right, understood. But it is the right of every company to have the freedom of association[1] to determine what sort individuals they want to associate with, no?
Just because someone has the freedom to say something, it doesn't mean that their employer has to provide a platform to say it. It also doesn't mean that the employer has to allow its employees to disparage paying customers.
Like I kept hearing over the last few years[2], "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences".
[1] Much like your Free Speech position, I'm not being absolutist, only maximalist in this position; IOW, no dissassociation on illegal grounds, like protected class members, for example.
[2] Not that I agree, just that it seems to be acceptable.
In the context of the DoD… if people, online or offline, get to them just by swearing, then North Korea should have saved money and developed an f-bomb instead of an a-bomb.
not when it comes to employees and also not when it comes to customers. employees have a right to share their opinions. and discrimination on political opinion is illegal in many countries. i am not sure if that is the case in the US, but it is in the EU and the UK at least.
doesn't mean that their employer has to provide a platform to say it
the employer didn't provide the platform. they said it on their own personal twitter account not on the company blog.
It also doesn't mean that the employer has to allow its employees to disparage paying customers
depends on whether the statement is factual or not. in germany there was a court case that clarified that it is legal and not an insult to claim that "soldiers are murderers" as long as it is not making that claim about a specific person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_are_murderers
according to the german court: "sharing opinions to public controversies is a sign of a free democratic order"
companies can not restrict the rights of their employees to share your opinion because that would essentially prevent any public discourse about controversial topics.
I said that in the post you replied to.
> the employer didn't provide the platform. they said it on their own personal twitter account not on the company blog.
They said it while being a paid representative of the company, at an event that they were paid to represent the company.
> depends on whether the statement is factual or not. in germany there was a court case that clarified that it is legal and not an insult to claim that "soldiers are murderers" as long as it is not making that claim about a specific person.
This was made about a specific person.
> companies can not restrict the rights of their employees to share your opinion because that would essentially prevent any public discourse about controversial topics.
Of course they can, they just can't do it while representing the company.
I'm a little confused about why you replied; are you clarifying my position by disagreement?
it is still their personal twitter account. they are not representing their company on twitter. the time and the location of the person should not matter.
This was made about a specific person.
that is debatable. i interpreted it as a general statement about the military that the recipient of the message is a part of. i can see that it can be read as a personal accusation, but i believe that this was not the intent of the sender.
are you clarifying my position by disagreement
it appears that i am. it did help me better understand your position, so i hope that's ok.
If you're there on your company dime, and the tweets are associated with your company image, the company now gets a say.
Is this not just a way to say "my speech is free speech and protected, your speech is hate speech and should be banned"?
Therapists and doctors have to guarantee to their patients that no beans will be spilled just to get what they need to do their jobs.
Whistleblowers need to know their names won't get shared to be willing to blow their whistles.
Filibusters, in the political rather than military context.
That's just off the top of my head.
I'm all for banning threats and other speech that's illegal. But once a line is drawn it's in everybody's interest to defend it in either direction. Remember that everything you demand to be banned can be used against your cause at a later point. Similar with every accusation you want to be able to utter.
But that's not what happened. What happened is that she personally cursed out a client, publicly accusing this person in war crimes, while being on a job conference. And, when confronted about that, she basically told HR "your rules are stupid, I'm not going to follow them, let me educate you about how your job should be done". This is not a free speech issue, this is "rules don't apply to me because I am a precious flower that is always right" issue. The organization could choose to tolerate and accommodate this kind of an employee if it's worth it, but nothing requires them to. She is still free to curse out the government in her free time, or when she is outside her job duties - and I would be the first, again, to support her right to do so. But maybe realizing there's a time and a place for such things may do her some good. And if she can't control herself while being on a job (and going to the conference is part of one's job, otherwise why would their employer pay for it?) and be a professional then maybe she should look for some job that does not involve doing that.
Note she wasn't even fired for the conference BS. It was when she explicitly refused to commit to social media guidelines that they pulled the plug. I say if you prioritize the ability to say shit on twitter over your job, then it's not a question of free speech, it's a question of choice. She made her choice, now she's completely free to say shit on twitter.
You look like less of a bootlicking dumbass when you don't contradict yourself in the span of a single comment.
There's a difference between being a "bootlicker" and being extremely unprofessional (to the nth degree).
https://qz.com/1041113/a-wharton-professor-explains-why-hiri...
[0] https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/op-ed-usafs-chaillan-knausenb...
[edit] WAY worse! Intellectual Property Theft, Gifting Officials, Misuse of Position, Abuse, “Sabotage” of Competing Platforms, Improper Contract Award, Misappropriation of Funds
Zero excuse for the behaviour of the tweeter though.
OP does mention that they were with VMWare only by acquisition.
Do I think that OP should have done this? No. Do I think they deserve to be fired over this? No. This is the standard chastise them for being an idiot and get back to work.
The problem here was a high-ranking Federal bureaucrat (USAF Chief Software Officer) got his knickers in a twist and rattled VMWare management who should have told him to go pound sand.
And, personally, even though I don't find the OP sympathetic, I'm glad this story came out as the bureaucrat in question should absolutely be named and shamed so other companies won't capitulate to him being a snot. Anybody with skin that thin shouldn't be allowed any amount of power, ever.
How do you know that? Nothing in that article suggests there is even the smallest shred of evidence that the bureaucrat in question applied any pressure.
Both [2] and [3] aren't about this story at all.
I think we're taking their account of the events at face value. Maybe this event was just the last in a chain of similar events, and management were fed up already.
Although, I also think that your kind of event description is just as likely. I'm sure it happens a lot, as I know it does in many political, business and interpersonal situations. And you know that being thin skinned won't ever lose them their power, just like that. A person has many reasons to get into power, it's not up to merit.
Unfortunately it's not basic; the ability to strip all context to make this about being mean to a customer makes for a poor argument.
The government isn't just _any_ customer, whether you think the firing was justified or not. The DoD enjoys a ton of taxpayer budget money and a sanctioned right to kill people if it deems it necessary. And it was proactively recruiting at a tech conference for software that isn't innately violent. Is that bad? Maybe not, maybe so. Is that a basic customer? Not at all.
Is this really only about criticizing the government at work? If she made the tweet off hours or wasn't even at the conference, does Nicholas Chaillan still complain to VMWare and get her fired? When is it okay for her to criticize the government without losing her job? Would it even have cost VMWare anything if they didn't fire her and just disciplined her? How about the social media policy that bans talking about incredibly generic things like "age, sex, race, religion"? Has anyone at VMWare ever gotten disciplined for tweeting out "Jesus lives"?
I think your reduction to "employees must never tell any customer ever to go fuck themselves and that's basically what happened here" isn't useful nor is it one of the more interesting questions this post raises.
If the engineer had posted something criticizing the military outside of the context of the conference and without personally attacking the speaker, nothing would have happened. In fact, I bet the engineer had already done that multiple times before.
This, I think, is the point that caused the firing. It's pretty clear that if you choose a witness who then posts everything publicly that you are not discussing in good faith. Like, it's your right to speak your mind, and maybe you think you are in the moral right, but if you intentionally antagonize the people you work with you won't be working with them for much longer.
If the business was uncomfortable with their treatment of their employees being public, maybe that activity wasn't ethical.
Also, what is tweeting if not "speaking publicly"?
And what are workplace conditions if not "how I am disciplined at work"?
For all I know she might insult people when she sees them say things she thinks are shitty, but I haven't experienced that and I think we've disagreed on things in the past.
Someone you brought in is doing something disrespectful and indicative of the central problem to the conversation.
If you come to my house and draw on my walls - I ask you to stop and let's have a conversation about it, so you bring a friend who starts drawing on my walls while we're talking about you drawing on my walls.
You've lost all goodwill that I was willing to extend to you.
Businesses have every right to some level of obscurity on what happens internally. There is a very clear difference between using a tape recorder or your smartphone to record a conversation (after clearly stating that you will do so!) and having someone without any relation to the company present and blurbing everything into the ether.
And if hr disagreed, they could have asked the guest to leave.
Were they not livetweeting: fine, you can bring a family member or friend to these meetings.
But they were.
While I have an internal meeting I would NOT assume someone is life tweeting this.
It sounds like some weird joke. What goes in those people's head?
I'd think a VP (many levels above) coming to DM someone for a private chat isn't likely coming in good faith to begin with so it goes both ways.
It's interesting (to say the least) that they more or less used a "no talking about politics" clause to fire this woman, even though the other guy's statements about DoD weapons systems are certainly just as political. But he's an Air Force guy, she's a dissident, he's establishment, she's counterculture, so he got to push her out of a job for meeting him on his playing field, so to speak.
Always illuminating to see what gets cast as "political" and what gets cast as merely neutral.
This is also true of a large portion of HN commenters.
This would be no different than wearing the uniform of a supermarket and going on a political rant with a megaphone.
I know the boilerplate "tweets do not represent the views of my employer" thing is a cliche at this point, but I always assumed it was at least partly true. If you're not tweeting directly from AcmeCORP's socials, wouldn't there be some understanding that you're not a direct mouthpiece for the company?
I was attending KubeCon on behalf of my then-employer, VMware.I guess what I'm really asking is whether an outside observer would genuinely assume her tweets were indicative of VMware's official stances on anything, or whether they'd assume she was just one cog in their employee machine. Or maybe it's somewhere in the middle.
Should it be fireable? I’m having trouble there. But they certainly wouldn’t be sent to events for a long, long time.
For something like government, it doesn't really matter what the official stance of the company is. If you think a single employee is going to try to sneak a backdoor into the software you're buying and the company isn't trying hard enough to prevent it, that's a showstopper.
Yes. That's the whole point of "representing your employer at $FOO conf".
> Definitions from Oxford Languages
on behalf of
phrase of behalf
1. in the interests of (a person, group, or principle).
"votes cast by labor unions on behalf of their members".
Similar: as a representative of, as a spokesperson for, for, in the name of, in place of, appearing for, representing, in the interests of
2. as a representative of. "he had to attend the funeral on Mama's behalf"
3. on the part of; done by. "this wasn't simply a philanthropic gesture on his behalf"I wouldn't explicitly dig around to try and figure out who a pseudonymous person is to try and get them in trouble though
I’m on the fence on this one. The tweets were in poor judgment. Especially tagging the speaker. That’s needlessly antagonistic.
But, if this person were on my team I’d have tried to protect their job - though I probably wouldn’t be sending them to any shows in the future on the company dime.
There’s probably a lot of additional context that isn’t available in this post that might sway me one way or the other. The fact they were brought in via acquisition matters, IMO.
But I also dislike the idea that offensive language is somehow not pacifist behavior, whereas developing weapons of war is perfectly fine so long as you're polite about it. Regardless of how you feel about weapons of war, it's hard to deny that they hold a certain non-neutral weight.
"if its good enough for weaponssystems, its probably good enough for you."
yeah, i can see how that could deserve a "fuck you"...
from all of vmwares employees.
She wasn't whistle blowing/revealing any inside information. She wasn't adding anything to the topic of the conversation. She publicly made a rude personal comment at a conference from a platform which connects the company with its current and prospective customers. I'm surprised the company dragged this for so long. If this was a waiter at a restaurant saying "fuck you" to this guy while eating there, I'm sure they wouldn't even have had a chance to finish their shift.
The line between good and evil is not explicitly "violence"
It's just respectability politics. Tone down your language so you don't hurt the poor DoD Aiw Fowce man's feewings. If she "plugged her beliefs in pacifism in a positive manner" he would've just ignored her, which is the point of Respectability(tm).
I'm sure that every software engineer can think about complexities that DoD experience in their work with software. Some are highly technical in hard environments and with reliability requirements
* corrected, based on comment below
DoD weapons systems isn’t neutral, and it is political. Those systems are used to enforce U.S. policy, via combat. That’s the status quo, which may not feel “political” if you’re supportive of U.S. policy and/or don’t think about the ramifications, but it is very political. If you’re not okay with how the U.S. uses its military, its definitely political.
To some that message reads as “if it’s good enough to use to kill people, it’s good enough for your business.”
And this is just from thinking about *potential* things, as in system design interview. Reality, I'm sure, is much more complicated and hard.
Some will find offense in every word one can say, it doesn't mean that they're right. Because to some that message may mean "If it's good enough to use to save people, it's good enough for your business". Are they less right?
What I was responding to was the assertion that "there is nothing political to say..."
As I said, the topic is political. Trying to move from "political" to "offensive" (and omitting "weapons") suggests to me that you're not seeing this as a political issue because you're just seeing this as "normal" from your POV. That doesn't make it not political.
It’s not. Maybe insensitive to contra-war, but not political.
> The Department of Defense provides the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security.
You very well understand what I mean. If your stance is anything military - that’s fine, but your arguments are straw and you know that.
Re:substance, the idea that the DoD is for anything but war is… puzzling. It’s literally a rebrand of the War Department. That’s what “providing military services” is??
Definitely one of the goofiest arguments I’ve ever seen on here. I highly value this forum, because I’m 99% sure everyone here argues in good faith
Like, this wasn't even about tweeting political opinions and then being fired for it (which is way less black-and-white than this and I could absolutely have sympathy if that happened), this was straight-up telling "fuck you" to someone when representing the employer at a personal event.
Well, I'm afraid to say after reading this, I have to disagree. Common sense would have made me consider not posting an inflammatory tweet like that, to be perfectly honest.
This isn't some dystopian concept. This is how grownups behave. You are welcome to be an edgelord on your own time anonymously.
I'm not against capitalism, or pro some rebellion, or pro insulting people on twitter. But on the other hand I do realise that the corporate dystopia is only ever increases, because of of the immense power imbalance between individual humans and corporations.
I'm obviously not condoning abusive behaviour, I'm using this as an example of how much scrutiny there is on these corporations.
It's the same in this case: you're taking the view that a company should allow itself to be dragged into politics by the employee who publicly represents it. Surely that's wrong, isn't it? Companies should not be involved in politics. That's specifically what you are against when you call them dystopian.
This person, who I assume is an US citizen, is absolutely allowed to criticise the army, but they should do it as a citizen. Ultimately, the army serves the citizens and corporations serve customers.
Regarding corporate dystopia, I politely disagree with you. Some isolated cases where corporations are a tiny little bit affected are a drop in ocean of the reverse situations. Also notice that in your example a person (Spacey) is unilaterally abused by the corporation, outside of any due process. This is actually an example for my idea, I think :) . And in general the trend is obvious - corporations are rapidly increasing in size, they destroy free market (or rather it works as expected) by demolishing any competition, bribe and subvert weak governments to push their agenda and lock all customers to their products/services. They blatantly exfiltrate money to the tax free offshores and avoid abiding by any laws (which matter). They deliberately stall any regulation by government of any new areas they are controlling (ads, ISP, media, communication and so on). They are like a rapidly growing tumor, for now mostly benign, but metastases has already started. And anti-monopoly government bodies of all countries are spectacularly impotent over past decades, sitting on their hand and doing nothing that matters.
Isn't it obvious? You're literally giving away more than a third of your life working these jobs to do things that you don't personally want or benefit from. You think the more restrictive thing that is being really imposed on you is being unable to tweet "Fuck you" instead of spending like half of your waking time away from your family and loved ones?
I'm personally not a fan of capitalism conceptually, not just the corporate kind, but it always strikes me as weird how other leftists think that's the unthinkable part, that someone would fire you for speaking out of line while still acknowledging that the other party is part of an organization that kills thousands and suppresses nations for oil for example.
I don't think there's any discussion about whether the OP had the right to make such comments. The employer also had a right to no longer employ them. Nobody's personal expression rights were violated, just the expression had consequences.
Nah, she should have quit and exercised her personal freedom to work for an employer she doesn't think is a war criminal. _That's_ how capitalism works, vote with your labor/dollar. Instead, she fought tooth and nail to keep that corporate job and the blood money that came with it.
Honestly I cannot believe people are bending over backwards to support the actions of the blog author.
Is it the profanity that puts it over the line? Profanity is often how we express that a feeling is extremely strong, and in the context of criticizing the government it's a pretty time-honored tradition given the power imbalance it has.
Conversely, if you're employable, a company is always at risk of you leaving. It's not like you're an indentured servant who can be dismissed at will. The voluntary nature of employment goes both ways. I don't I want to be a part of any system where the working relationship is not bilaterally voluntary.
Which has knock-on effects like "people with disabilities are pressured to not speak out on social media for fear of losing the job that is covering life-saving treatments" without better protections.
As for "speaking out" on social media, that's not really a loss, it's useless. Talk to a lawyer, if you have a case, they'll take it for free. It's funny that slacktivism is so normalized that people think it's the right thing to do when they are trying to help themselves.
I'm glad life is so simple for you that you can just get free lawyers and new jobs whenever anything goes wrong, but others can't and they're concerns and fears that people deal with every day.
Also, We're talking about moving jobs by choice due to a disagreement with your current employer. The author of the article isn't some coal miner in a dead end coal town, she's a software engineer, she can find another job, or could have, if she didn't publicly prove herself to be more trouble than she's worth and then double-down by publicly brag about it.
But it must. If an employer at Starbucks signs off every order with “Heil Hitler,” we should expect them to be fired. Companies don’t have to afford employees free speech when they are on company time.
Perhaps criticism of the government or government representatives should be added to the list?
[1] National Labor Relations Board v. Pier Sixty, LLC, 855 F.3d 115 (2d Cir. 2017)., via the second footnote on https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/first-amendment-rights-at-...
Yes, businesses exist to do business not be a place where you can discuss your feelings.
They could've just posted asking if something as controversial and politically-biased as the DoD was the best fit for an international conference and if there had been any political interference and it would've carried the same weight.
I’m still on the fence about this, I also think there’s probably context that we don’t have.
Tagging the speaker was also needlessly antagonistic. That IMO escalated it from snarking to picking a fight.
If they were at an event paying their own way, I’d be in agreement with you - but they were there to represent the company.
Rather, it's the right to freely associate yourself with whoever you want. Not above freedom of expression but certainly not below either.
I wouldn't want to associate with certain people because of what they say and do. There are people who wouldn't want to associate with me either. This is fine. It gets a bit duplicitous when money and power are involved but that's to be expected.
I'd feel very differently if VMware fired someone for voicing a political opinion outside the context of work with no reasonable association with VMware other than being employed there.
If part of your job includes repping the company, and the company paying for you to be somewhere, then while you're wearing that hat you need to be conscious of what you say and how it reflects on the company.
I agree with you that there's a power imbalance and "you're free to start your own company" would be unsatisfying if the company is trying to stifle your speech at all times.
Depending on the "political opinion" I would absolutely expect to be fired for expressing it even "outside the context of work with no reasonable association with [company]." If I went out and stood on a highway overpass waving a nazi flag or participated in a KKK march, I would 1000% expect to be fired without even a conversation from my manager. Or, really, if I did anything in public that would get me to the top of Reddit's r/PublicFreakout and got identified, I would not be surprised if my job was in jeopardy over it.
There's of course the opposite opinion too. I'm not interested in trying to demonstrate that one opinion is right or wrong, just that like, is this really an attack?
It's also almost certainly culturally different on different coasts, online, in person, etc. A tweet is like, nothing.
It's like being insulted because someone farted at the hotel you were staying at. It's of so little consequence it cannot possibly be an insult.
It's incredible to see HN lose their minds because someone sent a two word tweet with a curse word in it, lol. A tweet.
EDIT: Just to clarify, I didn't mean that pejoratively, I actually meant it in the supportive context as in: "Fuck you, I support you."
EDIT: Sorry again. This time, I did use it pejoratively, so I edited it out for possible vulgarity.
At best this is extreme playing with words, and at worst this is just mental gymnastics
Fuck you is fuck you, this is rude and as personal as it gets.
Carlin's sketches (at least ones that come to my mind, as I really loved to watch Carlin about 10-7 years ago) is irrelevant. When Carlin said "fuck you" he was speaking about phrase, not to someone in particular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqaOLThPg4
There could be different Carlin bits that I don't know about, and I'm sure that he said a lot of fuck yous to all presidents at a time in same way as op did to DoD guy, but no, I don't buy your comment saying that Carlin's fuck you and screenshot from the post are same things. Especially given what followed.
Very rough analogy, just to illustrate the point and how I see your arguing (as, at this time, I'm already believe that you're arguing in bad faith). You cannot say: "this guy is not guilty in a murder, as murders are happening in nature all the time. Dragonflies are killing flies, birds killing dragonflies, humans killing birds, humans killing humans, ergo no one is guilty, those are just facts"
I'm likely more terminally online, more cynical, or more desensitized, but I see the two word "fuck you" to be such low effort that it doesn't even rise to the level of notice.
Like, an insult that specifically called out my behaviors or appearance or something and said fuck you? That feels meaningful, that's personal. But like, autocompleting two words flippantly into a tweet is like... Nothing?
I mean the question I was raising was basically, "it's not clear this is an attack?" specifically because it's not "of course" to me.
Can you explain a bit more why it's obviously an attack?
"You have committed unjustifiable harm." is clearly an attack. People who commit unjustifiable harm are generally supposed to be shunned, penalized, or killed according to how human societies have operated across the world (various things can get in the way of this, but this is the baseline).
So now we're at "My employer's client is someone who should be shunned, penalized, or killed. (and I'm going to post it publicly in a way to make it possible for said client to be able to see it!)".
Finally, a lot of business runs on vibes. Having employees that attack your clients in public sends bad vibes. Even if it's just a 'rude comment', why endanger your business for someone who so deeply fails the vibe check?
"I don’t even usually swear much"
"Anger does not really become me, but boy was I mad."
If you do it from your private account, which doesn't contain any links to or mentions of you being part of your employer, outside of working hours? The employer shouldn't even be mentioning it.
If you do it from your fused-personal-and-work-persona while repping your employer on a conference, on working hours? You have it coming.
In one, you speak purely as a private person while in the other you are acting on behalf of your employer, like it or not. There's a vast gray area in-between. One of many good reasons to keep your identity small and your personas segregated. If you need to live-tweet no-filter-hot-takes from kubecon, you shouldn't be attending on company time.
If you are at a tech conference, likely on company time, then you are in effect representing your employer. This includes the content of the constant stream of tweets.
Is there a word for this kind of behavior?
For what it’s worth, IMHO, VMWare comes across as extremely mature.
Mental illness.
I feel like there is something - not necessarily something legal - about the fact that the author was attending the convention on behalf of her employer; she was tweeting ‘on the clock,’ if I understand correctly.
Otherwise, I’m not sure how that kind of policy could possibly be reasonable. People get to hold their own opinions, and they get to hold forth on those opinions if they choose. I don’t think anyone reasonable would confuse her statements with some sort of official policy position on the part of her employer…
… but also honestly fuck professionals who take blood money from the military industrial complex. VMWare should be proud to take a public, principled stance on DoD contracts. That’s the kind of free speech that everyone is entitled to, firing someone over it is shameful.
Taking “blood” money and complaining about doesn’t make you a freedom fighter, it makes you a hypocrite.
The oft-repeated "The first amendment doesn't apply to corporations!" slogan when defending the banning of people from various social media applies here. The company she works for doesn't have to employ her if they disagree with her opinions. Isn't that the goal of all these doxxing Twitter mobs when they find someone who said the n-word on video?
I don't know anything about this guy, but if this is an attempt to portray him as a racist, it's a pathetic one at that.
On the other side I'd not want people on my team to represent my work place like this. If I was a coworker I'd rather see them removed. Those tweets were gratuitously unprofessional in the setting of a work conference.
I'm not pro insults on twitter. But I think much bigger problem than the insults is the way corporations try to claim everything as "work related". If that specific account or whole media (Twitter) had been explicitly mentioned as her job responsibilities, then I guess corporation was in the right, claiming that it was for work. But just trying to blanket control whole human lives during the employment period is bad. Bad for us, employees.
I mean in what world do you go to a conference on company time, as a representative of that company and then type "Fuck you" to one of your biggest customers?
So what did I see "Fuck you" for slide where army officer praises Kubernetes and calls to join them. Then accusing him for blood on his hands. Then also connecting inability to negotiate better severance package when firing happened with Trump era...
My opinion always is: if in any shape or form your posts are related to work (e.g. that person was tweeting about conference attendance, that conference attendance was on behalf of her employer, for fucks sake), then you should have separate account and strictly separate your opinions.
The things that I read both in post and in referenced tweets, actually, did remind me about Timnit Gebru and her story with Google (opinion below is my own and in no means reflect anything else, as Google is my employer). I was curious about Gebru and read her twitter for some time after her departure. God lord, the toxicity is over the top. I even learned a bit of the anti-white racist dictionary such as "white aligned". But, of course, as I'm eastern European immigrant, I still speak from the historical position of patriarchal white privilege, so my opinion doesn't matter.
> And when he publicly resigned in 2021 he worried about how in the future “China has the drastic advantage of population over the U.S.”
Given its place it feels like it has a very clear subtext, but I cannot figure out what it could be.
It worked out in the end as he correctly surmised that she was just young, dumb and excited and tried to work to get her the position back. However the crappy side of furries (well anybody online) targeted the poor dude even though he was completely correct to call her out on her language.
As a furry myself I completely separate it from work, why someone would ever mention work or any other professional part of their lives on a "I like cartoon animals" account is beyond me. It's easy to be necessarily vicious and reactive/emotional online and I do it all the time myself, but I never involve my job.
Perhaps it's a context problem, being used to particular environments, say professional & unprofessional, when someone makes the mistake of being unprofessional in their unprofessional environment (their personal Twitter) but there are links to the professional environment (colleagues on Twitter) then trouble happens.
OP was big-headed and was posting all this conference shit from their personal Twitter account looks like. They should've been posting it from a work account and not gone off the rails. If they want to bitch about the DoD fine, I can totally understand, but do it on personal account and don't involve your work/job in any way. Explain what you don't like about the DoD rather than "fuck you".
We became aware that you dislike one of our clients, and that you have strong beliefs that we shouldn't do business with them. Given that, we decided that you should not work with us because you think we shouldn't do business the way we do.
what would have happened? Could this clear and direct justification still be used as basis for a lawsuit from the employee?
B) the rules only tell to avoid
C) at least I do not have such rules places upon me
all in all, nice try, but you have no argument
I found it especially interesting that the DoD dude apparently had a history of using his position to get people fired who insulted him on Twitter (or at least trying to do so).
I understand why -- they tend to lead to flamewars. But I'm not sure if hiding issues like this is a good choice.
(Aside: I think it's telling that the apparent majority on HN is on Goliaths side in this case. Usually we're more on the side of the underdog. I wonder if that's just the latent misogyny showing, or if it's because OP is left leaning, or because of the pink homepage with the ponies.)
With the way how the post is written, and I find the end especially toxic, with points about trump era, throwing shade on a guy with hints of racism, I cannot see that this was just some unfortunate misunderstanding.
omg your possible explanations: misoginy, ponies, anti left - you seem to forgot to add transphobia and tech bros to the same sentence to have flesh royal
Some people have strong feelings against Monsanto. Pfizer. Oil industry. Solar industry. Chemical industry. Meat processing industry. Would this be an excuse to write the things that this person did? No.
Imagine scenario. Instead of DoD there is a slide from a guy from Tyson. And some vegan activist, who represents VENDOR in professional capacity, literally writes the same tweets: "Fuck you", then "Blood on your hands". Will that be acceptable? Should that be ok?
> Will that be acceptable? Should that be ok?
A lot of the language being heralded as examples of brave free speech on social media are far from acceptable or okay either, but that’s where those fights take place- on the margins, at the boundaries of social tolerance.
It obviously wasn't a misunderstanding. The story is about a person who insulted an air force official, and got fired as a result. There is no misunderstanding about this.
So the relevant question is, should programmers be fired for insulting government brass on Twitter? I would expect most of HN to say "No, they shouldn't".
But in this case, the overwhelming majority of posters is really pissed at OP for some reason, and I'm wondering why that is.
> to have flesh royal
I don't understand what this part is supposed to say?
Defence is one of the most vital sectors in a countries continued existence, coming just after food and water.
One could even argue that defense even precedes food and water at this stage also.
Imo its more acceptable and moral to work in the defence of your nation than to design increasingly intrusive data harvesting / advertising machines.
But as ever there isn't a correct answer and everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Surely not....
This is why we use semi-anonymous services to post criticism.
Not to mention a fairly stupid opinion; some of my colleagues arguably have the US DoD to thank for not being victims of russia's genocide. I couldn't imagine my colleagues having to deal with this drama bullshit on top of sheltering from missile attacks on civilians.
How depressing.
How would they react if it was the megacorp playing stupid by ignoring all common-sense and respect, and pointing at minutia in written guidelines to justify sociopathic actions?
A person that publicly curses out the military, while on a job conference paid by her employer, and while the military is their client, and adds vile personal attacks to that. The justification for it - "I was mad". Sure, then of course it makes it ok, of course if you're mad the rules no longer apply to you, sorry we even asked.
Refuses to promise she wouldn't keep doing it, while having the gall to "propose to improve" the guidelines so that they suit her personally. Probably adding "all the above doesn't apply if the employee feels mad at DoD for existing".
Refuses to admit there's anything wrong about inflammatory offensive cussing (I'm not talking about serene or even heated political debate, "fuck you" is not that) - again, while being on the job, and repeatedly being suggested by hr that it's not how things are done.
Signing the NDA, because sweet sweet money.
Violating the NDA as soon as she's sure they won't ask for the money back, because agreements are for other people to follow.
Somehow making it all Trumps fault because sure, that's what Trump was doing for 4 years, personally ensuring this person could not tell her bombshell story.
Looks like a nice person to work with, yep.
So I'm sorry for this individual, but glad it happened. It needs to happen more.
seems easier than firing someone
Because:
1. It wasn't private, it was public and tagged the subject of the abuse directly.
2. "This employee" was on company time and actively representing the company at the time.
It doesn't matter what role you are, you are always at risk of getting fired if you embarrass your employer.
And you know who’s always there with big contracts and consultants?
That’s right: VMware (and oracle and others…)
If one were to start virtue signaling (which I’m clearly not prone to do given my work history) I think it’s hard to argue that the DOD is worse than VMWare.
This person’s entitlement is on another level. They aren’t guaranteed a job and insulting high ranking officials will get you sacked 99% of the time, on top of the thousands of other reasons your employer can let you go.
I THINK THIS IS A MASSIVE MISTAKE.
War exists. It is as old as humankind. We could wish it wouldn't, but it does. And history has shown again and again that the way to avoid war is not in de-arming, appeasing or otherwise refusing to participate, but in obtaining a level of military and economic strength that makes it unattractive for others to attack you.
Silicon Valley has the potential to generate this overwhelming strength, but it declines to do so. And the few companies that do, such as Palantir or Anduril are often shunned by their peers.
I believe that Silicon Valley could play a unique role in ensuring a lasting global peace and is held back by shortsighted sentiments. Or, to put it into fancy Latin:
Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum
Of course, one of the inherent problems of having a strong military is the temptation to use it - and the US has certainly done so multiple times in ill-advised fashion in Irak, Kuwait or Vietnam to name just a few.
But having a military superpower like the US that's more interested in economic and cultural expansion than in direct land grabs is certainly an important counterweight to Russian or Chinese ambition. I believe a world with a militarily weak US would have seen much less "Pax Americana" and much more aggressive, expansionary wars since 1945.
A tiny fraction of western weapons allowed Ukraine to hold against Russian war machine and even have prospects of counter offensive. I can’t imagine the hell on earth if it kicked in full force and went to war against anyone.
All these clauses are coercive. It should be impossible to sign away what should be rights.
Should OP have tweeted as they did, specially while attending an event *on behalf* of their employer? Yeah, it is asking for trouble. Yeah, the company does have a right to fire them.
What should be extremely grinding y'all gears though is:
1. A government employee should NEVER be the initiator of such an event. Even if it's legal, smells A LOT like the government trying to silence citizens.
2. The minute the company says "we'll accept your resignation" and tried to get out of paying what OP was owed, they become the bad guys, doesn't matter how obnoxious OP might be. If you wanna fire someone, have the balls to actually fire them and pay up whatever was agreed to in the contract.
I'll give a bit of a pass on 2, because a lot of HN commenters are Americans, and Americans are brainwashed by their shitty work laws, they lost perspective of what is fair in an employer/employee relationship.
But 1? Reverse the ideologies and this post would've been front page for 3 weeks.
Can someone explain why they are impossible to follow? Just… don’t tweet (or use other social media) and you are following them, right? Apparently I’ve been doing the impossible since forever.
This reads 'immature borderline toxic' I can't imagine having to work with this kind of drama.
This is exactly what happened. But when communicating the policy the poster flat out refused to follow it and brought their bud to the meeting to insultingly live tweet it. Insulting the VP and refusing to follow the policy after that meeting is what got them fired.