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Comment by spondylosaurus | Hacker News Reader

Nice read, thanks for sharing.

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.

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No, it's absolutely not about how "counterculture" her opinions are. It's about using offensive language. She probably would have avoided all trouble if instead of talking down a fellow participant of the conference, she plugged her beliefs in pacifism in a positive manner.

TBH I don't know that she would have fared much better. One, because it sounds like the Air Force guy is thin-skinned, and two, because even peaceful anti-war protestors have generally been met with disdain and/or tear gas.

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.

personally, i found the slide from mr airforce kinda insulting to vmware:

"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 faced concequences for her actions as an employee, not as an activist of peace. Offensive language as an employee, especially when directed at the customer, usually gets you fired.

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.

People developing weapons believe in protecting their families from danger and don't necessarily consider themselves to be morally superior to their coworkers.

The line between good and evil is not explicitly "violence"

Boohoo, somebody said "fuck you" instead of "I strongly disagree with you, good sir! I shall shake my head disapprovingly whence upon I see you again!"

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).

The key element is the poster was essentially _representing_ their employer at a tech conference.

This would be no different than wearing the uniform of a supermarket and going on a political rant with a megaphone.

Genuine question, though (and not "asking just to make a rhetorical point because I've already decided on an answer"): is that really the case?

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?

It was literally written in 2nd sentence of the post

    I was attending KubeCon on behalf of my then-employer, VMware.

Right, but does it follow that "attending on behalf of" equates to "representing the company's official views and opinions"?

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.

It equates to being paid to make the company look good. I wouldn’t take their comments or tweets as official policy, necessarily, but attracting negative attention by dragging on a speaker on the company dime isn’t a great look.

Should it be fireable? I’m having trouble there. But they certainly wouldn’t be sent to events for a long, long time.

Fair enough. As much as I'll defend her right to express those views, I do think making those tweets wasn't the greatest call—especially considering the fallout that ensued :P

Given that it caused the Chief Software Officer of a major customer to view it negatively, I think that proves an outside observer viewed it as representing some of the company's views.

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.

is an "employee of a major customer" an "outside observer"?

I think they're not only an outside observer, but the only kind of observer that really matters.

> Right, but does it follow that "attending on behalf of" equates to "representing the company's official views and opinions"?

Yes. That's the whole point of "representing your employer at $FOO conf".

https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+on+behalf+of

> 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'm not a tweetin' man myself, but if I were doing business with a company and one of their employees was publicly trash-talking me, I'd probably get pissed and complain to my contacts at that company

I wouldn't explicitly dig around to try and figure out who a pseudonymous person is to try and get them in trouble though

It is also unclear to me what role the author played at VMWare. Random, faceless dev, or an external relations role with a much tighter association to the company.

They were in PonyOps

If the company sends you to the event, it’s fair to say that you’re there “representing” them. If you’re there on your own dime, that may be different.

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.

There is nothing political to say "If Kubernetes is good for DoD weapon* systems, it is definitely good enough for your business!".

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

I disagree. First, you dropped the word “weapons.” “DoD systems” sounds neutral, could be benign personnel systems.

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.”

Corrected, but missing word was honest mistake and not intentional. I still believe that point stands - as a software engineer I can see a lot of technical challenges in weapon systems too.

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?

There were two assertions in the original, I was not responding about the complexity piece. Sure, DoD requirements are no doubt fascinating and complex.

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.

> DoD weapons systems are certainly just as political.

It’s not. Maybe insensitive to contra-war, but not political.

War is pretty explicitly political.

Where did they advocate for war?

...What else is the DoD making weapons for? Fun? Children's birthday parties?

Do you really want to play the game?

> 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.

National security isn't political???

Mentioning national security is not political.

Lol I love the snarky end. Roasted em. They’ll never recover from that put down.

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

Right, and no matter how much you love (or hate) the DoD, war and defense == geopolitics == political.

Gentlemen, you can't advocate for war here, this is the defense room!

Anything that isn't explicitly supporting the status quo = "politics".

This is also true of a large portion of HN commenters.

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