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Comment by newaccount74 | Hacker News Reader

If you fire someone for a few insults on Twitter then you belong in Kindergarten, not in a management position.

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.

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If you maliciously and repeatedly attack people on Twitter, customers no less, while at a work conference on work’s dime then you belong in kindergarten, not having a professional job. Thankfully VMWare fixed that.

Look up the person OP insulted:

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.

> Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator.

Guess I'll never know.

Well, I’m sure OP got her job back as soon as it was revealed that the person she was accusing as a war criminal with blood on his hands was indeed an asshole.

I'm curious, as a self-employeed worker, do you find freedom in saying "fuck you" to your clients publically online?

There's a great Mike Monteiro talk about contracting titled, "Fuck you; Pay me", so yes, it's not unheard of at all.

I’d like to see you actually using this as a sales pitch to your client.

Hilariously enough, here's some blog thought leader who's telling founders to do so as an exercise while writing up their pitch decks:

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.

You and I roll in very different circles. I've had clients who told me to go fuck myself (and vice versa) without any real damage to our relationship.

A New Yorker using the expression is just frankly a different reading than a Washington DC type.

They were not these person's "clients", they were the government clients of the company employing him/her. I would have expected the US employees to still have the freedom to say "fuck you!" to their government, even though said government might be on the list of one employer's clients.

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.

Just because you retain the right to say F U to your government doesn't mean you have the right to say F U to your employer's customers while acting in the context of such employment.

They absolutely do have that right. They even exercised that right. The government did not send police to their house to arrest them. There are many governments that would.

What they don't have is freedom from consequences. They don't have imnunity from being fired.

And perhaps that is a problem in a world where it costs an individual a lot if they are fired, and it (typically) costs a company much less. The result is a chilling effect on the right to criticize the government via corporate punishment, and just because it's technically legal or laundered through a corporation's actions doesn't mean it's a good effect to let continue.

> The government did not send police to their house to arrest them

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.

Canceling people for their offensive comments is hardly something new.

DoD assets weren’t needed. Any customer would have the same power to object to this.

> If you fire someone for a few insults on Twitter then you belong in Kindergarten, not in a management position.

Nonsense; no company allows any employee to publicly hurl insults at a large paying customer.

> 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.

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?

They are a business, not a social club, and so they will do whatever safeguards that business (maximises its profits). If an employee tells a customer to 'fuck off', they are going to fire them, as its not good for business.

You should be careful. It takes a whole lifetime to build a reputation and mere seconds to destroy it permanently. Everything depends on reputation, especially in business. Guard it with your life.

Yeah, for example if you have a reputation as a good employer you shouldn't ruin it by firing employees just because an army official on a power trip asked you to.

But then again, VMWare never had a reputation as a good employer, did they?

If you insult people on twitter then you belong in the kindergarten.

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