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Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

In situations like these, in which someone is nominally fired for how their behavior affects the reputation of the company, and then that firing itself rebounds—with either legal ramifications or "merely" bad press—I wonder why the person who ordered the firing never seems to get fired for the same offense. In this case, the justification for firing him was specifically for posting on social media, but surely the reason for that clause in the code of conduct could be applied to any reputationally damaging behavior on the part of managers, lawyers, or whomever was involved, regardless of where it took place. I mean, is posting on social media worse than getting taken to court and negatively covered by the press? Certainly a tricky situation, but it seems like a double standard sometimes.

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I'd guess that they probably do see the consequences, but we don't. The one thing that a company in this situation really doesn't want is more attention. So they make the problem go away as quietly as possible, and if they're going to fire anybody for it it happens months later.

That's the double standard I was referring to—they didn't fire the plaintiff in this case quietly, months later, and he was only accused (incorrectly) of damaging the company. They fired him immediately, visibly, punitively. But they'll possibly lay off the actual cause of their problems quietly, later.

I suppose that, as you say, they are worried about adding fuel to the fire by firing the parties who were actually at fault. Personally, I doubt it would. What's most likely to happen is that they get it wrong in both cases: first, damaging their reputation by firing someone who didn't do anything, and then later not firing someone who did damage their reputation, thus damaging their public reputation (perhaps) and hurting their internal reputation and morale (one would assume).

> Personally, I doubt it would.

It will. In this example, publicly firing the guy who ordered Sleiman's termination can be construed as "American firing Hamas Sympathizer fired and sympathizer reinstated"

A culture war is a two way street. No reason to further fan the flames.

I think the difference is being in scope versus out of scope. Employee’s inflammatory behavior outside of work is mostly all downside for the company. So, they just try to shut it down. To do some jobs at the company will risk negative press. If you get too much bad press or it isn’t worth it, eventually the person would be fired for being bad at their job.

It’s like the difference between a salesman ranting on Facebook about how a competitor sucks, versus a marketing campaign that’s an attack ad on a competitor.

Its probably because the firing decision was made/approved by committee and 100% by an individual. One can fire an employee but its harder to deconstruct a system.

The people who do the firing are usually HR and HR often aren’t making any decisions. They follow a handbook of procedures and rules.

eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

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