Workers are filming their layoffs, then posting to TikTok. What could go wrong? | Hacker News Reader

Workers are filming their layoffs, then posting to TikTok. What could go wrong?

bbc.com

23 pointsdevonnull41 comments

I had an old roommate who was the political whistle-blower for NYC police when they lied about the number of minorities they arrest. He was instrumental in getting attention to the disproportionate number of minorities adversely affected by stop and frisk. As an analyst, he had access to the actual raw data and was the one actually creating the reports internally and decided to do speak out when, despite his reporting, the police and politicians were lying to the public.

He had an incredible background on paper (went to Harvard, numerous high level and trusted analyst positions in government, high profile Twitter account). After he leaked the information and had his 15 minutes of fame, his career was basically destroyed. I watched, first hand, over the course of the next two years how he couldn't get a job in his field anymore -- or any field for that matter. After going through his savings, he was forced to take a job working part time at a used clothing store, working for an abusive boss.

Don't underestimate the power of forever getting your name indexed in Google. He was labeled as a "gadfly" by government. Watching him struggle and what it did to his mental and physical health over was absolutely heartbreaking. I really hope this woman doesn't have the same outcome, but I am not optimistic.

If your takeaway from that anecdote is "don't whistleblow" I feel like you're in a different dimension than me.

My takeaway is that he probably has a viable lawsuit and maybe pay somebody 5k for some SEO, or change his name for free.

I don’t think that’s the takeaway. I think the comment simply meant to shed some light on the personal consequencea of the whistleblower that might go under the radar - both for readers and the whistleblowers themselves prior to the act.

That was also my understanding. There are countries (in EU) where filming your layoff might land you in jail (privacy, obstruction of property, trade secrets).

Whistle-blowing is unfortunately very dangerous.

As a millennial, why does every aspect of our life have to be so performative? People are mistaking attention seeking for "transparency". If you spend every waking of your moment on camera or making everyone around you paranoid about being on camera, no one in your life including yourself is every going to be genuine.

Besides, it's a dumb thing to do. Depending on the state you or the HR person is in you could be violating 2-party consent laws.

What a poor take that projects your own biases onto the situation.

Every layoff should be recorded and she broke no laws.

>and she broke no laws.

in this same thread you replied to someone with "You offer no support for your claim."

"Could be", should have said verifiable to keep you happy, Brittany Pietsch is in a one party consent state.

https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/georgia-recording-law

The thing that rubbed me the wrong way is that @legitster most likely knew this, and this why they said, "could be violating ..." and then the whole comment comes off like a pro-corporate scare post to not call out shitty tactics. It is disingenuous. It is shallow and dismissive to call what she did the act of a performative millennial.

By the point this article came up, it was widely known for those paying attention that Pietsch committed no crimes in recording this.

> @legitster most likely knew this

You knew what state the other people on the call were in? Were their names even revealed? Even if they were, why would you assume others are as invested in this story that they’d seek out that info?

i dont understand the first sentence you wrote at all

what state were the other two callers in? you also wrote all layoffs should be recorded knowing that it would violate law in some states. this sounds pretty disingenuous. by "paying attention" you mean someone highly invested in this like you are, with the same weirdo aggro activist tone

Maybe every interaction with HR should be recorded, but almost none of them should be posted to TikTok. That eliminates anonymity, and increases the chance of bias for future employers.

As Gen X, I don't think many young people can help it at this point. I don't use social media because I hate the way it invades my thoughts and mediates my experiences into a judgement of post worthiness.

If you grew up filming the most trivial aspects of your life it should not be a surprise if you feel the need to film something as important as losing a job.

Personally, it wouldn't even occur to me to film such a thing let alone to post it online. I would have assumed it would be illegal to film without the other side having a clue you are filming.

If I grew up filming literally everything though the idea of it being illegal I am sure would sound ridiculous and not even enter my mind. I am sure the thought process didn't go beyond this being some potentially really good "content".

The strangest thing to me is I have been let go from a job before. It is surely not a moment I wish to relive.

This young lady may or may not have destroyed her career prospects. I have no idea.

But, if the outcome is that all employers need to think about whether their firings/layoffs are broadcast for everyone to see and critique, I’d say that she made the world a little bit better :)

She has definitely damaged herself professionally.

It was a very naive thing to do. I'm actually surprised that instead of laying her off they didn't just sack her, but maybe there was a delay between the meeting and her releasing it.

She got a few likes on social media though, so that's good.

No she hasn't. You offer no support for your claim. I'd rather hire her than you and I have been industry for over 30 years.

Did she make the word a better place, or a worse one?

In my opinion, after seeing this video, any HR department will simply say “you are being laid off” and give no other information. I imagine this could only reduce the amount of information that an HR dept would give.

This is my cynical point of view, at least.

Which would be fantastic and exactly what she asked for in the video. She just wanted them to drop the obvious bullshit.

This and the other response make perfect sense, thanks.

You’re right, that is what I’d prefer also.

That’s better than lying to people claiming that it’s their fault. Losing a job is traumatic and anyone who isn’t supremely self-confident is going to be hurt by those false claims. We’re not going to get executive accountability easily but it’s still better if HR doesn’t make a bad situation worse trying to coddle senior management’s egos.

That was entirely her goal. She wanted the company to admit that she was just being laid off for no reason. Instead they tried to make her feel like it was her bad performance. That need to end.

> What could go wrong?

Probably nothing. Bad things happen in dark corners. Shining a little sunlight into a dark corner is almost always a good thing.

In this case, possibly a very good thing. Because even just the threat of a little sunlight being shone on your performance generally improves it. This viral TikTok video made that possibility very real in a lot of peoples minds.

So I'm guessing this video going to have an outsized impact, for the better.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince responds on X: https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1745697840180191501

On X, Conservative commentator Candace Owens called Pietsch "young and stupid" after her video went viral: "Now any company that googles Brittany Pietsch will come across this video of her secretly recording the company she was employed at to expose them for doing their job. Unbelievably shortsighted."

Candace Owens is also known for her flippant suggestion that 'Hitler was trying to make Germany great again'. If the best source the BBC can come up with for the alternative POV is a nazi-adjacent social media troll, perhaps they should reconsider their cognitive biases.

Regardless of bad commentary, it’s a cogent point. Debate the idea, not the idiot.

Credibility matters. If someone is equivocating genocide with “making Germany great again”, it deserves to be pointed out and their testimony taken with a huge grain of salt.

I was under the impression that the German economy was vastly improved under Hitler, so I think that point at least is valid.

Because he funded military and conquest paid for that. In the long run he devastated Germany and half Europe with it.

Go read Götz Ali's Hitler's Beneficiaries, which lays out in exhaustive detail the combination of financial chicanery and outright theft that was used to channel wealth toward his political base.

While the risk is obvious, what is the alternative ?

You can go down as a number on the spreadsheet, or you can show everyone else they are also numbers on a spreadsheet.

Her behaviour is a first step towards a different workplace. The effectiveness is questionable, but what more can a single, non organized individual can do ?

Some people really thrive in the cage and would prefer to not acknowledge it's existence. That's what this entire thing really boils down to.

No one's saying she did something immoral. Instead the implication is that she broke some social code. Because of course we're all operating on the assumption that corporations hold the power and we should be grateful that they take pity on us to exploit us at all.

Everyone else with any measure of maturity knows they're just numbers on a spreadsheet. It's not a startling revelation.

How many people act like they know this?

Given how many people are willing to burn themselves out because of their job I’m going to guess not too many.

They could have quoted someone else who made the same point. Instead they chose to give more attention to a troll.

No. Anyone can form a superficially cogent argument when they don't need to defend it. This one is fallacious because it assumes its conclusion (hard working managers doing their jobs, rather than the reality of being unable to articulate what expectations the laid-off employee failed to meet).

Further, engaging with bad actors (who are generally cynics rather than idiots) normalizes their standing as commentators/public figures, and gives them opportunity to push shitty ideas into public discourse. They're PR professionals who understand how to exploit the dynamics of social media very well and imho to the general detriment.

It’s not a cogent point but a distraction: as an authoritarian, Owens is naturally predisposed to assuming the company is in the right but a more accurate framing recognizes that this was not HR doing their jobs but HR lying about someone to make it sound like they were being fired for cause. Doing their jobs would have been “we’re doing a layoff, here are the terms of your severance”, and recognizing that Owens is an unreliable source is important for not letting her framing shape the discussion.

I find the whole article to downplay and minimize the impact of CloudFlair's actions.

It just safe to assume that these videos are staged, until proven otherwise.

Given the cloudflare CEO responses, I think it’s safe to assume that one is real.

It doesn't seem that hard to pull off, nor particularly unlikely that some people will try. So I don't think I expect 'proof' that they are real.

It's like the ice bucket challenge. Sure some people probably will fake it, but I expect many of them are real.

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