Pinterest sacks two engineers for creating software to identify fired workers | Hacker News Reader

Pinterest sacks two engineers for creating software to identify fired workers

theguardian.com

Which two? If only there was a tool for finding out who it was.

  A spokesperson for Pinterest said: “Two engineers wrote custom scripts improperly accessing confidential company information to identify the locations and names of all dismissed employees and then shared it more broadly. This was a clear violation of Pinterest policy and of their former colleagues’ privacy.”

That's terrible. If I'm fired, I don't want the entire company to find out through a script.

It would make you feel better if they did it with a pen and paper?

Let's not pretend there isn't a huge difference between automated privacy invasion and manual.

Let's not pretend that firing software engineers for reading a publicly available Slack list with software is anything but the crack of a whip. Or equivocate doing that with firing _700 people_ while the board gets their million-dollar yacht bonuses.

Remember back when they built these businesses out of thin air, they would hire for the type of personality that would hack together something pointless like this.

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