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Comment by steve8918 | Hacker News Reader

There are so many things wrong with this post, I would strongly advise you to delete this. Besides the libel, it doesn't really paint you in a good light either, especially if you're going to be looking for a job. I would suggest keeping your dirty laundry off the Internet, and delete this post.

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I for one appreciated the info. But you're right: shawnee should definitely consider trying to hide the hate, because even well-justified and 100% righteous anger can prevent you from landing the perfect job you want. Pretend you're a zen master; a lot of potential employers only want people who have never been victimized like this at work, particularly in their leadership roles. I speak from experience: it's better to paint a picture of a clear, strong, victorious past than a picture including the truth of having worked for unscrupulous jerks who you had serious disagreements with.

On the other hand, the world would be a better place if we didn't all have to make nice-nice and pretend, so rock on!

People are way to uptight about stuff like this when it comes to finding your next job. It's true that it will close some doors, but it will open others. And, for the vast majority of openings nobody will ever know.

Relevant xkcd:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dreams.png

I enjoyed reading it. I doubt this will come back to haunt the author with respect to future work. If he's good at programming, pretty much anyone will overlook his "scumbag" remark. After all, who identifies with the group "scumbag" and will be offended?

This is, sadly, false. It may be true that anyone cool would ignore such things, but there are plenty of companies and recruiters out there that will consider this kind of thing a red flag and downvote people during the recruiting process. (Edit: this comment has been getting upvoted and downvoted in equal proportions, which kind of supports my point. It's an ugly truth, what I'm saying here.)

Oh sure, some people will discriminate against you, but you need very few jobs relative to the number available.

That's a great point. And perhaps working for cool people is better. Maybe the doors it closes are doors best left closed.

But it's a great filter to avoid the types of employer who would repeat the aggravation OP was experiencing.

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Agreed - whether or not the CEO is an "unethical bag of scum", this person just made some colorful remarks about the CEO, and linked their real name in the same comment. All on Hacker News, which could be portrayed as a source of news for the industry, thus making the comment damaging.
This is very dangerous ground, and could be a case of libel if the "unethical" CEO catches this.

I'm pretty sure libel and slander are really hard to actually get judgements on. The information can't be true, and the victim has to be able to demonstrate damages. There may be other technical factors as well, such as whether the victim is famous and whether they rely on having a clear name to exist in the world. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that people get more nervous about slander than they really need to.

Not in the UK. The defendant must prove that the statement is true[1]. This is why the UK is a prime libel tourism destination, as the cost of defending the statement is often prohibitive to an individual.
Being a statement on the internet, I believe this case could be tried in the UK, hence the tourism aspect.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law#Burden_o...

Luckily the US passed the SPEECH act: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEECH_act
Ridiculous libel judgements in the UK will not be enforced in the US if the judgements violate the First Amendment.
I'm just waiting for day when libel tourism results in no one visiting the UK -- actual tourism -- because everyone has UK libel judgements against them.

This CEO would have to prove that they behave ethically, and then extrapolate the HN viewership with potential customers and thus lost revenue and/or a loss of brand equity.
This is certainly not a stretch for civil court, nor would it be inexpensive for either party involved.

It's not so much that you have to worry about losing a judgement, but rather that you have to spend time and resources fighting in court.

I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that any US court would consider "unethical bag of scum" to be a statement of opinion, and thus not covered by defamation laws.

How does it paint them in a bad light?

OP is accusing the CEO of things that are impossible for any of us to verify. We have no idea what the truth is.
I would be hesitant to hire OP because I wouldn't want my name unfairly tarnished in public like this.

Whistle blowing is one thing, calling people names is another. It makes him sound vindictive.

To me, it just makes them sound honestly upset, especially because this poster seems to have a history of reasonable discourse.
Saying what you think about someone is not, in and of itself, a vindictive act.

I think what steve8918 is trying to say is that a comment such as one made by shawnee_35 is not seen in a good way by some people, and I agree with him. However that does not mean that people shouldn't say what they think about someone but calling names is not a good sign.

No, this is vindictive: http://freespire.com/. That's a site set up by a former exec of a defunct company, attacking its former CEO. shawnee_'s comment is exploding with tact by comparison, and any HR drone who doesn't see the difference doesn't deserve their position.

Yes, you can find more vindictive things: there are people out there who have not only set up a silly website, but have made it their life's mission to stalk and terrorize the people they dislike; there are even people who have captured and tortured the objects of their hatred/revenge. Obviously, this is a massively different situation than simply calling someone names, and anyone who fails to recognize that fact is being dense: these websites and comments are, after all, "harmless name calling".
However, that really doesn't excuse the behavior: just because you can find someone worse than you, making you look good in comparison, doesn't mean that you are actually doing well... "have you seen Steve? he failed that class; in comparison, my C is great! if you really can't see the difference, you don't deserve to be a teacher" <- this statement isn't even false, as a C really is massively different than an F... at least you tried... but is it really something we should be happy about? Seriously?

At the end of the day, calling an asshole an asshole is not something to apologize for.

I am not certain whether I agree with that; I might, actually... I certainly would if it were in private, or in context. However, that doesn't make the argument "if you think X is Y then you should check out Z: it is so much more Y you will stop calling X Y by comparison" a useful argument: you can almost always find more and more extreme examples, and eventually you are saying "at least he's not Hitler; you can tell the difference, right?".

> Besides the libel
What libel? You mean his opinion of the CEO? Which statement do you find to be factual and a lie?

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