Hacker News Reader

Comment by nerdsniper | Hacker News Reader

The employee didn't call him a jerk. That was a straw-man from Atlassian. Now we're arguing over whether he's a jerk or not.

A opposed to what actually happened: Mike (CEO) fired 19,000 people. Then Mike held a video AMA regarding the firings. Mike took the meeting from the headquarters of the NBA team he owns.

The employee, Unterwurzacher, parodied the CEO on Slack, writing, “What’s up Outragers, just dialing in from my NBA team’s headquarters to yell at the people whose careers I’ve just pummeled.”

Then that employee was fired.

View on HN

Correct, but as of writing this the two top comments were:

> Regardless of the fact that he probably is a jerk

and

> Does Atlassian's CEO realize that we all now know that he really is a rich jerk?

My comment was just meant to provide an insider perspective as a foil to those who had given theirs.

> The employee didn't call him a jerk. That was a straw-man from Atlassian.

We don't really have enough information to adjudicate either way, the article doesn't include a transcript of what she actually said or a transcript of what was being said in the courtroom with context (tribunalroom? boardroom? wherever the lawyer was talking).

It seems a bit pointless to hypothesise what might have happened then decide whether the imaginary actions were reasonable in the hypothetical scenario. If we're going to debate correctness there needs to be actual source material instead of this third-hand summary behind a paywall.

does this particularly qualify him as a jerk? or just that the employee takes all the risk in employment, and capitalism does wrong by rewarding owners and management vs workers?

that he's showing off how rich he is as the result of throwing these people on the street is just part of the system weve built

He was a passionate climate activist, possibly still is.

He has since purchased a private jet under controversy.

His company now sponsors an F1 team.

He now seems to be a typical billionaire. You don’t get to be a billionaire without being ruthless.

He probably is now a rich jerk. When I worked at Atlassian and on boarded, one of the managers said if you are in a lift with Mike or Scott, and they asked what you do here, you better tell them what value you are bringing…

Mike was also very public he was proud Atlassian was not a high payer, he wouldn’t compete with Google etc on pay, at the time, yet people still wanted to work at Atlassian. Also didn’t hide the fact they absolutely utilised lack of local market knowledge for visa holders when nearly have the office was a temporary visa holder at the time.

Reading this comment really shifted my perspective on this whole thing. I’m less upset about the firing and more upset that anyone ever has the ability to control the livelihoods of 19,000 people.

Maybe businesses shouldn’t get that big.

19k is a fairly small business. I mean it isn't "small business" but it is small relative to many others. Large companies aren't anytime new. Ford had 100k in the 1920s. Then you have places like new York City government that has 309k people. I would prefer to have many smaller companies than a could of big ones. But 19k isn't really that many people

Think about what was happening in US labor in the 1920’s, it’s pretty interesting you chose that decade, actually and I think it speaks to my train of thought.

The size of a business may not be the best part to care about, maybe the power of a single executive is more concerning - but one person holding power over 19k people who have no representation to bargain with that person (like an elected official) is extremely unbalanced.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com