Business Insider CTO Forced to Resign Following Twitter Firestorm
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But it seems that tweeting that kicked off a PC feminist lynch mob that went back through his tweets combing for a way to get him fired. Most of the tweets that offended them are logically defensible, if against mainstream opinion.
The one that is beyond the pale is a quote from Mel Gibson. I'm not sure why he posted that. Anybody that has a reason to dislike you isn't going to give you the benefit of the doubt. You gotta be on your toes. Even in this thread on HN people are debating whether or not he should be fired, and then that tweet gets posted and people say "oh, I see".
This goes to show that the only way to have counter-cultural opinions on the internet is with a pseudonym. Or to never make mistakes. You hackers arguing about "women in tech", founder accents, or other sensitive topics under your real names are insane.
[1] https://twitter.com/paxdickinson/status/377139293136756736
Regardless, it's more than just bad taste. At a professional event for a group that has terrible gender balance, glorifying the objectification onstage only further creates a culture where it is hard for women to feel welcome. It's bad taste that is Part of the Problem. And even a sexualized environment (eg. the stupid CircleShake presentation) can make a lot of people feel uncomfortable, especially women since society views male and female sexuality very differently. Plus women are overwhelmingly the ones who have had very bad experiences with sex (sexual assault, etc), or have worried about it even if it hasn't happened.
So both presentations contributed to the status quo that makes tech/startups feel like a boys club, making it harder for women to feel comfortable joining the communities. I think that supporting these unjust, sexist status quos is misogyny, so both presentations were--in effect, if not in intention--misogynistic.
But it also doesn't matter. He's the CTO. If he were a random dev, firing him would probably be extreme. Talk to him, ask him to avoid touching controversial subjects online for awhile and be more careful and considerate. But this is the guy who leads the technical team. He has a lot of impact on the culture. If he thinks the right response to stupid guys who support the objectification of women onstage at a large, publicly-broadcast professional event is to defend them as "not misogynists," then I don't trust him to be very sensitive to how his work environment may need improvement to make women feel more comfortable. And I doubt many prospective female engineers would either.
I disagree with your definitions of misogyny, objectification, and all that. But you seem like a reasonable person and I'm sure we could have a good discussion over it. However, if at the end of the discussion I get fired for holding my side of the conversation, count me out.
Actually, its a mockery of a Mel Gibson by projecting a quote from Mel Gibson about (IIRC) his ex-wife into a notional sequel to Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, with Jesus being put into the position of the subject of the original quote.
As such, its probably the one least subject to challenge as being indicative of misogyny, since it is mocking the conflict between Gibson's statement and his public shows of piety.
I don't support anything this guy said, but clearly some of it was sarcasm, and as for the rest of it, differences of opinion are entropy, and every time we suppress them, the universe gets that little bit colder and humanity dies that little bit quicker..
There are no winners here. I find everything about this episode a disgrace on both sides.
That alone would be cause for concern. I don't know that I"d advocate his firing, but I'd certainly question his authority to hire & fire staff based on the things he's said.
It's quite simple (and already explained by rit). He posted numerous messages disparaging various groups - blacks, women, gays. He is responsible for hiring within the company. This places Business Insider in an utterly compromised position and in danger of lawsuits.
So? Even aside from the PR (and potential advertising sales) aspects -- which are probably the main factor -- anything he says in public on behalf of himself is, even if not made on behalf of the company, evidence that can be used to establish his motive in any decision he makes on behalf of the company (e.g., hiring/firing) in the event of a lawsuit.
Right now I'm looking at the Twitter search results and being reminded why I hate people in general. Should expressing this opinion get me fired? Should I be prohibited from occupying a position of hiring people because I am prejudiced to assume they are capable of what I'm seeing in those search results?
Somehow it's not fair. A Christian or Atheist or (pre-1960s) homosexual sympathizer would present the same risks to a business as Dickinson did here. His views aren't considered progressive by any means, but 50 or 100 years ago neither would the views of an Atheist or a homosexual. I'm trying to find the difference here between firing Dickinson and, say 60 years ago, firing a homosexual sympathizer.
And I can't find that line. I can't say, without making an absolute judgement using a perfect computer and a perfect observation of the global state of the universe, whether the sympathizer was correct at the time, or whether Dickinson is somehow wrong now. All I know is that nobody appears to have been harmed except Dickinson, and I won't be hearing his opinions any time soon, and that's a crying shame.
Well, a homosexual sympathizer in a hiring position 60 years ago would have been more inclusive in their choices for candidate. A bigot in the 21st Century would be be more exclusive.
He is not being suppressed for holding an opinion. He is perfectly entitled to hold that opinion. And Business Insider is perfectly entitled to fire him to avoid being associated with an opinion that does not match their company values.
He's not being suppressed (and now fired) for holding an opinion. He was fired for publicly expressing views that were incompatible with his job as CTO.
He said in a public medium (Twitter), tagged with his professional title, that he believed superb female developers were as rare as unicorns. Any woman who had ever interviewed and been turned down for a dev position at Business Insider might have a legal case for unfair discrimination in hiring.
The other stuff (racism, sexism, etc) is one thing, but the example I mentioned above exposed his company to legal liability. That's not a responsible thing for a person in a decision-making and hiring position to do.
Sometimes knowing when to shut the hell up is a far greater asset than being outspoken and opinionated. Especially about things related to your job...
"@Liberal Insider: Haha, you'd feel pretty silly for writing that comment if you ever saw my twitter feed and read all the horrible things I say about Obama. :)"
[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/hiring-mobile-apps-developer-...
I doubt it very much that he was implying you needed to be liberal OR conservative to work at BI.
"Tech managers spend as much time worrying about how to hire talented female developers as they do worrying about how to hire a unicorn."
>> In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers. It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though.
You'd put this guy in charge of your business?
That's a very good point: context matters. Being a C-level employee is very different than being a comedian (or telling jokes like that in sunday school).
Oh, wait, that's an offensive and horrible thing to say. Maybe we need to be held accountable for our opinions.
Now, I guess, the real question is whether my first statement is sarcasm or not.
He didn't lose his job as night watchman. You want to be a leader, you have to act the way you expect people in your company to act.
If you think this is just 'political correctness', you're wrong. It's about leadership and not having a company culture of being a bunch of a-holes.
Use this filter. If you were running a company and came across this type of personality, would you want them in your company?
What if they were anti-gay? Anti-white? Anti-immigrant? And not just held those views but basically YELLED them in PUBLIC while using your company name? Yeah, common sense says you need to get rid of them.
No, BI is better off without him. I would say the tech industry as an entity would be much better off the less of these people we have in it. It has nothing to do with honesty, but empathy, intelligence, and common sense.
And, btw, this is not hard. Get a different twitter account if you want to spout your opinions. Make sure it has no connection to your work.
I have three twitter accounts. One is "me", that I use for work stuffs. One is more for close friends and people I know in public. The last is my controversial one that I use.
"Many UR readers have had the priceless educational privilege of growing up behind the Iron Curtain. These readers will identify Professor DeLong’s tone at once: it is the tone of the Soviet humor magazine Krokodil[2]. I will take the liberty of Anglicizing, and call it “crocodile humor.” Extremely educated readers may also be familiar with the Nazi variant, as found in Der Stürmer and the like. The material is different, of course, but the tone is unmistakable. We’ll hear a good deal more of it in the next four years.
Crocodile humor is the laughter of the powerful at the powerless. It is not intended to be funny. It is intended to intimidate. Those who laugh, as many do, are those who love to submerge themselves in a mob, feel its strength as theirs, chant and shake their spears as one."
[1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/11/preside...
Which groups can say racist statements about which other groups and still keep their jobs? Also a good question for measuring relative power. We'll ask Anil Dash[1]
If your HR department toes the official feminist line, feminism has power. If someone can get you fired for making a dongle joke to your friend, that is power.
The myth that white males all hold positions of power is itself evidence of the power that cultural Marxists hold.
Oh, and he did this from a twitter account with mini-bio that featured his position as CTO of Business Insider.
I'm far from politically correct, but if I were CEO and this were my CTO, and I heard about this, he would have one and only one chance to make his account anonymous and disconnect it from my company and my brand. Personal views and "your own time" is one thing, but when you put your professional title (especially at CxO level) and your company name in your twitter bio, you're representing a brand whether or not you want to be.
He wasn't fired because liberals engaged in Crocodile Humor. He was fired because he made an unprofessional social media decision and attracted a hurricane of shit from a broad swath of the internet that spilled over to the brand of his company.
Two things complicate this: firstly, social networks are really making the idea of a 'private sphere' of beliefs that are separate from one's public role unsustainable. Secondly, CTO is a high-profile role, a representative of the company with responsibilities including dealing with technical partners and attracting new employees. This role is compromised by behaving in a way that is very likely to damage those relationships.
Obviously, he's now going to be on the receiving end of abuse that's as bad or worse than anything he's ever said himself. In the interests of consistency, I obviously have to deplore this; two wrongs don't make a right. The sight of a bunch of righteously-enraged Twitter users piling on is not exactly edifying and won't do anything to persuade anyone that civil discourse is the way to a better future.
A couple of years ago I thought we might be on the verge of a new era of permissiveness, in the sense that policing the subjectively offensive thoughts of others would be so obviously impossible that we'd have to accept the existence of offensive ideas and aim instead for the more achievable (and more liberal, to a given definition of 'liberal') goal of ensuring that people simply ensure that their public (in the sense of official or political) conduct is impartial irrespective of their private beliefs. Now, I'm not so sure. People seem to like being outraged by others, and seem to want to suppress views they dislike even if no identifiable harm has been caused (in fact, one can always claim some harm on the basis that someone's feelings were hurt). It now seems to be reasonable to argue in favour of, in effect, a campaign for the improvement of public morals, a notion that seemed remote only recently.
That said, I also personally think that this guy sounds like an asshole, and I wouldn't have wanted him as my boss or my subordinate if he displayed any of the attitudes on show in his Twitter feed in the workplace. It's highly likely that he did so, and for all we know he could have been under existing disciplinary warnings or subject to internal complaints. It might be that what people say about him on Twitter has nothing to do with him being fired.
This is both true, and a very good thing.
This guy had the title of CTO, and at that level one must be a leader in the views that they express. If one expresses views that are inconsistent with the values of the company, and you are supposed to be a leader, then your job is on the line.
This is true of all sorts of views, not just social views, and the C level people need to be held accountable for the public face that they choose to put out there. And if this guy's views reduce their hiring pool by half because he's scaring away employees over trivial and bad reasons, he is actively harming the company and should be fired.
Saying that a view is "honest" doesn't matter a damn, whether it's endorsing competitors products or being a misogynist. When you are an employee, you can't be actively damaging your company, and when you are in a leadership role, your words have much more power, and can both be far more helpful or hurtful to the company.
I've worked with my share of C level folk who are borderline sociopathic and have the wonderful combination of NOT being successful at that level either. It astounds me that people can basically continue to con their way around companies at the upper levels.
/rant
They'll also put up with:
- long hours
- far less than optimal physical workspaces
- being left in the dark about what's going on in the company from a business perspective
- all kinds of other crap
In far too many workplaces, it's still high school. Management is sometimes just a great way not to have to be accountable.
Pre-empt: Obviously there are great managers. I'm not talking about them.
Coming up with excuses/assigning blame somewhere other than himself.
Taking credit for other people's successes.
In all my job interviews, no one has ever asked me whether I tweet out racist and sexist comments (spoiler: I don't).
One should always expect that their internet information where their real name is listed will be seen. Most places are doing some sort of internet search for the person to see what public information, both good and bad, they can glean. This is the way of the world these days.
Depends on the policy of the company, of course, but the first thing I would do when I get a resume of a person for interviewing is to google their name. Do they have LinkedIn, github, Facebook, a personal web site?
There's good, neutral, and bad.
- good: OS contributions, intelligent blog on topic
- neutral: random hobbies, completely blank web presence
- bad: photos with illegal drugs, hostile blog, drive-by vicious blog comments, etc
The tech market is incredible in Seattle (where I live) right now and I know plenty of smart devs who put up with bullshit all the time.
I spent a few years dealing with the asshole charlatan CTO, who I shit you not, was "discovered" while working at computer renaissance.
The major differentiator between him and the lead dev who never got his way, was that the CTO could calmly and credibly state his case. Even if that case was as ridiculous as "we need to rewrite all our systems to use UDP, TCP is making everything slow". When confronted with these kind of theories the lead dev would easily be goaded into hissy fits, that made him sound like an egotistical baby.
Everyone on this forum knows that blaming TCP for system slowness is total misdirecting bullshit. But the CEO doesn't know that, and if you present your case without savvy social skills you will lose every time. This lead dev proved it for several years. It sucks, but it is life.
Interestingly I happened upon this telling quote that I later learned through informal channels was attributed to the CEO
"I have 25 code writers that are absolute 'Rain Men', but I gotta have ONE 'Rain Man' with social skills to run the place."
Pretty important stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n88eb8LUIdU Circle Shake
Not only the sheer audacity of these idiots with their "apps" but also on the shoulders of TechCrunch who apparently do not employ any sort of pre-screening toward applicants.
Worth pointing out that the exact same thing has now happened to this thread.
http://valleywag.gawker.com/techs-grossest-website-hits-a-ne...
There was a hackathon planned last year that boasted "women, booze & massages". Numerous threads about it were immediately flagged off the site. Same the Geeklist issue with a promo video that had a woman in her underwear.
It would be one thing if the HN community was capable of looking at these issues and having a reasoned discussion about them. But no, flagged immediately. Heroic hackers jumping on the gender grenade so the rest of us don't even have to think about it.
This guy is a lawsuit waiting to happen with a very vivid history. No company is going to place themselves at risk hiring this guy again. There's plenty of other respectable talent out there.
B) "There's plenty of other respectable talent out there." No there isn't. There are plenty of people who read hacker news and know what's trending today, but very few who can pinpoint what's going to be trending tomorrow or what a company can do to position themselves to be on the front page tomorrow.
Meanwhile, this guy is still employed: https://twitter.com/anildash/status/370362753451827200
Also, "the economic catastrophe facing the global marketplace is a result of a failure of white culture in America."[2]
Because, hey!, we all know white people are crazy. Good thing businesses never have to hire white people.
[2] http://dashes.com/anil/2009/01/monoculture-is-bad-for-busine...
Pretty sure this guy qualifies as a douchebag and not simply trying to toe the line in a politically correct world. That is, of course, my opinion - but I sure as fuck wouldn't want this sort of individual publicly representing my company and embodying sort of behavior we tolerate, embrace or promote.
Reply to Below- The tweets speak for themselves. No journalism necessary.
[1] http://valleywag.gawker.com/dear-paul-graham-your-priorities...
Did he really get fired for tweeting "feminism in tech remains the champion topic for my block list. my finger is getting tired."?
someone gets fired for saying he blocks people talking about $topic on his twitter timeline?).
wow, if that is all he got fired for, then (imo) this is political correctness gone crazy.
EDIT: ok there is a whole history of weird tweets. see http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-ne...
Whoa I didn't know you could use the word 'nigger' in polite/public conversation in the USA.
Above judgment withdrawn. The guy is nuts. How did he get to be CTO in the first place?
"In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers. It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though."
http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-ne...
http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-ne...
Example: "In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers. It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though."
my question: what gain would someone have for posting these kind of tweets? show off you are a cool guy? get some "no such thing as bad publicity" followers? is it a "Miley Cyrus" marketing scheme?
Rule #2 of work - be nice. to everyone. there is no downside to this. prove me wrong.
EDIT: corrected Murphy entry number
I can remember reading quite a few and thinking "wow, this guy's gonna get called out one of these days". Guess it finally happened, and by someone with a big enough megaphone to really make it go viral.
[1] "Passion of Christ" tweet not among them. That was just foul.
Also are BI so big that they require a CTO or title inflation is in full swing.
We are must also solve the problem why someone can be fired for something non work related and out of company time in general. Because it will grow bigger with time.
Not anymore you don't.
Because merit is an individual quality, and feminism is a collective ideology? Just a guess.
"At least three cool dudes that I can drink at lunch with? Check."
Uh, who is arguing otherwise? Unless you're somehow saying that women are generally less motivated, accomplished, and talented than men.
2. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. That does not mean they are free from consequences when they share that opinion publicly.
Yeah lawsuit waiting to happen.
This is just a meme which the mob picked up and ran with, just like "Phil Fish is an asshole" that drove him out of indie game dev.
Edit: for example, when people say he makes misogynist tweets, then they need to offer evidence that he is against women or hates women.
EDIT: Is it possible to link to past search results on Twitter? So https://twitter.com/search?q=%40paxdickinson but as it was 12h ago? Either way, it's not that different today.
TL;DR; if you're an asshole, then sometimes unpleasant things happen to you.
Is there any evidence "Pax Dickinson" is a real person?
business insider: you are anti-democratic and pro-feminist douche bags.
fuck feminist agenda.
"In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of niggers. It's his own fault for dressing like a whore though."
Citation needed. He was asked to step down for being an abhorrent human being who posts abuse about a number of groups of people (including women) and leaves his company vulnerable to lawsuits.
He can surely have an opinion, even a minority, rather ridiculous opinion. What he can't do is be a complete asshat and think there are no ramifications.
It shows a complete lack of empathy as well as judgement. Guy is a CTO of a rather public company and feels the need to rant off like this on twitter? 1. extremely poor judgement and 2. shows he "doesn't get it".
However you look at it, this guy shouldn't be anywhere near leading other people and should have all access to public communications revoked. Not to mention the possible lawsuits this exposed the company to! I mean, come on! Think!
In the US, the government can not prevent him from voicing it.
None of this means that what he chooses to voice is free of consequences. The first amendment to the US constitution does not prevent Business Insider from severing ties with him to prevent from being associated with is views.
There is nothing hypocritical about it.