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Comment by m0skit0 | Hacker News Reader

I understand your posture and I totally support gay marriage, but you're mixing politics with work, and you're taking a personal issue to a professional level. It's Brendan Eich that supported the prop 8, not Mozilla. That's a very very very VERY unprofessional stance. From now on I will be very careful in buying/getting anything from your company because of huge lack of professionalism being shown here.

This said, I wish you the best luck in your personal life and I hope you get that gay marriage bill ASAP! All my support from Morocco!

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> That's a very very very VERY unprofessional stance.

I do not recognise this definition of professionalism, and am happy to be called unprofessional if it is the accepted one.

Mozilla is an organisation that is dependent on community goodwill and support, and if the person they choose as a figurehead is one who has taken direct action to alienate a large segment of that community, then it seems to me entirely proper for that community to react as they see fit.

Not sure how this is a direct action taken to alienate a community. Seems like they're alienating themselves just fine.

Well, let me help you out. Brendan Eich choosing to pay actual money (taking a direct action) to oppose the existence of gay marriage (alienating a large community) is what I'm referring to.

You said it: Brendan Eich. In his free time. As an individual person. Mozilla has nothing to do with what this guy does in his free time (and I hope it doesn't).

Of course everyone can react as he/she sees fit. I did.

This statement "However, this particular subject is not one that is negotiable to us. We are personally affected by his actions." should make people very skittish about using Team Rarebit's code or services in production, specially if they ever make something that your app infrastructure is dependent on (like payment systems or APIs).

I understand that right now, it's some tiny app that doesn't affect too many people, which is fine. But imagine if tomorrow, Stripe or Balanced decided to stop certain conservative organizations from using their app. That would definitely be considered a suppression of personal expression and (imho) cause quite a backlash. As your organization grows, you have to be more and more careful about separating your personal and political views from those of your customers. I am glad that this company is not building anything that might be considered essential to startup infrastructure.

[Edit: To clarify a bit more, I'm trying to say that pulling an app from a store / suspending a service for reasons of personal disagreement is a disservice to the users of said app/service. Showcasing Brendan's role in donating against Prop 8 is perfectly fine.]

Weighed in the balance:

1. the right of gay people to get married

2. our personal right to pay money to bigots using specific money-transfer services

I'll be honest, I keep re-rolling, and it keeps coming up 1. What am I doing wrong?

So then I understand you do agree that a company should ask you your personal beliefs, religion, sexual orientation, and check which donations to which causes you made before hiring you? Because that's what you're implying here.

Brendan Eich chose to make his personal belief public by paying for it to be written into law, and his customers, who include publishers on his platform, are absolutely free to hold him accountable for that.

What his employers choose to do in response to that public knowledge and action is up to them, within the limits of employment law. It is my understanding that homophobes are not a protected class under said law, and long may that continue.

Any further inferences you draw from my posts are unwarranted, although I'll tell you for free that any company that asks potential employees what their sexual orientation is can get stuffed as far as I'm concerned.

I would say that this is a false dichotomy. If said organizations are bigoted but legal 1) and 2) can co-exist peacefully if the app/service makes their value statement very clear from the outset about what sort of organizations they want to serve. It is the sudden suspension of an app or service based on personal decisions that I think is unprofessional.

To give a better example of why this would affect you as a third-party user not directly involved in the debate -- imagine you use a Mint-like personal finance app on your Android phone on a day-to-day basis. Now suppose Brendan Eich becomes CEO of Google, and the app writers pull their app from the Play store, and revoke API access for all Android devices. Would you be okay with that?

I would be ecstatic if the businesses I chose to deal with had such principles, yes, and would gladly join their boycott. We are all involved in the civil rights "debate", whether we like it or not.

And Mozilla chose Brendan Eich to represent them as CEO. There is a distinct difference between being an employee, and being the CEO.

No, there isn't. A CEO is an employee, just one that tends to get paid above average.

And one that steers the direction of the company every single day. Mere employees don't.

Every employee affects the direction of the company in some amount, commensurate with their hierarchical level, security clearance, expertise, etc.

In normal, day to day operations, the CEO tends to have a bigger share of influence than other employees, but he neither has sole influence, nor always the biggest influence.

One could very well argue that Jonathan Ives had a bigger influence than Steve Jobs on Apple's direction around the time of iPod's release, for example. That product singlehandedly changed Apple's market segment and consumer perception.

In short, a CEO is just an employee, often getting paid more than the average employee, and often having more influence than the average employee, but not always.

If an employee pulls in one direction, and the CEO pulls in the other, the employee loses. Period.

(If the majority of employees pull in that direction, then the CEO needs to rethink. But we're talking about individuals).

"In short, a CEO is just an employee, often getting paid more than the average employee, and often having more influence than the average employee, but not always."

Yes always. Your supposed company where the average employee out-influences the CEO simply does not exist.

Still, what has that to do with personal beliefs? If he's a professional he will know to keep his personal beliefs out of his work. And if his beliefs interfere with his Mozilla's work, then I would agree on boycotting him and Mozilla. Until then, that's a private personal opinion which I absolutely don't care about.

It's fine that he has personal beliefs against gay marriage. As an LGBT person, it bothers me, but whatever, I probably bother him as well. It's mutual.

My problem is he has expressed he's willing to act on those views, by donating to a cause against gay marriage. While of course it's reasonable for him to act on his views if he wants to, that means I personally don't want to support him because I don't want to help him act on those views. Now that he's CEO, how do we know that LGBT people at Mozilla are getting fair treatment? Would he fairly consider a LGBT person for a promotion? What if two LGBT people get married and invite a bunch of their coworkers, or have a small celebration at work during break? Would he be OK with that? We don't know, but taking away from the fact that he's already acted on his anti-gay views, then I would lean towards that he wouldn't, and that bothers me enough that I don't want to support Mozilla.

There's also the fact that he designed Javascript, which is a perfectly valid reason to hate him :p

Hahahahahahahaha.

No.

Not much of a counterargument there.

Nothing to counter. Putting words into a comment does not make it valid. Review your history.

p.s. Feel free suggest the same thing about my comment. I know you want to.

They chose Eich because of professional issues, not his personal beliefs. I hope no company/organization chooses employees by their personal beliefs. Private life is private, he can have whatever beliefs he wants, I don't care. That doesn't affect his work as CEO or any other post. And if it eventually does, then I would stand against it. Until then, private life is private, I don't care what he does in his free time.

There's a difference between petty bikeshedding politics between republicans and democrats and world changing, need-to-be-done politics.

what's unprofessional about this stance? They're standing up for their values. Why should we separate different aspects of our lives? We're not machines, we're human beings. I say, I'd love to do business with them because they stand up for their values rather than bow to greed and fear not getting some unknown moroccan's business.

I have no business, I'm a simple user and I have my values and they say: "Do not trust people that mix work and personal issues". It's my opinion and I respect yours as well.

this is not a personal matter. It's a public issue. For example, there are plenty of Arab businesses that boycott Israel and their products. Are they mixing work and personal issue?

It's not a public issue. He didn't support the anti-gay marriage bill as a representative of Mozilla. He did it in his free time and as a SINGLE person. I absolutely DO NOT agree with him, but that has nothing to do with Mozilla or his professional work. I don't support either boycotting any Israel company, but if that company supports Israel apartheid by any means, then yes, I do support its boycotting. And if Eich does anything anti-gay as Mozilla CEO (e.g. ban gay employees), then I would boycott Mozilla as well for letting CEO's personal beliefs interfere with the organization proper working and he should be dismissed because of unprofessionalism as well.

It's not as clear-cut as you suggest. You can't just draw lines between his role as CEO of a company and his public stance on an issue and call them separate. It does affect the company and the impression that other employees get. It affects the company culture. It on one hand makes homosexual employees feel that the CEO despises their lifestyle so much, that he's publicly willing to donate to not allow them to lead it. On the other hand, it enables the bullies to take this as a green light since their values (based on hate) reflect that of the CEO.

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