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Comment by Jormundir | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't call it a witch hunt. Now every Mozilla employee's work is contributing to Eich's paycheck. The paycheck with which he will (has) donate(d) to oppose gay marriage. If I was a Mozilla employee, this is not something I would want to be contributing to.

This argument can obviously be applied to any employee in the company, but it's severely exacerbated when it's applied to the CEO, who's getting a huge paycheck and is serving as the face of the company. It would be nice if we could separate his work from his personal life, but that separation does not actually exist. His personal endeavors are fueled by his professional life. (This is why we all work, really).

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"This argument can obviously be applied to any employee in the company, but it's severely exacerbated when it's applied to the CEO"

So, you're saying then, that they should go through the donations of every employee, ever, and fire anyone who donated to a cause that a sub-group of employees disagrees with?

I don't see it simply as disagreement. I draw the line at oppression. He's spending money earned, in part from any given employee's contribution to the company, to support the oppression of a group of people. It actually doesn't really matter if it's the CEO, this type of thing at any level in the company derails morale.

With this line drawn, it's not about going through and ratting out people who donate to stuff you don't like, and it's not about limit free speech. This is about supporting human rights, and more specifically to the private company, maintaining a workplace that is inclusive to everyone, and a vision for the company that everyone can get behind.

Yes, everyone has free speech and should be able to support whatever they want, but when you support oppression, I think it's completely fair that there is backlash and questioning of whether you should be part of, and benefitting from, a inclusive group. The employees have every right (freedom of speech, remember?) to voice opposition to you in your role, because it really does affect everyone in the company.

If you work for a private company, and look up the causes that your CEO contributes to, you might be surprised at what you find there, too.

I'm not saying Eich's contributions are irrelevant, just that he would hardly be the first CEO to hold political opinions many or all of the people who work with him find repugnant.

> it's severely exacerbated when it's applied to the CEO, who's getting a huge paycheck

I haven't looked at their financials, but I would have to assume that CEO of Mozilla is one of the less lavishly paid "CEO of a major tech organization" jobs. Nobody goes to work at Mozilla to get rich.

Liberals have power, feel the need to enforce their social order.

Is this supposed to amaze anyone ? You should see how bad this get in some parts of Europe, although that could just be me having more experience with it in that part of the world.

The problem liberals have is that while they're endemic in the rank and file of these companies, they're not exactly common at the top.

The problem is the liberals "enforcing their social order" with their power... by individually reacting to someone spending money to make sure the government resumes enforcing a particular social order? This is entirely a contest between a liberal desire to enforce social order A and a conservative desire to enforce social order B. There's a few who basically want government out of marriage all together, but that's a tiny minority in my experience and is made up of people from both sides of the left-right spectrum.

Except of course that conservatives are pretty much about that, while liberals' great claim is that they don't enforce any social order. They are about freedom, you can do anything you want, believe anything you want, want anything you want !

Here it's obvious that the exception is that this is predicated on you wanting exactly the same they want. The problem is the hypocrisy. The problem is that liberals constantly scream bloody murder if anyone uses the "but those guys do the same" defense.

The problem is that they enforce their own rules on others but not themselves. The problem is the blatant intolerance, the attempt to destroy a man's career because of his beliefs.

If you don't see the problems with this, I'm not going to get dragged in.

liberals' great claim is that they don't enforce any social order. They are about freedom, you can do anything you want, believe anything you want, want anything you want !

I think you are really confused, that's some anarchists and libertarians. Liberal democracy is about the idea of a social contract and trying to balance the greatest freedom for the greatest number, not limitless individual freedom. It has always been philosophically against limitless individual freedom as it considers that damaging.

It definitely is a witch hunt. What next? Are you going to fire any employee that goes on vacation to Russia, Turkey, or gasp Cuba? Or anyone that contributes to a charity you don't agree with?

There're any number of reasons why someone might visit those countries. When you put up $1K towards a political campaign whose raison d'etre is to deny gay people the right to marry, it's rather well defined what the expectation is.

I don't understand what charities have to do with this, though. Surely there are charities which would be morally objectionable. If he'd donated to a charity with similar aims to the Prop 8 campaign, I imagine it would change people's opinions rather little. Or how about a charity which campaigned against interracial marriage?

> There're any number of reasons why someone might visit those countries.

People were calling for a boycott of all things Russian, or did you forget that?

The irony of course being that Russia decriminalized same-sex relationships in 1993 long before the US, effectively, did the same in 2003 even though 14 states still ban sodomy.

And yet the US, EU, et al, still sent their Olympic teams to Sochi. I remember hearing something about how companies are usually pretty happy when people call for a boycott because it means it's a vocal minority and nothing organized.

I don't really see how this is relevant except for a tit-for-tat comparison b/w Russia and the US, which is kinda pointless.

Do you support employees being fired for supporting gay marriage then?

I don't see any difference in the two positions (both are using their paychecks to advanced a political cause), except that you personally agree with one position and not the other.

The difference is that only one of those positions in a boss is threatening. Take interracial marriage as a parallel. If you are in a mixed-race marriage and your boss has tried to prevent interracial marriage, you could reasonably feel threatened. Whereas if your boss supports equality, you won't worry whether you are in a same-race or mixed-race marriage.

Threatened how?

Threatened with the sort of discrimination that minority groups often experience from people who have an irrational bias against them.

Sorry, when did those threats happen?

I said "reasonably feel threatened". You don't have to have someone directly threaten you to reasonably feel threatened.

OK, so what was the reasonable cause to feel threatened?

That your boss has helped strip you of your civil rights.

If my boss paid money to a political cause against mix-marriages, but inside of work took no action to discriminate against people who were in mixed marriages, I'd think he was an asshat, and express such opinion, but not tie it to work any more than he was.

Of course, I don't need to feel threatened by people disagreeing with life choices I've made just because they don't like them, nor do I need to retaliate against people having different views. I can act like a professional at work while expressing my dissent in the marketplace of ideas.

I don't think Mozilla employees are wrong to say he's wrong on Twitter - I think they're wrong to link it to workplace politics sans any demonstration of him doing so.

Do you often tell your boss he's an asshat? If so, you should read the people commenting here that the Mozilla employees speaking out may be making career-limiting moves.

Regardless, it sounds like you haven't experienced significant workplace discrimination. Some people are prone to see discriminatory behavior as threatening because they have been threatened or harmed.

No one, as far as I'm aware, has pointed out examples of him behaving in a discriminatory manner - just that he holds a different view than them and engages in the political process.

I certainly agree that workplace discrimination is a problem, I just don't think that one necessitates the other, as people are claiming here.

> Do you often tell your boss he's an asshat? If so, you should read the people commenting here that the Mozilla employees speaking out may be making career-limiting moves.

I'd expect that the career limiting move is largely that they're linking their speaking out to how things should be at Mozilla, rather than distancing their speaking out from workplace politics.

But for the record, yes, I've told superiors, up to the CTO (while I was working in IT) that they're wrong on a number of social issues. I've also literally used the word "asshat" to describe people who hold opinions contrary to mine on those same issues on social media.

I just don't go out of my way to link it in to workplace politics, and haven't worked for people petty enough to punish their subordinates for having differing opinions.

If the Mozilla CEO is doing that, I'd be happy to see evidence of it. If the Mozilla CEO is discriminating at work because people are gay or support gay marriage, I'd like to see evidence of that. So far, all I see is people intentionally linking their dissent to workplace politics and people trying to punish him for having a view they don't like.

Feel free to cite evidence to prove me wrong.

I'm pretty sure that helping to remove a civil right from a group of people can be taken as discriminatory.

I agree that nobody has come forward with proof that he has done something wrong at Mozilla. Which is why he's still at Mozilla.

But I don't think "hasn't been caught being an egregious bigot at work" is the only bar a CEO of a major nonprofit needs to clear. And whether or not he stays on as CEO, I think it's entirely reasonable for some Mozilla employees to decide that they're better off elsewhere.

> I'm pretty sure that helping to remove a civil right from a group of people can be taken as discriminatory.

Sure, he holds views that some people should be discriminated against, and contributes to political causes advocating that. Lots of people hold those kind of views, and lots of people hold other objectionable views. My objection is to punishing him at work for that, and that alone.

I'm fine with Mozilla employees deciding that they're better off somewhere else, because they don't like their boss for any reason. That's their decision about who they associate with.

I think it's more of a problem when they decide he should be somewhere else because they don't like his opinions, or his political actions. I think that's discriminatory, and a large problem in a free society.

Gosh golly, what's it coming to when right straight white people can't discriminate against unpopular minority groups without facing consequences! It's as you say: minority groups should just quit if their boss might be discriminatory. That will surely end the problem of discrimination.

I wish I could give this post 10 upvotes. There is a reason that the US has employment laws [Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Section 703(a)(1) & (2)] related to discrimination -- and its to stop precisely these sorts of questions from ever being questions in the first place.

Where did all of this moral relativism come from?

What Eich believes goes against basic human rights. This isn't some argument about tax rates.

Which basic human right does his belief go against, exactly?

In all sincerity, if you had to write down a list of human rights, ordered by most-to-least basic, where would it fall on the list? Which rights would be more basic? Which less?

I think free speech is a basic human right, too, but I wouldn't demand my CEO be fired if he gave a million dollars to try to get a Constitutional amendment passed to overturn Citizens United.

I'm sure there exists a political cause that if your CEO was funding it, would cause you to demand their resignation or make you leave the company.

Say they are funding a campaign calling for speech restrictions of a group of which you are a member, for instance. You presumably have a line somewhere.

You're positive about that? They could fund a campaign calling for speech restrictions for a group I'm a member of, and I'll probably feel peeved about it (or even stronger feelings), but so long as it doesn't affect the workplace, and the CEO is still doing their job, I wouldn't call for their resignation.

That's pretty lucky for them then, because you won't legally be able to after their bill goes through about speech in the workplace.

edit - that's a pretty unfair hypothetical, and it would be directly affecting your work then, but I still suspect you have a line, if only to avoid things ever getting a little bit too Kafka.

I suppose it's lucky for them, but I don't see removing them as CEO as an action helpful to the cause. It probably won't weaken their beliefs, and might even strengthen them. They might even want to retaliate against the group they see as booting them out.

I just don't think that stripping them of their lands and titles really helps anybody. Arguably they won't have a source of income, except that they probably would receive a fairly nice severance package, and could still look for more work elsewhere.

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I really like your last line of "things ever getting a little bit too Kafka".

So marriage is a basic human right?

So the right to marry whomever you choose is universal, for everybody, no exceptions?

So why doesn't the campaign for "marriage equality" fight for the right of a brother and sister to get married, or a mother and her son?

How much money (as a private citizen) has he spent on anti-gay causes?

How much money has he spent (as CEO) {i'm having trouble with wording here} keeping Mozilla a safe play for LGBTQ staff?

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