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Comment by georgespencer | Hacker News Reader

> We have employees with a wide diversity of views. Our culture of openness extends to encouraging staff and community to share their beliefs and opinions in public.

Except for the CEO, it seems.

I don't think what he did is right -- it should be pretty obvious to everyone by now that history is going to look unfavourably at all of us for dragging our feet on the issue he made a bigoted stand on -- but it seems a peculiar thing to include in the blog post announcing that your CEO stepped down because of his stance on a civil rights issue.

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To be clear, what he did wasn't wrong either. You have a different opinion, and society as a whole is shifting to a different opinion, but that doesn't make his actions wrong.

Certainly he's no more wrong than any racist in the fifties or sixties, and we all know how not-wrong those folks were.

It's about as close to wrong as you can get in any meaningful sense.

Is it really that difficult to understand why the CEO would be treated differently in that regard? His job is to lead the company. It's hard to do that when many Mozilla employees fundamentally disagree with his stance on how their LGBT friends, coworkers, and family members should be treated in the eyes of the law. That's just the nature of the role.

So then should a CEO of a company in a rural conservative place, say Alabama, be forced to step down because he supports gay marriage, just because many of his employees disagree with him on that issue?

There is no such symmetry as you imply. The opinions under discussion aren't irrelevant. One opinion is that an entire group's freedoms ought to be restricted. Another is that the group's freedoms ought not be. These opinions are different, and the character of individuals having these opinions, with respect to their behavior towards others, is different.

It's irrational of your hypothetical conservatives in Alabama to react negatively toward that CEO, because that CEO is simply not arguing for the conservatives' freedoms to be suppressed.

The success of this campaign will certainly embolden others from both sides of the political spectrum to try to take scalps in this way. It is really a scary development.

Should such a person step down? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, Eich wasn't forced to step down; he did so voluntarily.

> Regardless, Eich wasn't forced to step down; he did so voluntarily.

I think an HR type might examine the concept of "constructive dismissal" in this particular case.

Rest of the paragraph for understanding: "This is meant to distinguish Mozilla from most organizations and hold us to a higher standard. But this time we failed to listen, to engage, and to be guided by our community."

They're saying they have a culture of openness in decision-making, but chose their CEO in a way contrary to that.

A CEO exists to serve the staff, the community and the world at large. Ditto for any leadership role. There is. Ton of laws and legal precident which enshrine this.

Given that context, yeah the CEO doesn't get to piss of the people he is supposed to lead.

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