I would have fired this person as soon as humanly possible for basically (actually) telling customers of the company to go F themselves, and making horribly insensitive and inappropriate jokes at their expense.
imho the point of this article seems to be to tell the story where big bad VMWare or the target of VMWare’s employee’s ire stomped on poor VMWare employee, but I think it makes the employee look bad. I would absolutely not hire this person based on this post. Work isn’t the right time to be attacking people on a personal level.
All the fist bumps and cheers in these social media echo chambers won’t help them reflect. Unlike the OP who casually tagged some tech guy on Twitter and said “I’d shake your hand but the blood never washes off” (what the actual fuck), reasonable people won’t engage them on social media and tell them how incredibly toxic they are.
You don’t need to invoke “some people”, I happen to find the U.S. military immoral, and you can find posts supporting that from my comment history right on this site.
Still, this person displayed unbelievable lack of judgement by posting like that to a speaker of their employer’s conference, and it crossed at least two more lines beyond the simple “fuck you” preceding it.
In what way is the US military analogous to Nazi Germany?
Spoiler alert: It isn't.
And I'm sure I'm far from the only person here who's near relatives died in the holocaust, so this little bit of rhetoric you're employing is grossly offensive.
Right now the US military tech, created with k8s among other components, is used by Ukrainian army to fight Putin invasion. Where this fact sits on your (im)morality scale?
Every country in the world has their share of far right bozos. Those of Azov are quite mild, by the way. And they are putting their lives where their mouths are, suprisingly, going out and fight Russians. Unlikely their European or US ideology brothers, who mostly fight the police during and after football games. Or, even worse, harmless LGBT folks on pride parades.
"Every country in the world has their share of far right bozos"
I'd suggest you follow the links I gave you.
"In this first English-language book on the Azov movement, Michael Colborne explains how Azov came to be and continues to exploit Ukraine’s fractured social and political situation—including the only ongoing war on European soil – to build one of the most ambitious and dangerous far-right movements in the world. Michael Colborne ... has been part of the Bellingcat Monitoring Project team at the investigative journalism website Bellingcat, primarily researching Ukraine’s far right."
And by the way, what other country made a neo-Nazi brigade a part of its army?
"And they are putting their lives where their mouths are"
Not sure what's your point. Nazis were doing that too.
The same Michael Colborne this commenter is citing has also written that he "wouldn't call [the Azov Movement] explicitly a neo-Nazi movement", and told Haaretz in 2022:
"After the first few years of its formation, only a small minority of members had far right connections. ... The Azov Battalion and the entire Azov movement are almost completely untainted by antisemitism."
Not that I'm defending Azov. Just that I don't think that this commenter's apparent concerns about Azov's political beliefs are what they seem. I don't think they really care as to whether Azov is now, or ever was neo-Nazi in any substantive sense. It's just a topic they like to through around to push people's emotional buttons, and distract from far more obvious and important issues.
Pretty much exactly like Putin is doing whenever he plays the Nazi card.
You mean those naive, brainwashed fools in Western countries might learn ...
We know all about the topic. However, it's clear from the overall tone of how you communicate here (and your endless evasions when cornered on simple factual matters) that you are either not capable of, or are simply not interested in anything even remotely resembling a productive discussion about it.
"those naive, brainwashed fools in Western countries"
You might be right, actually. Naive and brainwashed Americans supported criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the false pretext. And reelected Bush afterwards. So don't underestimate the power of Western domestic propaganda.
Wagner and its sub Rusich? Both are directly funded by Russia (as recently admitted by Putin himself).
You can possibly claim that it is PMC rather than direct Russian military, but then there is the recent ultimatum given to Wagner troops -- Join Russian military ranks or leave.
Even if we consider "Wagner" to be "neo-nazi" with no evidence what so ever, as you noticed yourself, it's a PMC, so it's not a part of the military. And the ultimatum confirms that (you cannot demand people who are part of the military to join the military).
As for "Rusich" relation to "Wagner" there are just Western journalists claiming that. "Wagner" is not very secretive and Prigozhin is making more videos than some ecelebs yet he never mentioned that nor has shown any "Rusich" troops.
"Even if we consider "Wagner" to be "neo-nazi" with no evidence what so ever"
Well, this sure looks like an evidence of Wagner's commander having a neo-Nazi tattoo [0][1]. Besides Utkin's personality there doesn't seem to be anything else.
Essentially lack of denial. Weird mix of 'Utkin was undercover among Nazis' and 'to fight Nazism one needs to try it himself'. By the way, Bellingcat claims that Utkin has a minor position in Wagner.
I'd imagine if they recorded an audio answer they were not being serious, so makes sense you found it weird. Bellingcat claims a lot of things with no evidence, it's not a serious source IMO.
To be fair, it is silly to even separate them as they're all fighting hand in hand with regular Russian army with Russian army supplies, so for all intents and purposes they were both part of it.
But seeing as the person I was responding to is touting about "powerful Russian military" and "weak Europe" from the comforts of the western middle class, I don't really want to engage in discussion any further.
Milchakov was seen on a Wagner photo in Syria and "allegedly since the summer of 2017 a group of 6 people from Rusich fought in Wagner" ("С осени 2017 года у Вагнера в строю якобы целая группа из «Русича» – шесть человек.") [0]
So much for Rusich being a part of Wagner. The same source says Wagner killed 5 fighters from Rusich guarding one of Donbass warlords.
"so for all intents and purposes they were both part of it"
Not really. Rusich is a dirty secret just like Utkin's personality. They are not legitimized in any way. Azov with the Wolfsangel on their banner and Aidar are openly ultra-nationalist and touted by Kyev as heroes.
As I said, I took it off wiki and I did not verify sources further due to lack of interest in this angle (Wagner is equally despicable in my view).
Russia and Russian Military have a long and proven track record of lying without any shame or remorse, so I don't really care what the "official" standing of these units is. They are fed by Russia, armed by Russia and controlled by Russia, everything else is "Пыль в глаза".
Without downplaying the troubling beginnings of Azov (who aren't the worst offenders by a mile if you look at 2014-2015, to be honest) -- it has little bearing in 2023.
Ukrainian army went a long way cleaning up their ranks and becoming a professional army since then, they had trials and punished their own soldiers for committing crimes in ATO, which Russian side not only did not do, but encouraged.
The World is holding Ukraine to an impossible standard right now, magnifying every individual case and person to paint the whole country in bad light while turning the blind eye to one to Russian atrocities (See HRW about Cluster munitions for Ukraine vs silence on Russia using all sorts of forbidden weaponry).
"they had trials and punished their own soldiers for committing crimes in ATO"
Zelensky let them all out when the war started[0], including the infamous Tornado battalion[1][2].
"have a long and proven track record of lying without any shame or remorse"
Just like the Ukraine or the US.
"which Russian side ... encouraged"
Another fine example of 'atrocity propaganda'[3] to mobilize public support in Western countries for the Ukrainian war.
"vs silence on Russia using all sorts of forbidden weaponry"
So why is the silence? That happens when things get investigated and no proof is found. I remember Ukrainian general claiming in 2014 that Russia used a tactical nuke in Donbass.
Zelensky let them out after many years in prison when faced with full scale war, I do like how you are silent on Russia recruiting violent offenders in prisons to go to Ukraine though. And no, it was not just Wagner doing so, and even Wagner was doing it with explicit approval from Russian government.
The audacity to compare Ukraine, which has incredible level of transparency during this invasion in every aspect, welcoming auditors and investigators from all over the world to Russia is very telling of your biases.
I am Russian, I am well aware of nuances, but to even begin to compare the two is insanity in 2023.
"Where do you the Russian soldiers raping and torturing children in Ukraine sit on your scale?. "
About in the same place as Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, removing the incubators and leaving the babies to die. [0]
Yeah, I thought the same thing. Like, yeah, the guy was being thin-skinned and over reactive but publicly accusing your employer's client of war crimes should get you fired. If you're upset that your employer is dealing with these people, quit. Work for someone you don't hate.
I don't think it's thin-skinned to complain about those tweets. It would bother me too if someone who attended my presentation in professional capacity personally attacked me in a public way like that. It's absolutely completely unacceptable, even in a more casual setting (I'd expect to get banned or at least a stern warning if I said something like that on HN, for example).
>If you think what your employer does is unacceptable you shouldn’t work for them (even if this happens via an acquisition).
I disagree. If leadership of a company makes an ethically questionable decision and everyone who disagrees with that decision quits, that leaves an even more ethically questionable organization behind. I think all good people have an obligation to voice an ethical objection to their company's behavior whenever relevant. Don't just quit and let the amoral/immoral people win.
The author's problem was not that they decided to object instead of quit. Their mistake was doing the objection in both a public and intentionally inflammatory way.
> Don't just quit and let the amoral/immoral people win
If the opposite is stay and actually make efforts for change then yes. If it is staying and keeping your mouth shut then it's just keeping the status quo. And that may be fine and understandable but don't be offended when called out on that.
> think all good people have an obligation to voice an ethical objection to their company's behavior whenever relevant.
Posting a cynical tweet does not reflect a moral high ground, specially if the person doing the tweeting doesn't express any similar concern on any other occasion regarding their line of work and how they contribute directly and indirectly to that moral hazard, and apparently gets disappointed when their employer fires them.
Frankly, it all looks like puerile attention-seeking fuelled by Twitter echo chambers.
She. If you are unsure of a person's gender, just use 'they', but don't assume it's a man. In this case the pronouns are right there on the top of the blog though (as well used in the article).
Not cool, bro. I know transwomen are extremely over-represented among online drama queens and shit-stirrers, and many people resent them for that, but you should still say "she".
Not a native speaker, but my assumption is that we are trying to go easy on “guys”, “man” and “he”. It is not hard to say “they”, “person”, “people”.
Also, I cannot really explain really well, but it seems like there is a big difference saying “he” about just mythical person, and referring to a real person (whose gender you don’t know).
Even worse than that. She took the $40k in return for agreeing to not disparage VMware. She then immediately started disparaging them, but it was "in private" whatever that means, so she presumed she wouldn't get caught. And then once her preferred candidate is in the White House she figures it's now safe to violate her agreement in public too, thus keeping the $40k AND going back on her word. She stiffed VMware once at the conference, and then again afterwards! Clearly this person cannot be trusted in any kind of business relationship at all, as the threat of enforcement is the only thing that keeps them from immediately turning around and stabbing you in the back.
> And then once her preferred candidate is in the White House she figures it's now safe to violate her agreement in public too, thus keeping the $40k AND going back on her word. She stiffed VMware once at the conference, and then again afterwards!
Regardless of how the vicissitudes of politics go, the current NLRB has made its decision, so the author is acting in accordance with the law. Their legal counsel agreed. Perhaps you find this dishonorable or morally disagreeable because of the particulars of this case, but given this is about an individual employee vs. megacorp, it seems no different in principle from the adage of "don't feel bad for quitting, your company would lay you off without a moment's thought." That VMWare vice president is not losing any sleep over the $40k.
"Stabbing you in the back" is pretty strong language for posting social media about a personal experienced at a job she no longer has at a company that will barely see any consequences from this post using a right that literally the government has granted all workers now.
Like what world do you live in that people don't complain about their old jobs such that you think it's that unacceptable?
People can complain about old jobs, sure. But not if they explicitly make a promise not to do so, especially not if they get paid in return for that promise. Whether governments will let her get away with it or not, it's a backstab to extract cash from someone in return for a promise to be nice, and then to break it.
That explicit “promise” is a simple contact, the likes of which companies break all of the time when fiscally advantageous and legally permissible, whether against employees, former employees, or against each other. Also, VMWare isn’t even painted as the villain in this account. You are getting outraged on behalf of an entity that cares not.
Funnily enough, it would seem that VMWare historically has bigger things to worry about when it comes to the military, protests, and broken contracts:
> The Defence Information Security Agency (DISA) reversed a decision to award VMware Inc. with a $1.6 billion contract, following a protest by number of tech companies last February.
> The Pentagon’s decision to cancel its joint enterprise licensing agreement with VMware means the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was able to dismiss protests against the award made by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Citrix Systems Inc., Nutanix and Minburn Technology Group, LLC, as per the statement at this link.
Stab in the back feels apt for signing something to get money in exchange for not saying bad things, only to go and say bad things once the OP realized there would not be consequences for that.
It depends- was that clause the linchpin of the agreement, or rather just a technicality that became obsoleted as it became unenforceable? A bit of click-through EULA.
In any case, regardless of the intentions of the author, VMWare doesn’t look particularly worse off for having this story publicized. It feels like they were caught between a rock and hard place.
This individual has shown they lack a moral compass and will happily lie and disparage anyone they want in both public and private life. Their community of friends are enablers of this negative behavior. I would not hire them.
Agreed. As to the world lived in: most people are so enthralled with money that any risk to earning more in the future is unacceptable to them, sadly. Companies then bank on that behaviour to help sweep things under the rug.
No, the "agreement" was struck down as illegal suppression of labor rights by the NLRB. Non-disparagement clauses are patently bullshit, and their elimination was a big, positive change for everybody who isn't a living caricature of the monopoly man.
Every person has their price. I have lots of ideals too but also have my price. Given enough money I could literally shun society and create a small oasis where said ideals hold true. If given even more money I could lobby governments. The power just keeps expanding the bigger the payment.
> Or you know, most people still need the food and rent.
this is complete bs. it's not 'VMWare or unemployment' (or any $bigtech or unemployment). there are a ton of employers ready to pay competent people a decent salary.
I don't think it's a stretch if you're accusing a member DoD of having blood on their hands to assume that the intent of that statement is that the blood is there due to unjust actions and, since the DoD primarily kills people through war like activities, that the blood that was on their hands was from some sort of unlawful, war like activity, aka, war crimes.
Setting aside the gigantic leap and cognitive dissonance required to imply that a short-serving Chief Software Office is somehow a war criminal and answering your actual question: Avoiding factual statements that have to do with race, religion, politics, sexual orientation, and gender is a good start.
So, if say you're black and your employer pulls some racist shit on you, or a woman and they pull some sexist shit, you shouldn't post any factual statements about it, right?
If you read the rest of my comment, I don't actually have a problem with accusing people of war crimes. I think it's assinine to think one could do so and hope to continue to be paid by those people though. I would think that someone so ready to stand on this moral high ground wouldn't want that money but I guess when it actually comes to backing up her morals, she'll take the money instead.
Your critique only makes sense if she's working for the DoD, or negotiating those contracts for VMWare, or VMWare's business is significantly DoD contracts, none of which are true.
The DoD also performs public services that ostensibly protect her life and liberty at some level, and doubtless she doesn't disagree with those functions. The amount one benefits from an entity one disagrees with can be variable, and debatable.
If you're the owner of your company, the company won't fire you. You can still harm your company (and thereby yourself) by attacking your biggest customers on social media.
On his private twitter? While NOT posting about the company at all?
It was a customer of the company that got offended. Should he know every customer of the company? If the company has 1000s of customers, are they all off limits? Are you supposed to know who they are?
If you work for AT&T and an AT&T customer (of the millions it has) is a jerk or you have some political disagreement with their views, do you get to tweet about it on your personal twitter account? Should they be able to complain and get you fired?
I don't think anyone is debating VMWare's legal right to fire her, just the wisdom of such a decision.
If I was a big tech company especially one trying to find people interested in working lower down the stack, I wouldn't go around pissing off leftist furries.
> They are free to make these claims in a way that doesn’t damage the business. Like a second personal Twitter account.
Are they, though?
I mean, presumably they were posting from a personal account to begin with. Just how separate would a second account have to be - Is it enough to just say all opinions are their own, and only post on their own time? Could they use their own name? What about an online handle they'd used before, if a highly motivated doxxer could possibly identify their employer?
I don't know about that, the smartest man in the world can't seem to stop posting while multiple distinct sets of complete idiots have managed to take over Afghanistan in the past two decades.
> What other factual statements should you not be allowed to make about your employer's clients?
The author seemed perfectly fine with getting paid by their employer, but somehow felt morally justified to openly criticize the way they got their paycheck. It sounds like a very selective self-righteous position.
Also when HR approaches me about it, I tell them their rules are stupid, but I am willing to educate them and show them how to write the correct rules, if they ask nicely.
It makes them look so bad. Also that bit about their friend live-tweeting the private meeting with the VP??! I had to scroll up and check this wasn't fiction.
I'm not a free speech absolutist[0], but if there's one speech one ought to be free to do, it's to write mean things about a government body (or deals with one) in a country that has a constitutional right to free speech.
[0] neither is the US, despite what it says; I am however a free-speech maximalist, and the differences between these positions includes but is not limited to acknowledging that some speech chills other speech.
> I'm not a free speech absolutist[0], but if there's one speech one ought to be free to do, it's to write mean things about a government body (or deals with one) in a country that has a constitutional right to free speech.
Right, understood. But it is the right of every company to have the freedom of association[1] to determine what sort individuals they want to associate with, no?
Just because someone has the freedom to say something, it doesn't mean that their employer has to provide a platform to say it. It also doesn't mean that the employer has to allow its employees to disparage paying customers.
Like I kept hearing over the last few years[2], "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences".
[1] Much like your Free Speech position, I'm not being absolutist, only maximalist in this position; IOW, no dissassociation on illegal grounds, like protected class members, for example.
[2] Not that I agree, just that it seems to be acceptable.
it is the right of every company to have the freedom of association[1] to determine what sort individuals they want to associate with
not when it comes to employees and also not when it comes to customers. employees have a right to share their opinions. and discrimination on political opinion is illegal in many countries. i am not sure if that is the case in the US, but it is in the EU and the UK at least.
doesn't mean that their employer has to provide a platform to say it
the employer didn't provide the platform. they said it on their own personal twitter account not on the company blog.
It also doesn't mean that the employer has to allow its employees to disparage paying customers
depends on whether the statement is factual or not. in germany there was a court case that clarified that it is legal and not an insult to claim that "soldiers are murderers" as long as it is not making that claim about a specific person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_are_murderers
according to the german court:
"sharing opinions to public controversies is a sign of a free democratic order"
companies can not restrict the rights of their employees to share your opinion because that would essentially prevent any public discourse about controversial topics.
> not when it comes to employees and also not when it comes to customers. employees have a right to share their opinions. and discrimination on political opinion is illegal in many countries. i am not sure if that is the case in the US, but it is in the EU and the UK at least.
I said that in the post you replied to.
> the employer didn't provide the platform. they said it on their own personal twitter account not on the company blog.
They said it while being a paid representative of the company, at an event that they were paid to represent the company.
> depends on whether the statement is factual or not. in germany there was a court case that clarified that it is legal and not an insult to claim that "soldiers are murderers" as long as it is not making that claim about a specific person.
This was made about a specific person.
> companies can not restrict the rights of their employees to share your opinion because that would essentially prevent any public discourse about controversial topics.
Of course they can, they just can't do it while representing the company.
I'm a little confused about why you replied; are you clarifying my position by disagreement?
They said it while being a paid representative of the company, at an event that they were paid to represent the company.
it is still their personal twitter account. they are not representing their company on twitter. the time and the location of the person should not matter.
This was made about a specific person.
that is debatable. i interpreted it as a general statement about the military that the recipient of the message is a part of. i can see that it can be read as a personal accusation, but i believe that this was not the intent of the sender.
are you clarifying my position by disagreement
it appears that i am. it did help me better understand your position, so i hope that's ok.
Indeed, that's another and more extended example of why I'm a maximalist rather than an absolutist.
In the context of the DoD… if people, online or offline, get to them just by swearing, then North Korea should have saved money and developed an f-bomb instead of an a-bomb.
I'm assuming the "fuck you" was the one that fired her. However you choose to understand free speech, being needlessly rude as a media representative of a company should get you fired.
Assuming accurate reporting, in the absence of a social media clause that, when shown, your boss agrees you don't need to sign? Doesn't pass the sniff test.
(Curiously, I've just seen someone walk past me with "duck off" printed on their T-shirt. But then, culture here in Germany is much more liberal about both word and deed — it's American cultural norms that made the autocorrupt inside my quote marks).
Given the tweets and the article, it's fair to assume that this is not the first time the person has exhibited such behavior and this was just the last drip overflowing the bucket.
If anybody would prosecute this person under the color of law for her speech, I'd be first to object. I am also very against going for people's job for something they said in their personal capacity, or for disagreeing with their politics.
But that's not what happened. What happened is that she personally cursed out a client, publicly accusing this person in war crimes, while being on a job conference. And, when confronted about that, she basically told HR "your rules are stupid, I'm not going to follow them, let me educate you about how your job should be done". This is not a free speech issue, this is "rules don't apply to me because I am a precious flower that is always right" issue. The organization could choose to tolerate and accommodate this kind of an employee if it's worth it, but nothing requires them to. She is still free to curse out the government in her free time, or when she is outside her job duties - and I would be the first, again, to support her right to do so. But maybe realizing there's a time and a place for such things may do her some good. And if she can't control herself while being on a job (and going to the conference is part of one's job, otherwise why would their employer pay for it?) and be a professional then maybe she should look for some job that does not involve doing that.
Note she wasn't even fired for the conference BS. It was when she explicitly refused to commit to social media guidelines that they pulled the plug. I say if you prioritize the ability to say shit on twitter over your job, then it's not a question of free speech, it's a question of choice. She made her choice, now she's completely free to say shit on twitter.
> I am also very against going for people's job for something they said in their personal capacity... I say if you prioritize the ability to say shit on twitter over your job, then it's not a question of free speech, it's a question of choice.
You look like less of a bootlicking dumbass when you don't contradict yourself in the span of a single comment.
Society needs a general a priori agreement about what's ok and what's not. If people get to make up the rules on the spot then obviously you will just get into this kind of conflict. (This includes "you hurt my feelings".)
I'm all for banning threats and other speech that's illegal. But once a line is drawn it's in everybody's interest to defend it in either direction. Remember that everything you demand to be banned can be used against your cause at a later point. Similar with every accusation you want to be able to utter.
No, that is just one of many examples of how it can happen (and in your case, in both directions, because the name things have in politics doesn't need to match the reality).
Therapists and doctors have to guarantee to their patients that no beans will be spilled just to get what they need to do their jobs.
Whistleblowers need to know their names won't get shared to be willing to blow their whistles.
Filibusters, in the political rather than military context.
Reminded me of that bar scene from Trainspotting where he throws a pint into the crowd from the balcony above, then goes down asking which idiot threw the pint...
Your "hot takes" for the most part (especially when they're basically cheap dunks) on SM help only twitter.
There's plenty of criticism that can be done about the parts mentioned, but those tweets are pretty much the definition of heckling. Honestly nobody cares, and nobody is there for that
She's not technically right. Her article is filled with "all my bosses cheerfully agreed that the social media policy was impossible to comply with", which is nonsense. She could have just stopped using Twitter. She's not a shark who will die if she doesn't tweet every few minutes, it's just social media. Yet she seems to be convinced that she found some clever gotcha here and everyone in every meeting bowed to her superior intellect, meaning she has an impressive inability to read her colleagues.
Looks like she treats people giving up on arguing with her as people agreeing with her. No wonder she's so smug and self-righteous - her experience shows her if she argues long enough, everybody is ending up agreeing with her!
Having opinions is one thing, spewing these opinions, unsolicited, in a public rants while being on a job is another. Spewing them in highly offensive form of a personal insult, and telling the HR to shove it when they object is yet another.
I'd probably rather work for a company that requires people to be professional on a job than one that allows them to "authentically" go wild and throw shit around. There are limits to how much "authenticity" I want to see from my coworkers. Everybody has their own opinions, but there's a time when one needs to choose between staying a professional or let oneself loose. And I'd rather work in a place where the former is encouraged.
> The pony IS her authentic self. Forcing her to suppress that aspect of her identity is as oppressive as forcing gay or transgender people to suppress their identities.
That gave me a chuckle over my morning coffee. A beautifully absurd paragraph. Please write more of this comedy.
As a trans woman, I will pitch in and say this kind of stuff (from fringes of trans/queer community) is why we get hate crimed.
There's medical basis (decades of research and literature) for asserting that one's gender does not match their biological sex. There's not a DSM V criteria for being a pony.
It’s dubious whether this person brought their social media personality into the office. And who’s to say that the entire localized team might not share in the same culture? Would be interesting to hear accounts from the coworkers. Certainly it sounds like there was at least one who had the author’s back. Finally, I am unsure whether that is an accurate, or fair, assessment about their particular subculture. Are you operating with additional insight on that subject? From an insider’s perspective, perhaps?
I don't necessarily disagree with the substance but I think the logic is very sound here. Saying "you are free to choose another industry to work in." if you don't like a specific aspect of an industry is I think a quite exclusionary and condescending view. Nothing ever improves if everyone just leaves everything ranging from jobs or even entire fields when they don't like some of it.
There are many people who want to improve things instead of leaving.
Of course, that is not an improvement at all..... god I wish we just left all personal stuff and identity outside work and unrelated hobbies, it would be much easier... I remember when most people only had a username and zero personal information about themselves so everyone was pretty much faceless, so this wasn't as big of a problem.
I don't see what one's preference in how to have sex and what implements are being shoved where is relevant to Kubernetes. So I'd rather have my coworkers to not bring that to the job unless I ask them about it. I am not showing anybody my private parts unsolicited, and I expect the same courtesy from others, especially on the job.
> (...) but I think it makes the employee look bad.
The fact that the author claimed brought a third party to a work-related meeting with a VP with the purpose of live tweeting it to the world already speaks volumes.
> I would have fired this person as soon as humanly possible for basically (actually) telling customers of the company to go F themselves, and making horribly insensitive and inappropriate jokes at their expense.
OP does mention that they were with VMWare only by acquisition.
Do I think that OP should have done this? No. Do I think they deserve to be fired over this? No. This is the standard chastise them for being an idiot and get back to work.
The problem here was a high-ranking Federal bureaucrat (USAF Chief Software Officer) got his knickers in a twist and rattled VMWare management who should have told him to go pound sand.
And, personally, even though I don't find the OP sympathetic, I'm glad this story came out as the bureaucrat in question should absolutely be named and shamed so other companies won't capitulate to him being a snot. Anybody with skin that thin shouldn't be allowed any amount of power, ever.
> The problem here was a high-ranking Federal bureaucrat (USAF Chief Software Officer) got his knickers in a twist and rattled VMWare management who should have told him to go pound sand.
How do you know that? Nothing in that article suggests there is even the smallest shred of evidence that the bureaucrat in question applied any pressure.
Your [1] is pure hearsay, no different from gossip, and it's coming from one side. It's unlikely to be true, and even if true, unlikely to have resulted in pressure on the employer.
They are not mine, they are the article's. I have acknowledged they are not court-admissible evidence, I am simply establishing that the narrative is not without (claimed) basis. It is up to the reader to determine whether or not they have any merit.
> Do I think they deserve to be fired over this? No.
I think we're taking their account of the events at face value. Maybe this event was just the last in a chain of similar events, and management were fed up already.
Although, I also think that your kind of event description is just as likely. I'm sure it happens a lot, as I know it does in many political, business and interpersonal situations. And you know that being thin skinned won't ever lose them their power, just like that. A person has many reasons to get into power, it's not up to merit.
Unfortunately it's not basic; the ability to strip all context to make this about being mean to a customer makes for a poor argument.
The government isn't just _any_ customer, whether you think the firing was justified or not. The DoD enjoys a ton of taxpayer budget money and a sanctioned right to kill people if it deems it necessary. And it was proactively recruiting at a tech conference for software that isn't innately violent. Is that bad? Maybe not, maybe so. Is that a basic customer? Not at all.
Is this really only about criticizing the government at work? If she made the tweet off hours or wasn't even at the conference, does Nicholas Chaillan still complain to VMWare and get her fired? When is it okay for her to criticize the government without losing her job? Would it even have cost VMWare anything if they didn't fire her and just disciplined her? How about the social media policy that bans talking about incredibly generic things like "age, sex, race, religion"? Has anyone at VMWare ever gotten disciplined for tweeting out "Jesus lives"?
I think your reduction to "employees must never tell any customer ever to go fuck themselves and that's basically what happened here" isn't useful nor is it one of the more interesting questions this post raises.
The comments were personal attacks on the speaker, not aimed at the government or the military. There's a huge difference between those.
If the engineer had posted something criticizing the military outside of the context of the conference and without personally attacking the speaker, nothing would have happened. In fact, I bet the engineer had already done that multiple times before.
Engineers with unicorn / my little pony avatars is a slight red flag to me. I am as socialist as they come (I am not even American, I am Brit and a left wing), but I always try to not engage with those folks on twitter, to easy to get caught up in personal attacks if anything you say is remotely misunderstood. It can quite easily turn into a digital lynching.
My impression is that a large number of toxic people, or outright grifters, join them. In a way that a protest has a bunch of people who don't care as much about the cause, as they just want to fuck shit up. I genuinely find value in many of such groups' original ideas, but it's impossible to separate them from what they have turned into, especially when speaking about them to other people.
This is why many hiring managers these days have a covert policy to never hire any of these people, they can absolutely ruin a team, become a management nightmare and have a high chance of causing reputational damage. Even though in larger companies there is often a diversity drive to increase their number. It's just not worth the risk of hiring from this cohort.
Hi, I use pony/anime/furry avatars at work and my blog is loved on this website for its technical content and innovative use of the Socratic method. People like me exist.
I don't know anything about this person, but I would definitely hire them just because of this story! I like this kind of ppl and i dislike bootlickers, suckers and ppl without a spine
You'd hire someone you barely know because you like their political opinions? You'd be doing them more of a disservice than anything, as clearly your business will go under before the year's end and they'd be stuck finding a better job.
> I don't know anything about this person, but I would definitely hire them just because of this story! I like this kind of ppl and i dislike bootlickers, suckers and ppl without a spine
There's a difference between being a "bootlicker" and being extremely unprofessional (to the nth degree).
If you fire someone for a few insults on Twitter then you belong in Kindergarten, not in a management position.
Boy, I'm so happy I don't work for anyone, I'd hate to have to deal with sensitive pricks that think they can dictate what their employees say on social media.
If you maliciously and repeatedly attack people on Twitter, customers no less, while at a work conference on work’s dime then you belong in kindergarten, not having a professional job. Thankfully VMWare fixed that.
Well, I’m sure OP got her job back as soon as it was revealed that the person she was accusing as a war criminal with blood on his hands was indeed an asshole.
> What is the fuck you list?
Simply put, it’s what you tell Billy Bob to get him to shut the fuck up, and as someone who hates you, still make him think what you are doing actually makes sense.
> The fuck you list are 3-5 key points about why your business is amazing and you are going to win. They are the important points you would feel annoyed for having not conveyed when you leave that big meeting with the investor you really want to close.
They were not these person's "clients", they were the government clients of the company employing him/her. I would have expected the US employees to still have the freedom to say "fuck you!" to their government, even though said government might be on the list of one employer's clients.
More generally, one shouldn't have to give up his/her personal rights to say "fuck you!" to the government once he/she enters an employment contract.
Just because you retain the right to say F U to your government doesn't mean you have the right to say F U to your employer's customers while acting in the context of such employment.
They absolutely do have that right. They even exercised that right. The government did not send police to their house to arrest them. There are many governments that would.
What they don't have is freedom from consequences. They don't have imnunity from being fired.
And perhaps that is a problem in a world where it costs an individual a lot if they are fired, and it (typically) costs a company much less. The result is a chilling effect on the right to criticize the government via corporate punishment, and just because it's technically legal or laundered through a corporation's actions doesn't mean it's a good effect to let continue.
> Boy, I'm so happy I don't work for anyone, I'd hate to have to deal with sensitive pricks that think they can dictate what their employees say on social media.
Here's a genius idea: keep your hot takes to an isolated Twitter account not directly associated with your employer? Have we really forgotten basic OPSEC?
They are a business, not a social club, and so they will do whatever safeguards that business (maximises its profits). If an employee tells a customer to 'fuck off', they are going to fire them, as its not good for business.
You should be careful. It takes a whole lifetime to build a reputation and mere seconds to destroy it permanently. Everything depends on reputation, especially in business. Guard it with your life.
Yeah, for example if you have a reputation as a good employer you shouldn't ruin it by firing employees just because an army official on a power trip asked you to.
But then again, VMWare never had a reputation as a good employer, did they?
> "Being as I’m not an idiot, I elect to bring a witness of my own (@lizthegrey ). She slightly livetweeted that conversation until VP VMware tells her to stop. "
This, I think, is the point that caused the firing. It's pretty clear that if you choose a witness who then posts everything publicly that you are not discussing in good faith. Like, it's your right to speak your mind, and maybe you think you are in the moral right, but if you intentionally antagonize the people you work with you won't be working with them for much longer.
and that was an "external" witness, not even an employee of the company. Which company would tolerate that? Social media has somehow conditioned people to think they can air all of their opinions with no filter and when there are consequences, they act surprised.
I took external to mean someone not involved in the conflict. If they actually were external to the company, that's insane and definitely cemented them being fired. Maybe even before the second round of live-tweeting.
It must have been external to the company, because later they say that they were asked not to invite someone external, so they invited a fellow employee instead.
I mean this is just baffling to me, why is VMWare even allowing her to bring a random person external to the company as a witness to a meeting related to a company's employee, and then that person decides to TWEET that meeting?
It sounds like some weird joke. What goes in those people's head?
Bullshit. Bringing someone from outside a business to a conversation that "slightly livetweets" what is being said is totally not acceptable. I invite you to bring an outside party to your next business meeting, standup or all hands meeting and have them "slightly livetweet" it. You will find the door before the meeting ends.
Businesses have every right to some level of obscurity on what happens internally. There is a very clear difference between using a tape recorder or your smartphone to record a conversation (after clearly stating that you will do so!) and having someone without any relation to the company present and blurbing everything into the ether.
Those meetings are not disciplinary meetings where your performance is being discussed. Everything in a disciplinary meeting is workplace conditions, full stop.
And if hr disagreed, they could have asked the guest to leave.
How does it being a disciplinary meeting effect the validity of bringing in an external party that isn't professionally tied to any party and which "slightly livetweets" events to the general public?
Were they not livetweeting: fine, you can bring a family member or friend to these meetings.
There's a difference between speaking publicly about workplace conditions and livetweeting the details of an individual conversation in a (likely) mocking tone. At that point, the only thing standing between you and being fired is whatever legal defense you can muster, because no reasonable person is going to want to work with you after that.
I'm in slightly overlapping social circles with Liz and have never felt remotely insulted the times we've chatted. I don't follow her on Twitter anymore and haven't been around her since the pandemic started, but I'd be shocked if she insulted people indiscriminately.
For all I know she might insult people when she sees them say things she thinks are shitty, but I haven't experienced that and I think we've disagreed on things in the past.
Someone you brought in is doing something disrespectful and indicative of the central problem to the conversation.
If you come to my house and draw on my walls - I ask you to stop and let's have a conversation about it, so you bring a friend who starts drawing on my walls while we're talking about you drawing on my walls.
You've lost all goodwill that I was willing to extend to you.
How is it that you think this makes it better? I’m asking in all seriousness. To my mind, I can’t conceive of ever thinking this way, so I’m trying to understand what your thought process is.
It's interesting (to say the least) that they more or less used a "no talking about politics" clause to fire this woman, even though the other guy's statements about DoD weapons systems are certainly just as political. But he's an Air Force guy, she's a dissident, he's establishment, she's counterculture, so he got to push her out of a job for meeting him on his playing field, so to speak.
Always illuminating to see what gets cast as "political" and what gets cast as merely neutral.
No, it's absolutely not about how "counterculture" her opinions are. It's about using offensive language. She probably would have avoided all trouble if instead of talking down a fellow participant of the conference, she plugged her beliefs in pacifism in a positive manner.
TBH I don't know that she would have fared much better. One, because it sounds like the Air Force guy is thin-skinned, and two, because even peaceful anti-war protestors have generally been met with disdain and/or tear gas.
But I also dislike the idea that offensive language is somehow not pacifist behavior, whereas developing weapons of war is perfectly fine so long as you're polite about it. Regardless of how you feel about weapons of war, it's hard to deny that they hold a certain non-neutral weight.
She faced concequences for her actions as an employee, not as an activist of peace. Offensive language as an employee, especially when directed at the customer, usually gets you fired.
She wasn't whistle blowing/revealing any inside information. She wasn't adding anything to the topic of the conversation. She publicly made a rude personal comment at a conference from a platform which connects the company with its current and prospective customers. I'm surprised the company dragged this for so long. If this was a waiter at a restaurant saying "fuck you" to this guy while eating there, I'm sure they wouldn't even have had a chance to finish their shift.
People developing weapons believe in protecting their families from danger and don't necessarily consider themselves to be morally superior to their coworkers.
The line between good and evil is not explicitly "violence"
Boohoo, somebody said "fuck you" instead of "I strongly disagree with you, good sir! I shall shake my head disapprovingly whence upon I see you again!"
It's just respectability politics. Tone down your language so you don't hurt the poor DoD Aiw Fowce man's feewings. If she "plugged her beliefs in pacifism in a positive manner" he would've just ignored her, which is the point of Respectability(tm).
Genuine question, though (and not "asking just to make a rhetorical point because I've already decided on an answer"): is that really the case?
I know the boilerplate "tweets do not represent the views of my employer" thing is a cliche at this point, but I always assumed it was at least partly true. If you're not tweeting directly from AcmeCORP's socials, wouldn't there be some understanding that you're not a direct mouthpiece for the company?
Right, but does it follow that "attending on behalf of" equates to "representing the company's official views and opinions"?
I guess what I'm really asking is whether an outside observer would genuinely assume her tweets were indicative of VMware's official stances on anything, or whether they'd assume she was just one cog in their employee machine. Or maybe it's somewhere in the middle.
It equates to being paid to make the company look good. I wouldn’t take their comments or tweets as official policy, necessarily, but attracting negative attention by dragging on a speaker on the company dime isn’t a great look.
Should it be fireable? I’m having trouble there. But they certainly wouldn’t be sent to events for a long, long time.
Fair enough. As much as I'll defend her right to express those views, I do think making those tweets wasn't the greatest call—especially considering the fallout that ensued :P
Given that it caused the Chief Software Officer of a major customer to view it negatively, I think that proves an outside observer viewed it as representing some of the company's views.
For something like government, it doesn't really matter what the official stance of the company is. If you think a single employee is going to try to sneak a backdoor into the software you're buying and the company isn't trying hard enough to prevent it, that's a showstopper.
1. in the interests of (a person, group, or principle).
"votes cast by labor unions on behalf of their members".
Similar: as a representative of, as a spokesperson for, for, in the name of, in place of, appearing for, representing, in the interests of
2. as a representative of. "he had to attend the funeral on Mama's behalf"
3. on the part of; done by. "this wasn't simply a philanthropic gesture on his behalf"
I'm not a tweetin' man myself, but if I were doing business with a company and one of their employees was publicly trash-talking me, I'd probably get pissed and complain to my contacts at that company
I wouldn't explicitly dig around to try and figure out who a pseudonymous person is to try and get them in trouble though
It is also unclear to me what role the author played at VMWare. Random, faceless dev, or an external relations role with a much tighter association to the company.
If the company sends you to the event, it’s fair to say that you’re there “representing” them. If you’re there on your own dime, that may be different.
I’m on the fence on this one. The tweets were in poor judgment. Especially tagging the speaker. That’s needlessly antagonistic.
But, if this person were on my team I’d have tried to protect their job - though I probably wouldn’t be sending them to any shows in the future on the company dime.
There’s probably a lot of additional context that isn’t available in this post that might sway me one way or the other. The fact they were brought in via acquisition matters, IMO.
There is nothing political to say "If Kubernetes is good for DoD weapon* systems, it is definitely good enough for your business!".
I'm sure that every software engineer can think about complexities that DoD experience in their work with software. Some are highly technical in hard environments and with reliability requirements
I disagree. First, you dropped the word “weapons.” “DoD systems” sounds neutral, could be benign personnel systems.
DoD weapons systems isn’t neutral, and it is political. Those systems are used to enforce U.S. policy, via combat. That’s the status quo, which may not feel “political” if you’re supportive of U.S. policy and/or don’t think about the ramifications, but it is very political. If you’re not okay with how the U.S. uses its military, its definitely political.
To some that message reads as “if it’s good enough to use to kill people, it’s good enough for your business.”
Corrected, but missing word was honest mistake and not intentional. I still believe that point stands - as a software engineer I can see a lot of technical challenges in weapon systems too.
And this is just from thinking about *potential* things, as in system design interview. Reality, I'm sure, is much more complicated and hard.
Some will find offense in every word one can say, it doesn't mean that they're right. Because to some that message may mean "If it's good enough to use to save people, it's good enough for your business". Are they less right?
There were two assertions in the original, I was not responding about the complexity piece. Sure, DoD requirements are no doubt fascinating and complex.
What I was responding to was the assertion that "there is nothing political to say..."
As I said, the topic is political. Trying to move from "political" to "offensive" (and omitting "weapons") suggests to me that you're not seeing this as a political issue because you're just seeing this as "normal" from your POV. That doesn't make it not political.
Lol I love the snarky end. Roasted em. They’ll never recover from that put down.
Re:substance, the idea that the DoD is for anything but war is… puzzling. It’s literally a rebrand of the War Department. That’s what “providing military services” is??
Definitely one of the goofiest arguments I’ve ever seen on here. I highly value this forum, because I’m 99% sure everyone here argues in good faith
For me, as someone not an American, this level of polarisation and abrasivity is almost unimaginable for me. Like, intentionally provoking people then painting them as dicks when they get enough of it.
Like, this wasn't even about tweeting political opinions and then being fired for it (which is way less black-and-white than this and I could absolutely have sympathy if that happened), this was straight-up telling "fuck you" to someone when representing the employer at a personal event.
Most Americans would see this person's behavior as polarizing and abrasive, and most employers would seek to fire anyone exhibiting this behavior, and especially with the subsequent actions. This post is just doubling down and shows they have not learned anything. The community of commenters/friends are reinforcing the negative behavior
Well, I'm afraid to say after reading this, I have to disagree. Common sense would have made me consider not posting an inflammatory tweet like that, to be perfectly honest.
Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression?
It is factual that one person was touting instruments of war, but by most comments here that’s seen as “the right” because it’s representing “business”.
What you’re all saying implicitly is that the rights of a corporate employer to make money are always above the freedom to personal expression, by contract, by law and so on.
So if that is always true as many commenters seem to believe, I reiterate that you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom.
This isn't anything particularly corporate. If you worked at a mom and pop restaurant and mouthed off with this level of vitriol about the customers you should expect to be fired.
I don't think there's any discussion about whether the OP had the right to make such comments. The employer also had a right to no longer employ them. Nobody's personal expression rights were violated, just the expression had consequences.
If you have signed an employment contract, then it's perfectly normal to be required to restrict your personal opinions when you are representing your employer.
This isn't some dystopian concept. This is how grownups behave. You are welcome to be an edgelord on your own time anonymously.
It is quite dystopian in general. We are in an early stages of a corporate dystopia all across the world. Very polite and grownup dystopia. For instance it only took 8 years for my employee to stop working with an aggressor country, responsible for killing tens of thousands in those 8 years. And they were both fulfilling contracts for customers from that country and employing contractors there. Neither me nor practically anyone else in the company could speak out against this (and like half of the contractors in the company were from the country being massacred). But we were definitely very polite and all grownup. Great for the business, yeah? :)
I'm not against capitalism, or pro some rebellion, or pro insulting people on twitter. But on the other hand I do realise that the corporate dystopia is only ever increases, because of of the immense power imbalance between individual humans and corporations.
"early stages of corporate dystopia". If anything, we're on the other side of it where companies are being held to some ridiculous standard that we don't even hold elected officials to. Remember Netflix having to fire Kevin Spacey for being accused of something that the president of the United States actually admitted to? How does this fit into the dystopian medium you think you live in?
I'm obviously not condoning abusive behaviour, I'm using this as an example of how much scrutiny there is on these corporations.
It's the same in this case: you're taking the view that a company should allow itself to be dragged into politics by the employee who publicly represents it. Surely that's wrong, isn't it? Companies should not be involved in politics. That's specifically what you are against when you call them dystopian.
This person, who I assume is an US citizen, is absolutely allowed to criticise the army, but they should do it as a citizen. Ultimately, the army serves the citizens and corporations serve customers.
Again - I'm not supporting this person in the OP, not supporting her insults and don't support doing this to customers in general. I'm also rather grateful to the US army and citizens enabling it, because they are #1 factor today why me and my family and friends are alive.
Regarding corporate dystopia, I politely disagree with you. Some isolated cases where corporations are a tiny little bit affected are a drop in ocean of the reverse situations. Also notice that in your example a person (Spacey) is unilaterally abused by the corporation, outside of any due process. This is actually an example for my idea, I think :) . And in general the trend is obvious - corporations are rapidly increasing in size, they destroy free market (or rather it works as expected) by demolishing any competition, bribe and subvert weak governments to push their agenda and lock all customers to their products/services. They blatantly exfiltrate money to the tax free offshores and avoid abiding by any laws (which matter). They deliberately stall any regulation by government of any new areas they are controlling (ads, ISP, media, communication and so on). They are like a rapidly growing tumor, for now mostly benign, but metastases has already started. And anti-monopoly government bodies of all countries are spectacularly impotent over past decades, sitting on their hand and doing nothing that matters.
A full frontal attack is not always the best strategy while facing an opponent, ideological or not. Just saying.
They could've just posted asking if something as controversial and politically-biased as the DoD was the best fit for an international conference and if there had been any political interference and it would've carried the same weight.
The sticking point here for me is that this person was attending an event on the company dime. They were literally being paid to make the company look good by attending.
I’m still on the fence about this, I also think there’s probably context that we don’t have.
Tagging the speaker was also needlessly antagonistic. That IMO escalated it from snarking to picking a fight.
If they were at an event paying their own way, I’d be in agreement with you - but they were there to represent the company.
Considering that this person was happily collecting a paycheck from a company that supplies DoD, I'd personally not make the "personal beliefs are more important than business" argument.
I don't see the issue with this one. If you are working for the company in the first place, you're making an agreement to give your energy, and contribute to this company. It doesn't make much sense to willingly enroll in a company to then criticize its clients and business. The fact that they now represent this company is also quite obvious... This employee of course has the freedom to express its discontent with the company, but then the company is also free to fire this employee for not fitting the culture. If both disagree, it makes sense that they part ways in the end.
The problem comes before that. Mostly there isn’t an alternative to that. Either sign off your rights with an employment contract if you wanna be paid for your skills, or die in a ditch (pardon the hyperbole).
Tertium non datur, there is not an alternative.
And no, I’m sorry, but “you have the freedom to start your own company”, “you have the freedom to not be employed by that company” are all false statements.
There's an in-between, here. The author was at a conference representing said company. Maybe they were told to go, but this isn't VMware policing their speech in general - this is someone attending an event on VMware's behalf and picking a fight directly with the speaker.
I'd feel very differently if VMware fired someone for voicing a political opinion outside the context of work with no reasonable association with VMware other than being employed there.
If part of your job includes repping the company, and the company paying for you to be somewhere, then while you're wearing that hat you need to be conscious of what you say and how it reflects on the company.
I agree with you that there's a power imbalance and "you're free to start your own company" would be unsatisfying if the company is trying to stifle your speech at all times.
> I'd feel very differently if VMware fired someone for voicing a political opinion outside the context of work with no reasonable association with VMware other than being employed there.
Depending on the "political opinion" I would absolutely expect to be fired for expressing it even "outside the context of work with no reasonable association with [company]." If I went out and stood on a highway overpass waving a nazi flag or participated in a KKK march, I would 1000% expect to be fired without even a conversation from my manager. Or, really, if I did anything in public that would get me to the top of Reddit's r/PublicFreakout and got identified, I would not be surprised if my job was in jeopardy over it.
I really didn’t want to drill down into that. I don’t consider being a Nazi a “political opinion.” That’s outright denying other people right to exist, and shouldn’t be dignified as a legitimate political stance.
> What you’re all saying implicitly is that the rights of a corporate employer to make money are always above the freedom to personal expression
Rather, it's the right to freely associate yourself with whoever you want. Not above freedom of expression but certainly not below either.
I wouldn't want to associate with certain people because of what they say and do. There are people who wouldn't want to associate with me either. This is fine. It gets a bit duplicitous when money and power are involved but that's to be expected.
This freedom you all tout as a counterargument is a lie.
You’re all repeating it as if it’s a commonly held piece of common sense, but have you stopped for one second if it actually makes sense?
What is the alternative this freedom enables, if you have a skillset for which you need to be employed to make a living?
For there to be a freedom, there would need to exist an alternative.
As Mark Fisher already brilliantly pointed out before that devoured him to the core, the alternative is not even thinkable.
> Do you realize you are all reinforcing that business must come always first before personal expression?
But it must. If an employer at Starbucks signs off every order with “Heil Hitler,” we should expect them to be fired. Companies don’t have to afford employees free speech when they are on company time.
There already are protected forms of speech in the workplace, including discussion of workplace safety, unionizing, as well as speaking out against harassment and discrimination. And the NLRB has already ruled that some of those are protected even when made on social media, even if it's alongside profainty[1].
Perhaps criticism of the government or government representatives should be added to the list?
Fair opinion. I might agree, but the manner of this “disagreement” was clearly outside the bounds of any reasonable code of conduct. I would not support such a law if it permitted workplaces to turn into places where screaming obscenities at each other over government policies were considered protect speech.
> I reiterate that you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom.
Nah, she should have quit and exercised her personal freedom to work for an employer she doesn't think is a war criminal. _That's_ how capitalism works, vote with your labor/dollar. Instead, she fought tooth and nail to keep that corporate job and the blood money that came with it.
LOL, no sorry. That’s the kool aid they want you drink. Stating it as if it’s an actual fact of corporate capitalism, as if facts wouldn’t have disproven these “tenets” over and over, won’t make it all magically real.
Yes, the implication here is that having to give up something that is comparatively very valuable to you (your livelihood) while the consequences to the company of plucking it away from you are tiny (a line item on a budget somewhere) in order to exercise your freedom is a flaw of capitalism.
To clarify, I mean more like "your ability to pay the bills on time" but more importantly I mean that the risks you incur losing your job are much higher than the risks your job incurs from firing you, typically. It's a power imbalance.
Well, the reason for this particular firing is because the risks of keeping this person employed were higher than keeping them employed. One mitigate their risk of getting fired by not being actively detrimental to their employer and even trying to contribute in a meaningful way. Being utterly replaceable is going to get you replaced.
Conversely, if you're employable, a company is always at risk of you leaving. It's not like you're an indentured servant who can be dismissed at will. The voluntary nature of employment goes both ways. I don't I want to be a part of any system where the working relationship is not bilaterally voluntary.
Employability isn't the only factor, there's insurance, health, debt, rising cost of living, visa status, and so on that can make it such that, while you can _technically_ leave at any time, it may be disastrous to do so.
Which has knock-on effects like "people with disabilities are pressured to not speak out on social media for fear of losing the job that is covering life-saving treatments" without better protections.
All of that stuff is irrelevant, you get a new job and all of that stays the same. You're just flailing for social justice buzz words now.
As for "speaking out" on social media, that's not really a loss, it's useless. Talk to a lawyer, if you have a case, they'll take it for free. It's funny that slacktivism is so normalized that people think it's the right thing to do when they are trying to help themselves.
> All of that stuff is irrelevant, you get a new job and all of that stays the same.
I'm glad life is so simple for you that you can just get free lawyers and new jobs whenever anything goes wrong, but others can't and they're concerns and fears that people deal with every day.
Again, free lawyers are generally available for any person who has a reasonable chance of winning a case. The author of the article herself appears to have done that. Expensive lawyers in civil cases are for people who are making cases with little chance to win, often where the legal proceeding is the goal itself.
Also, We're talking about moving jobs by choice due to a disagreement with your current employer. The author of the article isn't some coal miner in a dead end coal town, she's a software engineer, she can find another job, or could have, if she didn't publicly prove herself to be more trouble than she's worth and then double-down by publicly brag about it.
I can't think through all the flaws but "criticism of the government is protected speech for employees" broadly seems achievable, which of course has tons of annoying details like "when is an employee speaking for a company vs for themselves, are personal twitter accounts an employee's own speech" or "what is a government entity" or "what is criticism" or "what is an allowed disciplinary response to grey areas" and so on.
It pretty clearly is criticizing the DoD and it's representatives for 1. killing people (probably in a general sense) and 2. participating in and advertising themselves at a tech conference while doing so.
Is it the profanity that puts it over the line? Profanity is often how we express that a feeling is extremely strong, and in the context of criticizing the government it's a pretty time-honored tradition given the power imbalance it has.
>you’re all confirming that contributing to corporate capitalism is incompatible with personal freedom
Isn't it obvious? You're literally giving away more than a third of your life working these jobs to do things that you don't personally want or benefit from. You think the more restrictive thing that is being really imposed on you is being unable to tweet "Fuck you" instead of spending like half of your waking time away from your family and loved ones?
I'm personally not a fan of capitalism conceptually, not just the corporate kind, but it always strikes me as weird how other leftists think that's the unthinkable part, that someone would fire you for speaking out of line while still acknowledging that the other party is part of an organization that kills thousands and suppresses nations for oil for example.
Very good points.
In fact the reality is the lack of alternative. But this is really what I don’t understand about thousand and thousand of talented people working for Meta, for example.
If you publicly make personal attacks against employees of your employer's biggest customer, isn't firing you a completely reasonable thing for your employer to do?
Is saying "the blood never washes off" the hands of this DoD employee really a personal attack? I mean, it certainly seems like a consistent and reasonably widely held belief that military industrial complex jobs cost lives.
There's of course the opposite opinion too. I'm not interested in trying to demonstrate that one opinion is right or wrong, just that like, is this really an attack?
Yes. There's a difference between saying "I would like to avoid you because your industry costs lives" and "I'd shake your hand, but, y'know, the blood never washes off". They're both basically statements about the same thing, except one is an attack while the other is merely expressing disapproval.
It's rude, sure, but I still fail to see how that rises to the level of attack? What harm is intended or possible from a comment like that? Are all rude comments attacks?
Accusing someone of having blood on their hands is generally an attack to mean that the accused has caused unjustifiable death. To contrast, if person A saves person B from a mass shooter by killing said shooter, it'd be odd for person B to say to A "You have blood on your hands!" (unless it's literally true).
"You have committed unjustifiable harm." is clearly an attack. People who commit unjustifiable harm are generally supposed to be shunned, penalized, or killed according to how human societies have operated across the world (various things can get in the way of this, but this is the baseline).
So now we're at "My employer's client is someone who should be shunned, penalized, or killed. (and I'm going to post it publicly in a way to make it possible for said client to be able to see it!)".
Finally, a lot of business runs on vibes. Having employees that attack your clients in public sends bad vibes. Even if it's just a 'rude comment', why endanger your business for someone who so deeply fails the vibe check?
Of course it is an attack, and they tagged him in the tweet too. There were plenty of opportunities to keep the job after this point (deleting the tweets, not being a massive douchebag in every interaction with the company) but they gave the company no choice.
Use common sense. "[..] blood on your hands [..]" implies he's indirectly a murderer at least. Calling someone a murderer is in the best case defamation or an insult.
"Fuck you" has so many different tones, and is so ubiquitous. It can be playful, jocular, intense, deadly serious, all over the place. Fuck you is not, by default, a personal attack, imo.
It's also almost certainly culturally different on different coasts, online, in person, etc. A tweet is like, nothing.
It's really, really not. Fuck you has a huge range of meaning. Carlin built several comedy bits around the word Fuck specifically because it was used colloquially so many ways.
Did he took some person, in audience or otherwise public and built entire bit around saying "Fuck you" addressing that person?
Carlin's sketches (at least ones that come to my mind, as I really loved to watch Carlin about 10-7 years ago) is irrelevant. When Carlin said "fuck you" he was speaking about phrase, not to someone in particular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqaOLThPg4
There could be different Carlin bits that I don't know about, and I'm sure that he said a lot of fuck yous to all presidents at a time in same way as op did to DoD guy, but no, I don't buy your comment saying that Carlin's fuck you and screenshot from the post are same things. Especially given what followed.
Very rough analogy, just to illustrate the point and how I see your arguing (as, at this time, I'm already believe that you're arguing in bad faith). You cannot say: "this guy is not guilty in a murder, as murders are happening in nature all the time. Dragonflies are killing flies, birds killing dragonflies, humans killing birds, humans killing humans, ergo no one is guilty, those are just facts"
I do believe I'm at least attempting good faith here, I just do not find "fuck you" as a tweet, even levelled against me, to be particularly aggressive. Especially such a short message.
I'm likely more terminally online, more cynical, or more desensitized, but I see the two word "fuck you" to be such low effort that it doesn't even rise to the level of notice.
Like, an insult that specifically called out my behaviors or appearance or something and said fuck you? That feels meaningful, that's personal. But like, autocompleting two words flippantly into a tweet is like... Nothing?
But could you accept that other people can take that differently, especially if those people represent paying customers and getting such message from people who represent a vendor?
I have had a different life from you. I've been homeless, I've been wealthy, I've lived in many cultures and communities from suburbs to communes. I've worked tech I've worked as day labor moving soil by hand. I guarantee you that language (and especially the use of curse words), varies wildly.
I have lived in many countries and had a wide variety of jobs and life situations as well. You are not impressing anyone with your knowledge about cultural nuance, everybody knows that any sentence can be interpreted in many different ways. And everybody that argues in good faith also knows that saying "fuck you" on Twitter, to someone that you don't have any rapport with, is going to be interpreted as an insult.
I disagree, I think of tweets as nothing - air, fluff, someone expressing themselves without thinking. If someone tweets fuck you at me I'm not insulted, it's such a low effort post why would it ever even be parsed by me into anything meaningful?
It's like being insulted because someone farted at the hotel you were staying at. It's of so little consequence it cannot possibly be an insult.
It's incredible to see HN lose their minds because someone sent a two word tweet with a curse word in it, lol. A tweet.
You're not even wrong, but the problem is that when you post on Twitter, any and all context and nuance is immediately lost and all that's left is a string of ASCII spelling out "fuck you".
That's fair, but also, Twitter culture is definitely it's own culture, and I've largely seen quickly slammed out "fuck you"s to be emotionally equivalent to the rolling eyes emoji or the "wanking" hand gesture.
It certainly reads like an attack, and that's to someone who agrees with the sentiment. And as an observation, in professional contexts you can generally be poetic and figurative when talking about good things ("Gary is such a godsent and a genius for showing us the way to restructure our department"), but it's in bad taste to do it to express negative things ("I worked with Gary and he's an absolute mouth-breather and defecated all over our infrastructure").
If you do it from your private account, which doesn't contain any links to or mentions of you being part of your employer, outside of working hours? The employer shouldn't even be mentioning it.
If you do it from your fused-personal-and-work-persona while repping your employer on a conference, on working hours? You have it coming.
In one, you speak purely as a private person while in the other you are acting on behalf of your employer, like it or not. There's a vast gray area in-between. One of many good reasons to keep your identity small and your personas segregated. If you need to live-tweet no-filter-hot-takes from kubecon, you shouldn't be attending on company time.
If your clown persona is incompatible with corporate culture, then you’re the one who’s in the wrong. They just corrected their original error of hiring the person.
If you are at a tech conference, likely on company time, then you are in effect representing your employer. This includes the content of the constant stream of tweets.
This sounds exactly like the person who first does something stupid, then instead of accepting their mistake doubles down on it and takes several steps to make it much much worse, and then when has to face the consequences blogs about it with a straight face while trying to get public sympathy.
Is there a word for this kind of behavior?
For what it’s worth, IMHO, VMWare comes across as extremely mature.
I feel like there is something - not necessarily something legal - about the fact that the author was attending the convention on behalf of her employer; she was tweeting ‘on the clock,’ if I understand correctly.
Otherwise, I’m not sure how that kind of policy could possibly be reasonable. People get to hold their own opinions, and they get to hold forth on those opinions if they choose. I don’t think anyone reasonable would confuse her statements with some sort of official policy position on the part of her employer…
… but also honestly fuck professionals who take blood money from the military industrial complex. VMWare should be proud to take a public, principled stance on DoD contracts. That’s the kind of free speech that everyone is entitled to, firing someone over it is shameful.
The oft-repeated "The first amendment doesn't apply to corporations!" slogan when defending the banning of people from various social media applies here. The company she works for doesn't have to employ her if they disagree with her opinions. Isn't that the goal of all these doxxing Twitter mobs when they find someone who said the n-word on video?
> … but also honestly fuck professionals who take blood money from the military industrial complex. VMWare should be proud to take a public, principled stance on DoD contracts. That’s the kind of free speech that everyone is entitled to, firing someone over it is shameful.
Taking “blood” money and complaining about doesn’t make you a freedom fighter, it makes you a hypocrite.
> . And when he publicly resigned in 2021 he worried about how in the future “China has the drastic advantage of population over the U.S.”
I invite you to draw your own conclusions about this guy.
I don't know anything about this guy, but if this is an attempt to portray him as a racist, it's a pathetic one at that.
Really? On first meeting they brought a witness who sort of livewteeted the meeting? This is so weird, I wonder what is going on with author that they dont see by themselves what they are doing here? Feels like a case of totally missing any sort of self-reflection.
Bringing witnesses to all these meetings is likely what got them fired. The VP was going to just accept their apology for insulting a customer but the combativeness turned it into a bigger problem.
I'm pro free speech and hate when people get cancelled for their beliefs. I don't think firing was appropriate based on the story told in the article, but also recommend not acting like the author. Not to avoid being fired but to follow the basic life rule "don't be a dick".
Yeah I think you might be correct. I used the wrong term but I guess what I don't like is the idea of calling someone's boss to get them fired for saying something mean online.
On the other side I'd not want people on my team to represent my work place like this. If I was a coworker I'd rather see them removed. Those tweets were gratuitously unprofessional in the setting of a work conference.
It wasn't work related, no? She wrote from the personal account, not from the @vmware or something.
I'm not pro insults on twitter. But I think much bigger problem than the insults is the way corporations try to claim everything as "work related". If that specific account or whole media (Twitter) had been explicitly mentioned as her job responsibilities, then I guess corporation was in the right, claiming that it was for work. But just trying to blanket control whole human lives during the employment period is bad. Bad for us, employees.
She attended the conference on behalf of her employer (literally the first line on her post), and insulted people at this conference, this is 100% work related.
I agree she's obnoxious (as is anyone tweeting too much), and tweeting that is kind of rude, but would she get more positive reviews here if she were a Tencent/Yandex employee and had tweeted the equivalent of FU at a presentation of a Chinese/Russian military tech representative?
This would even be grounds for firing in the Netherlands, which has the most rigorous employee protections on the planet.
I mean in what world do you go to a conference on company time, as a representative of that company and then type "Fuck you" to one of your biggest customers?
That person should've been fired, and it happened. Good riddance.
So what did I see "Fuck you" for slide where army officer praises Kubernetes and calls to join them. Then accusing him for blood on his hands. Then also connecting inability to negotiate better severance package when firing happened with Trump era...
My opinion always is: if in any shape or form your posts are related to work (e.g. that person was tweeting about conference attendance, that conference attendance was on behalf of her employer, for fucks sake), then you should have separate account and strictly separate your opinions.
The things that I read both in post and in referenced tweets, actually, did remind me about Timnit Gebru and her story with Google (opinion below is my own and in no means reflect anything else, as Google is my employer). I was curious about Gebru and read her twitter for some time after her departure. God lord, the toxicity is over the top. I even learned a bit of the anti-white racist dictionary such as "white aligned". But, of course, as I'm eastern European immigrant, I still speak from the historical position of patriarchal white privilege, so my opinion doesn't matter.
It worked out in the end as he correctly surmised that she was just young, dumb and excited and tried to work to get her the position back. However the crappy side of furries (well anybody online) targeted the poor dude even though he was completely correct to call her out on her language.
As a furry myself I completely separate it from work, why someone would ever mention work or any other professional part of their lives on a "I like cartoon animals" account is beyond me. It's easy to be necessarily vicious and reactive/emotional online and I do it all the time myself, but I never involve my job.
Perhaps it's a context problem, being used to particular environments, say professional & unprofessional, when someone makes the mistake of being unprofessional in their unprofessional environment (their personal Twitter) but there are links to the professional environment (colleagues on Twitter) then trouble happens.
OP was big-headed and was posting all this conference shit from their personal Twitter account looks like. They should've been posting it from a work account and not gone off the rails. If they want to bitch about the DoD fine, I can totally understand, but do it on personal account and don't involve your work/job in any way. Explain what you don't like about the DoD rather than "fuck you".
We became aware that you dislike one of our clients, and that you have strong beliefs that we shouldn't do business with them. Given that, we decided that you should not work with us because you think we shouldn't do business the way we do.
what would have happened? Could this clear and direct justification still be used as basis for a lawsuit from the employee?
Not being able to comply with “Avoid topics involving age, sex, race, religion, ethnicity, politics or disabilities.” is pretty odd, but then again I guess this is your average Twitter user.
A) pretty sure this post is about someone getting fired for misconduct. That has nothing to do with the listed topics. At best it could be mildly political since they were allegedly fired for political views, but that is not the main discussion.
B) the rules only tell to avoid
C) at least I do not have such rules places upon me
This has been upvoted by many people on HN, so I guess it has some value for folks here, but can anyone enlighten me as to how this outrage porn is supposed to result in curious conversation? (For anyone wondering, I flagged it.)
That's disingenuous of you. This article sparks conversations about workplace boundaries and corpo vs personal ethics and rights, as can be clearly seen by the other comments.
Yeah, unfortunately important topics like these are typically flagged on HN and quickly disappear from the front page.
I understand why -- they tend to lead to flamewars. But I'm not sure if hiding issues like this is a good choice.
(Aside: I think it's telling that the apparent majority on HN is on Goliaths side in this case. Usually we're more on the side of the underdog. I wonder if that's just the latent misogyny showing, or if it's because OP is left leaning, or because of the pink homepage with the ponies.)
Could it be nothing of that but disregard for toxic behavior of op who either doesn’t have clue about tone, causes and consequences of the actions or refuses to own it.
With the way how the post is written, and I find the end especially toxic, with points about trump era, throwing shade on a guy with hints of racism, I cannot see that this was just some unfortunate misunderstanding.
omg your possible explanations: misoginy, ponies, anti left - you seem to forgot to add transphobia and tech bros to the same sentence to have flesh royal
To flip the political polarity, this is a matter of free speech, an issue championed by the right as of late- and involving Twitter, no less! It becomes an interesting case study once you strip away the triggering particulars and examine it from a bigger picture.
Person was fired for offending, in very harsh words, a CUSTOMER while being on behalf of a VENDOR. HN people in this thread see it as it is, without deflection attempt by OP (oh, this is DoD, this is government official, he is corrupt, he is racist, trump era, fuck you is not big deal etc etc etc).
Some people have strong feelings against Monsanto. Pfizer. Oil industry. Solar industry. Chemical industry. Meat processing industry. Would this be an excuse to write the things that this person did? No.
Imagine scenario. Instead of DoD there is a slide from a guy from Tyson. And some vegan activist, who represents VENDOR in professional capacity, literally writes the same tweets: "Fuck you", then "Blood on your hands". Will that be acceptable? Should that be ok?
To be honest, I thought the inflammatory tweet against Walmart was suspect enough, both because one would assume that if there's a VMWare business deal with a fellow corporation it would be more at risk than one with the federal government (or not: https://siliconangle.com/2015/03/17/u-s-military-drops-1-6b-...). One would think that would merit more potentially scrutiny and censure, because when it comes to the government there's an element of protected political speech (so long as it does not trigger any security concerns) that provides plausible deniability, as the OP is engaging there. So no, I don't think it's equivalent to Tyson, because the latter is more of a business risk.
> Will that be acceptable? Should that be ok?
A lot of the language being heralded as examples of brave free speech on social media are far from acceptable or okay either, but that’s where those fights take place- on the margins, at the boundaries of social tolerance.
> I cannot see that this was just some unfortunate misunderstanding
It obviously wasn't a misunderstanding. The story is about a person who insulted an air force official, and got fired as a result. There is no misunderstanding about this.
So the relevant question is, should programmers be fired for insulting government brass on Twitter? I would expect most of HN to say "No, they shouldn't".
But in this case, the overwhelming majority of posters is really pissed at OP for some reason, and I'm wondering why that is.
> to have flesh royal
I don't understand what this part is supposed to say?
The "no politics on HN" rule/convention died out around 2016 or so. Turns out even though Hacker News used to not believe in politics, politics believes in hackers. And everything about this story is actually about hackers, rather than a random political story like many highly-discussed articles as of late.
It's an interesting insight into work place politics inside a big tech company. It's certainly interesting to hear that even though you may be a well paid professional, your employment is still at the whims of a bunch of spineless execs who'd prefer to fire an employee that they paid a lot of money to hire, rather than finding a way to deal with Twitter drama in a reasonable way.
I found it especially interesting that the DoD dude apparently had a history of using his position to get people fired who insulted him on Twitter (or at least trying to do so).
She was right to speak out, and her employer was within its rights to fire her. As long as she subsequently found a job at a company that comes closer to sharing her values, it sounds like a win-win.
There is something of a paradox that I feel exist, at least in the US, with regards to the defense sector. I don’t agree with its ethics or morals as they exists in the country, but I’m curious how others reconcile their privileges in comparison to other regions with the fact that said privileges can be attributed to the US’s tremendous military scale domestically and globally.
One could even argue that defense even precedes food and water at this stage also.
Exactly. The only reason so many Western countries are able to spend so little on defense without being conquered is that the US is spending enough to pick up all of their slack at once.
The screenshot of the DoD recruitment pitch from the conference set off a little "military-industrial complex alarm" in my mind. To be clear, I wouldn't have tagged the guy in a mean tweet. I would have just frowned and gone on with my day. But I think it's crucial that the voices of people like this blogger be present in tech communities.
Zero sympathy for this person. The behaviour described is unprofessional, immature, and frankly quite toxic.
Not to mention a fairly stupid opinion; some of my colleagues arguably have the US DoD to thank for not being victims of russia's genocide. I couldn't imagine my colleagues having to deal with this drama bullshit on top of sheltering from missile attacks on civilians.
So their employer pays for them to go to a conference and they don't see anything wrong with embarrassing their employer with inflammatory tweets against an arm of the government?
How would they react if it was the megacorp playing stupid by ignoring all common-sense and respect, and pointing at minutia in written guidelines to justify sociopathic actions?
A person that publicly curses out the military, while on a job conference paid by her employer, and while the military is their client, and adds vile personal attacks to that. The justification for it - "I was mad". Sure, then of course it makes it ok, of course if you're mad the rules no longer apply to you, sorry we even asked.
Refuses to promise she wouldn't keep doing it, while having the gall to "propose to improve" the guidelines so that they suit her personally. Probably adding "all the above doesn't apply if the employee feels mad at DoD for existing".
Refuses to admit there's anything wrong about inflammatory offensive cussing (I'm not talking about serene or even heated political debate, "fuck you" is not that) - again, while being on the job, and repeatedly being suggested by hr that it's not how things are done.
Signing the NDA, because sweet sweet money.
Violating the NDA as soon as she's sure they won't ask for the money back, because agreements are for other people to follow.
Somehow making it all Trumps fault because sure, that's what Trump was doing for 4 years, personally ensuring this person could not tell her bombshell story.
There's too much insensitivity these days. People think it's perfectly fine to state their opinion as fact and be completely rude to anyone else. I believe it should stop.
So I'm sorry for this individual, but glad it happened. It needs to happen more.
why does employer not say "dear whoever, this employee is clearly an idiot, and whatever they say on their private twitter does not represent our views"
> why does employer not say "dear whoever, this employee is clearly an idiot, and whatever they say on their private twitter does not represent our views"
Because:
1. It wasn't private, it was public and tagged the subject of the abuse directly.
2. "This employee" was on company time and actively representing the company at the time.
It doesn't matter what role you are, you are always at risk of getting fired if you embarrass your employer.
I’m an IT contractor working in gov, and I’ve worked in a huge number of autocratic governments around the world that would be considered “the bad guys”. Many of the regimes that mistreat their citizens and workers.
And you know who’s always there with big contracts and consultants?
That’s right: VMware (and oracle and others…)
If one were to start virtue signaling (which I’m clearly not prone to do given my work history) I think it’s hard to argue that the DOD is worse than VMWare.
Why do people gloss over the fact that they signed a contract stating their employment is “at will” meaning they can be let go for a multitude of reasons outside of being in a protected class.
This person’s entitlement is on another level. They aren’t guaranteed a job and insulting high ranking officials will get you sacked 99% of the time, on top of the thousands of other reasons your employer can let you go.
Shame about their financial package but it feels like the system mostly works. People should be free to be their whole selves at work and in public and they shouldn’t want to work anywhere that fires them for that. Obviously many people don’t have the privilege to live that way, and more’s the pity.
I very much agree with the general sentiment here, but I want to make a separate point about tech's relationship to defense which is also portrait in these tweets. Much has been written about the DoD's funding of early Silicon Valley companies - but today, this relationship has been largely severed with giants like Google refusing to provide their tech for defense and military purposes.
I THINK THIS IS A MASSIVE MISTAKE.
War exists. It is as old as humankind. We could wish it wouldn't, but it does. And history has shown again and again that the way to avoid war is not in de-arming, appeasing or otherwise refusing to participate, but in obtaining a level of military and economic strength that makes it unattractive for others to attack you.
Silicon Valley has the potential to generate this overwhelming strength, but it declines to do so. And the few companies that do, such as Palantir or Anduril are often shunned by their peers.
I believe that Silicon Valley could play a unique role in ensuring a lasting global peace and is held back by shortsighted sentiments. Or, to put it into fancy Latin:
That is too absolute a statement. But generally, yes, I believe that a militarily strong US that has an interest in global trade makes war much less likely.
Of course, one of the inherent problems of having a strong military is the temptation to use it - and the US has certainly done so multiple times in ill-advised fashion in Irak, Kuwait or Vietnam to name just a few.
But having a military superpower like the US that's more interested in economic and cultural expansion than in direct land grabs is certainly an important counterweight to Russian or Chinese ambition. I believe a world with a militarily weak US would have seen much less "Pax Americana" and much more aggressive, expansionary wars since 1945.
A tiny fraction of western weapons allowed Ukraine to hold against Russian war machine and even have prospects of counter offensive. I can’t imagine the hell on earth if it kicked in full force and went to war against anyone.
Y'all are really telling on yourselves by shitting on OP. It's all about defending freedom of speech until the speech is a gay furry communist telling the army to fuck off.
Should OP have tweeted as they did, specially while attending an event *on behalf* of their employer? Yeah, it is asking for trouble. Yeah, the company does have a right to fire them.
What should be extremely grinding y'all gears though is:
1. A government employee should NEVER be the initiator of such an event. Even if it's legal, smells A LOT like the government trying to silence citizens.
2. The minute the company says "we'll accept your resignation" and tried to get out of paying what OP was owed, they become the bad guys, doesn't matter how obnoxious OP might be. If you wanna fire someone, have the balls to actually fire them and pay up whatever was agreed to in the contract.
I'll give a bit of a pass on 2, because a lot of HN commenters are Americans, and Americans are brainwashed by their shitty work laws, they lost perspective of what is fair in an employer/employee relationship.
But 1? Reverse the ideologies and this post would've been front page for 3 weeks.
> I pointed out the social media guidelines were basically impossible to follow
Can someone explain why they are impossible to follow? Just… don’t tweet (or use other social media) and you are following them, right? Apparently I’ve been doing the impossible since forever.
Yeah, if you don't know why you weren't going to keep your job after that, then well, that's not good. Plenty of places you can work with opinions like that. Also be wary that others will then voice their opinions about you.
This reads 'immature borderline toxic' I can't imagine having to work with this kind of drama.
This situation is complicated and I've noticed most of the top posters saying they would fire the employee immediately. However, the behaviour expectations weren't communicated properly post acquisition and it's really the company's management who are responsible for protecting the company from these situations. Imho the situation is something like, it's the employee's fault, but not their responsibility. Management should have done a lot more to prevent this happening and communicate to all employees expectations in a clear way. Imho the VP should have taken the L, communicated a clear policy and then dealt with the angry customer personally. This whole sacrificial 'fire the employee' thing makes the company and the VP look weak and pathetic. It's much harder to meditate and communicate towards an amicable resolution.
> Imho the VP should have taken the L, communicated a clear policy and then dealt with the angry customer personally.
This is exactly what happened. But when communicating the policy the poster flat out refused to follow it and brought their bud to the meeting to insultingly live tweet it. Insulting the VP and refusing to follow the policy after that meeting is what got them fired.
Is this a defense of tweeting "fuck you" at a customer based in the company not having said "don't tweet 'fuck you' at customers"? Is there some ambiguity at play here, like in some cases employees are encouraged to tweet fuck you at customers? I'm puzzled
Presumably there are companies that consider your social media part of your personal life and beyond the purview of corporate scrutiny. Maybe the reason why the author felt entitled to act this way was because their company permitted them to tweet like this prior to the VMWare acquisition.
imho the point of this article seems to be to tell the story where big bad VMWare or the target of VMWare’s employee’s ire stomped on poor VMWare employee, but I think it makes the employee look bad. I would absolutely not hire this person based on this post. Work isn’t the right time to be attacking people on a personal level.